Chrismation, Confirmation, and Excommunication
Liturgists throughout the ages have long recognized the principle of lex orandi, lex credendi. The law of prayer becomes the law of belief. So if you want to reform the theology of the church, first reform its worship. Belief will follow. The same holds true of the reverse. A little superfluous drama or symbolism, a little unwarranted addition to the service of worship, can have far reaching negative consequences. In this short article I want to address the question of how children came to be barred from participation in the Lord’s Supper.
In the early church, the newly baptized were admitted immediately to the table. There is a great deal of evidence from the writings of the church fathers that this was the case even for infants.
At some point in the first couple centuries of the Church, someone had the slick idea to add a little oil to the waters of baptism. More precisely, a small element was added to the rite of baptism in which the newly baptized was anointed with oil to symbolize the anointing of the Holy Spirit. This anointing, called chrismation, was originally viewed as simply a part of the baptismal rite. It is an extra-biblical addition to the sacrament. It must have been a fairly early tradition, since it is found everywhere in the ancient churches, and also in denominations today that hold claim to the ancient church. So the alien element of oil was interposed between water and supper.
In the Eastern Orthodox churches, we can see something similar to what this rite might have looked like in the ancient church. Baptism is immediately followed by anointing with oil, and the newly baptized and chrismed is immediately admitted to the Eucharist. This immediacy in administration of the sacraments is maintained in the East because any priest could both baptize and chrismate, and then administer the elements. In the West, the story is quite different.
Conscious to guard the hierarchy of the bishopric, which it considered to be essential to the doctrine of apostolic succession, the Roman church ruled in the West that while the priesthood could baptize and administer the Eucharist, chrismation required the services of a bishop. Without the anointing, the baptism was deemed incomplete. As the church spread throughout the empire into more rural areas, it became hard to come by a bishop. Priests could administer baptism, but without the authority to perform the rite of chrismation, they could not complete the initiation of converts or their children into the new faith.
More and more, chrismation had to be delayed until a bishop passed through the area. Because chrismation was technically a part of the baptismal ritual, the baptism was not complete until this anointing of oil had been given. The result was that administration of the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was also withheld from those who had been baptized but whose baptism had not been “confirmed” by a bishop in chrismation.
Often it could be years before the services of a bishop were available. A traveling bishop would pass through, chrismate all those who had been baptized but not confirmed, and then admit them to the table of the Eucharist. By then, those who had been baptized as infants but had never been chrismated would be old enough to be aware of what was taking place. In order to prepare these children for the anointing of oil and the partaking of the Supper, a system of catechism was introduced. The baptized would be instructed in the doctrines of the church and so made ready for chrismation and communion.
And so the Western rite of Confirmation was born. As chrismation was increasingly separated from baptism in the greater part of the Western church, confirmation came to be seen as a separate sacramental rite—one that drove a man-made wedge between baptism and communion. If you consider that chrismation with oil, whether in baptism or years afterward, is an extra-biblical practice, then the fact becomes unavoidable that this later development amounts to the unnatural and unlawful excommunication (barring from the table) of baptized Christians.
It is a curious thing that this rite continues even in Reformed churches today, albeit without the oil. Granted, they don’t consider it a sacrament, and Confirmation as such is sometimes optional or simply called something else. But the essential idea continues that there must exist a period of instruction between baptism and communion, at least for those who are baptized as infants, and a “credible confession” must thereafter be made in order to gain access to the table.
By introducing catechism as a prerequisite for chrismation, the Western Roman church placed an emphasis on understanding as a requirement for confirmation (of baptism), and thus for communion in the Eucharist. When the Reformed church rightly did away with the oil of chrismation, they nevertheless retained the rite and all its implications for the sacraments. I find it ironic that a controversy regarding the communication of children today in Reformed churches has its roots in two erroneous Roman practices: the chrismation of oil in baptism and the safeguarding of apostolic succession in the hierarchy of the church by requiring that a bishop must confirm a baptism administered by a priest.
The lex orandi of the Roman church has become the de facto lex credendi of of Western Christianity, including many Reformed Christians.
Bibliographic Sources:
Kavanagh, Aidan, Confirmation: Origins and Reform, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1996
Turrell, James F., “Muddying the Waters of Baptism: The Theology Committee’s Report on Baptism, Confirmation, and Christian Formation,” Anglican Theological Review, July 1, 2006
Tags: baptism, chrismation, communion, excommunication, Liturgy, Orthodoxy, paedocommunion, Reformation, Reformed, Roman Catholicism, Rome, worship
Apologetics, History, Liturgy, Theology | Christopher Kou | 
August 28, 2008 1:26 PM
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confirmation is certainly one of the most messy aspects of teh entire church tradition in the West (though not in the East). I must point out, tho, that often the Eucharist was offered by and given to children prior to confirmation throughout the middle ages, and even now in the Roman Catholic Church. It is actually an anglican arch-bishop who was the first to require confirmation before communication.
Nice! Next up: article explaining the differences between the Table in the ancient church and now.
Haha. I think it might take a little more than one blog article to begin to explore that. I might give it a try though . . .
Or at least, how about a good exegesis of I. Cor. 11?
dude, that was awesome!
"It is actually an anglican arch-bishop who was the first to require confirmation before communication."That's interesting. It directly contradicts Kavanagh's thesis, to which quite a few scholars adhere. Also, if the Roman Church does not view confirmation as an interposition between baptism and communion, then why would Kavanagh (a Catholic scholar) describe the development in this way?Also, who was this Anglican archbishop you're speaking of? And how can you be sure he was the first to impose such a requirement?
i think i read that in "The Study of Liturgy" … in teh anglican section of teh eucharist part. it's possible the author was saying that that anglican archbishop was the first in the history of teh church of england … it's been a while since i red this … hrmrm.actually, it's not necessarily as opposed to Kavanagh's thesis as u might think, since practice and doctrine were not always in harmony everywhere at all times. so even tho the western church always did see confirmation as something that shud precede eucharist (this is seen in the fact that for adults this is always the case), they did not always implement this. so i'm not really contradicting Kavanagh, i'm just saying that the practice within the church was much more diverse. now, with Vatican 2 I know they tried to clear things up and become more consistent on this issue. I'm not entirely sure about all teh details of thei reform tho … i wud check wot vatican ii and conciliar documents said on this as well.
Okay, I have that book. I'll look it up. And I need to take a closer reading of Kavanagh again on the theology vs. practice. I might check on Vatican II while I'm at it. I'd be interested to know the Roman position on confirmation right now.
I finally read your article! Well done, Chris. It was clear, straight forward, and easy to understand for aging people like me. I appreciated reading it. Keep up the good work. We need it!