Some sort of what we would describe as a profession of faith has been integral to Christian baptism since its inception, even in the case of infants, and I intend to argue that the evidence for the early forms of this act suggests a much more complex development than is often portrayed. In particular, I shall claim that the understanding of its nature changed quite significantly in the course of the first few centuries, and that it was this change that in part gave rise to questions and doubts about the propriety of administering baptism to infants which have continued to trouble many Christians down to the present day.
At the outset, however, it is important to take note of an important distinction that is often overlooked in the study of early baptismal practice, between formulae that might have been used catechetically and those that were used liturgically. The two are not the same thing, but in the past some scholars have presumed that if an author appeared to be quoting some sort of credal formula, then that must necessarily have been used in that form in the baptismal rite. Credal expansions of the attributes of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, do appear quite early in Christian literature. Justin Martyr, for example, in the middle of the second century speaks of the candidates being baptized ‘in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and in the name of the Holy Spirit, who predicted through the prophets everything concerning Jesus’.1 But this apparent citation of a nascent credal formula does not mean that it was recited in that form within the baptismal rite. We would expect credal formulae like this to develop quite early in the Christian tradition – indeed, it has been claimed that some can be detected within the New Testament writings themselves – but the most probable use of these would have been in pre-baptismal catechesis. We should not make the assumption that they were being used liturgically without explicit testimony to that effect.
What appears to be the oldest extant instance of a form of profession of faith in connection with baptism is provided by the so-called Western text of the book of the Acts of the Apostles. Here in chapter 8, the account of the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch by Philip, as a response to the eunuch’s question, ‘What is to prevent my being baptized?’, this manuscript tradition inserts verse 37: ‘And Philip said, “If you believe with all your heart, you may.” And he replied, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.”’ We do not know whether this was the precise wording of an actual liturgical formula, nor, if it was, where it might have been in use, but it certainly implies that something like it was part of the living tradition of at least one Christian community through which a Greek manuscript of the Acts of the Apostles was transmitted and so was responsible for its textual elaboration at this point.
The Didache
When we look for further examples in early Christian literature in the East, it is rather surprising to discover that the Didache, which many would date as having been composed well before the end of the first century, contains no reference at all to a profession of faith among its instructions for the celebration of baptism. What it does contain, however, is an apparent indication of the use of a baptismal formula by the minister at the moment of immersion, seemingly in Trinitarian form, ‘in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’ (7.1–3), although some scholars have doubts whether these words are intended to refer to an actual liturgical formula as such,2 while others believe the present text to be a later adaptation of an earlier version that used the name of Jesus alone.3 It is even possible that the Trinitarian baptismal formula in Matthew 28.19 is also a somewhat later insertion into the Gospel.4 If these claims are true, it would mean that baptism in the name of Jesus alone might well have continued into the middle of the second century, if not later still, in some parts of the ancient world. The criticism made by Cyprian of Carthage (Epistulae 74.5; 75.18) appears to indicate that the church at Rome in the third century was still willing to accept the sufficiency of baptisms in the name of Jesus alone, even if its own practice was now Trinitarian.
Commentators have generally not remarked on the absence of any reference to a profession of faith in the Didache text, although J. N. D. Kelly did make the quite unwarranted assumption that an interrogatory creed was ‘almost certainly presupposed’.5 Nevertheless, it may be possible to shed some light on what seems to be a strange omission. The text mentions fasting beforehand, so why not a profession of faith? I have already argued in the previous chapter that, according to the evidence of the Didascalia and other sources, ethical instruction would have preceded the making of the profession of faith in the Syrian tradition and specifically doctrinal teaching would have been reserved until afterwards and given in the interval between then and the occasion of baptism itself.6 We have no way of knowing how early this temporal separation of the baptismal profession from the rite as such came into being, but if it were quite ancient, it might help explain why there is no reference to a profession in the baptismal instructions in the Didache: it was not part of the immediate preliminaries of baptism but belonged to a prior stage in the process.
