Common Agreement on Mutual Recognition of Baptism - National ...

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and ordering of elements, they share the common concerns stated earlier: attention to the Word
(particularly clear in explicit scriptural warrant for liturgical practice); emphasis on the water as
central symbol and sign of God‘s grace; concern to locate baptism in the church in connection
with public worship; and emphasis on the connection of baptism and ongoing nurture of the faith
(as illustrated by admonitions to parents and/or godparents). We also see through the 16 th
century a growth in exhortation/instruction as a part of the baptismal service in Reformed
congregations. Though baptismal instruction may well have been intended by Zwingli and
Bucer, this element is firmly ensconced as a part of the baptismal service by the time we reach
Calvin, Knox, and the Heidelberg-Dutch traditions. These four themes that shaped reform of
rites in the 16 th century continue to exercise major influence in Reformed rites up to the present.
4. c. Historical developments: Roman Catholic
The Council of Trent (1545-1563) left the actual revision of the rites of the sacraments to
the judgment of the Pope and his curia as the agents of reform (see Annibale Bugnini, The
Reform of the Liturgy [Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1990] 5). It would take the major effort
of Pius V (1504-1572) and Paul V (1552-1621) to help realize the required changes. Session 7
of that council addressed fourteen principal concerns about baptism which were intended to
answer the claims of some reformers who had posed new understandings about long-held
baptismal belief. These same concerns would influence the shape of baptismal rites only
gradually, if at all, during the fifty year period following the Council.
Among the concerns which touched on the rite of baptism itself was the necessity for the
use of water in baptism, rather than the acceptance of a kind of ―baptism of the spirit‖ in its place
(Sess.7:c.2). In addition, the Council re-affirmed that baptism may be validly administered by
anyone, including heretics, as long as they held ―the intention of doing what the church does‖
(cum intentione faciendi, quod facit ecclesia) in baptism (Sess.7:c.4). The Council denied that
the only appropriate age for baptism is adulthood (Sess.7:cc.12; cf. cc.13 and 14). Lastly, Trent
clearly taught that children who are baptized need not be re-baptized when they reach the ability
to profess their own faith, since the Church professed faith on their behalf at their baptisms
(Sess.7:c.13).
Implicit in several of the canons from the Council of Trent (Sess. 7:cc. 12, 13, 14, 14) is
an argument about whether baptism is efficacious for those not able to freely profess their own
faith, but instead have it professed by others on their behalf. This practice had been rejected
vigorously by the Anabaptists, but defended as authentically Christian by John Calvin in 1536
(Institutes 4.16); in Martin Luther‘s Sermon on the Third Sunday after the Epiphany of 1525 and
in Martin Bucer‘s Grund und Ursach of 1521. It is to be noted, however, that the Reformed
understanding of paedo-baptism and its place within the believing community did not correspond
with that of Roman teaching, despite the appearance of common ritual elements used by both
churches.
Differences on paedo-baptism between the Roman Catholic and Reformed churches of
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries appear to lie more centrally in the question of the rite as a
sign and seal of God‘s promise of grace. In the Reformed tradition, infant baptism is not essential
to salvation, since it can not bring about the assent of the individual to the action of God, i.e., it
can not produce an act of faith. What is more, within Reformed theology, grace is presumed to
be available to every child of a believing Christian, by virtue of being born into the covenant.
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