From a letter of St Basil to his friend Amphilochius, Bishop of Iconium, about how to receive into communion with the Church converts who have received a form of baptism outside the Chruch.

As to your enquiry about the Cathari, a statement has already been made, and you have properly reminded me that it is right to follow the custom obtaining in each region; because those who at the time gave decision on these points, held different opinions concerning their baptism. But the baptism of the Pepuzenes seems to me to have no authority; and I am astonished how this can have escaped Dionysius, acquainted as he was with the canons.

The old authorities decided to accept that baptism which in no way errs from the faith. Thus they used the names of heresies, of schisms, and of unlawful congregations. By heresies they meant men who were altogether broken off and alienated in matters relating to the actual faith; by schisms men who had separated for some ecclesiastical reasons and questions capable of mutual solution; by unlawful congregations gatherings held by disorderly presbyters or bishops or by uninstructed laymen. As, for instance, if a man be convicted of crime, and prohibited from discharging ministerial functions, and then refuses to submit to the canons, but arrogates to himself episcopal and ministerial rights, and persons leave the catholic Church and join him, this is unlawful assembly. To disagree with members of the Church about repentance, is schism. Instances of heresy are those of the Manichaeans, of the Valentinians, of the Marcionites, and of these Pepuzenes; for with them there comes in at once their disagreement concerning the actual faith in God. So it seemed good to the ancient authorities to reject the baptism of heretics altogether, but to admit that of schismatics, on the ground that they still belonged to the Church.

As to those who assembled in unlawful congregations, their decision was to join them again to the Church, after they had been brought to a better state by proper repentance and rebuke; and so, in many cases, when men in orders had rebelled with the disorderly, to receive them on their repentance, into the same rank. Now the Pepuzenes are plainly heretical, for, by unlawfully and shamefully applying to Montanus and Priscilla the title of the Paraclete, they have blasphemed against the Holy Ghost. They are, therefore, to be condemned for ascribing divinity to men; and for outraging the Holy Ghost by comparing Him to men. They are thus also liable to eternal damnation, inasmuch as blasphemy against the Holy Ghost admits of no forgiveness. What ground is there, then, for the acceptance of the baptism of men who baptize into the Father and the Son and Montanus or Priscilla? For those who have not been baptized into the names delivered to us have not been baptized at all.

The Cathari are schismatics. But it seemed good to the ancient authorities, I mean Cyprian and our own Firmilianus, to reject all these, Cathari, Encratites, and Hydroparastatae, by one common condemnation, because the origin of separation arose through schism, and those who had apostatized from the Church had no longer on them the grace of the Holy Spirit, for it ceased to be imparted when the continuity was broken. The first separatists had received their ordination from the Fathers, and possessed the spiritual gift by the laying on of their hands. But they who were broken off had become laymen, and, because they are no longer able to confer on others that grace of the Holy Spirit from which they themselves are fallen away, they had no authority either to baptize or to ordain. And therefore those who were from time to time baptized by them, were ordered, as though baptized by laymen, to come to the church to be purified by the Church’s true baptism.

Nevertheless, since it has seemed to some of those of Asia that, for the sake of management of the majority, their baptism should be accepted, let it be accepted. We must, however, perceive the iniquitous action of the Encratites; who, in order to shut themselves out from being received back by the Church have endeavoured for the future to anticipate readmission by a peculiar baptism of their own, violating, in this manner even their own special practice. My opinion, therefore, is that nothing being distinctly laid down concerning them, it is our duty to reject their baptism, and that in the case of any one who has received baptism from them, we should, on his coming to the church, baptize him. If, however, there is any likelihood of this being detrimental to general discipline, we must fall back upon custom, and follow the fathers who have ordered what course we are to pursue. For I am under some apprehension lest, in our wish to discourage them from baptizing, we may, through the severity of our decision, be a hindrance to those who are being saved. If they accept our baptism, do not allow this to distress us. We are by no means bound to return them the same favour, but only strictly to obey canons. On every ground let it be enjoined that those who come to us from their baptism be anointed in the presence of the faithful, and only on these terms approach the mysteries. I am aware that I have received into episcopal rank Izois and Saturninus from the Encratite following. I am precluded therefore from separating from the Church those who have been united to their company, inasmuch as, through my acceptance of the bishops, I have promulgated a kind of canon of communion with them.

A few disclaimers are in order. First of all, this is probably the only article by Gary North I will ever repost, and I endorse none of his political writings. Second, no disrespect is intended to the memory of Ronald Reagan; I may take issue with his politics, but mocking someone with Alzheimer’s would be despicable. Finally: my reason for posting this is to highlight the relationship between salvation, grace, understanding, and what it means to be a member of Christ. 

My own tradition, Eastern Orthodoxy, baptizes and communes infants as full members of the community of faith, in expectation that the young person will grow into the faith as it is taught and lived around him. However, most other Christian traditions, while they may baptize infants or not, reserve the Eucharist for adults. In this article I think the author brings up some meaningful questions that arise from our various traditions’ practices of Communion.

THE EXCOMMUNICATION OF RONALD REAGAN: A LITERARY INVESTIGATION
(2003 version)
by Gary North

Ronald Reagan is afflicted with Alzheimer’s disease. Most of us fear this disease as we grow older because the older we get, the more likely we will be its victims.

Mr. Reagan is a member in good standing in Bel Air Presbyterian church (PCUSA), and has been for decades. The theological question arises: Should he be allowed to take the Lord’s Supper?

Why should this question arise? Because of the centuries-old tradition in Presbyterianism that anyone who does not understand what the theological meaning of the Lord’s Supper is not allowed to partake. This principle is almost universally applied to young children. It is also applied to people with Down’s Syndrome.

Why isn’t it applied to Alzheimer’s victims? One possible reason: “The victim’s correct understanding years ago still counts judicially.” But this does not answer these theological questions:

1. Why does someone who doesn’t understand today allowed to partake?
2. How can we be sure the person was ever truly saved, since confession of faith is judicial evidence of such salvation?
3. Isn’t a participant supposed to examine himself before partaking, as Paul requires in I Corinthians 11?

The fact that pastors prefer not to deal publicly with this problem doesn’t make it go away.

What about you? Will you be allowed to partake? If not, doesn’t that mean you have been excommunicated? Excommunication is defined as cut off from Holy Communion, i.e., the Lord’s Supper. Not only must you worry about Alzheimer’s, are you also to worry about being unofficially excommunicated?

To help you understand the theological issues in this controversial topic, I offer this hypothetical dialogue, which would never take place in a congregation of the Presbyterian Church in the USA. But it might happen in your congregation with someone less famous than Mr. Reagan. If it wouldn’t, be grateful, but you owe it to yourself find out why it wouldn’t. If it wouldn’t happen mainly because Ronald Reagan is an important person, then you are at risk unless you are an equally important person. So, you might consider showing this essay to your pastor. See if he disagrees with it, and why.

The following discussion is between Reagan’s pastor and his legal guardian at the time of the fictitious incident.

* * * * * * * * *

Pastor: I have invited you to my office to discuss the matter of Mr. Reagan’s membership in this congregation.

Guardian: Is there something wrong?

Pastor: Well, frankly, there is. Mr. Reagan has Alzheimer’s disease.

Guardian: Yes. He has had it for some time.

Pastor: I suppose the elders should not have waited so long to deal with this.

Guardian: Deal with what?

Pastor: The fact that Mr. Reagan no longer understands theology.

Guardian: What has his understanding of theology got to do with his membership?

Pastor: He is a communicant member. Or, I should say, he was a communicant member. He is no longer.

Guardian: What do you mean?

Pastor: The elders voted him a non-communing member at last week’s meeting.

Guardian: On what authority?

Pastor: On the authority of Book of Order.

Guardian: Where does it say that you can refuse to offer the Lord’s Supper to him without a trial?

Pastor: Well, it doesn’t actually say this, but we posses this authority.

Guardian: On what basis?

