The Theology of Confirmation in Relation to Baptism
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
In this volume, Dix briefly discusses the contemporary Anglican practices of Christian initiation rites and the recent development of the Anglican theology of baptism across the past 50 years. He traces confirmation and baptism through the early church to the New Testament, unpacks the Greek and Latin meanings and interpretations related to these sacraments, and delves into soteriological issues with the theological teaching of these rites.
Top Highlights
“Until the second quarter of the third century—the generation before the controversy on Rebaptism—the two ‘elements’, so to speak, of the sacrament of Baptisma, water and the Spirit, had been regarded as the constituents of a single rite, like the bread and wine of the Eucharist. We have now to see how the West came to treat them as separable, at first as an abnormality to meet a practical difficulty, and then little by little as the only normal liturgical custom.” (Page 21)
“These are (1) the early liturgical practice of the Churches in conferring it, and (2) the comments upon this of early Christian writers. Scientifically, the liturgical evidence ought to be treated as absolutely primary, for it is older in its substance than any of the rest, and it was to some extent formative of Christian theological thought about the matter in the period before the New Testament documents were canonised.” (Page 10)
“Now that the history of the Canonisation of the New Testament is better understood, we can begin to shake ourselves free from the sixteenth century—or rather the mediaeval—delusion that primitive Christian Worship and Church Order must have been framed in conscious deference to the precedents of a New Testament which as such did not yet exist.” (Page 11)
“Immediately after leaving the font the Candidate is anointed on the head with chrism by a (third?) Presbyter, with the words ‘I anoint thee with holy oil in the Name of Jesus Christ’.” (Page 13)
“the Latin name for the Baptism of the Spirit had been the Scriptural term ‘the Seal’—signaculum, consignatio” (Page 25)
George Eglinton Alston Dix (named Gregory in religion) (1901–1952) was an English monk and priest of Nashdom Abbey, an Anglican Benedictine community. He was a noted liturgical scholar whose work had particular influence on the reform of Anglican liturgy in the mid-twentieth century.