HOLMES Baptism: Patristic Resources 261
sion in water into the Name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, of
those who have professed repentance towards God and faith in our Lord
Jesus Christ', but he would not deny on that basis the possibility that those
unable to profess repentance and faith (whether through age in the case of
infants or infirmity in the case of clinical baptism) could not be validly
baptized.
I began with an anecdote which suggests that there is some desire
amongst Baptist pastors to find a way of recognizing the seriousness of the
faith of those who believe their infant baptism to be valid without com-
promising our own convictions. It may be that John offers us the theologi-
cal resources to do that, by showing us space within those convictions that
we had not realized was there. We will certainly, as he did, want to hold
strongly to the confession that Christian baptism is the baptism of believ-
ers; we may want to speak much more strongly than he did about the
failings and faults of infant baptism; but if we can acknowledge with him
that there is yet room for a strange and inappropriate, but not invalid, form
of the sacrament, refusing to condone the practice, but refusing to let it
divide the Church either, we will have begun to heal a serious wound in
the body of Christ.
To do this we will need to find a practice similar to John's clinical bap-
tism, which allows extension of our baptismal practice to those unable to
make the appropriate professions. Such a practice is in fact available
within British Baptist life, at least: each year at the Baptist Assembly,
members of the Baptist Union Initiative on Learning Disabilities (BUILD)
share in leading the worship. Their literature regularly offers moving
accounts of the baptisms of people who are unable to make the normal
professions by reason of disability. We will surely want to insist that these
baptisms are valid much more strongly than John was prepared to in the
case of clinical baptism; in doing so, however, we open the same theo-
logical space that he opened.
As a way forward we may, perhaps, want to adopt and adapt John's
rhetoric concerning clinical baptism in discussing infant baptism. We
would then enlarge upon how the practice obscures the meaning and
denies the symbolism of the sacrament; we would insist that what goes on
is a travesty of true Christian baptism; rhetorically, we may even want to
ask 'what benefit does [the infant] get from his initiation?' (9.9). If, how-
ever, alongside this we are still prepared to say, as John was of a practicehe objected to, 'the grace is the same for you and for those...' (9.5), then
something of value will have been accomplished.