Pastor: Because we are authorized to determine at what age a child is eligible for communing membership. The Book of Order is quite clear about this: G-5.0100, “The Meaning of Membership, Section c.”

http://www.pcusa.org/oga/publications/01_FOG.pdf

Guardian: He is not a child.

Pastor: On the contrary, he is a child. He has the mentality of a toddler.

Guardian: But he is 91 years old.

Pastor: In years, yes. In mental ability, he is about three years old.

Guardian: But baptized adults are entitled to the Lord’s Supper.

Pastor: Mental adults are entitled to the Lord’s Supper. Mental children are not.

Guardian: I have never heard such an interpretation before.

Pastor: That’s because the elders of this congregation have just discovered this principle.

Guardian: But it’s not part of Presbyterian law.

Pastor: It’s part of a well-established traditional interpretation of Presbyterian theology. The basis of the prohibition against toddlers’ taking communion has always been this: the toddlers’ inability to understand theology. Toddlers don’t understand what communion means. Neither does Mr. Reagan.

Guardian: You’re saying that access to the Lord’s Supper is based on a person’s IQ.

Pastor: Well, we wouldn’t want to put it that way.

Guardian: But that’s the implication of what you’re saying. “No brains, no communion.”

Pastor: Well, yes, I suppose that is our position.

Guardian: He understood communion before he got Alzheimer’s.

Pastor: But he doesn’t understand any longer.

Guardian: But doesn’t his intelligence carry over legally?

Pastor: How? He doesn’t understand the meaning of communion. So, he cannot search his heart before he takes communion, as Paul requires in I Corinthians 11.

Guardian: Well, I can do this for him, now that I’m his legal guardian and trustee. So can the elders, if I fail in my duty.

Pastor: I’m afraid your argument doesn’t apply. If we accepted its logic in your case, we would have to accept it for toddlers and infants.

Guardian: Why?

Pastor: Because it’s the same argument, judicially speaking. You’re saying that a legal guardian who is a member of this congregation and is mentally competent can judge the moral state of his or her mentally incompetent ward. If we were to accept your argument regarding Mr. Reagan, we would have to accept it for the parents of every toddler. The parents would say that the child has not done anything so evil since the date of the last communion that the child should be denied access to the Lord’s Supper.

Guardian: But he hasn’t done anything deserving of excommunication.

Pastor: But he has.

Guardian: What has he done?

Pastor: He got Alzheimer’s.

Guardian: Are you saying that a disease is grounds for excommunication?

Pastor: This disease is grounds for exclusion from the Lord’s Table. Also any other disease or head injury that lowers a person’s IQ to the level of a toddler.

Guardian: Then contracting such a disease is the same, judicially speaking, as committing adultery.

Pastor: No, I’m not saying that.

Guardian: No, I guess you aren’t. That’s because someone can repent from committing adultery. A person can’t raise his IQ. You’re saying that Alzheimer’s is a legal basis for permanently excommunicating a person, but adultery isn’t.

Pastor: Well, now you put it that way, I agree with you. I hadn’t thought of that.

Guardian: There is a whole lot that you haven’t thought of.

Pastor: Like what?

Guardian: Like the fact that anyone can get Alzheimer’s. Like the fact that you are condemning in advance millions of old people to excommunication. Like the fact that you are bringing despair to millions of spouses who are married to people with Alzheimer’s. You are also raising a specter of separation from the Lord’s Table to every Presbyterian, who must now fear the day that he will be treated the way you are treating Mr. Reagan, should they contract this terrible disease.

Pastor: Well, that’s what we tell parents of toddlers.

Guardian: Parents of toddlers have hope that their children will get smarter as they grow older. Their pain is bearable, especially because your interpretation is backed up by tradition.

Pastor: Parents of low IQ children have to live with this despair, and it’s permanent. They don’t complain. They know that Presbyterians have always accepted this risk as a cost of being Presbyterians.

Guardian: But why should this be? Why should you treat Down’s Syndrome victims as sinners who are forever cut off from the communion table?

Pastor: Because they are stupid.

Guardian: You mean intelligence is a matter of saving grace?

Pastor: Oh, no. We wouldn’t say that.

Guardian: You already have. You are saying a lot worse. You are saying that having a low IQ is worse than committing adultery, because repentance is possible for adulterers.

Pastor: Being excluded from the communion table isn’t the same as excommunication.

Guardian: Really? How is it different?

Pastor: Because you have to be convicted of a sin in order to be officially excommunicated.

Guardian: But what’s the difference in the objective result? In both cases, the person is cut off from the Lord’s Table. Excommunication is considered the supreme negative sanction that the church can impose. Why isn’t it a negative sanction for a Down’s Syndrome child to be cut off from the Lord’s Supper?

Pastor: Because there has been no trial.

Guardian: What kind of view of the Lord’s Supper are you teaching here? Are you people Baptists?

Pastor: That is a terrible thing to accuse anyone of being, unless he’s a Baptist.

Guardian: Well, that’s the view of the Lord’s Supper that you’re defending. You’re saying that the Lord’s Supper is one thing for one person, and another thing for someone else. It’s whatever a person thinks it is. It has no judicially valid authority in its own right.

Pastor: I don’t follow you.

Guardian: If being denied access to the Lord’s Supper is a negative sanction for an adulterer, then it’s also a negative sanction for a Down’s Syndrome victim.

Pastor: But this isn’t a negative sanction for the Down’s Syndrome victim.

Guardian: Why not?

Pastor: Because there has been no trial.

Guardian: There doesn’t need to be a trial. My point is that the same negative sanction applies to both the Down’s Syndrome victim and the adulterer. If the sanction is the same for one, it’s the same for the other. It’s not just what the participants think it is. The Westminster Confession of Faith is clear about this. It’s right here in Chapter XXI. Let me read it to you.

These sacraments, both of the Old Testament and of the New, were instituted by God not only to make a visible distinction between his people and those who were without the Covenant, but also to exercise the faith of his children and, by participation of these sacraments, to seal in their hearts the assurance of his promise, and of that most blessed conjunction, union, and society, which the chosen have with their Head, Christ Jesus. And so we utterly condemn the vanity of those who affirm the sacraments to be nothing else than naked and bare signs. No, we assuredly believe that by Baptism we are engrafted into Christ Jesus, to be made partakers of his righteousness, by which our sins are covered and remitted, and also that in the Supper rightly used, Christ Jesus is so joined with us that he becomes the very nourishment and food of our souls. . . .

Therefore, if anyone slanders us by saying that we affirm or believe the sacraments to be symbols and nothing more, they are libelous and speak against the plain facts.

Pastor: I’m not saying that the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper has no independent power on its own authority. I’m not a “memorial only” theologian.

Guardian: Then why do you deny access to the Lord’s table for a member in good standing?

Pastor: Because a member in good standing has to have an IQ over 80.

Guardian: Why?

Pastor: So he can understand what’s going on.

Guardian: You think a Down’s Syndrome person doesn’t understand that he is not being allowed to participate, when everyone else in the church is taking the elements except those people nobody talks to — adulterers, thieves, and child molesters?

Pastor: Yes, that’s what I’m saying, at least the victims of extreme Down’s Syndrome.

Guardian: His parents understand, and they act on his behalf. They can decide that he has not committed an excommunicable sin. You should support their decision.

Pastor: They don’t have the authority to act on his behalf. He has to be responsible. He has to act on his own authority.

Guardian: I was right. You’re a Baptist.

Pastor: I deeply resent that accusation.

Guardian: I apologize. You’re only half-Baptist. If a parent who is a member in good standing can act on behalf of the child when it comes time to baptize the child, then why not allow the parent to make the same representative decision in the case of the Lord’s Supper?

Pastor: Because that’s what Presbyterianism has done for centuries.

