Water Works
Early and Medieval Rituals and Theologies of Baptism: From the New Testament
to the Council of Trent
by Bryan D. Spinks
Ashgate Press, 2006
(190 pages, $29.95, paperback)
Reformation and Modern Rituals and Theologies of Baptism: From Luther
to Contemporary Practices
by Bryan D. Spinks
Ashgate Press, 2006
(254 pages, $29.95, paperback)
reviewed by Peter J. Leithart
Bryan Spinks, prolific Professor of Liturgical Studies at Yale, is disarmingly humble about his latest book. He admits that due to his Anglican roots and previous specialized scholarship, the two-volume work displays “an obvious unevenness in the depth of treatment of some rites and some traditions.” He even apologizes for what he doesn’t cover, pleading ignorance.
No doubt the humility is genuine. It is also completely unnecessary. Spinks’s encyclopedic survey is not profound, and little is entirely new. But he has produced the most comprehensive history of Christian baptism available, perhaps the most complete ever published.
Beginning with the New Testament, the first volume examines the “rising springs” of patristic baptismal theology and practice in Rome, Byzantium, Syria, Egypt, and Ethiopia, and follows the stream of tradition through medieval baptismal rites in England and the Continent up to the reforms of Trent.
Like many recent liturgical historians (such as Notre Dame’s Paul Bradshaw), Spinks emphasizes the diversity of baptismal practice in the early Church, paying particular attention to the different placement and number of baptismal anointings, which, he argues, arise from the Church’s adoption of various ancient bathing customs. He also examines the transmission of baptismal rites from Rome and Byzantium to associated churches in the East and West, and the local changes introduced on the frontiers of Egypt, Armenia, Gaul, Spain, and England, but also notes a growing uniformity toward the end of the Middle Ages.
Volume two navigates the “divergent rivers” of Lutheran, Reformed, Anglican, and Anabaptist baptism, takes us through (the rapids of?) Methodist baptismal practice, and even spends a few pages with the Mormons. Spinks ends with a summary of trends in baptismal theology during the twentieth century, a review of some contemporary baptismal rites, and “reflections on the waters” within a global Church. (What is it that conjures the Muse of Puns when theologians write about baptism?)
Rich & Varied
One of Spinks’s guiding premises is that the practice and understanding of baptism are rich and varied, as kaleidoscopic as water itself. Water cleanses, and baptism is, for Augustine, a flood that removes the stain of original sin. Water sets boundaries, and in the typology of the early Church, baptism was likened to the water-passage out of Egypt.
We live the first months of our lives in “water,” and Jesus says that we must be “born again” in water and the Spirit, a text that many Christians have interpreted as baptismal. Though life-giving, water also kills, and Paul talks about baptism as a death-and-burial with Jesus. Our planet is mostly water, and in Luther’s great baptismal prayer, baptism is associated with the cosmic destruction and re-creation through Noah’s flood.
Peter J. Leithart is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and the president of Trinity House Institute for Biblical, Liturgical & Cultural Studies in Birmingham, Alabama. His many books include Defending Constantine (InterVarsity), Between Babel and Beast (Cascade), and, most recently, Gratitude: An Intellectual History (Baylor University Press). His weblog can be found at www.leithart.com. He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.
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