BAPTISM OF JESUS. - The scene narrated by the Synoptics (Mt. 3:13-17; Mk. 1:9-13; Lk. 3:21-22) and alluded to by John (Jn. 1:32-34) can easily be reconstructed as follows: at about the age of thirty (Lk. 3:23), Jesus sets out from Nazareth, presents himself at the Jordan amid the crowd that had gathered at the Baptist's word, and asks to be baptized as well (Mt. 3:15). When he comes out of the water and is absorbed in prayer (Lk. 3:22), the heavens open, the Holy Spirit descends from them in the form of a dove, which rests upon him, and a voice proclaims: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." In the dove the Baptist perceives the sensible, "bodily" (Lk. 3:22) sign of the descent of the Holy Spirit and understands that the one whom he has just baptized is the Son of God (Jn. 1:33-34).
The baptism of Jesus is therefore: 1) The consecration of Jesus' messianic mission. That descent of the Holy Spirit, in fact, fulfilled two texts, considered messianic, of Sacred Scripture (Ps. 2:7; Is. 61; cf. also Is. 42:1); and the Precursor himself had declared: "After me comes one who is greater than I... and it was precisely to baptize in water that I came, so that he might be manifested in Israel" (Jn. 1:30). 2) A new proclamation of the natural sonship of the Incarnate Word. That the words "This is my beloved Son" must be understood in the sense of natural and not merely adoptive sonship is required both by the text (Jesus is the son [ὁ υἱός μου] and the beloved son [ὁ ἀγαπητός], that is, not only most dear, but uniquely dear, the only one [cf. J. Lebreton, Les origines du dogme de la Trinité, Paris 1919, pp. 3-38-39]) and by the context, when we consider them in the light of the identical expressions recurring in other episodes of Jesus' life (for example, in the virginal conception of the Word [Lk. 1:34-37], in the transfiguration [Mt. 17:5], in the finding of Jesus in the temple [Lk. 2:49], and in what the Messiah preached about himself and his relations with the Father, ever more openly as he drew near to the Passion [cf. J. Lebreton, ibid., p. 286 ff.]).
Many modern critics of the liberal Protestant school have wished to conclude from the episode of Jesus' baptism that he then received for the first time the dignity of Messiah, or became conscious of it for the first time, or received divine sonship. But these interpretations run openly counter to what St. John and St. Paul say about the preexistence of the Word. On the other hand, the descent of the Holy Spirit upon a person chosen by God for a particular mission does not of itself entail any divinization; it serves only to demonstrate a special impulse on God's part, as happened to Othniel (Judg. 3:10), Gideon (Judg. 6:34), Jephthah (Judg. 11:29), Samson (Judg. 13:25), Balaam (Num. 24:2), Saul (1 Sam. 10:6), etc.