On Rebaptism 1–10

I observe that the question has been raised among the brothers what ought rather to be done in the case of those who, though in heresy, have been dipped in the name of our God Jesus Christ, and who afterward have left it and, fleeing as suppliants to the church of God, do penance with their whole heart and, now at last understanding the condemnation of their error, implore from her the help of salvation: whether, according to the most ancient custom and church tradition, it would be enough, after the baptism they received outside, but in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, that only a hand be laid on them by the bishop for the receiving of the Holy Spirit, and that this laying on of the hand should give them the sign of faith renewed and completed; or whether a repeated baptism would also be necessary for them, as though they would have nothing unless they had obtained this too afresh, just as if they had never been baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. And so it was being boasted that a number of writings and replies had been written on this new question, in which each side strove with the greatest zeal to demolish the other's. In this kind of question, as it seems to me, no controversy or dispute at all could have arisen, if each of us, content with the venerable authority of all the churches and with due humility, had wished to make no innovation, since he could see no ground at all for contradiction. For everything that is doubtful and ambiguous, placed among the differing opinions of wise and faithful men, if it is judged to be against the ancient, memorable, and most solemn observance of all the saints and faithful who have gone before, ought certainly to be condemned; since, in a matter long settled and ordered, whatever is brought forward against the quiet and peace of the churches will bring nothing but discord, enmity, and schism. In it no other fruit is found but this alone: that one man, whoever he may be, is proclaimed with empty glory among certain light-minded people as a man of great prudence and constancy, and, made an object of wonder to the heretics (whose one consolation in their perdition is not to seem to sin alone), is celebrated among people just like himself as having corrected the errors and faults of all the churches. For this is the zeal and purpose of all heretics: to weave as many calumnies of this kind as they can against our most holy mother the church, and to count it the highest glory to have found something that could be charged against her as a fault, however slight. Since it befits no faithful person of sound mind to hold this, least of all anyone placed in any rank of the clergy, and much less a bishop, it is monstrous that bishops themselves should contemplate such scandals and, against the precept of the law and of all the Scriptures, should not fear, most irreverently and to their own shame and danger, to uncover the shame of mother church, if they think there is any in this business; although there is no shame of the church in it, except in the error of those very men. Such men offend the more, then, if what they censure in the most ancient observance as not rightly done is shown plainly and strongly to have been rightly observed both by those before us and by ourselves, and to be observed still. So even if we met with equal arguments on both sides, yet, because the innovation could not stand without dissension among the brothers and harm to the church, it ought not to be rashly inflicted on mother church like a stain, against right and wrong, as the saying goes, that is, against what is good and fair; and the disgrace of this audacity and impiety should deservedly be ascribed to those who attempted it. But since it is not in our power, according to the apostle's precept, that we should all say the same thing and that there be no schisms among us, we nevertheless strive as far as we can to set out the state of this question, and to persuade turbulent men to begin at last to mind their own business; and we too shall gain much if they are willing at last to accept this sound counsel. And so we shall of necessity gather into one whatever chapters of the holy Scriptures pertain to this point; what seem to be different or varied we shall join together as clearly as we can; and we shall examine the usefulness and advantage of each according to our modest ability, so as to commend to all the brothers a most wholesome and peaceable form and custom of acting in the church.

As we approach the treatment of the saving and new baptism, that is, the spiritual and evangelical baptism, there first meets us the preaching best known to all, proclaimed and begun by John the Baptist. Departing somewhat from the law, that is, from the most ancient baptism of Moses, and laying down the way of the new and true grace by the baptism of water and repentance that he practiced for the time being, he gradually prepared and filled the ears of the Jews with the announcement of the spiritual baptism to come, exhorting them and saying: “He who comes after me is mightier than I; I am not worthy to untie the strap of his sandal. He will baptize you in the Holy Spirit and fire.” For this reason our discourse too must begin from here. For the Lord also confirmed this same saying of John after his resurrection, in the Acts of the Apostles, when he commanded them not to leave Jerusalem but to wait for “that promise of the Father which you have heard from me: for John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.” Likewise Peter recalled the same words of the Lord when giving account of himself to the apostles, saying: “But when I began to speak, the Holy Spirit fell upon them just as upon us at the beginning, and I remembered the word of the Lord, how he said, John baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit. If then he gave them the same gift as he gave us who believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could forbid the Lord?” And again: “Men, brothers, you know that from early days God chose among us that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe; and God, who knows the hearts, bore witness, giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us.” We must therefore consider what the force and meaning of this saying is. For the Lord says that those who were later to be baptized, because they would believe, were to be baptized not as John baptized, in water for repentance, but in the Holy Spirit. Since none of us can doubt this preaching, it is plain in what way people have been baptized in the Holy Spirit. For those who believed have been baptized, properly speaking, in the Holy Spirit alone, since John made the distinction, saying that he baptized in water, but that one was coming who would baptize in the Holy Spirit. They are baptized by the grace and power of God, who grants and works this too in secret; but no less also in the baptism of the Spirit and water; and moreover in the baptism of the Spirit in each one's own blood, as the holy Scriptures declare to us. For each of the things we shall relate we shall bring clear proofs from them.

