Why do baptismal fonts have eight sides?
I was giving a tour at Fort Belmont on Friday to some JCC fifth graders, and in the church I was asked a question that I didn’t have an answer to:
Why does the baptismal font have eight sides?
The student who asked wondered if the reason was that eight people were saved on Noah’s Ark. I had never heard that explanation before! I did know that some of the earliest Christian churches have octagonal fonts. Even our own baptismal font has eight sides. So I did some reading and found several plausible reasons:
We are people of the “Eighth Day,” that is, the day of Resurrection.
By the Jewish reckoning, Sunday is the first day of the week and Saturday (the Sabbath) is the last day of the week. Jesus, however, rose from the dead on a Sunday - the Eighth Day. In fact, we all live in the perpetual Eighth Day of the Resurrection.
Jewish baby boys were circumcised into the Abrahamic covenant on the eighth day. Baptism is the new, spiritual circumcision that marks our entrance into the covenant of Jesus Christ.
Colossians 2:11-12 — “In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead.”
Eight people were saved through the waters of the ark, while the rest of humankind was destroyed for their sin.
1 Peter 3:20b-21 — “…God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water.
And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience…”
So when you walk in to worship at Our Savior’s - or many other churches - keep an eye out for an octagonal baptismal font. It’s not a requirement, but it’s a beautiful symbol of God’s saving work for us in Holy Baptism.
