On Holy Baptism

This week in conversation, an acquaintance mentioned responding to inquiries from non-parishioners regarding having their children baptized. This person related that the standard response in this particular situation is that because baptism is baptism into a community who make promises on behalf of the child, that baptism should only occur if and when the family are ready to be a part of that community. As an aside, however, my interlocutor espoused an opinion to the effect that infants were already children of God and baptism was therefore more or less only a kind of (presumably optional) dedication within the (presumably local) community. The conversation moved on, and if I misunderstood or have misrepresented the opinion given, it is certainly one I have encountered elsewhere – not least from a bishop. In any case, it seemed at first blush an inadequate articulation of baptismal–sacramental theology and ecclesiology, more the sort of anti-sacramental line I encountered in my (Ana)Baptist upbringing (‘Baptism doesn’t “save” you,’ I remember hearing) than what I expected to hear in a ‘sacramental’ Church that read today, ‘And baptism...now saves you.’ (1P 3.21)

This, along with a series of weblog entries I have read quite recently (by Frs Robert Hendrickson and Stephen Freeman and iconographer Jonathan Pageau), as well as today’s Lesson and Epistle, led me to reflect further on the nature of Baptism and other Sacraments, and limits, boundaries, and the necessity of particularity. All these things really have to do with the question ‘is there salvation apart from the [visible] Church?’ (or, ‘is there any Church but the visible Church?’): thus I want to ask whether we can affirm a high, strong, real, efficacious place for the Church and Sacraments while avoiding an entirely subjective and individualistic, or an entirely objective and mechanistic, understanding of them – whether we can establish a firm core than can allow us (and God) to be generous, ‘soft’, or slightly ‘porous’ around the edges.

To begin: my acquaintance was absolutely right to stress the importance of an infant candidate’s family being part of the parish in which the baptism will take place (which may or may not lead a parish to conclude that it should not ordinarly administer the sacrament of baptism to children of rather uninterested non-parishioners). For baptism is no mere formality. It is the sacrament (‘an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace’, according to the famous formulation of the Catechism, ‘given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace’ [bcp 857]) of new birth which comes only by death to the old self, the old way of seeing and being and doing. The Catechism says the following specifically regarding Baptism:

Q. What is the outward and visible sign in Baptism?
A. The outward and visible sign in Baptism is water, in which the person is baptized in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Q. What is the inward and spiritual grace in Baptism?
A. The inward and spiritual grace in Baptism is union with Christ in his death and resurrection, birth into God’s family the Church, forgiveness of sins, and new life in the Holy Spirit.
Q. What is required of us at Baptism?
A. It is required that we renounce Satan, repent of our sins, and accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior.

Other relevant Prayer Book texts, soaked in the language of the Gospels and Epistles, speak further of the requirements and consequences of baptism: turning from, or putting away, the ‘old life of sin’; dying to sin, being buried with Christ, sharing in His resurrection, being clothed with, or putting on, Christ. Baptism is a return to the Deep,* the watery chaos from which all creation sprang, so that we may be a new creation, may be re-formed; a return to the womb so that we may be born again to a new life; and it leads to liberty, proclamation, keeping of promises, resurrection, splendor:

Grant, O Lord God, to all who have been baptized into the death and resurrection of thy Son Jesus Christ, that, as we have put away the old life of sin, so we may be renewed in the spirit of our minds, and live in righteousness and true holiness; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord…
     Collect for Various Occasions 7:
     For all baptized Christians

Almighty God, who by our baptism into the death and resurrection of thy Son Jesus Christ dost turn us from the old life of sin: Grant that we, being reborn to new life in him, may live in righteousness and holiness all our days; through the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord…
     Collect for Various Occasions 10:
     At Baptism

Through the Paschal mystery, dear friends, we are buried with Christ by Baptism into his death, and raised with him to newness of life.
     From the invitation to the
     Renewal of Baptismal Vows

We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism. In it we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.
     from the Thanksgiving over the Water

Father, we thank you that through the waters of Baptism we die to sin and are made new in Christ. Grant through your Spirit that those baptized here may enjoy the liberty and splendor of the children of God.
     from the Consecration of a Font

Grant, O Lord, that all who are baptized into the death of Jesus Christ your Son may live in the power of his resurrection and look for him to come again in glory; who lives and reigns now and for ever.
     concluding collect at the
     Prayers for the Candidates

