[0:00] Welcome back. Today's question is, I just finished reading Peter Lightheart's The Priesthood of the Plebs. It was one of the most stimulating books I have read in a long, long time.
[0:11] I also have recently watched some of your videos on baptism. How does your thought relate to his? I may be misreading Lightheart, but he emphasises that baptism works ex operae operato and seems to say that baptism is salvific for all those baptised.
[0:25] This seems to stand in contrast to your statement in Does Baptism Save Us? that not every person baptised is saved and brought into the realities you are speaking of. Perhaps I am misunderstanding one or both of you, or perhaps you have disagreements with Lightheart.
[0:40] Either way, I would enjoy hearing you talk about his book and how your understanding of baptism compares and contrasts with his. The book in question is Peter Lightheart, The Priesthood of the Plebs.
[0:53] It is truly a superb book. It's based upon his PhD thesis, which he did in Cambridge under John Milbank, and it is an incredibly stimulating treatment of the subject.
[1:04] He has also written this book, The Baptised Body, which is again a discussion of questions of baptismal efficacy and other things like that. I would recommend this for a more popular audience and his Priesthood of the Plebs for those who want a more scholarly and detailed treatment of the subject.
[1:22] The Priesthood of the Plebs has at its heart the paradigm of baptism into priesthood that we see within the Old Testament. So for instance, if you go to Exodus chapter 40, as Moses and his sons are set up for priesthood, we read, You shall anoint, speaking to Moses, you shall anoint the altar of the burnt offering and all its utensils and sanctify the altar.
[1:45] The altar shall be most holy and you shall anoint the labour and its base and sanctify it. Then you shall bring Aaron and his sons to the door of the tabernacle of meeting and wash them with water.
[1:56] You shall put the holy garments on Aaron and anoint him and sanctify him that he may minister to me as priest. And so this is a paradigm that we find alluded to in the New Testament for baptism.
[2:22] If we go to something like Hebrews 10, we read, Therefore, brethren, having boldness to enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he consecrated for us through the veil, that is his flesh, and having a high priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.
[2:47] We see similar things in Galatians chapter 3, I think it's verse 27, when he talks about as many of those who have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ.
[2:58] There's a sort of clothing, an investiture. And so baptism is conceived of in part according to the analogy of priesthood. Priesthood is one of the cases in the Old Testament where we do have a baptism-like ceremony, and it baptises people into the task of priestly ministry.
[3:16] And so Peter Lightheart explores this as a paradigm and argues, among other things, that it helps us to respond to Roman Catholic claims about priesthood.
[3:28] It also enables us to understand something about baptismal efficacy, which is where this question comes in. So when we think about baptism into priesthood, the Levitical priests were baptised into their ministry, and that works ex operae operato.
[3:47] It's not a matter of some symbol of an inner state or anything like that. Rather, this is something that has an objective force.
[3:58] When Aaron and his sons are baptised and invested for their role, they immediately enter into that role. There is something about that ceremony that works.
[4:10] By the very performing of the ceremony, they are set apart for their ministry as priests. Now, that is something that people can struggle to understand from a certain understanding of, a more evangelical understanding of baptism, where it's very much about my individual state.
[4:27] And baptism points to that. And so baptism gets its validity from my state of heart. So my faith is what gives baptism its efficacy and its validity.
[4:40] And so when this paradigm of priesthood is spoken of, it brings in a more sociological paradigm for thinking about these sorts of things. So when we think about our ceremonies more generally, whether that's anointing for priesthood and setting apart investiture and priesthood, or investiture for some other office, maybe as mayor or something like that, or we think about something like marriage.
[5:06] These things work in an almost, by the very performing of the ceremonies themselves, they have their effect. So when you've gone into a church as two single people and gone through a marriage ceremony, wedding ceremony, and you come out the other end as a married couple, with all sorts of things being morally appropriate now that were not morally appropriate when you first walked into that building, something objective has changed.
[5:34] And that objective thing is not ultimately contingent upon some hidden state of heart. It's something about the ceremony itself, performed properly with intent, that it has that effect.
[5:50] And so Peter Lightheart is drawing attention to this, that this is something about the way that baptism works, that baptism is not just about some inner state that is represented in some, symbolised in some objective ceremony.
[6:08] And that, I think, is an important point. He makes a number of arguments along this line that I think help to clarify what exactly he's arguing and what he is not.
