HOLMES Baptism: Patristic Resources 255
infant baptism began to become normal, although there are witnesses to
the practice in the earlier tradition.^4 At the same time, in both West and
East, there were controversies over the status of heretical and schismatic
baptism. It is a time, then, when the Church was faced with a wide variety
of baptismal practice, and with hard questions about possible rebaptisms.
It is the reflections of the Fathers on these themes that I wish to explore.
The Baptismal Instructions of St John Chrysostom^5 (given in Antioch
sometime between 386-398) witness to the variety of baptismal practice
that a single church could tolerate. Interestingly, John does not refer to two
sorts of baptism, but to three: adult baptism following catechesis; infant
baptism; and clinical baptism (that is, the baptism of those who are on
their death beds [kline]). The norm for baptism, according to John, is adult
baptism at Easter following a catechetical period during Lent. 'Norm' here
does not necessarily mean the most common form—John gives us no
information to determine that—but the form which makes the meaning
and results of baptism most clear. If we want to understand the sacrament,
this is where we look; other forms are not improper, but derive their mean-
ing from this basic form. This is clear even with regard to the timing of
believer's baptism: John did not believe that there was anything magical or
necessary about being baptized at Easter; in another place he points out
that the apostles, the three thousand who responded to Peter's Pentecost
- Most famously, Origen's In Rom. V. Johannes Warns has challenged the
authenticity of this text (Baptism: Studies in the Original Christian Baptism; its
History and Conflict; its Relation to State or National Church; and its Significance for
the Present Time [trans. G.H. Lang; London: Paternoster Press, 1957], pp. 331-35).
This is a fairly tendentious book, however, and I am not aware that the challenge has
been taken up seriously within Origen scholarship. For a thorough account of refer-
ences to baptism in the second century, see Andre Benoit, Le Bapteme Chretien au
Second Siecle: La Theologie des Peres (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1953). - The texts are most conveniently available in English translation, in the Ancient
Christian Writers series, StJohn Chrysostom: Baptismal Instructions (trans. Paul W.
Harkins; ACW, 31; London: Longman, Green, 1963). Only two of the originals appear
in Migne (PG, xlix, cols. 221-40); eight others can be found, with a French translation,
in Antoine Wenger, Jean Chrysostome: Huit catechises baptismales inedites (SC, 50;
Paris: Cerf, 1957). The original text of the final two, according to Harkins, is to be
found only in a Russian series published at the beginning of this century. For an
exhaustive discussion of these texts, see Thomas M. Finn, The Liturgy of Baptism in
the Baptismal Instructions of St John Chrysostom (Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press, 1967), which is also the source for the date and location I
indicate (p. 9).