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

Stookey repeatedly claims that Christ is active in the water. There is
an objective quality to baptism. Baptism is a sign that God grants us,
but **it is a sign that brings to pass, by the power of the Holy Spirit,
the very identity it proclaims." Stookey connects forgiveness of sins
with baptism. He has no difficulty stating that
All of us come to baptism as sinners equally guilty before God,
and all of us come away from baptism as those who have been
made God's adopted sons and daughters through grace?
Stookey provides the necessary demurrers. He does not make
individual salvation dependent upon baptism; he sees baptism not as
a magical act but as a beginning point of birth, from which people
are expected to grow. He laments the devaluation of the sacraments
and recounts American Methodism's gradual liberalization in its
baptismal liturgies in the early twentieth century, as far as the
doctrine of sin is concerned. This book, so rich in biblical and
historical support for the church's theology and practice of baptism,
concludes with the author's growing awareness of the meaning for
his own Christian life that his baptism in infancy has had.
James F. White, in his book Sacraments as God's Self-Giving,
contends that a revolution in our thinking about the sacraments and
our use of them has come about by our reinterpretation of the word
signify. 3
Sacraments, according to White, are sign-acts through
which God actually gives himself to us. They are actions through
which God relates to us in the here and now, establishing a personal
relationship with us just as God once acted in the basic sacrament,
Jesus Christ, who came into the world to make God known. Since
God is the chief actor in the sacraments, the power of the sacrament
rests upon God alone.
Does White speak in terms of baptismal regeneration? He does
see New Birth as a fifth biblical image of baptism, another of which
is forgiveness of sins. White approvingly states that in the New
Testament church
. . . baptism is a means through which the uncleanliness of sins
is washed away and we are united to Christ with a clear conscience.
As to the New Birth, White contends that physical birth is a gift,
not something we do for ourselves. He uses the John 3:5 text in
which our Lord tells Nicodemus that no one can enter the kingdom
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