Guardian: So, you’re saying that Presbyterians are half- Baptists. Presbyterians draw a judicial line at the Lord’s Table, and say to parents, “Your authority ends here.” Then you treat their young children just as you treat excommunicated adults. Meanwhile, the Baptists stand on the sidelines and taunt you. “You don’t really believe in all that representation stuff. You hold the same view that we do regarding the Lord’s Supper. There has to be an age of accountability. The difference is, we take baptism as seriously as you take the Lord’s Supper. We close access to baptism to toddlers and morons and people with Alzheimer’s.”

Pastor: But the child isn’t missing out. Not really.

Guardian: Of course he is missing out. The Confession says that “in the Supper rightly used, Christ Jesus is so joined with us that he becomes the very nourishment and food of our souls.” I ask you: Is it a positive sanction to be able to take the Lord’s Supper?

Pastor: I think I see where you’re going with this.

Guardian: Good. Then you have not yet developed Alzheimer’s.

Pastor: You’re trying to get me to say that the Lord’s Supper is a means of grace or something like that.

Guardian: Well, isn’t that what answer 96 of the Shorter Catechism says? “The Lord’s Supper is a sacrament, wherein, by giving and receiving bread and wine, according to Christ’s appointment, his death is shewed forth; and the worthy receivers are, not after a corporal and carnal manner, but by faith, made partakers of his body and blood, with all his benefits, to their spiritual nourishment, and growth in grace.”

Pastor: Yes, but answers 96 and 97 say that these benefits are limited to worthy receivers. “It is required of them that would worthily partake of the Lord’s Supper, that they examine themselves of their knowledge to discern the Lord’s body, of their faith to feed upon him, of their repentance, love, and new obedience; lest, coming unworthily, they eat and drink judgment to themselves.” Toddlers, morons, and Alzheimer’s victims are not worthy.

Guardian: Nobody is worthy except Jesus Christ.

Pastor: Of course, of course. But there are worthy members and unworthy members.

Guardian: Is an infant worthy?

Pastor: That’s a trick question.

Guardian: Only for Presbyterians with tricky answers.

Pastor: An infant is worthy to be baptized, but not to take the Lord’s Supper.

Guardian: What is the difference?

Pastor: The judicial authority of his parents. In the sacrament of baptism, the parents are worthy on his behalf, but not in the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.

Guardian: Where does it say that in the Confession or the Catechisms?

Pastor: It doesn’t. It’s implied.

Guardian: Where does it say that in the Bible?

Pastor: It doesn’t. It’s implied.

Pastor: Where does it say that Alzheimer’s victims are unworthy?

Pastor: It doesn’t. It’s implied.

Guardian: So, the elders of this congregation added together a series of implications, and they concluded that Mr. Reagan just had to be excommunicated.

Pastor: I wish you wouldn’t use that word.

Guardian: Then what word would you use? If being officially denied access to the Lord’s Supper isn’t excommunication, what is it?

Pastor: We like to think of it as “safety-first righteousness.”

Guardian: It’s more like “righteousness, emeritus.”

Pastor: Mr. Reagan is still righteous, in a childish sort of way.

Guardian: Toddlers are righteous in an Alzheimer’s sort of way.

Pastor: That’s it, exactly.

Guardian: Infants are baptized in an Alzheimer’s sort of way.

Pastor: No, that’s completely different. Infants are baptized in a judicially representative way. Their parents speak on their behalf.

Guardian: Then the sacramental issue is the competence and judicial standing of the parents.

Pastor: Yes, but only with respect to infant baptism, not young child communion.

Guardian: Then toddlers are denied access to the Lord’s Table in an Alzheimer’s sort of way.

Pastor: Very well put.

Guardian: What about an Alzheimer’s victim who commits adultery?

Pastor: What about him?

Guardian: Is this an excommunicable sin?

Pastor: Yes.

Guardian: But what if he didn’t know that the other person was not his spouse? After all, he has Alzheimer’s.

Pastor: Well, in that case, it wouldn’t be an excommunicable sin.

Guardian: But it would be for the woman who deceived him.

Pastor: Yes, but not for him.

Guardian: Then the only difference between the adulterer and the Alzheimer’s victim is that the adulterer knew what she was doing.

Pastor: Yes.

Guardian: Then the moral and judicial difference between the two kinds of sexual contact outside of marriage is that the deceiver, who lures the Alzheimer’s victim into adultery, is legally responsible.

Pastor: I don’t like where this line of reasoning is headed.

Guardian: I’ll bet you don’t.

Pastor: You’re trying to get me to say that the person with legal authority in the case of adultery is the mentally competent decision-maker, not the mentally incompetent person who obeys the words of the person he believes is in authority.

Guardian: You have got it, exactly.

Pastor: And then you’re going to go from the representative authority of the decision-making adulterer to the representative authority of a decision-making parent.

Guardian: You have got it, exactly.

Pastor: You’re trying to make access to the Lord’s Table as much a matter of representative parental authority as baptism is.

Guardian: You have got it, exactly.

Pastor: Well, I’m not going to say that.

Guardian: Why not?

Pastor: Because it doesn’t sound Presbyterian to me.

Guardian: Neither does excommunicating a person with Alzheimer’s.

Pastor: But that is the logical implication of Presbyterianism.

Guardian: It is the logical implication of a particular Presbyterian tradition. But it is not the logical implication of the doctrine of parental representation in the Presbyterian doctrine of baptism.

Pastor: You’re trying to confuse me.

Guardian: Not too difficult a task.

Pastor: You’re implying that Presbyterianism is theologically schizophrenic: that its doctrine of representation regarding parental authority in baptism is in conflict with the Presbyterian tradition of denying parental authority in the Lord’s Supper.

Guardian: I’m not implying it. I’m inferring it. They are in conflict.

Pastor: You want me to believe that Mr. Reagan should not be excluded from the Lord’s Table even though he has the mind of a toddler or a Down’s Syndrome child.

Guardian: Correct.

Pastor: But if I drew that conclusion, I would have to open the Lord’s Table to toddlers and Down’s Syndrome victims.

Guardian: Correct.

Pastor: And all this is based on the theology of judicial representation.

Guardian: Yes. That’s an important Presbyterian doctrine. Let’s begin with Adam.

Pastor: Let’s not.

Guardian: Then let’s begin with the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ.

Pastor: Let’s not.

Guardian: Then where should we begin?

Pastor: With Presbyterian tradition.

Guardian: You want to substitute ecclesiastical tradition for the Bible and covenant theology?

Pastor: I didn’t say that.

Guardian: But that’s what is implied by what you did say. You are saying that an ecclesiastical tradition that is inconsistent at this point with the doctrine of judicial representation — covenant theology, in other words — carries more authority than covenant theology.

Pastor: Tradition is important.

Guardian: It isn’t that important. Or was Luther wrong in 1517? Was Calvin wrong in 1536? Was the Reformation a mistake?

Pastor: You’re making this more complicated than it is.

Guardian: No, you’re making it more complicated than it is. The doctrine of representation is not all that complicated. Adam sinned on our behalf. Jesus Christ died on our behalf. Parents speak on behalf of their infants. If the concept of “on behalf” is abandoned, then Christianity loses its judicial character. And Presbyterianism is nothing if not judicial.

Pastor: You’re trying to persuade me to begin with the doctrine of judicial representation.

Guardian: No, I’m trying to persuade you to end up with the doctrine of judicial representation that you officially begin with as a Presbyterian. You keep ending up a Baptist. If Mr. Reagan had wanted to be a Baptist, he would have joined a Baptist church. There are surely a lot more voters who are Baptists than there are Presbyterians. He took Presbyterianism seriously. I’m asking you to take Presbyterianism seriously.

Pastor: I’ll have to think about this.

Guardian: Good. I would suggest that you and the elders put his excommunication on hold until you make up your mind.

Pastor: This will have to go to a committee.

Guardian: Somehow, that does not come as a surprise.

###

PAEDOCOMMUNION

Two decades ago, Rev. Ray Sutton and James Jordan each wrote a brief paper, “Presuppositions on Paedocommunion,” and “Theses on Paedocommunion,” respectively. That’s a fancy word for young child communion.

