FIDDES Baptism and the Process of Christian Initiation 289
link with the minister regarded as the focus of unity in the church, and the
receiving of a 'sealing with the Spirit' by the person understood to be 'the
special organ of the Spirit in his own Church, by the bestowal of which
men are made.. .full members of the People of God.. .by confirmation'.^21
During the last forty years both the 'Reformed' and Tractarian' tradi-
tions have reacted against a 'two-stage' view. Among the Reformed and
evangelical, objection to the notion of the Bishop as mediator of the Spirit
in the Church has been combined with a desire to keep baptism as a
covenantal rite within the Christian family; stressing the completeness of
baptism seems to make it more difficult to regard it as a means of bringing
a mission field within the borders of the Church. The High Church wing of
Anglicanism has itself adopted a modified view of the historic episcopate,
regarding it as of the bene esse of the Church, with implications for con-
firmation by the bishop;^22 at the same time, emphasizing the Church as a
sacramental community has made the closest link between baptism and
eucharist desirable. Perhaps all parties in the Church have also been
affected by the social pressures of 'family church/family eucharist'; to
refuse unconfirmed children communion seems to be denying them a place
in the Church and to be sending an unwelcoming message. Generally, the
theological view has prevailed that the 'seal of the Spirit' in New Testa-
ment understanding is given in the act of baptism and not in a later rite.^23
A notable feature of the Toronto Report was a concern for Christian
growth and nurture, expressed in the recovery of the ancient practice of the
catechumenate. The report proposes that the actual term 'catechumenate'
- Gregory Dix, 'Ministry in the Early Church', in Kenneth E. Kirk (ed.), The
Apostolic Ministry (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1946), pp. 220-21. - See H.W. Montefiore, 'The Historic Episcopate', in Kenneth M. Carey (ed.),
The Historic Episcopate in the Fullness of the Church (Westminster: Dacre Press,
1954), pp. 115-22. - See G. W.H. Lampe, The Seal of the Spirit: A Study in the Doctrine of Baptism
and Confirmation in the New Testament and the Fathers (London: Longmans, Green,
1951), pp. 235-46. The receiving of the seal of the Spirit in baptism is explicitly linked
with 'sacramental completeness of initiation' in baptism by the 'Report of the Com-
mission on Christian Initiation to the General Synod of the Church of England' in 1971
(the 'Ely Report'); see Christian Initiation: Birth and Growth in the Christian Society
(Westminster: Church of England Board of Education, 1971), pp. 30-31. A Baptist
theologian will naturally point out that the seal of the Spirit belongs with baptism in the
New Testament because baptism there is assumed to be the baptism of believers: see
G.R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament (Exeter: Paternoster Press, 1972
[1962]), pp. 171-77.