To this perhaps you who are introducing something new will at once reply impatiently, as you usually do, that the Lord said in the Gospel: “Unless someone is born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” From this, you say, it plainly appears that baptism profits only the one in whom the Holy Spirit can also dwell; for on the Lord himself, when he was baptized, the Holy Spirit descended, and his deed and his word agree together, and this mystery cannot stand in any other way. To this answer none of us is found so mad or stubborn as to dare contradict it against right or against truth, that is, when all things are intact, and everything is to be done so in the church and always observed by us according to the order of discipline. But if in the same New Testament the things that we find united in this matter are sometimes found in some way divided and separated, and arranged as if they were single, let us see whether they can sometimes stand even singly and alone, not as maimed but as whole and complete. For the Holy Spirit is given to each believer through the laying on of the bishop's hand, as the apostles did for the Samaritans after Philip's baptism: by laying their hand on them they conferred the Holy Spirit on them in this way, having prayed for them that this might happen; for the Spirit had not yet come down on any of them, but they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. So also our Lord, after the resurrection, bestowed the Holy Spirit on his apostles only when he had breathed on them and said: “Receive the Holy Spirit.”

Since this is found to be so, what do you think, brother? If someone has been baptized, not by a bishop, so that a hand could be laid on him at once, and he dies before receiving the Holy Spirit, do you judge that he has obtained salvation or not? For the apostles themselves and the disciples, who also baptized others and had been baptized by the Lord, did not at once receive the Holy Spirit, who had not yet been given, because Jesus had not yet been glorified; they received him after his resurrection, and no small interval of time passed before this happened. So too when the Samaritans had been baptized by Philip, until the apostles, sent for from Jerusalem, came down to Samaria to lay hands on them and confer the Holy Spirit on them by the laying on of hands: in that interval of time any of them who had not yet obtained the Holy Spirit could have been cut off by death and died deprived of the grace of the Holy Spirit. And it cannot be doubted that even today this is usual and commonly happens: very many depart this world after baptism without the laying on of the bishop's hand, and yet they are regarded as complete believers. So the Ethiopian eunuch, when he was returning from Jerusalem, reading the prophet Isaiah and at a loss, heard the truth from Philip the deacon at the Spirit's prompting, believed, and was baptized; and when he came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught Philip away, and the eunuch saw him no more, for he went on his way rejoicing. Yet, as you see, no hand was laid on him by a bishop that he might receive the Holy Spirit. If you admit this and believe it to be saving, and do not oppose the opinion of all the faithful, you must confess that, just as this holds more widely, so the other thing too can hold more widely: that through the laying on of the bishop's hand alone, since baptism in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord has gone before, the Holy Spirit can also be given to another person who repents and believes. For holy Scripture foretold that those who would believe in Christ must be baptized in the Spirit; so these too may not seem to have anything less than those who are complete Christians, and there is no need to ask what kind of baptism it was that they received in the name of Jesus Christ. Unless perhaps, in that earlier case too, you would decide that those who were baptized only in the name of Christ Jesus can be saved even without the Holy Spirit, or that the Holy Spirit is customarily given not in this way alone but through the laying on of the bishop's hand, or that even one who is not a bishop customarily bestows the Holy Spirit.

