Wednesday, December 08, 2004
(1:00 AM) | Dave Belcher:
St. Paul Week: Baptism into Death
Romans 6:3-4:3Are you ignorant that as many as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4Therefore we were buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk [περιπατήσωμεν] in the newness of life.
Baptism, for Paul, is not initiation into a community of peace. He says something much more sinister than we wish to hear today: “we were buried with him through baptism into death.” Baptism, rather than being a rite riddled with restrictions, or that which gives access to an inclusive community, is open to the Spirit’s movement which leads us into Christ’s death. It is not fixed in either the washing in blood or water, but moves seamlessly between them through the Spirit. St. Augustine makes this clear: “The Blessed Cyprian argues with considerable reason from the thief to whom, though not baptized, it was said: ‘Today shalt thou be with Me in Paradise’ that suffering can take the place of Baptism. Having weighed this in my mind again and again, I perceive that not only can suffering for the name of Christ supply for what was lacking in Baptism, but even faith and conversion of heart if perchance on account of the stress of the times the celebration of the mystery of Baptism is not practicable” (quoted in St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica III. Q. 66 a 11).
If Baptism thus happens in the meantime, in the transition between the Spirit’s coming and going, where both Spirit and the “baptizand” are not limited by water or blood, then it would seem that this opening up of the Christian life is less analogous to Milbank’s musical ontology of “harmony,” and closer to a musical ontology of dissonance, transition, and interpolation, as in the music of Cuban composer Leo Brouwer. [At a guitar-composition Master’s class in Córdoba, Spain, in the summer of 2002, Maestro Brouwer said, “Music is not theme, melody, etc., but transformation and transition…bridges. Everything in music is susceptible of being changed for the better. You could use the traditional methods: counterpoint, palindrome, etc., to build an arch, but they will have an ambiguous smell. Music is, rather, sonoro [sound] with the possibility of being transformed.”]
This does not mean, however, that any practice is potentially Baptism so long as the Spirit is present. For even as Aquinas, quoting Augustine, says above, “suffering can take the place of Baptism,” and “even faith and conversion of heart if perchance on account of the stress of the times the celebration of the mystery of Baptism is not practicable,” this is only after he notes that Baptism is efficacious only insofar as it conforms to Christ’s Passion (see Summa III. Q. 66 a 11). Thus, one could intimate, Aquinas could say confidently with Michel de Certeau, “In itself, action is a permanent divergence, but a divergence with a relation to an institution which is the reference point of new movements and which will then be changed by such movements” (“How is Christianity Thinkable Today?”).
Furthermore, if Baptism is thus akin to something like the actions of a Christian “walking in the city,” because it is open to the Spirit’s free movement, then the Church can learn something from this, and from Paul. Paul’s baptismal formula [for the catechumens in Rome] teaches us that the risk of displacement—which gives forth “newness of life”—is a new creation, a completely new beginning, that is as yet related to and “not without” the original event of Christ’s Passion. Baptism opens up the Church itself as mission; as those communities who are willing to take the risk of loss—or martyrdom: “witness”—in order to truly walk in newness of life. This happens in the musical and rhythmic interstices as the Church practices its mission eucharistically: there is a constant anticipation (of the coming Kingdom), but also a remembering (of the death that opens up new life, i.e., resurrection).
In order for the Church to enter into its missional identity, however, it must do so from a renewed understanding of Baptism as “being buried with him…into death.”
[Incidentally, I think this post is best understood as opposed to Milbank and Hauerwas, and Žižek and Badiou].
