Infant Baptism
As a questioning Reformed theologian, I am finally starting to understand the concept of Infant Baptism. Many denominations have made baptism into a profession of faith and the starting of a new life in Christ. A lot of times in these cases, baptism becomes all about the individual being baptized. But the truth of baptism is something much larger in scope.
In ancient cultures, the washing with water was always something special; possibly sacred. From water springs life. In water we can see life and death. We see water as a cleaning agent of sorts used to cleanse our physical bodies as well as our physical needs.
I am not going to get preachy on the subject due to lack of time before my next class, but I will be quite general, open to many different theories and interpretations. Having said that I will get into this topic from a Biblical standpoint. John the Baptist was performing baptism to those who believed and wanted to be renewed by God, but Jesus baptism itself transformed the meaning of what baptism stands for into more than just a profession of faith.
Baptism became the symbolism by which we acknowledge one's birth into a Christian family, both parents and church congregation, and in which we acknowledge that Christ's sacrifice was for the entire world. Aidan Kavanagh quotes, "Christian baptism is seen by them (New Testament writers) - not as an attempt to mimic Jesus' baptism in the Jordan but as the primary if still developing event by which the Church responds to and appropriates under grace the 'total redemptive action which the baptism of Jesus set in motion." In other words, baptism is communal in meaning, not individually based. It should effect the entire congregation when one is baptized, not just the individual. With that and the understanding that the grace of God is for everyone infant baptism can be performed.
Many people make the arguement that infant baptism is not Scripturally based, so how one make the assumption that it is plausible. Technically they would be correct, but there are references which suggest that children and infants were baptized, i.e. Acts16:15; 18:8; and 1 Corinthians 1:16. In these accounts whole households and families are baptised together. Baptism was a communal act acknowldging one's new life in the Body of Christ. The parents and the congregation promise to raise the child in the church.
Now I have heard arguements to the means of, "What if the baby grows up and becomes an atheist?" To those I say, apply the same question to those who were baptized as an adult who lost their faith; whether it was a loved one dying or a conversion to another religion. That arguement is thus refuted. When anyone is baptized whether infant or adult, the congregation of believers is taking responsibility for that individual in their new life in Christ. When an individual turns his back on his beliefs, the congregation is just as responsible as the individual.
Inclusion in the Covenant of Grace
As circumcision was the sign and symbol of inclusion in God's grace and covenant with Israel, so Baptism is the sign and symbol of inclusion in God's grace and covenant with the Church. As an identifying mark, Baptism signifies:
-the faithfulness of God
-the washing away of sin
-rebirth
-putting on the fresh garment of Christ
-being sealed by God's Spirit
-adoption into the covenant family of the Church
-resurrection and ilumination in Christ.
(PCUSA Book of Order)
In ancient cultures, the washing with water was always something special; possibly sacred. From water springs life. In water we can see life and death. We see water as a cleaning agent of sorts used to cleanse our physical bodies as well as our physical needs.
I am not going to get preachy on the subject due to lack of time before my next class, but I will be quite general, open to many different theories and interpretations. Having said that I will get into this topic from a Biblical standpoint. John the Baptist was performing baptism to those who believed and wanted to be renewed by God, but Jesus baptism itself transformed the meaning of what baptism stands for into more than just a profession of faith.
Baptism became the symbolism by which we acknowledge one's birth into a Christian family, both parents and church congregation, and in which we acknowledge that Christ's sacrifice was for the entire world. Aidan Kavanagh quotes, "Christian baptism is seen by them (New Testament writers) - not as an attempt to mimic Jesus' baptism in the Jordan but as the primary if still developing event by which the Church responds to and appropriates under grace the 'total redemptive action which the baptism of Jesus set in motion." In other words, baptism is communal in meaning, not individually based. It should effect the entire congregation when one is baptized, not just the individual. With that and the understanding that the grace of God is for everyone infant baptism can be performed.
Many people make the arguement that infant baptism is not Scripturally based, so how one make the assumption that it is plausible. Technically they would be correct, but there are references which suggest that children and infants were baptized, i.e. Acts16:15; 18:8; and 1 Corinthians 1:16. In these accounts whole households and families are baptised together. Baptism was a communal act acknowldging one's new life in the Body of Christ. The parents and the congregation promise to raise the child in the church.
