I haven't made my point very clearly. I'll try again.
ISTM that there are localized, fuzzy, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" forms of ecumenism, quite apart from denominational bodies' official theologies, policies and practices.
Localized ecumenism may take the form of "UtShay UpWay" (shut up, in pig Latin) about matters on which the denominational body and the local context might differ.
For example, it is my understanding that the Anglican church worldwide is very much in favour of matrimonial monogamy. It is also my understanding that this is not always proclaimed vociferously in areas where polygamy is part of the local cultural context.
It is true that according to the World Council of Churches' "Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry" (BEM) that official ecumenical agreement recognizes baptisms in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I respect that document and those agreements. As Gamma Gamaliel and Nick Tamen have pointed out, that is the official state of things.
But... what I'm saying is, given the real possibility of people around here baptized in the name of Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer - who seek active participation in other denominations - it is a more present, less academic, contextually difficult situation.
I was simply outlining an 'official' position without much by way of comment or reflection.
I think your example of Churches which may not stress particular emphases in particular contexts applies right across the board. I remember seeing an instance on a TV documentary of an RC nun distributing condoms during the height of the Aids crisis in Africa, for instance. She argued that prevention was far more important than moralising about abstinence and so forth.
Every now and then there's a bit of a kerfuffle within the Orthodox world from what I can gather if an African man with several wives is made a deacon or given some other formal/official role in the Church.
I'm sure the RCs, Anglicans and various Protestant Churches face similar issues in those contexts.
So, yes, I get what you are saying. I don't think I've got an answer in relation to the situation you describe where people who may have been baptised 'in the name of Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer' then seek to be received by Churches which insist on a Trinitarian formula - other than to suggest that this would be a matter for them and the priest/minister of the Church or denomination to which they seek admittance.
I have no idea how far 'ekkonomeia' might extend in a situation like that in Orthodox terms, nor how the RCs would approach an issue like that.
Well, it’s not a clear requirement of salvation. Scripture doesn’t share an account of the disciples being water baptized. The thief on the cross didn’t get baptized. Jesus didn’t heal or forgive people and tell them to go get baptized. Nicodemus wasn’t told about it. The Great Commission instructs it, but on the whole it’s a mixed message, isn’t it?
Between God, the officiant and the person baptised, intention that matters, in my opinion. As far as ecumenical relaions, and congregational sensibilities are concerned, those are separate issues.
I have no idea how far 'ekkonomeia' might extend in a situation like that in Orthodox terms, nor how the RCs would approach an issue like that.
Shipmates may remember the case of the Catholic priest in San Diego who for decades baptized saying “we baptize you” instead of “I baptize.” The baptisms of everyone he’d baptized that way were ruled invalid.
Perhaps a different tack might be taken in ecumenical cases, but it does seem to indicate a concern for exactly the right words.
Between God, the officiant and the person baptised, intention that matters, in my opinion. As far as ecumenical relaions, and congregational sensibilities are concerned, those are separate issues.
...
It is true that according to the World Council of Churches' "Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry" (BEM) that official ecumenical agreement recognizes baptisms in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I respect that document and those agreements. As Gamma Gamaliel and Nick Tamen have pointed out, that is the official state of things.
But... what I'm saying is, given the real possibility of people around here baptized in the name of Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer - who seek active participation in other denominations - it is a more present, less academic, contextually difficult situation.
...
So, yes, I get what you are saying. I don't think I've got an answer in relation to the situation you describe where people who may have been baptised 'in the name of Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer' then seek to be received by Churches which insist on a Trinitarian formula - other than to suggest that this would be a matter for them and the priest/minister of the Church or denomination to which they seek admittance.
Baptism, as practised by "the church", is initiation into "the church". It's what "the church" thinks that matters, be it Trinitarian, worldwide, the One True Church, or otherwise defined.
It seems clear that a human being is performing the physical water baptizing. It also seems clear that God doesn't need it to be done. Failing to be baptized or having one's baptism invalidated b/c of some aspect of creative license doesn't inhibit the divine. Is not "mucking it up" a function of religiosity, and not spirituality?
In answer to Gamma Gamiel's wondering about a person baptised without the traditional Trinitarian formula wishing to join another church community,it would make sense to me that if they wish to join another community then they would (or should) be ready to abide by its rules.
If the new community which they wish to join insists on a Trinitarian formula then they should be baptised in that way. If the new community does not insists on the Trinitarian formula then they don't need to be baptised using a formula which their ne w community does not consider to be necessary.
The forms used in the various sacraments are only to help us be clear about what we are doing.
It seems clear that a human being is performing the physical water baptizing. It also seems clear that God doesn't need it to be done. Failing to be baptized or having one's baptism invalidated b/c of some aspect of creative license doesn't inhibit the divine. Is not "mucking it up" a function of religiosity, and not spirituality?
Okay, taking a couple of steps back here. God doesn't need anything to be done; but if he sets up a procedure and says, "Do it this way," it's only courtesy for us to, well, do it that way.
Are we going to prevent him saving someone if we fuck it up, either deliberately or accidentally? Well, no; but deliberately relying on that fact to excuse our failure to do what we were told is a kind of rudeness, isn't it?
If I say to my son, "Please park the car in the driveway when you get home," and instead he leaves it on the street, I'm going to ask him what went wrong. If it turns out he didn't hear me, or there was a visitor parked in the driveway at that moment, I'll certainly understand. But if the answer is, "Well, I just didn't feel like it," or "I wanted to be creative," or "It's too many extra steps from the driveway, I'd rather park right in front of the house," I'm going to be a bit put out. Because I had a reason for what I asked, even if I didn't spell it out; and I expect my son to have the courtesy of at least asking me if he wants to change the plan. For all he knows, today might be the day when the city comes through fixing the street in a very messy way, apt to damage the car. Just because I didn't mention it is no reason for him to assume I had no good reason for my request.
It seems to me that we do better when we treat God like a person, not like an impersonal force where we're trying to suss out the limits of how much we can get away with before the whole thing falls apart. We should treat him the way we ourselves would like to be treated--that is, if he asks us to do something in a particular way, we follow directions if at all possible. And if we want to make changes, we ask him first out of courtesy.
I think any church that sees sacraments as having real effects that aren't purely voluntarist on the part of either humans or God is going to have trouble with the dichotomy. The catholic understanding - I believe - is that sacraments aren't just a piece of arbitrary busy work that God wants but actually have been empowered by God to make progress towards sanctification. It's not to be honest a million miles away from magic. This makes a bit more sense with a Christus Victor type view of the atonement.
(If so, the view that sacraments are there for humans corresponds to a moral example view of the atonement; a view that they're there to please God corresponds to a penal substitution view.)
I think this means that the essential bits of the sacraments have to be done to work automatically - which doesn't rule God making a special intervention to make an improperly performed sacrament work as intended.
That is a way of putting it, not very satisfactory.
It's hard to levy an accusation of rudeness against someone who's making a linguistic adaptation in an effort to be more pastoral, though, isn't it?
Taking your example, is there a difference if your son drives in nose first, or backs the car into the driveway? Or whether he pulls the car all of the way up to the head/top of your driveway, or leaves the car at the mouth of the street? Or moves the car to the right-hand edge of the driveway or left-hand edge of the driveway instead or parking dead center? Are there not a bunch of reasonable ways to park in the driveway and be just fine, yet not park exactly as you would have? Are those rude ways of parking?
So much has to do with intentions here, and given that humans are prone to messing up, certainly we want to treat people’s efforts with charity. And there are a huge number of things about baptism God has never specified, and we try to leave those in the hands of the people involved (for instance, source of water, water temp, precise method of application etc). If someone has a disagreement in one of those things (called afiaphira) the general principle is to treat each other kindly and do what we can not to destroy the unity of the church. So if someone comes to me and is super concerned about needing to be dunked three times in a river as opposed to splashed out of a font, for his comfort we’ll find him a river, though we think it unnecessary. So much of this is judged pastorally—how can we best avoid creating problems for people in their ongoing life with Christ.
So would you place absolutely no limits on the amount to which a person might change baptism? Or the Lord’s Supper?
Either you draw a line somewhere ( in which you come under the same judgment you’ve been passing on us) or you make it a free for all—in which case, what is the point of even having an act like baptism at all? If it is impossible to ever say “This, this here is baptism”?
I think I'd have to decide if the heart is ultimately more important than the ritual. I've attended all kinds of baptisms. I've watched adults wade out into a stream and be fully immersed by 'preachers' with no seminary training while onlookers sang "Shall we gather at the river." I've seen infants in linen gowns held over ornately carved fonts by Bishops while barely a teaspoon of holy water dripped off of their foreheads in total silence. I've heard "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit," "Father, Son, and Holy Ghost," and "Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer." I'd have to confess that at those times, my heart as well as the hearts of others taking part, were absolutely sincere. Not good enough for some, though. Alrighty then.
I've taken communion with homemade farmhouse white bread, whole grain wheat bread, unleavened bread, and a variety of wafers, both regular and gluten-free. I've taken wine from a common cup, in tiny glass communion cups, and grape juice from Dixie cups. I've taken communion elements separately, and by intinction. I've taken it individually, and literally taken it en masse where everyone holds their bread in their hands until all have it, and then everyone consumes simultaneously -- likewise for the "cup." I've taken it at a table, in a church, in a sports arena, in a field, on a mountain... and again, during those moments, I was absolutely sincere. Not good enough for some? Alrighty then.
I just don't know who's to say. If there really is one, it seems to me the bigger offense, well beyond rudeness, here, is the arrogance of those who'd invalidate it based on a word. Show of hands -- who's baptizing in Aramaic? No?! What about hearts?
FWIW, I'm still curious about the car in the driveway.
If someone has a disagreement in one of those things (called afiaphira) the general principle is to treat each other kindly and do what we can not to destroy the unity of the church.
Adiaphora are "neither commanded nor forbidden in the Word of God." Colloquially, it means "stuff that doesn't matter one way or the other, except insofar as it helps or hinders relationship with Christ."
In some contexts, wearing robes would hinder the congregation's relationship with Christ and his Church. In other contexts - such as, apparently, that of Eirenist - not wearing robes would be a stumbling block, so responsible clergy would likely wear robes.
From a Lutheran perspective, almost everything about baptismal practice is adiaphora, except for water and the name of the Trinity.
So much of this is judged pastorally—how can we best avoid creating problems for people in their ongoing life with Christ.
Exactly, and that takes discernment and sensitivity. On the one hand, there is the instinct toward eager instruction, which if done poorly is off-putting, arrogant, and boring af. On the other, there is a pragmatic laissez-faire attitude which is apathetic, insincere, and disrespectful of the denomination's beliefs. Either may be damaging to an individual's relationship with Jesus and the church.
I just don't know who's to say. If there really is one, it seems to me the bigger offense, well beyond rudeness, here, is the arrogance of those who'd invalidate it based on a word. Show of hands -- who's baptizing in Aramaic? No?! What about hearts?
That seems to be a little bit of a straw man, at least to me. I don’t know that anyone has suggested that the language used matters with regard to validity or whatever one wants to call it. What has been suggested is that there comes a point at which the way in which baptism or Eucharist is observed varies from expected/traditional/scriptural norms to such an extent that they may not be recognizable as baptism or Eucharist.
The significance of any such variation seems to me to be a separate question from how God does or doesn’t operate through an “irregular” baptism or Eucharist. Related, perhaps, but separate.
FWIW, in my denomination I think the “non-negotiables”* would be water and the Trinitarian formula (for baptism) and bread “common to the culture of the congregation,” drink derived from grapes/fruit of the vine and the words of institution (for Eucharist).
And I agree with what @Lamb Chopped and @Leaf have said about pastoral responsibility.
* “Non-negotiables” here, I’d say, means the (strong) expectation, the norm, or in line with posts above, the “non-adiaphora.” It has nothing to do with validity in terms of God’s action, but rather had to do with faithfulness on our part, as well as participation in the life of the wider church.
Thing is, @The_Riv, other than seeing a bishop baptise an infant, I've pretty much seen and participated in everything you describe and yes, I've helped baptise someone in a river by total immersion even though I'd not had any seminary training nor was 'ordained' to any 'office' in any way.
