Orthodox rite of baptism for adults
Whilst in most churches in Western Christianity baptism is usually administered by pouring water on the head of the candidate, I believe that in Eastern rites baptism is usually administered by ducking in water and rising to new life.
I can see that one might use some sort of basin for the baptism of a baby and indeed such a ceremony was the only time that I have been present at an Orthodox baptism.
What does one use for an adult baptism ? Is there a pool which is used as in a Baptist or indeed in some Catholic churches ? Do Orthodox always insist on an Orthodox baptism for an adult convert who may have already gone through the ceremony of baptism in one of the Western Christian 'churches' ?
I can see that one might use some sort of basin for the baptism of a baby and indeed such a ceremony was the only time that I have been present at an Orthodox baptism.
What does one use for an adult baptism ? Is there a pool which is used as in a Baptist or indeed in some Catholic churches ? Do Orthodox always insist on an Orthodox baptism for an adult convert who may have already gone through the ceremony of baptism in one of the Western Christian 'churches' ?
Comments
As far as baptising people who have already been baptised in another Christian tradition, my understanding is that the Russians will customarily do that and that the monks of Mount Athos would insist on it too. Other Orthodox jurisdictions don't. The Antiochians don't baptise Western converts from other churches. I don't think the Greeks do either.
Others who know more than I do will be able to give the low down.
As with almost everything else about Orthodoxy there are all sorts of contingencies and variations, it seems to me.
I love it!
Those who have previously been baptized in the name of the Holy Trinity, and have a certificate or witnesses, are received by Holy Chrismation (similar to a Western Confirmation).
For example, if your name is already Dwight Peter Jones, why take the name Seraphim when you’re already named for the Chief Apostle?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOH35IGxVBU
Seriously, though - coming from a place of complete ignorance - what are the gross (and not so gross) inaccuracies of the baptism in My Big Fat Greek Wedding?
Things that are a little unusual: a) adult candidates usually wear a long white robe with a red cross sewn on front and back; b) it would not be practical to have a godparent of the opposite sex in an adult baptism, as the candidate has to be anointed head to toe with holy oil by the godparent (under the robe); c) the father-in-law announces to Ian the night before that he’s being baptized...extensive catechetical instruction is pretty much mandatory beforehand.
The chanting and the actions of the priest are very well done.
If I remember correctly, the priest is played by an actual Greek Orthodox priest.
I didn't choose a new name, I simply chose a patron saint with my name. However, I don't see any reason to insist on it for everyone else.
I have known some missions to rent birthing pools, which seems an apt symbolism. My old parish uses a water tank and it's in this that I was baptised.
How people baptised in non-Orthodox churches are received into Orthodoxy depends on a number of factors, including the baptismal rite of the "outgoing" church home, its theology, and whether its sacraments are recognised by the particular Orthodox jurisdiction, as well as pastoral care in the individual's circumstances.
The Russian church, for instance, would usually accept a Catholic by Chrismation, and by vesting and concelebration if a priest, as it recognises Catholic sacraments, although there might be differences in practice by locale, and autonomous churches under Moscow (such as ROCOR) might have their own customs.
The Antiochian church maintains a list of churches whose baptisms it can be confident in accepting by economy without the need for an Orthodox baptismal rite.
That's what I was taught, having been formed in ROCOR and reading the writings of my patron saint.
However, I came to learn that there are more nuanced approaches to non-Orthodox sacraments elsewhere in Eastern Orthodoxy, ranging from complete non-acceptance (a more Cyprianic viewpoint) to acceptance but with a view that it's improper to celebrate together until full communion is restored (the approach of Moscow to Catholic sacraments*), with there lying in between the two the acceptance of the outward form of non-Orthodox baptism, for instance, but non-recognition of grace in those actions unless the person is bright within the Orthodox Church.
*This was one of the points discussed quite a bit online in the approach to the 2007 reunion between Moscow and ROCOR, And Met. Hilarion of Volokolamsk has spoken about this more recently, citing a source.
I might try to find it later when there's more time.
To clarify, the ROC will chrismate a concert from Roman Catholicism who has already received the sacrament of confirmation in the RCC, but they will not re-ordain an RC priest who converts to Orthodoxy? And they will let the convert priest celebrate sacraments from the moment he converts?
If a Roman Catholic married couple who were married by a deacon, rather than a priest, converted to Orthodoxy, would they have to marry again?
Nothing is absolute and everything is subject to the particular pastoral circumstances in each case and the direction of the ruling bishop but yes, generally speaking, my understanding is that this is the current prevailing custom within the Moscow Patriarchate.
Again, no absolutes.
If he wishes to continue to serve as a priest upon entering the Orthodox Church and if the bishop thinks that this is prudent, then he can be received simply by renouncing non-Orthodox beliefs, affirming Orthodox ones, being vested as a priest, and concelebrating with his bishop.
What formation would be deemed suitable and any timescales involved would again be determined according to the particular circumstances.
