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

to save them from "the wrath to come." Times were very difficult
and infants often died. The fear of damnation answered by doctrinal
theories of atonement justified the universal baptism of infants. The
Reformers would later complain that the work of Christ took on an
almost magical quality in medieval Christianity as parents hastened
to insure the salvation of their children. The modern church must be
sensitive to the parental and pastoral concerns that called forth
instant infant baptism.
By the end of the sixth century, baptism and confirmation had
become two separate sacraments. 27
The church also made a
complete shift from the traditional unified rite for adult believers to
the baptism and separate confirmation of infants. To be sure, the
ritual was somewhat slower to change. The ceremony that had once
been designed for adult converts took on an air of unreality when
said for infants. However,
even when adult baptism ceased to be the rule, and infant baptism became
standard, the water-bath was followed by eucharist, with the infant
receiving a drop of the consecrated wine. This is still part of the
eastern Church's rituals, and it lasted in the West until the cup was
taken from the laity in the early Middle Ages. When the consecrated
bread became the only form for eucharistic reception open to the laity,
the eucharistic aspect of the baptismal liturgy in the West was
dropped. 28
Loss of Sacred Memory
As the time between the sacraments of baptism and confirmation
lengthened, many Christians forgot the traditional purpose of
chrismation/confirmation. Eusebius Gallicanus, writing in the fifth
century, exclaimed:
What good can it do to me, after the mystery of baptism, to have
the ministration of confirmation? So far as I can see, we have not
obtained everything from the font, if after the font we still need
29
something new.
Both Martin Luther and John Wesley inherited this fifth-century
confusion. Luther and other mainline continental reformers attacked
the Roman Catholic sacrament of confirmation and regarded the rite
30 QUARTERLY REVIEW/SPRING 1993