TJieodore W. Jennings, Jr. The Meaning of ... - Quarterly Review

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Holy Spirit comes down willingly from the Father upon the bodies that have been cleansed and blessed, and resteth upon the waters of Baptism, as though remembering His ancient abiding place, who in the form of a dove descended upon the Lord.. ..By the same ordering of spiritual effect, doth the Dove of the Holy Spirit fly down upon our earth, that is, our flesh, when it cometh forth from the laver after itsformer sins, bringing to us the peace of God, sent forth from the heavens, wherein is the Church, the prefigured ark. 12 At about the same time, Hippolytus wrote that it was the practice in Rome to baptize by triple immersion. Immediately following was anointing by the presbyter with the oil of Thanksgiving. After the newly baptized dried and put on clothes, the bishop invoked a prayer to make them worthy of the "laver of regeneration" and "filled with the Holy Spirit." After this prayer, the bishop poured consecrated oil on the newly confirmed and, laying on hands, said, "I anoint thee with holy oil in God the Father Almighty and Christ Jesus and the Holy Ghost." 13 One final quotation points to a unitary baptism rite that extended from the second to the fifth century. This ritual included chrismation following a Spirit-filled water-washing and concluded with first communion for the newly baptized. The "sealing" in chrismation took the form of laying-on-hands with pneumatic prayer, with or without unction. Cyril of Jerusalem (348 C.E.) taught in his catechetical instruction: And He (Christ) having bathed in the Jordan and the Holy Spirit descended personally upon Him, Like resting in Like. And you also when you came out of the pool of the sacred water, you received the anointing, the sacrament (mark) of that with which Christ was anointed, I mean to say, the Holy Spirit... Christ was not anointed by an oil or by a physical perfume given by the hand of men. But the Father, Who established Him in advance as Savior of the whole universe, anointed Him with the Holy Spirit, as Peter says: Jesus of Nazareth Whom God anointed with the Holy Spirit. (Acts 10:38) 14 26 QUARTERLY REVIEW/SPRING 1993
Adult Baptism and Chrismation as Normative in the Ancient Church Christian literature from the first five centuries of the church's life recorded that baptism/chrismation/communion was normative for adults. Cyril of Jerusalem wrote: "The fullness of the sign of baptism is to be found in the baptism of believing adults." 15 Allen F. Bray III states, "The historical reality is that adults were the ones who were exposed, instructed and received as fully-participating members." 16 Balthasar Fischer, Chairman of the Vatican Council Subcommittee on the Baptism of Adults and Children, in answer to the question "Is adult initiation normative?" replies, "Not in the sense that would prejudice infant baptism...but the original pattern of baptism in the early church was only to be seen in adult baptism." 17 The Faith and Order Commission of the World Council of Churches, in its consensus document "Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry," summarizes this growing perspective of scholars with this carefully worded consensus paragraph: While the possibility that infant baptism was also practiced in the apostolic age cannot be excluded, baptism upon profession of faith is the most clearly attested pattern in the New Testament documents. Christians believed that water baptism was the sacramental sign of regeneration. Chrismation naturally followed as a sealing by the Holy Spirit of the promises of baptism (by dying to sin and rising to new life in Christ) and the granting of power to live out the life of faith in the world. Baptism was the act by which the believer was accepted into the visible church, and chrismation functioned as a sign of the baptism covenant, an authenticating seal of God's gracious action for salvation in Jesus Christ. From the second to the fifth centuries, chrismation was a universal practice of the Christian Church, being celebrated immediately on coming up out of the water. It was understood to confer the gift of the Holy Spirit as a logical consequence of baptism and its necessary completion. 19 CONFIRMATION: IT S HISTORY AND MEANING 27
Page 1 and 2: Quarterly Review/Spring 1993 55.00
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Page 8 and 9: I have always rather liked the gruf
Page 10 and 11: of discipleship in the New Testamen
Page 12 and 13: imagine a week without visiting the
Page 14 and 15: transform all of life, and all that
Page 16 and 17: Contemporary North American Christi
Page 18 and 19: We must now see what it is that cha
Page 20 and 21: saying "call no one your father in
Page 22 and 23: 13:12). There is no following of Je
Page 24 and 25: Both New Testament discipleship and
Page 26 and 27: 17. "The Duty of Constant Communion
Page 28 and 29: earliest Christian congregations be
Page 30 and 31: his baptism to the experience of Ch
Page 34 and 35: The Sacramental Nature of the Bapti
Page 36 and 37: to save them from "the wrath to com
Page 38 and 39: aptism—for mature youth and adult
Page 40 and 41: purpose of a rite of maturity is to
Page 42 and 43: church, namely, thatbaptism-chrisma
Page 44 and 45: 31. John Wesley, Works, X: 151. 32.
Page 46 and 47: In Baptismal Covenant I, in the "In
Page 48 and 49: of God without being born of water
Page 50 and 51: they urged a stronger claim for a p
Page 52 and 53: After analyzing how American Method
Page 54 and 55: eferred to as "a symbol of an inner
Page 56 and 57: of baptism is "the washing away the
Page 58 and 59: Although there is only scant likeli
Page 60 and 61: ut the inner man, where we have put
Page 62 and 63: Notes 1. Lawrence Hull Stookey, "Th
Page 64 and 65: 44. Borgen, 159f.; Stein, 319, f, 1
Page 66 and 67: I am not a liturgical scholar or pr
Page 68 and 69: ounden duty...to consecrate our chi
Page 70 and 71: formed in the gospel not only by le
Page 72 and 73: life, for one could always lose gra
Page 74 and 75: However, I have focused on human ac
Page 76 and 77: Osborne, Kenan B. The Christian Sac
Page 78 and 79: It was raining pretty hard one Satu
Page 80 and 81: the same time a young man came to s
Page 82 and 83:
theologically unpacked. A pastoral
Page 84 and 85:
Elizabeth Achtemeier's Preaching fr
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prophets by the traditions of ancie
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eading; it seems as if one is heari
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Brueggemann's discussion of royal v
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limitations, even in quite valuable
Page 95 and 96:
M. Eugene Boring Interpreting 1 Pet
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particular way. The particularity o
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in the capital of the empire felt m
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location but about the way we relat
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answer: Read. Interpret. Examine. B
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in liturgical settings. Yet all of
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word accomplished by Jesus, who cal
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community that does what priests do
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kings, slavery as a divinely author
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wives and husbands. To each it migh
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etained some of the oral style appr
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Brox, Norbert. Der erste Petrusbrie
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