Notes

INTRODUCTION

Theology of Baptism

Baptism in the Filipino socio-cultural and religious sphere:

Baptism, among the sacraments is the most popular yet limited to its social functions and less on its liturgical, theological and spiritual significance. In fact, it appears to be one of the least understood sacraments.

Baptism is the sacrament of faith par excellence (CCC 1236, 1253)

“Why do we seek baptism?” Because of faith.

Baptism, the “first sacrament of Christian initiation incorporates new members into the Christ and into the Church. It accomplishes what it signifies: new birth, new life, new creation. It arises in response to evangelization, the proclamation of God’s word, to repentance and conversion, to faith and to a desire to be one with Christ in His Church.”

Scriptures bear witness to the significant place occupied by faith in the need for baptism. The Lord commands his disciples to proclaim the Gospel to all nations and baptize them (Mt 28, 19-20; Mk 16, 15-16)

The General Introduction to Christian Initiation is more explicit in relating faith and baptism: “Baptism, the sacrament of that faith by which men and women, enlightened by the Spirit’s grace to the Gospel of Christ.”

Reading Notes:

David Tracy, “Approaching the Trinitarian Understanding of God,” in Systematic Theology, The Roman Catholic Perspective, Vol. I. edited by Francis Schusler Fiorenza and John P. Galvin. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991.

ON THE ONE AND TRIUNE GOD

“For a Christian understanding of God is none other than a Trinitarian understanding.” (132)

“A Christian theological understanding of God cannot be divorced from the revelation of God in Jesus Christ.” (133)

“… on a Catholic understanding, we understand God foundationally in and through Scripture and Tradition.” (135) In particular, “the ecclesial confession on God can be rendered: “We believe in the God of Jesus Christ with the Apostles.”(135-136)

“This common ecclesial confession which informs all the classic creeds, finds its scriptural foundation as well as its clearest rendering in the plain sense of the passion narrative of the New Testament.” (136)

“Christians understand who God is first and foundationally in and through their experience and understanding of Jesus Christ. Christians discover that experience and understanding mediated to them in word and sacrament through the mediation of the ecclesial tradition.” (136)

“A Christian theology further understands the person and salvific events of Jesus as the very self-revelation of who God is and who we are commanded and empowered to become.” (136)

“A systematic theological understanding of both revelation and salvation in turn is also grounded in the common ecclesial confession and the plain sense of the passion narrative of the Gospel.” (137)

“The passion narrative, moreover, should not remain isolated from the rest of the scriptures or from the latter creeds. Rather, the passion narrative, as foundation and focus of all properly Christian understanding of God, should open up to the larger gospel narrative of the message and ministry of Jesus, the incarnation of the Logos…” (137)

“… for the Christian faithful to answer who is Christ to the question “Who God is?,” asked in relation to the self-disclosure of God in Jesus Christ, is: God is love, and Christians are those agents commanded and empowered by God to love.” (138)

But Love is not God…

“God is love:” this identity of God the Christians experiences and knows is and through the proclaimed and narrated history of God’s actions and self-disclosure as the God who is love in Jesus Christ, the parable of God.” (138)

“God is love”, ‘is also to affirm now in the more abstract terms proper to post scriptural metaphysical theologies that God, the origin, sustainer, and end of all reality is characterized by the radical relationality of that most relational of categories, love.”(138)

‘the Christian understanding of the ‘existence” and “nature” of God is grounded in the “identity” of the God disclosed as kenotic love in Jesus Christ.’ (139)

“Holy Baptism and Contemporary Theology” in The Christian Sacraments of Initiation, Baptism, Confirmation, Eucharist by Kenan B. Osborne, OFM., New York: Paulist Press, 1987.

In contemporary sacramental theology with its emphasis on Jesus as the primordial sacrament and the Church as the basic sacrament, one would have to say that the only reason, theologically, that baptism is a sacrament is that baptism has an intrinsic and foundational relationship to the humanness of Jesus on the one hand and to the Church on the other hand. (79)

… baptism is a sacrament not simply because Jesus instituted it, but more profoundly because Jesus himself is the very meaning of baptism (79).

Jesus as primordial sacrament and Church as basic sacrament is indicated in some documents of Vatican II (cf. 79-80)

Jesus as the primordial sacrament of baptism is a “twentieth century approach to the issue of sacraments.” It is also the direction taken by Karl Rahner and Edward Schellebeckx.

-In what way can we say that today Jesus is the “primordial sacrament” of baptism?

A theological opinion… “Jesus in his humanity is the first sacrament.” (81) “Jesus in his humanity, is the baptized, that is, jesus is in himself what baptism is all about.”