Eucharistic Theology the Demonstrations of Aphrahat (Aphraates)

12:6-7

 

6. Our Saviour ate the Passover sacrifice with his disciples during the night watch of the fourteenth. He offered to his disciples the sign of the true Passover sacrifice. After Judas left them, he took bread and blessed [it], and gave [it] to his disciples. He said to them, “This is my body. Take and eat from it, all of you.” He also blessed the wine as follows, saying to them, “This is my blood, a new testament, which is shed on behalf of many for the forgiveness of sins. Keep doing this in memory of me when you gather together.” Our Lord said these things before he was seized. He stood up from where he had offered the Passover sacrifice and given his body to be eaten and his blood to be drunk, and he went with his disciples to that place where he was seized. Whoever eats his body and drinks his blood is counted with the dead. By his own hands our Lord gave his body to be eaten, and before he was crucified he gave his blood to be drunk. He was seized on the night of the fourteenth and judged before the sixth hour. At the sixth hour, they condemned him, raised him up, and crucified him. When they were judging him he did not speak, and he gave no reply to his judges. He could have spoken or replied, yet [on a deeper level] it was impossible for one who was counted with the dead to speak. From the sixth hour to the ninth there was darkness, and at the ninth hour he handed over his Spirit to his Father. He was among the dead during the night of the dawn of the fifteenth, the night and the whole day of the Sabbath, and three hours on Friday. During the night of the dawn of Sunday, at the [same] time that he had given his body and blood to his disciples, he rose from among the dead.

 

7. Now show us, O sage, what these three days and three nights were in which our Saviour was among the dead! We see the three hours on Friday, and the night when the Sabbath dawned, and the whole day, and [then] during the night of the first [day] of the week he rose. Define for me what they are, these three days and three nights! Take note that although the day and the night were completed, our Saviour spoke truly when he said, “Just as Jonah son of Mattai in the stomach of a fish for three days and three nights, so too will the Son of Man be in the heart of the earth.” Thus, from the time when he gave his body to be eaten and his blood to be drunk, there were three days and three nights. It was night when Judas left them, and the eleven disciples ate the body of our Saviour and drank his blood. Now take note: [this was] one night, when Friday was dawning. And take note [that the time] up to the sixth hour, when they judged him, [was] one day and one night. [Then] there were three hours that were dark, from the sixth hour to the ninth, and there were [also] three hours after the darkness. Take note [that this makes] two days and two nights. [Then] the night when the Sabbath dawned was completed, as well as the whole day of the Sabbath. Thus our Lord completed three days and three nights among the dead, and during the night of Sunday he rose from among the dead. (Adam Lehto, The Demonstrations of Aphrahat, the Persian Sage [Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies 27; Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2010], 282-83)

 

David F. Wright on the Westminster Confession of Faith and Baptismal Regeneration

David F. Wright was Professor Emeritus of Patristic and Reformed Christianity at the University of Edinburgh at the time of his death in 2008. From 2003 to 2004, he served as Moderator of the Presbytery of Edinburgh. In his essay, “Baptism at the Westminster Assembly,” he makes a case that a form of baptismal regeneration was affirmed in the Westminster Confession of Faith:

 

 

Baptismal Regeneration

 

What then about the efficacy of baptism according to the Westminster Confession? Its central affirmation seems clear: ‘the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited and conferred by the Holy Ghost’ (28:6). It is true that a variety of qualifications to this assertion are entered in the chapter on baptism: efficacy is not tied to the moment of administration (28:6), grace and salvation are not so inseparably annexed to baptism that no person can be regenerated or saved without (28;5). But these qualifications serve in fact only to highly the clarity of the core declaration, which is set forth as follows in the preceding chapter on sacraments in general:

 

neither doth the efficacy of a sacrament depend upon the piety or intention of him that doth administer it, but upon the work of the Spirit, and the word of institution; which contains . . . a promise of benefit to worthy receivers (27:3).

 

The Westminster divines viewed baptism as the instrument and occasion of regeneration by the Spirit, of the remission of sins, of ingrafting into Christ (cf. 28:1). The Confession teaches baptismal regeneration. We should note also that while the Catechisms use the language only of ‘sign and seal,’ the Directory for Public Worship has the following passage in the model prayer before the act of baptizing:

 

That the Lord . . . would join the inward baptism of his Spirit with the outward baptism of water; makes this baptism to the infant a seal of adoption . . . and all other promises of the covenant of grace: That the child may be planted into the likeness of the death and resurrection of Christ.