But 'when in Rome', as it were. If I were to join Leaf's Lutheran church I'd abide by whatever house-keeping rules applied there. Equally at Nick Tamen's Presbyterian church or Forthview's Roman Catholic one.
Ok, I'm Orthodox and so I abide by whatever canons apply there.
I wouldn't do what I did back in my independent charismatic evangelical days and baptise people in rivers, but neither do I go round wondering how sincere or otherwise I might have been, or whether it may have been presumption or hubris or whatever else. Offensive as it may seem, the Orthodox expect a kind of declaration of repentance for things that a convert may have done as an adherent of another Christian tradition.
I was happy to do that. But I don't go round analysing what particular aspects of my former affiliations may have been worthy of repentance from, as it were, and which parts weren't. I acted in good faith and according to my lights but there are certainly things I'm aware of that I did out of spiritual pride or Pharisaism or presumption. Just as there have been since I became Orthodox.
There may have been other things I did whilst involved with non-Orthodox churches that were fine and dandy. I don't know. Only God knows.
I don't take a 'mechanistic' view of these things, nor I hope a 'magical' one. As I've said before, one of the best pieces of advice I received on becoming Orthodox was, 'The sacraments are not magic.'
Nor do I think God goes around saying, 'Uh-oh, there's that heterodox Presbyterian Nick Tamen praying to me again. I'm not listening to him ...'
As you might expect, I'm tediously wedded to a both/and approach.
Of course God can 'save' or show grace and mercy without the sacraments. God is God. He can do whatever he wills. But that doesn't mean he doesn't 'work' through sacraments, 'ordinances' or 'means of grace' or whatever else we might call them.
To borrow @Lamb Chopped's analogy. Whether her son parks on the drive or out on the street, he's still parked the car, he's still her son. It would be better, of course were he to park as his mother requested but that doesn't mean he hasn't parked the car at all, but that he's parked it in a way that disrespectfully contradicts her wishes.
It seems clear that a human being is performing the physical water baptizing. It also seems clear that God doesn't need it to be done. Failing to be baptized or having one's baptism invalidated b/c of some aspect of creative license doesn't inhibit the divine. Is not "mucking it up" a function of religiosity, and not spirituality?
God doesn't need it to be done <> God doesn't want it to be done.
I think you're making a false dichotomy between "hearts" and actions. As far as you seem to be taking it, it sounds like the actions are of no consequence at all, provided one's heart is sincere... And yet it was Jesus himself who told us that what is in the heart flows out into one's words, and a tree's nature is known by its fruit. So I don't think you're going to find hearts and actions completely divorced from one another.
So would you place absolutely no limits on the amount to which a person might change baptism? Or the Lord’s Supper?
Either you draw a line somewhere ( in which you come under the same judgment you’ve been passing on us) or you make it a free for all—in which case, what is the point of even having an act like baptism at all? If it is impossible to ever say “This, this here is baptism”?
One can be sincere but sincerely wrong. I know I've done some pretty daft things in all sincerity.
I'm not sure why any of this is important to you, @The_Riv. As someone who has rejected formal Christian belief, why does it matter to you whether churches baptise in water, printing ink or cold tea or whether the formula is Trinitarian, Modalist or spoken in Klingon?
Why does it matter that some Christians baptise people in rivers singing 'We will gather by the river ...' or others baptise babies in fonts using a tiny trickle of water?
Why does it matter if Lamb Chopped's son parks contrary to his mother's wishes providing he does so in all sincerity as far as he is concerned?
I can understand it if you think the whole thing is wrong and you want nothing to do with it any more but you appear to want to retain a 'stake' in what Christian believers do or don't do even though you no longer believe any of it yourself.
I can understand that to some extent. If I lost or abandoned my faith tomorrow, I'd undoubtedly still be interested in what was going on within the churchy scene.
I'm not sure I'd set myself up though as judge and jury on what baptismal formulae they use or don't use or what hymns they sing or don't sing or whether clergy wear robes or whether there should even be clergy at all. Those strike me as 'in-house' matters. I'm only interested in those sort of issues because I'm involved.
I think you're making a false dichotomy between "hearts" and actions. As far as you seem to be taking it, it sounds like the actions are of no consequence at all, provided one's heart is sincere... And yet it was Jesus himself who told us that what is in the heart flows out into one's words, and a tree's nature is known by its fruit. So I don't think you're going to find hearts and actions completely divorced from one another.
So would you place absolutely no limits on the amount to which a person might change baptism? Or the Lord’s Supper?
Either you draw a line somewhere ( in which you come under the same judgment you’ve been passing on us) or you make it a free for all—in which case, what is the point of even having an act like baptism at all? If it is impossible to ever say “This, this here is baptism”?
I don't think I'm suggesting that hearts and actions are mutually exclusive. What I'm suggesting is that ISTM there should be a difference between what I imagine as the heart being right and the words slightly amended, and the heart being wrong and the words being o/O perfect. Is this a terrible idea?
The curse of invalidity, leading to allegedly cascading invalidations (ordinations, marriages, communions, etc. -- any other sacrament performed in connection with an invalid baptism) seems to be more pious than anything. But, not to worry, and all of the fancy protestations aside, your invalid baptism isn't unreal. God doesn't require that baptisms be 100% o/O accurate in process, but The Church does. That smacks as a fairly arrogant superimposition to me.
@Lamb Chopped I'm not sure I accept the premise of your "draw a line -OR- invite a free-for-all" scenario. Many if not most here seem pretty comfortable with denominationalism, at least in the mainline varieties. I'm struggling to understand why, in the diverse environment of contemporary Christianity, variations on three words should cause such stress, when it apparently doesn't matter to God, and when these things can't be back-traced very accurately (as @Gamma Gamaliel himself has suggested) for anyone to judge anyhow.
[aside] Wasn't there a "Seinfeld" bit about using valet parking? Or about being upset about how the car was parked? I think there was. [/aside]
So, @Gamma Gamaliel, I really don't want to derail the thread, and I'm not suggesting you are doing so by asking these questions of me -- you're just acting in good faith -- thanks. I have a number of reasons for remaining engaged. Christopher Hitchens (please forgive an other reference to him) once quipped that he was a Protestant Atheist, in a similar vein as Dawkins' acknowledgement of willingly participating in "cultural Christianity." Hitchens himself was married in an Orthodox Church(!), and did not prevent his first two children from being baptized in the same. I think I must confess to remaining, in many ways, a de-converted Episcopalian. There are family considerations, vocational considerations, and longstanding personal considerations as to why. Part of it will seem ugly to you and I'm sorry about that, but having all but lost my faith (relative to the supernatural and the corps of theology and dogmas around it), I liken myself to someone who, after they've been told a loved one has been killed, asks 'how did they die?' It's going to the morgue to identify and view the corpse. It's mentally reconstructing what happened and filling in all of the difficult minutiae. It's similar to finding out one has been betrayed, and then seeking to understand the conspiracy's breadth, depth and details: how long, via mechanisms, involving whom, and maybe most concerningly, what was my own contribution. I admit it's morbid, and self-flagellating (pun intended), but here I am. Maybe most offensively to you, and again, I apologize, but feeling as if I've been mostly duped for the vast majority of my life, I want to keep my young adult children from coming to the same distressing realization years hence, and since I had a rather large hand in their indoctrination (I mean that respectfully in terms of church doctrine), I feel responsible for at least detailing for them to the same measure why that upbringing may not actually be altogether true. So, weirdly enough, I have an even more urgent need to try to get to the bottom of a variety of churchy-religious things now than I did as a believer. I also used to be a very politically conservative person, but that has migrated 180 degrees as well. Older Shipmates may remember how I used to run headlong into the astute wall of @ken's, and to some degree @KarlLB's much more progressive views. LOL, I was pretty insufferable back then. That aspect may not have changed much (there, I've saved you the trouble!). So there's a lot of progressive humanist philosophy co-mingling with this religious post-mortem exacerbating the issues. I said on another thread that losing one's faith is a complicated, traumatic thing. I stand by that. Anyway, sorry for the length of this tangent.
Just to be clear, I have not been in the situation I recounted, I was reporting Mrs Eirenist's cousin's reaction. I am sure the officiant conccerned thought he was 'getting closer to his congregation' = bui not all of them shared his churchmanship, so he was distancing himself from them. I don't think not robing invalidates the rite. In my view the only practical function of vestments, like an actor's costume, is to indicate to the audience the role one is playing.
I'm not offended in the least @The_Riv and am sure that were I ever to lose my faith I'd act in a similar way to some extent.
It may sound like a glib response but you seem to be drawing a distinction between God and the Church - which distinction does exist of course, the Church isn't God but an icon of the Trinity in Orthodox terms.
But given the NT imagery of the Church as the 'Body of Christ' there does appear to be a pretty close and intimate relationship between the Church and Christ as the Head.
In crude terms, the only way we know anything about God in a Christian sense is because the Church, the community of believers, passed on teachings, both oral and written, and collected and 'canonised' some of those writings in what we know as the New Testament.
No Church, no New Testament.
Ok, as some have said, 'The Church through the Bible and the Bible through the Church.'
But you can't have one without the other.
That doesn't mean that God is limited to the pages of Holy Writ - the Bible isn't God - nor that he is limited to sacraments or ordinances which the Church - however understood - regards as 'authoritative' in some way.
Even the most hyper-sacramental of sacramentalists wouldn't claim that God exclusively works in and through the sacraments - or ordinances if you prefer.
Yes, I can see that you are looking for the 'smoking gun' and want to prevent your grown-up children from being hood-winked or misled as you feel you have been.
What I don't quite understand is why you introduce false dichotomies such as 'God doesn't require baptism but the Church does' when even the most sacramental of sacramentalists wouldn't insist that those who have been baptised using a particular Trinitarian formula will be saved. If I understand it correctly, the Roman Catholic Church no longer insists that you have to be a Catholic to be saved nor that God won't necessarily 'accept' people of faiths other than Christianity.
That doesn't mean that the RCC should disband as it is somehow surplus to requirements.
I think you're making a false dichotomy between "hearts" and actions. As far as you seem to be taking it, it sounds like the actions are of no consequence at all, provided one's heart is sincere... And yet it was Jesus himself who told us that what is in the heart flows out into one's words, and a tree's nature is known by its fruit. So I don't think you're going to find hearts and actions completely divorced from one another.
So would you place absolutely no limits on the amount to which a person might change baptism? Or the Lord’s Supper?
Either you draw a line somewhere ( in which you come under the same judgment you’ve been passing on us) or you make it a free for all—in which case, what is the point of even having an act like baptism at all? If it is impossible to ever say “This, this here is baptism”?
@Lamb Chopped I'm not sure I accept the premise of your "draw a line -OR- invite a free-for-all" scenario. Many if not most here seem pretty comfortable with denominationalism, at least in the mainline varieties. I'm struggling to understand why, in the diverse environment of contemporary Christianity, variations on three words should cause such stress, when it apparently doesn't matter to God, . . . .
That it apparently doesn’t matter to God seems to me to be an unwarranted assumption. “Doesn’t matter to God” and “doesn’t get in the way of God acting” aren’t the same thing. I think lots of Christians, perhaps most Christians, would say it does matter to God, and therefore should matter to us, but that God won’t let our screwing it up keep God from acting. God finding work-arounds when people fail to follow directions is a pretty consistent theme of Scripture.
I think the question @Lamb Chopped posed is a very reasonable one. Either there are sine qua non of baptism and Eucharist—essential physical elements, words or actions without which something can’t validly be called “baptism” or “Eucharist”—or there are not. If there aren’t, well, okay. But if there are, the question is where are the lines drawn?
What I don't quite understand is why you introduce false dichotomies such as 'God doesn't require baptism but the Church does' when even the most sacramental of sacramentalists wouldn't insist that those who have been baptised using a particular Trinitarian formula will be saved. If I understand it correctly, the Roman Catholic Church no longer insists that you have to be a Catholic to be saved nor that God won't necessarily 'accept' people of faiths other than Christianity.
That doesn't mean that the RCC should disband as it is somehow surplus to requirements.
