Baptismal Righteousness
A Biblical Theology of Christian Initiation
Baptism, as the incorporation into the redeemed humanity of Christ, is a multifaceted reality. Thus, baptism cannot be separated from initiation into the life in Christ and the Tripple Sacrament of Baptism, Chrismation, and reception of the Eucharist. Because of its totality, a multitude of Bivclaitl theological themes all consolidate around and in this reality. As the liturgist, Maxwell Johnson summarizes in his classic work The Rites of Christian Initiation, Baptism is:
the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:38); new birth through water and the Spirit (John 3:5, Tit. 3:5-7)—ritually explicated in the baptismal font as ecclesial womb; the putting off the old self and being clothed with Christ as a new creation (Gal. 3:27; Col. 3:9-10; 2 Cor. 5:16-18, also Gal. 6:15)—ritually explicated in the prebaptismal stripping of clothes and postbaptismal clothing in new white garments and the eight-sided baptismal font reflecting the entrance into the eight day or first day of the new creation; initiation into the one body of Christ the Church (I Cor. 12:13; Acts 2:42)—ritually explicated in the baptismal font as ecclesial womb and the reception of the Eucharist, in some times and places accompanied with the reception of milk and honey symbolizing the entrance into the promised land; a sanctifying washing and justification in Christ and the Holy Spirit (I Cor. 6:11)—ritually explicated in the application of the water always interpreted spiritually; enlightenment (Heb. 6:4, 10:32; I Pet 2:9)—ritually explicated in the baptismal candle; being anointed and/or sealed/marked as belonging to God and God’s people (II Cor. 1:21; Eph. 1:13-14, 4:30; Rev. 7:3)—ritually explicated in the anointing with oil in the prebaptismal anointings and chrismation as the constitutive element of the laying on of hands and signified by various signings or consignations with the cross; and union with Christ in his death and resurrection (Rom. 6:3-11; Col. 2:12-15 )—ritually explicated baptismal font as tomb or cross-shaped.1
Put simply, the meaning of baptism is coterminous with the Gospel itself.
In Baptism, we truly enter into Christ and become by grace co-heirs with Him of the Heavenly Kingdom. We, like Christ, enter the threatening waters (a symbol of death and the possibility of life prefiguring his Death and Resurrection) as an act of self-entrustment to the Father. And in so doing we receive and manifest the will of the Father. Christ received this will without needing to repent of anything, for he knew no sin (cf. 2 Cor. 2:21). And in His Baptism in the Jordan received the will of the Father and in so doing revealed his vocation and identity. Thus, He prefigured the “ultimate completion of that baptism in his death on the cross.”2 Thus Christ, in the Incarnation, Baptism, and Passion manifests and actualized a single kenosis of self-emptying (cf. Phil. 2:7). Man at long last fulfilled the will of God and the whole of Creation began its process of renewal. In these τρία μυστήρια κραυγης—tria mystiria kravgis, that is, “triple trumpet-tongued mysteries…brought to pass in the silence of God” to use Saint Ignatius of Antioch’s expression, and “the age-old dominion of evil was overthrown for God was revealing himself in human form and bring a new order, even eternal life.”3 The consequence of the faithful condescension was nothing less than the defeat of Death by death. Having risen from the dead, making that new life in the New Covenant accessible to all humanity in yet another outpouring, that of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.4 All of these various moments of outpouring are alluded to and can be brought together or viewed in and as a totality in the symbolon of “Jesus’ own baptism by John in the Jordan”5 which is paradigmatic of all Christian Baptism wherein we become by grace what Christ is by nature and revealed to be at the Jordan.6
Thus we, like Christ submit ourselves to the will of the Father, but unlike Christ, as sinners; that is, those who have turned away from that will and acted, even in ignorance, against it. We bring our exposed, embattled, and repentant hearts fully conscious of our own participation in sin and entropy to God in the waters of Baptism as “an appeal to God for a clear conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet.3:21) and in the expectation of victory of life, the New Israel, the New Creation.7 The Holy Spirit that descended upon the waters,8 and upon Christ,9 likewise descends upon us. We, in Christ, are by the power of that Spirit made heirs (Gal. 4:1) and are revealed to be what we have become in Him: sons and daughters, kings and priests of the Kingdom. For, “God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So through God you are no longer a slave but a son, and if a son then an heir” crying out “Abba, Father!” (Gal. 4:6-7).10 We are marked by and sealed in that identity in our Chrismation.11 For, “to be initiated into Christ, then, is to be assimilated by the Holy Spirit into the life pattern of the Anointed One…himself; to be a ‘Christian’ is to be, literally, an ‘anointed one.’”12 In the Theophany, we glimpse the meta-paradigm that informs our own christification.
