the Baptism of Jesusthe Baptism of Jesus

Baptism and "Sacramental Economy"
An Agreed Statement of The North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation
St. Vladimir's Orthodox Seminary, Crestwood, New York
June 3, 1999

Introduction

For the past three years the North American Orthodox-Catholic Theological Consultation has directed its attention to the concluding section of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed: in particular to the confession of "one baptism," and to the faith in one Holy Spirit and in "one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church" to which this single baptism is so closely related, and with which it constitutes an indivisible unity. We have chosen to consider this topic, first of all, as part of a larger and continuing reflection on baptisms constitutive role in establishing and revealing the fundamental character of the Church as a communion. Secondly, we wish to respond to the criticisms made by various groups of the statement issued by the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches at Balamand, Lebanon, in 1993, "Uniatism, Method of Union of the Past, and the Present Search for Full Communion," especially to protests against that statement's call for an end to the practice of rebaptism of converts (n. 13) and its reference to the Catholic and Orthodox communions as "sister churches"(n. 14). Finally, we recognize that our consideration of these protests directs us back to earlier statements which our own Consultation has issued: "The Principle of Economy" (1976); "On the Agenda of the Great and Holy Council" (1977); "On the Lima Document" (1984); "Apostolicity as God's Gift to the Church" (1986); our "Response" (1988) to the "Bari Document" issued by the International Commission in 1987; and finally our "Response" (1994) to the Balamand document itself. In drafting this present statement, we have elected to take our own advice and to offer a "deeper historical and theological investigation" of whether "our churches do in fact find the same essential content of faith present in each other" ("Response to the Balamand Statement," n. 9).

In the following sections we shall endeavor
a) to summarize our findings regarding our common understanding of baptism, as well as its unity with the life of the Church and the action of the Holy Spirit;
b) to elucidate the problems which, in relatively recent times, have arisen with respect to the mutual recognition of each other's baptism; and
c) to present our conclusions, together with certain recommendations which we feel are necessary, in order that on various levels our dialogue be established on a solid and unambiguous foundation.
Only if we have reached clarity on our common understanding of baptism, we believe, can our churches proceed to discuss, charitably and truthfully, those issues which at present appear to constitute genuine impediments to our unity in the one Bread and Cup of Christ.

I. On Baptism

A. A Matter of Faith: Baptism rests upon and derives its reality from the faith of Christ himself, the faith of the Church, and the faith of the believer.
1. The faith of Christ: With this Pauline expression we refer to the fact that baptism, like all the sacraments, is given to us first of all as the result of Christ's loving fidelity to his Father, and as a sign of his faithfulness in the Holy Spirit to fallen humanity, "so that we are justified not by the works of the law but through the faith of Christ Jesus" (Gal 2.16, cf. Rom 3.22,26; Phil 3.9). Baptism is not a human work, but the rebirth from above, effected through "water and the Spirit," that introduces us into the life of the Church. It is that gift by which God grounds and establishes the Church as the community of the New Covenant, the "Israel of God" (Gal 6:16), by engrafting us into the body of the crucified and risen Messiah (Rom 6:3-11; 11:17-24), into the one sacrament (mysterion) which is Christ himself (Eph 1:3; 3:3; Col 1:27 and 2:2).
2. The faith of the Church: In the Church of the Apostles and Fathers, baptism was never understood as a private ceremony, but was a corporate event. This is indicated by the development of the Lenten fast in the fourth century, when catechumens attended their final instructions before baptism at the paschal vigil: their baptism was the occasion for the whole community's repentance and renewal. Likewise, the definitive statement of the whole Church's faith, the "We believe" of the Creed, was derived from the solemn questions addressed by the sacramental minister to the candidate in the baptismal font. Whoever, then, is baptized, is baptized into the unique community of the Messiah, and it is that community's common faith in the Savior's person and promises that the candidate is obliged to make his or her own. As the Church, we acknowledge the trustworthiness of him who said, "Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live" (Jn 11:25). This is the faith of the Apostles and Fathers, of the martyrs and ascetics, and of "all the saints who in every generation have been well-pleasing to God" (Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom). In the words of the renewal of baptismal promises in the Easter liturgy of the Roman Rite, "This is our faith. This is the faith of the Church. We are proud to profess it in Christ Jesus our Lord."
3. The faith of the Christian: As just noted, every Christian is obliged to make his or her own the faith of the Church. The "We believe" of the whole Church must become the individual Christian's "I believe," whether spoken by the adult candidate for baptism on his or her own behalf, or on behalf of a child by its sponsor and the assembled community, in the full expectation that, when it has grown, the child will make the common faith its own as well. By baptism, every Christian becomes a "new creation" (2 Co 5.17), and is called to believe and to grow "into the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God...to the measure of the stature and fullness of Christ" (Eph 4:13). Baptism is the beginning of each believer's life in the Spirit, the implanting within each of the seed of the fullness of Christ "who fills all in all" (Eph 1:23): a life on earth which is at once the present reality and the continuing vocation of each Christian, as the "temple of the Holy Spirit" (I Co 6:19) and the dwelling place of divine glory (Jn 17:22-24). Christian initiation is the ground of our transfiguration "from glory to glory" (2 Co 3:18). It calls each of us to spiritual warfare as Christ's soldiers (Eph 6:10-17), and anoints us each with the oil of the Holy Spirit as priests who, in imitation of Christ, are to offer up ourselves as "a living sacrifice pleasing to God" (Rom 12:1; cf. Phil 4:18), and as prophets who are to call down upon ourselves and upon our world the fire from heaven which transforms (cf. I Kg 18:36-39; Mt 3:11; Lk 12:49). Also in baptism, we believe that we recover the royalty of Adam in Paradise, and that, as "having been clothed with Christ" (Rom 13:14), we are called to become ourselves the "christs" - the "anointed ones" - of God.