It'll sound ridiculous, but I'm actually trying to learn more about what I no longer believe. Maybe there's still something small, something hidden, something heretofore unrecognized that I can accept. I'm skeptical, but I'm also still turning over rocks. My false dichotomies are attempts to reconcile things that won't register. Maybe I don't understand what "invalidate" means re: baptism, or what "not unreal" means. @Nick Tamen brings up the important distinction between it mattering to God and getting in the way of God acting -- fine -- but then a person like me wonders what the ultimate point of invalidating a baptism could possibly be. Has anyone told the invalidators that God's doing a workaround no matter what?! Why then invalidate? Whom is that for?! What is the value of invalidating? Is its merit one of purity? Homogeneity to the extent that's possible? Is it hierarchical? Plain piety? Or is it just Nomenclature? If it's just nomenclature please say that. I don't need it all to register, but I want it to. Again -- I'm ridiculous.
When I was card-carrying, @Lamb Chopped, I would have been all for drawing lines and judging things to be or not be a "right, and good, and a joyful thing, always and everywhere..." Now that I'm on the outside looking in -- free of investment or liability -- I find these kinds of distinctions and disqualifications to be really frustrating. That's messed up.
Catholicism embracing any hint of universalism is news to me.
There's more to your posts, friends, but I'm distracted by the election today. Apologies.
In the C of E it is normal for clergy to robe for all services, regardless of churhmanship. My relayive is evangelical, and the family thought it disrespectful for the officiant not to have done so.
My godson's C of E church has two services. The vicar wears a stole and chasuble for the early service, but leads the later "family" service in jeans and a clerical shirt.
What I don't quite understand is why you introduce false dichotomies such as 'God doesn't require baptism but the Church does' when even the most sacramental of sacramentalists wouldn't insist that those who have been baptised using a particular Trinitarian formula will be saved. If I understand it correctly, the Roman Catholic Church no longer insists that you have to be a Catholic to be saved nor that God won't necessarily 'accept' people of faiths other than Christianity.
That doesn't mean that the RCC should disband as it is somehow surplus to requirements.
Maybe I don't understand what "invalidate" means re: baptism, or what "not unreal" means. @Nick Tamen brings up the important distinction between it mattering to God and getting in the way of God acting -- fine -- but then a person like me wonders what the ultimate point of invalidating a baptism could possibly be. Has anyone told the invalidators that God's doing a workaround no matter what?!
Again, though, I think that’s an unwarranted, or perhaps unsupported, assumption. “God is free to act no matter what” (which is what I’ve understood most people on this thread to say) isn’t the same as “God’s doing a workaround no matter what.”
At least from the perspective of my tradition, the thought would be God has promised to act when we baptize, meaning baptize with water (whether in a river, in a pool or tub, or just pouring or sprinkling water) in the name of the Triune God (“Father, Son, Holy Spirit,” whatever that may be in any language). God is not prevented from acting if a different formula is used, or if something other than water is used. But we’ve stepped from where God has promised to act to where God is certainly free to act but hasn’t promised to do so.
The perspective of my tradition would also be that water and the name of the Triune God (“Father, Son, Holy Spirit”) is and has been the practice and consensus—the sine qua non for baptism—of the church universal since the early church, and we as just one stream of the universal church do not have the authority to unilaterally change that.
The problem I have with eschewing any line drawing at all is that words lose meaning. We know the difference between baptism and, say, circumcision (in Jewish practice) because those words have agreed-upon meanings. If lines aren’t to be drawn at all, then a bris can be called a baptism, and vice versa. Or so it seems to me.
And fwiw, I don’t think you sound ridiculous at all.
@The_Riv - no, accepting that people of other Christian confessions or of other faiths might be saved isn't universalism. As far as I understand it, the RCC isn't suggesting that everyone will be saved - although there may well be individual RCs who are universalists - but that God isn't limited by confessional boundaries.
That's not quite the same thing as universalism.
I won't say 'Best of British' for the election, but you know what I mean ...
I think you're making a false dichotomy between "hearts" and actions. As far as you seem to be taking it, it sounds like the actions are of no consequence at all, provided one's heart is sincere... And yet it was Jesus himself who told us that what is in the heart flows out into one's words, and a tree's nature is known by its fruit. So I don't think you're going to find hearts and actions completely divorced from one another. ...
I don't think I'm suggesting that hearts and actions are mutually exclusive. What I'm suggesting is that ISTM there should be a difference between what I imagine as the heart being right and the words slightly amended, and the heart being wrong and the words being o/O perfect. Is this a terrible idea?
The curse of invalidity, leading to allegedly cascading invalidations (ordinations, marriages, communions, etc. -- any other sacrament performed in connection with an invalid baptism) seems to be more pious than anything. But, not to worry, and all of the fancy protestations aside, your invalid baptism isn't unreal. God doesn't require that baptisms be 100% o/O accurate in process, but The Church does. That smacks as a fairly arrogant superimposition to me.
@Lamb Chopped I'm not sure I accept the premise of your "draw a line -OR- invite a free-for-all" scenario. Many if not most here seem pretty comfortable with denominationalism, at least in the mainline varieties. I'm struggling to understand why, in the diverse environment of contemporary Christianity, variations on three words should cause such stress, when it apparently doesn't matter to God, and when these things can't be back-traced very accurately (as @Gamma Gamaliel himself has suggested) for anyone to judge anyhow.
I think we're talking past one another. I'm hearing you attributing to me positions I never held, and there are things in your answers that make me scratch my head and wonder where you got THAT from.
Look, the only thing I hold is that there exists a thing known as baptism; that the Lord Jesus Christ commanded it in these words (Yes, of course they are in translation, translation has never been a problem for Christianity from the beginning when the NT documents were written in koine Greek rather than the probable spoken Aramaic of Jesus and co.): "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." (Matthew 28:19-20)
I also hold that, when God-in-human-flesh tells us to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, that it would be best for me to do exactly that.
You are asserting that it doesn't matter to God; but you produce no proof of what you're asserting. The fact is, we know only what we've been told--and what we were told was "Do this." Jesus never said, "Actually, the only thing that matters is sincerity of heart, and God doesn't care at all." Bringing your own extraneous ideas to the table and changing the baptismal formula based on them is... unwise. I grant you they are very attractive ideas; but being attractive is not the same thing as being true. Why mess with what he told us to do?
We can speculate up a storm about what-ifs like "What if we used "Maker/Redeemer/Sustainer" or whatever; what if we used Coca-cola instead of water;" what if we did any number of things. Speculation is fun, but not really useful. We have no data on what would happen if we decided to change the instructions. We have no data, because God has not told us. And if God has not told us, the most we can do is make guesses based on our understanding of his character and of the way the universe works.
In a case where you have no data, AND where you can so easily carry out the original instructions, why would you not do so? This isn't a case like one I heard of, where my friend was accompanying a dying child down a Philippine mountainside to a hospital, and for want of any water nearby, baptized the child in her own saliva. In a case like that, it's obvious why you're not following instructions--you simply can't. And at that point, we can confidently trust the character of God and rest assured that the child is indeed baptized in his eyes, and comfort the grieving parents with a reminder of all the gifts God has promised to those who are baptized.
But assuming a perfectly ordinary situation with water on hand, a healthy person etc. the sensible thing to do is follow the original instructions and be done with it. Altering the instructions without any data about what follows is .... unwise. You rob the person of the comfort and assurance which would otherwise have been his/hers, and you leave him/her wondering "Have I really been baptized in God's eyes?" which are the only ones that matter. That is not a kind thing to do.
You appear to me to be proceeding on the ideas that a) baptism is a humanly invented thing, b) therefore we can change it up, c) sincere hearts are all that matters, and d) baptism is "valid" or "invalid" in some sort of sense similar to driver's licenses, if I understand you correctly. I deny the first three ideas on the basis of Scripture (and for the sake of my fellow Christians of other backgrounds, the tradition of the Church as well). The fourth idea is a confusion of thought. There is no such thing as an invalid baptism (though you may hear people use the phrase carelessly as a kind of shorthand). Either there is a baptism, or there is not. We've been told what constitutes baptism (water and the Word). Where those two are, we conclude a baptism has taken place.
Where one of those is missing or altered, we get concerned--has a baptism taken place at all? Since the aftereffects of baptism are invisible (forgiveness of sin, eternal life, adoption into the family of God, etc. etc. etc.), we can't check on those to see whether baptism has taken place. So we are left in limbo. That's not a comfortable place to be. And pastorally speaking, that is not a proper place to deliberately put somebody.
God of course is not in limbo. He can look at any situation, including a mess involving a banana milkshake and a weird-ass formula, and say, "All right, I'm going to go ahead and give all my gifts regardless" and do so. That is God's prerogative. He is not tied to the baptismal instructions. He can do whatever he wants. He can (as someone pointed out upthread) save the thief on the cross wholly without baptism, because hey, he's God and he does what he wants.
So with baptism, God has all the freedom to change, alter, accept weird-ass formulae, whatever he wants. We don't. We have instructions (very simple instructions!) and the promise of wonderful gifts to follow when we do what we're told.
Now, as for your idea of cascading invalidity. That's not a thing, at least as I understand it. When you speak of an invalid baptism, the more correct way to say it is "no baptism ever took place." Either it was a baptism or it wasn't. Thus the concern various people are expressing.
Now as for your cascading scenario:
Suppose someone to be under the impression he has been baptized when he really hasn't. If he goes on to become a pastor/priest/whatsit, to marry, celebrate communion, pronounce absolution, etc. all in good faith, are all of THOSE acts invalid (read: non-existent) also?
You will get different answers from different branches of the Christian church on this one, but in mine, we would say No.
An unbaptized person can baptize, though it's certainly a freaky situation. But there's nothing in the instructions from Jesus that say the baptizer must himself be baptized. What matters is what we were told: water and the Word. So also with communion and absolution. It is God who is doing all those things anyway, not the officiant; and he can certainly do them through anyone he wants, including the devil himself. (Judas Iscariot almost certainly performed his share of baptisms, how's that for freaky?)
Obviously we don't ENCOURAGE this sort of thing, and if we found out about it, we'd try to rectify matters (baptize the unbaptized pastor, etc.) as soon as possible. But we'd not worry about the people he'd already baptized, communed, or absolved. Because it's God working through the words and elements, not the intent or status of the officiant. As I said above, other branches of the Christian church will disagree, particularly the ones who hold to intentionalism.
In its teaching on the Necessity of Baptism the Catholic Church has always held to the firm conviction that those who die for the sake of the faith( martyrs for Christ) receive the 'fruits' of baptism without the sacrament having be carried out in the normal way.
Equally those who may die before having formally received the sacrament but have expressed a wish to be baptises receive the 'fruits of the sacrament
These are called Baptism of Blood and Baptism of Desire
The Catholic catechism also teaches 'Every person who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church but who seeks the will of God in accordance with their understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity.
All the baptised are members of the Church,irrespective of whether they accept all the teachings of the Church or not.
As GG has said this is not universalism but it is the hope of the Church that all will be 'saved'.
What I don't quite understand is why you introduce false dichotomies such as 'God doesn't require baptism but the Church does' when even the most sacramental of sacramentalists wouldn't insist that those who have been baptised using a particular Trinitarian formula will be saved. If I understand it correctly, the Roman Catholic Church no longer insists that you have to be a Catholic to be saved nor that God won't necessarily 'accept' people of faiths other than Christianity.
That doesn't mean that the RCC should disband as it is somehow surplus to requirements.
Maybe I don't understand what "invalidate" means re: baptism, or what "not unreal" means. @Nick Tamen brings up the important distinction between it mattering to God and getting in the way of God acting -- fine -- but then a person like me wonders what the ultimate point of invalidating a baptism could possibly be. Has anyone told the invalidators that God's doing a workaround no matter what?!
Again, though, I think that’s an unwarranted, or perhaps unsupported, assumption. “God is free to act no matter what” (which is what I’ve understood most people on this thread to say) isn’t the same as “God’s doing a workaround no matter what.”
At least from the perspective of my tradition, the thought would be God has promised to act when we baptize, meaning baptize with water (whether in a river, in a pool or tub, or just pouring or sprinkling water) in the name of the Triune God (“Father, Son, Holy Spirit,” whatever that may be in any language). God is not prevented from acting if a different formula is used, or if something other than water is used. But we’ve stepped from where God has promised to act to where God is certainly free to act but hasn’t promised to do so.