The same judicial is at stake as with Reagan. If a child can be lawfully separated from the Lord’s Supper merely because he doesn’t understand it, what about Down’s Syndrome victims and Alzheimer’s victims?

The two authors concluded that the Lord’s Supper should be open to young children. Their conclusion was accepted by the Reformed Episcopal Church, which Sutton later joined. It has been ignored by most Presbyterians and other Protestants. Here are their articles on the subject. They download slowly.

ftp://entrewave.com/freebooks/docs/a_pdfs/newslet/geneva/82s1.pdf

ftp://entrewave.com/freebooks/docs/a_pdfs/newslet/geneva/82s2.pdf

These papers were circulated widely, but rarely referred to publicly. They never became the focus of a formal debate in Presbyterian circles.

In 1983, David Chilton wrote an essay in dialogue form, “Conversations With Nathan.”

http://freebooks.entrewave.com/freebooks/docs/a_pdfs/cc_4.pdf

It covered the same theological issue. It was even more ignored than the Sutton-Jordan papers. I imitated Chilton’s educational approach in my essay: a dialogue.

CIRCULATE THIS ESSAY

I authorize anyone to send this report to any mailing list. I authorize its posting on any Web site. But this authorization applies only if the entire report is mailed or posted. If you want a copy of your own, send an e-mail to:

reagan@kbot.com

Wait 30 seconds after your e-mail has been sent. Then Click SEND/RECV to download it.

Paper presented at the European Pentecostal/Charismatic Research Conference held in Prague on 10-14 September 1997

The Holy Spirit supplies all things:
He causes prophecies to spring up,
He sanctifies priests,
To the uninitiated He taught wisdom,
The fishermen He turned into theologians.
He holds in unity the whole structure of the Church.
— From an Orthodox hymn on the Feast of Pentecost

Solovetsk and Sunderland

Around the year 1890 an Anglican traveller from Sunderland, the Revd Alexander Boddy, Vicar of All Saints, Monkwearmouth, came as a pilgrim to the great Solovetsky Monastery on the White Sea in the far north of Russia. One thing in particular impressed him. It was a depiction of the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost:¹

When, nearly two decades later, on the occasion of a famous visit from T.B. Barratt, there was an outpouring of the Holy Spirit in Boddy’s Sunderland parish on 31 August 1907, is it not likely that this ’striking representation’ of Pentecost that he had seen in Russia was still vividly present in his memory? A formative event in the history of British Pentecostalism turns out in this way to have, as one of its sources, the iconography of an Orthodox monastic church.

This unexpected connection between Orthodox Christianity and the origins of the twentieth-century Pentecostal movement in Britain naturally leads us to ask: can we discover other links, on a more specifically theological level, between Orthodoxy and Pentecostalism? How far is the Christian East sympathetic to a ‘charismatic’ understanding of the spiritual life? At first sight it might appear that there is but little affinity. Orthodoxy, it might be said, is liturgical and hierarchic, whereas Pentecostalism is grounded upon the free and spontaneous action of the Spirit; Orthodoxy appeals to Holy Tradition, whereas Pentecostalism assigns primacy to personal experience.

Anyone, however, who searches more deeply will soon realize that stark contrasts of this kind are one-sided and misleading. In actual fact, many of the Greek Fathers insist with great emphasis upon the need for all baptized Christians to attain in their own personal experience a direct and conscious awareness of the Holy Spirit. No one can be a Christian at second-hand: such is the frequently repeated teaching of the Fathers. Holy Tradition does not signify merely the mechanical and exterior acceptance of truths formulated in the distant past, but it is in the words of the Russian theologian Vladimir Lossky – nothing else than ‘the life of the Holy Spirit in the Church² here and now, at this present moment.

“The worst of all heresies”

The vital significance of the Holy Spirit for the Christian East will be apparent if we consider one of the outstanding mystical authors of the Middle Byzantine period, St. Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022). Each of us, he maintains, is called by God to experience the indwelling presence of the Spirit ‘ in a conscious and perceptible way’, with what he describes as the ’sensation of the heart’. It is not enough for us to possess the Spirit merely in an implicit manner:

Do not say, It is impossible to receive the Holy Spirit;
Do not say, It is possible to be saved without Him.
Do not say that one can possess Him without knowing it.
Do not say, God does not appear to us.
Do not say, People do not see the divine light,
Or else, It is impossible in these present times.
This is a thing never impossible, my friends,
But on the contrary altogether possible for those who wish.³

All the charismata available to Christians in the apostolic age, Symeon is passionately convinced, are equally available to Christians in our own day. To suggest otherwise is for Symeon the worst of all possible heresies, implying as it does that God has somehow deserted the Church. If the Gifts of the Spirit are not as evident in the Christian community of our own time as they are in the Book of Acts, there can be only one reason for this: the weakness of our faith.

Symeon goes on to draw some startling conclusions from this. When asked, for example, whether lay monks, not ordained to the priesthood, have the power to ‘bind and loose’ that is to say, to hear confessions and to pronounce absolution he answers that there is one essential qualification, and one only, which empowers a person to act as confessor and to bestow forgiveness of sins; and that is the conscious awareness of the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit. Monks who possess such awareness, even though not in holy orders, may confer absolution upon others; but anyone who lacks such awareness – even though he may be bishop or patriarch – should not attempt to do this.⁴

Symeon speaks also of a ’second baptism’, the baptism of tears, which is conferred on those who are ‘born from above’ through the Holy Spirit:

When someone suddenly lifts up his gaze and contemplates the nature of existing things in a way that he had never done before, then he is filled with amazement and sheds spontaneous tears without any sense of anguish. These tears purify him and wash him in a second baptism, that baptism of which our Lord speaks in the Gospels when He says, ‘if someone is not born through water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.’ Again He says, ‘If someone is not born from above’ (cf. John 3:5,7). When He said ‘from above’, He signified being born from the Spirit.

Symeon even seems to consider the second baptism more important than the first; for he regards the first baptism – sacramental baptism through water – as no more than a type’ or foreshadowing, whereas the second baptism is to be seen as the truth’ or full reality: ‘The second baptism is no longer a type of the truth, but it is the truth itself.’ ⁵

How far is Symeon’s standpoint typical of Eastern Christendom? He himself warns his readers that he is a ‘frenzied’ or ‘manic zealot’:⁶ are his remarks, then, to be discounted as the ravings of an extremist? Let us compare Symeon with three other writers, all of whom emphasize the Holy Spirit, and all of whom are held in high esteem within the Orthodox spiritual Tradition: with St. Mark the Monk (Plate fourth or early fifth century), alias Mark the Hermit or Mark the Ascetic; with the author or authors of the Homilies attributed to St. Macarius of Egypt, but in fact of Syriac origin (late fourth century); and with St. John Climacus (c.570-c.649), author of The Ladder of Divine Ascent, a work which Orthodox monks are supposed to reread each Lent.

Three Questions

In assessing how these different writers understand baptism ‘with the Holy Spirit and fire’ (Luke 3:16), let us ask three more specific questions:

1. Must the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit be always a conscious indwelling, or can there be an indwelling of the Paraclete which is unconscious yet nonetheless real?
2. What is the relationship between sacramental baptism that is to say, water baptism – and ‘baptism with the Holy Spirit and fire’? Is the ’second baptism’ in the Spirit to be seen as something radically new, conferring a fresh grace distinct from that of water baptism, or is the ’second baptism’ essentially the reaffirmation and fulfilment of the first – not a fresh grace but the realization and manifestation of the grace already received in our sacramental baptism with water?
3. What outward experiences – tongues, tears and the like – accompany and express our attainment of a conscious awareness of the Spirit?