Grant that all who have been baptized into Christ’s death and resurrection may die to sin and rise to newness of life, and that through the grave and gate of death we may pass with him to our joyful resurrection.
     Prayers at the Burial of the Dead

Father in heaven, who at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan didst proclaim him thy beloved Son and anoint him with the Holy Spirit: Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with thee and the same Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, in glory everlasting.
     Collect for the Baptism of Our Lord

It is on the other hand not true to say that one is baptized merely into the parish, or even a ‘denomination’ or particular or national Church. Rather, Holy Baptism is entry into the whole Church, which is the Body of Christ. In baptism, say the Scriptures and the Prayer Book, we are ‘adopted’ as God’s children and made heirs of the kingdom and covenant of God. In baptism we are grafted into the root-stock of Jesse, joined with the shoot growing from the stump, kept alive in Israel until it could come to first fruition in Christ and to full ripeness in the Church:

Q. What is Holy Baptism?
A. Holy Baptism is the sacrament by which God adopts us as his children and makes us members of Christ’s Body, the Church, and inheritors of the kingdom of God.

Q. Why then are infants baptized?
A. Infants are baptized so that they can share citizenship in the Covenant, membership in Christ, and redemption by God. 
     the Catechism

Baptism is not only a sign of profession, and mark of difference, whereby Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened, but it is also a sign of Regeneration or New-Birth, whereby, as by an instrument, they that receive Baptism rightly are grafted into the Church; the promises of the forgiveness of sin, and of our adoption to be the sons of God by the Holy Ghost, are visibly signed and sealed, Faith is confirmed, and Grace increased by virtue of prayer unto God. 
     Article xxvii. Of Baptism.

O God, who didst make this most holy night to shine with the glory of the Lord’s resurrection: Stir up in thy Church that Spirit of adoption which is given to us in Baptism, that we, being renewed both in body and mind, may worship thee in sincerity and truth; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord…
     Collect for the Easter Vigil

All praise and thanks to you, most merciful Father, for adopting us as your own children, for incorporating us into your holy Church, and for making us worthy to share in the inheritance of the saints in light; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord...
     Concluding prayer
     at Baptism apart from the Eucharist

Are all people, or even all infants, ‘children of God’? Our Holy Scriptures tells us, after all, that we are made in the ‘image of God’. But we also know that that image is tarnished or hidden through, we usually say, our overreaching our bounds. Put another way, we have so strained the relationship between ourselves and God that the fundamental bond is for the most part obscured, at least from our perspective, and like errant children of an earthly parent who have cut ourselves off from active relationship with that parent, we must be reconciled and that relationship be restored. As in the parable of the Prodigal, at some point we recognize our estrangement and consider that we are no longer worthy to be called children of the Father. And so we say that ‘child of God’ is something that we must become, or become again, by faith and a change in our way of being: a change that is ordinarily sealed in baptism.

That this is not an entirely mechanistic event can be seen from the Apostle’s teaching that Abraham’s faith was reckoned to him as righteousness (Rm 4; Ga 3) before the sign or seal of circumcision was given (the same term ‘seal’ being used to describe baptism); from the accounts in the Acts of the Apostles (chapters 2 and 10) in which the Spirit is received first and baptism administered second; and from the traditions that ‘from the time of admission, a catechumen is regarded as a part of the Christian community. For example, a person who dies during the catechumenate (i.e., before baptism) receives a Christian burial’ (Concerning the Catechumenate, bos) – just as ‘if a person desires to receive the Sacrament, but, by reason of extreme sickness or physical disability, is unable to eat and drink the Bread and Wine, the Celebrant is to assure that person that all the benefits of Communion are received, even though the Sacrament is not received with the mouth’ (Ministration to the Sick).

On the other hand, this focus on the intent of the recipient of the sacrament is not to deny the activity of God or the role of the community; infants are baptized and receive the Body and Blood, emergency baptism may be administered in extremis, and it even seems that in the embryonic Church baptism could be administered on behalf of the departed (1Co 15.29). As the Orthodox say, salvation depends upon cooperation (synergy) between the believer and God, and perhaps we could even add the Church to that dance, imagining a trinitarian perichoresis in which sometimes the faith of the individual, sometimes that of the Church, and sometimes the faith of Our Lord Himself (Rm  3.22,26 if the genitive construction is understood in the subjective sense) takes the lead.

