We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins

The Text

The creed changes its verb. From We believe (πιστεύομεν, credo) — the verb that has governed every clause from We believe in one God through We believe in one… Church — the creed shifts, uniquely and deliberately, to We acknowledge (ὁμολογοῦμεν, confiteor). The shift is theological, not stylistic. One believes into God — the Father, the Son, the Spirit — entrusting one’s whole life to the divine persons. One does not believe into baptism; one acknowledges it, confesses it, publicly owns it. Baptism is not a fourth object of saving faith alongside the three persons; it is the appointed means by which the triune God, confessed in the three articles, applies his salvation. The verb marks the difference between the God who saves and the means he has given.

The clause is the creed’s only explicit mention of a sacrament — and it stands, by that placement, for the whole sacramental economy. The creed does not enumerate the sacraments or settle their number (a later Western count of seven; a Reformation count of two; the Eastern tradition’s resistance to enumeration); it confesses baptism, the sacrament of entrance, as the representative and gateway of the church’s whole sacramental life. To confess one baptism is to confess that the salvation accomplished by the cross (clause 12) and applied by the Spirit (clauses 16–19) reaches the individual through an appointed, embodied, ecclesial means — water, the Name, the church — and is not a purely inward or invisible transaction.

The clause is also one of the most contested in the creed, because every word in it has been a battlefield: one (the unrepeatability of baptism; the recognition of other churches’ baptism), baptism (its mode, its subjects — infants or believers only — its minister), for (the precise relation of the sign to the forgiveness: does baptism effect, signify, seal, or merely symbolize?), forgiveness of sins (the relation of baptismal grace to original sin, to subsequent sin, to faith). The clause confesses a unity the church has often divided over.

Translation Notes

Homologoumen / Confiteor — we acknowledge / I confess. The deliberate verb-shift, discussed above. The Greek conciliar text has the first person plural (we acknowledge); the Western liturgical text characteristically has the first person singular (I confess). Both are theologically intended: baptism is owned by the whole church (it is the one church’s one baptism) and by each baptized person (it is my baptism, the concrete event of my incorporation). The English ELLC and BCP traditions render acknowledge; the Roman Missal renders confess (closer to confiteor). The substance is identical: a public, communal, personal owning of baptism as the church’s God-given means.

Hen baptisma / unum baptisma — one baptism. The numeral does two distinct kinds of work. Unrepeatability: baptism is, like circumcision and unlike the eucharist, unrepeatable for the individual — one is baptized once, because baptism is incorporation into the once-for-all death and resurrection of Christ (Rom. 6:3–4), and the catholic tradition therefore does not (re-)baptize. Ecumenical unity: there is one baptism across the whole church — the baptism administered in any trinitarian community, in water and the threefold Name, is the one baptism of the one church, not a denominational rite. This second sense made the clause the foundation of the single most successful piece of modern ecumenical convergence: the mutual recognition of baptism across the divided traditions (see Modern Ecumenical below).

Eis aphesin hamartiōn / in remissionem peccatorum — for the forgiveness of sins. The preposition eis / in (unto, for, resulting in) names baptism’s purpose and effect. The phrase is lifted verbatim from the apostolic preaching (Acts 2:38: Repent, and be baptized… for the forgiveness of your sins). The entire ecumenical dispute over baptismal efficacy lives in the weight given to this for. The strongly sacramental traditions (Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, and the Anglican and Wesleyan readings) hold that baptism conveys what it signifies — the forgiveness is really given in and with the sign, by the power of God’s word and Spirit, not by the water as such. The strongly symbolic traditions (the Anabaptist-Baptist and much of the broader evangelical reading) hold that baptism signifies and testifies to a forgiveness received by faith, the sign following the reality rather than conveying it. The Reformed tradition occupies a careful middle: baptism is a true means of grace and an effectual sign and seal of the covenant, in which the Spirit really works, while the efficacy is not tied to the moment of administration. The creed itself confesses the for without resolving the mechanism — and the modern ecumenical achievement has been substantial agreement on the substance (baptism is God’s gracious act incorporating into Christ for the forgiveness of sins) within continuing differences on the mode and the timing.

