FlDDES Baptism and the Process of Christian Initiation 301
the first two senses,^53 and others separate them out,^54 we should probably
regard these three realities as interweaving, overlapping and conditioning
each other rather than being simply the same thing. In this overlap there is
room for process and development in Christian nurture.
By envisaging a 'process' of incorporation, I am not proposing that it is
possible to be a member of the body of Christ in one sense and not at all in
another. Nor am I advocating the movement from 'membership' to 'full
membership' that has been rejected in recent thought,^55 nor that we should
see some sort of progression from membership in the 'universal, invisible
Church' to membership in the local institution of the church.^56 I am
suggesting that, at different stages of the journey of initiation, a personmay be related to each of the senses of 'the body of Christ' in a way
appropriate to that stage. This is only possible to envisage because Chris-
tian nurture is about being drawn more deeply into the interweaving move-
ments of the triune life, rather than being on one side or another of a single
border called 'membership'. We are concerned with organic relationships
in a community, with 'belonging' which takes diverse forms. 'Incorpora-
tion' should then be conceived as a journey or process of entering more
deeply into the reality of the body, just as we have been thinking of grace,
faith and the gifting of the Spirit.
So, in the second sense of the 'body of Christ' (the Church), infants who
are baptized become a 'member' in so far as they are welcomed and em-
braced by the community of the Church, immersed into its care and prayers.
Theologically, to be a 'member' of the body of Christ in the first sense
(belonging to the person of the risen Christ who has continuity of identity
with Jesus of Nazareth) means being conformed to the movement of
relationship in God which is like a Son relating to a Father, characterized
by a self-giving (dying) and a newness of life (resurrection). By their
human existence all persons participate in some way in God, in whom
'they live and move and have their being'; God makes room for the world- J.A.T. Robinson, The Body: A Study in Pauline Theology (SBT, 5; London;
SCM Press, 1953), pp. 51,79; L.S. Thornton, The Common Life in the Body of Christ
(Westminster: Dacre Press, 1944), p. 298. - Ernest Best, One Body in Christ (London: SPCK, 1955), pp. 111-14.
- See Brand, 'Rites of Initiation as Signs of Unity', p. 135, 'Baptized members
can only mean full members'. However, Beasley-Murray, 'The Problem of Infant
Baptism', p. 12, still writes of 'growth.. .towards full membership'. - E.g. Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/4, pp. 37-38; Susan Wood, 'Baptism and the
Foundations of Communion', in Root and Saarinen (eds.), Baptism and the Unity of the
Church, pp. 37-60(38-41).