Dimensions of Baptism Biblical and Theological Studies

FlDDES Baptism and the Process of Christian Initiation 285

a mutual recognition of each other's baptism as the one baptism into

Christ, and here the article makes a crucial statement:

Churches are increasingly recognizing one another's baptism as the one

baptism into Christ when Jesus Christ has been confessed as Lord by the

candidate or, in the case of infant baptism, when confession has been made

by the church (parents, guardians, godparents and congregation) and

affirmed later by personal faith and commitment.^10

The phrase 'and affirmed later' is attached clearly to the clause beginning

'when'. This is how, it suggests, mutual recognition is possible, when

baptism is part of a whole journey into faith. What can be recognized by

those practising believer's baptism, it suggests, is infant baptism plus a

confession of personal faith. The commentary to clause 12 also spells out

this mutual recognition of whole patterns or processes of initiation,

stressing that both forms of baptism (infant and believers') require to be

set in the context of Christian nurture, in which the baptized person—at

any age—needs to grow in an understanding of faith:

In some churches which unite both infant-baptist and believer-baptist

traditions, it has been possible to regard as equivalent alternatives for entry

into the church both a pattern whereby baptism in infancy is followed by a

later profession of faith and a pattern whereby believers' baptism follows

upon a presentation and blessing in infancy.^11

The article then urges all churches to consider whether they, too, cannot

'recognize equivalent alternatives in their reciprocal relationships'. That

these equivalent alternatives are not simply the different forms of baptism

but whole patterns of initiation is made clear by the 'clarification' of this

clause offered by the official report on the responses made to BEM (1990):

Some churches ask what is meant by 'equivalent alternatives'... It is not the

act of 'infant baptism' and the act of 'believers'/adult baptism' in them-

selves that are there proposed as 'equivalent alternatives', but rather two

total processes of initiation which the text recognizes.^12

So, according to BEM, the 'one baptism' in Christ is not in itself suffi-

cient to ensure mutual recognition of each other's baptism; indeed, such

recognition, achieved by mutual acceptance of whole processes of initia-

10. BEM, para. 15, p. 6, under the heading 'Towards mutual recognition of
    baptism'. My italics.


11. BEM, Commentary 12, p. 5.


12. Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry 1982-1990: Report on the Process and Re-
    sponses (F&O Paper, 149; Geneva: WCC, 1990), p. 109.