Can You Baptize Without Baptism? Review: The Ecclesiological Renovation of Vatican II

Is it possible to receive an unbaptized person into the Orthodox Church without baptizing him? What would it mean to do such a thing? You might not expect a book about the Second Vatican Council to elicit such questions from Orthodox sacramental theology but Fr. Peter Heers’s 2015 doctoral thesis, published with the title The Ecclesiological Renovation of Vatican II (ERV2), does just that. The book examines the theology and practice of baptism in the Latin West as it was articulated at the Second Vatican Council (V2), tracing its development from the time of St. Augustine, and contrasts this narrative, unfavorably, with what is presented as the theology and practice of the Orthodox East.

The main thesis of ERV2 is that the Latin West has departed by degrees from the patristic theology and practice of baptism, culminating in an entirely novel understanding of baptism articulated at V2. This new conception of baptism becomes the theological foundation for a new ecclesiology that enables the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) to enter the arena of ecumenical engagement, from which it had previously been excluded by its own theological commitments.

In the more than three years since its publication the book has received little sustained attention in terms of its structure, thesis, and argument. Such attention is needed, because ERV2 asserts a particular understanding of our own canonical and ecclesiological tradition that bears further scrutiny. Additionally, the way in which that tradition is deployed against the West raises methodological questions about the structure of the argument as a whole. This essay will highlight the structural flaws in ERV2 and devote sustained attention to the canonical and historical dimensions of its claims concerning the Christian East, with the intention of demonstrating that it presents a distorted understanding of the Orthodox tradition and fails to offer a sound defense of its thesis.

You also ignore much of the Bible - here's what I just got through writing to someone else...

Too funny - how about when He said that if we loved God with all our might (which he knew was flawed and is backed up by Paul, specially chosen by God to carry the lion's share of the Word, lamenting he found himself doing things he knew he shouldn't and not doing things he should) and loved our neighbor as ourselves, we were in fact satisfying the dictates of the Law because where there is love, there is no harm and that in and of itself satisfied the intent of the Law?

Jesus walked the earth as 100% Man and 100% God ...took the Man form so He could establish a personal relationship with Him....also, don't forget that while He still lived as a Man, He was under the constraints of the Old Covenant and had to be true to it....He is the only "Man" to have walked the earth and not broken a Commandment.

So, what was your point? When mortals get their hands on things, they necessarily tint it...if you don't believe that, then take a hard look at all the "fallen" Priests and a lot of their superiors...not to mention that the Catholic Religion considers the Pope to be "infallible" yet so many here also bad mouth him instead of just accepting their own religious teaching.

Men are needed to carry the Word, not to personally save souls - that's a personal choice between the sinner and his Savior.

Do you choose to ignore those parts of the Bible because they weaken the "power" of your priests?

I say this as one who was baptized into the Catholic Church and found that I had totally missed the real message of the Bible due to all the foraying into church rules....not to mention that all mass was done in Latin when I was young - brings to mind the lesson of Babel - much better to speak in the language one is trying to reach instead of harping on the mystique.

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