Any answers that we propose need to be offered with diffidence and humility, for it is hard to contain within verbal formulae the living dynamism of the Spirit. Pointing as He does always to Christ and not to Himself (John 15:26; 16:13-14), He remains elusive and hidden so far as His own personhood is concerned. He is ‘everywhere present and filling all things’, to use the words of a familiar Orthodox prayer, but we do not see His face. Symeon the New Theologian emphasizes this mysterious character of the Paraclete in an Invocation to the Holy Spirit which precedes the collection of his Hymns. ‘Hidden mystery’, he calls the Spirit, treasure without name … reality beyond all words … person beyond all understanding’; and he continues: ‘Come, for Your name fills our hearts with longing and is ever on our lips; yet who You are and what Your nature is, we cannot say or know.’ ⁷

Let us display, then, an apophatic reticence in all that we assert concerning the free and sovereign Spirit, who is like the wind that ‘blows where it chooses: and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where goes’ (John 3:8).

St. Mark the Monk: from ’secret’ to ‘active’ presence

Little known in the West, Mark’s writings have always been popular in the Christian East. They are included in the first volume of that classic collection of Orthodox spiritual texts The Philokalia; in the Byzantine period there was even a monastic adage, ‘Sell everything and buy Mark’. Reacting against the Messalians (an ascetic movement originating in fourth-century Syria), Mark insists in trenchant terms upon the completeness of baptism. He is speaking, of course, about sacramental baptism:

However far someone may advance in faith, however great the good he has attained … he never discovers, nor can he ever discover, anything more than what he has already received secretly through  baptism…. Christ, being perfect God, has bestowed upon the baptized the perfect grace of the Spirit. We for our part cannot possibly add to that grace, but it is revealed and manifests itself increasingly, the more we fulfil the commandments …. Whatever, then, we offer to Christ after our regeneration was already hidden within us and came originally from Him.

Mark ends – for he is strongly Pauline in spirit – with a quotation from Romans 11:35 – 36: ‘Who has first given a gift to God, so as to receive a gift in return? For from Him… are all things.⁸

Baptism, according to the Monk’s teaching, confers upon us a total purification from all sin, both original and personal; it liberates us from all ’slavery’, restoring the primal integrity of our free will as creatures formed in God’s image; and at the same time, through our immersion in the baptismal font, Christ and Holy Spirit take up their abode within us, entering into what Mark terms ‘the innermost and uncontaminated chamber of the heart’, the innermost and untroubled shrine of the heart where the winds of evil spirits so not blow’.⁹

At this point Mark makes a crucial distinction, summed up in the two Greek adverbs m u s t i k v V meaning ‘mystically’ or ’secretly’, and e n e r g u v V , meaning ‘actively’. Initially, at sacramental baptism -and Mark seems to envisage primarily the situation of infant baptism – the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit is given to us ’secretly’, in such a way that we are not at first consciously aware of it. We only become ‘actively’ conscious of this presence if we acquire a living faith, expressed through our practice of the divine commandments. In this way baptism plants within us a hidden seed of perfection, but it rests with us – assisted always by God’s grace – to make that seed grow, so that it bears conscious and palpable fruit. While we cannot “add* to the completeness of baptism, God nevertheless awaits a response on our part; and if we fail to make that response, although the Spirit will still continue to be present ’secretly’ in our heart, we shall not feel His presence ‘actively’ within us, nor experience His fruits with full conscious awareness.

Such is Mark’s map of the Christian pilgrimage. Our starling-point is the presence of baptismal grace within us ’secretly’ and unconsciously; our end-point is the revelation of that grace ‘actively’, with what he terms ‘full assurance (p l h r o j o r i a ) and sensation (a i s q h s i V )’. As he states:

‘Everyone baptized in the Orthodox manner has received secretly the fullness of grace; but he gains assurance of this grace only to the extent that he actively observes the commandments.’ ¹⁰

Our spiritual programme can therefore be summed up in the maxim ‘Become what you are’. We are already, from the moment of our sacramental baptism as infants , ‘Spirit-bearers’ in an implicit and unconscious manner. Our aim is therefore to acquire conscious experience – several times Mark uses the Greek term p e i r a – of Him who already dwells within us:

‘All these mysteries we have received at our baptism, but we are not aware of them. When, however, we condemn ourselves for our lack of faith, and sincerely express our belief in Christ by performing all the commandments, then we shall acquire experience within ourselves of all the things that I have mentioned; and we shall confess that holy baptism is indeed complete and that the grace of Christ is invisibly hidden within us; but it awaits our obedience and our fulfilment of the commandments.’ ¹¹

We are now in position to assess the answers which Mark offers to our three questions.

1. It is abundantly clear that Mark allows for an indwelling presence of the Spirit that is unconscious yet nonetheless real. Such, in his view, is precisely the position of those who have been baptized in infancy. They receive a genuine indwelling of the Paraclete, and this ’secret’ indwelling will never be altogether lost, however careless or sinful their subsequent lives may be; as Mark puts it, ‘Grace never ceases to help us in a secret way. ^l2 At the same time Mark regards this ’secret’ presence as no more than an initial starting-point; and he clearly affirms that the vocation of every baptised Christian without exception is to advance from this to a conscious awareness of the Spirit.
2. In Mark’s view, this conscious awareness of Spirit experienced ‘actively’ and ‘with full assurance and sensation’ is in no sense a new grace, distinct from the grace conferred in water baptism, but it is nothing else than the full ‘revelation’ of the baptismal grace conferred upon us at the outset. The baptized Christian ‘never discovers, nor can he ever discover, anything more than what he has already received secretly through baptism’. Everything is contained implicitly in the initial charisma of baptism.
3. As to the outward experiences which accompany this conscious awareness of the indwelling Spirit, Mark is reticent. He does not speak about visions, dreams, trances and ecstasy.

Nowhere have I found in his writings anything that could be interpreted as a reference to speaking with tongues. His allusions to tears are infrequent; so far from exalting the gift of tears, he warns us, ‘Do not grow conceited if you shed tears when you pray.’¹³ He does indeed believe that our aim is to experience consciously the energies of the Spirit’ and to reach the state above nature’, where the intellect (n o u V ) ‘discovers the fruits of the Holy Spirit of which the Apostle spoke: love, joy, peace and the rest’ (cf. Gal. 5:22).¹⁴ But he does not specify what precise form these ‘energies’ and ‘fruits’ are to take.

When interpreting an author such as Mark, it is helpful to make a distinction between ‘experience’ (in the singular) and experiences’ (in the plural). There are surely many Christians who feel able to say in all humility, ‘I know God personally’, without being able to point to any single event such as a vision, a voice, or a concentrated ‘conversion crisis’ of the kind undergone by St. Paul, St. Augustine, Pascal or John Wesley. Personal experience of the Spirit permeates their whole life, existing as a total awareness, without necessarily being crystallized in the form of particular ‘experiences’. When Mark and other Greek Fathers refer to our conscious awareness of the ‘energies’ or ‘fruits’ of the Spirit, they may well have in view an all-embracing ‘experience’ of this kind, rather than any specific and separate ‘experiences’.

The Macarian Homilies: light, tears and ecstasy

The Homilies attributed to Macarius are better known in the West than are the writings of Mark the Monk: John Wesley, for example, was an enthusiastic reader of the Homilies, characteristically observing in his diary for 30 July 1736, ‘I read Macarius and sang.’ Whereas Mark is evidently an opponent of Messalianism, the Homilies are commonly regarded as a Messalian or semi-Messalian work. But in fact, when Mark and the Homilies are carefully compared, their respective theologies of baptism turn out to be not so very different. It is true that the best-known group of Macarian texts, the collection of the Fifty Spiritual Homilies (known as Collection II or Collection H), is largely silent about sacramental baptism; but there are a number of important references to it in the other main groups, Collection I (B) and III (C).

