Baptism Intro

Water is a natural symbol and it is possibly one of the oldest symbols in human history. Ritual washings, cleansings, and bathings are common in many religious and were even part of the ancient religions of Egypt and Mesopotamia (Martos, 148). It tends to symbolize many things: life, death, cleansing, refreshment, etc. Even today, Hindus bathe in the Ganges river as a symbol of paying homage to their ancestors and cleansing themselves in sacred waters. Similarly, in Judaism Mikvehs (pools with fresh water) have been used for ritual purification washings after sexual intercourse, childbirth, or other activities.

John the Baptist preached a message of conversion and repentance of sins and the many people that underwent his ritual washings in the river Jordan accepted his call for a change of heart. Bapto in Greek means to dip or immerse. It is likely that in the early church adults were fully immersed or submerged in water when they were baptized. It is unlike, however, that children were baptized in the early church. Baptism was mostly for believing adults that had expressed or professed some faith in Jesus Christ. Baptism comes from the Greek word, bapto which means to dip or immerse.

Throughout most of church history there has been a heavy emphasis on the change of heart of conversion that happens with baptism. Conversion is the sincere change of mind, heart, and desire to turn from evil and sin towards God.

Revelation, Incarnation, and Apostolic Tradition

Revelation (def) is God's self-communication to humanity throughout history. Through an utterly free decision, God reveals himself to humanity. God's revelation and communication happen gradually.

Incarnation (def) is the truth of the faith that the Son of God assumed human nature and became man in order to accomplish our salvation in that same human nature. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, is both true God and true man, not part God and part man. The incarnation is not a plus; it's not a mixing together of different things; and it's not as though Jesus is half divine and half human. If we really want to learn about Jesus and God and what the incarnation means, then we should pay very close attention to what Jesus says and what Jesus does. Jesus says whenever you see me, you see the Father because the Father and I are one. You see me, and you see the Father. When you experience me, you experience the reality of who the Father is. When you see what I do, when you see how I act, you experience the reality of God. In this respect, Jesus is the sacrament of God because he points to God the Father. He reveals who God is to humanity.

Apostolic Tradition (def) the apostles transmitted all they received from Christ and learned from the Holy Spirit to their successors, the bishops, and through them to all generations until the end of the world. Scripture and tradition are bound closely together and communicate with one another.

What Faith Is, and What Faith Is Not"

Sign and Symbol Notes

Optional Study Session

There will be an optional review session for the exam on Friday, September 7 in the Criss Auditorium @ 7:10am. The Unit 1 exams will be on Monday and Tuesday.

Sign or Symbol?

Signs (def) are something that points to another reality and means what it signifies; the meaning is mostly fixed. For example, most people would interpret and understand a 'STOP' sign to mean only one thing = STOP.

Symbols (def) are multi-dimensional signs that point to another reality and manifest the reality to which they point. They are open to interpretation and can have multiple meanings. For example, something as simple as a kiss can manifest many different things to different people: love and affection, romance and seduction, greeting or farewell, betrayal and death, anger and frustration, or the rock band KISS.

Sacrament vs. sacrament

The term "sacrament" comes from the Latin world sacramentum. A sacramentum in pre-Christian history was a pledge, contract, or oath that parties would make to each other. Typically, two people would deposit a sum of money at the temple and if the contract we breached by one of the parties, then they would forfeit their deposit. Later on, a sacramentum was considered a pledge of allegiance to the emperor, a commander, of the Roman gods.

The African theologian and scholar Tertullian (d. 225) was one of the earliest Christian writers that used the term sacramentum in a religious context. He believed baptism was a type of sacramentum in the sense that the newly baptized were taking an oath of allegiance to Jesus Christ--"it was a ritual through which people began a new life of service to God" (Martos).

As polytheism died out in the Roman empire the term sacramentum gradually lost its original meaning and it was slowly used more often to describe the ceremony of initiation into the church, various blessings, and liturgical feasts, etc. Augustine once defined a sacramentum/sacrament "as a sign of a sacred reality" and he noted that "according to this general defintion anything in the world could be considered a sacrament since all of creation is a sign of God" (Martos). Eventually, the term sacrament was limited to refer to the seven sacraments in the catholic church.

Numerous places, actions, objects, and persons can be considered sacred if we use a broad definition of the term sacrament. There are sacred places such as temples, churches, mountains, shrines, and cities. There are sacred actions such as praying, singing, eating, fasting, and dancing. There are sacred objects such as pictures, statues, vestments, writings, foods, and tools. And there are sacred persons such as priests, kings, saints, shamans, virgins, gurus, and prophets. Martos points out that "any ritual or object, person or place, can be considered sacramental if it is taken to be a symbol of something sacred or mysterious."

A proper Sacrament in the catholic church is defined as "an efficacious sign of grace, instituted by Jesus Christ, entrusted to the church, by which divine life is dispensed to us." This definition refers to the seven sacraments in the church: baptism, confirmation, Eucharist, reconciliation, anointing of the sick, holy orders, and matrimony.

Sacraments of Initiation = baptism, confirmation, Eucharist
Sacraments of Healing = reconciliation, anointing of the sick
Sacraments of Vocation = holy orders, and matrimony (marriage)

Benedictine Monastery of Le Barroux (Watchers in the Night)

This documentary features a day in the life of Benedictine Monks at the Monastery of Le Barroux in France. Here are a couple of screenshots that I've borrowed from the New Liturgical Movement blog. We will watch most of this documentary in class.

(Ora)

(Labora)