If this is so, and any of these things can happen without robbing a believer of salvation, you yourself also grant that the mystery of faith, as it were halved and not completed as you contend, cannot, if some necessity has intervened, take salvation away from a believing and repentant person. Or if you say that such a person cannot be saved, we take salvation away from all bishops. For you bind them with the most certain dangers, since they would have to come in person to the aid of all the people under their care who fall sick here and there throughout their scattered districts (because the other clergy, lower in rank, cannot provide the same thing to those in danger), lest the blood of those who will seem to have left the world empty be required at the bishops' hands. Moreover, as you know, the Holy Spirit is found to have been given by the Lord to believers without the baptism of water, as is contained in the Acts of the Apostles in this way: “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell on all who heard the word; and the believers of the circumcision who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out on the Gentiles too. For they heard them speaking in their tongues and magnifying God. Then Peter answered: Can anyone forbid water, so that these should not be baptized, who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have? And he commanded them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.” As the same Peter afterward taught us most fully about these same Gentiles, saying: “And he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith.” And it will not be doubtful that people can be baptized in the Holy Spirit without water, as you see that these were baptized before they were baptized with water, so that the preaching both of John and of the Lord himself was fulfilled. For these too received the grace of the promise without the laying on of the apostles' hands and without the washing that they obtained afterward; and so God, having shortly before cleansed their hearts, also granted them at the same time, through their faith, the forgiveness of sins; so that the baptism that followed gave them this alone, that they also received the invocation of the name of Jesus Christ, lest anything should seem lacking to them for the completeness of the ministry and the faith.

The disciples of our Lord themselves obtained this from the opposite side of the question. On them, long since baptized, the Holy Spirit came at last on the day of Pentecost, not falling from heaven of his own accord but by the will of God, poured out for this very office, and he sat upon each of them, though they had long since been baptized, as we have said, with the Lord's baptism and were righteous men. So too the apostles themselves, who nevertheless are all found to have deserted the Lord on the night he was arrested; and that very Peter who boasted that he would persevere in his faith, and resisted the Lord's own prediction most obstinately, in the end nevertheless denied him. In this way it was shown to us that whatever sins they had somehow contracted in the meantime were undoubtedly forgiven them afterward, when their faith was sincere, through the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Nor, I think, had the apostles commanded those whom they addressed in the Holy Spirit to be baptized in the name of Christ Jesus for any other reason than that the power of the name of Jesus, invoked over any person in baptism, could give the one baptized no small advantage for obtaining salvation, as Peter relates in the Acts of the Apostles, saying: “For there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.” So too the apostle Paul discloses it, showing that God exalted Jesus our Lord and gave him a name above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord in the glory of the Father. And the person over whom the name of Jesus was invoked when he was baptized, even if he received it in some error, would still not be prevented at some later time from coming to a right mind, correcting his error, coming to the church and to the bishop, and sincerely confessing our Jesus before men; so that then, when the bishop laid his hand on him, he would also receive the Holy Spirit and would not lose that earlier invocation of the name of Jesus, which none of us may condemn. Yet this invocation, bare and alone, if it remains in error, cannot suffice to give salvation; otherwise we would believe that even pagans and heretics who misuse the name of Jesus can attain salvation without the true and complete reality. But it is most useful to believe that this invocation of the name of Jesus, once the error is corrected, the true faith acknowledged, and every stain of the former life cut away, and when the mystery of God has been duly performed for such people, gains the place it would not otherwise have had, and at last, in right faith, is no hindrance to giving the sign in its completeness, when the supplement of what was lacking is added; and it is useful to acquiesce with good reason in the authority of so many years and so many churches, and likewise of apostles and bishops. For it is the greatest harm and loss to our most holy mother the church to rise up now, suddenly, for the first time and without reason, against ancient decisions after so long a series of centuries. For there was no other reason why Peter, who had already been baptized, who had been asked by the Lord himself what he thought of the Lord, and who, when the truth of the heavenly Father's revelation had been placed in him, had confessed that our Lord was not only the Christ but also the Son of the living God, was afterward shown to have opposed that same Christ when he foretold his passion, and on that account was shown to be called Satan: except that it was going to happen that certain people, even though wavering in their own opinion and sometimes limping in faith and doctrine when they were baptized in the name of Jesus, would not for that reason fall away from salvation, if after some interval of time they could correct it; but when at some time they came to their senses, they would obtain by repentance a complete hope of salvation, especially when they received the Holy Spirit, with whom every person ought to be baptized, even if they had shown some such fault. For we find in the Gospel that not only Peter suffered this, but also all the disciples, to whom, already baptized, the Lord afterward said: “You will all be scandalized in me.” All of them, as we see, having corrected their faith after the Lord's resurrection, were baptized in the Holy Spirit; so that not without reason we believe today too that people corrected from their former error can be baptized in the Holy Spirit, even if, when they were baptized with water in the name of the Lord, they once had a rough faith. For there is a great difference between someone not having been baptized at all in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and his limping in something when he is baptized with the baptism of water, which is the lesser, provided that afterward a sincere faith is established in truth in the baptism of the Spirit, which is undoubtedly the greater.