Historical Context

The clause entered the creed at Constantinople (381), with the rest of the third-article expansion. Its precise wording — one baptism for the forgiveness of sins — does specific historical-dogmatic work.

The phrase one baptism addressed a live fourth-century controversy: the rebaptism question. In the third-century North African church, Cyprian of Carthage and the council of 256 had held that baptism administered by heretics or schismatics was no baptism at all, so that those coming from such groups must be (re)baptized. Rome, under Stephen, held the contrary: baptism rightly administered (in water and the Name, with right intention) is valid even outside the church’s unity, because the baptism is Christ’s, not the minister’s; such persons are reconciled, not rebaptized. The Roman/Augustinian position became the catholic settlement. Augustine’s anti-Donatist argument is decisive: the Donatists (like the Cyprianic rigorists) rebaptized; Augustine held that baptism, like a soldier’s brand, is Christ’s mark, valid wherever rightly given, though it does not profit unto salvation outside the unity and charity of the church until the schism is healed. The creed’s one baptism canonizes the anti-rebaptism settlement: there is one baptism, given once, recognized across the church’s divisions.

The phrase for the forgiveness of sins connected baptism to the apostolic kerygma (Acts 2:38) and to the developing doctrine of original sin and baptismal regeneration. The patristic mainstream (East and West) held baptism to convey the forgiveness of sins — for adults, the remission of all prior actual sin; for infants, the remission of original sin and incorporation into Christ. The fourth-century practice of delayed baptism (Constantine and others deferring baptism, sometimes to the deathbed, to maximize the remission of a lifetime’s sin) was a pastoral distortion the church corrected by re-emphasizing baptism as the beginning of the Christian life and developing the doctrine of penance as the means of dealing with post-baptismal sin.

The Reformation made the clause a central battleground in two directions at once. Against Rome, the Reformers (Lutheran and Reformed) reinterpreted baptismal efficacy in relation to faith and the word, rejecting any ex opere operato construal that would make the sign work mechanically apart from faith and the gospel — while retaining infant baptism and a strong doctrine of baptism as a true means of grace. Against the Anabaptists (the “re-baptizers”), the magisterial Reformers defended infant baptism and the unrepeatability of the one baptism; the Anabaptist movement (and its Baptist descendants) held that baptism presupposes personal faith and so applies only to professing believers, and that infant “baptism” is no baptism, so that believers baptized as infants must be baptized upon profession. This sixteenth-century division — paedobaptist vs. credobaptist — remains the single most church-dividing disagreement directly attached to this clause and is not resolved by the modern ecumenical convergence (which has achieved remarkable agreement among the paedobaptist traditions and substantial mutual understanding with the Baptist traditions, but not a common practice).

The modern ecumenical recovery of the clause is one of the genuine success stories of the ecumenical century. The Lima text, Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (1982), achieved the widest convergence of any modern ecumenical document on baptism: the churches affirmed together one baptism into Christ, by water and the Spirit, for the forgiveness of sins and incorporation into the body, and a large number of churches have entered into formal mutual recognition of baptism (notably the 2013 ecumenical agreements in several countries by which Catholics, Lutherans, Reformed, Anglicans, Methodists, and others recognize one another’s baptism as the one baptism of the one church). The creedal one baptism has, in the modern period, done more visible reconciling work than perhaps any other clause.

