"Starting Before the Beginning"

For Christmas, Kev gave me a copy of The Baptized Body by Leithart focusing on the efficacy of baptism. For the record, I haven't read the book and didn't get him anything. Chapter 1: "Starting Before the Beginning" addresses common modes of understanding baptism. The issue is these popular modes are loaded with baggage rendering them problematic for understanding baptism biblically. We bring with us in our interpretation many assumptions which prevent us from accurately formulating an understanding allowed by the text. We're biased. So this chapter deals with these biases and their wider theological implications.

Leithart explains the basis for modern interpreters as an a priori rejection of a sensus literalis read. They divorce signs from signified and deny the power of water both naturally and in itself. After excluding what we "know" is impossible, they then seek out an alternative interpretation to what they are forced to affirm.

Baptism and the Real Me

Leithart goes one anthropological step further and critiques Reformed ontological assumptions, primarily its dualism. Whereas Catholics believe that grace is infused through baptism, Protestants deny anything external can affect our soul, our "real me". Both share the assumption that who we truly are is an incorporeal soul, denying the possibility that the world can affect the core of us. In contrast the Scriptures both cede to a mutual rationality and conceptualize the inner self physically. While a strong inner/outer distinction remains intact, it's flushed out radically different from the Christianized Platonism of today. Here external events can and do change who we really and fundamentally are.

Baptism and the Social Contract

Further compounding the problem is the use of the social contract theory as a heuristic for understanding. Humans are individualistically and atomistically conceived entering and dissolving contractual relationships while remaining largely unaffected (an integrity model of relationships). Moreover, the "I" is primary and fundamental to our social interaction. In reality though, we become an I after primarily and fundamentally being a "you". We are socially and existentially placed within a community prior to forming a sense of self.

Do Baptist Talk to Their Babies?

Leithart then humorously explores the inconsistencies of credo-baptist practices. On the one hand, they often selectively employ intellectual criteria in arbitrating a capacity for faith. On the other, tied to their conversionism is a hesitancy for imposing such a Christian identity which can only "authentically" be assumed via a conscientious choice on the part of the child.

Why Sacraments Are Not Signs

At last Leithart begins to get into it. He acknowledges that baptism is a sign; however, argues that traditional theological conceptualizations leave an impoverished account of signs. Signs cannot be reduced to mere receptacles for presencing something other than the sign, as Augustine did. They are also to be enacted by God or us, not primarily for some realm only accessible through imagination, but for this world. A purely pedagogical purpose is too limiting for understanding signs.

Why Sacraments Are Not Means of Grace

Leithart argues that this understanding often reflects a false metaphysical view that reverts to a type of mediation between God and humanity. Rather grace has no ontological status; it's a mere token, the gift of God's favor. The moment of personal encounter is obscured by a linguistic schizophrenia that's impersonalizing and formulaic. More specifically he characterizes it as "mechanistic", analogously inaccurate. Grace becomes either thingified or some emanating quality. The formula itself doesn't do much; it's a faux-explanation instilling a false sense of understanding that is superfluous, sloppy, and obnoxious. Heuristic benefits are overplayed and need to be strategically discarded. Baptism is a type (grace) of favor.

Why Sacraments Are Not Symbols

Symbols too are problematic. Typically symbols are understood as:

1) reality can be distinguished from its external form
2) reality is non-symbolic
3) reality underlies the symbols

In reality by contrast, the distinction is blurred and ambiguous. For instance all language is symbolic and metaphorical, even literal language. Moreover, reality is dependent on symbols, without which it's merely internally imaginary. We have to "shake hands", exchange emails, or some other vestige of actual contact. So for instance when explaining our relationships we typically describe the ritualistic extent of a relationship, e.g. "we slept together", "we've only talked a few times", "we went to high school together". Sometimes though, people do utilize phrases like "we just had this bond", "I prefer conversing with dead authors", or the classic example of a bleeding heart who empathizes with all humanity despite never lifting a finger to do good for anyone other than themselves.

Sacraments Are Rituals

Leithart recommends this by virtue of its emphasizing action, the nature of communal performance, and entailment of ideals. Ritual highlights realization, as opposed to accoutrements. Rituals are how we transform status, beyond mere legitimizing and recognition. Hermeneutically it expands the descriptive power, as well as explain nullification due to requirement stipulations or inappropriate performances contrary to the intended spirit. Rituals are non-magical, yet allow for the reality of a "privileged nearness denied others".

God, Time, and Change

The last section was a sort of housekeeping, where Leithart clarifies the issues at stake. He advocates a holding in tension contradictions, rather than resolving them to the denial of Biblical affirmations. Often specific theological notions of transcendence particularly undermine other Biblical testaments of God.

Leithart subtly suggests that folks arbitrarily interpret the truths they affirm either through a Hellenistic lens (which he doesn't call that; after-all, subtlety) pr a contemporary one (equally improper). These in turn lead to not just issues with the character of God and a softening of implications, but what amounts to existential problems with our very practice, e.g. the efficacy of prayer.