In agreement with Mark, the Macarian Homilies see sacramental baptism as the foundation of all Christian life: ‘Our baptism is true for us and valid, and it is the source from which we receive the life of the Spirit.’ ¹⁵

The Homilies concur with Mark in insisting furthermore upon the completeness of baptism: ‘In possessing the pledge of baptism, you possess the talent’ in its completeness, but if you fail to work with it, you yourself will remain incomplete; and not only that, but you will be deprived of it.’ ¹⁶

Mark would not have said, ‘you will be deprived of if, for he believes that the gift of baptismal grace can never be wholly lost. But otherwise the two authors agree: baptism is ‘complete’ or ‘perfect’, but in order to experience the full effects of the sacrament, we need to ‘work’ with the initial charisma of baptism by fulfilling the commandments.

Once more in agreement with Mark, the Macarian writings state that the gift of the Holy Spirit is conferred ‘from the Moment of baptism’.¹⁷ Just as Mark envisages a progress from baptismal grace present ’secretly’ to baptismal grace experienced ‘actively’, so likewise the Homilies maintain that the indwelling presence of the Spirit, conferred at baptism, is something of which we ere initially unconscious. The Spirit’s working is at first so slight that the baptized person is ignorant of His activity:

‘Initially divine grace exists within a person in such a subtle way that he is unaware of its presence and does not understand [that it is within him]…. But if we persist and advance in all the virtues, struggling with full exertion, then baptism will increase in power and will be revealed in us, making us perfect through its own grace.’ ¹⁸

This, as we have noted, is exactly Mark’s teaching: through our fulfilment of the commandments and our ascetic struggles, the hidden grace of baptism is gradually ‘revealed’ in its full power.

At the outset, then, so the Homilies affirm, the Spirit is present ‘invisibly’, but if we persevere on the path of Christian obedience we shall gradually come to experience His presence with power and assurance’:

‘In His own wisdom the heavenly Physician bestows the heavenly bread – that is to say, the power of the Spirit invisibly through the holy mystery of the “washing of rebirth’ (Titus 3:5) and of the Body of Christ; and through the “word of consolation’ (Heb. 13:22) in the Scriptures He nourishes and warms the damaged soul that is still subject to the passions and that is not yet capable of experiencing the energy of the Spirit with power and assurance, whether on account of its childishness or because of its lack of faith and its carelessness. Every soul, on receiving the remission of sins in holy baptism according to the measure of its faith, participates in the energy of grace: one receives it with power and assurance, another with weaker energy of grace …. Thus the grace of the Spirit bestowed in baptism seeks to overshadow each person in abundance and to grant to each more speedily the perfection of divine power, but the degree to which someone shares in this grace depends on the measure of that person’s faith and piety.’ ¹⁹

This is less clear and coherent than the treatment that we find in Mark; also the Homilies seem to envisage adult baptism whereas Mark thinks primarily in terms of infant baptism. But there is no fundamental discrepancy between the two authors. Both agree that there is a progressive advance from an unconscious presence of the baptismal gift of the Spirit to a conscious awareness of the baptismal gift “with full assurance and sensation’ (a phrase used by the Homilies as well as by Mark).

How, then, do the Macarian Homilies answer our three questions?

1. The Homilies clearly assert that, in certain cases at any rate, the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit conferred at baptism is at first unconscious: He is present within us ‘invisibly, in such a way that we are ‘unaware’ of Him. At the same time, however, it is the vocation of every baptized Christian to advance from unconsciousness to conscious awareness, so that we experience this gift of the Spirit ‘with full assurance and sensation’. Here the Homilies, like Mark the Monk, rely heavily upon the language of feeling. Sometimes the Homilies describe this higher stage of conscious awareness as ‘baptism with fire and the Spirit’,²⁰ a phrase nowhere found in Mark’s writings.
2. This ‘baptism with fire and the Spirit’ does not, however, connote a new and distinct gift of the Spirit, but according to the Homilies it is nothing else than the developed and conscious awareness of the gift of the Spirit inherent in water baptism. As with Mark, it is water baptism that constitutes the ’source’ of all our life in the Spirit.
3. lf the Homilies and Mark prove thus far to be in substantial agreement, in their respective answers to the third question there is a significant difference between them. The Homilies emphasize various outward experiences that accompany the conscious awareness of the Spirit, in a way that Mark does not. Macarius speaks, for example, about a vision of divine light received by the spiritual aspirant,²¹! and about his illumination by ‘non-material and divine fire’.²² These Macarian texts concerning light and fire had an important influence upon the mystical theology of the fourteenth-century Byzantine Hesychasts, and they were taken up in particular by St. Gregory Palamas (1296-1359). The Homilies also attach more importance than Mark does to the gift of tears. Only if we ‘weep’ shall we experience the ‘power” of the Spirit:
   ‘If anyone is naked because he lacks the divine and heavenly garment which is the power of the Spirit… let him weep and beseech the Lord that he may receive the spiritual garment from heaven.’ ²³

Unlike Mark, the Homilies speak explicitly about trance-like and ecstatic experiences:

Sometimes a person when praying has fallen into a kind of trance (e c t a s i V ) and has found himself standing in church before the sanctuary; and three loaves of bread were offered to him, leavened with oil…

There have been other occasions, Macarius continues, when the impact of a vision of inner light has proved so devastating that a person loses normal self-control:

Swallowed up in the sweetness of contemplation, he was no longer master of himself, but became like a fool and a barbarian towards this world, so overwhelmed was he by the excessive love and sweetness of the hidden mysteries that were being revealed to him. ²⁴

There is no parallel in Mark’s writings to this kind of language.

There is even a possible allusion in one Homily to speaking with tongues. Recalling the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, Macarius says: As for the apostles, they cried out willy-nilly. Just as a flute, when air is blown through it, gives out the sound that the flute-player wants, so it is also with the apostles and those who resemble them. When they were ‘born from above’ (John 3:3,7) and received the Paraclete Spirit, the Spirit spoke in them as He wanted.²⁵

The reference here to those who ‘resemble’ the apostles suggests that the speaking with tongues on the day of Pentecost has been continued in later ages of the Church. But this is an isolated passage which has no exact parallel elsewhere in Macarian corpus, and so it would be unwise to base too much upon it.

Counterbalancing this passage on Pentecost, there are other occasions when the Homilies condemn the use of ‘unseemly and confused cries’ during times of prayer. Probably the author has in mind certain ‘enthusiasts’ among the more extreme Messalians:

Those who draw near to the Lord ought to make their prayers in quietness and peace and great tranquillity, not with unseemly and confused cries …. There are some who during prayer make use of unseemly cries, as if relying on their own bodily strength, not realizing how their thoughts deceive them, and thinking that they can achieve perfect success by their own strength. ²⁶

Yet even if the Homilies do not in fact provide clear support for glossolalia, it is evident that their author (or authors) expected the conscious experience of the Spirit to be marked by other external expressions, such as tears and ecstatic visions.

St. John Climacus: the baptism of tears

The Ladder of Divine Ascent by St. John Climacus, abbot of Sinai, provides relatively little material to help us in answering our questions. Although The Ladder contains a few (but not very many) references to baptism, and also a few (but not very many) references to the Holy Spirit, nowhere are these two themes – the gift of baptism and the grace of the Spirit – mentioned together in the same passage. It is clear from numerous statements in The Ladder that Climacus attaches great importance to personal experience, but he does not develop the point in explicit detail.

There are, however, two passages in The Ladder that are significant for our present purpose. First, Climacus indicates that there is a direct connection between the gift of the Spirit and obedience to a spiritual father or mother:

If you are constantly upbraided by your director and yet acquire greater faith in him and love for him, then you may be sure that the Holy Spirit has taken up residence in your soul and the power of the Most High has overshadowed you. ²⁷

To some contemporary Christians there might seem to be a contradiction between, on the one hand, strict obedience to a spiritual guide and, on the other, the personal experience of freedom in the Holy Spirit. But this is not the way in which Orthodoxy views the matter. On the contrary, it is precisely through obedience that we learn freedom. The role of the spiritual guide or ’soul friend’ (Celtic amchara) is not to act as a substitute for the Spirit, but it is specifically through our relationship with our guide that we are helped to attain personal awareness of the Spirit’s presence. So far from discouraging a direct contact with the Spirit, our guide seeks to open the door for us; to vary the metaphor, he or she aims to be transparent.

