403 - Baptism As a Performative Sign

Baptism As a Performative Sign
By James W. McClendon

"There are ... conventional human acts which although verbal have the quality not of describing but of doing something. Let us, with J.L. Austin, call these sign-acts 'performatives.' Perhaps the place where we most readily recognize performatives is in legal documents. After certain necessary preliminaries, we may find the document saying, 'I hereby donate my ranch to my stepdaughter, Susan.' This is, as lawyers say, the operative, or as we shall say, the performative clause. The action of the verb (in this case, 'donate') i's not described by the performative clause, it is accomplished."

IT may be that if Baptists are to make any outstanding contribution to twentieth century Christianity, we will have to begin soon! No one has accused us of being in the ecumenical van. Vatican II has made the gain of the century for religious liberty; Baptists are outflanked on the left by Pentecostalists and on the right by old-line Protestants. Martin Luther King, Jr. is a Baptist, and so is Billy Graham, but both have made their way mostly outside the fold.

Surprisingly little has been made of what might have seemed to be the empirical key to Baptist existence-baptism. The nineteenth century was, at least in America, a period of baptismal debate and discussion for Baptists. Baptists engaged freely in wide-ranging debates with paedo-baptists, sacramentalists, the newcomer Disciples,

James W. McClendon is Associate Professor of Theology at the University of San Francisco. He holds the doctorate from Southwestern Baptist Seminary and has served as a pastor and as a college chaplain. He studied linguistic philosophy under Ian Ramsey at the University of Oxford, and this article was written as an experiment, applying philosophical analysis to theological interpretation. The article was first read as a paper at the Pacific Section of the American Society of Church History held at the St. Patrick's Roman Catholic Seminary in Menlo Park. Dr. McClendon's special assignment was to state his case for liturgical renewal from the point of view of historic Baptist theology.

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and with one another on all the issues: the appropriate candidate (was he to be only a confessing believer?), the proper mode (could other modes be substituted for immersion?), the legitimate administrator (individual Christian, ordained minister, gospel church?), the appropriate purpose, and the validity of baptism which was judged deficient at one or more of these points. They engaged also in ironic conversations with other Christian bodies, looking toward proposed Christian union.¹ But in the early years of our own century, both the debate and the fraternal dialogue died away. American Christianity withdrew behind the ceasefire lines on this topic. It came to be understood that baptismal differences between the -denominations were fit for internal discussion only. I can remember when I began to teach a course on ecclesiology in 1955, I had to complain that no competent work by a Baptist on baptism had been written in the twentieth century.²

The past ten years, however, tell a different story. If we inquire the reason for the renewal of baptismal discussion, we must recognize the renewed impact of the ecumenical movement. New lines of inter-faith discussion were opened in Europe in the period interrupted by the Second World War.³ These discussions came, in the Faith and Order movement, to bear upon baptism. The confessional groups involved felt called upon to examine, and to justify or modify, their confessional distinctives. We must acknowledge, also, the importance of the revival of biblical theology. If this is conceived, not as a partisan theological movement, but as the fruitage of nineteenth century scholarship, it may be said that the literary investigations of the Bible had by the mid-twentieth century made possible a fresh approach to the history of the New Testament era, including its practice of worship. Confessional and liturgical elements were seen to be imbedded in the New Testament documents. Many Baptists viewed the ecumenical discussions only from afar,

¹ W. W. Barnes, The Southern BaptistCconvention 1845-1953 (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1954, pp. 270-275).
² The standard text by E. Y. Mullins, The Christian Religion in Its Doctrinal Expression (Phila.: The Judson Press, 1917, often reprinted) does not devote more than passing paragraphs to baptism.
³ There is a useful summary in the Summer, 1960, issue of Encounter (pp. 299 ff.) of the way in which the attention of the Faith and Order movement, frustrated in its attempt to discover in the eucharistic meal a suitable basis of unity, turned at the Lund (1952) Conference to baptism as a subject of study. The subsequent studies, several of which are published in that issue of Encounter, involved some Baptists, including some whom the present article seeks to interpret. My private judgment is that the Faith and Order baptismal documents as a whole are invincibly boring.

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but others joined in the new work. And the biblical theology movement was an enterprise in which Baptists took a hand from the first.

