We Confess One Baptism for the Forgiveness of Sins

New Impulses for the Ecumenical Discussion of Baptism

On the basis of an examination of the 1990 agreement on church fellowship between the Waldensians, Methodists and Baptists in Italy and its potential as a model for church unions in general, Eduard Schutz has explored how far the Italian model might be applicable to "the relationship between Baptist congregations and majority churches, for example, in Germany".(1) The ideas Schutz sees and develops as underlying the union in Italy are indeed worth including in dialogues with Baptists -- not only in Germany, but wherever the practice of "believers' baptism" is a source of irritation.

However, at a time when Baptist practice is both being critically questioned by the charismatic movement and encountering competition from a demand for self-determination motivated by secular society in the majority churches, it is not enough simply to treat this as a theme in dialogue with Baptists. Schutz is here putting forward considerations which should -- once again or for the first time -- be on the agenda of multilateral ecumenism. The World Council of Churches, for example, could mandate the commission on Faith and Order to take up the dialogue on baptism afresh in the light of the efforts of churches and church communities to achieve conciliar viability. For, as Schutz rightly points out, no matter how important mutual recognition of baptism may be for relations between two given local churches, it only perpetuates existing variations in the practice of baptism, but does not contribute to its renewal.

The same concern that leads Schutz to call for renewal in the face of "biblicistic fundamentalist perceptions and demands"(2) in his own ranks also leads him to object if, under the slogan of "sacramental integrity", the current practice of child and infant baptism -- which indisputably also includes improprieties, accommodations and claims to power -- almost without exception "is made unassailable and indispensable". And he is undoubtedly correct in his opinion that "the vexatious discussion on baptism" with Baptist churches which are not caught up in biblicism is essential "for all Christians and churches involved in the ecumenical discussion, in order to keep alive the question of faith and baptism as essential constituents of being a Christian in today's pluralist society".(3) The following reflections are intended to contribute to this.

I

Where the Apostles' Creed speaks only of the forgiveness of sins, the Nicene Creed starts afresh, changing the predicate "We believe" to "We confess" and mentioning the enduring source of the forgiveness of sins: "We confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins." Here the 150 fathers of the second ecumenical council had recourse to Ephesians 4:5 -- "one Lord, one faith, one baptism", a sequence which certainly echoes Mark 16:16: the worldwide "great commission" of the risen Christ for "the whole creation", the faith which accepts that commission, and the baptism which ratifies membership in the Christian community of those who stand the test in God's last judgment on the world. But in Ephesians 4 the accent has already unmistakably shifted. Now what is emphasized is that the plethora of experiences linked to becoming a Christian involves a coherent, self-consistent event: water baptism as an act of cleansing and reception into the community of those who, from Antioch on, have been called "Christians"; baptism in the Spirit, opening up previously suppressed or other* wise polarized areas of the mind for penetration by the Spirit of God; the baptism of illumination, the source of a knowledge of God which would finally break up the ancient polytheistic pantheon; and soon, in addition to and surpassing all of these, the baptism of blood -- that is, the surrender of one's life, martyrdom for the sake of belonging to Christ.

In summing up this fullness of a new kind of life with the expression "one baptism", the letter to the Ephesians certainly does not intend to question its origin and legitimacy as the expression of the one faith and to reduce the corresponding practice of the congregation to a uniform model. But it does seek to prevent its becoming independent -- perhaps even emancipating itself as an expression of religious self-realization (Gnosticism) -- and to establish awareness of the inner unity and sequence to which this fullness is owed. For without such perspectives, there is a danger of what we would today call "Christian narcissism". And we must not assume on the basis of later experiences that when the fathers of the council of Constantinople in 381 took up the phrase from Ephesians and expressly confessed "one baptism for the forgiveness of sins", they were seeking thereby to regulate baptismal practice for the oikoumene of that time or all times -- or even to introduce a specific concept of the sacrament. To do so would be to allow the negative experiences of a later time to impinge upon our assessment of decisions for which the underlying reasons were entirely different.