§ 136. Baptism as an action of the Church signifies simply the act of will by which the Church receives the individual into its fellowship; but inasmuch as the effectual promise of Christ rests upon it, it is at the same time the channel of the divine justifying activity, through which the individual is received into the living fellowship of Christ.
- We have already1 put the case for what is essential in this paragraph, namely, that the reception of an individual into the Christian fellowship and his justification or regeneration must be one and the same act. Otherwise, if reception into the Church were solely an act of the Church, then, since the act in question cannot be conceived as taking place without the Holy Spirit, the Supreme Being in preparing His union with human nature under the form of the common Spirit, would be in a state of passivity. But the outpouring of the Holy Spirit is conditioned by Christ,2 and rests on His promise; the same must therefore hold good of the impartation of the Spirit to the individual, even if (as is essential to the unity of the Church) the Spirit comes to all from Christ in the same manner. Thus the Church is relieved of a great uncertainty by the fact that Christ Himself enjoined baptism as the act of reception into the Church. For now every such reception is an act of Christ Himself, if performed in the manner He enjoined and according to His command. Hence the Church can neither depart from this form of reception through baptism nor, on the other hand, doubt that in every case where the command of Christ is properly carried out, His promise will be fulfilled that with such reception the salvation of the person received begins. The latter would be to doubt the redeeming power of Christ Himself; the former would be an audacious notion which could not possibly be derived from the Holy Spirit, for the Spirit takes all from Christ.
This fixes it that baptism must be retained by the Church in the form in which it received it. But it is impossible either to obtain or to give any information as to whether, or how, the outward form of the act is connected with its inward content and purpose. On that point we can only say that if Christ had enjoined an utterly different outward rite for the same purpose, we should regard it as equally sacred and expect from it the same results. Only so much is certain, that if Christ had specially instituted something that was altogether new, it would be incumbent on us in that case to seek for a relationship of the closest possible kind between the outward rite and the alleged inward result; for it is only under the severest compulsion that we could bring ourselves to suppose that any institution of Christ was purely arbitrary. It is otherwise inasmuch as He attached His institution to something already in existence, and since baptism was already historically conditioned by its connexion with the preaching of John. This historical basis is perfectly sufficient, without our being tempted to develop the symbolism universally recognized in that sphere further than is done in Scripture, or to regard the symbolism as so essential as to justify the position that the act itself is only complete and can only secure its purpose when even outwardly it is so performed as perfectly to bring out its importance.
- In spite of this undeniable connexion between the baptism of Christ and that of John, we can scarcely hold that the two are precisely the same without in some degree lessening the importance of the former.3 Even if in John’s baptism the idea of the Kingdom of God as coming through redemption was fundamental, yet prior to his recognition of Jesus in the act of baptizing Him the person of the Redeemer was undetermined alike for John and for those whom he baptized. Hence we should at least have to distinguish between his baptism before and after this incident, in the sense that the former, to equal Christian baptism, needed supplementing. This distinction, however, could only be important if John later had baptized in Jesus’ name, which, all things considered, we have more reason to deny than to assert.4 Thus it can scarcely be conceded that the baptism of John can have been either reception into the Christian Church or a bath of regeneration; in other words, it could only be construed as being identical with Christian baptism if we regarded both as equally ineffectual,5 or if, virtually abrogating the distinction between the old covenant and the new, we held that John, without any definite relation to Christ, was able to give precisely what Christ gave.