I

For these and other reasons, the last ten years, 1955-1965, have seen a cluster of articles and monographs, both scholarly and popular, on the topic of baptism. Neville Clark, Johannes Schneider, R. E. O. White, G. R. Beasley-Murray, Alec Gilmore, J. D. Hughey, Warren Carr, and others have contributed.⁴ These writers, on both sides of the Atlantic, and representing continental, British, and American (especially Southern) Baptist scholarship, have opened afresh the Wide range of problems connected With this doctrine, both to discover their own heritage and to examine it anew in the light of Scripture and history. For convenience I set out here a brief summary of what seem to be the main lines of direction shared by these writers, and the conclusions so far most generally reached in their Work. Where I am aware of important divergences, I call attention to these.

(1)All our writers are agreed on the central importance of baptism. While this may seem to be a characteristic of all writers on special topics, it may be contrasted With the neglect of baptismal theology which characterized the preceding period.⁵

(2)All our writers agree on the importance of relating baptism to Heilsgeschichte, to the kerygma, to Christ, and to the Holy Spirit. It is, writes Clark, "only within a context at once christological, ecclesiological, and eschatological that the sacraments will be given

⁴ Neville Clark, An Approach to the Theology of the Sacraments; Studies in Biblical Theology, No. 17 (London, S. C. M. Press, 1956); Johannes Schneider, Baptism and Church in the New Testament (London: Carey, Kingsgate Press, 1957); Alec Gilmore, ed., Christian Baptism (London: Lutterworth Press, 1959); Reginald E. O. White, The Biblical Doctrine of Initiation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1960); J. D. Hughey, Jr., "Baptism in Theory and Practice," G. R. Beasley-Murray, "Baptism in the New Testament," Ernest A. Payne, "Believer's Baptism in Ecumenical Discussion," Reider Björnard, "Important Works on Baptism from Continental Protestants," all in Foundations, January, 1960; G. R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament (London: Macmillan, 1961); Warren Carr, Baptism, Conscience and Clue for the Church (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964); J. Reiling "Holy Spirit in Baptism," Baptist Quarterly, Oct., 1962; G. W. Rusling, "The Status of Children," ibid., April, 1960; R. F. Aldwinkle, "Believer's Baptism and Confirmation," ibid., July, 1955; H. W. Trent, "Ourselves and the Ordinances," ibid., January, 1957; D. S. Russell, "The Ministry and the Sacraments," ibid., April, 1957; Walter J. Harrelson, "Children in the Church," Foundations, April, 1963; J. Walter Carpenter, "Water Baptism," Review and Expositor, January, 1957; J. Ayson Clifford, "A Paedobaptist Proof Text," ibid., July, 1957, are the principal works here surveyed.
⁵ On this point, see especially Beasley-Murray and White, in their cited works. But W.J. Harrelson (op. cit.) dissents.

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full content and meaning."⁶ Our authors would insist that there are not two Christian baptisms to be contrasted, water-baptism and Holy Spirit-baptism, but one baptism which is in water and in the Holy Spirit.⁷

(3)All our writers would insist that baptism is initiation into the full life of the church-and thus is related to the word, to the Lord's Supper, and to the shared life of worship and service in the church.⁸

(4)Almost all our writers agree that baptism is not a "mere sign," or "mere symbol"; rather it is an effectual sign. Carr prefers to speak of baptism as a "dynamic symbol," a term borrowed from Paul Tillich, and he notes that as such it is possessed of "innate power."⁹ G. R. Beasley-Murray, R.E.O. White, and the British Writers generally, freely employ the term sacrament. Let us attend the words of White, a British pastor:

The obvious objections to a sacramental interpretation of infant baptism are assumed to lie equally against believer's baptism-which is nonsense. The dynamic, or existential, sacramentalism of the New Testament seizes upon the fact that divine activity and human response meet in sacramental action. The sacramental effect-enduement, gift, remission, reception, incorporation, death-resurrection-occurs within the personal relationship which the act expresses. Thus efficacy belongs strictly neither to the element, nor to the rite, but to the action of God within the soul of the baptized who at that time, in that way, is making his response to the grace offered to him in the gospel. The sacrament consists not in the thing done, but in the doing of that which gives expression to faith in appointed ways. On the one side, the faith of the person doing the appointed things invests the rite at that moment, for himself, with sacramental meaning; on the other side, God, accepting this response, in fulfillment of His promise in the gospel invests the rite at that moment, for that convert, with sacramental power.¹⁰

