§ 170. Baptism

[…] once performed according to the teaching of the church, can never be repeated again,[1] and the priest who should repeat it is liable to deposition.[2] Baptism is performed by immersing the person being baptized three times in water and pronouncing the prescribed formula.[3] To use pouring instead of immersion is strictly forbidden, and the priest concerned is liable to deposition if he does so.[4] Pouring may be used only in case of illness, or when there is not enough water.[5] The matter of the sacrament of baptism is pure natural water, which cannot be replaced by anything else, and consequently, without such water, baptism cannot be validly performed.[6]

The right to perform baptism belongs to the bishop or the presbyter.[7] But in case of necessity, when the danger of death threatens, a deacon may also baptize, and any minor cleric,[8] and likewise any layman,[9] and even a woman,[10] provided only that they have the intention of doing so in the spirit of the church. If the person who was baptized by someone other than a bishop or priest survives, the baptism is then completed according to the prescribed rite of the church.[11] A priest who through negligence allows someone to die without baptism is liable to canonical punishment;[12] and a layman through whose fault this occurs is deprived of communion for three years.[13]

Baptism must be performed in the church, and only in exceptional cases in a private house.[14] In the earliest times of the church it was permitted for those concerned to be baptized only after undergoing catechesis—that is, after they had for a determined time studied and learned the Christian teaching. When the Christian faith became free in the Greco-Roman state and paganism was forbidden, and the greater part of the pagan peoples passed over to Christianity, the former catechumens, who had had to prepare themselves for baptism, ceased altogether, and paedobaptism began to be introduced—that is, the baptizing of children born of Christian parents began, and that soon after birth. Paedobaptism was made law in the church of Carthage as early as the middle of the third century, and in the fifth century it was universal.[15] At first the parents themselves took care that their children be baptized as soon as possible, and in the sixth century this was already regulated by state law as well.[16] The canons require that foundlings be baptized, regardless of whether or not they are of Christian parents.[17] By the 14th canon of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, and by the laws of Greco-Roman legislation, a child born of a mixed marriage is also to be baptized in the Orthodox Church.[18] Present-day practice in this regard is regulated by the legislation of the respective states.[19] As regards those of mature age who wish to pass over into Christianity from some non-Christian faith, the canons forbid haste in their baptism, and ordain that their motive for this, and their whole previous life, must be strictly and carefully examined, and that they must be instructed for a sufficient time in the faith and in Christian piety before baptism is performed upon them.[20]

At baptism it has been the practice from the most ancient times that there must also be a godparent (ἀνάδοχος, vosprijemnik), whose duty it is to vouch before the church for the orthodox belief of his godchild and for the latter’s spiritual upbringing.[21] By the canonical regulations, the following cannot stand as godparent at a baptism: one of another faith, a minor, a monk, the parents of the child themselves, the feeble-minded, public sinners, and all persons of evil repute in society.[22] Immediately after baptism, chrismation must be performed on the newly baptized: that is, the priest who baptizes must, as soon as he has baptized a person, anoint him—with holy chrism consecrated by a bishop—on the prescribed parts of the body, whereby the newly baptized person is confirmed in the Christian life.[23] As soon as someone has become, through baptism, a lawful member of the church, his name is at once entered in the register of births or baptisms, and, when needed, a certificate is thereafter issued to him from that register that he has all the rights of a lawful member of the church (§.125).

Footnotes

[4] Ap. can. 50. Canon 102 in the nomocanon appended to the Great Trebnik. This ordinance concerning the immersion of the person in question in the water at baptism rests on a tradition which goes back to the very beginning of the church, as Basil the Great testifies to this (can. 91). This same ordinance is vindicated by the practice of the church of all centuries. Let us adduce but a few testimonies from the Latin church. The Sacramentarium Gregorii Magni prescribes: “Baptizet sacerdos sub trina mersione, tantum S. Trinitatis semel invocans, ita dicendo: baptizo te in nomine Patris, et merget semel, et Filii, et merget iterum, et Spiritus Sancti, et merget tertio”. The Sacramentarium Ambrosianum for the Milanese church, in the section de modo ministrandi baptis., prescribes: “Immersionis modus cum antiquissimi in S. Dei ecclesiis instituti ritusque sit, idemque in ecclesia Ambrosiana perpetuo retentus: ab ea mergendi consuetudine recedi non licet, nisi imminens mortis periculum instet, tumque vel aquae infusione vel aspersione ministrabitur, servata illa stata baptizandi forma”. From the scholastic period the well-known Duns Scotus (Comment. in IV sentent. dist. 3. qu. 4) writes: “Excusari potest minister a trina immersione, ut si minister sit impotens, et si unus magnus rusticus, qui debet baptizari, quem nec potest immergere, nec elevare”. Even from the beginning of the 17th century there is, for example, this ordinance: “Baptizet sacerdos infantem sub trina immersione. Ego te baptizo in nomine Patris, et mergat semel, et Filii, et mergat iterum, et Spiritus Sancti, et mergat tertio” (Sacra institutio baptizandi. Cadomi, 1614). For the other innumerable testimonies of the fathers and teachers of the church, both Eastern and Western, see Macarius, Dogmatic Theology, §. 203 (the Russian edition). And the church was so strict in requiring that in ordinary circumstances baptism be performed only by immersion and not by pouring that it forbade receiving into the clergy persons who, owing to some extraordinary circumstances, had not been baptized by immersion. Neocaes. can. 12. and my commentary on this canon, Rules. II, 33–34.

§ 170. Baptism

§ 170. Крштење