Our participation in this New Humanity begins sacramentally in Baptism, but Baptism is the initiation into Life in Christ as such. The Christian is called to a conscious process of appropriating the victory given him in Baptism and voluntarily co-operate with his own redemption. It is Christ who saves us, but not without our permission and co-operation. Thus, authentic Christian morality posits no imitation of Christ outside of Christ for such would not even be possible: Nor is being in Christ conceivable without the individual quest for Christ-likeness.
For even in the New Covenant, the moral precepts of the Law do not simply pass away. But the possibility of making the will of God full is now open to us in Christ’s own full-fillment. The Law does not simply pass away, we remain called to “be perfect (τέλειοι), as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). But this perfection is only attainable precisely in the manner in which Christ categorizes it: as sons of the Father. As to the attainment of perfection, the Epistle to the Hebrews is clear, the “law made nothing perfect” thus “a better hope is introduced, through which we draw near to God” (Heb7:19). The Law cannot perfect us; we can only be “justified by faith” (Gal. 3:24). That faith is in Christ. He is our righteousness because only he, the begotten Son of God, is and has remained in true right-standing with the Father. As St. Paul continues, “in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Gal. 3:27). Only when we understand that this righteousness to which we are called is not our own can we go about attaining it.
Perfection is not possible by our own striving but is made possible by the Spirit as a growth in filial love. Christ’s righteousness is (by the Spirit) alive in us (cf. Rom. 8:9) that the “requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us” (Rom. 8:4). The Spirit is that down payment (cf. Eph. 1:13-14 & 2 Cor. 1:22), that better promise of the New Covenant that can perfect. Thus St. Paul mystically says, “the last Adam became a life-giving spirit—πνεῦμα ζῳοποιοῦν” (1 Cor. 15:45). Not that Christ is the Spirit, but that the Spirit of adoption is at work in us. This manner of “justification” is no legal fiction nor a one-time event, but we “beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18). For us perfection is a kind of movement; it subsists in the transformation of the inner man by the Spirit into the image and likeness of Jesus Christ, God the Son, who loves, and loves like his Father in heaven (cf. Eph. 3:16-17).
Traditionally this walk of faith which is accredited to us as righteousness is called ‘θέωσις –theōsis’—a process wherein we “become partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). The perfect fulfillment of the Law of the Kingdom is to become by adoption—in the transformative grace of the Holy Spirit—what Christ is by nature: a son of the Father.
Maxwell E. Johnson. The Rites of Christian Initiation: Their Evolution and Interpretation. Revised and Expanded Edition (Minnesota: Collegeville, Pueblo Liturgical Press, 2007), 37-38.
The Rites of Christian Initiation, 38.
Ignatius to the Ephesians, 19. My translation. Also, Rom. 6:4.
Cf. Johnson, 23-26, 28, and 82.
Ibid., 38.
Ibid., 52.
Cf. Ibid., 11-12; also 2 Cor. 5:17.
Cf. Ibid., 17, 33, 56-58, also Gen. 1:2.
Cf. Ibid., 51, also Matt. 3:13–17; Mark 1:9–11; Luke 3:21–22; & John 1:32–34.
Cf. Ibid., 51-55.
Cf. Ibid., 29, 31, 155-156, also Acts 8:14-17.
Ibid., 59.