I can appreciate that distinction. Thank you. Invalidating a baptism, then, is a more forcefully applied encouragement for a person to ensure that their observance of that sacrament falls within the technical guidelines that qualify a triggering of God's promised actions. Okay. The can of worms that opens for me, then, is one of why or how God would/could ever choose not to act on behalf of one whose error is simply being outside of those technical guidelines, especially when it is no fault of their own.
The perspective of my tradition would also be that water and the name of the Triune God (“Father, Son, Holy Spirit”) is and has been the practice and consensus—the sine qua non for baptism—of the church universal since the early church, and we as just one stream of the universal church do not have the authority to unilaterally change that.
Perhaps not, but is it fair to say that the same doesn't seem to be true re: invalidation of baptisms, or the withholding of some sacraments?
The problem I have with eschewing any line drawing at all is that words lose meaning. We know the difference between baptism and, say, circumcision (in Jewish practice) because those words have agreed-upon meanings. If lines aren’t to be drawn at all, then a bris can be called a baptism, and vice versa. Or so it seems to me.
I never meant to imply something this obtuse (bris = baptism), and I understand the point of such an example, regardless of how it made me smile. I tend to agree with you re: words.
It's not, and I didn't mean full-fledged Universalism. I said "any hint of universalism," which was not as clear as it could have been. Thanks for your additions to this point, @Forthview.
I'll get back to you, @Lamb Chopped in a separate post. This one is getting long.
What I don't quite understand is why you introduce false dichotomies such as 'God doesn't require baptism but the Church does' when even the most sacramental of sacramentalists wouldn't insist that those who have been baptised using a particular Trinitarian formula will be saved. If I understand it correctly, the Roman Catholic Church no longer insists that you have to be a Catholic to be saved nor that God won't necessarily 'accept' people of faiths other than Christianity.
That doesn't mean that the RCC should disband as it is somehow surplus to requirements.
Maybe I don't understand what "invalidate" means re: baptism, or what "not unreal" means. @Nick Tamen brings up the important distinction between it mattering to God and getting in the way of God acting -- fine -- but then a person like me wonders what the ultimate point of invalidating a baptism could possibly be. Has anyone told the invalidators that God's doing a workaround no matter what?!
Again, though, I think that’s an unwarranted, or perhaps unsupported, assumption. “God is free to act no matter what” (which is what I’ve understood most people on this thread to say) isn’t the same as “God’s doing a workaround no matter what.”
At least from the perspective of my tradition, the thought would be God has promised to act when we baptize, meaning baptize with water (whether in a river, in a pool or tub, or just pouring or sprinkling water) in the name of the Triune God (“Father, Son, Holy Spirit,” whatever that may be in any language). God is not prevented from acting if a different formula is used, or if something other than water is used. But we’ve stepped from where God has promised to act to where God is certainly free to act but hasn’t promised to do so.
I can appreciate that distinction. Thank you. Invalidating a baptism, then, is a more forcefully applied encouragement for a person to ensure that their observance of that sacrament falls within the technical guidelines that qualify a triggering of God's promised actions. Okay.
I think @Lamb Chopped is right that “invaliding” isn’t a helpful or accurate word or concept here. Either it’s a baptism from the get-go or it’s not. “Invalidating” implies it was valid but has been made no-longer-valid.
The can of worms that opens for me, then, is one of why or how God would/could ever choose not to act on behalf of one whose error is simply being outside of those technical guidelines, especially when it is no fault of their own.
I think my response there would be similar to the thread where universalism is being discussed. I don’t know why God might choose not to act. I very much hope, and perhaps even might trust, that God would choose to act.
But I/we have no right to assert that God will act. We can make no claim on God acting; we can only hope.
The perspective of my tradition would also be that water and the name of the Triune God (“Father, Son, Holy Spirit”) is and has been the practice and consensus—the sine qua non for baptism—of the church universal since the early church, and we as just one stream of the universal church do not have the authority to unilaterally change that.
Perhaps not, but is it fair to say that the same doesn't seem to be true re: invalidation of baptisms, or the withholding of some sacraments?
I think we're talking past one another. I'm hearing you attributing to me positions I never held, and there are things in your answers that make me scratch my head and wonder where you got THAT from.
I apologize. I always did better with creative writing than research papers. I have a (bad) habit of rephrasing people when I answer them.
Look, the only thing I hold is that there exists a thing known as baptism; that the Lord Jesus Christ commanded it in these words (Yes, of course they are in translation, translation has never been a problem for Christianity from the beginning when the NT documents were written in koine Greek rather than the probable spoken Aramaic of Jesus and co.): "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." (Matthew 28:19-20)
I also hold that, when God-in-human-flesh tells us to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, that it would be best for me to do exactly that.
I understand you. But I'm the one who's opined that we don't really know what Jesus said, (and you dedicated an amazing thread against that), and so I'm skeptical of the words. That said, I'm with @Nick Tamen insofar as words mean things.
You are asserting that it doesn't matter to God; but you produce no proof of what you're asserting. The fact is, we know only what we've been told--and what we were told was "Do this." Jesus never said, "Actually, the only thing that matters is sincerity of heart, and God doesn't care at all." Bringing your own extraneous ideas to the table and changing the baptismal formula based on them is... unwise. I grant you they are very attractive ideas; but being attractive is not the same thing as being true. Why mess with what he told us to do?
My assertion stems form at least one RC theologian saying that a baptism may be invalid but not untrue. Jesus also said that a married person merely looking lustfully at someone other than their spouse committed adultery in the heart. No action taken. Just thought crime. I'm troubled by the notion that righteousness isn't treated in the same way. It's a staircase that only goes down. And I'm not so much changing the formula, which I take as water + words, as much as wondering about the intrinsic values of its components. But I'm a little clearer on this now, I think.
We can speculate up a storm about what-ifs like "What if we used "Maker/Redeemer/Sustainer" or whatever; what if we used Coca-cola instead of water;" what if we did any number of things. Speculation is fun, but not really useful. We have no data on what would happen if we decided to change the instructions. We have no data, because God has not told us. And if God has not told us, the most we can do is make guesses based on our understanding of his character and of the way the universe works.
In a case where you have no data, AND where you can so easily carry out the original instructions, why would you not do so? This isn't a case like one I heard of, where my friend was accompanying a dying child down a Philippine mountainside to a hospital, and for want of any water nearby, baptized the child in her own saliva. In a case like that, it's obvious why you're not following instructions--you simply can't. And at that point, we can confidently trust the character of God and rest assured that the child is indeed baptized in his eyes, and comfort the grieving parents with a reminder of all the gifts God has promised to those who are baptized.
I see a crazy-big difference between changing the lyrics, as it were, and subbing-in cola for water. There's no need to go to that extreme end here, at least not for me. Like I told @Nick Tamen, in a similar vein, I get it.
Some people are always going to dutifully carry out the original. Well and good. Your salivary example, while beautifully pastoral I'm sure, does give me pause. Is that level of extremity required for God to act outside of Jesus' rubric? That seems awfully specific, and awfully reliant on a particular reading of God's character (whatever that is). I hesitate to use the word convenient, but there it is.
But assuming a perfectly ordinary situation with water on hand, a healthy person etc. the sensible thing to do is follow the original instructions and be done with it. Altering the instructions without any data about what follows is .... unwise. You rob the person of the comfort and assurance which would otherwise have been his/hers, and you leave him/her wondering "Have I really been baptized in God's eyes?" which are the only ones that matter. That is not a kind thing to do.
Doesn't this assume a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of baptism that arguably a lot of people won't have? I refer you again to the creekside. People without this level of theological appreciation can and do go through their entire lives without questioning it. What then? Do they/we just trust in God's character, too? Another baptism with an asterisk? and at the bottom of the pate the asterisk indicates "ok?"
You appear to me to be proceeding on the ideas that a) baptism is a humanly invented thing, b) therefore we can change it up, c) sincere hearts are all that matters, and d) baptism is "valid" or "invalid" in some sort of sense similar to driver's licenses, if I understand you correctly. I deny the first three ideas on the basis of Scripture (and for the sake of my fellow Christians of other backgrounds, the tradition of the Church as well). The fourth idea is a confusion of thought. There is no such thing as an invalid baptism (though you may hear people use the phrase carelessly as a kind of shorthand). Either there is a baptism, or there is not. We've been told what constitutes baptism (water and the Word). Where those two are, we conclude a baptism has taken place.
(a) I can plainly see that Jesus instituted baptism, and I can also plainly see that humans are responsible for it, (b) I haven't advocated for any specific change, but called into question the judgments re: relationship or not between the processes of baptism and God's actions based on the slightest of adaptations, (c) I remain unconvinced that this isn't necessarily true, and (d) that's not me -- it's the RC Church in situations described upthread re: invalid baptisms a number of years ago out west. I'm not in the game -- I'm just in the stands calling out commentary to the referees.[/quote]
Where one of those is missing or altered, we get concerned--has a baptism taken place at all? Since the aftereffects of baptism are invisible (forgiveness of sin, eternal life, adoption into the family of God, etc. etc. etc.), we can't check on those to see whether baptism has taken place. So we are left in limbo. That's not a comfortable place to be. And pastorally speaking, that is not a proper place to deliberately put somebody.
Again, I question as to whether these kinds of issues arise categorically across Christianity. I want to say you've made some allowances in that regard.
God of course is not in limbo. He can look at any situation, including a mess involving a banana milkshake and a weird-ass formula, and say, "All right, I'm going to go ahead and give all my gifts regardless" and do so. That is God's prerogative. He is not tied to the baptismal instructions. He can do whatever he wants. He can (as someone pointed out upthread) save the thief on the cross wholly without baptism, because hey, he's God and he does what he wants.
Yeah, that was me re: the thief. Surprise! I think it's problematic to think that one needs a life threatening situation in the hinterland of a third world country to be able to assume perfect grace re: a sacrament. Certainly God is better than that. Then again, my assessment of God's character is, how should I say, unorthodox.
So with baptism, God has all the freedom to change, alter, accept weird-ass formulae, whatever he wants. We don't. We have instructions (very simple instructions!) and the promise of wonderful gifts to follow when we do what we're told.
Why not do what we're told?
Yes, and I've already conceded that I'm sure most do, and that it's lovely. I just think that in the cases where a few may not, and by the tiniest of margins, God should have their backs.
It took a while, but it finally occurred to me that while most Christians (save folks like Oneness Pentecostals and Quakers who identify as Christians) would agree that water + Trinitarian formula = baptism, they wouldn’t necessarily agree what baptism does, what happens in baptism and what it means. Or even who does what.
@Lamb Chopped, quite understandably, assumes a Lutheran understanding when she describes the “aftereffects” of baptism as “forgiveness of sin, eternal life, adoption into the family of God, etc. etc. etc.”
Southern Baptists in my neck of the woods would say something quite different—they would not say God acts in baptism and certainly wouldn’t say baptism operates to forgive sins, but rather that baptism is an act of obedience by which a believer bears witness to his or her faith.
My Reformed folk would say yet something else different—that baptism is a “sign and seal of our engrafting into Christ,” and that it doesn’t operate to forgive sins, but rather assures us of God’s forgiveness of our sins. My Reformed folk also would stress the importance and value of baptism, but would not say baptism is necessary for salvation. (So for example, the “saliva” example isn’t something that would arise among us, because it would never occur to us that without baptism, a possibly dying child is in any spiritual danger.)
And other groups have other understandings.
So it seems to me that if we’re talking about the “effectiveness” (or okay, validity) of a baptism where the words are different, we have to make sure we’re also working from the same set of assumptions/beliefs about what baptism is, because any implications are very much related to those assumptions/beliefs.
I've been thinking similarly, @Nick Tamen, but not wanting to throw that kind of gasoline onto the fire. Speaking of Pentecost...
I don’t know that it’s gasoline on the fire, unless we want to move into a full-on discussion of what does or doesn’t happen in baptism. (And that would really be getting away from the topic of this thread.) But I do think it’s relevant when the discussion is about the implications of not doing baptism “right,” because unless everyone is on the same page about what baptism is or does, we may misinterpret the questions or answers of others.
Let me note that I'm not RC and have no brief for anything a random RC theologian may have said. You'll have to take that up with him.