Now I have heard arguements to the means of, "What if the baby grows up and becomes an atheist?" To those I say, apply the same question to those who were baptized as an adult who lost their faith; whether it was a loved one dying or a conversion to another religion. That arguement is thus refuted. When anyone is baptized whether infant or adult, the congregation of believers is taking responsibility for that individual in their new life in Christ. When an individual turns his back on his beliefs, the congregation is just as responsible as the individual.
Inclusion in the Covenant of Grace
As circumcision was the sign and symbol of inclusion in God's grace and covenant with Israel, so Baptism is the sign and symbol of inclusion in God's grace and covenant with the Church. As an identifying mark, Baptism signifies:
-the faithfulness of God
-the washing away of sin
-rebirth
-putting on the fresh garment of Christ
-being sealed by God's Spirit
-adoption into the covenant family of the Church
-resurrection and ilumination in Christ.
(PCUSA Book of Order)
posted by Adam | 12:28 PM
11 Comments:
Recently I've been wrestling with the violent symbolism in Christian rituals including baptism: the foundation of the religion is based on an act of violence. We eat and drink the blood and body of Christ...ickk...and how horrific. Baptism is symbolic of death and then a rebirth of a person.
It is interesting that we value non-violence but have foundations in violence these days.
Crap...gotta go to class...i'll try calling you later...
Baptism enacts and seals what the Word proclaims: God's redeeming grace offered to all people. Baptism is God's gift of grace and also God's summons to respond to that grace. Baptism calls to repentance, to faithfulness, and to discipleship. Baptism gives the church its identitiy and commissions the church for ministry to the world.
-Book of Order
Well I tend to look at baptism as a new life in Christ; a new birth to follow Christ's example of non violence.
The Eucharist is a different matter. Hmmm....I feel I have left this too broad, let me start from the importance of sacraments in general.
Sacraments are rituals. Anthropologist Victor Turner says, "Religion, like art, lives in so far as it is performed. For religion is not a cognitive system, a set of dogmas alone, it is meaningful experience and experienced meaning. In ritual one lives through events..." More or less, he goes on to say that without its experienced meaning, rituals, religion would not have survived.
"Sacraments are bearers of good news. They are matters of joy, not duty. They are actions, visible words, which proclaim and portray the gospel. They speak the message by enacting it. They make sense because they reach our senses." This is how Jean Cauvin saw the sacraments; "matters of joy."
David Batchelder would argue that sacraments are more powerful than any other part of worship.
Having said all of this, I have been trying to show the importance of sacraments to the Christain church. I would also like to bring attention to the context of the Eucharist. When Jesus did these acts at the last supper, a Pentecost meal, he did so quoting Scripture as he quite often did. If we have learned anything from the Old Testament, we have learned that Israel has a history of violence, sacrifice, etc. Blood is used not as a violent symbol, but as a sacrificial symbol of life. Yes, it is a paradox but from blood we see the representation of life. When animals were sacrificed in the Bible, as Leviticus points out, there were certain ways of killing the animal so it was not meant to suffer. Only in our culture today do we see these rituals as 'violent.'
Our culture today is more advanced in science, theology, etc. but we are still plagued (or gifted) with the knowledge of life and death. It is an overaching theme throughout history and no doubt the reason we have religion. I would not say the sacraments have violent conotations, but rather an acknowledgement of our own mortality.
I think your observation is very interesting and brings up a good observation because I am sure this is how non-Christian people view the sacraments at first glance. I know it would scare the hell out of me if I had not grown up in the church experiencing the sacraments.
Say hi to the wife for me.
In order to be reborn, I think one must die and that is the point of the symbolic water...death to the sinful by means of the grace of God.
I'm not sure why the anthropologist you mentioned seems to divorce art from ritual in his analogy...
Ritual is definately not meaningless dogma. It is firmly grounded in experience. I would go so far as to say that ritual is much the way we makes sense of the conditions in which we live.
Further, rituals all have many acts of violence, symbolically and perhaps physically as well...I think Maurice Bloch calls this 'rebounding violence.'
