The Name Is Not Enough

There is no ground, either, for anyone to get around Christian truth by holding the name of Christ up against us and saying, “Everyone who is baptized anywhere, and in any way at all, in the name of Jesus Christ has received the grace of baptism” — when Christ himself speaks and says, “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven.” And again he warns us beforehand, and teaches us, that no one should be easily taken in by false prophets and false Christs using his name. “Many,” he says, “will come in my name, saying, I am Christ, and they will deceive many.” And afterward he added, “But watch out. Look, I have told you everything beforehand.” From which it is clear that we are not to take up and accept everything at once that boasts the name of Christ, but only what is done in the truth of Christ. [a]

In the Gospels and in the letters of the apostles the name of Christ is named for the forgiveness of sins. But it is not named in such a way that the Son by himself, without the Father, or against the Father, can do anybody any good. It was said in order to show the Jews, who boasted of having the Father, that the Father would do them no good unless they believed in the Son he had sent. For people who know God the Father, the Creator, ought to know Christ the Son as well, so that they do not congratulate themselves and applaud themselves over the Father alone without acknowledging his Son, who also said, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” And the same Lord sets out that it is the knowledge of the two together that saves, when he says, “And this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” [c]

So then, by Christ’s own preaching and testimony, the Father who sent must be known first, and afterward Christ, who was sent; and there can be no hope of salvation except by knowing the two together. How, then, when God the Father is not known — is even blasphemed — can people who are said to be baptized among the heretics in the name of Christ be judged to have received the forgiveness of sins? The case of the Jews under the apostles was one thing; the position of the Gentiles is another. The Jews had already received the most ancient baptism of the law and of Moses, and so they were to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ as well, just as Peter tells them in the Acts of the Apostles: “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is to you, and to your children, and to all who are far off, as many as the Lord our God will call.” Peter mentions Jesus Christ, not so that the Father should be left out, but so that the Son might be joined to the Father as well.

Finally, when the apostles are sent by the Lord to the nations after the resurrection, they are told to baptize the Gentiles “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” How, then, do some people say that a Gentile baptized out there, outside the church — yes, and against the church — can obtain forgiveness of sin anywhere and in any manner at all, provided only it is in the name of Jesus Christ, when Christ himself commands the Gentiles to be baptized in the full and united Trinity? Unless, of course, while the man who denies Christ is denied by Christ, the man who denies the Father — the Father whom Christ himself acknowledged — is not denied; and the man who blasphemes against him whom Christ called his Lord and his God is rewarded by Christ, and obtains the forgiveness of sins and the holiness of baptism! But by what power can a man who denies God the Creator, the Father of Christ, obtain the forgiveness of sins in baptism, when Christ received the very power by which we are baptized and made holy from that same Father — the Father he called “greater” than himself, by whom he wanted to be glorified, whose will he carried out to the point of obeying, drinking the cup, and going through death? What is it, then, but to take a share with blaspheming heretics, to want to hold and argue that a man who blasphemes and sins gravely against the Father and the Lord and God of Christ can receive the forgiveness of sins in the name of Christ? And what sort of thing is this, that the man who denies the Son of God does not have the Father, while the man who denies the Father is supposed to have the Son — though the Son himself testifies and says, “No one can come to me unless it has been given to him by my Father”? So it is plain that no forgiveness of sins can be received in baptism from the Son which it is not plain that the Father has granted. Especially since he goes on to say again, “Every plant that my heavenly Father has not planted will be pulled up by the roots.” [e]

But if Christ’s disciples are unwilling to learn from Christ what reverence and honor are owed to the name of the Father, let them at least learn from everyday examples out of the world, and know that Christ said, and not without the sharpest rebuke, “The children of this world are wiser in their own generation than the children of light.” In this world of ours, if anyone has insulted somebody’s father — if out of spite and malice he has wounded the man’s reputation and honor with a vicious tongue — the son is outraged and angry, and does whatever he can to avenge the wrong done to his father. Do you think, then, that Christ lets the godless and profane go unpunished, the men who blaspheme his Father? That he takes their sins away in baptism, when it is clear that after being baptized they go on heaping up abuse against the person of the Father and sinning with the endless wickedness of a blaspheming tongue? Can a Christian, a servant of God, even think this in his mind, or believe it in his faith, or put it into words? And what becomes of the commands of God’s law, which say, “Honor your father and your mother”? If the name of father, which we are commanded to honor in a man, may be violated in God with no penalty at all, what becomes of what Christ himself lays down in the Gospel, where he says, “Whoever curses father or mother, let him die the death”? If he orders that those who curse their parents in the flesh be punished and put to death, does he himself give life to men who abuse their heavenly and spiritual Father and set themselves against the church, their mother? Some people actually assert a thing to be cursed and loathed: that he who threatens the man who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit with being guilty of an everlasting sin should himself stoop to make holy, with the baptism that saves, men who blaspheme against God the Father. And those who now think they must share communion with people who come to the church without baptism do not consider that they are becoming partners in other men’s sins — yes, in everlasting sins — when they receive without baptism people who cannot put off the sins of their blasphemies except in baptism. [i]

Besides, what an empty and twisted thing it is that, when the heretics themselves have thrown over and abandoned the error or the wickedness they were in before and acknowledge the truth of the church, we should cut short the rights and the sacred rite of that same truth — telling the people who come to us and repent that they had already obtained the forgiveness of sins, when what they are confessing is that they have sinned, and that this is the very reason they have come, to ask the church’s pardon! And so, dearest brother, we ought both to hold firmly to the faith and truth of the universal church, and to teach it, and to set out by every command of the Gospel and of the apostles the plan by which God has arranged things, and unity. [l]