Fourth-century Syrian rites
Be that as it may, in the Syrian baptismal tradition the distinction between the two elements was maintained in later centuries, even though the interval between them became greatly reduced. Thus, as we saw in the preceding chapter from one of his addresses to baptismal candidates, delivered around the year 388, John Chrysostom seems to have known at Antioch a formula of renunciation of evil and an act of faith in Christ that occurred on the day before the baptism, which was now celebrated on Easter Eve.7 In another such address, delivered two years later, he indicates that the words used by the candidate in what he describes as a ‘contract’ were: ‘I renounce you, Satan, your pomp, your worship, and your works. And I pledge myself, Christ, to you.’ And he goes on to explain that ‘once you have made this covenant, this renunciation and contract, since you have confessed his sovereignty over you and pronounced the words by which you pledge yourself to Christ, you are now a soldier and have signed on for a spiritual contest’.8 A similar pattern can also be found in the later rite of Constantinople.9
That in the ancient Syrian tradition the profession of faith did not originally occur in close conjunction with the moment of immersion but some time before it suggests that its relation to baptism was viewed somewhat differently from those parts of the West where, as we shall see, the two actions took place concurrently. The profession of faith here appears as the moment of decision for the convert, and symbolizes a change of ownership and allegiance from the devil to Christ, especially in the more dramatic forms that it took in several fourth-century rites, when the candidate faced west to renounce the devil and then turned towards the east for the act of adherence to the person of Christ. It was the occasion of final commitment to Christ’s service, which then admitted the believer to the inner circle of his disciples where he or she would learn the deep truths of the Christian faith that were hidden from unbelievers. Only after this teaching had been vouchsafed to the elect, would they go on to the final stage of baptism and incorporation into the number of the faithful. Thus, ritually speaking, the three stages of transition – pre-liminal, liminal, and post-liminal – are quite clearly differentiated here, and the profession of faith or act of adherence marks the movement from the pre-liminal to the liminal stage, and not from the liminal to the post-liminal.
Liturgical practice did not remain constant, however. Already we can see in the testimony of John Chrysostom’s contemporary, Theodore of Mopsuestia, that the rite he knew had undergone further changes. Not only had the time gap between the profession of faith and immersion closed still further, so that both now took place within the one rite, but the act of adherence had become Trinitarian in focus rather than simply Christological: ‘I pledge myself by vow, I believe, I am baptized in the name of the Father, of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’10 The Mystagogical Catecheses attributed to Cyril of Jerusalem tell of a similar modification in wording. The author states: ‘Then you were told to say: “I believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and in one baptism of repentance.”’11 Later rites, while still retaining traces of the original two-part structure,12 also reveal similar developments. Thus faith had ceased to be the gateway to an inner discipleship that would only later culminate in baptism; and in some cases what had been an act of personal commitment to the living Lord became an expression of belief in a more abstract Trinitarian godhead.
An even more significant change than this was also taking place at the same time, however: the attachment of the full text of a creed to the short act of faith. J. N. D. Kelly believed that this was what actually happened in the rite described in the Mystagogical Catecheses, but that the author abridged it in his description because he ‘may have felt some compunction about setting [it] down’.13 This seems highly improbable, because the pilgrim Egeria describes the candidates in Jerusalem repeating back to the bishop the Creed they had learned early in the morning a week before their baptism at Easter,14 a practice that parallels that in some Western rites and almost certainly copied from there.15 Be that as it may, we do find the Creed thus appended in the late-fourth-century Apostolic Constitutions, although the initial act of adherence is still directed towards Christ here and not the Trinity:
And I associate myself to Christ; and I believe, and am baptized into one unbegotten [being], the only true God, the Almighty, the Father of Christ, the Creator and Maker of all [things], from whom are all [things]; and into the Lord Jesus Christ, his only-begotten Son, the first-born of the whole creation, who before all ages was begotten by the good pleasure of the Father, through whom all things were made, those in heaven and those on earth, visible and invisible; who in the last days descended from heaven, and took flesh, [and] was begotten of the holy virgin Mary, and lived holily according to the laws of his God and Father, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and died for us, and rose again from the dead the third day after his passion, and ascended into the heavens, and is seated at the right hand of the Father, and is to come again at the end of the world with glory to judge the living and the dead, [and] of whose kingdom there shall be no end. And I am baptized into the Holy Spirit, that is the Paraclete, who wrought in all the saints from the beginning [of the world], but was afterwards sent also to the apostles by the Father, according to the promise of our Saviour and Lord Jesus Christ, and after the apostles to all those that believe in the holy catholic and apostolic Church; [and I am baptized] into the resurrection of the flesh, and into the remission of sins, and into the kingdom of the heavens, and into the life of the world to come.16
Although it may be objected that we have no way of knowing whether this text represents a liturgical rite in actual use or a fanciful compilation by the author, yet it is confirmed by other sources, including the later Constantinopolitan rite.17 Some of them preserve the act of adherence to Christ alone along with the Creed, while others resemble Theodore of Mopsuestia’s rite in substituting a reference to the Trinity instead. Indeed, it seems that even Chrysostom himself may have been familiar with the addition of the Creed to the act of adherence, in spite of his making no mention of it in his addresses to baptismal candidates. He touches on it in a sermon preached on 1 Corinthians 15.29 at Antioch a few years after those addresses. The absence of any reference to it in those earlier works could be because it was a subsequent development, but is more likely because the text of the Creed was still being kept secret, at least in theory, from those not yet baptized, as is evident from his obvious embarrassment in alluding to it in a sermon in front of both those who were baptized (and so would know all about it) and those who were not (and so should not learn about it):
But first I wish to remind you who are initiated of the response which on that evening they who introduce you to the mysteries bid you make . . .And I desire indeed expressly to utter it, but I dare not on account of the uninitiated; for these add a difficulty to our exposition, compelling us either not to speak clearly or to declare unto them the ineffable mysteries. Nevertheless, as I may be able, I will speak as through a veil.
