Baptismal Liturgy Research Articles

Obřad křtu podle Agendy české z r. 1581

Agenda česká [Czech Agenda] is a still under-researched source of the reformed liturgy in the Bohemian lands. It represents a liturgy influenced by Lutheran theology. This article argues that the form of the baptismal ceremony is based on the Wittenberg church order, published in 1539, and shows how the editors used their German source: Their approach was to some extent creative. There appear various changes compared to the original: Some parts take a different position; the exorcism is only optional and there is no mention of the handing over of the baptismal robes. The baptism itself is performed by a threefold pouring, not by immersion. The Agenda česká follows Martin Luther’s example in simplifying the baptismal liturgy and in this respect goes beyond its source. However, this trend was not common in the whole Bohemian and Moravian milieu, influenced by the German reformation. Thus, the Agenda česká represents only one of several streams.

Redniowieczne nazwy pierwszej niedzieli po Wielkanocy w Kociele zachodnim

The article focuses on analyzing the medieval names for the first Sunday after Easter, specifically examining the Latin names and only occasionally including those derived from national languages. The main objective of the study is to identify culturally determined areas of meaning that served as the basis for deriving the different types of names. Linguistic analyses allowed for the identification of three such areas: 1. The Paschal Octave, 2. The Liturgy of Baptism, and 3. The way Sundays were identified in medieval church tradition. The largest number of names were created in the first area (e.g. Dominica Conductus Paschae, Dominica in Octava Paschae,Dominica Clausum Paschae), with only a few emerging in the second (e.g. Dominica in Albis) and third (e.g. DominicQuasimodo) areas.

Onenigheid over een Doopvraag. De Gevolgen van Twee Incidenten in het Amsterdam van 1613 voor de Vormgeving van de Remonstrantse en Contraremonstrantse Doopliturgie

In this essay, the authors use new primary sources to reconstruct which baptism questions were asked during two services held in Amsterdam in 1613. These services, which were taken by, amongst others, the Reformed ministers P. Plancius and G. van der Heyden and in which the later Remonstrant foremen J. Wtenbogaert and S. Episcopius acted as godparents, caused great turmoil. Research of the various editions of baptismal liturgy reveals three basic types of the second baptism question. Primary and secondary literature have overlooked the significance of one of these types in the Amsterdam services. Wtenbogaert and Episcopius, but especially the latter, were not aware of the existence of all three types and felt misled since they did not want to subscribe to the doctrine taught from the Amsterdam pulpits by affirming the questions posed. The authors outline the impact of the incidents on the format of both later Reformed and later Remonstrant baptismal liturgy.

Homiletical possibilities and challenges in Colossians

Colossians shines a light onto how some early churches on the margins of society adjusted to everyday life in the midst of a non-Christian society. Engaging baptismal liturgy and hymnody, the Colossian authors instruct Christians in the Lycus Valley (western Turkey) to beware of philosophies and ascetic practices competing for their devotion. According to Colossians, the baptized are now living a new life in Christ, the head of the Church and cosmos. New fruit is visible evidence to the outside world of the cosmic reconciliation that occurred through the cross of Jesus Christ. As dramatic as the shift in cosmic order may seem in the first chapters of the letter, however, the latter half creates a challenge for the preacher. The authors seem to accommodate the radical new life in Christ to the wider Greco-Roman culture, resulting in a diminished role for women in the church and an acceptance of the slave–master dichotomy. Both accommodations in Colossians haunt our legacy as Christ’s Body in the world today.

A Suggestion on a Principle and Structure of Baptismal Liturgy according to Analysis of the Book of Worship in Korean Presbyterian Church

A Suggestion on a Principle and Structure of Baptismal Liturgy according to Analysis of the Book of Worship in Korean Presbyterian Church

The Apocalypse of Paul (nhc v,2) as a Valentinian Baptismal Liturgy of Ascent

The Apocalypse of Paul (nhc v,2), a second-century Valentinian text, imagines Paul’s progression up to the tenth level of heaven. Not only is this a reference to the third-person account in 2 Corinthians, but also a clear indication of the baptismal liturgy in the Valentinian text as the audience joins Paul after the third heaven and ascends through the upper levels while reciting the visionary tale in the first person after their initiation. Ultimately, this paper shows how the second-century Valentinian memory of Paul is a coalescence of his mystical religiosity and authority and the imagistic ritual practices of the Valentinians. Methodologically, this paper follows a traditional historical and text critical approach, augmented with social memory theory and cognitive ritual studies. In this paper, it is argued that the Apocalypse of Paul integrates of the memory of Paul and his ascent according to 2 Corinthians with contemporary Valentinian ritual practices.