As for " I just think that in the cases where a few may not, and by the tiniest of margins, God should have their backs," well, I DO happen to think God has their backs. The God I know is overwhelmingly kind, merciful, and willing to grab someone for his kingdom on the slimmest of pretexts, or none at all, it seems sometimes.
I simply don't think that it's at all appropriate for human beings to presume on that character. As in, "Well, he's going to save them anyway, so we can do whatever we like with the instructions." That's just a bad attitude.
Let me note that I'm not RC and have no brief for anything a random RC theologian may have said. You'll have to take that up with him.
As for " I just think that in the cases where a few may not, and by the tiniest of margins, God should have their backs," well, I DO happen to think God has their backs. The God I know is overwhelmingly kind, merciful, and willing to grab someone for his kingdom on the slimmest of pretexts, or none at all, it seems sometimes.
I simply don't think that it's at all appropriate for human beings to presume on that character. As in, "Well, he's going to save them anyway, so we can do whatever we like with the instructions." That's just a bad attitude.
Why would I be the one who’d take it up with him? He’s in this article: https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2022/03/08/invalid-baptism-catholic-242466 that I linked to more neatly up thread. An RC organization called the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith took the position in 2020 that the Trinitarian formula as you & others here have specified was the only proper & correct one. Great! It also said baptisms that somehow fell outside of the formula were “invalid.” (uh-oh) However, you’ve said that “there is no such thing as an invalid baptism.” Is the C.D.F. incorrect? Could you be? Is anyone?!
On 'thought-crime' and what RCs might call 'intentionality' and whether 'righteousness' might be treated the 'same way' - well, I'm not RC but I think @Forthview has outlined the RC position when it comes to who 'can' or 'might' be saved - and it isn't only people who are baptised 'correctly' or even only Christians.
It's my understanding that RCs believe that God takes 'intentions' into account even if those intentions may not be fulfilled for whatever reason - other than deliberate and wilful neglect, in which case the 'intention' was never really there in the first place.
'With you there is forgiveness, that's why you are to be feared.'
I attended a Bible study by Zoom this week, the story of Cain and Abel. It was noted how the 'mark of Cain' was there to protect and preserve him despite his heinous crime.
God is way, way, way more gracious and forgiving than we are.
With all due respect to our RC brothers and sisters, the Orthodox tend to see their approach as somewhat 'mechanical' to an extent - but we can see what they are getting at. Likewise, I can understand the Southern Baptist and Reformed positions as @Nick Tamen has outlined them, and the Lutheran one - which sounds more 'Catholic' to me in some ways if I have understood it correctly from @Lamb Chopped's posts.
As to who has the 'right' position on these things, whilst the Orthodox would clearly maintain that their position is correct - the clue is in the title - right glory or right worship, they would tend to say that God can and does meet us wherever we are 'at'.
I think there is plenty of scriptural warrant for that whichever Christian tradition we inhabit as it were.
That doesn't mean that it doesn't matter. 'God will meet me where I'm at so it makes no odds ...'
It is clearly important that each of us acts, by God's grace, in accordance with the light we have received as it were. Obviously, there are going to be things we all hold in common. In other things we may differ in opinions or practice, but God can handle that.
I may wake up dead and find that none of it was true or real and that there is only oblivion - in which case I wouldn't be aware of it.
So, what do I do? Try and live a Christian life in accordance with the particular form or expression of the faith that I happen to have found, chosen or belong to by intention or design or because I was brought up that way - or abandon it altogether?
I am trying to do the former of course and part of that involves acceptance of a Trinitarian formula in baptism - but it also involves loving my neighbour as myself, having a concern for others and the world around me and wrestling with sin, the world and the devil.
What it doesn't involve is a tick-box exercise where I sit as judge and jury on other people's practices or the way they live out their Christian faith.
I'm not saying anyone here is doing that but you get my drift.
Let me note that I'm not RC and have no brief for anything a random RC theologian may have said. You'll have to take that up with him.
As for " I just think that in the cases where a few may not, and by the tiniest of margins, God should have their backs," well, I DO happen to think God has their backs. The God I know is overwhelmingly kind, merciful, and willing to grab someone for his kingdom on the slimmest of pretexts, or none at all, it seems sometimes.
I simply don't think that it's at all appropriate for human beings to presume on that character. As in, "Well, he's going to save them anyway, so we can do whatever we like with the instructions." That's just a bad attitude.
Why would I be the one who’d take it up with him? He’s in this article: https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2022/03/08/invalid-baptism-catholic-242466 that I linked to more neatly up thread. An RC organization called the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith took the position in 2020 that the Trinitarian formula as you & others here have specified was the only proper & correct one. Great! It also said baptisms that somehow fell outside of the formula were “invalid.” (uh-oh) However, you’ve said that “there is no such thing as an invalid baptism.” Is the C.D.F. incorrect? Could you be? Is anyone?!
I said "you take it up with him" because you are the one who has the conflict with him. Presumably if you were sufficiently interested, you'd find a way to communicate with him? At any rate, I'm not going to do it. I don't consider myself sufficiently versed in Catholic thought to be able to explain what he's going on about.
I am fairly sure most of Christianity would agree with me that invalid baptism is just shorthand for "not a baptism at all." When it comes to baptism, the question of whether it's real/existing/valid/whatever-you-want-to-call-it is ultimately up to God. No human being is running that show, no matter what we may think. It's why we stick to what we're told as closely as we can--when we do that, we have good reason to be assured of the invisible outcome; when we screw around, less so.
It's also the reason why we have such a thing as conditional baptism--because there are cases where no human being (other than Christ, heh) can tell in a given case whether a baptism exists--for example, when records have been destroyed and there are no living witnesses, but family custom means it's very likely the person WAS baptized as an infant nonetheless. In such a doubtful case, to set the person's mind at ease, we conduct a baptism preceded with the words "If you have not already been baptized,..." and then carry on with the formula: "I baptize you" etc.
Getting back to the Catholic thing, since it's bugging you, and maybe I can help: I say this with some hesitation, being as I've just mentioned no authority on Catholic distinctives; and yet, one thing that appears to be a problem for them is a kind of tying together of the doctrine of apostolic sucession in a literal sense (laying on of hands at ordination by a rightfully ordained person themselves) and the doctrine of all the other sacraments. So given their system, they could conceivably have a person whose ordination was invalid, and who would then be (I think) conducting invalid sacraments himself until the whole situation was detected, stopped and set right. The whole theoretical situation acquires an urgency that might explain the use of the word "invalid.' (Such a case would not arise for Lutherans, as we hold any Christian may baptize.)
I say this is the IMPRESSION I've gotten from interaction with various Catholic friends over the years. It is not the standard way Lutherans think, nor (I believe) most of the rest of the Christian church. Among historical Lutherans, apostolic succession refers to a pastor/teacher/theologian continuing in the teaching of the apostles, not to some mystical connection conveyed by the laying on of hands in an unbroken line all the way back to the apostles. If a group of Lutherans were marooned for years on a deserted island, it would be their duty to appoint a pastor to celebrate baptism and communion, and to preach; and if no other pastor was present to do the ordaining, the community would see to it. Because we hold that the pastoral office is a delegation to a single individual of powers Christ vested in the whole church and in each individual believer by virtue of their baptism into the Body of Christ. Normally we delegate those responsibilities to one person for the sake of good order; but in an emergency, any believer can do the work of a pastor. I myself have been privileged to baptize and to offer absolution on several emergency occasions.
Jesus also said that a married person merely looking lustfully at someone other than their spouse committed adultery in the heart. No action taken. Just thought crime. I'm troubled by the notion that righteousness isn't treated in the same way. It's a staircase that only goes down. And I'm not so much changing the formula, which I take as water + words, as much as wondering about the intrinsic values of its components. But I'm a little clearer on this now, I think.
Jesus was dealing with something very different, IMHO. He was pointing out that sin has its root in the heart, in the life of the mind and spirit. It's never just an external thing ("oops, I tripped and fell onto her lips"). And therefore anyone who tries to deal with sin by policing externals while ignoring the heart is attempting something hopeless--rather like trying to get rid of running bamboo by chopping it down when you notice it. The main mass of it is underground, and has to be completely dug up if you're ever to be free of it again.
So what he's saying is not a judicial statement: "I'm here to assign a penalty for your lustful thought!" No, it's an observation of reality: the minute that person looked with lust, he/she started the root of adultery growing. Wait long enough without repentance, and that poisonous root will surface, grow stems and leaves, and eventually create a huge freaking mess in at least two lives.
It's an interesting question of whether righteousness operates the same way. I suspect it does, when it's not frustrated by sin--just as sin roots and grows and flowers, when it's not frustrated by repentance. (so, not a staircase that only goes down)
And in fact, you could argue that Jesus does point to similar tiny seeds or "roots" of righteousness when he says this: “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. The one who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward, and the one who receives a righteous person because he is a righteous person will receive a righteous person's reward. And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.” (Matthew 10:40-42) Taking this apart, it seems to me Jesus is saying that there are those who will receive rewards far beyond their own desert simply because they "received" or "gave a cup of cold water" to someone who was righteous, and by doing so they welcomed that person--and through that person, Jesus--and through him, God.
But I think your analysis is correct. In the case described above, where a priest had said “we baptize” instead of “I baptize” and the Church ruled those weren’t valid baptisms, at least two men who’d been on the receiving end, as it were, had gone on to become priests. They had to be baptized properly (per the church), confirmed and ordained, because the “improper” baptisms rendered the earlier “confirmations” and “ordinations” null.
Yes, RCs believe that anyone can baptise in extremis, such as if a child might die and a priest may not be available etc.
@Lamb Chopped I like your running bamboo analogy. We had a rampant and invasive bamboo in our garden planted by a previous owner and took me ages to drag out all the roots. But eventually I succeeded.
I found your reflections on the sin/repentance issue very helpful and insightful.
I said "you take it up with him" because you are the one who has the conflict with him. Presumably if you were sufficiently interested, you'd find a way to communicate with him? At any rate, I'm not going to do it. I don't consider myself sufficiently versed in Catholic thought to be able to explain what he's going on about.
The article was from 2020. Water under the bridge (well, over the forehead and into the font, anyway). I was just pointing out the difference in positions: a baptism can be invalid vs. there's no such thing as an invalid baptism. For a new Christian or seeking soul that dichotomy would be, on its surface, pretty confusing. Not that I assume it comes up very often, especially in some of the traditions @Nick Tamen mentioned in which baptism is more of an outward demonstration of church membership and intention.
I am fairly sure most of Christianity would agree with me that invalid baptism is just shorthand for "not a baptism at all." When it comes to baptism, the question of whether it's real/existing/valid/whatever-you-want-to-call-it is ultimately up to God. No human being is running that show, no matter what we may think. It's why we stick to what we're told as closely as we can--when we do that, we have good reason to be assured of the invisible outcome; when we screw around, less so.
Of course. But I'm tired today, and it's fastest just for me to say that the running ambiguity of invisible outcomes are a reason why my faith is lapsed. It's the intersection of the unfalsifiable with the unverifiable. If you say so for you, though, fantastic. I mean that.
It's also the reason why we have such a thing as conditional baptism--because there are cases where no human being (other than Christ, heh) can tell in a given case whether a baptism exists--for example, when records have been destroyed and there are no living witnesses, but family custom means it's very likely the person WAS baptized as an infant nonetheless. In such a doubtful case, to set the person's mind at ease, we conduct a baptism preceded with the words "If you have not already been baptized,..." and then carry on with the formula: "I baptize you" etc.
Of course. I can safely assume that at this point (2000 years on) all contingencies have been accounted for.
Getting back to the Catholic thing, since it's bugging you, and maybe I can help: I say this with some hesitation, being as I've just mentioned no authority on Catholic distinctives; and yet, one thing that appears to be a problem for them is a kind of tying together of the doctrine of apostolic sucession in a literal sense (laying on of hands at ordination by a rightfully ordained person themselves) and the doctrine of all the other sacraments. So given their system, they could conceivably have a person whose ordination was invalid, and who would then be (I think) conducting invalid sacraments himself until the whole situation was detected, stopped and set right. The whole theoretical situation acquires an urgency that might explain the use of the word "invalid.' (Such a case would not arise for Lutherans, as we hold any Christian may baptize.)