As thus: after the enunciation of those mystical and fearful words, and the awful rules of the doctrines which have come down from heaven, this also we add at the end when we are about to baptize, bidding them say, ‘I believe in the resurrection of the dead’, and upon this faith we are baptized. For after we have confessed this together with the rest, then at last are we let down into the fountain of those sacred streams.18
It is not entirely clear at precisely what point in the initiatory process this took place. The reference to ‘that evening’, to being ‘about to baptize’, and then at the end to going down into the water after the confession might seem to point to it happening during the baptismal rite itself at the Easter vigil and not in conjunction with the renunciation and act of adherence on the preceding day at the ninth hour. But, as Ruth Meyers has suggested, it is possible that the ninth hour could have been loosely understood as the evening, since services of the word at that hour often led directly into the evening office,19 and the text does not explicitly say that the immersion followed the creed immediately. She goes on to conjecture that it actually took place on Thursday and not Friday, on the basis of a statement in Chrysostom’s Thursday address that the candidates are going to say ‘I believe’,20 but to presume that he must have meant on that very day and not on the next seems unwarranted. An alternative possibility is that liturgical changes had taken place in the years after his baptismal addresses, and the whole rite, including renunciation and act of adherence, was now celebrated on Easter Eve, as in the case of Theodore of Mopsuestia. On the other hand, when Theodore himself refers to the recitation of both the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, although he is not very precise, the context seems to imply that it took place on some unspecified day before the renunciation and act of adherence, in other words that it resembled the redditio that we find in the Jerusalem rite.21
The introduction of the recitation of a full creed into the rite is a perfectly understandable consequence of the moving of the profession of faith from before the period of credal instruction to its end. It would be natural for there to be a desire to sum up by this liturgical recitation what had been learned in the preceding weeks and in some cases to attach it to the solemn renunciation and act of adherence already present in the final preparatory rites. But the results were unfortunate, to say the least. The substantial text of the Creed greatly overshadowed the brief formula of adherence to Christ, sandwiched as it now was between a more lengthy renunciation and this doctrinal giant. Moreover, it had the effect of changing the implied character of baptismal faith, from an act of personal commitment to Christ to belief in a body of doctrines as the necessary prerequisite for baptism.
Early Roman practice
Before pursuing this important point further, however, let us first turn our attention to the practice of the profession of faith in the West, where, as I have suggested earlier, it appears to have taken a quite different form from that in the East. Unfortunately, when we attempt to ascertain what went on in Rome, our natural starting-point, we are faced with some difficulty. There is little evidence available for early baptismal practice here, and both of the sources which look as if they might offer us the best testimony are surrounded with problems of different kinds. Justin Martyr says that new Christians are washed ‘in the name of God, the Father and Lord of all, and of our Saviour, Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit’.22 This description has commonly been understood as referring to a threefold interrogation and immersion of the candidate similar to that which we will encounter both in the so-called Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus and in Tertullian in North Africa and which we certainly find in Roman sources several centuries later. But Justin does not explicitly say that this is what happens, and indeed he goes on to describe this ‘name’ as being ‘invoked over the one who wishes to be regenerated’.23 While it is just about conceivable that the Greek verb translated here as ‘invoked’ (έπονομάζεται) could mean that the baptizer questions the candidate about his or her belief in God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, its more natural sense would seem to be that the baptizer pronounces over the candidate the threefold name.24 In other words, it appears that Justin may be outlining a baptismal practice of a Syrian kind, and not what later became the standard Roman way of doing things. This would not be all that surprising. Roman Christians were still at this period grouped in a multitude of local house churches, many of which doubtless had a strongly ethnic character, and as Justin was Syrian in origin and had been baptized at Ephesus, it is likely that he would have belonged to a community at Rome that was primarily Eastern in membership and hence in its liturgical practices.25 If this is so, then the profession of faith may have taken place on an earlier occasion than the baptism itself. Justin may be referring to this occasion when he says that ‘those who are convinced and believe what we say and teach is the truth, and pledge themselves to be able to live accordingly, are taught in prayer and fasting to ask God to forgive their past sins’,26 as this certainly seems to imply an interval of some kind before the baptism itself takes place.