La Oratio dominica en los Comentarios africanos. Iniciación a la oración

The article presents a summarized historical overview of the different commentaries of the Pater Noster in the authors of North Africa before St. Augustine, particularly Tertullian, to present later the role that Pater noster played in Christian initiation, highlighting the ideas of Justin and the Didache that can be seen also in Augustine. Later, it discusses the relationship between the prayer of Pater noster and the baptismal liturgy and catechesis, explaining the diverse requests of our Father according to Saint Augustine. The article ends with a discussion of the presence and importance of the Pater Noster in the Ordo Baptismi after Vatican II.

Book Review: The Ethics of Everyday Life: Moral Theology, Social Anthropology, and the Imagination of the Human

The Ethics of Everyday Life: Moral Theology, Social Anthropology, and the Imagination of the Human. By Michael Banner. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. xiii + 223 pp. $35.00 (cloth).Michael Banner, in this book form of his 2013 Bampton Lectures, argues for three innovations in Christian ethics. First, and most significantly in Banner's view, he aims to reorient Christian moral discourse toward what he calls (p. 3). For too long, he contends, moral theology has seen simple naming of the good and bad as sufficient fulfilment of its obligations in limited but difficult situations like abortion or the use of military force (p. 202). Rather, ethics should concern itself events across the whole course of human experience, without necessarily neglecting its treatment of hard cases. One might think that Christian ethics could find assistance from moral philosophy in this regard, but that discipline proves even more remote from everyday life due to the abstracted reflection of both Kantian deontological ethics and utilitarianism, according to Banner. His alternative proposal-the second innovation-is deep engagement social anthropology, specifically the ethnography's textured portrayal of the human motives and desires that underpin moral choices. The third innovation is his method, the crafting of an everyday ethics through the lens of Christ's own life as the paradigmatic human. His method is, in short, ethics as Christology.The moments of Christ's life as narrated in the Nicene Creed thus become the foci of Banner's everyday ethics. Conception, birth, suffering, death, and burial each receive their own chapter, as does the act of remembrance-itself an objective of the creed. In addressing conception, for example, Banner draws from Augustine and certain erstwhile Christian baptismal liturgies to argue that Christianity reconstructs kinship around spiritual solidarity rather than blood ties. This spiritual kinship challenges the modem preoccupation conceiving a biological child through fertility treatments, emotionally taxing as they may be, rather than considering options like adoption (chapter 2). Later in his discussion of suffering, he employs ethnographies to criticize modem humanitarianism, which too often responds to crises through curious spectatorship (p. 90). Instead, conceiving suffering through Holy Week remembrances of Christ's sufferings implores Christians to nurture sympathy and to involve ourselves the sufferings of others, which he aptly portrays in the compassion practiced in Christian L'Arche communities. His chapter on expanding forgiveness in acts of communal remembrance (chapter 7) proves especially poignant, especially his moving account of a Greek village that remembers its dead by coupling their names with the adjective ? …

Teologiczny i antropologiczny wymiar obrzędów chrzcielnych w Kościele IV wieku

The Holy Baptism in Church in period of the first centuries was considered as an extra ordinary and important event, both in life of the baptized person, as well as in the entire Church community. Almost exact information on baptism in Church of the 4th century is available in existing documents of empathetical discourses on baptism by four great Fathers of the Church: St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. John Chrysostom, St. Ambrose of Milan, and Theodor, bishop of Mopsuestia. Thus in this paper I have decided to present only the Baptismal Rites and their theological and anthropological significance. In terms of the mentioned authors’ writings, we can find two parts of the baptismal liturgy where they consist of particular Rites. The first part is devoted to so called the rites preceding a ceremony of baptism, It means to surrender Satan, take off cloths and apply the holy oil before one’s baptism. Another Rite, i.e. taking off clothes of the candidates to be baptized, was significant for the new way of life of a certain human being, and rejection of the old man with his all affairs and matters. Authors of baptismal discourses also paid their attention to application of the holy oil. The second part of Baptismal Rites was related to baptismal immersion itself. First of all, there was the following or­der: to reach the baptismal tank, immerse in waters three times, then leave it and put on the white clothes. The theological interpretation of particular Baptismal Rites in writings of the Church of the 4th century was rather compact. Even in case of some differences available, they were not concerned with the principal aspects, but strictly devoted to the baptism itself in order to understand the ceremony, and all particular order of the Baptismal Rites.