Can the power of baptism be greater, or count for more, than confession, than suffering — when a man confesses Christ before men and is baptized in his own blood? And yet not even this baptism does a heretic any good, though he has confessed Christ and been put to death outside the church. Unless the patrons and advocates of heretics are going to declare that heretics killed in a false confession of Christ are martyrs, and hand them the glory and the crown of martyrdom, against the testimony of the apostle, who says that it will do them no good even if they are burned and killed. But if not even the baptism of a public confession and of blood can bring a heretic to salvation, because there is no salvation outside the church, how much less good will it do him if in a hiding place and a robbers’ cave, stained with the pollution of adulterous water, he has not put off his old sins but has rather piled up newer and greater ones! So baptism cannot be something we share with heretics, who share with us neither God the Father, nor Christ the Son, nor the Holy Spirit, nor the faith, nor the church itself. That is why those who come from heresy to the church must be baptized: so that men who are made ready for the kingdom of God by God’s own new birth, in the lawful and true and only baptism of the holy church, may be born of both sacred rites. For it is written, “Unless a man is born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” [n]

At this point some people, as though by human reasoning they could undo the truth of what the Gospel says, bring up the case of the catechumens against us. They ask whether one of them, before he is baptized in the church, if he were arrested and killed for confessing the name, would lose the hope of salvation and the reward of his confession, because he had not first been born again of water. Let men of this kind, who are helpers and supporters of heretics, know this. First, those catechumens hold the sound faith and truth of the church, and they go out from God’s own camp to do battle with the devil, with a full and honest acknowledgment of God the Father, and of Christ, and of the Holy Spirit. Second, they are certainly not deprived of the sacred rite of baptism, since they are baptized with the most glorious and greatest baptism of blood — the baptism the Lord himself spoke of when he said that he had “another baptism to be baptized with.” And the same Lord declares in the Gospel that those who are baptized in their own blood and made holy by their suffering are brought to completeness and obtain the grace of God’s promise. He does it when he speaks to the thief who believed and confessed during his own suffering, and promises him that he will be with him in paradise. So we who are set over faith and truth ought not to deceive and mislead people who come to faith and truth, who repent and beg that their sins be forgiven them. We ought to instruct them once we have corrected them and shaped them, by the discipline of heaven, for the kingdom of heaven. [q]

But someone says, “What, then, is to become of those who in past times came from heresy to the church and were received without baptism?” The Lord is able, in his mercy, to grant them pardon, and not to shut out from the gifts of his church those who were let into the church in their simplicity and have fallen asleep in the church. All the same, it does not follow that because there was error once, there must always be error. It is more fitting for wise and God-fearing men to obey the truth gladly and without delay, once it has been opened up and seen, than to fight stubbornly and obstinately against brothers and fellow priests on the heretics’ behalf. [r]

And let no one think that heretics will be kept from coming to the church because baptism is put to them, as if they would take offense at the name of a second baptism. On the contrary, that very thing drives them the harder toward the necessity of coming, because the truth has been shown and proved to them. For if they see it settled and decided by our judgment and sentence that the baptism they are baptized with over there counts as valid and lawful, they will think that they justly and lawfully hold the church as well, and the other gifts of the church; and there will be no reason for them to come to us, since, having baptism, they seem to have the rest too. But when they know that there is no baptism outside, and that no forgiveness of sins can be given outside the church, they hurry to us more eagerly and more readily, and beg for the gifts and benefits of the church our mother, certain that they can in no way reach the true promise of God’s grace unless they first come to the truth of the church. And heretics will not refuse to be baptized among us with the lawful and true baptism of the church, once they have learned from us that men who had already been baptized with John’s baptism were baptized by Paul as well, as we read in the Acts of the Apostles. [t]

And now some of us claim that the baptism of heretics holds the same ground, and out of a kind of distaste for baptizing over again they count it unlawful to baptize after God’s enemies have done so. This, although we find that men whom John had baptized were baptized again — John, reckoned the greatest among the prophets; John, filled with the grace of God even in his mother’s womb; who was carried along by the spirit and power of Elijah; who was not the Lord’s opponent but his forerunner and herald; who not only foretold our Lord in words but even showed him to the eye; who baptized Christ himself, by whom others are baptized. But if a heretic could get the right of baptism on the ground that he baptized first, then baptism will not belong to the man who has it, but to the man who seizes it. And since baptism and the church can in no way be separated or divided from one another, whoever managed to lay hold of baptism first has laid hold of the church along with it — and you begin to look to him like the heretic, once you have been forestalled and have begun to come in second, and by yielding and giving way have let go of the right you had received. But how dangerous it is in the things of God for anyone to give up his right and power, holy Scripture declares in Genesis, where Esau lost his birthright and afterward was not able to get back what he had once given up. [u]

These things, dearest brother, I have written to you briefly, as well as I am able, laying down rules for no one and prejudging no one, so as to stop no overseer from doing what he thinks right and from having the free use of his own judgment. As far as it lies with us, we do not quarrel over heretics with our colleagues and fellow overseers, with whom we keep a godly harmony and the peace of the Lord — especially since the apostle says, “But if anyone is minded to be quarrelsome, we have no such custom, and neither does the church of God.” The love that comes from the Spirit, the honor of our college, the bond of faith, and the harmony of the priesthood are kept by us with patience and gentleness. For this reason, too, with the Lord’s leave and prompting, we have written as well as our poor abilities allow a treatise on The Advantage of Patience, which we have sent on to you for the sake of the love we have for one another. I bid you, dearest brother, always a hearty farewell. [x]