In any case, the terms children, family, household, people of God are used often and consistently in Scripture and Prayer Book to refer to Israel and then to the Church – those belonging to communities explicitly acknowledging the lordship of God and living accordingly. In addition to the above Prayer Book texts, we find the following:

O God, whose blessed Son was manifested that he might destroy the works of the devil and make us the children of God and heirs of eternal life...
     Collect for Proper 27

My brother, the Church is the family of God, the body of Christ, and the temple of the Holy Spirit.
     Examination at the Ordination of a Priest

...our Savior Christ...took upon himself our flesh, and humbled himself even to death on the cross, that he might make us the children of God by the power of the Holy Spirit, and exalt us to everlasting life.
     from the Exhortation to Communion

Eternal God, who led your ancient people into freedom by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night: Grant that we who walk in the light of your presence may rejoice in the liberty of the children of God; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
     Prayer for Light in Eastertide

What, then, of those outside this family, household, or people? The expansion of the covenant people was a major theme for the Apostle: Abraham, he reminds us, was the father not only of Israel but, precisely because his faith preceded the covenant and its sign in the flesh, also of all believers who are uncircumcised. Christ, he says, joined the Jews and the Gentiles, preaching peace to those who are far-off and those who are near, making us all members of the household of God (Ep 2).

For the life and mission of Israel and the New Israel have always been to be a beacon (Mt 6), so that all nations should stream to God’s light (Is 2.2, 11.10, 60.3, etc.) – always to be salt seasoning the world (Mt 6). Indeed, God has always had a vision of expanding the circle of the covenant community. The alien and the enemy, the harlot and the adulteress, the tax-collector and the beggar, the collaborator and the Zealot, the Pharisee and the Greek, the Samaritan and Syro-Phoenician women, teenaged boys and girls, the eunuch and the barren, the one slow of speech and the one with the thorn in the flesh, and now all nations have been embraced by the love of God – adopted, grafted, reborn – and in turn carry on the line of God’s family.

God and Father of all believers, for the glory of your Name multiply, by the grace of the Paschal sacrament, the number of your children; that your Church may rejoice to see fulfilled your promise to our father Abraham; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
     Collect after the Lesson about
     Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac
     at the Easter Vigil

O God, whose wonderful deeds of old shine forth even to our own day, you once delivered by the power of your mighty arm your chosen people from slavery under Pharaoh, to be a sign for us of the salvation of all nations by the water of Baptism: Grant that all the peoples of the earth may be numbered among the offspring of Abraham, and rejoice in the inheritance of Israel; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
     Collect after the Lesson about the Exodus
     at the Easter Vigil

We give you thanks that from the beginning you have gathered and prepared a people to be heirs of the covenant of Abraham...
     Prayer of Consecration of a Bishop

O eternal God, you have promised to be a father to a thousand generations of those who love and fear you: Bless this child and preserve his life; receive him and enable him to receive you, that through the Sacrament of Baptism he may become the child of God; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
     For a child not yet baptized
     from the Thanksgiving for a Child

How, then, can we reconcile claims of the necessity of the Church and the generosity of God?

To begin, we can, for example, recognize that life is present in a fetus – but we can also say that that fetus is not fully alive or fully human in the sense of being able to survive on its own. It is only through the traumatic and risky process of birth – which must seem for all the world like death when viewed from inside the womb – that the child can even begin the process of growing to maturity (the same is true of a seed or a cocooned insect). Hidden indeed – and vicarious – may be the ways in which one may be fed before birth, but food and drink are not consumed in the ordinary way until one has been born into this world. In the same way, one may indeed be nourished by God – perhaps through the prayers of others – before baptism, but only after new birth by water and the Spirit does one ordinarily receive the breath of life and the heavenly food of Christ’s Body and Blood. And Holy Baptism is the means and sign of this engrafting, this birth – and the Church is the Mother that gives us life, gives birth to us, and continues to nourish us with her own Body and life-blood.

