Baptism and (Trans)Formation

Paul writes – I commented, in passing (in this post) that an interesting question about Baptism had been asked of Dave Tomlinson at Finlay Park – the question was in the context of Dave talking about “borderless churches” and went something like this: ““if we’re talking about “(church) communities without borders” and “churches without ‘border control’” where then do practices such as baptism and confirmation fit?” 

Anyway, here are some thoughts on Baptism via Jason Goroncy that I’d like to add to any conversation that might arise in response to the above question. 

“…Baptism is both God’s sign to humanity that we have been redeemed by Christ, and humanity’s sign to God that we are willing partners in God’s work of reconciliation. Baptism, in other words, finds its basis in the hypostatic union through which God draws near to humanity and humanity draws near to God. Jesus Christ is the one mediator between God and humanity. It is the prius of the divine ecomony in the incarnation that baptism testifies chiefly to, and not to any subjective attainment of our confession, which might change. To put it another way, baptism is nothing less than our participation in the full and vicarious humanity of the Son of God.” 

Jason then quotes Bonhoeffer: 

“Formation comes only by being drawn into the life of Jesus Christ. It comes only as formation in His likeness, as conformation with the unique form of Him who was made man, was crucified and rose again…” You can read all of Jason's post here. 

This in turn got me thinking about a statement author Marilynne Robinson made when asked, in effect, whether religion was needful in living the moral life, particularly as there are a good many very moral people for whom religious commitment is not a part of their life. I wove some of her response into my own statement of what I heard as she responded:

“…Religion is not [ultimately, as many suppose, about morality]… It is about what the nature of  being is… [It opens us] to the mystery of experience for which religion supplies wonderful images and vocabularly and in doing so opens us to a much larger  [horizon and] understanding than one would have without it…”

“…Often when people ‘change’ they really do become themselves [i.e. they change toward themselves]; it’s not like a difference enters into them. It’s like, for some reason or other, they’ve been distracted away from their own human centre] – who they most deeply are…”

Other sculpturers saw a big block of stone, Michelangelo saw David and set out to reveal him.  Every bit of stone that was chipped away was a change toward revealing David.

Comments

[Jason Goroncy]

Paul. Thanks for the plug. Given the connection you make here with Robinson, you may be interested in checking out Chapter 2 of The Joy of Being Wrong by James Alison who draws heavily upon a Girardian anthropology in his identifying of the formative interruption of conversion.

[Paul Fromont]

Thanks Jason. I enjoyed your post. Sadly I don't have that book by James Alison. I have three others, but not that one. Will add it to my book basket. Enjoy your long weekend.