B. Baptism within the Rites of Initiation
1. One Moment in a Single Action: In ancient times, initiation into the Church was understood as a single action with different "moments." Thus in Acts 2:38-42, we find baptism with water directly followed by the reception of the Holy Spirit and "the breaking of bread" (Eucharist) by the community; other texts in Acts present the gift of the Spirit as preceding baptism (Acts 10:44-48; 11:15-17). This continuity between the various stages of initiation is consistently reproduced in the oldest liturgical texts and in early patristic witnesses: baptism with water in the name of the Trinity, a post- (or pre-) baptismal anointing and/or laying-on of hands invoking the Spirit, and participation in the Eucharist. The present-day ordering of the Eastern Christian rites of initiation and the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults in the Roman liturgy preserve this unity. In the case of infant baptism, medieval Latin practice separated this unity of action, deferring confirmation by the bishop and Eucharistic communion to a later date. Indeed, the distinction which is customarily made today in both churches between baptism and chrismation, or confirmation, was never intended to separate the reception of the Spirit from incorporation into the body of Christ, whose quickening principle is the same Spirit (see, e.g., Rom 8:9-11, as well part III, B5 below).
2. The Method of Baptism: In ancient times, and in the contemporary Orthodox Church, baptism is administered as a threefold immersion in water hallowed by prayer and oil, while the baptizing minister invokes the Holy Trinity. In the Roman rite of the Catholic Church since the later Middle Ages, baptism has usually been administered by the infusion or pouring of water sanctified by prayer and the sign of the Cross, accompanied by the Trinitarian invocation. In past centuries and even today, some Orthodox have protested against infusion as being an invalid form of baptism, basing their protest on the mandate of baptismal immersion implied in such Biblical passages as Rom 6.4 ("We were buried with [Christ] by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead, we too might walk in newness of life") . This criticism, however, should be measured against the following considerations:
a) "immersion" in the ancient church did not always mean total submersion--archaeological research indicates that many ancient baptismal pools were far too shallow for total submersion;
b) the Orthodox Church itself can and does recognize baptism by infusion as valid in cases of emergency;
c) for most of the past millennium, the Orthodox Church has in fact recognized Catholic baptism as valid (see our discussion in Part II below).
3. The Symbolism of Baptism: Baptism is at once a death and a new birth, a washing-away of sin and the gift of the living water promised by Christ, the grace of forgiveness and regeneration in the Spirit, a stripping-off of our mortality and a clothing with the robe of incorruption. The baptismal font is the "tomb" from which the newborn Christian rises, and, as the place of our incorporation into the life of the Church, the "womb" and "mother" of the Christian, the pool of the divine light of the Spirit, the well-spring of immortality, the gate of heaven, entry into the kingdom of God, cleansing, seal, bath of regeneration and bridal chamber. All these are meanings the Fathers saw in this sacrament, and all of them we continue to affirm.
4. The Non-Repeatability of Baptism: It is our common teaching that baptism in water in the name of the Holy Trinity, as the Christian's new birth, is given once and once only. In the language of fourth-century Fathers of East and West, it confers the indelible seal (sphragis, character) of the King. As the definitive entry of an individual believer into the Church, it cannot be repeated. To be sure, the grace of baptism may be betrayed by serious sin, but in such cases the modes prescribed for the recovery of grace are repentance, confession, and - in the Orthodox usage for apostasy - anointing with the sacred chrism; reconciliation with the Church is never accomplished by baptism, whose repetition we have always recognized as a sacrilege.

C. The Results of our Investigation:"We Confess One Baptism"
The Orthodox and Catholic members of our Consultation acknowledge, in both of our traditions, a common teaching and a common faith in one baptism, despite some variations in practice which, we believe, do not affect the substance of the mystery. We are therefore moved to declare that we also recognize each other's baptism as one and the same. This recognition has obvious ecclesiological consequences. The Church is itself both the milieu and the effect of baptism, and is not of our making. This recognition requires each side of our dialogue to acknowledge an ecclesial reality in the other, however much we may regard their way of living the Church's reality as flawed or incomplete. In our common reality of baptism, we discover the foundation of our dialogue, as well as the force and urgency of the Lord Jesus prayer "that all may be one." Here, finally, is the certain basis for the modern use of the phrase, "sister churches." At the same time, since some are unwilling to accept this mutual recognition of baptism with all its consequences, the following investigation and explanation seems necessary. Link to Part 2.