Lines of Interpretation

Patristic

Tradition: the Didache; Justin Martyr, First Apology 61; Tertullian, On Baptism; Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catecheses; the Cappadocians (Gregory of Nyssa, On the Baptism of Christ; Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 40, On Baptism); Augustine, anti-Donatist and anti-Pelagian works; the catechumenate

The patristic settlement is the foundation of the catholic doctrine. From the earliest period baptism is the church’s gateway: the Didache (c. 100) gives the trinitarian formula and the practical rubrics; Justin (c. 155) describes baptism as regeneration and illumination (φωτισμός) following catechesis, repentance, and faith; Tertullian’s On Baptism (c. 200) is the first treatise devoted to the sacrament. The fourth-century catechetical tradition (Cyril of Jerusalem’s Mystagogical Catecheses; the Cappadocian baptismal orations; Ambrose; Chrysostom; the developed catechumenate) gives the mature patristic theology: baptism is participation in Christ’s death and resurrection (Rom. 6), the bath of regeneration (Titus 3:5), illumination, the seal of the Spirit, the remission of sins, and incorporation into the church and the paschal mystery (the classic baptismal season is the Easter Vigil).

Augustine’s contribution is double and decisive. Against the Donatists: baptism is Christ’s act, valid wherever rightly administered, unrepeatable, the indelible mark of Christ — the dogmatic basis of one baptism recognized across divisions. Against the Pelagians: infant baptism for the forgiveness of sins presupposes that infants have a sin to be forgiven — original sin — and the universal, ancient practice of baptizing infants is itself a proof of the doctrine of original sin (Augustine’s argument the church baptizes infants for the remission of sins; the church does not lie; therefore infants have sin to remit). The anti-Pelagian linkage of infant baptism and original sin shaped the entire Western tradition.

Strengths

• The patristic baptismal theology (death/resurrection, regeneration, illumination, seal, incorporation) is the permanent catholic foundation
• Augustine’s anti-Donatist settlement secures one baptism recognized across divisions — the root of the modern ecumenical recognition
• The catechumenate models the integration of baptism with formation, repentance, and faith

Weaknesses

• The fourth-century delayed baptism practice was a real pastoral distortion the tradition had to correct
• Augustine’s tight linkage of infant baptism to a particular (sometimes harshly construed) doctrine of original sin has been pastorally and theologically contested
• The polemical contexts (Donatist, Pelagian) sometimes produced sharper formulations than the catholic substance required

Scholastic

Tradition: Peter Lombard, Sentences IV; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.66–71; the doctrine of ex opere operato; the sevenfold sacramental system; character indelebilis

The scholastic tradition gave Western sacramental theology its technical articulation. Peter Lombard’s Sentences IV fixed the number of sacraments at seven and made baptism the first; Aquinas’s ST III.66–71 is the mature systematic treatment. Key scholastic doctrines bearing on this clause: baptism causes grace ex opere operato — by the work worked, that is, by the power of Christ acting through the rightly performed sign, not by the merit of the minister or (in the case of infants) the faith of the recipient, though in adults a disposition of faith and repentance (or at least the absence of an obstacle) is required; baptism imprints an indelible character on the soul (hence its unrepeatability — the one baptism); baptism remits original sin and all actual sin and the eternal penalty, incorporating into Christ and the church.

The scholastic precision protected real catholic substance (baptism is God’s gracious act, not a human work; its validity does not depend on the worthiness of the minister or recipient) but the ex opere operato formula, popularly received, risked a quasi-magical construal — the very distortion the Reformation would attack. The scholastic tradition itself guarded against this (the opus operatum is the work of Christ, not the water mechanically; an adult’s fictio, a feigned reception without faith, blocks the grace), but the popular reception often lost the guard.

Strengths

• Ex opere operato, rightly understood, protects the objectivity of grace (baptism is God’s act, not the minister’s or recipient’s achievement)
• The doctrine of indelible character gives the one baptism (unrepeatability) its dogmatic ground
• Aquinas’s treatment integrates baptism with the whole economy of grace

Weaknesses

• The popular reception of ex opere operato tended toward a mechanical-magical construal — the Reformation’s central objection
• The sevenfold enumeration and the scholastic apparatus are not received by the Reformation traditions
• The Aristotelian causal vocabulary requires translation and can obscure the personal-covenantal character of the sacrament