(5)There is among all these writers the call for baptism to be responsive or responsible. The latter, it seems to me, is the viable word among Baptist writers on the subject today. "Adult" baptism

⁶ Clark, op. cit., p. 83.
⁷ Ibid., p. 19. The opposite view is implied by a polemical article by J. Walter Carpenter (op. cit.). For a balanced consideration, which would reveal the summary above as over simplified, see J. Reiling, op. cit.
⁸ This is especially to be noted as a new emphasis among British writers; see, e.g., White, op. cit., PP. 313 f.
⁹ Carr, op. cit., pp. 170-174.
¹⁰ White, op. cit., p. 308. J. Walter Carpenter clearly dissents from this view.

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suggests a legal majority age which is found neither in Baptist theory nor Baptist practice. "Believer's" baptism, the old standby, is rejected by Carr,¹¹ though maintained by Beasley-Murray¹² and others. But all would agree that baptism, to be meaningful, must be responsible-not only the act of a gracious God, but also the act of his responding child.

(6)This leads directly to the effort among these writers to come to terms with the theology of childhood with relation to baptism. All of our writers, predictably, regard the baptism of newborn infants as unwise, and almost all regard it as invalid.

In general the British writers suppose that young manhood or womanhood is the appropriate age for believer's baptism-Carr, in line with widespread Southern Baptist practice, would not refuse or "hinder" the younger child who appeals to the church for baptism, for he is the very paradigm of those who do indeed come into the Father's kingdom.¹³ In either case, our authors recognize that the status of the child in the church, before or after baptism, is a problematic one on any view of baptism.

(7)It is evident, then, that these writers agree that baptism is essentially unrepeatable. If it is initiation into Christian life and faith and community, there can be but one such beginning. It is, of course, the awkward status of infant baptism which leads some of these writers to ask whether the greater perversion is to be found in requiring the "rebaptism" of those who come, perhaps with newborn faith, into Baptist churches, or in implicitly approving by receiving it the indiscriminate "baptism" of infants, although it is widely known that many such infants are by no means brought up in the community of faith.¹⁴

II

What I now propose to do is to offer some theological interpretation and appraisal of the seven propositions just set forth-and particularly of proposition four. Here the greatest care is called for. Can we be at once faithful to what my Baptist brethren say they find the Scripture saying to them-that baptism is much more than a "mere sign" or "mere symbol," that it does something, does

¹¹ Carr, op. cit., p. 34 et passim.
¹² Beasley-Murray, op. cit., et passim.
¹³ Carr, op. cit., pp. 175-187.
¹⁴ Cf. ibid., ch. 4.

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not merely describe something already done; and at the same time be faithful to the Baptist heritage which has for these centuries, and surely with good reason, shrunk from a false sacramentarianism which substitutes mechanically conceived grace for the personal presence of God? If we may for a moment use the word without prejudging its meaning, is there anywhere in human thought or experience that which could serve as a model for a gospel sacrament? One solution which offers itself is the model of the pagan mysteries of the Hellenistic world, and of the extra-biblical sacraments in general. No doubt such models are appropriate; no doubt much is to be learned from an examination of these.¹⁵ And yet the dangers are obvious-the model may differ from the Christian mysteries at just the crucial points; more troublesome still, these models are not a part of our present clay experience. We know little of that world. A second proposal is that our model should be found in the prophetic signs of the Old Testament.¹⁶ But here again there seem to be differences as pronounced as the similarities, and here again these signs are remote from our modernity.

I turn my attention, therefore, to a phenomenon which has been distinguished by certain linguistic philosophers.¹⁷ There are, these philosophers point out, conventional human acts which although verbal have the quality not of describing but of doing something. Let us, with J. L. Austin, call these sign-acts "performatives." Perhaps the place where we most readily recognize performatives is in legal documents. After certain necessary preliminaries, we may find the document saying, "I hereby donate my ranch to my stepdaughter, Susan." This is, as lawyers say, the operative, or as we shall say, the performative clause. The action of the verb (in this case, "donate") is not described by the performative clause, it is accomplished. To execute such a document, in the appropriate circumstances (you being of a sound mind, not under duress, actually having a stepdaughter named Susan, the ranch being your own, etc.)-to execute it is to donate the ranch to your stepdaughter.

