Theologian urges ‘baptismal revival’ to help ecumenism

A leading Orthodox theologian has called for a restored theology of the Church based on baptism, that he says will bring the main Christian denominations closer together, writes Laura Ieraci.

Delivering the annual Donohue Lecture at the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome on 26 March, Paul Meyendorff, a professor of liturgical theology at St Vladimir’s Seminary in Crestwood, New York, called for a “baptismal revival”. Restoring a baptismal ecclesiology, he said, could help to advance Christian unity, promote the laity and renew parishes.

Professor Meyendorff said the current eucharistic theology of Church dominant in the Orthodox world “is not sufficient” for furthering Orthodox relations with other Christian Churches. This theology’s “limitations … meant it leaves no middle ground between full communion and no communion”. A theology of Church based on baptism, on the other hand, could help reconciliation. He said the early Church highlighted the rite of initiation, and baptismal ecclesiology was to the fore in the first centuries of Christianity, when “converts were flocking” to the Church.

However, the importance of baptism began to fade once the Roman Empire became Christian and infant baptism replaced adult baptism, he said. One consequence was “the virtual disappearance of the catechumenate”, he added. Eventually, the Eucharist became the central defining factor of the “visible expression of the Church”.

It is “now time to rediscover baptism, without which the Eucharist and all that flows from it is impossible,” he said.

A “solid baptismal theology” would also allow the rediscovery of “the priesthood of the laity”, he insisted, arguing that Eucharistic ecclesiology had done nothing to counter increased clericalism.

The result today is a “passive laity, which lacks the knowledge, conviction or courage to assume its proper responsibilities”, he declared.

He called for returning baptism as a public event involving the whole parish community, restoring the “entire catechetical process” for adult catechumens, and for developing more adequate adult catechesis.