 

But if the Assembly unambiguously ascribes this instrumental efficacy to baptism, it is not automatically enjoyed by all recipients: it contains ‘a promise of benefit to worthy receivers’ (27:3), who from one point of view are 'those that do actually profess faith in and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one or both believing parents’ (28:4), and from another, ‘such (whether of age or infants) as that grace belongeth unto, according to the counsel of God’s own will, in his appointed time’ (28;6). But it would surely be a perverse interpretation of the Confession’s chapter on baptism if we allowed this allusion to the hidden counsel of God to emasculate its vigorous primary affirmation. (David F. Wright, “Baptism at the Westminster Assembly,” Infant Baptism in Historical Perspective: Collected Studies [Studies in Christian History and Thought; Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2007], 244-45, emphasis in bold added)

 

David F. Wright on Colossians 2 as a Reference to Water Baptism and it being the means of appropriating the atonement of Christ

  

There remains Colossians 2.11-12, which starts with a spiritualizing of circumcision as a way of describing the Christian experience of Christ’s redemption, and then refers to the baptismal incorporation of Christians into Christ’s spiritually circumcising atonement. The correspondence is not between two rites, of circumcision and baptism, but between the Jewish rite and the divine work of spiritual circumcision accomplished by Christ. ‘The circumcision of Christ’s is the atoning death of Christ. (David F. Wright, “The Origins of Infant Baptism—Child Believers’ Baptism?” in Infant Baptism in Historical Perspective: Collected Studies [Studies in Christian History and Thought; Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2007], 19)

 

David F. Wright on Polycarp's "eighty-six years I have served [Christ]" and the Question of Infant Baptism

While a proponent of infant baptism, David F. Wright, commenting on the appeal to Polycarp's "eighty-six years I have served [Christ]" in The Martyrdom of Polycarp as evidence for infant baptism in the late-1st/early-2nd century wrote that:

Nothing more definite can be deducted from two other first-person testimonies as long Christian lives in the later second century—Polycarp’s ‘Eighty-six years I have served [Christ]’ and Polycrates’ ‘I have now lived in the Lord sixty-five years’. The latter belongs to AD 190-91, which enables Jeremias to conclude that Polycrates ‘was baptized as a child about A.D. 125’. Polycarp’s martyrdom is variously dated between 153 and 177, which would give an infant, perhaps baby, baptism for Polycarp in the first century. The discussion of such statements between Jeremias and Aland is inconclusive, although in his later book Jeremias concedes that some of them show only that the persons concerned ‘were not first converted as adults, but were Christians already from their youth up’. He makes no mention of a reference introduced into the discussion by Aland from 1 Clement (c. AD 96) to certain Christians who ‘have walked among us from youth to old age unblameably’, where on no reasonable chronology can απο νεοτητος specify the years of babyhood (1 Clement 63:3 [cf. 65:1]). Such testimonies can more confidently be held to reflect the baptism of teenagers or children as believers (cf. Hippolytus’ parvuli who can speak for themselves), than baby baptism. (David F. Wright, “The Origins of Infant Baptism—Child Believers’ Baptism?” in Infant Baptism in Historical Perspective: Collected Studies [Studies in Christian History and Thought; Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2007], 9)

 

"One Baptism for the Remission of Sins" in the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed being Interpreted by Early Christians as Teaching Baptismal Regeneration

  

‘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)

 

David F. Wright on Origen's Theology of Personal Pre-existence Informing His Understanding of the nature of "Original Sin"

  

In three passages from the later Caesarean period of his life (Homilies on Luke 14 [on Luke 2.22]; Homilies on Leviticus 8.3; Commentary on Romans 5.9), he followed through an explicit chain of reasoning which concluded that, since baptism was given for the remission of sins and was administered according to the church’s practice to parvuli as well as older persons, there must be something in infants requiring the baptismal washing, for otherwise there would be no rationale for their baptism. Since they have at no time committed sin, the answer is found in the uncleanness of which Job 14.4 (LXX) speaks: ‘None is pure from uncleanness (sorde), not even if his life on earth is but one day old.’ This text (which was not unknown to Cyprian) (cf. Cyprian, Testimonies 3:54, where with Ps 51.5 and 1 Jn 1.8 it proves that ‘No one is without uncleanness and without sin’) was backed up by Psalm 51.5 (50.7, LXX): ‘In iniquities was I conceived, and in sins did my mother give me birth.’ In fact, Origen’s conception of original sin was hardly mainstream, although it remains disputed whether it developed toward a more orthodox configuration (Cf. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, pp. 180-82. A rather different account of Origin’s thought is given by Williams, Fall and Original Sin, pp. 223-30). His belief in the pre-cosmic fall of pre-existent souls required that the sinfulness attested by Job and the Psalmist was the legacy, not of solidarity with Adam’s sin, but of each soul’s previous transgression. In this knowledge that all human beings were born into this world in impurity, the apostles mandated the church to give baptism to infants also (Origen, Commentary on Romans 5.9). (David F. Wright, “How Controversial Was the Development of Infant Baptism in the Early Church?” Infant Baptism in Historical Perspective: Collected Studies [Studies in Christian History and Thought; Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2007], 31-32, emphasis in bold added)