I think Christ is a good example of non-violence (except perhaps in the temple scene) though the OT is what yields a more difficult theological question. Perhaps all the violence in the OT is under the umbrella of love, but it is hard to examine say the conquest into Canaan by the Israelites after the deliverance.
Sacraments are joyful though the symbolism still might represent violence within the religion's history. The gospel is indeed joyful...Christ coming to judge is indeed joyful because it is the same Christ who died on the Christ. The sacraments are indeed participating in the body that is the body of Christ and proclaiming faith in what the apostle's creed says..."I believe in..."
I would suggest that violence has always existed within ritual...the blood may be more a contrast to the transcendental...perhaps a symbol of life, but also perhaps a symbol of our mortality.
In many rituals there is a progression from a person of a certain vitality. Then there is a ritual violent act in which the transcendental completely destroys any ounce of vitality and the person becomes completely transcendental. But then a person cannot stay that way because he or she would be dead. So vitality is regained in a second form of violence, usually by the physical consumption of something. In the Eucharist we eat the body and drink the blood of Christ...this would be a symbolic form of violence. This however is not unique to Christianity...most religions have similar acts in their rituals. The first form of violence is at baptism when our old self is destroyed for the new self, free from sin because of our faith in the grace of God.
The symbolic act is still violent. The transcendental destroys our initial vitality, and by means of the Eucharist we continually gain back vitality. But the transcendental element is never gone. It stays with us, uplifting us, giving us a sense of empowerment, much more so than before. At this stage, when that empowerment is fresh, often times in many cultures that second act of violence because a real act of violence, militarily or politically. Perhaps not as apparent in the Christian tradition today, but historically it has happened: the Crusades, etc. It would probably have to depend on historical circumstances, or given a certain traditions cultural and religious values at any given time.
But my point is that the symbolic violence is still there. And in that symbolic violence is the violent potential of that symbol.
Fortunately the love commandment as an ethical guideline is a value that Christians hold.
I don't know if we can say that we have advanced in theology, though. Scripture is always having to be interpreted and re-interpreted in historical circumstances from scratch. This is not to say that what Augustine, Aquinas, Jerome, etc have to say is unimportant, but as you said experience is at the heart of the Christian religion.
To go along with what I said about violence, ironically violence is what leads to order in society and in ritual. Without violence, without the testing of extremes we would in fact not know what the extremes of good and bad are and so not make decisions that might contribute to order.
Also, Thomas Kuhn, who introduced his notion of paradigms, he says that paradigms end and begin with a drastic form of violence. This is not just for science though. Religions and cultures experience this too.
Most cultures in many rituals see themselves as somehow different from the world and again being lower than another class of people - the transcendent. In the Okanaiva initiation ritual, pigs are represented as a kind of 'over-mortality.' Pigs lack that part that makes them immortal...they are completely of the world, there to remind the villagers of their mortal selves, but the transcendental are there to remind the villagers of their immortal status, their difference from the pigs.
So you are right that non-Christians or perhaps anthropologists might see all rituals, sacrifices, marriages, etc in this way as they try to note core similarities between the rituals apart from there apparent differences.
I told Amy hi.
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Speaking of which...the baby is bigger now...dude, it is amazing how intricate babies are and miraculous how the splitting of a cell can start a process in which a baby is born. The brain (I've been reading up on this) is one of the first things to start developing...pretty soon the brain will be communicating messages to all parts of the baby's body! Isn't that cool! And the skin is translucent right now so you can see the bones and veins starting to develop in the baby (if we had a camera to see). The bones don't even harden in the stomach but actually harden a few months after the baby is born. This is really interesting stuff I never knew before. Also, the baby really grows and changes fast! Next month it will begin to hear stuff so we've got music lined up...
I don't know where the confusion was, but the anthropologist compared religion to art, not rituals.
As I said previously: religion is in itself created from the knowledge of our own mortality, but this does not imply violence.
I can see where this author sees viloence implied in the sacraments, but I don't see it the same way. Baptism may be a symbol of mortality in life and death, but mortality I do not see as violent. Furthermore I see the Eucharist in the ame fashion. The language may sound violent in nature, but the Christian meaning transcends the contexual language.
