Testimonia

Publiek archief van verzamelde en verwerkte bronrecords.
Overzicht / tekstblob

Tekstblob

sha256: a3dc8ab67b8ee1a427973b0e80fd80135ad438b3b0c7c33aa4f6dfd11f99a59a · 2,854 tekens

This opinion is elaborately discussed by the Benedictine editor, Touttée, Dissertatio iii. c. 7, who argues that the Unction described by Cyril is a Sacrament distinct from Baptism, that it has for its proper grace the gift of the Holy Spirit, and further that this gift is not conferred in Baptism.  Of these assertions the first and second appear to represent Cyril’s view correctly:  the last is an exaggeration and a mistake, the tendency of which is to identify the Chrism of the Eastern Church with that which is used in Confirmation by the Roman Church, and to exalt the rite of Confirmation as a proper Sacrament distinct from Baptism, and even superior to it.  A view differing in some respects from both of these has been recently put forward by a learned and devout writer of our own Church, who has fully discussed the teaching of Cyril and other Eastern Fathers, and gives the result of his investigation in the following “Summary A. J. Mason, D.D., The Relation of Confirmation to Baptism, p. 389.  Though I find myself compelled to differ widely from my friend Canon Mason in the interpretation of Cyril’s teaching on this subject, I cannot refrain from expressing my sincere admiration of the tone and purpose of his treatise, and of the learning and research which it exhibits.:”  “For very many centuries the Christians of the East have never been forced to define to themselves at all clearly the position of a person baptized but unconfirmed.  Their mode of administering Confirmation (Chrism?) by the hands of the baptizing Presbyter—though among the Greeks and some others with chrism prepared by the Bishop—relieves them from the necessity which weighs upon us Westerns, of teaching Christian children what their status is between the two rites.  Confirmation (Chrism?) is for them, far more than it has been for a long while in the West, a factor in Baptism.  Only a more or less conscious desire not to fall behind Western teachers in honouring the perfecting Unction can have led their later authorities to treat that Unction as a sacrament numerically distinct from Baptism.  To all the early doctors of the East the two things are one, and Baptism culminates in the Unction.  The tendency among Oriental Christians was, not to attribute to Baptism in our modern sense the gift of the Holy Ghost, but rather to consider Baptism by itself as a bare rite, benefiting the body alone, and dependent for its spiritual efficacy upon other actions, after and before.  Not that this tendency has its full way.  The Greek Fathers may be said certainly on the whole to trace the forgiveness of sins, the preparatory cleansing, to the baptismal Laver; the gift of the Holy Ghost, for the ordinary purposes of Christian living, they trace, like S. Chrysostom, to that act which comes “ immediately after Baptism, and before the Mysteries.”

Alle records · Zoek op deze hash