Back to baptism

In one of the filler passages on the excellent BBC website (I'm contractually obliged to say that) there is a rather silly article on people wanting to be debaptised. I can never resist a good argument about baptism, and I'm on my way to Oxford at present, so can really get going.

Theologically, baptism (Christening for those who think about this in other language) seems to get a relatively easy rise in sacramental controversy. No disputes its position as second only to the Queen of Sacraments (I'll save my thoughts on whether that's out of two or seven for later), but whereas the Eucharist has been the subject of wranglings about its significance for most of the history of the church, and continues to excite doctrinal controversy, both around traditional areas - I wish I could persuade my church to revert to red wine - but in new directions as well. I find the inculturation debate around the use of bread and wine in particularly African liturgy fascinating.

By contrast, there is a brief flurry of activity over baptism in the early church around validity (hence Nicaea - Constantinople's one baptism), a gradual movement towards infant baptism, which remained rare even in late antiquity, and another flurry about that adult issue in the reformation period (note: I know this isn't a full review of the history, and I am aware of the role of baptist ministry in the US and Africa, but time, time). And that's odd, because baptism is the defining feature of Christians: good Christians take communion; all Christians are baptised.

I think that is changing and the issue is coalescing around what it means to be baptised, and the article made me think about precisely this point, though the views of the individuals in question are absurd. However, their reaction (though they don't realise it) is against the theological position, originally in Paul, of being sealed in Christ, but he is really wrestling with circumcision and the Law here; this isn't the root of baptism - it's John (one of my favourite saints) and his sense of baptism is very different - it's a creed of repentance and of cleansing from sin, and this is clearly absurd to offer to infants. It also leads to a slightly odd position where it is clearly logical to delay baptism until death so that the value of the forgiveness of all sin might be maximised - pace Constantine - a kind of Russian roulette of forgiveness: after all, you wouldn't want to mistime that. BTW, this is easily and obviously argued against. No need for that here.

However, we have another rather important meaning in the gospel account of the baptism of Jesus, where the baptism is clearly a commission and the beginning of the ministry of Christ. I would argue this is where we must root our conception of baptism, of a commission, or as we have it in Acts 2.38, receiving the gift of the Spirit. In some sense those who argue for debaptism are right, they have - in theory - chosen to lay down their divine commission. Of course that's not how we understood and it's very unclear why they care (I've often noticed that about atheists). That's clearly wrong. Baptism isn't like a membership card you hand back. Baptism clearly does fulfill a number of overlapping roles: initiatory, soteriologically (there are massive difficulties in renouncing God's role: once in, never out), and in relation to sin as well as this sense of commission.

But it does strengthen my belief around the unsatisfactory nature of infant baptism and the inability of such a sacrament to be reconciled with either its original conception or its theological significance. Where adulthood starts in this context (and it's not 21) is harder to define and the subject of a long running argument between A and me, but some time to go before we resolve it.