More on Baptism
Saturday, 17 July 2010 03:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cjbanning(Following up on my previous post, On Baptism.)
The Evangelical anti-sacramentalism towards baptism is a result of that movement's overemphasis on personal experience and individual salvation. At its extreme, this results in a denial of the eficancy of infant baptism, for infants do not have the development in faith to come to Christ on their own accord. (But then, who does?)
Against this, we affirm in our Anglo-Catholicism the properly sacramental understanding of the baptismal rite, one grounded in the community of the Body of Christ. Properly understood, it is not so much that an individual enters the Church so much as it is the Church who grows by one member. It is Christ who works through the sacrament, with the Church as mediator, not the baptisand--but as God has bound the sacraments to Godself, we may be fully certain than the sacramental infusion of grace shall be efficacious.
By entering into the bonds of community which mark the mystical Body of Christ, it is of course true to say that something significant happens in the life of the baptisand. It is a turning, not away from the world, but from sin and its tyranny, and most especially "the conditions which hold people in economic and political bondage" (Bloesch 24, not speaking with praise).
This will not necessarily be of the character of some prominent conversion experience on the part of the individual person (although we may be sure that the Church feels her growth by even one person deeply), as she may well be an infant. Even for those of us baptized as adults, it is often a less than profound experience, as we are focused for the moment more on the theatre of the performing of the sacrament--on our outfit, on friends and family we may not usually see in church, on getting wet--than on God. Such is the nature of any sacrament; we place our trust in God to do God's work in any case.
But just as the transformation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is, however many bells we may ring or smells we may produce, quite ordinary (the communion elements sit there, still looking--and feeling and tasting--like bread and wine), our faith assures us that the mystical change is both deep and profound. Baptism, like the Eucharist, enacts a deep Radical Transfiguration--only it is ourselves rather than the bread and wine who are in this sacrament transformed into the Body of Christ.
The Evangelical anti-sacramentalism towards baptism is a result of that movement's overemphasis on personal experience and individual salvation. At its extreme, this results in a denial of the eficancy of infant baptism, for infants do not have the development in faith to come to Christ on their own accord. (But then, who does?)
Against this, we affirm in our Anglo-Catholicism the properly sacramental understanding of the baptismal rite, one grounded in the community of the Body of Christ. Properly understood, it is not so much that an individual enters the Church so much as it is the Church who grows by one member. It is Christ who works through the sacrament, with the Church as mediator, not the baptisand--but as God has bound the sacraments to Godself, we may be fully certain than the sacramental infusion of grace shall be efficacious.
By entering into the bonds of community which mark the mystical Body of Christ, it is of course true to say that something significant happens in the life of the baptisand. It is a turning, not away from the world, but from sin and its tyranny, and most especially "the conditions which hold people in economic and political bondage" (Bloesch 24, not speaking with praise).
This will not necessarily be of the character of some prominent conversion experience on the part of the individual person (although we may be sure that the Church feels her growth by even one person deeply), as she may well be an infant. Even for those of us baptized as adults, it is often a less than profound experience, as we are focused for the moment more on the theatre of the performing of the sacrament--on our outfit, on friends and family we may not usually see in church, on getting wet--than on God. Such is the nature of any sacrament; we place our trust in God to do God's work in any case.
But just as the transformation of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ is, however many bells we may ring or smells we may produce, quite ordinary (the communion elements sit there, still looking--and feeling and tasting--like bread and wine), our faith assures us that the mystical change is both deep and profound. Baptism, like the Eucharist, enacts a deep Radical Transfiguration--only it is ourselves rather than the bread and wine who are in this sacrament transformed into the Body of Christ.