Lutheran

Tradition: Luther, Large Catechism (Fourth Part, on Baptism), The Babylonian Captivity, Concerning Rebaptism; Augsburg Confession IX; Small Catechism

The Lutheran tradition holds a strongly sacramental reading while relocating efficacy in the word and faith. Luther’s Large Catechism on baptism is one of the great evangelical baptismal texts: baptism is not simple water only, but the water comprehended in God’s command and connected with God’s word — and it is therefore God’s own act, working forgiveness of sins, deliverance from death and the devil, and eternal salvation to all who believe. The efficacy is not in the water but in the word of God in and with the water and in faith which trusts this word. Luther defended infant baptism vigorously (Concerning Rebaptism, 1528) and made baptism the lifelong ground of the Christian’s assurance: against every accusation of conscience the Christian answers baptizatus sum — I am baptized — for baptism is God’s unrepeatable promise, and the Christian life is the daily return to it (the Small Catechism: the old Adam is to be drowned by daily contrition and repentance, and the new self to rise, which is what baptism signifies).

The Lutheran integration with justification is exact: baptism is the gospel applied — the external, tangible, datable form of the pro nobis, the place where the forgiveness won on the cross is given to this person. Baptizatus sum is the pastoral heart of the Lutheran reading.

Strengths

• Luther’s relocation of efficacy in word + faith rescues sacramental objectivity from mechanism without losing it
• Baptizatus sum — baptism as the lifelong ground of assurance — is one of the great pastoral gifts of the Reformation
• The integration with justification is exact and powerful

Weaknesses

• The Lutheran insistence on baptismal regeneration and sola fide has been a perennial point of intra-Protestant tension (how the infant’s faith is construed)
• The reading is contested by the credobaptist traditions on the same ground as the whole paedobaptist position

Reformed

Tradition: Calvin, Institutes IV.15–16; the Heidelberg Catechism QQ. 69–74; the Westminster Confession Ch. 28; the Belgic Confession Article 34; the doctrine of baptism as covenant sign and seal

The Reformed tradition reads baptism as the sign and seal of the covenant of grace — the New Covenant counterpart of circumcision (Col. 2:11–12), marking the recipient’s incorporation into the covenant community and sealing the promises of forgiveness, regeneration, and union with Christ. Calvin’s Institutes IV.15 holds baptism as a true means of grace in which the Spirit really works, while carefully distinguishing the sign from the thing signified: the efficacy is not bound to the moment of administration (a Reformed emphasis: the grace may precede, accompany, or follow the rite, according to the Spirit’s freedom), and the sign without faith does not profit. The Reformed defend infant baptism on covenantal grounds — the children of believers belong to the covenant people, as the children of Israel did, and so receive the covenant sign — rather than primarily on the Augustinian original-sin-remission ground (though the Reformed also hold original sin).

The Westminster Confession 28.6 gives the careful Reformed formula on timing: the efficacy of baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered; yet… the grace promised is not only offered, but really exhibited and conferred by the Holy Ghost… in his appointed time. This frees the Reformed reading from any mechanical construal while retaining baptism as a genuine, effectual means of grace.

Strengths

• The covenant framework gives infant baptism a strong biblical-theological rationale (circumcision/baptism continuity) independent of contested original-sin construals
• The sign/seal distinction and the not tied to that moment formula rescue sacramental realism from mechanism with great care
• The Reformed reading integrates baptism with the whole covenant theology coherently

Weaknesses

• The careful qualifications can, in popular reception, weaken the sense that something is given in baptism (a “mere sign” reduction the confessions themselves resist)
• The covenantal defense of infant baptism is precisely what the credobaptist traditions reject
• Intra-Reformed disputes (baptismal regeneration controversies, the status of covenant children) recur

Eastern Orthodox

Tradition: the Byzantine baptismal rite; the Cappadocians; the integration of baptism, chrismation, and eucharist in a single initiation; the doctrine of baptism as illumination and the beginning of theōsis; modern: Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit

The Eastern tradition preserves the patristic unity of initiation: baptism, chrismation (the seal of the Spirit — the Eastern equivalent of confirmation, administered immediately, not deferred), and the eucharist are a single rite, given together, to infants as well as adults (Orthodox infants are baptized, chrismated, and communed in one liturgy). Baptism is illumination (φώτισμα), regeneration, participation in the death and resurrection of Christ (the triple immersion), the remission of sins, and the beginning of theōsis — the inauguration of the lifelong process of deification by participation in the divine life through the Spirit.