The second and more important passage in The Ladder concerns the gift of tears. Climacus, as Symeon the New Theologian was later to do, regards this as a second baptism, which is to be placed on an even higher level than the first baptism in sacramental water:

The tears that come after baptism are greater than baptism itself, though it may seem rash to say so. Baptism washes off those evils that were previously within us, whereas the sins committed after baptism are washed away by tears. The baptism received by us as children we have all defiled, but we cleanse it anew with our tears. If God in His love for the human race had not given us tears, those being saved would be few indeed and hard to find.²⁸

This is relevant to the third of our questions. What outward signs accompany direct experience of the Spirit? Climacus says nothing about speaking with tongues, but he attaches deep value to the charisma of spiritual tears. The gift of tears is also strongly emphasized by Climacus’s contemporary, St. Isaac of Nineveh (Isaac the Syrian).²⁹

St. Symeon the New Theologian: ‘he cries and shouts’

Let us now return to the author with whom we started, St. Symeon the New Theologian. How far do his answers to our three questions correspond to those found in Mark the Monk and the Macarian Homilies?

(i) It might seem at first sight that Symeon excludes the possibility of an inner presence of the Spirit that is unconscious yet real; for) in a passage already cited, he states unambiguously, ‘Do not say that one can possess Him without knowing it.³⁰ Taken literally, these words suggest that Symeon identifies the reality of grace with the conscious awareness of it. This is often regarded as a typically ‘Messalian’ deviation (although what the Messalians actually believed is notoriously difficult to establish). In fact, however, there are other passages in Symeon which imply that he did not in fact endorse such an extreme position. More than once he definitely allows for an unconscious working of grace:

Let us seek Christ, with whom we have been clothed through holy baptism (cf. Gal. 3:27). Yet we have been stripped of Him through our evil deeds; for, although in our infancy we were sanctified without being aware of it (a n a i s q h t v V ), yet in our youth we defiled ourselves. ³¹

As it is written, ‘He who endures to the end will be saved’ (Matt. 10:22). Not only will he be saved, but he will receive help – at first, without being aware of it, then with conscious awareness, and soon afterwards with the illumination that comes from Almighty God. ³²

When the fear of God leads someone to cut off his own will, God grants him His will, without the person knowing it, in a way that he does not perceive. ³³

Symeon – more than Mark the Monk, more even than the Macarian Homilies - attaches crucial importance to the attainment, by every Christian without exception, of a direct, conscious awareness of the Spirit; and this may sometimes lead him to exaggerated statements. But, as the passages quoted above clearly indicate, he does not altogether exclude an unconscious presence of Christ and the Spirit. He too, in common with Mark and Macarius, envisages a progress from a ’secret’ to an ‘active’ indwelling.

(ii) Does Symeon also agree with Mark and Macarius in regarding ‘baptism with the Holy Spirit’, not as a new grace, but as the ‘revelation’ and fulfilment of water baptism? It has to be admitted that his answer is less clear than that of his two predecessors. As we have seen, he asserts that water baptism is no more than a type’, while the second baptism of tears is the truth’.³⁴ He even suggests, in words that I find disturbing, that not all the baptized receive Christ:

Let no one say, ‘ I have received and I possess Christ from the moment of holy baptism.’ Such a person should recognize that it is not all the baptized that’ receive Christ through baptism, but only those who are strong in faith and in perfect knowledge.³⁵

Perhaps Symeon’s point here is that none of us should rest satisfied with a purely external and mechanical appeal to our baptism; we have to live out its effects. But in that case it would have been clearer if he had said, as Mark does: ‘We receive Christ in baptism, but we only become aware of Him if we fulfil the commandments.’

In general, however, Symeon affirms categorically that baptism confers forgiveness of sins, total liberation from tyranny, and the indwelling presence of the Spirit. To use his own words:

Descending from on high our Master through His own death destroyed the sentence of death against us. He entirely destroyed the condemnation that we inherited from the transgression of our first father, and through holy baptism He completely delivers us from it, regenerating and refashioning us; and He places us in this’ world altogether free and no longer subject to the tyranny of the enemy, honouring us with our original power of voluntary choice. ³⁶

You renewed me through the holy baptism that fashioned me anew, adorning me with the Holy Spirit.’ ³⁷

Through divine baptism we become children and heirs of God, we are clothed with God Himself, we become His limbs, and we receive the Holy Spirit who comes to dwell within us, which is the royal seal…. All these things, and other things yet greater than these, are given to the baptized immediately from the moment of divine baptism. ³⁸

After a careful assessment of the evidence, Archimandrite Athanasios Hatzopoulos concludes:

When Symeon speaks of Baptism in the Spirit, he means the grace of the renewal of sacramental Baptism. It is the same grace of the Spirit that makes water-Baptism a sacrament, which in turn makes possible the gradual renewal of the image…. The grace man receives in Baptism, which promotes his spiritual growth, acts as a starting-point in which the end is present in the beginning. ³⁹

In the last resort, then, Symeon concurs with Mark and Macarius in regarding ‘baptism with the Holy Spirit’ – the second baptism of tears – as the full realization of sacramental baptism, not as a new and different grace. But it has to be confessed that here Symeon constitutes a borderline case.

(iii) Like Macarius, but unlike Mark, the New Theologian speaks in some detail about the outward experiences that accompany a full conscious awareness of the Spirit. First of all, he lays great emphasis upon the gift of tears: the second baptism is precisely ‘a baptism of tears’. Here he appeals explicitly to John Climacus. Secondly, he assigns a central place in his mystical theology to the vision of divine light. This light, so he believes, is God Himself; Christ may sometimes speak to us from the light, although His bodily form is not seen m the vision. Thirdly, he describes ecstatic phenomena which have obvious parallels in modem Pentecostalism:

A person who has within him the light of the most Holy Spirit, unable to endure it, falls prostrate upon the ground; and he cries out and shouts in terror and great fear, for he sees and experiences something that surpasses nature, thought and imagination. He becomes as one whose entrails have been set ablaze: devoured by fire and unable to bear the scorching flame, he is beside himself, and he cannot control himself at all. And though he sheds unceasing tears that bring him some relief, the fire of his longing is kindled to yet fiercer flames. Then he weeps more abundantly and, washed by the flood of his tears, he shines as lightning with an- ever-increasing brilliance. When he is entirely aflame and becomes as light, then is fulfilled the saying, ‘God is joined in unity with gods and is known by them. ⁴⁰

It is not surprising that Symeon’s writings are popular among contemporary Orthodox who have come under the influence of the charismatic movement.

In conclusion, then, we may claim to have found a large measure of convergence between our Patristic witnesses:

1. All agree that it is possible to possess the Holy Spirit within oneself, without being conscious of His presence.
2. All agree that the ’second baptism’ – the baptism of tears or ‘baptism with the Holy Spirit’ – is an extension and fulfilment of the first baptism bestowed sacramentally with water. ‘Spirit baptism’ is not to be seen as conferring an entirely new grace, different from that conferred through “water baptism’.
3. Some Eastern Christian authors, such as Mark the Monk, are reticent in describing the outward signs that may accompany conscious awareness of the Spirit. Others, such as Macarius and Symeon, enter into much fuller detail, referring in particular to the gift of tears, the vision of divine light and even on occasion to something that resembles the modem experience of speaking with tongues. But their allusions to this last are very infrequent.

Of these three points, the second will surely prove of crucial importance in any future Orthodox-Pentecostal dialogue.

Footnotes

1. Alexander A. Boddy, With Russian Pilgrims: being an account of a sojourn in the White See Monastery and a journey by the old trade route from the Arctic See to Moscow (London, no date [ca.1931), p.181.1 am grateful to Dr. David N. Collins, of the University of Leeds, for drawing my attention to this passage.