Notice that the performative need not be in writing. One can

¹⁵ Louis Bouyer, Life and Liturgy (London and New York: Sheed and Ward, 1956), ch. 7.
¹⁶ Cf. H. Wheeler Robinson, The Christian Experience of the Holy Spirit (London: Collins Fontana Books, 1962, first published 1928), pp. 167-172.
¹⁷ The primary work is J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Clarendon press, 1962), although a briefer account appeared in a talk, "Performative Utterances," published in J. L. Austin, Philosophical Papers. ed. J.O. Urmson and G. J. Warnock (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961).

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donate viva voce, and most performatives are viva voce. Notice that verbal performatives do what they say. Notice also that a useful test of a performative utterance is whether one can insert the word "hereby" into the crucial utterance without changing its meaning. The following are examples of performative utterances:

"I (hereby) order you off my property."

"I (hereby) thank you."

"I(hereby) take this woman to be ... (etc.)" [spoken in a wedding ceremony].

"I(hereby) appoint you ambassador to Armenia" [spoken by one with authority to appoint ambassadors].

Someof these may exist in a somewhat contracted form. "Thank you" may serve as well as (or better than) "I hereby thank you." "Get out" may serve as well as "I hereby order you to get out" as a performative,

It is possible, then, to do things with words, or with non-verbal signs. Not all signs are descriptive-very many of the utterances of everyday life are performative. They do not describe, they accomplish what they say. To say "I thank you" is not to describe my thanking some one; it is to thank someone. (The description would be, "I thanked him," past tense.) Perhaps, now, we are ready for an exact definition of performatives, drawing our language from J. L. Austin:

There must exist an accepted conventional procedure having a certain conventional effect, that procedure to include the uttering of certain words [but this needs qualification below] by certain persons in certain circumstances, and further the particular persons and circumstances in a given case must be appropriate for the invocation of the particular procedure invoked.

The procedure must be executed by all participants both correctly and completely,

Where, as often, the procedure is designed for use by persons having certain thoughts or feelings, or for the inauguration of certain consequential conduct on the part of any participant, then a person participating and so invoking the procedure must in fact have those thoughts or feelings, and the participants must intend so to conduct themselves, and further must actually so conduct themselves subsequently.¹⁸

¹⁸ Austin, How To Do Things With Words, pp. 14 f.

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I think we need to qualify this primarily by noting that performative signs need not be verbal: I can greet you by saying "I hereby greet you," and that is performative-it does something. I can also greet you by saying "Gruss Gott" or "Hi," or by a handshake without words, and that may do the same thing.¹⁹

Further we need to note that performatives are subject to going wrong in certain classifiable ways. Austin calls these the infelicities to which performatives are subject. Thus I might thank you when you had done nothing for me (inappropriate person), or I might, in a foreign land, get the words wrong, and insult you when I intended to thank you (wrong conventional procedure), or the groom might say "I do," whereas the bride says "I don't" (procedure not executed completely), or the wrong intentions or the wrong subsequent actions (as failing to consummate the marriage) may somehow spoil the performative action.

We are ready, at last, for my thesis: Christian baptism, as it is understood by the Baptist theologians just surveyed, and as it ought to be understood, is a performative sign. It has the special quality, according to Christian belief, of involving both the human participants (the church and the candidate) and God. Baptism is a "word" addressed by the candidate to God. (It is "the appeal of a good conscience toward God," I Peter 3:21 ASV margin.) It is that "word" in which the candidate claims the power of the resurrected Christ for himself. It is a prayer, but an acted prayer rather than just a spoken one. Like every petition, it is performative. It is also a "word" from the church to the candidate-a "word" in which the church says Something like: "We receive you as out brother in Christ." And it is a "word" from the candidate to the church, a "word" in which the candidate says something like: "Brethren, I take ray place in your midst. Receive me!"