The Eastern emphasis falls on baptism as new birth and entrance into the divine life rather than primarily on the juridical remission of a debt; the forgiveness of sins is held within the larger frame of new creation and participation. The Eastern rite’s exorcisms, the renunciation of Satan (facing west) and the adherence to Christ (facing east), the triple immersion, the white garment, the chrismation, and the immediate first communion together constitute one of the richest sacramental theologies in Christendom. Alexander Schmemann’s Of Water and the Spirit (1974) is the major modern Orthodox exposition.

On one baptism: the Orthodox practice regarding converts is varied (some received by chrismation, some by baptism, depending on the form of their prior baptism and the application of economia), which reflects the unresolved tension between the Cyprianic and Augustinian inheritances within Orthodoxy itself.

Strengths

• The preserved unity of initiation (baptism–chrismation–eucharist) is theologically and liturgically profound, and a standing question to the Western separation of the rites
• Baptism as illumination and the beginning of theōsis gives the forgiveness of sins its proper larger frame of new creation
• The rite itself is a catechesis of unmatched richness

Weaknesses

• The varied practice on receiving converts reflects an unresolved internal tension on one baptism recognized across divisions
• The integration of infant communion is not received in the West and complicates ecumenical convergence
• The detailed liturgical-theological idiom requires translation

Wesleyan

(See Wesleyan Voice below.)

Modern Ecumenical

Tradition: Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (Lima, 1982); the mutual-recognition-of-baptism agreements; the Catholic–Lutheran and other bilaterals; the continuing paedo-/credobaptist conversation; the recovery of the catechumenate (RCIA)

The modern recovery of this clause is one of the ecumenical century’s genuine achievements. Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (the Lima text, 1982) records the widest convergence of any modern ecumenical document on a sacrament: the churches affirm together that baptism is the one unrepeatable act of God in Christ, by water and the Spirit, signifying and effecting participation in Christ’s death and resurrection, the forgiveness of sins, new birth, incorporation into the body, and the gift of the Spirit; that it is administered in the threefold Name; and that the practices of infant and believer baptism, while still divided, are both to be understood within the one baptism and approached with mutual respect (the text invites the believer-baptist traditions to value the corporate-covenantal dimension and the paedobaptist traditions to recover personal profession and the catechumenal formation).

Concretely, large numbers of churches have entered mutual recognition of baptism: a person baptized with water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in any of the recognizing churches is acknowledged as having received the one baptism and is not rebaptized on changing communions. Major formal agreements (e.g., the 2013 Catholic–Reformed–Lutheran–and-others mutual recognition agreements in several national contexts; long-standing Catholic recognition of trinitarian Protestant baptism) have made the creed’s one baptism a lived ecumenical reality across most of the paedobaptist and many of the credobaptist traditions. The remaining hard edge is the paedo-/credobaptist divide where it concerns practice (whether one baptized as an infant who comes to personal faith should be baptized on profession) — substantially understood, not yet resolved.

The recovery of the catechumenate (the Roman Catholic RCIA after Vatican II, and parallel recoveries across the traditions) has reconnected baptism to formation, repentance, and profession, healing the long divorce of the rite from the catechetical process the patristic church held together.