Nor should you think that what the Lord said is contrary to this treatment: “Go, teach the nations; dip them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” For though this is true and right and to be observed in every way in the church, and has customarily been observed, yet we must consider that the invocation of the name of Jesus ought not to seem worthless to us, because of the veneration and power of that name, in which all mighty works are customarily done, and sometimes some are done even by outsiders. Otherwise, what is the point of those words of Christ, who said that he would deny and not know those who would say to him on the day of judgment: “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do great mighty works in your name?”, answering them even with an oath: “I never knew you; depart from me, you who work iniquity”, unless it were being shown to us that sometimes, through the surpassing power of the name of Jesus, these things can be done even by those who work iniquity? And therefore this invocation of the name of Jesus should be received as a kind of beginning of the Lord's mystery, common to us and to all others, which can afterward be filled up by the remaining things. Otherwise such an invocation will not profit if it has remained alone, since after the death of such a person nothing at all can be added or supplied to it, or profit him in anything on the day of judgment, when the things we mentioned above begin to be held against them by our Lord. Yet none of these people can today be prevented by anyone, so harshly and so cruelly, from being helped in the ways we have shown above.

But to this, as usual, you will object that the disciples were then baptized wholly and rightly, and not as these heretics have been baptized. This you must take from their persons and from the person of him who baptized them. And therefore we reply to this proposition of yours not as accusers of the Lord's disciples, but because we are compelled, since we must investigate by reasoning where and when and how salvation has been given to each of us. For that our Lord had been born and that he was the Christ was, not without reason, believed by his disciples on many grounds: that he had been born of the tribe of Judah, of the family of David, and in the city of Bethlehem; that he had been announced by angels to shepherds as the Savior born to them, at the same moment that, his star having been seen in the east, he was most carefully sought out and worshiped by the magi and honored with splendid gifts and notable presents; that while still a boy, sitting in the temple with the teachers of the law, he had disputed wisely, to the admiration of all; that when he was baptized he had been glorified, as had happened to no one else, by the opening of the heavens, the descent of the Holy Spirit and his remaining upon him, and the testimony also of his Father and of John the Baptist; that beyond human measure he understood the hearts and thoughts of all; that he cured and healed sicknesses, defects, and illnesses with the greatest power; that he granted forgiveness of sins with evident proof; that he drove out demons by command; that he cleansed lepers with a word; that by turning water into wine he increased a wedding feast with wonderful joy; that he restored or granted sight to the blind; that he asserted the Father's teaching with all confidence; that in a desert place he fed five thousand men from five loaves, and the leftovers and scraps filled more than twelve baskets; that in his kindness he raised the dead here and there; that he commanded the winds and the sea to be still; that he walked on the sea; that he performed every kind of mighty work.

