An Anglican Theology Of Baptism

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Anglicans retained the Catholic understanding of baptism as a sacramental washing away of sin. As the evangelical party emerged out of the Wesleyan revivals of the eighteenth century, some nineteenth-century Anglicans challenged the theology of baptismal regeneration. It was, in turn, defended by Edward Pusey and Frederick Denison Maurice. During the twentieth century, some Anglicans have called for the sacrament of confirmation to be reunited with baptism. This reunification has not occurred, and most Anglicans have simply admitted baptized children to Communion before they have been confirmed. Some twentieth-century Anglican theologians have abandoned the theology of original guilt. Infant baptism then becomes a demonstration of the priority of God's grace in salvation. However, Anglican baptismal liturgies retain traditional forms, including the renunciation of Satan and the interrogative recitation of the Apostles' Creed.

Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century History In a sense, the Anglican tradition neither had nor claims a distinctive theology of baptism. None of the English Reformers thought through an original theological approach to baptism. The Church of England, in its liturgy and in its official doctrinal formularies, largely repeated the vocabulary for interpreting baptism from the New Testament and from the patristic and the medieval traditions. The baptismal rite of the Prayer Book of 1549 affirmed that persons who are baptized are united with Christ's death and resurrection. They receive remission of sins and are made living members of the church. They are given the Holy Spirit, new life, and the pledge of eternal life. Baptism is a sign of a divine gift and human faith. Baptized persons are committed to live in righteousness. The Articles of Religion (1571) described baptism not only as a sign of profession, but also as an instrument whereby the promise of baptism is effected (Art. 27; see G. W. Bromiley, Baptism and the Anglican Reformers [1953].) As a matter of practice, the earliest English Prayer Books adapted the medieval rites for the baptism of infants and until the revision of 1662 made no provision for adult baptism. Infant baptism was the only form that existed and had an Anglican theology. The classic English doctrinal authorities upheld central doctrinal affirmations. John Jewel (1522–1571), replying to the contention that the Church of England had strayed from true doctrine, said that his church taught that "?baptism is a sacrament of the remission of sins and of that washing which we have in the blood of Christ?" (Apologie, Part 2). Replying to the thesis that sacraments were empty signs while only faith could accomplish redemption, the great constructive theologian, Richard Hooker (1554–1600), said that one is not baptized into one's own faith, but into a given divine redemption, in which one participates through baptism. As the incarnation was the divine participation in the human, so the church and its sacraments are means of human participation in the divine. In sacraments, outward things exhibit inner reality, and inner reality is brought to outward expression. Sacraments, Hooker said, "?serve as the instruments of God, … moral instruments, the use whereof is in our hands, the effect in his?" (Apologie, V. lvii.5). Baptism specifically is a heavenly work of new birth, accomplished "?not with the Spirit alone, but with water thereunto adjoined?" (Ecclesiastical Polity, V. lix.5). Puritan Objections Some controversies introduced peripheral issues. The Puritans objected to the Prayer Book's use of the sign of the cross at baptism on the grounds that only those things which were required by obedience to Holy Scripture should be performed at worship. Without scriptural warrant, the sign of the cross was unnecessary at best, and offensive at worst. Hooker replied that the action was not scandalous, but was profitable, even though it was of human origin. The cross on the forehead appealed to the imagination as a "?silent teacher.?" The giving of this sign sealed to the believer the solemn vow to obey Christ and suffer reproaches for his sake (Apologie, V. 65). Hooker also had to deal with the Puritan objections to baptism by lay persons, particularly women. But none of these challenges drew Anglican theologians in new directions. English controversialists of the seventeenth century debated whether baptismal discipline should be relatively restrictive or relatively inclusive. Some contended that baptism should not be administered except to children whose parents showed evident signs of faith. The leadership of the Church of England was inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to children for whom sponsors would make the pledges of baptism, for it considered baptism more an act of grace and gift from God manifested through the church than an act of faith and witness on the part of the one baptized. Once children were baptized, they were within the faith-bearing community and shaped by a godly liturgy, where they should be catechized and brought to adult faith insofar as human effort can achieve that result. The church did not baptize because one had given sufficient evidence of worthiness, but it baptized in service of a divine promise, and as an instrument of acceptance into the community of divine redemption. Later Landmarks After the early seventeenth century, a number of