Strengths

• BEM and the mutual-recognition agreements have made one baptism a visible ecumenical reality — the clause’s single greatest modern fruit
• The recovered catechumenate reintegrates baptism with formation and faith
• The convergence holds substantial agreement on the substance across continuing differences on mode

Weaknesses

• The paedo-/credobaptist divide in practice remains unresolved and church-dividing
• Reception of the recognition agreements is uneven at the congregational level (rebaptism still occurs informally)
• Convergence on baptism has outrun convergence on eucharist and ministry, so the one baptism still does not yield one table

Wesleyan Voice

Wesley’s baptismal theology is robustly catholic and sacramental, and the Methodist tradition’s distinctive contribution is the careful integration of baptismal grace with the new birth and conversion. The Methodist Articles of Religion (1784), Article XVII — Of Baptism — gives the definition Wesley abridged from the Anglican Articles: baptism is not only a sign of profession and mark of difference whereby Christians are distinguished from others that are not baptized; but it is also a sign of regeneration or the new birth. Wesley retained infant baptism without qualification and held a high doctrine of baptism as a true means of grace, the ordinary sacramental instrument of regeneration and the seal of the covenant — his treatise A Treatise on Baptism (1756, adapted from his father Samuel) affirms baptismal regeneration in the patristic-Anglican sense.

What is distinctively Wesleyan is the refusal to let baptismal regeneration become presumption. Wesley held both: the infant is truly regenerated and forgiven in baptism (the objective sacramental grace), and the baptized must, as they come to the age of responsibility, personally repent and believe and be born again (the experiential new birth). In Sermon 18, “The Marks of the New Birth,” and Sermon 45, “The New Birth,” Wesley confronts the pastoral reality of the baptized but unconverted: many who were baptized in infancy have, by sin, “sinned away” the grace of their baptism and must be born again. This is not a denial of baptismal regeneration but a refusal of the carnal trust that would say I was baptized; therefore I am saved while living without faith and holiness. The Wesleyan both-and — baptism truly conveys regenerating grace, and the baptized must come to personal living faith — holds the catholic sacramental realism together with the evangelical insistence on personal conversion. It is one of the Wesleyan tradition’s most pastorally important syntheses, and it speaks directly to the standing Protestant tension between sacramental and conversionist readings of this clause.

On one baptism, Wesley was firmly anti-rebaptist: baptism is unrepeatable; those baptized as infants and later converted are not to be rebaptized but to be born again of the Spirit and to improve their baptism (to live into and out of the covenant grace once given). This is precisely the Augustinian-catholic settlement, and it makes the Wesleyan tradition a natural ecumenical bridge: Methodists baptize infants, recognize the one baptism of the other trinitarian churches, do not rebaptize, and have been among the most active participants in the modern mutual-recognition agreements.

Charles Wesley’s hymnody confesses the clause. Come, Holy Ghost, our hearts inspire and the baptismal hymns hold baptism within the Spirit’s regenerating work; the great covenant hymns (Come, let us use the grace divine) confess the once-given, lifelong covenant the baptized live into.

The pastoral Wesleyan posture: confess one baptism for the forgiveness of sins in its full catholic-sacramental sense, without modification; hold infant baptism as the church’s covenant act and a true means of regenerating grace; refuse the presumption that would make baptism a substitute for personal faith and holiness — the baptized must be born again and must improve their baptism; do not rebaptize, and teach the parish why (the one baptism is God’s unrepeatable act); recover the catechumenal integration of baptism with formation, repentance, and profession; and let baptizatus sum — I am baptized — be, as for Luther, the ground of the believer’s assurance against every accusation, while the new birth is its living fruit.

Hymnody

The hymnody on this clause is the baptismal and covenant-renewal repertoire.

“We know that Christ is raised and dies no more” (John B. Geyer, 1969) is the major modern baptismal hymn, set to ENGELBERG, confessing baptism as participation in the resurrection: We share by water in his saving death… / Reborn we share with him an Easter life.

“Baptized in water” (Michael Saward, 1981) is a widely used modern baptismal hymn confessing the clause directly: Baptized in water, sealed by the Spirit, / cleansed by the blood of Christ our King; / heirs of salvation, trusting the promise, / faithfully now God’s praise we sing.

