As we approach the feast of the Baptism of Our Lord and our parishes (hopefully) celebrate the sacrament of new birth, one might ask what makes for a good baptism? An easier question to answer might be “What makes for a valid baptism?” Sacramental “validity” names the bare minimum of words and actions required to constitute the sign in a recognizable form. With baptism, it doesn’t take much: a washing with water, an invocation of the divine name “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” and in so doing intending what the church intends by them: the forgiveness of sins, membership in Christ’s body, the promise of eternal life.
Of course, even the bare minimum is contested. Christians being a disputatious people, we will always find things to argue over. How much water? Sprinkling, pouring, or immersion? Does baptism in the name of Jesus count? — some Pentecostal communities do this, and there is New Testament precedent. Is a baptism valid if performed in some modified version of the triune Name, e.g. Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier? (the consensus ecumenical answer to this question has been “no”). Most neuralgic of all, of course, is the question of the appropriate candidate. Is baptism limited to those who can make a full, conscious profession of faith? Or do we also baptize infants, persons whose faith is yet unformed, so that others have to make promises on their behalf?
But having said all that, performing the outward sign of baptism isn’t all that difficult. It is not, so to speak, rocket science.
Perhaps the most affecting baptism I ever witnessed took place on the far side of the Berlin Wall. It was the early 1980s, and I was an American seminarian employed at a large Protestant parish in West Berlin. Unexpectedly free of church duties one Sunday morning, I decided to attend services with a friend in the eastern part of the city (having a U.S. passport made travel across this famous border absurdly easy, while for most East Germans, it formed an impenetrable barrier). There was a baptism scheduled for that morning; a bearded young man in his 20s, who stood up and made his profession of faith, and had water poured over his head im Namen des Vaters, und des Sohnes, and des Heiligen Geistes, Amen.
I don’t recall anything about either the baptismal liturgy or the accompanying sermon. Rather, it was the peculiar circumstances that made that baptism stand out. Christian commitment in the German Democratic Republic carried with it very real personal and social consequences. Education and career doors that stood open to Communist Party members, and even ordinary citizens, were closed to those deemed ideologically unreliable; and Christians were almost by definition such.
It’s quite possible that that young man’s decision to be baptized meant that there would be a new note in his Stasi (State Security Police) file. Wags said that you could tell the Stasi agents in church because they didn’t know the words to the hymns. It’s a good joke, but not entirely accurate, because all too often the Stasi informant spying on you was your fellow Christian, or your coworker, or even your family member. Anyone wishing to know more about this fraught period in German history should see the 2006 film The Lives of Others, which depicts the pervasive atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust that marked everyday life in the GDR.
As with any religious ritual, the social meaning of baptism is determined in large part by context. Baptism in the German Democratic Republic in the thick of the Cold War has different connotations from the sacrament as it was performed in, say, Jane Austen’s England, or by Jesuits in 16th-century China, or among the Inuit people by Anglican missionaries at the turn of the 20th century.
Things we’re pleased to sort into neat piles called religion, culture, and politics are in fact closely intertwined. Thus, the young man who stood up to give his profession of faith that day was making a political statement, whether he intended to do so or not, simply because of the peculiar circumstances in which the rite was being performed. A good deal of Christian missiology is devoted to thinking about matters like these, so that we don’t confuse our cultural baggage and well-meaning, disastrous intentions with the gospel of Christ.
Here’s the thing with sacraments, though: they have a way of cutting through the human stuff, because in them God is doing something. The reason talk about sacramental validity can be stultifying is that it focuses attention on human performance: what is the bare minimum we can get away with and still have it “work”? Curiously, though, validity-talk can also serve to highlight the activity of God. God doesn’t need much to forgive sins, or effect entry into the kingdom of heaven, or incorporate a person into Christ’s body, the church. A splash of water, the triune Name, “yes” spoken in response to a few simple questions: “Do you believe in God the Father … in Jesus Christ our Lord … in God the Holy Spirit?”
