Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

THE MISSION OF JESUS §11.4
John appears to have been doing something similar. He envisaged the one
to come as immersing people into the river of God's fiery breath as it (probably)
flowed from heaven. As the imagery implied, this could be a destructive event.
But as the imagery also implied, it could also be a purificatory, purgative event,
burning away all impurities (as in Mai. 3.2-3). 144 According to Q, after all, he
promised this further baptism not as a threat to those who refused his baptism,
but as a prospect (promise?!) to those he himself baptized: 'I baptize you with
water, but he will baptize you [the same 'you'!] with the Holy Spirit and fire' (Q
3.16). The parallel image was of wheat gathered into barns as well as of chaff
burned (Q 3.17). And as noted earlier, Mark was not the only Evangelist to regard
John as 'the beginning of the good news'. 145 John, in other words, took the
imagery provided by his own distinctive act and drew on its powerful symbolism
to give a new variation to an older prophetic/apocalyptic expectation. Or perhaps
he baptized because he had already appreciated the power of the symbolism
which it expressed. At any rate, we can assume that John saw his own distinctive
practice of immersing the repentant in Jordan as somehow foreshadowing a
much more fearful immersion to come. Presumably he expected that those who
so repented would find the imminent immersion in the river of God's fiery breath
to be purifying and cleansing rather than consuming and destructive.
We can probably go a little further. John's image of being baptized in the
river of fire descending from heaven may have been John's own way of envisaging
the final period of tribulation which in apocalyptic thought came to be seen
as the necessary or inevitable precursor of the new age to come. This expectation
was probably rooted in Daniel's prophecy that 'there shall be a time of anguish,
such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence' before
the people are delivered and the resurrection takes place (Dan. 12.1-2). It would
be natural to link this prospect with the earlier imagery in Daniel's vision of the
little horn prevailing over the saints of the Most High (Dan. 7.21). 146 Another
powerful image was of a woman's labour pains ('birth-pangs') in giving birth,
which was familiar from similar prophetic contexts 147 and evidently in current
144. Webb has some justification in criticising my 'Spirit-and-Fire Baptism' 84-86: to
insist that the future event was envisaged as a 'single baptism' may press the language too
strongly, particularly as I also accept that two outcomes are envisaged, destruction for the unrepentant,
purification for the repentant (John the Baptizer 289-92; similarly Taylor, Immerser
139-43; the view is common — Ernst, Johannes der Täufer 53-54). But it still makes better
sense of the imagery (a river of ruah and fire, not two rivers) to think of one baptism with two
distinct outcomes rather than of two distinct baptisms.
145. Becker, however, insists that John prophesied only judgment: 'Nothing even approaching
a promise of salvation crosses his lips . . .' (Jesus of Nazareth 38-39)!
146. Dan. 12.1 is echoed in T. Mos. 8.1; CD 19.7-10.
147. Isa. 13.8; 26.17-18; 66.7-9; Jer. 6.24; 13.21; 22.23; Hos. 13.13; Mic. 4.9.
368