“Crown him with many crowns” and the broader paschal repertoire confess the death-and-resurrection into which baptism incorporates (Rom. 6).

“Come, let us use the grace divine” (Charles Wesley, 1762) is the great Wesleyan covenant renewal hymn, sung at the Methodist Covenant Service, confessing the once-given covenant the baptized live into: Come, let us use the grace divine, / and all with one accord, / in a perpetual covenant join / ourselves to Christ the Lord.

“O Jesus, I have promised” (John E. Bode, 1868) is the classic hymn of baptismal-confirmation profession.

“Wash, O God, our sons and daughters” (Ruth Duck, 1987) is a widely used contemporary baptismal hymn.

“Spirit of God, unleashed on earth” (John W. Arthur, 1969) and “This is the Spirit’s entry now” (Thomas E. Herbranson, 1965) are modern baptismal hymns in the lectionary collections.

“Children of the heavenly Father” (Carolina Sandell Berg, 1855) is often sung at infant baptism for its covenant assurance.

For the liturgical year: this clause is performed at every baptism; its primary liturgical home is the Easter Vigil (the ancient and still normative occasion of baptism, where the newly baptized are joined to the paschal mystery), Baptism of the Lord (the Sunday after Epiphany, when the church recalls its own baptism in Christ’s), Pentecost and the Easter season generally, and — in the Wesleyan tradition — the Covenant Renewal Service (traditionally at the New Year), which is the corporate liturgical improving of baptism. The renewal of baptismal vows at the Easter Vigil is the whole congregation’s annual re-acknowledgment of the one baptism.

Pastoral and Liturgical Use

Three pastoral tasks attach to this clause.

The first is teaching the parish why the verb changes. The shift from we believe to we acknowledge is the single most overlooked feature of the creed, and it carries the whole catholic doctrine of the means of grace. The pastor’s task is to teach it: we do not believe into baptism as into God; we acknowledge baptism as God’s appointed means. This rescues the parish from two opposite errors at once — the error that makes the sacrament a magic that saves apart from the God who acts in it, and the error that makes the sacrament a “mere symbol” that signifies a grace located entirely elsewhere. The verb teaches the right relation: God saves; baptism is how he applies it; we confess it as his gift.

The second is teaching “one baptism” against the recurring temptation to rebaptize. In congregations shaped by revivalist and credobaptist currents, the baptized-as-infants who come to a vivid adult conversion often desire to “really” be baptized now. The pastoral task is gentle and firm catechesis: baptism is God’s unrepeatable act, not the believer’s testimony to an experience; to seek rebaptism is, however sincerely, to make the sacrament depend on the recipient rather than on Christ. The Wesleyan-catholic counsel is exact: do not be rebaptized; instead, be born again and improve your baptism — let the conversion be the living into the covenant God already made. The annual renewal of baptismal vows (Easter Vigil; the Covenant Service) is the liturgical provision for exactly this need: a way to own baptism afresh without repeating it.

The third is making baptism visibly the church’s act, not a private family ceremony. The clause confesses one baptism into one Church; the modern reduction of baptism to a private familial rite (a “christening” detached from the congregation, the catechumenate, and the paschal mystery) is a pastoral distortion of exactly the kind the patristic church corrected. The pastor’s task is to restore baptism to its proper setting: in the gathered assembly, normatively at the Easter Vigil or a principal Sunday, with the congregation professing its own faith and renewing its own vows, and (where the catechumenate has been recovered) with formation, repentance, and profession integrated as the ancient church held them together. Baptism is the one Church’s act of incorporating a new member into the one body for the forgiveness of sins — and it should look like that.