Problems of a different sort emerge with regard to the second source that has commonly been used to reconstruct pre-Nicene Roman liturgical practice – the so-called Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus. As we have seen earlier, a growing number of scholars would now regard this work as a composite document, comprising several different strata added to the core at different points between the second and fourth centuries, and very probably stemming from different geographical regions.27 This appears particularly true of its account of baptismal practice, and thus it can no longer be read confidently as a reliable description of what went on at Rome in the early third century. Nevertheless, in spite of this, when one strips away what seem to be later accretions from this part of the text, what emerges appears remarkably similar in a number of respects to what later became the standard Roman baptismal rite. These later accretions include extensive credal elaborations of the questions about faith that are put to the candidates. In the light of the distinction between catechetical and liturgical formulae that I made at the beginning of this chapter, it appears that these are catechetical formulae that have been artificially inserted into the text of the baptismal rite itself by later hands. They cannot be regarded as offering trustworthy testimony for actual liturgical practice without independent corroborative evidence, which in this case is lacking.28
As we saw in the preceding chapter, the core rite within this text appears to have known a moment of decision and admission to doctrinal instruction some time before the baptism itself. In contrast to the Syrian tradition represented by the third-century Didascalia Apostolorum, however, that door was opened not by an act of faith from the candidates but an examination of their moral conduct while living as catechumens. Here, therefore, the proof of true faith is looked for in the changed life of the candidate, while its verbal profession is deferred until the point of baptism, where there is as yet no indicative formula said by the minister. With the later accretions peeled away, the baptismal rite appears to have involved a brief threefold response by the candidate to questions put to him or her and accompanied by a threefold immersion in the water. Thus the candidate is asked, ‘Do you believe in God the Father almighty?’, responds ‘I believe’, and is immersed once. He or she is then asked, ‘Do you believe in Christ Jesus, the Son of God?’ and responds in the same way before being immersed a second time. Finally, the candidate is asked, ‘Do you believe in the Holy Spirit?’, and after answering is immersed for a third time.29
These interrogations at first sight seem to suggest that the primary focus of the rite was on the content of the candidates’ beliefs rather than on their personal commitment to their Lord, as in ancient Syrian practice. But J. Albert Harrill has pointed out that the normal method of making a contract under Roman law, known as a stipulatio or sponsio, ‘took a highly structured format in which one person, typically a prospective creditor, asks a question (interrogatio), and another person, typically a prospective debtor, gives an affirming answer (responsio) that must repeat the same verb as the question’,30 a particularly useful convention when the Latin language lacked a word for ‘yes’. This cultural background implies that the original purpose of the baptismal questions and answers is therefore better seen as the establishing of a contract between the candidate and the triune God rather than as constituting subscription to specific articles of faith. Indeed, Tertullian in North Africa at the beginning of the third century described the process of repeating the words (verba respondimus) as being ‘drafted into the army of the living God’, likening it to taking the military oath (sacramentum) with which a soldier signed on (Ad martyras 3.1), thus anticipating by nearly two centuries the simile employed by John Chrysostom cited earlier.31 Yet it strongly suggests that though the form of this interrogatory exchange may be different from the act of adherence found in the Syrian sources, its original purpose was apparently the same, the articulation of commitment, making a contract, effecting a change of ownership.
While the absence of any contemporary corroborative evidence means we cannot be sure that the core baptismal rite underlying the so-called Apostolic Tradition really does reflect early Roman baptismal practice, it is not dissimilar to two other sources deriving from neighbouring regions that are commonly thought to have closely paralleled what went on in Rome: Milan and North Africa.
