Baptism — the Basis of Church Unity?: The Question of Baptism in Faith and Order

Ecumenical Review, The, Oct, 1998 by Dagmar Heller

But in any case, if the Orthodox do not (re-)baptize a person coming from another church, it is only because of what they call oikonomia, an exception or suspension of the strict application (akribia) of the canons and normative rules of the church. From the point of view of akribia, all non-Orthodox sacraments are invalid, but they may be valid kat' oikonomia -- according to oikonomia. But this is not to attribute to them validity per se. In other words, "in theory the Orthodox church has not fully accepted the baptisms of other churches to be the baptism of the early church [which is their criterion], but in practice accepts it so that it does not baptize those coming from these churches into the Orthodox church".(11)

There are two reasons for this principled non-recognition of the baptism of other churches. In the first place, from the Orthodox point of view, baptism should be immediately linked with chrismation and eucharist. Here one can recognize a difference about the very concept of baptism. Second, and more important, is the fact that for the Orthodox, a baptism -- as with all the sacraments of other churches -- can be recognized only if the other church can be recognized as a church in the Orthodox sense of the word,(12) that is, if unity is truly achieved. Meanwhile, there is the possibility of practising oikonomia, but the use of oikonomia is also an ecclesiological issue: one cannot simply apply it in any circumstance whatsoever. The cases in which oikonomia may be applied are not precisely defined, and there is a reluctance to do so before the great and holy pan-Orthodox council which is presently being prepared. Thus the practice differs widely among Orthodox churches.

As far as the Oriental (non-Chalcedonian) Orthodox churches are concerned, there is evidently a certain confusion: the Syrians, for example, rebaptize Lutherans in Syria but not in the USA. For them, baptism must be done by a priest who stands in the apostolic succession -- which is the reason they do not (re-)baptize Catholics.

Baptism as a basis of unity

Most churches' responses to BEM "affirm the text's insistance that baptism is a basic bond of unity".(13) All churches "agree that baptism is incorporation into the body of Christ". And "almost all are ready to recognize some baptisms outside their institutional boundaries as being incorporation into this body which is the church".(14) It is thus evident that a certain will to unity exists and that baptism is seen as in some sense a basis for this unity. At the same time there is a contradiction between a unique baptism and the divided Christian communities.

This analysis of the responses to BEM strikes me as being more positive than the current situation warrants. My impression is that it has not taken sufficient account of the identity of the "most churches" or "almost all churches" of which it speaks. For a closer look will demonstrate that those who agree on these questions are precisely those churches which do not have problems with others on the point of recognition of baptism.