One Baptism—One Church?

Kimberly Hope Belcher is associate professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame, in liturgical studies. She uses sacramental and liturgical theology and ritual theory to study Christian worship. She represents the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on the Methodist-Catholic, Episcopal-Catholic, and Pentecostal-Catholic dialogues in the United States. Her related publications include “Ritual Techniques in Affliction Rites and the Lutheran-Catholic ecumenical Liturgy of Lund, 2016” (Yearbook for Ritual and Liturgical Studies, 2022), “Ritual Systems: Prostration, Self, and Community in the Rule of Benedict” (Ecclesia Orans, 2020), and Eucharist and Receptive Ecumenism: From Thanksgiving to Communion (Cambridge, 2020).   Nathan P. Chase is assistant professor of liturgical and sacramental theology at Aquinas Institute of Theology in St. Louis, Missouri. He has contributed articles to the field of liturgical studies, including pieces on liturgy in the early church, initiation, the Eucharist, inculturation, and the Western non-Roman rites, in particular the Hispano-Mozarabic tradition. His most recent monograph published in 2023 is titled The Anaphoral Tradition in the ‘Barcelona Papyrus.’ His work on initiation includes “A Chrismatic Framework for Understanding the Intersection of Baptism and Ministry in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Churches” (Journal of Ecumenical Studies 2018) and “From Arianism to Orthodoxy: The Role of the Rites of Initiation in Uniting the Visigothic Kingdom” (Hispania Sacra 2020).    Alexander Turpin is a Roman Catholic priest of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York, and a doctoral candidate in liturgical studies at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. His dissertation focuses on the reception of non-Orthodox Christians into the Eastern Orthodox Church. Other scholarly interests include liturgical reform and renewal as well as liturgical history, especially in the Roman and Byzantine traditions. Some of his recent publications on these topics are “The Tridentine Genius of Traditionis Custodes” (Ecclesia Orans, 2021), “The Archaeology of Tradition: Theological Implications of Liturgiewissenschaft” (Antiphon, 2023), and “The Super Oblata Euchology of the Early Roman Mass: Divine-Human Exchange in a Local Eucharist” (Ecclesia Orans, 2024).

Contents
Acknowledgments   viii
Abbreviations   ix
Chapter One
Ecumenism and the Reception of Christians from Other Churches   1
     Introduction   1
     “One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism”   4
     Receptive Ecumenism and Growth in Communion   8
     The Social Dimensions of Church Communities   12
Chapter Two
The Historical Foundations   23
     Foundational Dispute: Cyprian and Stephen   23
     Mary Douglas and Cultural Theory   38
Chapter Three
Clarifying the Debate: From Cyprian and Stephen to the First Liturgical Witnesses   47
     Trinitarian Baptism in East and West   48 
     The Eighth-Century Emergence of Liturgical Texts   63
Chapter Four
Rebaptism and Canonical Reinterpretation   67
     Trouble in Bulgaria: The Ninth-Century Conflict between East and West   67
     Late Medieval and Early Modern Developments   77
     “Arians, Heretics, and Apostates”: The Western Liturgical Books of the Middle Ages  79
     East-West Relations in the “Medieval” Period   90
Chapter Five
Settling into Schisms   99
     Early Modern Period (Sixteenth to Twentieth Centuries)   100
     Historical and Ritual Conclusions   114
     Interlude: Other Eastern Churches   120
Chapter Six
Ecumenical Revisions: The Twentieth Century, Today, and the Future   125
     East   126
     West   128
     Post–Vatican II Reforms   134
     Theological and Ecumenical Conclusions   143
     Best Practices Using the Current Liturgical Book   155
     Toward a New Liturgical Rite   167 
Appendix
A Proposed Order of Reception into the Full Communion of the Catholic Church of Those Already Validly Baptized   173
Index   193