More Proof of a 'Baptism For the Dead' Among Actual Early Sects of Christianity

I love the way the ignorant like to imagine that 'Secret Mark' - the longer version of the Gospel of Mark mentioned in the Letter to Theodore by Clement of Alexandria - exists in some kind of void. Scott Brown and Stephen Carlson agree that the first 'addition' to the Gospel of Mark (LGM 1) can't be about baptism - so you know when genius' like this are on the case it would be impossible to develop an argument that it MIGHT be connected with other sects who most scholars ignore.

Like the 'Marcionites' who had a 'baptism for the dead' ritual.

And the 'Marcosians' who had a 'redemption ritual' which had one person 'dying' in order to liberate another.

Yet let's look at LGM 1 again. The youth wakes up from a dead state, Jesus tells him to do something and then he is baptized.

That's a baptism on behalf of the dead.

And then there are all these ancient personalities WITHIN THE CHURCH who engage is a baptism ritual which is central developed from a presumed state of 'death.'

I will ignored the rites of the earliest monks and focus on what I just discovered from the Archaeology of Baptism which notes:

The Paulianists, or disciples of Paulus Samosatensis, Bishop of Antioch, who denied the divinity of Christ, baptized without mentioning the persons of the Trinity. The Eunomians and other sects used this form : " I baptize thee into the death of Christ." Against this practice is directed one of the Apostolic Canons, which says : " If any bishop or presbyter use not three immersions in the celebration of baptism, but one only given in the death of Christ, let him be deposed, for our Lord did not say, 'Baptize into My death but, ' Go, teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost" (Can.) [p. 145 - 146]

I think we better follow up on those Eunomians and see if a thread can be traced back to Alexandria and the autograph copy of the Gospel of Mark which tradition says was still in St. Mark's Church down through to the Venetian robbery of his relics (c. 828 CE).

Who are these Eunomians who baptized people into the death of Christ? The Catholic Encyclopedia writes that they represented:

a phase of extreme Arianism prevalent amongst a section of Eastern churchmen from about 350 until 381; as a sect it is not heard of after the middle of the fifth century. The teaching of Arius was condemned by the Council of Nicaea, and the word homoousion adopted as the touchstone of orthodoxy. The subsequent history of the Arian history is the history of the endeavours of arianizing sympathizers to get rid of the obnoxious word. The diplomacy of court intriguers forms the dark background against which stand out Eusebians and Semi-Arians. Imperial influence had been all-powerful too long in the official religion to allow imperial ingerence in church affairs to cease with the imperial change of attitude towards Christianity. That influence was exercised through the court prelates tinged with the fundamental rationalism underlying Arianism. They skilfully avoided the real issue, represented the whole affair as merely a question of the propriety of using particular terms, and for a time deluded those who were unfamiliar with the metaphysics of the question.

Indeed when we hear time and time again that the Eunomians "used only one immersion and their baptism was held invalid by the First Council of Constantinople (can. vii); but this was not on account of the single ablution, but apparently because they baptized in the death of Christ" this sounds remarkably similar to attacks against Marcionites for their parallel denial of the Trinity.

Clearly there were indeed groups baptizing people 'into the death of Christ' as early as the Apostolic canons (late second century?):

If any bishop or presbyter does not perform the three immersions of the one admission, but one immersion, which is given into the death of Christ, let him be deprived; for the Lord did not say, "Baptize into my death," but, "Go ye and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Do ye, therefore, O bishops, baptize thrice into one Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost, according to the will of Christ, and our constitution by the Spirit? (Apostolical Constitutions, Ante-Nicene Christian Library, vol. 17, p. 263).

Socrates eyewitness to the continuation of this practice into the fifth century is worth noting "I shall merely observe that they [the Eunomians] adulterated baptism: for they do not baptize in the name of the Trinity, but into the death of Christ."

Again these practices and beliefs are rooted in the very thing that always puzzled me (as a non-Christian). Where did the Apostle get his idea for a 'baptism into the death of Christ'? The answer in my mind HAS TO BE LGM 1 of Secret Mark, the Alexandrian gospel of this quintessentially Alexandrian sect. Eunomius after all studied and was ordained by Aetius of Alexandria.