[6:18] So he talks at considerable length about the nature of the person because identities are formed not just in some private interiority, but in our participation in narratives and stories, in belonging communities, all these sorts of things, and roles that we have.
[6:37] And these become part of what we are, how we live these things out. Thus, what is ontologically fundamental is not the naked eye, laid bare by stripping away layers of accidental cultural clothing, any more than God is the bare minimum of deity that remains after we peel off his attributes, word, and works.
[6:57] Rather, the ontologically fundamental self, what makes me uniquely me, is a combination of the roles, stories, actions, and events of my life. The individual and his world are not hermetically sealed from one another, but mutually defining.
[7:11] Thus, while it is true that I am a husband, it is equally important to see that I am a husband. Husband is not an accident in hearing in an unmarried self, but one of the roles that make up my identity.
[7:28] Importantly, I am a husband because I have gone through the ceremony of marriage. Operative ceremonies, thus, by placing us in new roles, vesting us with new clothes, and imposing new sets of obligations and rules, affect an ontological transformation, a change in who we are, who we think we are, and who others think we are.
[7:48] Baptism clothes us as priests, and those clothes remake the man. When we think, then, about a ceremony such as marriage or baptism, then, it changes us.
[7:59] It forms us into new people. It forms us into new people, not by some magical reconfiguration of the heart, but by putting us in new roles, in new stories, in new identities.
[8:12] So when we are baptised, we are connected with this deep story that goes back to the very creation. We are baptised like the Israelites were baptised into Moses.
[8:24] We are those who, like Elisha, are crossing through the Jordan, succeeding after the ascended prophet who has gone before us. We are those who, like the priests, are being appointed for office.
[8:38] We are those who, like Naaman, are Gentiles going down into the water of the Jordan to wash away the leprosy of sin. We are those who are entering into the promised land like they did under Joshua.
[8:53] And in all these ways, we are becoming part of a big story, the story of Christ as well, baptised in the Jordan, appointed for his ministry, baptised in his death, baptised in, or his baptism that he performs in the day of Pentecost as well.
[9:08] And so all of these things are now part of our story. We are knit into this. And also he points out that individuals are bound up with this larger community of the church.
[9:20] Now the church would not exist apart from visible signs. And this is one of the things that Augustine points out, that visible signs, as he thinks about, is not merely some opposition between invisible interiority being expressed in some visible exteriority as a secondary thing, some deterioration from what is more primary.
[9:43] Rather, his point is that communities cannot exist without visible signs. And so these visible signs are those things within which a community finds its life.
[9:58] Likewise, the club as club exists only in and through these institutions and practices. Likewise, theoretically, any number of individuals may sincerely believe that Jesus is Lord without forming a church.
[10:10] The church, as a recognisable human community, exists only in her common confession of Christ, obedience to the word, liturgical practices, fellowship and mutual aid, and formal and informal procedures of correction and forgiveness.
[10:24] If the spirit dwells in the church as church, he dwells in the people constituted by these practices. Baptism is one of the practices without which the church does not exist.
[10:35] Initiation is thus not so much a doorway through which one passes into the house as the first act of membership and therefore the first contact with the spirit who circulates through the body.
[10:48] Baptism into the ecclesial priesthood, that is the house, therefore also confers the arrow bone, the earnest of the spirit. Finally, we may consider the relation of baptism to salvation.
[11:01] Salvation is not an entity, substance or power that floats free of persons in concrete situations. Rather, salvation is adjectival. Persons, communities and in a sense the non-human creation are or will be saved.
[11:15] A saved person is one who, redeemed in Christ from sin and death, lives as Christ created him to live, walking with God, submissive to his rule. A saved people consists of the redeemed whose communal life is conformed to the new covenant under the Lord Christ.
[11:31] Salvation in its fullest sense is eschatological. Only at the end will death be swallowed up in victory and God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Yet because the church is on the path towards this eschatological consummation, she anticipates, to the extent that she conforms to the will of Christ, the final peace of that kingdom.
[11:51] Yet because the church is on the path towards this eschatological consummation, the church as a concrete historical community is thus not merely the means of salvation but the already partially realised goal.
[12:06] And so what he's talking about here, we've first of all understood that human beings are not just detached interiorities that have a second level of social construction, they're part of these communities.
[12:18] Rather, as persons, we are bound up with these stories, bound up with these communities and these roles that we're within. And so to be a husband is something about who you are.
