A post I made on the Ship of Fools in a discussion of the Episcopal Church USA's acceptance of non-episcopal rites of "mature adult profession of faith" as valid substitutes for the sacrament of confirmation:
The problem, of course, is that confirmation isn't by nature a "mature adult profession of faith." You can have confirmation without adulthood or conscious faith and a profession of faith without the sacrament of confirmation.
The 1979 BCP's shrill insistence that it can declare baptism to be the fullness of Christian initiation by fiat is rather bemusing, not to mention unfortunate. Since baptism is one half the early Church's rite of initiation, it clearly is by definition not its "fullness."
1 comment:
Next time you run into John Hill (Incumbent at St. Augustine's) ask him about this and he'll try to convince you otherwise about the "fullness" of baptism as the rite of initiation. You should also talk to Lee Mitchell, AHC, about this sometime since he was a principal architect of the '79 BCP Baptismal Theology. IMHO, "Confirmation" has been a rite in search of a theology ever since it was separated from Baptism. -t
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