Dimensions of Baptism Biblical and Theological Studies

338 Dimensions of Baptism

This earthly element replaces for us the invisibility of his bodily life in

heaven. This is precisely what the sacraments are: the face of redemption

turned visibly towards us, so that in them we are truly able to encounter the

living Christ. The heavenly saving activity, invisible to us, becomes visible

in the sacraments.^15

Following this, we may argue that these sacraments, together with the

proclaimed Word, enable the contemporary Church to encounter Christ in

the present and to become the Church, the body of Christ. Wainwright

speaks of 'patterning' in which:

The sacraments may therefore be seen as the ritual expression of a pattern

which is set by Christ and whose intended scope is nothing less than the

universal divine kingdom.^16

Baptist writer Neville Clark argues that a sacramental theology should

arise out of an explication of the meaning of baptism and the meaning of

the Lord's Supper.^17 He criticizes those sacramental theologies which are

constructed separately from such explication and then are used as a means

of interpreting the meaning of each of the sacraments. What is being

proposed here is somewhat different. The meaning of baptism will be

explored in relation to the specificity of the rite, but its meaning for the

Church will primarily be explored rather than its meaning for the one

being baptized. The present proposal is that baptism as a liturgical act

expresses something of the nature of the Church and even assists the

assembly in becoming the body of Christ. Here is an ecclesiological dimen-

sion of the sacrament, as the nature of the Church is displayed, and here is

a soteriological dimension, as the gospel is proclaimed. Of course, these

are two dimensions of the same kingdom reality in which the Church is a

sign and foretaste of what is to come.^18

Ecclesiology before Baptism

In our attempt to understand baptism in its ecclesial context, we need to

note a curious but vital claim of several twentieth-century Baptist writers.

15. Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament, pp. 43-44.


16. Wainwright, Doxology, p. 70.


17. Neville Clark, An Approach to the Theology of the Sacraments (SBT, 17;
    London: SCM Press, 1956), p. 71.


18. Christopher J. Ellis, Together on the Way: A Theology of Ecumenism (London:
    British Council of Churches, 1990), pp. 108-13.