significant works appeared that addressed the Anglican theology of baptism. In the late seventeenth century, the eminent theologian Jeremy Taylor (1613–1667) described the benefits and obligations of baptism. William Wall (1647–1728), on the other hand, wrote a landmark of eighteenth-century theological literature with his lengthy (usually a two volume set), descriptive, and immensely learned History of Infant Baptism (1705). The theologian Daniel Waterland (1683–1740), best known for his work on eucharistic doctrine, also gave a serious account of baptism. In the nineteenth century (as a consequence of the intense personal spiritual experience engendered in the Wesleyan movement), the evangelical party questioned a passage in the Prayer Book. After baptism, this passage stated that "?this child is regenerate and grafted into the body of Christ's church.?" This phrase had been deleted in the Prayer Book proposed by William White for the Episcopal church in 1785; however, the text adopted by that church in 1789 reinstated the wording. The objection arose because evangelicals thought regeneration was a wonderful and identifiable inward experience, not a mysterious act of God at baptism that the Prayer Book wording implied. To devout evangelicals, this objectifying of grace seemed to bring baptism close to magic, a human effort to manipulate God. To the defenders of the Prayer Book wording, the evangelicals experiential view of grace seemed to be too individualistic and implied a baptism into one's own inward experience, not the church. Baptism has reference, not just to an individual and God, but also to the community of new life, which one is born into with baptism. In the New Testament, the imagery of regeneration primarily is developed in a cosmic and eschatological sense, rather than an individual and experiential sense. With this controversy in mind, the learned theologian of the Oxford Movement E. B. Pusey (1800–1882) devoted several of his Tracts for the Times to a defense of baptismal regeneration. His tracts amounted to a developed treatise, citing largely early Christian writers in favor of baptism as an effective sign of redemption. Pusey's somewhat scholastic defense of the tradition led to an original theological development by the influential English theologian Frederick Denison Maurice (1805–1872). Maurice interpreted (perhaps not with complete fairness) Pusey's simple interpretation of baptism as an act that effects regeneration as defending a conjuring trick which makes someone into something that before the person had not been. On this point, Maurice agreed with the evangelicals, but he did not accept the evangelicals' trust in subjective experience. Maurice's theology centered around Christ's lordship, which means that he is head of the human race. All human life is under Christ and stands in relation to Christ, although most humans live without knowing that crucial truth about themselves. From this conviction, Maurice understood baptism to be an act by which the church declares on behalf of a person that which is in fact true of that person—indeed, the deepest truth about that person. If one argues that such an emphasis makes baptism declarative rather than effective, a showing rather than a doing, Maurice would reply that a declaring is a kind of doing. Some things are not effectively true until they are declared. Maurice saw the unrepeatability of baptism as a sign of divine faithfulness; the baptism once given inaugurates a lasting relation. Baptism is a sign of constant union—a union which endures, even when a baptized person, in statement or in action, denies it. The practical effect of Maurice's emphasis was to extend the inclusiveness of baptism. (see A. R. Vidler, F. D. Maurice, et al., "?The Sacrament of Constant Union,?" 1966). To a great extent, debates over the relation of baptism to confirmation have dominated the Anglican literature through most of the twentieth century. Some students of the early church claim that the postbaptismal anointing, which had become a separate ritual event of confirmation in the medieval West, is specifically the sacramental instrument by which the Holy Spirit is given. This viewpoint makes confirmation a necessary completion of baptism; it reduces the theological and pastoral fullness of baptism; and it raises ecumenical problems concerning the standing of Christians in churches which had no bishops and no sacramental confirmation. Other scholars have replied that baptism is complete—uniting a whole person with the triune God. Their emphasis, however, leaves confirmation somewhat problematic. It is at most a pastoral act signifying the adult's owning of one's own infant baptism. However, confirmation is not initiatory. No intrinsic reason demands that the rite be administered exclusively by bishops. One can even question whether first Communion should depend on it. Several scholarly exchanges occurred on this matter in the first half of the twentieth century. Some ecumenically significant issues were perhaps explored; however the debate was not very theologically productive (see Dale Moody, "?The Anglican Tradition: Baptism and Confirmation,?" chap. 4 in Baptism: Foundation for Christian Unity [1967]). Starting in the late 1940s, the Church of England became concerned about what was often called indiscriminate baptism. Because of the state church inheritance, baptism for a long time had been regarded as a social recognition of birth. Persons who took no part in the life