Milan
Admittedly, Ambrose of Milan is a witness for the late fourth century rather than the late second-century date that I am postulating for the core rite of the Apostolic Tradition. Yet what he appears to cite as the formulae in use in his church do not differ much from what I have just described, and Ambrose was proud to claim that his local liturgical customs in general did not differ significantly from the practice of Rome. He says:
You were asked: ‘Do you believe in God the Father almighty?’ You replied: ‘I believe’, and you were immersed: that is, buried. You were asked for a second time: ‘Do you believe in our Lord Jesus Christ and in his cross?’ You replied: ‘I believe’ and you were immersed: which means that you were buried with Christ. For one who is buried with Christ rises again with Christ. You were asked for a third time: ‘Do you believe also in the Holy Spirit?’ You replied: ‘I believe’, and you were immersed a third time, so that the threefold confession might absolve the manifold lapses of the past.32
Of course, one cannot rule out the possibility that Ambrose might have been here abbreviating what was actually said, but because he includes what appears to be an expansion of the formula, ‘and in his cross’, that seems less likely. Whether that expansion was actually in the spoken formula or is merely an interpretative gloss by Ambrose in his commentary is hard to decide. It is interesting to note that the Jerusalem rite too at this time seems to have acquired a similar threefold baptismal interrogation at the moment of immersion – another indication of Western influence there. The Mystagogical Catecheses state: ‘Each person was asked if he believed in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. You made the confession that brings salvation, and submerged yourselves three times in the water and emerged . . .’33
North Africa
This second parallel source is more contemporary with the date I am assigning to the core rite of the Apostolic Tradition. From the allusions that Tertullian makes to baptismal practice, it appears that he too was familiar with a threefold questioning of the candidates as to their faith in conjunction with a threefold immersion. He states that ‘when we have entered the water, we make profession of the Christian faith in the words of its rule’,34 and elsewhere that ‘we are three times immersed, while we answer interrogations rather more extensive than our Lord has prescribed in the Gospel’.35 What ‘our Lord has prescribed in the Gospel’ appears to be baptism in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in Matthew 28.19, which Tertullian in his treatise on baptism describes as being ‘a law of baptizing’ and ‘its form prescribed’.36 How then are the interrogations ‘rather more extensive’? Does he simply mean that a few more words were used in each one, such as ‘Do you believe in God the Father Almighty?’ Or does he mean they have been expanded in some other way? Earlier in the treatise he had said that ‘after pledging both of the attestation of faith and the promise of salvation under “three witnesses”, there is added of necessity mention of the Church; inasmuch as wherever there are three (that is, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit), there is the Church, which is a body of three’.37 That seems to suggest that the third question asked: ‘Do you believe in the Holy Spirit and in the holy Church?’ Such an expansion also occurs in the baptismal questions in the Testamentum Domini, one of the derivatives of the Apostolic Tradition,38 and half a century later than Tertullian in North Africa, Cyprian of Carthage provides evidence for a similar expansion of the baptismal questions. He asserts that ‘the very interrogation which is put in baptism is a witness of the truth. For when we say, “Do you believe in eternal life and remission of sins through the holy church?” we mean that remission of sins is not granted except in the church.’39
Later Roman practice
While it is not clear whether Cyprian is referring to an extension to the third question, about the Holy Spirit, or whether he means that there is an additional, fourth, question, the earliest official Roman liturgical manuscript to provide the words used at the administration of baptism, the eighth-century Gelasian Sacramentary, apparently reflecting practice that goes back at least to the sixth century, manifests a similar credal expansion to the interrogatories in which the additions are appended to the third question:
And before you pour the water over him, you question him with the words of the Creed, and say:
Do you believe in God the Father Almighty? R. I believe.
And do you believe in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, who was born and suffered? R. I believe.
And do you believe in the Holy Spirit; the Holy Church, the remission of sins, the resurrection of the flesh? R. I believe.
And while you ask the questions, you dip him three separate times in the water.40
Thus the original threefold questioning has effectively become sixfold – adding belief in the Church, remission of sins, and resurrection (or eternal life in the case of Cyprian). A fivefold articulation of faith, adding Church and either forgiveness of sins or resurrection to the Trinitarian core, is known in a number of other early sources, the oldest being the second-century Epistula Apostolorum,41 and this eventually became part of the standard affirmation of faith in the later Coptic baptismal rite.42 Because the earliest context for this formula is not explicitly baptismal, however, it seems likely that it first emerged as a catechetical tool and only later began to migrate into the baptismal rite itself. It thus provides yet another parallel to the Syrian tradition, where the original brief act of adherence gradually attracted to itself a complete creed. While this process seems to have begun much earlier in the West than in the East, the Romano-African tradition never developed the expansion to the same extent, because by the late fourth century there had emerged within the period of final preparation for baptism a separate solemn handing over of the full creed to the candidates and its repetition back by them. Thus by the time that the candidates reached the baptismal rite itself, that element had already been covered, and so only the earlier short credal expansion remained attached to the profession of faith in that rite.
