Made Not Born
In 1976, the year I was born, Notre Dame released a collection of papers called Made, Not Born: New Perspectives on Christian Initiation and the Catechumenate. This little book was an attempt by Catholic scholars to deal Christian conversion and by implication, what it means to be a Christian in the first place. Here is some of what I have learned:
1. In the early church, when the church was small and on mission to save some individuals and enfold them into the body of Christ, baptism was radical. It represented a complete break with the life of society and an entrance into a new kind of life in Christ Jesus. The church was mainly baptizing adult converts. It was full imersion and involved annointing with oil and the laying on of hands and first communion afterward. It also involved a period of instruction and living the life with the believers, called Catechism, that usually lasted 1-3 years. The final great preparation happened during Lent when the whole church joined these new converts in fasting and prayer.
2. Much of this changed when the church managed to baptize the entire society. With the conversion of Contantine and all that followed, the mission of the church changed drastically. Society and Church entwined and so conversion was more difficult to define. There was also a final acceptance of infant baptism. Infant baptism was always allowable, given that the parents or godparents vowed to raise the children in the faith. But once everyone was de facto a Christian the church baptized infants much like Western doctors circumcize boys ... as a matter of course. Nathan Mitchell described what he called: the dissolution of the rites.
3. Baptism (including catechism), confirmation (involving the laying on of hands and the anointing with oil), and first communion were all one event in the life of the beliver ... all under the heading of Baptism. But once the church converted to infant baptism and was no longer seeing adult baptism as the norm, there was no reason for catechism and so confirmation took on some of the catechism role, but happened later in the life of the child and was then followed by first communion. The sad thing is that catechism died in that moment (around 5th or 6th century and didn't revive in the West until the Reformation). For example, in 1536, the people of the Fisher Coast in India were baptized en masse, in number about ten thousand, and then left without instruction or pastoral care, either before or after baptism, for six years!
4. Unfortunately, I wonder if we are doing much better. We don't do mass baptisms in America, but how much do we give ourselves to discipling those who are baptized ... or preparing them for baptism. This is where Dallas Willard's critiques of what he calls the Great Ommision come into play ("Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.")
Well more thoughts to come later. That is all I have time for right now.
1. In the early church, when the church was small and on mission to save some individuals and enfold them into the body of Christ, baptism was radical. It represented a complete break with the life of society and an entrance into a new kind of life in Christ Jesus. The church was mainly baptizing adult converts. It was full imersion and involved annointing with oil and the laying on of hands and first communion afterward. It also involved a period of instruction and living the life with the believers, called Catechism, that usually lasted 1-3 years. The final great preparation happened during Lent when the whole church joined these new converts in fasting and prayer.
2. Much of this changed when the church managed to baptize the entire society. With the conversion of Contantine and all that followed, the mission of the church changed drastically. Society and Church entwined and so conversion was more difficult to define. There was also a final acceptance of infant baptism. Infant baptism was always allowable, given that the parents or godparents vowed to raise the children in the faith. But once everyone was de facto a Christian the church baptized infants much like Western doctors circumcize boys ... as a matter of course. Nathan Mitchell described what he called: the dissolution of the rites.
3. Baptism (including catechism), confirmation (involving the laying on of hands and the anointing with oil), and first communion were all one event in the life of the beliver ... all under the heading of Baptism. But once the church converted to infant baptism and was no longer seeing adult baptism as the norm, there was no reason for catechism and so confirmation took on some of the catechism role, but happened later in the life of the child and was then followed by first communion. The sad thing is that catechism died in that moment (around 5th or 6th century and didn't revive in the West until the Reformation). For example, in 1536, the people of the Fisher Coast in India were baptized en masse, in number about ten thousand, and then left without instruction or pastoral care, either before or after baptism, for six years!
4. Unfortunately, I wonder if we are doing much better. We don't do mass baptisms in America, but how much do we give ourselves to discipling those who are baptized ... or preparing them for baptism. This is where Dallas Willard's critiques of what he calls the Great Ommision come into play ("Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.")
Well more thoughts to come later. That is all I have time for right now.
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