of the church still thought they had a right to have their children christened in the Church of England. Incumbents, informed by the dream of a Christian society united by a single church, felt that, as a matter of conscience, they had no right to refuse. The result was that a very high (but a diminishing) proportion of the English population is baptized in the Church of England, while only a small (but fairly steady) proportion is active in the church. This discrepancy seems scandalous. The lapsed baptized member was not the exception, but the norm. Did not such results subvert one of the sacraments of the gospel? Should not the church be shamed? Yet, who was to say no to parents? And on what grounds? Many articles and booklets debated the matter. Some clergy declared a moratorium on infant baptisms, just to indicate their distress over baptizing more members into the church who became only nominal Christians. (To be fair, other historic centers of Christianity in Europe had similar figures and similar pastoral soul searching.) Although many parts of Anglicanism were aware of this discussion, it affected principally the Church of England. Other Anglican provinces which lack the state church tradition (including some provinces in which the Christian population is growing rapidly), do not show the same statistics, and, if the provinces have the same pastoral problem, they have it to a lesser degree. Modern Liturgies Anglicanism expresses its doctrinal emphases principally through authorized Prayer Books, rather than through confessional statements. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Anglican discussion concerning baptism has centered on the Prayer Book texts. Existing texts have been criticized or supported; new texts have been proposed or adopted. Hence, to establish contemporary Anglican baptismal theology, one consults the many revised Prayer Books and the teachings they appear to express. (See D. B. Stevick, Baptismal Moments: Baptismal Meanings [1987] for an explication of the 1979 Prayer Book of the Episcopal Church.) Baptism and the Corporate Life. Modern Anglican liturgies contain an implicit critique of the individualism of Western baptism. Whereby the rite (during the Middle Ages and also through the first part of the twentieth century) was usually performed in an empty church with only family and sponsors present, baptism is now understood as an ecclesial event. It is enacted at the Easter Vigil or at the principal Eucharist of a Sunday, when a congregation is present to give witness and to engage itself freshly in the baptismal life. Baptism brings one into a new set of relationships. One is within the forgiven and forgiveness-bearing community and is bound into the common life of believers—which shares, supports, gives, loves, and judges its members (at the same time, the common life offends and inflicts pain, but asks forgiveness and begins again). No one becomes a Christian or remains a Christian alone. Clearly, baptism is an event, not just for the individual, but for the church (see T. Eastman, The Baptizing Community [1982]). When adults speak the baptismal promises on behalf of a child, the act challenges the community. Not everyone is competent to enter every contract. Clearly, adults who are not mature, carrying out to their best ability the promises of baptism, are not able to make those promises on behalf of someone else. The baptismal action must be carried by the community of faith. Baptism and Redemptive History The modern Anglican service books surround baptism with a rich presentation of Scripture and psalmody. They set the act within the divine redemptive purpose by placing it in the Christian year at the Great Vigil of Easter. Not all baptisms will be carried out at this time, but the Prayer Book sets the rite in this context as its normative location. All baptisms, whenever they are done, are enactments of the Easter reality. One's baptism, a passage from death to life, from darkness to light, is enacted in the context of Christ's death and resurrection—which is itself set against the interpretive background of Israel's emancipation from slavery. This redemptive emphasis touches the theology of infant baptism particularly. For several generations, most Anglican theologians realized that the common interpretation that Romans 5:12 taught a doctrine of inherited guilt imposed a legal thesis on the Pauline text. Probably since the late patristic period, the practice of infant baptism had been defended, at least in part, by an understanding of the sin at birth. At times, the rite was dominated by anxiety, an Augustinian fear which is still popular. Sin is a terrible, collective reality, which is present before the individual consents to take part in sin. Paul speaks in Romans 5 of human solidarity in sin (in "?Adam?"), but he does not say that sin is (if one may express sin this way ) genetically transmitted. Guilt is not a part of Paul's argument, and in any case is not inheritable. Paul identifies the solidarity of the human race in sin, but he is not fatalistic. Speaking of God's work, he describes Christ as a greater and more inclusive figure than Adam. Speaking of human sin, he emphasizes moral responsibility "?because all have sinned.?" When one recognizes that one does not baptize an infant because that infant is, in some sense, a sinner, one must rethink the rationale for infant baptism. Many Anglican theologians now speak of infant baptism as a ritual demonstration of divine