Baptism as return to God
This previous Sunday, I baptised six children, and before each baptism, I made the sign of the cross on them. This is a universal tradition in the Church, East and West. In the Lutheran churches of Norway and Denmark, however, there is a tradition that the priest also addresses the candidate by paraphrasing Psalm 121:8: “May God keep your going out and your coming in from this time forth and for evermore” (my translation).1 The official translation (of the Norwegian liturgy) unfortunately reverts the sequence, from out-in to in-out, which obscures the meaning of the phrase: “May God protect your coming and your going both now and forever.”2 It seems to me that the translators have neither considered the origin of the text (Psalm 121:8) nor its theological meaning, where the sequence is important. For this gives expression to what is arguably the two main features of our Christian faith (and their relation): creation and redemption. As we are created, we go out from God, and as we are redeemed, we come back in to Him. Creation is our procession our from God (Gk. próodos), while redemption is the return back to Him (Gk. epistrofḗ), both of which I have explained in more detail in an earlier post.
In our Church (of Norway), we highlight this particularly in baptism, because that sacrament initiates and makes actual this epistrofḗ, the return, in to God (or the ascent up to Him). Baptism is literally the vehicle through which we ascend to God but this ascent, paradoxically, happens through our descent into death, as we die to sin and to ourselves, which is also a participation in the death of Christ. But having having become a partaker of His death, and having been incorporated into Him, we are also made partakers of His resurrection. Though it is anachronistic to suggest that St. Paul was influenced by Dionysius, or by earlier Neoplatonists who developed this concept of procession and return,3 it gives us a key to explain this metaphysically.
And, as I noted in the earlier post, this is reflected in the very life of Christ Himself in to whom we are grafted. As a human being, as God in the flesh, He went through everything we go through, but without sin. He went forth from God by becoming human in the womb of Virgin Mary and He returned to God at the ascension. But between these two events, He also had to go through the consequences that came from the fall, including death, so that He could remake it from the inside (Philippians 2:5-11). Jesus became one of us, by becoming a human being, a creature, proceeding from God. And He proceeded as far down as possible, all the way to Hades, before returning both through the resurrection and ascension. And by being incorporated into Him, we get to participate in His return, His epistrophḗ. This, however, is not given to us in the abstract but in very real and tangible rituals, in Baptism, in the Eucharist, in prayer.
As Rev. Dr. Thomas Plant explains in a video posted for the celebration of Feast of the Ascension, while there is a physical law of nature saying that what goes up must come down, the spiritual law of nature is the opposite: What goes down must go up. But we can only achieve this through Jesus, the One who “descended into the lower parts of the earth” but who also “ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things” (Ephesians 4:9-10).
So, when those six kids were baptised, they all received this as a pure gift. They returned to God. Through the holy waters of baptism, they were lifted up to God to become His children. And from this gift, they can live in His kingdom.
See the collection of liturgies at the Church of Norway website (under ‘hovedgudstjeneste’). I use the version in nynorsk. My translation is basically the text of Psalm 121:8 as it appears in the RSV. In Norwegian: “Gud vare din utgang og din inngang frå no og til evig tid.” Also see the baptism liturgy of the Church of Denmark. In the Church of Norway, this is done immediately before the sign of the cross, which occurs immediately before the act of baptism. In the Church of Denmark the sign of the cross is made before the creed and the act of baptism, while the words from Psalm 121 appears after the act. I have not found this use of Psalm 121 in any other contemporary baptismal rites, in or outside the Lutheran tradition, and I cannot trace it further back than the Danish-Norwegian church order of 1685, which is structured similar to the current Danish ritual. See this Danish web page. The document itself is found in the Schøyen Collection, though it does not appear to be available digitally.
For the translations, see the previous mentioned collection of liturgies (again under ‘hovedgudstjeneste’).
See R. M. van den Berg, Proclus’ Hymns: Essays, Translations, Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 18-22; Radek Chlup, Proclus: An Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 62-82; Brendan Thomas Sammon, “Redeeming Chenu? A Reconsideration of the Neoplatonic Influence on Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae” (The Heythrop Journal 62, 2021), 971-987; Gregory Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus, 2nd ed. (Kettering: Angelico Press/Sophia Perennis, 2014), 121-133.