But baptism, on the Christian view, is a prayer which God answers-and the baptism itself is the God-given token of his answer. Indeed, it is more than that. Baptism is first of all God's word to us. In it he declares, "This is my son; this day have I begotten him."²⁰ In it he offers us initiation into new life. In it he pro-

¹⁹ Austin's immediate interest was words. And baptism fits this category nicely-words are used in Christian baptism. But that the performative sign must be verbal for the relevant considerations to apply is not the case, as can be seen from Austin's remarks about bowling and "Salaam," Philosophical Papers, pp. 232 f.
²⁰ Cf. Luke 3: 22, RSV marginal variant reading, and parallels.

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claims in sign the good news to which our submission, our being baptized, is only the answer.

Now because we Baptists have long spoken in somewhat leaner ways of baptism, this may be a hard doctrine for us to accept. It does at least serve to make sense of what recent Baptist scholars say they are finding about baptism in Scripture. But there is this as well: if we do not make baptism such a performative sign, we are not rid of performative signs-we may simply substitute some other-the words of the Scripture and the convert's prayer in the pastor's study, or the words of the sermon and the walk down the aisle-and say here God speaks, and man responds. And indeed, I would want to agree that sometimes that is the whole story. Not all the saved are baptized. But in the New Testament, baptism came to occupy the conventional place. "As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ" (Gal. 3: 27). Perhaps, therefore, it deserves the central place in initiation today.

Next, we may consider the objection that the performative concept makes, not too much, but too little, of baptism. "Have you not," it might be asked, "turned this mighty act of God into a kind of divine-human scrabble game? Is being baptized so small a thing as saying a word to God, and hearing a word from God? Is not the necessary note of awe, of having to do with holy mystery, missing from your account of baptism as a Performative sign?" In reply, I would concede that there is a clarity here which is missing from some sacramental theology. The analogy of the performative seems to me to illuminate, rather than to obscure. But baptism is not therefore less awesome, less mysterious. For, on this view, it is God himself with whom we have to do in baptism. In this sign he addresses us, speaks his mighty word of grace to us. Here is an act of God. Here heaven touches earth afresh. Here is the Holy One in holy action. And the view that God does act, in connection with the stream of earthly events, still retains enough mystery to call forth all our faith.²¹

²¹ The objection might have come from Paul Tillich, which leads me to remark here yon Tillich's conception of sacrament (as reflected, eg. in "Nature and Sacrament," ch. vii of The Protestant Era, abridged ed., Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1957; original edition copyright 1948) and its relation to what stands above. Tillich begins by putting his finger on a sensitive spot in Luther's Catechism: what can Luther mean by speaking of water without the word as "simply water"? Is there such a thing as "simply water" (p.95)? Can any element be the beater of sacramental power if there is not something in the nature of things that makes them inherently sacramental? Can there be any symbols of God unless this is a sacramental universe? Tillich answers no, and I would agree with

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Second, it may be inquired whether we have not explained the obscure through the obscure. "A sacrament I can understand, and also a symbol-but what about these performative signs?" In reply, I note that the vocabulary of the performative is not essential to what I have to say. It may be a useful device for scholars, but a needless technicality for the layman. Perhaps for the layman it will be enough to say that not all words describe-there are also words which act. "I do." "Thank you." "Come in." If then we say that baptism is intended to be such a "word," spoken by God to us, and (at the same time) by us to God and to one another, we shall have expressed the theory in brief. As for the term "sacrament," I do not object to it, but I believe it to be subject to abuse. If some of us retain it, we need to remember the Words of P. T. Forsyth:

Let us be outdone by none in reverence for the Sacraments. It is an attitude we much need to cherish. But let it be a real reverence for the personal Christ in donative action in our midst. What metaphysic may be behind it belongs to the metaphysics of personality and of energy and not of substance. The Sacraments will never become the symbol of a united Church till the whole tissue of thought, speech, and practice in connection with a metaphysic or magic of the elements as substance has been converted and transfigured, and they are construed as acts of Christ in person through the corporate personality of the Church, embodying the gospel's action in and by sacramental souls.²²

III

Let us for the moment suppose that the understanding of baptism as performative sign should prevail, What difference would it make? What change in practice might be expected?

