‘One baptism for the remissions
of sins’—and there again the specification of the purpose of baptism is
important—declares that the washing away of sins in baptism may be received
only once. This is how Cyril of Jerusalem explains the words in his Procatechesis:
A person cannot be baptized a second
or third time. Otherwise, he could say: ‘I failed once; the second time I shall
succeed’. Fail once and there is no putting it right. For [there is] ‘one Lord,
one faith, one baptism’. It is only heretics who are rebaptized, and then
because the first [baptism] was no baptism.
Thus Cyril interprets the phrase
in a manner that explicitly denies that it debars the rebaptism of those
baptized at the hands of heretics. Speaking to neophytes Chrysostom warns them
to ‘be alert to prevent any second conduct [i.e., the debt from post-baptismal
sins]. For there is no second cross, nor a second remission by the bath of
regeneration. There is remission, but not a second remission by baptism’ (Instr.
3.23). On other occasions he also denies that there is any second baptism to
cancel sins committed after baptism (De Petecoste 1 [PG 50, col.
463]; Homil. in Eph. 11:1 [PG 62, cols. 79-80). Theodore likewise
insists that, ‘As we will not receive a second renewal, so we should not expect
a second baptism, just as we hope or but a single resurrection’ (Catech.
Homil. 14:13). (David F. Wright, “The Meaning and Reference of ‘One Baptism
for the Remission of Sins’ in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed,” in Infant
Baptism in Historical Perspective: Collected Studies [Studies in Christian
History and Thought; Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2007], 58-59)