I once knew a former Coptic Orthodox priest who was received into Eastern Orthodoxy through ROCOR (in this case the ordination prayers were prayed over him and he was vested but without the public display of the full ordination rite). Even though he was considered an Eastern Orthodox priest from that moment, he was not pemitted to serve the Liturgy or hear confessions &c. until his mentoring priest and the bishop were satisfied that he was competent to do so.
Marriage is one of those areas where economy is usually extended extremely generously. Those entering into Christian marriage outside of Orthodoxy would generally find their marriage seen as part of the whole that is made in a sense complete in Chrismation. (What happens in the case of civil marriages I suspect might be different but I will defer to those with greater knowledge.) I have known of couples who have requested their marriage to be crowned after converting to Orthodoxy - and that is an option - but I havenver heard of a priest insisting on it. It would seem too much like setting an unnecessary hurdle in the way of people's journey.
Nothing is absolute, indeed! Although we usually accept adults by chrismation (most are coming from mainline Trinitarian traditions), marriages are often recommended to be blessed immediately or very soon after reception.
This is a common attitude among a certain niche of anti-ecumenical Orthodox, but I don't think it holds up in light of the historic practice. In fact the Russian Orthodox Church for a long time received Catholics by mere profession of faith, recognizing not only their baptisms but their confirmations. In the case of Greek Catholic groups reverting to Orthodoxy en masse, this was often done without any rite for individuals at all. Some of the Orthodox rigorists will try to square this with their hard Cyprianist view by saying that such receptions are by economy, and the reception into the church fills the "empty forms" of the heterodox sacraments retroactively. IMO that stretches the idea of economy to the breaking point and I don't believe this theory can be found before the modern era.
There are Orthodox who insist that all converts should be baptized, irrespective of which confession they come from. This attitude is strong on Mount Athos, where some of the monks are notorious for re-baptizing converts who were received only by chrismation.
Some with this attitude will grudgingly allow that those who are chrismated were validly received, but they will insist that this is by economy. The grace of the chrismation somehow retroactively fills the empty form of the heterodox baptism.
People hundreds of miles away woke up the next morning to find themselves bereft of grace and their sacraments invalid despite their being unaware of whatever was happening way over at the other end of the Mediterranean.
Sure, I get that East and West gradually drifted apart and the West unilaterally introduced innovations the Orthodox believe to be detrimental. Sure. I get that.
But it's this thing that whole swathes of Christendom have invalid baptisms, orders and eucharists because of somewhat arcane spats over a millenium ago that strikes me as odd.
That said, I still regard small o orthodoxy to be some kind of lower level approximation to the Big O benchmark. I'm wierd that way. But - perhaps because I'm not Big O myself - I regard small o stuff to be different rather than deficient.
I don't spend my life going round wondering how valid or otherwise various orders and sacraments are. It would worry me if I 'had' to. I'm sure the Orthodox don't spend their time mithering whether Methodists, Presbyterians or anyone else are kosher to some extent or other - although some of them certainly seem obsessed about that.
The historical reality is that 1054 did not flip some magic grace switch and intercommunion continued, to varying degrees, sometimes in far flung places, all the way up to the 18th century.
It tends to a feature of Tridentine Catholics and the more specifically Reformed. I'd be interested to know how prevalent it is in Orthodoxy, or whether it's something western converts to Orthodoxy take with them.
I've only once been told that I can't possibly be a Christian at all because I'm not Orthodox, and that was by a Western convert to Orthodoxy from a very fundamentalist US background. That said, I'm pretty sure that the more full-on Hyperdox cradle Orthodox out in the Balkans, the Steppes and in some of the monasteries would take a similar view.
A Romanian monk once told me that most of the older monks in the monastery he joined were convinced that Western Christianity was 'demonic'. They were only outwardly polite towards the rest of the Christian world because the Patriarch and other authorities had told them that they ought to be.
It’s definitely not solely an import from the West. It is quite prevalent among certain “traditionalist” strands of Orthodoxy, with fierce advocates on Mount Athos and elsewhere. I suspect this view came to prominence in the highly polemical/ bitter periods of the unia and seems to have found new energy since the 20th century in reaction to the Ecumenical movement.
My hunch is that some form of the idea of “hypostasising of grace” (I like that phrase, btw) can be found in the fringes of almost any group. It’s probably part of what makes them “fringe.”
Sometimes, when talking with the Orthodox, I get the impression that they feel the West has 'commodified' grace and made it into some kind of 'force' extraneous from God himself. If I understand them correctly, they would say that God is grace, as it were, in the 'God is Love,' sense.
Or am I getting the wrong end of the stick?
If we say that 'God is Love', are we 'hypostasising' Love?
I'm getting confused ...
Is that the sort of thing we are talking about?
This usually goes back to the 14th century debate about created versus uncreated grace, and the views of Barlaam of Calabria, which are often imputed to the Roman church as a whole, despite him being quite irrelevant in actual Catholic theology. Because the RC's don't accept Gregory Palamas' essence-energies distinction, they separate grace from God, have no real experience of God's divine energies, yada yada yada. The RC's turn around and accuse the Orthodox of ditheism. It's a pretty tiresome debate and my opinion is that, as with the filioque, both sides were talking past each other with the primary goal of scoring points rather than getting at the truth.