him. Then, however, he sets out to show in what sense nature is sacramental, and here, in my judgment, he fails to make sense to the hardheaded. He employs talk of "the mystic power of numbers," of "precious stones," of the power of animals in religious symbolism (pp. 103-106), and even of "the half-demonic character of water." (Cf. "Water:" in J. L. Adams, Paul Tillich's Philosophy of Culture, Science, and Religion, New York, Harper & Row, 1965, pp. 62-64). From such instances he seeks to evoke a belief in nature as possessed of innate "power." But Tillich grants that this view would still not do for Protestant thought, and seeks to show a relationship between this kind of nature and history ("Nature and Sacrament," p. 110). But such relationships are not available to philosophers simply by wishing for them. What my paragraphs above are doing may be described in this context as offering, via the theory of performatives, a clue to the relationship, to the "historicizing of nature"-in Forsyth's terms (see infra), to the replacing of a metaphysic of substance with a metaphysic of personality and of energy, thereby making the connection Tillich (correctly and intuitively) sought. But such talk as this is itself fairly rich in metaphysical hocus pocus, and I prefer to avoid it when possible.
²² P.T. Forsyth, The Church and the Sacraments (London: Independent Press, 1953, first edition 1917), pp. 143 f.

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I think we might expect among Baptist churches a change in the methodology of evangelism. To the extent that evangelism has been dominated by revivalistic expectations of conversion, it has placed the strongest emphasis on emotional crisis. Where the ethos no longer made such crises likely, especially in children, the result was that rationality was substituted for conversion: thus the justification for the baptism of the child came to be, "He knew what he was doing."²³ In either case, (1) private experience, (2) "joining the church" during the invitation hymn, and (3) the subsequent baptism were strictly separated in theory, and often widely separated in practice. If, however, the understanding of baptism here offered is correct, this separation is unsound. Evangelism need not concentrate on the mere evocation of private experiences. Instead it can return to its original, central business of telling the good news, in the confidence that this gospel will call forth faith whose normal expression within the Christian community will be the response of baptism.

If this means that the child born into a faithful Christian home may come in still tender years to hear the gospel and, responding to its claim upon his life, request baptism, then the church if it baptizes him will have to provide means by which the baptized youth in later crises of adolescent faith may express his recommitment. Here again revivalism has provided a pattern: an often emotional "rededication" of life to Christ. Where such patterns prove emotionally sterile, however, the biblical pledge, the Lord's Supper, viewed in line with baptism as acted word or performative sign, may be invoked afresh. And a rethinking of the significance of baptism will surely imply a rethinking of the eucharistic sign as well, and along similar lines. It would appear certain, then, that the performative understanding of baptism leads to modifications of church practice.

IV

What of the effect of our thesis, if granted, upon traditional paedo-baptist churches? For it must be remembered that the thesis, in itself, is not a complete baptismal theory, and seems to leave open the question of infant baptism. What the thesis does do, I suggest, is to provide a conceptual tool whereby the question about infant

²³ Carr, op. cit., p. 144,

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baptism may be asked afresh. There are a number of theories which are employed to interpret the practice of infant baptism. Let us try translating a couple of these into performative terms.

One theory has it that the infant, though truly baptized, does not receive the benefit of his baptism until a subsequent time when by conscious faith he ratifies the baptismal vow made on his behalf, "owns the covenant," and acknowledges his baptismal gift.²⁴ In this case, baptism is conceived as the kind of performative sign which, in order to come off successfully, requires the intentional act of more than one party. For example, it is a rule of Anglo-American law that "a pardon, to be effective, must be accepted," That is, the governor may execute the pardon, it may be delivered to the jailed prisoner-but if he refuses it, it has no legal force. In this view of baptism, the baptized infant might be regarded as in the position of the prisoner who has been offered (via his baptism) the freedom of life, but who has not yet, for incapacity or other reason, accepted the offer. He is in an intermediate position. Another theory regards the baptismal performative as one which does come off, is effectual, without regard to the candidate's response.²⁵ In this regard it is analagous to the naming (christening) of a ship, or the firing of an employee. If the boss say, "You're fired," he having authority to fire, and you being his employee, you are fired. Response does not affect the performative force of the event. Agree or object, you are still fired.

Now these are not the only available views of infant baptism, but they are both respectable and widely held views of that rite. Therefore it is interesting to see how the performative concept enables us to deal with them. In the latter case, it enables us to raise the question: what becomes of the biblical element of response in this performative act? If baptism is to be a sacrament of personality, if in it God encounters us at the level of our humanity, must not the candidate's role be a responsible and therefore a responsive one?

