294 Dimensions of Baptism
assertion [of BEM] that baptism is a process'.^35 As we have seen, the
'assertion' of BEM is rather different. In the 'baptismal process' now being
proposed, the continuum of the events immediately surrounding baptism is
a compressed one, and indeed the aim of those emphasizing its ordo is
precisely to unify the rite, or 'to hold together matters that have been torn
apart in the history of baptism'.^36 This is an ordo that need not, in its basic
pattern, include the conscious profession of faith of the one being bap-
tized, since the primary phase of 'instruction in the faith' before baptism,
mirrored in confession of faith in baptism, can be undertaken by the
sponsors of the child. Of course, the larger pattern of'baptismal reality' in
Christian living must include personal faith, but the events of initiation
itself, or 'becoming a Christian' need not. When churches are then urged
to recognize the pattern of the ordo in each other, as it 'unfolds in ways
appropriate to the dignity and gifts of the local place',^37 those practising
believer's baptism are faced with the same issue as when they are being
asked to recognize two forms of baptism as equivalent. The 'common ordo
of baptism' presents the same problems as 'common baptism', where a
'common ordo of initiation' need not.
What is being lost here is a process of initiation which encompasses, atsome point, the response of the one baptized with his or her own faith to
the initiating love of God. When the person being baptized is a child, then
this process has to stretch just as far as that happens. Until it does we have
not finished with beginnings. This process, co-terminous with basic Chris-
tian nurture, may cover a period of months in the case of an adult convert,
but may have to run from infancy to responsible adult life when infant
baptism is practised. This, I propose, is the journey of sacramental initia-
tion.^38 But then many questions arise: how can we prevent a 'dismember-
- Gordon Lathrop, 'The Water that Speaks: The Ordo of Baptism and its Ecu-
menical Implications', in Best and Heller (eds.), Becoming a Christian, pp. 13-29 (25). - Lathrop, 'Water that Speaks', p. 27.
- Lathrop, 'Water that Speaks', p. 26.
- This view receives some support from an as yet unpublished text on baptism,
'One Baptism: Towards Mutual Recognition of Christian Initiation' (FO/2001:24),
which was produced by a second group of consultants gathered under the auspices of
Faith and Order at Faverges in 2001, and of which I was myself a member. While this
second Faverges text builds on the insights of the earlier consultation in describing a
threefold 'pattern' of baptism, it also emphasizes that 'initiation into the life of Christ
and his church is... a larger process than the moment of baptism' (II.B.21). The first
element of'formation in faith', for instance, is a 'whole process' within which 'the faith
which is expressed by the community of the church, parents and sponsors in the case of