It's not the retroactive thing being called ekonomia so much as the acceptance of any converts by any means other than baptism. In other words, the strictly "canonical" way to receive everyone is supposedly by baptism. Reception by chrismation or confession of faith is considered "economy", a relaxation of the strict practice, so as to avoid admitting that Catholics, Anglicans, etc. have valid sacraments.
If Enoch means by 'Tridentine Catholics' those who after 1970 and the introduction of the Mass of Paul VI those who refused to accept the new Mass and insisted on using the old rites,then I might agree with him. Certainly these people will see in the Catholic church and in its older rites the certainty of the Ark of Salvation and be doubtful, certainly for themselves,that they could only see salvation coming through their adherence to these rites.
Just as the Anglican Church and many of the Reformed Churches have moved on so also has the Catholic Church and can see God's grace as coming from- God.
filling in what was lacking.
Officially grace is an uncreated energy of God. Far from being some fluid. It's God himself.
Saying "God is love" is not hypostasising either 'love' or 'divine love'. Love is of God's nature. He is love because he can't be anything else. It's just how he is. Likewise grace. It's a quality of his personality. Likewise the Father; likewise the Son; likewise the Holy Spirit. It is how they all are. It does not have an independent hypostatised existence. It cannot be commodified. To commodify grace is to misunderstand not just grace but who God is and what he is like.
That's what I think, anyway.
@SirPalomides this is not something I'm any sort of expert in. Nevertheless, since love and grace are how God is, I think I'd assume it follows that as the divine light on the Mount of Transfiguration, his love and his grace are uncreate, not created.
@Forthview if a person were to insist that between 1570 and 1970 all Latin rite Catholics stepped as one step and thought as one thought in accordance with the theology commended as 'thinking with the Pope' after the Council of Trent, then it would follow that all were 'Tridentine Catholics'. I'm not at all convinced that that was ever the case. I suppose I'd probably put it that by 'Tridentine Catholics' I mean those who have since refused to accept Vatican II or think like such people, whether before or after Vatican II. It's the approach to represented by figures like Ludwig Ott. I know haven't put that very well.
I always get a good laugh when folks distance Anglicanism from the Reformed tradition, in a manner that seems to suggest that we never had anything to do with Them, but then I do spend a lot of time dealing with the history and theology of the CofE from 1532 to about 1650. The other factor with me is that I have always calmly accepted that under Laud Anglican theology drifted away from the Reformed norm in some areas, for example, Predestination; but remained firmly on track with the older Reformed tradition when it came to the Eucharist.
Baptism is an interesting area because someone like Heinrich Bullinger (Decades 5:8) has quite a strong developed understanding of Baptismal Regeneration, and uses language reminiscent of the Old High Churchmen. Other Reformed theologians don't and seem to cling to the covenant concept with great tenacity and dismiss any broader notions of sacramental grace. I tend to read reformed theology with a general rule in the back of my mind that the later you go the weaker the sacramentalism until you run into Nevin in the 1840s.
As for the essence-energies thing that Sir Palomides reminds us about ... well, I've never understood that one.
Orthodox have tried to explain it to me and why it's important but I just don't get it. I sort of get the filioque controversy, to the extent that I do inclined towards the Orthodox position on that one ...
But as far as the controversy between Balaam and Gregory Palamas or whoever it was, that whole thing is lost on me. I don't know where to even start with that one. I don't know what either side were on about and why it was important.
This is also why you should always disbelieve any Reformed Christian who claims that they have the only true understanding of the Reformed Tradition. A tradition which is based on a merger can never have a single true interpretation, the true interpretations must always be multiple.
However, it isn't now 1600, 1630 or even 1660. The CofE wasn't where it was at any of those dates in 1760, 1860 or 1960. It's original claim to be a via media wasn't between Protestantism and Rome but between Reformed and Luther. I'd now put it as with "those who are happy to draw on all of them".
@Enoch - Laud is not exactly one of my favourites either.
I get the impression that there was a lot of cautious testing of boundaries. Sometimes Andrewes seems quite in line with the Calvinist view; sometimes he seems to assert a very local presence, though with language not necessarily irreconcilable with virtualism. On the topic of images some of the Caroline divines seem to have not only repudiated the old iconoclasm in deed (e.g. images in chapels) but in writing, albeit in very hedged and cautious terms (e.g. Thorndike's critique of the Homily on Peril of Idolatry). Bishop Montagu's argument against the invocation of the saints is so mild and concedes so much that it kind of reads like a defense of the practice- which is of course how the Puritans read it.
Obviously Protestantism is in the Anglican DNA and is not going away, but it's also true the Tractarians were picking up on a certain trajectory that had begun in the 17th century at the latest.
FYI Calvin's actual Eucharistic teaching can be interpreted in a very high view; I think spiritual presence has been used. Calvin was not a simple memorialist. This article gives you some idea of the complexity of the debate. There is a lot clearer discussion of Calvin's own stance in this article.