Baptismal and Missional Ecclesiology in the American Book of Common Prayer

I argue that the ecclesiology expressed in the American 1979 Book of Common Prayer is, in addition to being a baptismal ecclesiology, also inherently missional. After briefly attending to debates about patterns of initiation, I turn my attention to the prayer book’s theology of ministry, wherein all ecclesial ministry is rooted in baptismal identity. I weigh the relative merits of considering the laity as an ‘order’ within the Church, and consider the diaconal nature of the Church and its mission. I finally pursue the connections between between a baptismal ecclesiology and Christian mission. This involves a consideration of the prayer book’s baptismal liturgy (with particular reference to the baptismal covenant), and of the fact that baptism implicates the Church in mission because it implicates Christians in the paschal mystery.

The Memory of Baptism in the Introductory Rites of the Holy Mass

Sprinkling with water as a sign of covenant and purification is rooted in the Old Testament. Although Christians accepted the biblical symbolism of water, sprinkling with it in the liturgy encountered resistance. In ancient times that reluctance resulted from the similarity of sprinkling to pagan rites, in the Middle Ages and during the Reformation from the danger of treating this rite in the liturgy as a repetition of baptism. The rite of sprinkling initially had no connection with the liturgy of the Mass, later it became the rite preceding the Mass (Asperges) and it was of purifying and penitential character. The development of the introductory rites in the Mass led to the formation of the penitential act among them, which in the post-Tridentine Missal took the form of the Confiteor. The post-conciliar Missal of Paul VI included Asperges in the introductory rites of the Mass providing for the possibility of replacing the penitential act on Sunday with Asperges, and at the same time treating it as the memory of baptism. The analyses of the subsequent editions of the post-conciliar Missal indicate, among others, the connection of Asperges with the liturgy of baptism during the Easter Vigil. The prayers of Asperges also highlight the baptismal character of the common priesthood of the faithful. The service which completes the rite of Missal Asperges is Vespers of Resurrection Sunday connected with the sprinkling of baptismal water.

Difficult Texts: Mark 3.13–15: The nature of Christian vocation

This short article argues from the unique text in Mark 3.13–15 that all Christian vocation is about being called by Jesus to ‘be with him’ and to ‘be sent out by him’, so is about who God has called us to be as well as what God has called us to do (or to give up doing). It also draws on the Baptismal Liturgy of the Scottish Episcopal Church and the Methodist Covenant Prayer.

4세기 예루살렘교회의 세례예식 : 씨릴 감독과 에제리아 수녀의 증언

4세기 예루살렘교회의 세례예식 : 씨릴 감독과 에제리아 수녀의 증언

Chrzest sakramentem nowego życia w świetle tekstów euchologicznych "Obrzędów chrztu dzieci"

The article deals with the new quality of life a baptised child participates in. The source for this research is a book published after the Second Vatican Council entitled: the Rite of Baptism for Children, that is the first liturgical book in the history of the Church, which contains the rite of baptism adapted to real condition of a child. The child is baptised in the faith of the Church, which is expressed by his/her parents and godparents in particular. From the beginning to its end the dynamic of the celebration of the rite of baptism emphasizes the aspect of a gift that the baptised child receives, i.e. the new life. The sacrament of baptism constitutes a new birth of child, a birth of water and Spirit, of which the Lord said to Nicodemus (cf. J 3,5).In each part of the liturgy of baptism the euchological texts refer to the gift of the new life. The source of the new life is constituted on the immersion of baptised child in Christ’s death and resurrection. The fullness of the new life is reached in the life to come. The baptism is a seed and a beginning of man’s life everlasting.

What is “New” in the “History” of Christian Baptismal Liturgy: The Early Centuries

What is “New” in the “History” of Christian Baptismal Liturgy: The Early Centuries

A Critical Comparison of the So-called ‘Lawsuit’ in the Baptismal Rites of Theodore of Mopsuestia and Narsai of Nisibis

Abstract Theodore of Mopsuestia’s baptismal homilies 1-3 and Narsai of Nisibis’ liturgical homilies 21 and 22 are valuable sources concerning the Syrian baptismal liturgy. It is commonly held that Narsai’s rite is heavily influenced by Theodore’s. Some scholars even go that far to picture Narsai as Theodore’s copycat. Such a view would have profound consequences for our perception of continuity and discontinuity within the Eastern baptismal tradition. However, the present comparative study of an often neglected pre-baptismal part of the rite both Narsai and Theodore describe as a “Lawsuit” or “Judgment” (dinā) reveals significant differences between both liturgies that make an exclusive dependance improbable. These differences must be taken into account if we want to get a clear picture of the relationship of both rites with each other and the larger Syrian tradition.

