Introduction — Historical footnotes

This opinion is elaborately discussed by the Benedictine editor, Touttée, Dissertatio iii. c. 7, who argues that the Unction described by Cyril is a Sacrament distinct from Baptism, that it has for its proper grace the gift of the Holy Spirit, and further that this gift is not conferred in Baptism. Of these assertions the first and second appear to represent Cyril’s view correctly: the last is an exaggeration and a mistake, the tendency of which is to identify the Chrism of the Eastern Church with that which is used in Confirmation by the Roman Church, and to exalt the rite of Confirmation as a proper Sacrament distinct from Baptism, and even superior to it. A view differing in some respects from both of these has been recently put forward by a learned and devout writer of our own Church, who has fully discussed the teaching of Cyril and other Eastern Fathers, and gives the result of his investigation in the following “Summary:” “For very many centuries the Christians of the East have never been forced to define to themselves at all clearly the position of a person baptized but unconfirmed. Their mode of administering Confirmation (Chrism?) by the hands of the baptizing Presbyter—though among the Greeks and some others with chrism prepared by the Bishop—relieves them from the necessity which weighs upon us Westerns, of teaching Christian children what their status is between the two rites. Confirmation (Chrism?) is for them, far more than it has been for a long while in the West, a factor in Baptism. Only a more or less conscious desire not to fall behind Western teachers in honouring the perfecting Unction can have led their later authorities to treat that Unction as a sacrament numerically distinct from Baptism. To all the early doctors of the East the two things are one, and Baptism culminates in the Unction. The tendency among Oriental Christians was, not to attribute to Baptism in our modern sense the gift of the Holy Ghost, but rather to consider Baptism by itself as a bare rite, benefiting the body alone, and dependent for its spiritual efficacy upon other actions, after and before. Not that this tendency has its full way. The Greek Fathers may be said certainly on the whole to trace the forgiveness of sins, the preparatory cleansing, to the baptismal Laver; the gift of the Holy Ghost, for the ordinary purposes of Christian living, they trace, like S. Chrysostom, to that act which comes “ immediately after Baptism, and before the Mysteries.”

There is in fact no reason to exalt the benefits of Unction, or Confirmation, by robbing Baptism of its proper grace. “It was this Unction, as the completion of Baptism, to which they ascribed the power of making every Christian in some sense partaker of a royal priesthood. To it they also ascribed the noble effects of confirming the soul with the strength of all spiritual graces on God’s part, as well as the confirmation of the profession and covenant made on man’s part.” We may well be satisfied that the doctrine of the early Church has been so fully retained in essential points in our own Office of Confirmation, recalling as it does by the ratification of the baptismal vows the immediate connexion of the ancient Unction with Baptism, and in its Prayers invoking the same gifts of the Holy Spirit,—“Strengthen them, we beseech Thee, O Lord, with the Holy Ghost the Comforter, and daily increase in them Thy manifold gifts of grace; the spirit of wisdom and understanding; the spirit of counsel and ghostly strength; the spirit of knowledge and true godliness, and fill them, O Lord, with the spirit of Thy holy fear, now and for ever. Amen.”

§ 2. Chrism. When spiritual blessings so many and so great have been ascribed to Baptism, in what light, it may be asked, does Cyril regard the Unction which follows? Does he treat it as being merely an additional ceremony subordinate to Baptism, or as having for its own proper grace some special gift of the Holy Ghost? We find no answer to this question in the earlier course of Lectures. But that Chrism was not regarded by Cyril as a mere accessory to Baptism, as Milles thought, may be safely inferred from the fact that in announcing the subjects of his Mystagogic Lectures, he mentions first Baptism, then “the seal of the fellowship of the Holy Ghost,” and then “the Mysteries at the altar of the New Covenant:” and this inference is fully confirmed by his language elsewhere: “Ye have heard enough of Baptism, and Chrism, and partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ.” A mere additional ceremony of Baptism could not have been so independently placed between the two sacraments, and, as it were, in the same rank with them.

