On the eve of my two sons’ baptism this Easter Sunday, I looked back to see where the Paschal Baptism tradition went in the liturgy.  It should be a tradition that more Protestants observe.  The brief story I share here about Paschal baptism also sheds light on how absolute insistence to hold on to one doctrinal commitment can lead to implausible, absurd, and sometimes harmful ends with regard to other doctrines and their resultant effect on worship and human living.

It was quite prevalent and common to do all of the baptisms either the night before or the morning of Easter in order to truly celebrate the death of the old being and the resurrection of the new in Christ.  It was a sacramental way to participate in the death and resurrection of Christ and for the people partaking of the mass to do the same.  Hughes Oliphant Old literally wrote the book on Reformed worship and baptism.  (His Reading & Preaching of the Scriptures in the Worship of the Christian Church is quite remarkable as well but I have not had time to digest it as fully as I would like).  From his tutelage at Princeton, I can truly say that I came to an understanding of the root cause of the Reformation.  The question was not, how do we change doctrine, but how do we worship God?  It is from this question that the political and theological transformations took place.

In his book The Shaping of the Reformed Baptismal Rite in the Sixteenth Century he discusses how the Paschal baptismal rite faded from the liturgy.

By the beginning of the Reformation the great baptismal celebrations of the Easter season were a thing of the past.The mounting expectation during the forty days of catechetical preparation, the magnificent Paschal Vigil with its reading of the Old Testament types of baptism, the solemn consecration of the font, the baptisms themselves near the dawn of Easter morning, and the celebration of communion in the full light of the resurrection, which back in the fourth century had made such an exciting liturgical drama, had all disappeared.  There were few traces of all that Easter glory in he baptism celebrated on the eve of the Reformation.  The rites we find in Strasbourg and Constance can be celebrated with dispatch, in less than half an hour and at the time most convenient for either priest or parent (p. 23).

Baptism performed this way has such theological weight to it.  If it is a sign and seal not only as something to nourish the faith of the people of God, but to act as a visible sign of the mystery of God’s eternal grace, performing baptism in the midst of the splendor of worshiping the resurrected Christ has such a prominence in framing the entire liturgical season.  So why did this fade away?   As Old continues:

What seemed to change this insistence on the two classical occasions for baptism was the growing conviction of the absolute necessity of baptism.  The necessity of baptism was considered so absolute to such theologians as Bernard, Peter Lombard, and Hugh of St. Victor that by the end of the twelfth century no one dared wait for Easter, particularly if that meant waiting the better part of a year.  Such insistence, coupled with the cold reality that a quarter to a half of these infants would not live a year, effectively undermined the tradition of paschal baptisms (p. 24).

From this baptism became a right to be performed on the eighth day after birth in order to mitigate midwife baptisms which would have been more common due to the absolute insistence of the rite.  Indeed this did happen and as Old quotes the ritual of Constance, “In necessity it can be conferred by a layman of either sex, even from a heretic, or a schismatic, or a Jew, if only there is the intention and if the formula is used”.

The absolute insistence here is that without baptism which conferred the washing of original sin, one simply could not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.  Infants get a free pass if they pass away before the eight days grace period the church also conferred.  But this did not mitigate midwife baptism and, in fact, it became a common thing.   Thus, the rite was in danger of becoming a household rite which indeed it was in numerous instances as the sketch of the church’s position shows in the rite of Constance.

This is an illustration of the absurdities that come out of holding an absolute position regarding a doctrine.  In this case the doctrine is that without baptism, you are eternally damned.  With the theological reasoning here, there is also political reasoning to legitimate it.  Baptism is also the rite that initiates you into the covenant of the church.  The church at the time demanded assent from everyone.  Thus, we cannot divorce politically motivated legitimations here from a theological rationale behind more or less immediate and frequent baptism.

However, it is clear that this claim resulted in implausible conclusions with regard to salvation.  Baptism so conceived is not just a visible sign of an invisible mystery, it is literally the rite that acts as a container of grace if you will.  Hugh of t. Victor would use this kind of understanding for the Eucharist as well.  Without that which contains the grace of God, the grace of God cannot be conferred to the initiate.  It must, therefore, com through the church.  But as we see the church gave this “container” to others in order that infants could receive grace.  And then there is the arbitrary assignment of eight days additional grace from the church in order to have the rite performed in due time.

This is why theology is a systematic enterprise.  It is an attempt to find harmony when various doctrines are intertwined in an effort to define and clarify the realities of Scripture.  But I liken it to being a good pragmatist when we are constructing our doctrinal understandings of things.  If one doctrine that you hold so dear causes other doctrines not to be faithful to the witness of Scripture, it seems that the tendency has been to make all other doctrines conform to the one that you hold so dear.  This is true of inerrancy, biblical literalism, Calvinism’s absolute reliance on total depravity, a literal bodily resurrection of Jesus, etc.  If one doctrinal commitment causes others to seem implausible or fundamentally irrational, it is better to revise or do away with the source of the doctrinal problem rather than adjust everything else to fit that one doctrinal commitment.