Dimensions of Baptism Biblical and Theological Studies

THOMPSON Memorial Dimensions of Baptism 309

We find here memory rising through a complex of ritual and recital.

It is quite apparent that these colonial-era Baptists believed that in the

rite of baptism the object of their memory, the saving work of Christ, was

actualized in their particular time and place. We must take care, however,

not to affirm the wrong thing. Baptism for these earlier Baptists did not re-

open the past to present access, so rendering the past something available

for repeated appropriation. Were that the case, we might imagine a prayer

that the participants think themselves gathered on the banks of the Jordan.

Yet such is not the case. Christ is bidden to join them. This baptismal rite,

then, brings persons and communities to participate in time conditioned by

a nexus of events including that of Christ, of the life of the people of God

including the present baptismal act, and pointing to events still hoped for

in the redemption of all things at the close of the age.^21 This is a remark-

able intuition concerning time itself, one acknowledging the time of the

new creation that is for anyone who is in Christ. The time that Christian

memory evokes and indwells is neither created nor governed by chrono-

graphic devices, nor by temporal succession. Rather, it is the rhythm of the

event of Christ, from first to final advents, that marks the time of those for

whom 'everything has become new' (2 Cor. 5.17).^22 Christ can be encoun-

relative to the name, materials, constitution, power, officers, ordinances, rites, busi-
ness, worship, discipline, government, & c. of a church; to which are added their
proofs from scripture, and historical narratives of the manner in which most of them
have been reduced to practice (Philadelphia: n.p., 1774), pp. 81-82. Spelling and
punctuation reflect the original. Edwards wrote for the ministers of the Philadelphia
Baptist Association, the oldest extra-congregational Baptist body on the North Ameri-
can continent, and a de facto national Baptist body prior to the Triennial Convention's
founding in 1814. The Philadelphia Association represented the oldest constituent
tradition of Southern Baptists, the Regular Baptists. The Philadelphia tradition ulti-
mately exercised influence on other constituent traditions, particularly in theology.
H.L. McBeth, The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness (Nashville:
Broadman Press, 1987), p. 212, notes that Edwards was foremost in lending theologi-
cal, spiritual, and practical stability to Baptist life in his time.

21. Cf. Krell, Memory, p. 94; and Verhey, 'Remember', pp. 668-69.


22. J.W. McClendon, Systematic Theology. I. Ethics (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
    1986), pp. 31-35, identifies the 'baptist vision' as the 'hermeneutical motto, which is
    shared awareness of the present Christian community as the primitive community and
    the eschatological community. In other words, the church now is the primitive church
    and the church on the day of judgment is the church now...' (emphasis in the original).
    McClendon's shorthand for this principle is 'This is that, then is now'. The 'is' is
    neither successionist nor developmental, but mystical and immediate. Both exist within
    the open time of God's creation and reconciliation of all things. Lutheran theologian T.