For the preacher: this clause is the proper subject of the sermon at the Baptism of the Lord, at the Easter Vigil and the renewal of baptismal vows, at every baptism, and at the Covenant Service. The recurring homiletical task is to hold the catholic both-and: baptism is God’s real gracious act (not a mere sign of a human decision) and it summons and requires personal faith and holiness (not a magic that dispenses with conversion). The Wesleyan synthesis — regenerated in baptism, born again in living faith, improving the one baptism lifelong — is the model the preacher can hold before a congregation pulled between sacramentalism and revivalism.

For the liturgist: the recovery of the Easter Vigil as the normative occasion of baptism, the annual renewal of baptismal vows, the visible placement of the font at the entrance of the worship space (so the people pass their baptism on the way in), the practice of remembering baptism (the asperges, the touching of the font), and the Wesleyan Covenant Renewal Service are the concrete liturgical means by which the parish is formed in this clause. The creed recited weekly confesses one baptism; the liturgy’s baptismal practice should make that confession visible and lived.

Further Reading

• Genesis 7 — the flood (1 Pet. 3:20–21’s baptismal type)
• Exodus 14 — the passage through the sea (1 Cor. 10:1–2’s baptismal type)
• Joshua 3–4 — the Jordan crossing
• 2 Kings 5 — Naaman washed in the Jordan
• Ezekiel 36:25–27 — I will sprinkle clean water upon you… a new heart… my Spirit
• Matthew 3:13–17 — the baptism of Jesus
• Matthew 28:18–20 — the trinitarian baptismal commission
• Mark 1:4–11; 10:38–39 — John’s baptism; baptism as the cup of death
• John 3:1–8 — born of water and Spirit
• Acts 2:38–41 — be baptized… for the forgiveness of your sins
• Acts 8:12–17, 36–38; 9:18; 10:44–48; 16:14–15, 31–33; 19:1–7 — the baptismal narratives
• Romans 6:1–11 — baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection
• 1 Corinthians 1:13–17; 6:11; 10:1–2; 12:13 — Pauline baptismal theology
• Galatians 3:26–29 — baptized into Christ… clothed with Christ
• Ephesians 4:4–6 — one Lord, one faith, one baptism
• Ephesians 5:25–27 — the washing of water by the word
• Colossians 2:11–15 — baptism as the new circumcision; buried and raised with Christ
• Titus 3:4–7 — the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit
• Hebrews 10:22 — bodies washed with pure water
• 1 Peter 3:18–22 — baptism as the antitype of the flood, an appeal to God for a good conscience
• Didache §7
• Justin Martyr, First Apology 61, 65
• Tertullian, On Baptism
• Hippolytus (attrib.), Apostolic Tradition (the baptismal rite)
• Cyril of Jerusalem, Mystagogical Catecheses I–III
• Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 40 (On Holy Baptism)
• Gregory of Nyssa, On the Baptism of Christ
• Basil of Caesarea, On the Holy Spirit (on baptismal-trinitarian faith)
• Ambrose, On the Sacraments; On the Mysteries
• John Chrysostom, Baptismal Instructions
• Augustine, anti-Donatist works; On Baptism, Against the Donatists; anti-Pelagian works on infant baptism
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.66–71
• Luther, Large Catechism (Fourth Part); The Babylonian Captivity of the Church; Concerning Rebaptism
• Augsburg Confession IX
• Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion IV.15–16
• Heidelberg Catechism QQ. 69–74
• Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter 28
• Belgic Confession Article 34
• Menno Simons and the Anabaptist baptismal writings (the credobaptist position)
• Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church (1784), Article XVII
• John Wesley, A Treatise on Baptism (1756); Standard Sermons, Sermons 18, 45
• Charles Wesley, “Come, let us use the grace divine”
• Alexander Schmemann, Of Water and the Spirit (St Vladimir’s, 1974)
• Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (WCC Faith and Order, Lima, 1982)
• Geoffrey Wainwright, Christian Initiation (1969)
• G. R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament (Eerdmans, 1962)
• Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/4 (the fragment on baptism — Barth’s late, contested credobaptist turn)
• Aidan Kavanagh, The Shape of Baptism (Pueblo, 1978)