La Preghiera del Signore fra esegesi, catechesi e liturgia: il Padre nostro nei primi tre secoli

By the end of the fourth century the Lord’s Prayer was a fundamental component of the baptismal liturgy and Eucharistic celebration in nearly all of christendom and the Liturgy of the Hours later on as well. It is unlikely, however, that these practices had begun much earlier: with the exception of the Didachè, an isolated prescriptive text unconfirmed by other documentation, there is no indication of any use of the Our Father in the first three centuries. This lack of evidence is accentuated all the more by the fact that the Lord’s Prayer is the object of extensive comments in all early Christian tracts and catecheses on prayer. In the beginning it probably constituted a model for Christian prayer and became a formula to be repeated word for word only later, after the Constantinian shift; an analogous process can be found in the history of the institution of the Eucharist.

The baptismal liturgy of Jerusalem. Fourth- and fifth-century evidence from Palestine, Syria and Egypt. By Juliette Day. (Liturgy, Worship and Society.) Pp. viii+157. Aldershot–Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007. £50. 13 978 0 7546 5751 4Baptism, Church and society in modern Britain. From the Evangelical Revival to Baptism, eucharist and ministry. By David M. Thompson. (Studies in Christian History and Thought.) Pp.

The baptismal liturgy of Jerusalem. Fourth- and fifth-century evidence from Palestine, Syria and Egypt. By Juliette Day. (Liturgy, Worship and Society.) Pp. viii+157. Aldershot–Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007. £50. 13 978 0 7546 5751 4Baptism, Church and society in modern Britain. From the Evangelical Revival to Baptism, eucharist and ministry. By David M. Thompson. (Studies in Christian History and Thought.) Pp.

Die „Gotteskindschaft“ als Schlüssel zur spätantiken Tauftheologie

This article examines the research of Friedrich Ohly, a medievalist who sought to stimulate spiritual understanding through thought which explored the significance of metaphor. For him, metaphors were not merely the remains, but parts of the active inventory of human life. Religious language, in particular, could not do without them. The relationship between God and man could be articulated only by metaphoric means. In this article Ohly's approach is applied to the metaphor of 'God's Child', or 'Divine Filiation'. The article seeks to analyse the power of the impression of the metaphor itself with a view to the baptismal liturgy and baptismal theology of the ancient Church. From the very beginning Christians had been convinced that new believers became young in baptism and remained young thereafter if they are loyal to that calling. The key terms of this article are as follows: firstly, baptism as spiritual birth and the beginning of a new life; secondly, the metaphorical language of the Baptismal Eucharist which speaks of pure (or, in the KJV, 'sincere') spiritual milk for God´s Children. (1 Peter 2,2).

Baptism in Jordan – for Christians and Gnostics: Remarkable similarities between Old Syrian baptismal liturgies and the Mandaean masbuta

ZUSAMMENFASSUNG Der vorliegende Aufsatz konzentriert sich auf Parallelen zwischen alten syrischen Taufliturgien und der Liturgie für die mandäische Taufe (masbuta). Die Mandäer, die einzige gnostische Gruppe der Gegenwart mit historischer Verbindung zur antiken „Gnosis“, verstehen die Taufe als eine repetitive liturgische Handlung für die Seele auf dem Wege zur Lichtwelt. Die mandäische masbuta ist also keine initiatorische, einmalige Handlung wie die christliche Taufe. Auf diesem Hintergrund sind die vielen Parallelen zu den alten syrischen Liturgien überraschend. Es zeigt sich, dass sowohl die mandäische als auch die syrische Tradition das Taufwasser durchgehend als “Jordan” verstehen. Wie die alten syrischen Kirchen benutzen auch die Mandäer Öl und “Kronen” als liturgische Elemente während der Taufhandlung, die mit einem liturgischen Mahl („Kommunion“) abgeschlossen wird. Obwohl die mandäische Anthropologie klare gnostische Züge hat, enthält die Taufliturgie der Mandäer, wie die der alten syrischen Kirchen, die jüdischchristliche Idee von Sündenvergebung und Heil für den ganzen Menschen (Seele/Geist und Leib). Diese Verwandtschaft zwischen mandäischen und christlichen Tauftraditionen aus syrischem Gebiet könnte dadurch erklärt werden, dass die Mandäer ursprünglich zu einer jüdisch(-christlichen) Gruppe in Palästina oder Syria gehörten, bevor sie sich von dieser Gruppe trennten. Diese Aussonderung der Mandäer fand ihren Ausdruck sowohl auf ideologischem Gebiet (Gnostizierung) als auch auf geographischer Ebene (Auswanderung nach Babylonia).