No CrossRef data available.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Expositions of the Sacraments of Baptism and the Eucharist usually concentrate on their meaning as between God, the Church itself and the individual candidate or communicant. J. S. Whale, for example, in Christian Doctrine1 speaks of the Communion as (a) Memorial, (b) the Mediation of God's Presence, and (c) the Union of the Historical with what is beyond History. Or again, the Scottish Manual of Church Doctrine2 defines Baptism as follows: ‘The outward part in this Sacrament is washing with water in the Name of the Holy Trinity. The inward part is “engrafting” into Christ, regeneration, remission of sins, and giving up to God.’ The Lord's Supper is explained3 as a supreme act of worship, a commemoration, the oblation of all possible praise, the utmost act of prayer and intercession, and a supreme means of grace. Only at the very end of the Chapter on Ordinance do we find these words4: ‘Further still, Christ is the propitiation not for our sins only but for the sins of the whole world. Laying hold of Him for its own need, the soul apprehends its debt to remember the need of the world without, for which Christ also died.’ This thought, which makes the Communion a reminder of the need to evangelise only, has a very strong flavour of pietism and ‘separateness’. One could find oneself at one with this even when celebrating in the secrecy of the Catacomb.
page 37 note 1 Whale, J. S., Christian Doctrine, pp. 160–162.Google Scholar
page 37 note 2 Wotherspoon and Kirkpatrick, p. 22.
page 37 note 3 ibid., pp. 39ff.
page 37 note 4 ibid., p. 54.
page 38 note 1 John 14.18–23.
page 38 note 2 I use the terminology of the law of agency here, and the words Agent, commission and Principal must be understood in their technical legal meaning.
page 39 note 1 Acts 2.59.
page 40 note 1 Robertson, F. W., Sermons⋮on Christian Doctrine, p. 18f.Google Scholar
page 42 note 1 1 Kings 13.2ff.
page 42 note 2 Ezek. 4.1–8, 6.2, 12.2, 3.
page 42 note 3 Jer. 32.6–15.
page 43 note 1 Ps. 23.5
page 43 note 2 Reflections on the Psalms, p. 21.