 

Origen in Latin can be read, no doubt unhistorically, as propounding an orthodox western doctrine of original sin, citing as he does Job 14.4-5 (LXX) and Psalm 50(51.)7 (LXX), two of Augustine’s favourite proof-texts. In fact, Origen is most probably assuming the impurity of newborn pre-existing souls. (Wright, “George Cassander and the Appeal to the Fathers in Sixteenth-Century Debates about Infant Baptism,” in ibid., 189-90, emphasis in bold added)

 

David F. Wright on the Magisterial Reformers and their Followers Appealing to "Tradition" to Support Infant Baptism

  

Tradition and Scripture

 

There may be significance in the Reformers’ reading of Origen, Augustine and other Fathers as demonstrating the primitive antiquity rather than the strict apostolicity of paedobaptism. Perhaps it enabled them to cope with the awkward question of non-biblical tradition. In his Refutation of the Tricks of the Baptists, Zwingli comments as follows after invoking Origen and Augustine as witnesses that the church received infant baptism from the apostles. Quo testes non in hoc adduco, ut eis autoritatem tribuam scripturae, sed propter historiae fidem (Origenes enim post centum et quinquaginta annos ab ascensione Christi floruit), ne vetustatem baptismi infantium ignoramus sinulque possimus adsequi indubitatum esse, quod apostoli citra omnem controversiam infantes baptizaverint (Zwingli, Catabaptistarum Strophas Elenchus [1527]). Zwingli’s conclusion—that the apostles themselves baptized infants—cannot conceal his discomfort at having to rely on non-apostolic attestation of apostolic practice.

 

The Reformers found themselves permanently impaled on the horns of a dilemma. They deployed a range of arguments based on the Bible in favour of baptizing infants. But none, to my knowledge, claimed that the Bible provided an express warrant for the practice (though Calvin held that the intention of baptism is no less appropriate for children than for adults [Calvin, Institutes, 4:16:18]), and none could avoid resort to patristic testimony to help out. Yet miserrimum asylum foret, says Calvin, si prop defensione paedobaptismi ad nudam Ecclesiae authoritatem suffugere cogeremur (Calvin, Institutes 4:8:16).

 

So for Calvin, to credit the testimony of Origen and Augustine is not to rely on nuda Ecclesiae authoritas. Indeed, it is worth noticing that the testimonia of these two Fathers in particular—affirming the apostolic institution of paedobaptism—stand in a class of their own among the patristic evidence commonly cited in the debate. Their force lies not so much in what they attest at the church’s observance in their own day (although Origen is early enough for his report not to be insignificant in this respect), as in their claiming the observance to be apostolic. Yet this is not vindicated by their quoting apostolic scripture, because it is not available.

 

As Martin Bucer admits in an open letter to Bernard Rothmann: Hoc ergo vobis concedimus, baptisma infantium non esse inter εγγραφα Christi instituta, at inter αγραφα numerandum certo credimus (Martin Bucer, Quid de Baptismate Infantium . . . [Strasbourg, 1553], sigs. Aiii^v -Av^r;). But although Bucer reckons that Rothmann will acknowledge pleraque Christi αγραφα Bucer can cite nothing remotely as important as infant baptism.

 

So these two Father’s testimonia belong to an intermediate category: they are neither expositions of scripture—and hence in principle acceptable to the Reformers, like, for example, the doctrine of the Trinity—nor independent post-apostolic traditions. They remain unparalleled, I suggest, in sixteenth-century controversy, in regard to both the fundamental centrality of the observance they sustain and the Reformers’ readiness to believe and defend their assertion of the apostolic origin of an unwritten tradition.

 

The appeal to the Fathers on the baptism of infants was inseparable from the appeal to scripture, which in this case sought to prove, or disprove, the congruity of the practice with the explicit teaching of scripture. Bucer tells Rothmann that discerniculum [of the αγραφα] in eo situm est, esse iis, quae scriptura exprimit, consentaneaum vel dissentaneum (Bucer, Quid de Baptismate Infantium . . ., sigs. Aiii^v -Av^r). (David F. Wright, “George Cassander and the Appeal to the Fathers in Sixteenth-Century Debates about Infant Baptism,” in Infant Baptism in Historical Perspective: Collected Studies [Studies in Christian History and Thought; Milton Keynes, U.K.: Paternoster, 2007], 186-88)