2. In the Image and Likeness of God (St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, Crestwood 1974), p.152.

3. Hymn 27:125-32.

4. See Kallistos Ware, Tradition and Personal Experience in Later Byzantine Theology', Eastern Churches Review 3:2 (1970), pp.131-41, especially pp. 135-9.

5. Practical and Theological Chapters 1:35-36.

6. Catechesis 21:139-40.

7. Sources Chretiennes 156 (Paris 1969), p. 151.

8. On Baptism (PG [= J.P. Migne, Patrotogia Graeca] 65:1028BC). It is somewhat surprising that Mark, while speaking at length about baptism, says very little about the eucharist.

9. On Baptism (,PG 65:996C, 1016D).

10. On those who think that they are made righteous by works 85 (PG 65:944A).

11. On Baptism (PG 65:993C).

12. On those who think that they are made righteous by works 56 (PG 65:937D).

13. On the Spiritual Law 12 (PG 65:908A).

14. On those who think that they are made righteous by works 57, 83 (PG 65:940A, 941 CD).

15. B43:6.

16. C28:3.

17. Great Letter (ed. Wemer Jaeger), p.236, line 8.

18. B43:6.

19. B 25:2, §§2-4.

20. H 26:23; 27:17; 32:4; 47:1; etc. •

21. See, for example, H 1-8,10.

22. H 25:9-10.

23. H20:1.

24. H 8:3.

25. C 15:4.

26. H 6:4.

27. Ladder, Step 4 (PG 88:725D).

28. Ladder, Step 7 (PG 88-.804B).

29. See his Ascetical Homilies 14 and 37 (35), tr. Holy Transfiguration Monastery (Boston 1984), pp.82-83, 174: cited in Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Way (St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, Crestwood 1995), p.101.

30. See note 3.

31. Catechesis 2:139-42.

32. Catechesis 26:63-66.

33. Practical and Theological Chapters 3:76.

34. See note 5.

35. Ethical Discourse 10:323-6.

36. Catechesis 5:381-6.

37. Thanksgiving 2:17-18.

38. Letter on Confession 3 (ed. Kari Holl), p.111, line 26 – p.112, line 6.

39. Athanasios Hatzopoulos, Two Outstanding Cases in Byzantine Spirituality (Thessaloniki 1991), pp.135,137.

40. Practical and Theological Chapters 3:21. The final phrase is from St. Gregory of Nazianzus.

Christian Baptism

I will also relate the manner in which we dedicated ourselves to God when we had been made new through Christ; lest, if we omit this, we seem to be unfair in the explanation we are making. As many as are persuaded and believe that what we teach and say is true, and undertake to be able to live accordingly, are instructed to pray and to entreat God with fasting, for the remission of their sins that are past, we praying and fasting with them. Then they are brought by us where there is water, and are regenerated in the same manner in which we were ourselves regenerated. For, in the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit, they then receive the washing with water. For Christ also said, “Except ye be born again, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. Now, that it is impossible for those who have once been born to enter into their mothers’ wombs, is manifest to all. And how those who have sinned and repent shall escape their sins, is declared by Esaias the prophet, as I wrote above; he thus speaks: “Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from your souls; learn to do well; judge the fatherless, and plead for the widow: and come and let us reason together, saith the Lord. And though your sins be as scarlet, I will make them white like wool; and though they be as crimson, I will make them white as snow. But if ye refuse and rebel, the sword shall devour you: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.”

And for this rite we have learned from the apostles this reason. Since at our birth we were born without our own knowledge or choice, by our parents coming together, and were brought up in bad habits and wicked training; in order that we may not remain the children of necessity and of ignorance, but may become the children of choice and knowledge, and may obtain in the water the remission of sins formerly committed, there is pronounced over him who chooses to be born again, and has repented of his sins, the name of God the Father and Lord of the universe; he who leads to the layer the person that is to be washed calling him by this name alone. For no one can utter the name of the ineffable God; and if any one dare to say that there is a name, he raves with a hopeless madness. And this washing is called illumination, because they who learn these things are illuminated in their understandings. And in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and in the name of the Holy Ghost, who through the prophets foretold all things about Jesus, he who is illuminated is washed.

Its imitation by demons

And the devils, indeed, having heard this washing published by the prophet, instigated those who enter their temples, and are about to approach them with libations and burnt-offerings, also to sprinkle themselves; and they cause them also to wash themselves entirely, as they depart from the sacrifice, before they enter into the shrines in which their images are set. And the command, too, given by the priests to those who enter and worship in the temples, that they take off their shoes, the devils, learning what happened to the above-mentioned prophet Moses, have given in imitation of these things. For at that juncture, when Moses was ordered to go down into Egypt and lead out the people of the Israelites who were there, and while he was tending the flocks of his maternal uncle in the land of Arabia, our Christ conversed with him under the appearance of fire from a bush, and said, “Put off thy shoes, and draw near and hear.” And he, when he had put off his shoes and drawn near, heard that he was to go down into Egypt and lead out the people of the Israelites there; and he received mighty power from Christ, who spoke to him in the appearance of fire, and went down and led out the people, having done great and marvellous things; which, if you desire to know, you will learn them accurately from his writings.

Baptism and the consecration of the Eucharist

But we, after we have thus washed him who has been convinced and has assented to our teaching, bring him to the place where those who are called brethren are assembled, in order that we may offer hearty prayers in common for ourselves and for the baptized illuminated person, and for all others in every place, that we may be counted worthy, now that we have learned the truth, by our works also to be found good citizens and keepers of the commandments, so that we may be saved with an everlasting salvation. Having ended the prayers, we salute one another with a kiss. There is then brought to the president of the brethren bread and a cup of wine mixed with water; and he taking them, gives praise and glory to the Father of the universe, through the name of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and offers thanks at considerable length for our being counted worthy to receive these things at His hands. And when he has concluded the prayers and thanksgivings, all the people present express their assent by saying Amen. This word Amen answers in the Hebrew language to genoito so be it. And when the president has given thanks, and all the people have expressed their assent, those who are called by us deacons give to each of those present to partake of the bread and wine mixed with water over which the thanksgiving was pronounced, and to those who are absent they carry away a portion.

The Eucharist

And this food is called among us Eucharist, of which no one is allowed to partake but the man who believes that the things which we teach are true, and who has been washed with the washing that is for the remission of sins, and unto regeneration, and who is so living as Christ has enjoined. For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but in like manner as Jesus Christ our Saviour, having been made flesh by the Word of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. For the apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered unto us what was enjoined upon them; that Jesus took bread, and when He had given thanks, said, “This do ye in remembrance of Me, this is My body;” and that, after the same manner, having taken the cup and given thanks, He said, “This is My blood;” and gave it to them alone. Which the wicked devils have imitated in the mysteries of Mithras, commanding the same thing to be done. For, that bread and a cup of water are placed with certain incantations in the mystic rites of one who is being initiated, you either know or can learn.

Weekly worship of the Christians

And we afterwards continually remind each other of these things. And the wealthy among us help the needy; and we always keep together; and for all things wherewith we are supplied, we bless the Maker of all through His Son Jesus Christ, and through the Holy Ghost. And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things. Then we all rise together and pray, and, as we before said, when our prayer is ended, bread and wine and water are brought, and the president in like manner offers prayers and thanksgivings, according to his ability, and the people assent, saying Amen; and there is a distribution to each, and a participation of that over which thanks have been given, and to those who are absent a portion is sent by the deacons. And they who are well to do, and willing, give what each thinks fit; and what is collected is deposited with the president, who succours the orphans and widows and those who, through sickness or any other cause, are in want, and those who are in bonds and the strangers sojourning among us, and in a word takes care of all who are in need. But Sunday is the day on which we all hold our common assembly, because it is the first day on which God, having wrought a change in the darkness and matter, made the world; and Jesus Christ our Saviour on the same day rose from the dead. For He was crucified on the day before that of Saturn (Saturday); and on the day after that of Saturn, which is the day of the Sun, having appeared to His apostles and disciples, He taught them these things, which we have submitted to you also for your consideration.