To sum up, therefore: the original purpose of the act of faith in early baptismal rites both Eastern and Western seems to have been to articulate the change of ownership and allegiance of the candidate, from the devil to Christ. While in the East this was expressed by the candidate making an indicative statement, the Romano-African tradition in the West employed instead the interrogatory form of making a contract that was customary in the surrounding culture, and gave this a Trinitarian shape from early times. Later developments added to this core further credal elements that had previously been employed in a catechetical rather than a liturgical context, more fully in the East than in the West, and in this way obscured its original intent and changed people’s understanding of it. From being an articulation of personal commitment to a new Master, it came to be seen instead as a vocalization of the content of the candidate’s beliefs.
Infant baptism
Yet, if we focus instead on its original role, it is possible that we may be able to make rather more sense of the emergence of the baptism of young children. As David Wright’s studies have persuasively demonstrated, there is a lack of evidence to support the view that the practice of paedo-baptism was universal in the early centuries, and in those places where it did take place, it often seems to have had more to do with the fear of the child dying unbaptized, because of the high level of infant mortality, than any fundamental conviction that all babies ought to be baptized.43 On occasions when infants and young children were baptized, however, it seems that someone else made the responses on their behalf. The Apostolic Tradition gives the instruction: ‘let their parents or another one belonging to their family speak for them’.44 Tertullian also mentions the practice, although he is critical of it. He preferred baptism in general to be delayed, but especially in the case of little children, asking, ‘For what need is there, if there really is no need, for even their sponsors to be brought into peril, seeing they may possibly themselves fail of their promises by death, or be deceived by the subsequent development of an evil disposition?’45 A similar proxy action also appears to have been taken in the case of adult candidates who had signified their desire for baptism but were too ill to answer for themselves when the time came, although explicit evidence for this does not exist until the end of the fourth century.46 The use of sponsors to answer the questions in the case of both babies and sick adults precisely parallels what happened in the making of contracts under Roman law. Because that procedure was entirely verbal, it was impossible for those who were mute or deaf or were infants to be able to make the stipulatio themselves, and so a slave or a guardian, known in Latin as a sponsor, might stand in for them.47
Thus what happened at Christian baptism was in line with the normal customs of the contemporary society. Just as parents and guardians were regarded as qualified to make important decisions on behalf of the children under their care in other aspects of their life, so too were they treated as capable of effecting the transfer of the child’s allegiance from the devil to Christ. However, as that action attracted to itself more specific doctrinal content and the understanding of it consequently shifted away from the making of a contract to the articulation of a particular set of beliefs, questions began to arise in people’s minds as to whether infants were competent to do this. At first different answers emerged. Thus, while Gregory Nazianzus in Cappadocia in 381 advised that children should normally be baptized at about the age of three years, when they were able to answer the baptismal questions themselves and could to some extent understand the Christian faith,48 Augustine of Hippo put forward a justification for infant baptism that was destined to become the standard explanation in later Western theology: faith was not a prerequisite for baptism in their case as it was for adults, because faith was bestowed on the child through the faith of others in the celebration of the rite itself:
when, on behalf of an infant as yet incapable of exercising faith, the answer is given that he believes, this answer means that he has faith because of the sacrament of faith . . . Therefore an infant, although he is not yet a believer in the sense of having that faith which includes the consenting will of those who exercise it, nevertheless becomes a believer through the sacrament of that faith. For as it is answered that he believes, so also he is called a believer, not because he assents to the truth by an act of his own judgment, but because he receives the sacrament of that truth.49
Incidentally, as this extract implies, and other places in Augustine’s writings confirm, in his church the questions were now phrased in the third person (‘Does he/she believe . . .’) and answered in the same way (‘He/she believes’), rather than being put directly to the uncomprehending infant.50 This variation was enough to cause Augustine’s theological opponent Pelagius to argue that, if adults and infants were supposed to be receiving the same baptism, then exactly the same words ought to be used in the rite.51 Although there are signs that this form of the profession of faith was also adopted in Spain and France as well as Africa,52 it did not apparently affect the liturgy at Rome, and so when the Roman rite eventually supplanted all other local rites in the West during the Middle Ages, the use of the adult formula for infants became universal, and effectively reduced the role of the godparent in the rite to that of a mere ventriloquist, supplying a voice for the silent child.
