The Mystery of Baptism in the Anglican Tradition - Kenneth Stevenson

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by others elsewhere, including Thomas Cranmer in England, stripped the liturgy down. The pouring of water over the head of the child was to be central. Confirmation was abolished, though where it survived – initially only in England – the emphasis came to be focused as much on the candidates’ profession of the Christian faith, as on their blessing and strengthening in the power of the Holy Spirit by the Church.

      Of course, the scene was far more complicated than that. For neither Calvin nor Luther was the journey straightforward.2 But they and their colleagues, together with Thomas Cranmer in the first two English Prayer Books, inherited the medieval pattern of Christian initiation that persisted in all its fragmentation down to recent times. Baptism was primarily for those in infancy, and parents were expected to have their children baptized. Catechesis and first communion followed as the child got older and was able to understand more. The first two Prayer Books of 1549 and 1552 presuppose that scheme, adding a form of private baptism for when the child is dangerously ill, and a simple form of confirmation by the bishop. The form of baptism for those ‘of riper years’ was the main addition to the Prayer Book in 1662; it was added probably for two reasons, the Church’s mission in North America, and the numbers of people who were not baptized as infants during the time of the Commonwealth when the Prayer Book was proscribed and the influence of those wanting to delay baptism into adulthood was in some places strong.3 The other significant addition was the active profession of faith by the candidates at confirmation – all grist to the mill of those who wanted Christian commitment expressed in the liturgy.

      Catholic ceremonies, like anointing with oil and elaborate ways of blessing the baptismal water, were abolished – although Cranmer did retain a blessing of the water, another indication of conservatism in England. Luther retained the sign of the cross before baptism, whereas Calvin got rid of it. Luther retained godparents, whereas Calvin got rid of them also, and required the parents of the child to make the promises at baptism. Already a varying picture is emerging. The Reformation did not proceed in a uniform manner at all. When, after the death of Edward VI in 1553, Mary Tudor reigned as a Catholic monarch again, it was inevitable that those budding churchmen who took the chance to escape to mainland Europe should encounter a more distinct style of Reformed Christianity in centres like Geneva and Zürich than they had known back home in England. When they returned at the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I from 1558 onwards, many of them became valuable allies of the new monarch in her opening years. Together they faced the Catholic inheritance, and one of the results is that English Christianity became a matter of debate and controversy.

      All these changes were not solely in the interests of simplifying the liturgy. They were about theology as well. Medieval Catholic teaching about baptism was to the effect that baptism is for the washing away of original sin. The Reformers challenged this, but in different ways: what about the centrality of the work of Christ on the cross? What about sins committed after baptism, which would not be dealt with automatically in the confessional? Baptismal theology therefore shifted in the same way as teaching about the Eucharist, towards views that tried to hold in some kind of tension the action of the Church in faithful obedience to the Lord’s command (on the one hand), and faithful reception on the part of the believer (on the other). Insofar as there is any discernible theological scheme, it concentrates on the way the symbol of water functions in relation to the gift of salvation.

      In his work on Calvin’s eucharistic theology, Brian Gerrish suggests three models. We shall return to them later on, when we come to assessing the work of our nine writers. They approximate to three views of what sacraments do.4

      The first is symbolic memorialism. This can be identified most immediately with the radical Swiss Reformer, Ulrich Zwingli. Sacraments are pledges of God’s goodwill to us. Baptism becomes an action that is a memorial of what Christ has already done for us. This is an exaggerated view, which suspects the language of sacramental efficacy. Faithful reception is the dominant part of the equation.

      Then there is symbolic parallelism, a view that can be identified with Zwingli’s successor at Zürich, Heinrich Bullinger. A careful distinction is made between outward and inward baptism. As Bryan Spinks has suggested, ‘they are not identical, but neither are they totally unconnected. They are simultaneous and parallel.’

      Thirdly, there is symbolic instrumentalism, a view which Gerrish identifies with John Calvin himself, and it can also be found in the writings of Martin Luther. The sacraments are ‘visible words’ (to use Augustine’s well-known tag); they are not bare signs, but consist of the sign and what is signified together. The water of baptism conveys the gift of salvation in the sacrament itself; faithful reception begins from that point. As we shall see, Anglican teaching tends strongly towards this third view, because it is faithful to tradition and at the same time allows ample scope for the basic Reformation emphasis on human appropriation.

      The principal way in which debate and controversy in England operated – and still does today in world-wide Anglicanism – is the almost endemic manner in which this particular style of Reformed Christianity is determined to face both ways. The Church of England is Catholic, but it is not Roman Catholic. It is Reformed, but it is not like the Reformed Churches of the Continent. From some of the writings which will be discussed later, it is apparent that there were elements in this English Church that also found an increasing amount of inspiration in the Greek Fathers and the Eastern Christian traditions. In this connection, one name stands out particularly strong, that of Lancelot Andrewes. The extraordinary characteristic of this Church of England is that traces of this endemic tendency to be both Catholic and Reformed are to be found in virtually every service of The Book of Common Prayer. As far as baptism and confirmation are concerned, a good example is in the following prayer, which first appears in 1549 and survives thereafter:

      Almighty and immortal God,

      The aid of all that need, the helper of all that flee to thee for succour, the life of them that believe, and the resurrection of the dead:

      We call upon thee for this infant that he, coming to thy holy baptism, may receive remission of his sins by spiritual Regeneration.

      Receive him, O Lord as thou hast promised by thy well beloved son, saying, ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:

      So give now unto us that ask; let us that seek find; open the gate unto us that knock; that this infant may enjoy the everlasting benediction of thy heavenly washing, and may come to the eternal kingdom which thou hast promised by Christ our Lord. Amen.5

      This prayer has a curious origin. Archbishop Thomas Cranmer will have known it from his Catholic days as the prayer used in the baptism rite when putting salt in the candidate’s mouth. Much earlier, Augustine uses the image of knocking on the door when exhorting candidates to come forward for baptism. This probably inspired the composition of the prayer in the first place, for when it was originally written, probably in the sixth century (if not earlier), the ceremony of the giving of salt took place some time before the baptism, and was part of the rites associated with the final part of the catechumenate – the group of people preparing for baptism. If they were mainly adults, or if a high proportion of them were adults, then it made a great deal of sense to ‘ritualize’ the last stages in preparation for baptism.

      The prayer in its original form is marked by two main features. One is that it was originally a prayer in the singular, uttered by the priest almost as a personal petition over the candidate. This Cranmer changed to the more normal plural ‘we’. Secondly, the prayer has at its heart the teaching of Jesus about asking, seeking, and knocking (Matt. 7:7–8; Luke 11:9–10). In other words, the prayer as adapted by Cranmer places the candidate – and the congregation identifying with the candidate – on the threshold of the Christian life.

      This is probably why the prayer was a winner with Cranmer, and to a lesser extent with Luther, who abbreviated it for his baptismal rite. All those rich periods near the start – ‘the aid of all that need, the helper of all that flee to thee for succour, the life of them that believe, and the resurrection of the dead’ – express the sheer dependence upon God that is at the heart of the deepest classical traditions of Christian prayer. After the quotation from Matthew’s Sermon on the

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