From these deeds, and many others of the kind that belonged to his glory, it seemed to follow that the disciples too, as the Jews think about the Christ (though they do not believe it of Jesus Christ our Lord), supposed that one so great would continue for ever without undergoing death, and would possess the kingdom of Israel and of the whole world for all time, never to be taken from him. Hence the Jews too dared to seize him and anoint him king, which he had to escape; and therefore his disciples thought that he would give them eternal life in no other way than by first joining in himself this temporal life to that eternal one. Then, when they were staying in Galilee, Jesus said to them: “The Son of Man is about to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him, and after three days he will rise.” And they were greatly saddened, because, as we have said, they had first conceived something very different in their hearts and minds. This was also the Jews' word of contradiction against him, when he taught them about himself and announced the future, and they said: “We have heard from the law that the Christ remains for ever; how can you say that the Son of Man must be lifted up?” So the disciples had this same presumption about the Christ, and Peter himself, the leader and chief of the apostles, burst out into this speech of unbelief. For when he had been asked by the Lord, together with the others, what he thought of him, that is, who he supposed him to be, he first confessed the truth, saying that he was the Christ, the Son of the living God, and was judged blessed by him for this, because he had attained it not through the flesh but by the revelation of the heavenly Father. Yet when Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and priests and scribes, and be killed, and rise after the third day, that same true confessor of Christ took him aside a few days later and began to rebuke him, saying: “Be it far from you; this shall not happen,” so that on that account he deserved to hear from the Lord: “Get behind me, Satan; you are a stumbling block to me,” because he was not minding the things of God but the things of men. This reproach against Peter showed itself more and more when the Lord was arrested: frightened by a servant girl, he said, “I do not know what you are saying, nor do I know you”; he said the same again with an oath; and a third time, cursing and swearing, he affirmed that he did not know the man. He denied him not once but repeatedly; and because this disposition of his was going to last until the Lord's passion, the Lord made it known long before, so that we too should not be ignorant of it. Then, after the Lord's resurrection, one of his disciples, Cleopas, sad in the error shared by all his fellow disciples, told the Lord himself, as though he were some stranger, what had happened, and spoke of Jesus of Nazareth, “who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, how our priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death and fixed him to the cross. But we had hoped that he was the one who would redeem Israel.” Accordingly all the disciples judged the report of the women who had seen the Lord after the resurrection to be nonsense; some of them, when they saw him, did not believe but doubted; and those who were not present then did not believe at all, until afterward they had been rebuked and reproached by the Lord himself in every way. For his death had so offended them that they thought he had not risen, since they had supposed he ought not to die, and against their expectation he had once died. So, as far as the disciples themselves are concerned, they are found in the ways we have related to have had neither a whole nor a perfect faith; and, what is much more serious, as is written in the Gospel according to John, they were even baptizing others.

Besides, what will you say of those who are often baptized by bishops of very bad life, who nevertheless at last, when God wills it, are convicted of their crimes and deprived of their office, or even altogether of communion? Or what will you decide about those who have been baptized by bishops who think wrongly or who are rather unskilled, when they did not speak clearly and fully, or even spoke otherwise than they should, in handing on the sacrament: certainly they either asked something, or in asking heard from those who answered something that ought by no means to be asked or answered in that way? This does not much injure that right faith of ours, but these simpler men too hand on the mystery of faith, though not so elegantly and neatly as you. For you will surely say, with your singular diligence, that these too must be baptized again, since the thing itself is lacking to them, or something stands in the way of their receiving that inviolable divine mystery of faith undefiled. But, best of men, let us render and leave to the heavenly powers their own strength, let us grant to the favor of the divine majesty its own operations, and, understanding how much benefit there is in it, let us gladly rest in it. And therefore, since our salvation is founded in the baptism of the Spirit, which is generally joined with the baptism of water: if baptism is given by us, let it be conferred wholly and solemnly, with everything that is written, and given without separating anything; or if it has been given by the lower clergy out of necessity, let us wait for the outcome, so that it may either be completed by us or be left for the Lord to complete; but if it has been given by outsiders, let the matter be corrected as it can be and as it admits. For the Holy Spirit is not outside the church, and faith cannot be sound not only among heretics but also among those who are in schism. Therefore those who do penance and are corrected by the teaching of the truth, and by their own faith, since amended, their hearts having been purified, should be helped only by the spiritual baptism, that is, by the laying on of the bishop's hand and the ministering of the Holy Spirit. The sign of faith too has rightly been customarily given whole in the church in this way and on this principle, lest the invocation of the name of Jesus, which cannot be abolished, should seem to be held in contempt by us, which certainly ought not to be; although such an invocation, if none of the things we have mentioned follows, ceases from the work of salvation and is empty of it. For since the apostle says that there is one baptism, this must be so because the invocation of the name of Jesus continues, since once invoked it cannot be taken away by any man, even if we dared, against the decree of the apostles, to double it by an excess of zeal in giving, or rather adding, baptism. If the one who returns to the church is unwilling to be baptized again, it will come about that we defraud of the baptism of the Spirit one whom we think ought not to be defrauded of the baptism of water.