There's no dark night of the soul thing happening here with me, LOL, but yes -- this is indeed what was detailed either in the article I linked, or a similar one I read as a result of the same search. In think I used the term "cascading invalidations" in a previous post. Glad to have it fleshed out the way you have, though -- thank you!
I say this is the IMPRESSION I've gotten from interaction with various Catholic friends over the years. It is not the standard way Lutherans think, nor (I believe) most of the rest of the Christian church. Among historical Lutherans, apostolic succession refers to a pastor/teacher/theologian continuing in the teaching of the apostles, not to some mystical connection conveyed by the laying on of hands in an unbroken line all the way back to the apostles. If a group of Lutherans were marooned for years on a deserted island, it would be their duty to appoint a pastor to celebrate baptism and communion, and to preach; and if no other pastor was present to do the ordaining, the community would see to it. Because we hold that the pastoral office is a delegation to a single individual of powers Christ vested in the whole church and in each individual believer by virtue of their baptism into the Body of Christ. Normally we delegate those responsibilities to one person for the sake of good order; but in an emergency, any believer can do the work of a pastor. I myself have been privileged to baptize and to offer absolution on several emergency occasions.
Thank you for this. Though not Lutheran, I believe William Brewster assumed a pastoral role for the first Pilgrims, though not being ordained, until a proper pastor arrived a number of years later. Happy to be corrected on this if I'm mistaken.
Comments
I think you made your point very clearly, @Leaf.
I was simply outlining an 'official' position without much by way of comment or reflection.
I think your example of Churches which may not stress particular emphases in particular contexts applies right across the board. I remember seeing an instance on a TV documentary of an RC nun distributing condoms during the height of the Aids crisis in Africa, for instance. She argued that prevention was far more important than moralising about abstinence and so forth.
Every now and then there's a bit of a kerfuffle within the Orthodox world from what I can gather if an African man with several wives is made a deacon or given some other formal/official role in the Church.
I'm sure the RCs, Anglicans and various Protestant Churches face similar issues in those contexts.
So, yes, I get what you are saying. I don't think I've got an answer in relation to the situation you describe where people who may have been baptised 'in the name of Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer' then seek to be received by Churches which insist on a Trinitarian formula - other than to suggest that this would be a matter for them and the priest/minister of the Church or denomination to which they seek admittance.
I have no idea how far 'ekkonomeia' might extend in a situation like that in Orthodox terms, nor how the RCs would approach an issue like that.
Well, it’s not a clear requirement of salvation. Scripture doesn’t share an account of the disciples being water baptized. The thief on the cross didn’t get baptized. Jesus didn’t heal or forgive people and tell them to go get baptized. Nicodemus wasn’t told about it. The Great Commission instructs it, but on the whole it’s a mixed message, isn’t it?
Shipmates may remember the case of the Catholic priest in San Diego who for decades baptized saying “we baptize you” instead of “I baptize.” The baptisms of everyone he’d baptized that way were ruled invalid.
Perhaps a different tack might be taken in ecumenical cases, but it does seem to indicate a concern for exactly the right words.
If the new community which they wish to join insists on a Trinitarian formula then they should be baptised in that way. If the new community does not insists on the Trinitarian formula then they don't need to be baptised using a formula which their ne w community does not consider to be necessary.
The forms used in the various sacraments are only to help us be clear about what we are doing.
Okay, taking a couple of steps back here. God doesn't need anything to be done; but if he sets up a procedure and says, "Do it this way," it's only courtesy for us to, well, do it that way.
Are we going to prevent him saving someone if we fuck it up, either deliberately or accidentally? Well, no; but deliberately relying on that fact to excuse our failure to do what we were told is a kind of rudeness, isn't it?
If I say to my son, "Please park the car in the driveway when you get home," and instead he leaves it on the street, I'm going to ask him what went wrong. If it turns out he didn't hear me, or there was a visitor parked in the driveway at that moment, I'll certainly understand. But if the answer is, "Well, I just didn't feel like it," or "I wanted to be creative," or "It's too many extra steps from the driveway, I'd rather park right in front of the house," I'm going to be a bit put out. Because I had a reason for what I asked, even if I didn't spell it out; and I expect my son to have the courtesy of at least asking me if he wants to change the plan. For all he knows, today might be the day when the city comes through fixing the street in a very messy way, apt to damage the car. Just because I didn't mention it is no reason for him to assume I had no good reason for my request.
It seems to me that we do better when we treat God like a person, not like an impersonal force where we're trying to suss out the limits of how much we can get away with before the whole thing falls apart. We should treat him the way we ourselves would like to be treated--that is, if he asks us to do something in a particular way, we follow directions if at all possible. And if we want to make changes, we ask him first out of courtesy.
(If so, the view that sacraments are there for humans corresponds to a moral example view of the atonement; a view that they're there to please God corresponds to a penal substitution view.)
I think this means that the essential bits of the sacraments have to be done to work automatically - which doesn't rule God making a special intervention to make an improperly performed sacrament work as intended.
That is a way of putting it, not very satisfactory.
Taking your example, is there a difference if your son drives in nose first, or backs the car into the driveway? Or whether he pulls the car all of the way up to the head/top of your driveway, or leaves the car at the mouth of the street? Or moves the car to the right-hand edge of the driveway or left-hand edge of the driveway instead or parking dead center? Are there not a bunch of reasonable ways to park in the driveway and be just fine, yet not park exactly as you would have? Are those rude ways of parking?
Either you draw a line somewhere ( in which you come under the same judgment you’ve been passing on us) or you make it a free for all—in which case, what is the point of even having an act like baptism at all? If it is impossible to ever say “This, this here is baptism”?
I've taken communion with homemade farmhouse white bread, whole grain wheat bread, unleavened bread, and a variety of wafers, both regular and gluten-free. I've taken wine from a common cup, in tiny glass communion cups, and grape juice from Dixie cups. I've taken communion elements separately, and by intinction. I've taken it individually, and literally taken it en masse where everyone holds their bread in their hands until all have it, and then everyone consumes simultaneously -- likewise for the "cup." I've taken it at a table, in a church, in a sports arena, in a field, on a mountain... and again, during those moments, I was absolutely sincere. Not good enough for some? Alrighty then.
I just don't know who's to say. If there really is one, it seems to me the bigger offense, well beyond rudeness, here, is the arrogance of those who'd invalidate it based on a word. Show of hands -- who's baptizing in Aramaic? No?! What about hearts?
FWIW, I'm still curious about the car in the driveway.
Adiaphora are "neither commanded nor forbidden in the Word of God." Colloquially, it means "stuff that doesn't matter one way or the other, except insofar as it helps or hinders relationship with Christ."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adiaphora
In some contexts, wearing robes would hinder the congregation's relationship with Christ and his Church. In other contexts - such as, apparently, that of Eirenist - not wearing robes would be a stumbling block, so responsible clergy would likely wear robes.
From a Lutheran perspective, almost everything about baptismal practice is adiaphora, except for water and the name of the Trinity.
Exactly, and that takes discernment and sensitivity. On the one hand, there is the instinct toward eager instruction, which if done poorly is off-putting, arrogant, and boring af. On the other, there is a pragmatic laissez-faire attitude which is apathetic, insincere, and disrespectful of the denomination's beliefs. Either may be damaging to an individual's relationship with Jesus and the church.
The significance of any such variation seems to me to be a separate question from how God does or doesn’t operate through an “irregular” baptism or Eucharist. Related, perhaps, but separate.
FWIW, in my denomination I think the “non-negotiables”* would be water and the Trinitarian formula (for baptism) and bread “common to the culture of the congregation,” drink derived from grapes/fruit of the vine and the words of institution (for Eucharist).
And I agree with what @Lamb Chopped and @Leaf have said about pastoral responsibility.
* “Non-negotiables” here, I’d say, means the (strong) expectation, the norm, or in line with posts above, the “non-adiaphora.” It has nothing to do with validity in terms of God’s action, but rather had to do with faithfulness on our part, as well as participation in the life of the wider church.
But 'when in Rome', as it were. If I were to join Leaf's Lutheran church I'd abide by whatever house-keeping rules applied there. Equally at Nick Tamen's Presbyterian church or Forthview's Roman Catholic one.
Ok, I'm Orthodox and so I abide by whatever canons apply there.
I wouldn't do what I did back in my independent charismatic evangelical days and baptise people in rivers, but neither do I go round wondering how sincere or otherwise I might have been, or whether it may have been presumption or hubris or whatever else. Offensive as it may seem, the Orthodox expect a kind of declaration of repentance for things that a convert may have done as an adherent of another Christian tradition.
I was happy to do that. But I don't go round analysing what particular aspects of my former affiliations may have been worthy of repentance from, as it were, and which parts weren't. I acted in good faith and according to my lights but there are certainly things I'm aware of that I did out of spiritual pride or Pharisaism or presumption. Just as there have been since I became Orthodox.
There may have been other things I did whilst involved with non-Orthodox churches that were fine and dandy. I don't know. Only God knows.
I don't take a 'mechanistic' view of these things, nor I hope a 'magical' one. As I've said before, one of the best pieces of advice I received on becoming Orthodox was, 'The sacraments are not magic.'
Nor do I think God goes around saying, 'Uh-oh, there's that heterodox Presbyterian Nick Tamen praying to me again. I'm not listening to him ...'
As you might expect, I'm tediously wedded to a both/and approach.
Of course God can 'save' or show grace and mercy without the sacraments. God is God. He can do whatever he wills. But that doesn't mean he doesn't 'work' through sacraments, 'ordinances' or 'means of grace' or whatever else we might call them.
To borrow @Lamb Chopped's analogy. Whether her son parks on the drive or out on the street, he's still parked the car, he's still her son. It would be better, of course were he to park as his mother requested but that doesn't mean he hasn't parked the car at all, but that he's parked it in a way that disrespectfully contradicts her wishes.
God doesn't need it to be done <> God doesn't want it to be done.
I'm still asking this question below:
I'm not sure why any of this is important to you, @The_Riv. As someone who has rejected formal Christian belief, why does it matter to you whether churches baptise in water, printing ink or cold tea or whether the formula is Trinitarian, Modalist or spoken in Klingon?
Why does it matter that some Christians baptise people in rivers singing 'We will gather by the river ...' or others baptise babies in fonts using a tiny trickle of water?
Why does it matter if Lamb Chopped's son parks contrary to his mother's wishes providing he does so in all sincerity as far as he is concerned?
I can understand it if you think the whole thing is wrong and you want nothing to do with it any more but you appear to want to retain a 'stake' in what Christian believers do or don't do even though you no longer believe any of it yourself.
I can understand that to some extent. If I lost or abandoned my faith tomorrow, I'd undoubtedly still be interested in what was going on within the churchy scene.
I'm not sure I'd set myself up though as judge and jury on what baptismal formulae they use or don't use or what hymns they sing or don't sing or whether clergy wear robes or whether there should even be clergy at all. Those strike me as 'in-house' matters. I'm only interested in those sort of issues because I'm involved.
But our respective mileage varies as they say.
I don't think I'm suggesting that hearts and actions are mutually exclusive. What I'm suggesting is that ISTM there should be a difference between what I imagine as the heart being right and the words slightly amended, and the heart being wrong and the words being o/O perfect. Is this a terrible idea?
The curse of invalidity, leading to allegedly cascading invalidations (ordinations, marriages, communions, etc. -- any other sacrament performed in connection with an invalid baptism) seems to be more pious than anything. But, not to worry, and all of the fancy protestations aside, your invalid baptism isn't unreal. God doesn't require that baptisms be 100% o/O accurate in process, but The Church does. That smacks as a fairly arrogant superimposition to me.
@Lamb Chopped I'm not sure I accept the premise of your "draw a line -OR- invite a free-for-all" scenario. Many if not most here seem pretty comfortable with denominationalism, at least in the mainline varieties. I'm struggling to understand why, in the diverse environment of contemporary Christianity, variations on three words should cause such stress, when it apparently doesn't matter to God, and when these things can't be back-traced very accurately (as @Gamma Gamaliel himself has suggested) for anyone to judge anyhow.
[aside] Wasn't there a "Seinfeld" bit about using valet parking? Or about being upset about how the car was parked? I think there was.
