I’ve always found it to be a thing of comfort to know that one Apostle found another Apostle’s writing to include things that are “hard to understand” (2 Pet. 3:15-16), while honoring him for being used by God to reveal the most comforting spiritual truths. I have often wrestled with many of the things that the Apostle Paul wrote–trying to understand how they fit into the larger context of his argument on the whole. Part of this difficulty is, no doubt, on account of the proximity issue. A 21st Century Christian has to labor diligently to understand the cultural and linguistic background of the New Testament concerning issues relavent to 1st Century Christians. Part is almost certainly due to the fact that God’s truth is profoundly deep and inexhaustible. And part seems to have to do with the redemptive-historical continuity and discontinuity that exists in the relationship between the Old and New Testaments and the two ages of human history (i.e. the present evil age and the age to come). Which brings me to a question I have long considered–namely, “Which of the Apostle Paul’s statements are hardest to understand?”

It doesn’t take long for someone to stumble across difficult sections of just about any of Paul’s epistles. A number of years ago, I preached through 1 Corinthians and found it to be one of the most enjoyable expositions upon which I have had the privilege of preaching–that is, until, I hit the eighth chapter. Paul’s arguments about consciences and food offered to idols prove to be some of the most perplexing portions in the New Testament. Then, when you make it to chapter 15–and the glorious teaching about Christ’s resurrection and our own–you feel as though you’ve made it out of the woods and into the clear. Then you plow into the brick wall of Paul’s question, “Why then are they baptized for the dead” (1 Cor. 15:29)? Who is being baptized for who in this verse? What could Paul possibly have in mind? This verse is certainly in the running for the most difficult verse in the Bible.

Dan Doriani writes, “The phrase ‘baptism for the dead’ is so obscure and perplexing, the meaning so uncertain, and the variety of interpretations so numerous that it seems wise to say it seems impossible to know what the phrase means.”1 This is not to say that we ought not labor to come to a settled position. It is not to wave the white flag of surrender to the hermenuetical idol of agnosticism. It is, however, to acknowledge the seemingly insurmountable obstacle we face while we diligently labor to understand precisely what the Apostle is seeking to convey.

Mormon perversion of this passage put aside, there are a number of standard interpretive possibilities in the history of Christian exegesis. Was this a ritual in the early church that Paul is sarcastically including in his argument in order to show the Corinthians their own folly in rejecting a physical resurrection? Is it a reference to people being baptized on behalf of those who were recently deceased? Both of those suggestions are laden with so many problems, it would be nearly impossible for anyone to accept them with any intellectual integrity. There are, however, three plausible interpretive solutions to the meaning of this verse. First, the Scottish theologian, Robert Candlish, wrote:

“Of the other meanings that have been put upon the phrase…that which, perhaps, most commends itself—at least to the fancy and the heart, is the one which, retaining still the general idea of substitution, gives it a different turn, making it not a vicarious representation of the persons of the dead, but, as it were, a vicarious occupancy of the position which till death they filled.