When we come to inquire how far these several theories agree with the teaching of Cyril himself, we must in the outset put aside altogether the name Confirmation: for as applied to the Unction used in the Eastern Church it is only confusing and misleading. In the early ages of the Church Confirmation was not known even by name. In the Latin Church “neither Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, nor any of the Latin Fathers, makes mention of Confirmation in this sense. Nor have the Greeks any word to answer to this Latin term.” So far, therefore, Milles appears to be perfectly right in refusing to connect the Chrism of which Cyril treats with the Unction used in Confirmation by the Roman Church.

“Some might suppose,” it is said, “from these words that Cyril thought of water and the Spirit as the sign and the thing signified in Baptism respectively, and a passage in a later Lecture upon the subject of the Sacrament (of Baptism) at first confirms that impression.”

Here besides “the remission of sins, which no man receiveth without the Holy Spirit,” we find “a gift of the Holy Ghost,” and the fellowship of Christ’s Passion distinctly attributed to Baptism.

§ 2. Chrism. When spiritual blessings so many and so great have been ascribed to Baptism, in what light, it may be asked, does Cyril regard the Unction which follows? Does he treat it as being merely an additional ceremony subordinate to Baptism, or as having for its own proper grace some special gift of the Holy Ghost? We find no answer to this question in the earlier course of Lectures. But that Chrism was not regarded by Cyril as a mere accessory to Baptism, as Milles thought, may be safely inferred from the fact that in announcing the subjects of his Mystagogic Lectures, he mentions first Baptism, then “the seal of the fellowship of the Holy Ghost,” and then “the Mysteries at the altar of the New Covenant:” and this inference is fully confirmed by his language elsewhere: “Ye have heard enough of Baptism, and Chrism, and partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ.” A mere additional ceremony of Baptism could not have been so independently placed between the two sacraments, and, as it were, in the same rank with them.

In regard to the supposed identity of Chrism and Confirmation, it is important to notice carefully how Cyril speaks of the laying on of hands in the only passage where he mentions it.

From this passage it has been inferred (i) that Cyril alludes to a gift of the Spirit by laying on of hands in immediate connexion with Baptism and Unction, and (2) that he refers this gift of the Spirit not to Baptism itself, but to the laying on of hands, or to the Unction as a figure that answers to it.

(2) In support of the second inference the argument offered is as follows: “That the Spirit was to come upon them in the course of their Baptism is here again clearly stated; but that Cyril did not intend them to suppose that Baptism itself would convey the gift is equally clear. Again and again in earlier Lectures, as well as in the words actually before us, Cyril has taught them to expect the gift in Baptism; if therefore the immersion itself were to be the means of receiving it, he has already told them his secret. Yet now he says that he will not tell them ‘how’ they are to receive it. That remains for a future occasion.” The mistake, as I venture to consider it, lies in the words which I have marked with italics. For of the mysteries which were to be concealed from the unbaptized (ἀμύητοι) the first was the manner of administering Baptism itself, and the second, the unction of Chrism; and in the preceding Lectures Cyril has no more told the secret of the one than of the other. “Baptism, the Eucharist, and the oil of Chrism, were things that the uninitiated (ἀμύητοι) were not allowed to look upon.”

“We bless,” says S. Basil, “both the water of Baptism and the oil of the Chrism, and moreover the baptized (βαπτιζόμενον) himself. From what written commands? Is it not from a secret (σιωπωμένης) and mystical tradition? Again, the very anointing with the oil, what word of Scripture taught that? And the dipping the man thrice, whence came it? And all the other accompaniments of Baptism, the renunciation of Satan and his angels, from what Scripture came they? Come they not from this unpublished and secret teaching, which our fathers guarded in a silence with which no prying curiosity might meddle, having been well taught to preserve the sanctity of the mysteries by silence? For how could it have been right to publish in writing the doctrine of these mysteries, which the unbaptized are not even allowed to look upon?”