So, @Gamma Gamaliel, I really don't want to derail the thread, and I'm not suggesting you are doing so by asking these questions of me -- you're just acting in good faith -- thanks. I have a number of reasons for remaining engaged. Christopher Hitchens (please forgive an other reference to him) once quipped that he was a Protestant Atheist, in a similar vein as Dawkins' acknowledgement of willingly participating in "cultural Christianity." Hitchens himself was married in an Orthodox Church(!), and did not prevent his first two children from being baptized in the same. I think I must confess to remaining, in many ways, a de-converted Episcopalian. There are family considerations, vocational considerations, and longstanding personal considerations as to why. Part of it will seem ugly to you and I'm sorry about that, but having all but lost my faith (relative to the supernatural and the corps of theology and dogmas around it), I liken myself to someone who, after they've been told a loved one has been killed, asks 'how did they die?' It's going to the morgue to identify and view the corpse. It's mentally reconstructing what happened and filling in all of the difficult minutiae. It's similar to finding out one has been betrayed, and then seeking to understand the conspiracy's breadth, depth and details: how long, via mechanisms, involving whom, and maybe most concerningly, what was my own contribution. I admit it's morbid, and self-flagellating (pun intended), but here I am. Maybe most offensively to you, and again, I apologize, but feeling as if I've been mostly duped for the vast majority of my life, I want to keep my young adult children from coming to the same distressing realization years hence, and since I had a rather large hand in their indoctrination (I mean that respectfully in terms of church doctrine), I feel responsible for at least detailing for them to the same measure why that upbringing may not actually be altogether true. So, weirdly enough, I have an even more urgent need to try to get to the bottom of a variety of churchy-religious things now than I did as a believer. I also used to be a very politically conservative person, but that has migrated 180 degrees as well. Older Shipmates may remember how I used to run headlong into the astute wall of @ken's, and to some degree @KarlLB's much more progressive views. LOL, I was pretty insufferable back then. That aspect may not have changed much (there, I've saved you the trouble!). So there's a lot of progressive humanist philosophy co-mingling with this religious post-mortem exacerbating the issues. I said on another thread that losing one's faith is a complicated, traumatic thing. I stand by that. Anyway, sorry for the length of this tangent.
It may sound like a glib response but you seem to be drawing a distinction between God and the Church - which distinction does exist of course, the Church isn't God but an icon of the Trinity in Orthodox terms.
But given the NT imagery of the Church as the 'Body of Christ' there does appear to be a pretty close and intimate relationship between the Church and Christ as the Head.
In crude terms, the only way we know anything about God in a Christian sense is because the Church, the community of believers, passed on teachings, both oral and written, and collected and 'canonised' some of those writings in what we know as the New Testament.
No Church, no New Testament.
Ok, as some have said, 'The Church through the Bible and the Bible through the Church.'
But you can't have one without the other.
That doesn't mean that God is limited to the pages of Holy Writ - the Bible isn't God - nor that he is limited to sacraments or ordinances which the Church - however understood - regards as 'authoritative' in some way.
Even the most hyper-sacramental of sacramentalists wouldn't claim that God exclusively works in and through the sacraments - or ordinances if you prefer.
Yes, I can see that you are looking for the 'smoking gun' and want to prevent your grown-up children from being hood-winked or misled as you feel you have been.
What I don't quite understand is why you introduce false dichotomies such as 'God doesn't require baptism but the Church does' when even the most sacramental of sacramentalists wouldn't insist that those who have been baptised using a particular Trinitarian formula will be saved. If I understand it correctly, the Roman Catholic Church no longer insists that you have to be a Catholic to be saved nor that God won't necessarily 'accept' people of faiths other than Christianity.
That doesn't mean that the RCC should disband as it is somehow surplus to requirements.
I think the question @Lamb Chopped posed is a very reasonable one. Either there are sine qua non of baptism and Eucharist—essential physical elements, words or actions without which something can’t validly be called “baptism” or “Eucharist”—or there are not. If there aren’t, well, okay. But if there are, the question is where are the lines drawn?
It'll sound ridiculous, but I'm actually trying to learn more about what I no longer believe. Maybe there's still something small, something hidden, something heretofore unrecognized that I can accept. I'm skeptical, but I'm also still turning over rocks. My false dichotomies are attempts to reconcile things that won't register. Maybe I don't understand what "invalidate" means re: baptism, or what "not unreal" means. @Nick Tamen brings up the important distinction between it mattering to God and getting in the way of God acting -- fine -- but then a person like me wonders what the ultimate point of invalidating a baptism could possibly be. Has anyone told the invalidators that God's doing a workaround no matter what?! Why then invalidate? Whom is that for?! What is the value of invalidating? Is its merit one of purity? Homogeneity to the extent that's possible? Is it hierarchical? Plain piety? Or is it just Nomenclature? If it's just nomenclature please say that. I don't need it all to register, but I want it to. Again -- I'm ridiculous.
When I was card-carrying, @Lamb Chopped, I would have been all for drawing lines and judging things to be or not be a "right, and good, and a joyful thing, always and everywhere..." Now that I'm on the outside looking in -- free of investment or liability -- I find these kinds of distinctions and disqualifications to be really frustrating. That's messed up.
Catholicism embracing any hint of universalism is news to me.
There's more to your posts, friends, but I'm distracted by the election today. Apologies.
My godson's C of E church has two services. The vicar wears a stole and chasuble for the early service, but leads the later "family" service in jeans and a clerical shirt.
At least from the perspective of my tradition, the thought would be God has promised to act when we baptize, meaning baptize with water (whether in a river, in a pool or tub, or just pouring or sprinkling water) in the name of the Triune God (“Father, Son, Holy Spirit,” whatever that may be in any language). God is not prevented from acting if a different formula is used, or if something other than water is used. But we’ve stepped from where God has promised to act to where God is certainly free to act but hasn’t promised to do so.
The perspective of my tradition would also be that water and the name of the Triune God (“Father, Son, Holy Spirit”) is and has been the practice and consensus—the sine qua non for baptism—of the church universal since the early church, and we as just one stream of the universal church do not have the authority to unilaterally change that.
The problem I have with eschewing any line drawing at all is that words lose meaning. We know the difference between baptism and, say, circumcision (in Jewish practice) because those words have agreed-upon meanings. If lines aren’t to be drawn at all, then a bris can be called a baptism, and vice versa. Or so it seems to me.
And fwiw, I don’t think you sound ridiculous at all.
That's not quite the same thing as universalism.
I won't say 'Best of British' for the election, but you know what I mean ...
I think we're talking past one another. I'm hearing you attributing to me positions I never held, and there are things in your answers that make me scratch my head and wonder where you got THAT from.
Look, the only thing I hold is that there exists a thing known as baptism; that the Lord Jesus Christ commanded it in these words (Yes, of course they are in translation, translation has never been a problem for Christianity from the beginning when the NT documents were written in koine Greek rather than the probable spoken Aramaic of Jesus and co.): "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." (Matthew 28:19-20)
I also hold that, when God-in-human-flesh tells us to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, that it would be best for me to do exactly that.
You are asserting that it doesn't matter to God; but you produce no proof of what you're asserting. The fact is, we know only what we've been told--and what we were told was "Do this." Jesus never said, "Actually, the only thing that matters is sincerity of heart, and God doesn't care at all." Bringing your own extraneous ideas to the table and changing the baptismal formula based on them is... unwise. I grant you they are very attractive ideas; but being attractive is not the same thing as being true. Why mess with what he told us to do?
We can speculate up a storm about what-ifs like "What if we used "Maker/Redeemer/Sustainer" or whatever; what if we used Coca-cola instead of water;" what if we did any number of things. Speculation is fun, but not really useful. We have no data on what would happen if we decided to change the instructions. We have no data, because God has not told us. And if God has not told us, the most we can do is make guesses based on our understanding of his character and of the way the universe works.
In a case where you have no data, AND where you can so easily carry out the original instructions, why would you not do so? This isn't a case like one I heard of, where my friend was accompanying a dying child down a Philippine mountainside to a hospital, and for want of any water nearby, baptized the child in her own saliva. In a case like that, it's obvious why you're not following instructions--you simply can't. And at that point, we can confidently trust the character of God and rest assured that the child is indeed baptized in his eyes, and comfort the grieving parents with a reminder of all the gifts God has promised to those who are baptized.
But assuming a perfectly ordinary situation with water on hand, a healthy person etc. the sensible thing to do is follow the original instructions and be done with it. Altering the instructions without any data about what follows is .... unwise. You rob the person of the comfort and assurance which would otherwise have been his/hers, and you leave him/her wondering "Have I really been baptized in God's eyes?" which are the only ones that matter. That is not a kind thing to do.
You appear to me to be proceeding on the ideas that a) baptism is a humanly invented thing, b) therefore we can change it up, c) sincere hearts are all that matters, and d) baptism is "valid" or "invalid" in some sort of sense similar to driver's licenses, if I understand you correctly. I deny the first three ideas on the basis of Scripture (and for the sake of my fellow Christians of other backgrounds, the tradition of the Church as well). The fourth idea is a confusion of thought. There is no such thing as an invalid baptism (though you may hear people use the phrase carelessly as a kind of shorthand). Either there is a baptism, or there is not. We've been told what constitutes baptism (water and the Word). Where those two are, we conclude a baptism has taken place.
Where one of those is missing or altered, we get concerned--has a baptism taken place at all? Since the aftereffects of baptism are invisible (forgiveness of sin, eternal life, adoption into the family of God, etc. etc. etc.), we can't check on those to see whether baptism has taken place. So we are left in limbo. That's not a comfortable place to be. And pastorally speaking, that is not a proper place to deliberately put somebody.
God of course is not in limbo. He can look at any situation, including a mess involving a banana milkshake and a weird-ass formula, and say, "All right, I'm going to go ahead and give all my gifts regardless" and do so. That is God's prerogative. He is not tied to the baptismal instructions. He can do whatever he wants. He can (as someone pointed out upthread) save the thief on the cross wholly without baptism, because hey, he's God and he does what he wants.
So with baptism, God has all the freedom to change, alter, accept weird-ass formulae, whatever he wants. We don't. We have instructions (very simple instructions!) and the promise of wonderful gifts to follow when we do what we're told.
Why not do what we're told?
Now, as for your idea of cascading invalidity. That's not a thing, at least as I understand it. When you speak of an invalid baptism, the more correct way to say it is "no baptism ever took place." Either it was a baptism or it wasn't. Thus the concern various people are expressing.
Now as for your cascading scenario:
Suppose someone to be under the impression he has been baptized when he really hasn't. If he goes on to become a pastor/priest/whatsit, to marry, celebrate communion, pronounce absolution, etc. all in good faith, are all of THOSE acts invalid (read: non-existent) also?
You will get different answers from different branches of the Christian church on this one, but in mine, we would say No.
An unbaptized person can baptize, though it's certainly a freaky situation. But there's nothing in the instructions from Jesus that say the baptizer must himself be baptized. What matters is what we were told: water and the Word. So also with communion and absolution. It is God who is doing all those things anyway, not the officiant; and he can certainly do them through anyone he wants, including the devil himself. (Judas Iscariot almost certainly performed his share of baptisms, how's that for freaky?)
Obviously we don't ENCOURAGE this sort of thing, and if we found out about it, we'd try to rectify matters (baptize the unbaptized pastor, etc.) as soon as possible. But we'd not worry about the people he'd already baptized, communed, or absolved. Because it's God working through the words and elements, not the intent or status of the officiant. As I said above, other branches of the Christian church will disagree, particularly the ones who hold to intentionalism.
Equally those who may die before having formally received the sacrament but have expressed a wish to be baptises receive the 'fruits of the sacrament
These are called Baptism of Blood and Baptism of Desire
The Catholic catechism also teaches 'Every person who is ignorant of the Gospel of Christ and of his Church but who seeks the will of God in accordance with their understanding of it, can be saved. It may be supposed that such persons would have desired baptism explicitly if they had known its necessity.
All the baptised are members of the Church,irrespective of whether they accept all the teachings of the Church or not.
As GG has said this is not universalism but it is the hope of the Church that all will be 'saved'.
Perhaps not, but is it fair to say that the same doesn't seem to be true re: invalidation of baptisms, or the withholding of some sacraments?
I never meant to imply something this obtuse (bris = baptism), and I understand the point of such an example, regardless of how it made me smile. I tend to agree with you re: words.