[12:29] It's something primary to your identity. It's not something that is secondary and something that is pasted on top of something that's more fundamental, some private interiority that's detached from all of this.
[12:41] Indeed, our interiority is something that's formed from the outside in. We are given language, we are given structures, we are given identities and roles and a place within the world out of which we can articulate what it means to be a self in that place.
[12:58] The self is not some detached entity that precedes my existence in relationship, my existence in particular roles, my existence in particular offices. I understand myself in terms of these things.
[13:13] And so this is an important part of his argument here. What he's trying to point out is that the self is not something that can be reduced to an interiority and then seeing these things as exterior things that are not really connected to the true reality of the human self.
[13:31] Rather, baptism or marriage or these other operative ceremonies are things that have at their heart something that is integral to the human person. These are not when we think about a proper sort of anthropology it leads to an understanding of rites and ceremonies that are not merely external.
[13:51] And so there is an objective efficacy to these rites. These rites genuinely change who I am. And that is important in the case of baptism.
[14:02] So for me to be baptised is a change in who I am. I become a different person when I am being baptised. And that shocks many people because they think of the true person as purely interior but the true person is exterior too.
[14:16] I become a different person if I go through a wedding ceremony and I become a different person when I go through the ceremony of baptism. As I go through the rite of baptism I become a baptised person.
[14:29] I become a member of the body of Christ a visible part of the visible church. Now, how does this all relate to what I've been arguing? I believe that this what Peter Lightheart argues is quite right.
[14:44] I quite agree with it. But I think there's a certain point we need to go further. He's pushing against a way in which we've had this very subjective understanding of human identity. A form of human identity that detaches the true self from the self as defined by roles by offices by membership in communities by these exterior things and has a very strong external internal opposition.
[15:10] But what I'm trying to emphasise is that the meaning well, a couple of things the meaning of rites like baptism or marriage is not purely contained within those rites themselves.
[15:24] There is an illocutionary force to something like a marriage ceremony a wedding ceremony. A wedding ceremony is not merely about that moment itself that two people are joined together in that specific moment.
[15:41] That happens. But the illocutionary force of a wedding ceremony is joining people two people together for life. It has a promissory force and its efficacy is something that is bound up with what happens next.
[15:57] And that I think goes a bit further than what Peter Lightheart is saying. Peter Lightheart's argument which I entirely agree with focuses upon the objective union that is formed at that period of time and what that everything else being defined in terms of that.
[16:13] But there is that illocutionary force as well. So when I've been baptised I have genuinely been made a part of the priesthood of the visible church.
[16:24] I've been brought into that reality but and this is a very important but what the efficacy of baptism means has a great deal to do with what happens next.
[16:37] Am I going to live out that reality or am I going to abandon it? Am I going to be an unfaithful priest or am I going to be a faithful one? And the point of baptism is not just to make people priests in an objective sense rather it's to bring people into the newness of life of the body of Christ as they live out of that life.
[17:00] And so people are brought into that community that community where the spirit dwells in baptism that this is part of our entrance into the community not merely in order that we might that we might just have an objective status and rest in that but that we might live it out and in the same way I've given the example of adoption that we are adopted and the adoption objectively changes our status we become a different person when we're adopted that moment you are adopted you are a new person you're a member of a new family you have a new name you have new relationships you have new siblings you have new parents and you have a new place in the world you have become a new person but yet there is an objective force in that sense a legal external force but then there is also this need to live out that identity to follow that up with what happens next so the meaning of adoption is not merely that moment where things objectively change you're objectively reconfigured as a person rather the meaning is primarily found in everyday relating to your new adoptive parents as mother and father and other people treating you in that way and giving that as it is faithfully lived out it has its proper force and so if we're thinking about baptism purely in terms of it is my subjective state that gives baptism its force we're missing something important we're missing what Peter
[18:40] Lightheart highlights about the objective force of a performative of operative ritual ritual on the other hand if we think purely in terms of the performative force of an operative ritual we can lose sight of the need for us to live these things out and that being part of the efficacy of the right the efficacy is the way that we live out the meaning of what has occurred so I don't think we're in any fundamental disagreement here I think it's a difference of emphasis Peter Lightheart is focusing very much upon a certain form of evangelical understanding of baptism that is very prevalent and he's challenging that focusing very much upon the operative force of the operative efficacy of rights whereas I'm focusing upon what happens beyond that that we're not given baptism merely in order to create people who are in an objective sense priests whether they're faithful or not no the purpose of baptism it's elocutionary force what it is intended to perform what it is intended to create is living members of the body of Christ and to be living members of this body of Christ to participate in the life of the spirit in the rights of this community which again highlights the fact that salvation is not just something that's interior salvation is partly realized in the life of the visible church as it faithfully lives out what Christ has declared it to be and as the spirit works within it to produce