Or again, we can affirm that life is certainly not present only in humanity, and perhaps we can even allow that some inkling of feeling or consciousness is not wholly absent from other parts of creation. The humus of which we humans are made, composed of the dead remains of other creatures, is in fact teeming invisibly with life, and even the line between organic and inorganic is not so clear as we once might have thought. Other creatures are larger, stronger, longer lived, than human beings. Yet we still generally affirm that humanity, made in God’s image and likeness, with ‘memory, reason, and skill’ (Eucharistic Prayer C) is something special.† In the same way perhaps we can say that all people have life, and even one or more great qualities, but in Christ, human life reaches its summit – articulates its divinity – and insofar as we are sacramentally joined to Christ, we share in that perfection.

We might even return to the question of our status as ‘children of God’ long enough to imagine our situation slightly differently. Rather than ‘not children’ or ‘estranged children’, I wonder whether we could see ourselves as ‘amnesiac children’, or children who for some other reason do not know their mother or father, but whose parent knows them. Speaking in human terms, in such a case the fundamental, biological link exists, and the parent would consider the child his or her own – but the child might or might not be considered ‘family’ and would not know him- or herself to be such, unless and until the biological relationship is revealed and the interpersonal relationship is built or restored. Prior to this revelation and restoration, the child might, upon encountering the parent, act in all kinds of unloving or adversarial ways, or at least in ways that did not befit the underlying relationship – and might even do so after the relationship is known. The fundamental fact of biological relationship would not have changed; the parent’s view of the child would not really have changed; but the child’s perspective – his understanding of self and parent and the relationship between them – would have changed irreversibly – and perhaps, in time, his perspective on all other relationships and the fact that true relationship (as Our Lord taught) transcends the bounds of immediate kinship. Perhaps it is this way between us and our heavenly Father.


The point of these examples is that it is part of the nature of the created order that the particular, the specific, the boundary, the critical moment or threshold, is required for us to be able to recognize that which transcends these limits. In the beginning, God brought form from chaos, distinguishing – and naming – day and night, sky and deep, earth and sea (see not only Gn 1 but also Ps 104 and 148). God gave the dust a particular form and breathed life into it. Thereafter, God has made Godself most fully known not just in people, but in a particular People; not just in man, but in a particular Man. It is because Christ became a human with a body that all humans may now be partakers of his life in his Body; that is, only in Christ’s self-subjection to the limitations given to us humans could we recognize the Son, and through the Son, the Father. And it is because we have seen God in the particular man Jesus, and Christ in the particular community of the Church and in our particular lives, that we seek to find God and make God known in other contexts, to other people. We administer the Sacraments which reveal the whole creation to be a sacrament (Patriarch Bartholomew); as Percy Dearmer’s hymn ‘Draw us in the Spirit’s tether’ prays, ‘all our meals, and all our living, make as sacraments of thee...’: that is, through certain bread and certain water made holy, we learn that all bread and water are suffused with the Presence and Spirit of Christ; through (a) certain people made holy, the world learns what holiness looks like, and then can recognize it, and tend towards it. And this life in and of Christ is the way in which we ultimately transcend the boundaries between peoples, between the ‘in’s and ‘out’s, between humanity and God, between life and death.

And so our calling is, through the new life and the Church and the Sacraments, to help others to turn and see what is already there – the coming kingdom of God; to be what they already are – no longer aliens and sojourners; to learn that in Christ, the world is secretly the burning bush (St Maximus the Confessor); to claim for themselves the gifts and promises offered by God.

*  Indeed, the native English word for baptism, dyppan (dip), is related to deop (deep), just as in other Germanic languages (Dutch dopen / diep, German taufen / tief, Danish døbe / dyb, etc.)

†  Another Eucharistic Prayer, Prayer D, states that we ‘give voice to every creature under heaven’ – that is, we can articulate rationally and emotionally, psychologically and spiritually, the praises of trees and rivers, mountains and mice. Perhaps our articulations have that much more meaning and weight because we have to struggle so hard to do and be what we were created for, because we have the capacity and tendency to live anywhere besides the present moment, because we are so acutely aware of our finitude and expend so much effort trying to deny or delay it. I said earlier that it was through grasping and trangressing our allotted limits (what is good for us, what we have control over, etc.) that the image of God in us was tarnished or hidden – but St Paul, in his speech to the Athenians (Ac 17.26–27), says that it is precisely through groping about along our boundaries that we may find God, who is in any case very near.