This practice has continued to raise questions for some as to whether babies can properly be said to believe. Yet if we return to what appears to have been the original understanding of the act – a transfer of personal allegiance rather than a statement of assent to doctrinal truths – that may set it in a different light. If parents and guardians (or even courts of law) are thought to be justified in making major decisions affecting the life of minors, then some at least would argue that they are also capable of doing so with regard to religious affiliation. However, it is quite a different question whether an obscure and obsolete method of making a contract in ancient Rome should continue to be used for this purpose rather than another form that would more clearly bring out what is really thought to be going on.
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1 Justin Martyr, First Apology 61.13 (DBL, p. 3).
2 See, for example, Maxwell E. Johnson, The Rites of Christian Initiation: Their Evolution and Interpretation (The Liturgical Press, Collegeville 1999, 2nd edn 2007), p. 46.
3 See Arthur Vööbus, Liturgical Traditions in the Didache (ETSE, Stockholm 1968), pp. 35–9; Willy Rordorf, ‘Baptism according to the Didache’, in Jonathan A. Draper (ed.), The Didache in Modern Research (Brill, Leiden 1996), p. 217; but cf. Niederwimmer, The Didache: A Commentary, pp. 127–8, nn. 8, 11, and 12.
4 See H. B. Green, ‘Matthew 28:19, Eusebius, and the lex orandi’, in Rowan Williams (ed.), The Making of Orthodoxy (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge/New York 1989), pp. 124–41.
5 J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Creeds (Longmans, Green, London 1950), p. 66.
6 See pp. 55–6 above.
7 See p. 57 above.
8 Baptismal Instructions 2.20–2; ET from AIR, pp. 159–60 = DBL, p. 45.
9 DBL, pp. 109–13.
10 Theodore of Mopsuestia, Baptismal Homilies 2.5 (AIR, p. 170 = DBL, p. 48).
11 Mystagogical Catecheses 1.9 (AIR, pp. 74–5 = DBL, p. 31). For the debate about the authorship of the Mystagogical Catecheses, see the recent contributions by Alexis Doval, Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogue: The Authorship of the Mystagogical Catecheses (Catholic University of America Press, Washington, DC 2001), and Juliette Day, The Baptismal Liturgy of Jerusalem (Ashgate, Aldershot 2007), pp. 12–23.
12 See Brock, ‘Studies in the Early History of the Syrian Orthodox Baptismal Liturgy’, pp. 22–3; Meyers, ‘The Structure of the Syrian Baptismal Rite’, pp. 31, 34–8.
13 Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, p. 33.
14 Egeria, Itinerarium 46.5–6; ET in Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels, p. 145 = DBL, p. 34.
15 See above, p. 60, and Augustine, De symbolo 11; Sermo 58.1. But note that in the West it was the handing over (traditio) of the Creed that took place on this day; the handing back (redditio) took place on the baptismal day itself a week later.
16 Apostolic Constitutions 7.3–8; ET from W. Jardine Grisbrooke (ed.), The Liturgical Portions of the Apostolic Constitutions: A Text for Students, Alcuin/GROW Liturgical Study 13–14 (Grove Books, Nottingham 1990), p. 67.
17 DBL, p. 111.
18 John Chrysostom, Homiliae in epistulam 1 ad Corinthios 40.2; ET from NPNF, First Series, 12:244–5.
19 Meyers, ‘The Structure of the Syrian Baptismal Rite’, pp. 39–40.
20 Baptismal Instructions 11.15; ET in Harkins, St John Chrysostom: Baptismal Instructions, p. 165 = DBL, p. 42.
21 Theodore of Mopsuestia, Baptismal Homilies 1.26–8; 2.1; text and French translation in Tonneau and Devreesse, Les homélies catéchétiques, pp. 362–9.
22 Justin Martyr, First Apology 61.3 (DBL, p. 3).
23 Ibid., 61.10 (DBL, p. 3).
24 Its cognate noun is used in the Clementine Homilies when speaking of baptism ‘with the thrice-blessed invocation’ (9.19, 23; 11.26).
25 See Acts of Justin 3.3; 4.7–8, in H. Musurillo (ed.), The Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1972), pp. 44–5. See also Andrew McGowan, Ascetic Eucharists (Clarendon Press, Oxford 1999), pp. 154–5.