[20:26] Christ's image as we faithfully live that out that is what the purpose of baptism is baptism is creating that community not just a community that is visible a visible church in the lowest common denominator sense that these people just so happen to have gone had this right and they're part of the club even if they're not really acting in any way that's conforming to what is proper to that reality and so the difference here is a difference of emphasis but the emphasis I think that both of us have is important Peter Lightheart's emphasis is very important to push against a certain subjectivisation of baptism that it's purely my faith that gives baptism its meaning and baptism has no objective force if baptism has no objective force then it does not have the promissory force that we need it to have baptism should be approached as a promise that I can take hold of for the entirety of my life that I can depend upon this that God has said something in baptism and I can lay hold of that and find comfort and assurance within that and it's also something that has changed me
[21:41] I've become a new person in this and I have new responsibilities and new sort of belonging a new sort of calling and identity and that is a great assurance and challenge but it is not in itself enough what is needed what is called for is faith in responding to that in an appropriate way and that is what baptism has as its primary and highest end producing that life of faith and belonging and communion with Christ and with our brothers and sisters in his body and where that is lost sight of we can easily reduce our understanding of baptism merely to people on a membership role as it were and that is a severe problem I think this is one of the problems in certain communions not least my own in the Church of England that have treated baptism very much as something that you give to children willy-nilly without consideration of whether they will be raised in the life of faith and this is something that has deep consequences for the efficacy of baptism when baptism comes to be seen purely as an objective thing merely focus upon that particular ceremony and its operative force what it has created there can be a sort of approach to baptism that is superstitious that sees within baptism some sort of magical force within that event itself rather than seeing the efficacy of baptism as being related to what happens as we live it out by faith and so the danger of focusing purely upon the operative efficacy of the operative force of these sorts of rights and their efficacy in the objective sense and bringing us into new roles communal identities things like that the danger in that is that it can leave us in a more superstitious understanding because we're not thinking about the efficacy of how we live this out in the long term and that's where I want to place the emphasis upon so what
[23:50] Peter Lightheart says is a very important word against those who are purely subjectivised baptism and leave us with not much of a promise to hold on to that baptism just becomes something that depends upon our faith itself and our faith is weak and our faith is frail and our faith is fluctuating and that's not much of a comfort as it should be baptism just is an externalisation of some interior state but then if baptism is purely external there's another problem one of the things that makes marriage efficacious what makes language what makes all these external things efficacious is as we take them into ourselves and so having the external force of this efficacious right is important but the point is to take that in and then to live it out and that is where I want to place the emphasis and so when we talk about baptism into the visible church we are talking about something that should have as its effect the fullness of life in participation in the body of
[24:57] Christ in communion with him and where that is lost something very important has been removed from the picture and this I believe is something that certain contexts need this word very they really need this word whereas other contexts I think the context into which Peter Lightheart is writing it needs that challenge the challenge that baptism has an objective force but that objective force is not merely an ambivalent thing that you're being baptised into priesthood and you could be faithful you could be unfaithful but the important thing is that you're being baptised into priesthood no the point of baptism is that you're baptised into priesthood in order that you might be a faithful and beloved member of God's house and live out that reality in his house for the rest of the days of your life that you might belong as a beloved son and where that is lost sight of then I think baptism becomes considerably reduced in what it should be and so we need to hold both aspects of this we need to recognise the anthropological points that
[26:05] Peter Lightheart makes and we need to recognise that the external realities are very important and they impinge upon the internal reality and the internal reality is built out of that that is spot on and it's very important but we also need to recognise the importance of living out for that right to have its efficacy to have its proper purpose it needs to be lived out for the entirety of our lives I highly recommend that you read Peter Lightheart on this subject there's a lot that he says that develops this thought I would recommend Priest of the Plebs and the Baptised Body both of these books are worth reading I'll leave the links for those below Lord willing I'll be back again tomorrow with some further thoughts thank you very much for listening for your time if you would like to ask me any questions please do so using my Curious Cat account and if you would like to support this and future videos you can do so using my Patreon account and the links for those are also below God bless and thank you for your time