I would not argue that rituals contain a 'violent' act, but violence is a part of our humanity. I would argue that our violence separates us from God, while the Sacraments do the opposite. You can argue that the language is violent, as is its ritual base, but cannot argue that the Sacraments are a violent symbol.
I left a bunch of loop holes but I have to sleep.
violence is perhaps more a tool of humanity, something in nature that contributes to order...
To a Christian, the violence is not inherent in the symbol, but to an anthropologist looking to identify similarities among rituals, the violence seems to be an underlying reality and possibility shared by all religions and ritual...
The meaning of the symbol is not necessarily violent in any other ritual or religion either. Though the symbol itself (the language) is a violent image, which has potential of outward thrust.
So I completely agree with you that the Eucharist and Baptism are not violent, though they share a violent image and tendency with other religions, which has the potential of manifesting itself in outward actions to others.
Basically, I guess it is a balance thing. When a group of radicals feels puffed up enough after participating in the Eucharist, that transcendent with them can be used for very violent, exclusivist things (which has happened throughout Christian history). President Bush may be an example, though I haven't thought that through all they way...don't quote me on that. The Crusades were...
This potential of violence is actualized outwardly militarily and politically at times I guess...
I would agree that it is probably because of a false interpretation of Scripture or something like that, but it exists...
Explain to me the violent conotations of Baptism. Unless you stretch it into a deliberate drowing act, there is nothing violent about death; nor rebirth.
Oh crap...the dog peed on the bed...
These 'violent' images, as I pointed out before, are contextual to the language itself. To pass on a story through oral tradition, the language has to be exaggerated in order to get the point across. I propose the same is true of these 'violent' ritual images.
I guess all in all I'v never had a problem with this for the reasons I have pointed out. Language will always be bias and audience based. I don't see violent conotations because the meaning of the sacraments are not violent; the language may be, but to me the whole Bible is full of contextual language that is hard for a 21st century to grasp.
In a sense, I don't disagree with you if I was from a non-Christian viewpoint (which I'm sure you are trying to point out). From that view, yes, the language and acts seem violent and unusual. I can't argue with that. If you are arguing from a non-Christian, outside lens, at Sacraments (first glance), I see violence.
I am willing to talk more on the subject cause it has turned out to be interesting, although my original topic was infant baptism. Hehehehe. I'm gonna get a few other people to come and respond to get more feedback.
I don't really see this as a language thing though...I'm looking at the ritual as it is acted out. The language is what we instill into that ritual and symbol to give it meaning. So the language may not necessarily be that violent (or it may be); I guess my point is that violence seems to be needed for balance...Christ's dying on the cross is a violent thing, though it was necessary to bring humanity back into balance with their true selves (by means of the grace of God)...
There is more I am trying to say, but am struggling to say it (language barrier).
Infant baptism is something I've thought about a lot recently, with the baby due in around 5 months...I'll give a more lengthy response later...must go fix house...
The action of certain rituals may be violent, but I don't see it in the two protestant sacraments.
With Christ, you could argue that a viloent death was necessary to bestow grace on the world, because without violence we would not have mercy, compassion, grace. If this is how you want to explain violent conotation. Maybe from this perspective, I am a glass half full kinda guy, rather than half empty. Their is good and bad. Right and Wrong. Violence and mercy. I guess I can see from this black and white viewpoint your perspective, but I don't view it in that way.
"Sacraments are bearers of good news; the Grace of God."
-John Calvin
"Christianity is most often a culture within a culture, a symbol-system in contrast to or in cooperation with surrounding symbol-systems."
-Lathrop
When John the Baptist performed baptism it had one meaning. "The consensus seems to be that purification washings were carried out in anticipation of the expected day of God. These eschatological ideas were brought into relationship with the available as cultural symbols."
(Batchelder) The gospel accounts of Jesus' baptism, together with stories of washings, constitute interpretations of baptism. They both reinterpret and refuse/critique washing rituals current at the time. From this viewpoint, I don't see the violence implied in baptism. There is a better arguement in the Eucharist, but I still say that Christian meaning transcends any violent conotations that may be humanly perceived.
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