prevenience. God has acted for each person who is baptized before he or she is capable of knowing or responding to that act. God's love anticipates our experience of that love. Infant baptism signifies the priority of grace. This account of infant baptism (common in Anglicanism, but in other communions also) is not stated in any official formula, but neither was the former account. The Book of Common Prayer does include renunciations of evil in the baptismal rite for children. (The medieval rite included exorcisms; however, the Anglican prayer books did not.) The renunciations are the counterpoint of the baptismal promises. In a moral world, a saying yes requires also a saying no. These words are said by parents and sponsors who do not speak about what is or what had been, but about what will be or what must be. This child, who now neither believes in God nor resists temptation, must come not only to believe, but also to discriminate and to reject evil. The child must grow to be a moral person in a flawed world. The baptism speaks by anticipation, setting the child in the grace-filled, forgiveness-bearing community under the name, not of Adam, but of Christ. Baptism and Eucharist The two sacraments of the gospel complement each other. One signifies birth, and the other feeding. The Eucharist sustains the life that is begun in baptism. The repeated hearing of the Word and partaking of the Supper renews the fundamental relationship begun in the unrepeated act of baptism. In the earliest Christian centuries, baptism was followed at once by Holy Communion, as it still is in the East. As the initiatory rites in the West came to be observed in two stages, admission to Communion was made dependent on the second stage, confirmation at adolescence. Thus in the Western church, the two sacraments have been divided by ten or twelve years. Most (but not all) new Anglican liturgies state clearly that persons, including infants, are eligible for the Lord's Supper by reason of baptism. This change in sacramental economy has required some adjustment of spirituality and pastoral practice insofar as it implies infant Communion. But a church that sees no reason to postpone baptism should also question the postponement of Holy Communion (see U. T. Holmes, Young Children and the Eucharist [1972]; and the collective work, Nurturing Children at Communion [1985]). Baptism and Holy Spirit The past division of initiation between baptism and confirmation at least suggested a division of the realities signified. When some Anglican theologians took the rite of confirmation (derived from the early church's postbaptismal anointing) to speak specifically of the gift of the Holy Spirit, it left water baptism a diminished—almost a pre-Christian—rite. The modern prayer books seek to clarify that baptism is a complete Christian initiation. The Holy Spirit is not reserved for a select few; Holy Spirit fills all Christians by definition. Many Anglican liturgies or pastoral practices place postbaptismal acts (laying on of hands, or anointing, with prayer for the Holy Spirit) in the baptism rite itself. Such practices follow the early church, which understood these practices to signify the anointing of Christians into a royal priesthood. These practices complete the fullness of meaning in the act of Christian initiation (see G. W. H. Lampe, The Seal of the Spirit [1967]). Baptismal Gift and Faith The liturgies of modern prayer books suggest that baptism is a point at which divine gift and human faith coalesce. Baptism which belongs to the initiative of God belongs also to the response of humanity. Sacraments enact the great Pauline paradox: "?I, yet not I, but Christ in me?" (Gal. 2:20). The prayer over the water and baptism in the triune name set the action in the context of a divine redemptive initiative. Clearly, God acts in baptism to accept a person and to bring that person into a new relationship—to set that person within a new people, representing a new order of forgiveness and promise. Yet at the same time, the person baptized (in the case of an adult) or the community speaking for that person (in the case of a child) is expressing gratitude and faith by making revolutionary declarations. The promises at baptism include the Apostles' Creed, the early baptismal affirmation. This basic baptismal pledge (based on apostolic preaching) is followed by further promises: to continue faithful in prayer and worship, to return when one has violated the commitments of Christian life, to witness of Christ, to serve others as one encounters need, and to work through the structures of justice to affirm the dignity of every person (The Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church [1979], 304–5). The baptismal covenant gives expression to divine grace and human responsibility. Baptism sets a person in a community with a mission. It makes each baptized person a sharer in that mission, which is ultimately not programs and ideals, but the mission of God. The people of God, through joy and suffering, are participants in this mission of God. In sum, the Anglican theological tradition retains from the biblical and early Christian sources the heart of the church's understanding of baptism as a sign and actualization of the gospel. But these sources are sufficiently flexible so that Anglican baptismal theology and practice can grow and change in response to unprecedented situations that occur in the advance of history, yet can also remain true to their Christian identity.