26 Justin Martyr, First Apology 61.2 (DBL, p. 3).
28 See Maxwell E. Johnson, ‘The Problem of Creedal Formulae in Traditio Apostolica 21:12–18’, Ecclesia Orans 22 (2005), pp. 159–75.
29 Chapter 21.12–18, reconstructed; see Bradshaw, Johnson, and Phillips, The Apostolic Tradition: A Commentary, pp. 114–19, 124–7; Bradshaw, ‘Redating the Apostolic Tradition: Some Preliminary Steps’, in John Baldovin and Nathan Mitchell (eds), Rule of Prayer, Rule of Faith: Essays in Honor of Aidan Kavanagh, O.S.B. (The Liturgical Press, Collegeville 1996), pp. 3–17, esp. 10–14.
30 J. Albert Harrill, ‘The Influence of Roman Contract Law on Early Baptismal Formulae’, Studia Patristica 35 (2001), pp. 275–82, here at p. 276.
31 In fact, military terms were often used in connection with the catechumenate and baptism, especially by North African writers (see, for example, Tertullian, De paenitentia 6; Commodianus, Instructions 52–3), although it is an interesting choice of metaphor for a movement that was generally opposed to Christians enrolling for actual military service in the imperial army because of the nature of the religious oath soldiers were required to take and of the possibility that they would be called upon to shed blood.
32 Ambrose, De sacramentis 2.20 (AIR, p. 118 = DBL, p. 179).
33 Mystagogical Catecheses 2.4 (AIR, pp. 77–8 = DBL, p. 32).
34 Tertullian, De spectaculis 4 (DBL, p. 11).
35 Tertullian, De corona 3 (DBL, p. 11). Tertullian also refers to a threefold immersion in Adversus Praxean 26 (DBL, p. 11).
36 Tertullian, De baptismo 13; ET from DBL, p. 10.
37 Tertullian, De baptismo 6.
38 See Bradshaw, Johnson, and Phillips, The Apostolic Tradition: A Commentary, p. 117.
39 Cyprian, Epistula 70.2; ET from DBL, pp. 12–13; he attests to the same wording of the question when attacking the Novatianists in Epistula 69.7 (DBL, p. 12).
40 DBL, p. 242.
41 Ch. 5, adding Church and forgiveness of sins to the Trinity; see Wilhelm Schneemelcher (ed.), New Testament Apocrypha, I (2nd edn, James Clarke, Cambridge 1991), p. 253. The expansion also occurs in the Latin version of the baptismal rite of the Apostolic Tradition (20.17), where Church and resurrection are added; see Bradshaw, Johnson, and Phillips, The Apostolic Tradition: A Commentary, p. 116.
42 Adding resurrection and church (in that order) to the Trinity. See DBL, p. 135; Emmanuel Lanne, ‘La confession de foi baptismale à Alexandrie et à Rome’, in A. M. Triacca and A. Pistoia (eds), La liturgie, expression de la foi (C.L.V.-Edizioni liturgiche, Rome 1979), pp. 213–28.
43 See David F. Wright, ‘The Origins of Infant Baptism – Child Believers’ Baptism?’, Scottish Journal of Theology 40 (1987), pp. 1–23; ‘How Controversial Was the Development of Infant Baptism in the Early Church?’, in James E. Bradley and Richard A. Muller (eds), Church, Word, and Spirit: Historical and Theological Essays in Honor of Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids 1987), pp. 45–63; ‘At What Ages were People Baptized in the Early Centuries?’, Studia Patristica 30 (1997), pp. 389–94.
44 Chapter 21.4 (Sahidic version).
45 De baptismo 18.4; ET from DBL, p. 10.
46 See Council of Hippo (North Africa, AD 393), canon 36; First Council of Orange (France, AD 441), canon 12; Cyril of Alexandria, Commentarius in Ioannis Evangelium 11.26; Fulgentius, Epistula 11.7; Gennadius of Marseilles, De ecclesiasticis dogmatibus 52.
47 See Harrill, ‘The Influence of Roman Contract Law on Early Baptismal Formulae’, p. 277.
48 Gregory Nazianzus, De oratione 40.28.
49 Augustine, Epistula 98.9, 10; ET from NPNF, First Series, 1:410.
50 See Augustine, Epistula 98.7; Sermo 294.12.
51 See Augustine, De gratia Christi et de peccato originali 1.32.35; 2.1.1; 2.21.24.
52 See J.-Ch. Didier, ‘Une adaptation de la liturgie baptismale au baptême des enfants dans l’Église ancienne’, Mélanges de science religieuse 22 (1965), pp. 79–90.