Every age of the church has its characteristic baptismal as well as eucharistic liturgies. My parish in Toronto uses the rite in the Anglican Church of Canada’s Book of Alternative Services (1982), which is very close to the order that appears in the Episcopal Church’s Book of Common Prayer (1979). These liturgies have their virtues. They highlight the dignity of baptism, in part simply by the prominent placement of the order in the book — just before the order for Eucharist, to which baptism forms a gateway.
These rites strongly emphasize the corporate and ecclesial dimensions of the sacrament: “Holy Baptism is appropriately administered within a celebration of the Eucharist as the chief service on a Sunday or other feast” (BAS, p. 150, cf. BCP, p. 298). Baptism is no mere baby-naming ceremony, conducted for the family’s benefit, but an action of the whole Church. In a nod to early Christian practice, the bishop is the appropriate celebrant. All this is right, proper, and worthy of all praise.
At the same time, the newer rites’ emphasis on all manner of human doings and undertakings tends to obscure baptism’s character as sheer divine action. The problem is especially acute in the Baptismal Covenant, which occupies a prominent place in both the Canadian and U.S. rites (though each locates it slightly differently).
It starts out well enough: the recitation of the Apostles’ Creed in the context of baptism, its original home, is undeniably powerful. The interrogatories that follow draw on biblical language, at times to excellent effect: “Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?” (cf. Acts 2:42). But as the covenant unfolds, it descends into an aspirational and abstract listing of commitments—everything from “[striving] for justice and peace among all peoples” to “[respecting] the dignity of every human being.” In recent years, the Anglican Church of Canada has expanded the list to include creation care: “Will you strive to safeguard the integrity of God’s creation, and respect, sustain, and renew the life of the Earth?” The expected response to all these queries is “I will, with God’s help.”
Read charitably, the Baptismal Covenant can be seen as a somewhat clumsy attempt at remedial catechesis: it is good for Christians to be reminded of what they signed on to when they were baptized. Read more suspiciously, the ambitious list of mandates can sound all too Pelagian, softened by the assurance that we will do these things only “with God’s help.” I am reminded of what Robert Jenson calls the “anti-Pelagian codicil,” tacked on to theologies otherwise focused solely on human efforts. Thus, the typical modern sermon may be said to consist of “twenty minutes of ethical and religious exhortation, with the closing qualification, ‘Of course, all this is by grace’” (Jenson and Eric W. Gritsch, Lutheranism, 1976, p. 39).
Law has an important place in the Christian life. There are moments when it is utterly crucial to be reminded that even though grace is free, it is not cheap. But that place is not baptism! The sacrament (the efficacious sacrament, for again, in baptism God is doing something through our human action) is strong enough to stand on its own, quite apart from our well-meaning agendas of personal and social renewal. There is much to be said for the stripped-down older liturgies, which keep the human promise-making to a bare minimum, and allow grace to do its gratuitous thing. A splash of water, the triune Name, faith’s assent: it doesn’t take much to make a baptism.
Moreover, while it is true that baptism is by its very nature an ecclesial event, its value for the assembly consists largely in the public showing of God’s action in just these persons, the candidates. They step forward and occupy center stage, as the young man did that morning in East Berlin. They form a mirror in which we can see ourselves. Witnessing other people’s baptisms can be an oddly affecting experience.
I almost always find myself tearing up on these occasions — tears, perhaps, being among the lesser biblical types of baptism, to be set alongside such great figures as the Red Sea, the waters of Jordan, and Noah’s ark (cf. 1 Pet. 3:20-22). If only we could bring back a version of the “flood prayer,” in either its Lutheran or Cranmerian form! Its themes of destruction, deliverance, and divine remaking are powerfully evocative of the Lord’s capacity to bring life out of death. But perhaps this is asking too much.
It’s not liturgical revision we need, however, so much as a willingness to “let baptism be baptism.” Like the other mysteries of the Church’s faith, baptism has a way of cutting through the messy human and religious business with which we encumber it. Water is poured. The new Christian dies and rises with Christ. Grace happens. The assembly says its “Amen.” And this is sufficient.
Joseph (Joe) Mangina is professor of theology at Wycliffe College, Toronto.