Thank you for this grace.
It's not, and I didn't mean full-fledged Universalism. I said "any hint of universalism," which was not as clear as it could have been. Thanks for your additions to this point, @Forthview.
I'll get back to you, @Lamb Chopped in a separate post. This one is getting long.
I think my response there would be similar to the thread where universalism is being discussed. I don’t know why God might choose not to act. I very much hope, and perhaps even might trust, that God would choose to act.
But I/we have no right to assert that God will act. We can make no claim on God acting; we can only hope.
I’m afraid I’m not sure what you’re asking here.
I understand you. But I'm the one who's opined that we don't really know what Jesus said, (and you dedicated an amazing thread against that), and so I'm skeptical of the words. That said, I'm with @Nick Tamen insofar as words mean things.
My assertion stems form at least one RC theologian saying that a baptism may be invalid but not untrue. Jesus also said that a married person merely looking lustfully at someone other than their spouse committed adultery in the heart. No action taken. Just thought crime. I'm troubled by the notion that righteousness isn't treated in the same way. It's a staircase that only goes down. And I'm not so much changing the formula, which I take as water + words, as much as wondering about the intrinsic values of its components. But I'm a little clearer on this now, I think.
I see a crazy-big difference between changing the lyrics, as it were, and subbing-in cola for water. There's no need to go to that extreme end here, at least not for me. Like I told @Nick Tamen, in a similar vein, I get it.
Some people are always going to dutifully carry out the original. Well and good. Your salivary example, while beautifully pastoral I'm sure, does give me pause. Is that level of extremity required for God to act outside of Jesus' rubric? That seems awfully specific, and awfully reliant on a particular reading of God's character (whatever that is). I hesitate to use the word convenient, but there it is.
Doesn't this assume a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of baptism that arguably a lot of people won't have? I refer you again to the creekside. People without this level of theological appreciation can and do go through their entire lives without questioning it. What then? Do they/we just trust in God's character, too? Another baptism with an asterisk? and at the bottom of the pate the asterisk indicates "ok?"
(a) I can plainly see that Jesus instituted baptism, and I can also plainly see that humans are responsible for it, (b) I haven't advocated for any specific change, but called into question the judgments re: relationship or not between the processes of baptism and God's actions based on the slightest of adaptations, (c) I remain unconvinced that this isn't necessarily true, and (d) that's not me -- it's the RC Church in situations described upthread re: invalid baptisms a number of years ago out west. I'm not in the game -- I'm just in the stands calling out commentary to the referees.[/quote]
Again, I question as to whether these kinds of issues arise categorically across Christianity. I want to say you've made some allowances in that regard.
{cont.}
Yes, and I've already conceded that I'm sure most do, and that it's lovely. I just think that in the cases where a few may not, and by the tiniest of margins, God should have their backs.
@Lamb Chopped, quite understandably, assumes a Lutheran understanding when she describes the “aftereffects” of baptism as “forgiveness of sin, eternal life, adoption into the family of God, etc. etc. etc.”
Southern Baptists in my neck of the woods would say something quite different—they would not say God acts in baptism and certainly wouldn’t say baptism operates to forgive sins, but rather that baptism is an act of obedience by which a believer bears witness to his or her faith.
My Reformed folk would say yet something else different—that baptism is a “sign and seal of our engrafting into Christ,” and that it doesn’t operate to forgive sins, but rather assures us of God’s forgiveness of our sins. My Reformed folk also would stress the importance and value of baptism, but would not say baptism is necessary for salvation. (So for example, the “saliva” example isn’t something that would arise among us, because it would never occur to us that without baptism, a possibly dying child is in any spiritual danger.)
And other groups have other understandings.
So it seems to me that if we’re talking about the “effectiveness” (or okay, validity) of a baptism where the words are different, we have to make sure we’re also working from the same set of assumptions/beliefs about what baptism is, because any implications are very much related to those assumptions/beliefs.
As for " I just think that in the cases where a few may not, and by the tiniest of margins, God should have their backs," well, I DO happen to think God has their backs. The God I know is overwhelmingly kind, merciful, and willing to grab someone for his kingdom on the slimmest of pretexts, or none at all, it seems sometimes.
I simply don't think that it's at all appropriate for human beings to presume on that character. As in, "Well, he's going to save them anyway, so we can do whatever we like with the instructions." That's just a bad attitude.
Why would I be the one who’d take it up with him? He’s in this article:
https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2022/03/08/invalid-baptism-catholic-242466 that I linked to more neatly up thread. An RC organization called the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith took the position in 2020 that the Trinitarian formula as you & others here have specified was the only proper & correct one. Great! It also said baptisms that somehow fell outside of the formula were “invalid.” (uh-oh) However, you’ve said that “there is no such thing as an invalid baptism.” Is the C.D.F. incorrect? Could you be? Is anyone?!
It's my understanding that RCs believe that God takes 'intentions' into account even if those intentions may not be fulfilled for whatever reason - other than deliberate and wilful neglect, in which case the 'intention' was never really there in the first place.
'With you there is forgiveness, that's why you are to be feared.'
I attended a Bible study by Zoom this week, the story of Cain and Abel. It was noted how the 'mark of Cain' was there to protect and preserve him despite his heinous crime.
God is way, way, way more gracious and forgiving than we are.
With all due respect to our RC brothers and sisters, the Orthodox tend to see their approach as somewhat 'mechanical' to an extent - but we can see what they are getting at. Likewise, I can understand the Southern Baptist and Reformed positions as @Nick Tamen has outlined them, and the Lutheran one - which sounds more 'Catholic' to me in some ways if I have understood it correctly from @Lamb Chopped's posts.
As to who has the 'right' position on these things, whilst the Orthodox would clearly maintain that their position is correct - the clue is in the title - right glory or right worship, they would tend to say that God can and does meet us wherever we are 'at'.
I think there is plenty of scriptural warrant for that whichever Christian tradition we inhabit as it were.
That doesn't mean that it doesn't matter. 'God will meet me where I'm at so it makes no odds ...'
It is clearly important that each of us acts, by God's grace, in accordance with the light we have received as it were. Obviously, there are going to be things we all hold in common. In other things we may differ in opinions or practice, but God can handle that.
I may wake up dead and find that none of it was true or real and that there is only oblivion - in which case I wouldn't be aware of it.
So, what do I do? Try and live a Christian life in accordance with the particular form or expression of the faith that I happen to have found, chosen or belong to by intention or design or because I was brought up that way - or abandon it altogether?
I am trying to do the former of course and part of that involves acceptance of a Trinitarian formula in baptism - but it also involves loving my neighbour as myself, having a concern for others and the world around me and wrestling with sin, the world and the devil.
What it doesn't involve is a tick-box exercise where I sit as judge and jury on other people's practices or the way they live out their Christian faith.
I'm not saying anyone here is doing that but you get my drift.
I said "you take it up with him" because you are the one who has the conflict with him. Presumably if you were sufficiently interested, you'd find a way to communicate with him? At any rate, I'm not going to do it. I don't consider myself sufficiently versed in Catholic thought to be able to explain what he's going on about.
I am fairly sure most of Christianity would agree with me that invalid baptism is just shorthand for "not a baptism at all." When it comes to baptism, the question of whether it's real/existing/valid/whatever-you-want-to-call-it is ultimately up to God. No human being is running that show, no matter what we may think. It's why we stick to what we're told as closely as we can--when we do that, we have good reason to be assured of the invisible outcome; when we screw around, less so.
It's also the reason why we have such a thing as conditional baptism--because there are cases where no human being (other than Christ, heh) can tell in a given case whether a baptism exists--for example, when records have been destroyed and there are no living witnesses, but family custom means it's very likely the person WAS baptized as an infant nonetheless. In such a doubtful case, to set the person's mind at ease, we conduct a baptism preceded with the words "If you have not already been baptized,..." and then carry on with the formula: "I baptize you" etc.
Getting back to the Catholic thing, since it's bugging you, and maybe I can help: I say this with some hesitation, being as I've just mentioned no authority on Catholic distinctives; and yet, one thing that appears to be a problem for them is a kind of tying together of the doctrine of apostolic sucession in a literal sense (laying on of hands at ordination by a rightfully ordained person themselves) and the doctrine of all the other sacraments. So given their system, they could conceivably have a person whose ordination was invalid, and who would then be (I think) conducting invalid sacraments himself until the whole situation was detected, stopped and set right. The whole theoretical situation acquires an urgency that might explain the use of the word "invalid.' (Such a case would not arise for Lutherans, as we hold any Christian may baptize.)
I say this is the IMPRESSION I've gotten from interaction with various Catholic friends over the years. It is not the standard way Lutherans think, nor (I believe) most of the rest of the Christian church. Among historical Lutherans, apostolic succession refers to a pastor/teacher/theologian continuing in the teaching of the apostles, not to some mystical connection conveyed by the laying on of hands in an unbroken line all the way back to the apostles. If a group of Lutherans were marooned for years on a deserted island, it would be their duty to appoint a pastor to celebrate baptism and communion, and to preach; and if no other pastor was present to do the ordaining, the community would see to it. Because we hold that the pastoral office is a delegation to a single individual of powers Christ vested in the whole church and in each individual believer by virtue of their baptism into the Body of Christ. Normally we delegate those responsibilities to one person for the sake of good order; but in an emergency, any believer can do the work of a pastor. I myself have been privileged to baptize and to offer absolution on several emergency occasions.
Jesus was dealing with something very different, IMHO. He was pointing out that sin has its root in the heart, in the life of the mind and spirit. It's never just an external thing ("oops, I tripped and fell onto her lips"). And therefore anyone who tries to deal with sin by policing externals while ignoring the heart is attempting something hopeless--rather like trying to get rid of running bamboo by chopping it down when you notice it. The main mass of it is underground, and has to be completely dug up if you're ever to be free of it again.
So what he's saying is not a judicial statement: "I'm here to assign a penalty for your lustful thought!" No, it's an observation of reality: the minute that person looked with lust, he/she started the root of adultery growing. Wait long enough without repentance, and that poisonous root will surface, grow stems and leaves, and eventually create a huge freaking mess in at least two lives.
It's an interesting question of whether righteousness operates the same way. I suspect it does, when it's not frustrated by sin--just as sin roots and grows and flowers, when it's not frustrated by repentance. (so, not a staircase that only goes down)
And in fact, you could argue that Jesus does point to similar tiny seeds or "roots" of righteousness when he says this: “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives him who sent me. The one who receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet's reward, and the one who receives a righteous person because he is a righteous person will receive a righteous person's reward. And whoever gives one of these little ones even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple, truly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward.” (Matthew 10:40-42) Taking this apart, it seems to me Jesus is saying that there are those who will receive rewards far beyond their own desert simply because they "received" or "gave a cup of cold water" to someone who was righteous, and by doing so they welcomed that person--and through that person, Jesus--and through him, God.
But I think your analysis is correct. In the case described above, where a priest had said “we baptize” instead of “I baptize” and the Church ruled those weren’t valid baptisms, at least two men who’d been on the receiving end, as it were, had gone on to become priests. They had to be baptized properly (per the church), confirmed and ordained, because the “improper” baptisms rendered the earlier “confirmations” and “ordinations” null.
@Lamb Chopped I like your running bamboo analogy. We had a rampant and invasive bamboo in our garden planted by a previous owner and took me ages to drag out all the roots. But eventually I succeeded.
I found your reflections on the sin/repentance issue very helpful and insightful.
Of course. But I'm tired today, and it's fastest just for me to say that the running ambiguity of invisible outcomes are a reason why my faith is lapsed. It's the intersection of the unfalsifiable with the unverifiable. If you say so for you, though, fantastic. I mean that.
Of course. I can safely assume that at this point (2000 years on) all contingencies have been accounted for.
There's no dark night of the soul thing happening here with me, LOL, but yes -- this is indeed what was detailed either in the article I linked, or a similar one I read as a result of the same search. In think I used the term "cascading invalidations" in a previous post. Glad to have it fleshed out the way you have, though -- thank you!
Thank you for this. Though not Lutheran, I believe William Brewster assumed a pastoral role for the first Pilgrims, though not being ordained, until a proper pastor arrived a number of years later. Happy to be corrected on this if I'm mistaken.