According to the "About the Author" on Amazon,
Dr.
Cyril Eastwood was minister of the Methodist Church at Harrogate, England.
Before returning to circuit work in England, he served as a missionary in the
Trichinopoly District of India from 1940-1948, and then served the Church of
South India for three years. Dr. Eastwood was trained at Wesley College,
Headingley, Leeds, England. He earned his BD at Serampore, India, and His PhD
at London University.
While one would take exception
with his defence of the universal priesthood of believers to the exclusion of
an ordained, ministerial priesthood prior to Cyprian (mid-second century), his comments
about baptism, its efficacy, and how it is a work of God, not man, is spot-on:
Baptism
is the consecration of a new member to the royal priesthood. It is the sign
whereby a member is baptized into the Death of Christ, sealed by the Spirit,
endowed with the gifts of the Spirit, and given a part and lot within the total
priesthood of the Church of God. There is no more dramatic expression of the
real meaning of priesthood than that in which a person is baptized into Christ
by the waters of baptism. To be baptized ‘into His death’ (Rom. iv. 3) means to
participate in the priestly act of Christ at its most crucial point. With
Christ buried, rising with Christ and living in Him, the believer is incorporated
in the community of the Faithful. It is not only an initiation into a New
Community, but a total experience in which all spiritual blessings are vouchsafed
to him. It also implies the consecration of life, for the believer bears the
mark of the Redeemer. Each believer has ‘an anointing from the Holy One’ (I John
ii.20), for the mark of the Cross is ratified by the inward seal of the Spirit,
and this indicates not only a presentation but a consecration. This is why the
early Christians soon learned to speak of baptism as a ‘priestly consecration.’
It
must be noted that Baptism is above all a gracious act of God, and this
precludes any notion of good works, since the believer relies solely on the
mercy of God and the renewing power of the Holy Ghost.
But
when the kindness of God our Saviour, and His love toward man, appeared, not by
works done in righteousness, which we did ourselves, but according to His mercy
He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy
Ghost, that being justified by His grace, we might be made heirs according to
the hope of eternal life (Tit. iii. 4-7).
There
is no room for good works ‘which we did ourselves’ but only for repentance and
faith, and so we draw near ‘with a true heart and fullness of faith’, for this
is the only way in which God’s mercy may be received. Whether in the case of an
infant or an adult, the faith of the believing congregation is exercised and in
this act the priesthood of believers is fulfilled.
Nicodemus,
as a Jew, might have thought that there was some other way of entering the kingdom
of God; hence the importance of our Lord’s words to him: ‘Except a man be born
of water and the Spirit he cannot enter the kingdom of God’ (John iii. 5). John’s
baptism of purification and the Messianic baptism of the Spirit are a necessary
preparation, even a condition for admission to the Kingdom. The one purifies
and the other empowers, and that is why baptism is regarded as the initiation
into the universal priesthood.
Yet
even in baptism there is an eschatological reference, for, according to St.
Paul, the purpose of baptism is the sanctification of the whole Church: ‘That
he might sanctify it, having cleansed it by the washing of water with the word,
that He might present the Church to Himself a glorious Church . . . that it
should be holy and without blemish” (Eph. v. 26-27)
One
truth stands out clear: Christians become priestly not by what they do, ‘not by
works of righteousness’, but ‘by the fullness of faith’. Through faith they die
to their own works and live unto Christ. Priesthood, therefore, arises out of
baptism, and although baptism is a single act, it is continually renewed by the
Holy Ghost, and only so can the priestly character of the Church, which is
holiness, be revealed. But true priesthood is not confined to a single act of initiation,
it is revealed continuously by the sacrificial nature of the Christian life. (Cyril
Eastwood, The Royal Priesthood of the Faithful: An Investigation of the Doctrine
from Biblical Times to the Reformation [London: The Epworth Press, 1963], 46-47)