²⁴ While this view is not, as far as I know, applied by Roman Catholic teachers to the status of baptized infants, it is formally similar to the attitude taken, from Hippolytus and certainly Stephen of Rome (253-257) onwards, as to the value of heretic and schismatic baptism.
²⁵ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Part III, Q. LXIX, Art. 6. Oscar Cullmann, (in Baptism in the New Testament, London: S.C.M., 1950) employs instances of performative civil actions (a government granting citizenship, etc.) in order to buttress his theological argument for this view against Barth. Both Cullmann's and Barth's arguments may profitably be submitted to performative analysis as further instances of what appears above.

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Ought not his baptism be, not passive, but passionate, the "Amen" in his own soul to the "Yes" spoken by God in Christ, and repeated anew in this mighty sign? Or if the view be the former-that in infant baptism, the response is indeed essential, but comes later, then there arises another kind of question: would it not be well to set the time of the ceremony so that the response can be more clearly seen as related to it? Obviously, this is a pragmatic proposal. It may be that it is on pragmatic grounds that the question will be answered in our times. In a post-Constantinian age, when it is by no means evident that any child is a "church" child, far less all, is it not for the well-being of the church that we make exceedingly clear the responsive aspect of the baptismal sign?

Two questions seem very often to arise in traditional churches when this latter proposal is put forward. The first is this: "What would be the status of the child whose church had for these reasons delayed his baptism, if, unbaptized, be dies in infancy?" May I suggest, in reply, that his status in death is no other than his status in life? Briefly put, he is in God's care. To the infant in his infancy neither signs nor the lack of them avails anything at all!

Another objection may be put in the following way: "Would the church then be left without any way to mark what is undoubtedly the special status, within the Christian community, of the child of faithful parents?" Certainly not. There is a hint for us here, I believe, in the proposal of the Constitution on the Liturgy of Vatican II to restore the baptismal catechumenate.²⁶ The Constitution requires that it be restored for adult converts. But might not the principle of the catechumenate also be applied (as the Roman Rite for the baptism of infants does already apply a relic of it) to infants as well? In that rite, the baby, with sponsors and (I presume)

²⁶ The Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, III, 64. Vatican II did not devote itself to sacramental theology as such, but rather to the pastoral application of theology. Of those theological tendencies which did affect the adopted documents, the most notable (as far as the sacraments are concerned) was the effort to root the understanding and practice of the sacraments more thoroughly in salvation history (see, for example, Lumen Gentium I, 7; Sacrosanctum Concilium I, 6). It is in this theological light that the proposed revision of the liturgy, and of the baptismal ritual (Lumen Gentium I, 21, et passim; III, 63-67) can be understood as something more than a taste for modernity or antiquity. Rather the proposals are attempts to employ new and traditional structures in order to allow the import of the sacraments to break through afresh, on the assumption that there was a lively awareness of that import in early Christianity. It is therefore of no small importance that the one substantial change proposed in the baptismal service is the reintroduction of the adult catechumenate. My suggestion above shows how small a further step, technically, is required to adjust the baptismal rite for children to the requirements of "responsible" baptism.

416 - Baptism As a Performative Sign

parents, is met by the priest at the door of the church. After asking the name of the baby, the priest inquires:

P. N, what are you asking of God's Church?

And the answer, given by the sponsors, is:

Sponsors: Faith.

After a sentence of instruction, the priest then breathes and prays an exorcism of unclean spirits, and traces the sign of the cross on the brow and the breast of the child, saying:

P. Receive the sign of the cross on your brow and on your heart.Put your whole trust in the heavenly teachings. And lead a life that will truly fit you to be a dwelling place for God.²⁷

The present rite proceeds directly toward baptism. But might it not fittingly pause here, as sponsors and church join in a program of evangelic education lasting not for days but for years, a period whose ripe fruit might be a baptism responsive, responsible, performative, and whole, in which youth's actual faith encounters God's active grace, and the developing human child enters by a second birth into the Kingdom of his Lord?

²⁷ Philip T. Weller, ed., The Roman Ritual (Milwaukee: Bruce, 1964), pp. 43 f.