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At Corinth there was a peculiar practice in which people were baptized on behalf of the dead: “Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf?” (1 Cor 15:29) Paul mentions them to bolster his argument about resurrection but it is not clear whether he objects to the practice or approves of it. It may easily characterize those whom Paul was attempting to defeat.

This strange passage has been the source of an immense number of differing interpretations.106 The interpretation that makes best sense of the context is to assume that Paul’s statement refers to a vicarious baptism, effecting the salvation of people who died without its benefit while alive. But precisely what the ceremony was or how it was performed is obscure. Equally obscure is whether or not Paul himself was in favor of it. All we know for sure is that the disbelief of some of the Corinthians in the literal resurrection is inconsistent with the Corinthian practice of baptizing on behalf of the dead. The most obvious doctrine which the Corinthian schismatics could have believed in opposition to the resurrection of the dead would have been immortality of the soul. But there is not enough evidence to decide exactly what they believed.107

Jeffrey Trumbower has outlined a most interesting and important phenomenon in early Christianity.108 Christianity, being born from sectarian Judaism, most often assumed that salvation was limited to the borders of its movement. There were three major exceptions to that rule: (1) occasional universalist tendencies, which are seen in Origen, and Gregory of Nyssa, for example, but also in Hosea Ballou, the nineteenth century founder of the Unitarian-Universalist church; (2) the later doctrine of the natural Christian, where some individuals live lives of such probity and sanctity that they are assumed to be naturally Christian and worthy of the rewards of a Christian; and (3) baptism for the dead, mostly those held dear to the first generation of Christian converts. Being the first Christian in the family, the new convert was often anxious to extend the benefits he had earned to his departed loved ones, who had not had the opportunity to assent to Christian conversions.

It is this last category that most interests Trumbower, as it was a major discussion in the Early Church. Although finally forbidden by Augustine, it has made two major contemporary appearances in American society. The first is in nineteenth-century Shaker communities, where members of the community were possessed by Native American spirits. Once summoned the spirits could be baptized and saved.

The second is in Mormonism. The Mormon Church today makes a maximal interpretation of Paul’s words and does baptize on behalf of the dead. For instance, some 380,000 Holocaust victims have been baptized by the Mormon Church to save them posthumously with a living Latter Day Saint standing in as proxy, though in cases where family members object, the baptism is reversed. One can appreciate the honor offered but one must also appreciate the very unfriendly reaction of the Jewish Holocaust survivors and other relatives of the deceased.

Trumbower is more interested in the ancient phenomenon. Christian converts wanted naturally to save their departed parents and other relatives and so baptism for the dead became popular in the Early Church. To those familiar with the New Testament, the whole question seems out of place. The parable of the rich man and Lazarus seems to seal the fate of the unbaptized (Luke 16:19-31). This story is meant to illustrate the superior virtue of the poor over the rich, the believers over the Jews, and probably should not be used as an example of Christian views of the afterlife. But once life is over, so is all hope of repentance. It furthermore says that Jews can be expected to remain stubborn even in this life.

But the text of 1 Peter 3:16-4:7 describes a harrowing of hell in which Christ is able to atone