The Holy Spirit: the key to the baptismal sacramentalism of H. Wheeler Robinson: the rise of the ecumenical movement in the early twentieth century meant that many principles held so dear for generations, or so it seemed, came under the theological microscope, and established practices were increasingly challenged from within and without ...

For Baptists associated with the Baptist Union of Great Britain, it was baptism more than any other doctrine because of its sectarian nature that became the focus of Baptist thinking. The Baptists' leading scholar in the first half of the century, Henry Wheeler Robinson, eloquently declared that if believer's baptism was really central and fundamental enough to justify the existence of a distinct denomination to urge its claims, then Baptists should be able to show the great and permanent principles that were implied in it: personal conversion, the authority of Christ revealed in the New Testament, and the doctrine of the church as the society of the converted. (1)

Wheeler Robinson himself was greatly influenced by the ecumenical climate of Britain at this time. But his early ecumenical enthusiasm soon waned because he believed it was based on the compromising of principles. (2) In contrast, he believed in the need for clearer thinking and greater charity. He applied this more to baptism than any other doctrine because baptism was the major stumbling block to the reunion discussions at that time.

Robinson was born in mid-Victorian England at a time when the overwhelming majority of Baptists understood baptism to be nothing more than an ordinance: a symbol of conversion, a profession of personal faith in Christ, a witness to the gospel, an act of obedience and, in the majority of churches, a condition of membership, though the days when it was the condition for participation in communion were fast becoming a thing of the past. One of the chief factors in this merely symbolic interpretation was the Baptists' overreaction to the baptismal regeneration advanced by the Oxford Movement. (3) This position came under the stricture of Robinson who criticized "the `Zwinglianism' which is too current amongst us. (4)

Two causes underlay Robinson's departure from this tenaciously held understanding of baptism as nothing more than an ordinance: his reading of Scripture and a personal experience during a serious illness in 1913 when, in his own words, "the truths of `evangelical' Christianity ... failed to bring him personal strength." Such strength, however, he did find in "a more `sacramental' religion" mediated through a priest and "sacred elements." In his words, the "lacuna in his own conception of evangelical truth" was filled with "those conceptions of the Holy Spirit in which the New Testament is so rich." (5) This theological reorientation enabled him to see that "the Bible itself is no more than a collection of ancient documents till it becomes ... a sacrament, that is, something which is a means by which the divine Spirit becomes active in the heart of reader or hearer." (6)

The consequences of rejecting the sacramental nature of baptism, he believed, were great: "If water-baptism is not a means of grace, why keep it up?" (7) What is more, "If baptism were a mere form, which left us just as it found us, we might well ask whether a spiritual religion has any place for it. (8) If Baptists were to justify their own distinctive practice, they must:

   show it to possess the dignity of a distinctive principle, important enough
   to warrant a separate denominational existence. It is not enough to say to
   men, however true it is, "obey this command of the New Testament"; we must
   show that the command carries its own intrinsic authority by being worth
   while, from the highest moral and spiritual standpoints. (9)

According to Robinson:

   The Baptist stands or falls by his conception of what the Church is; his
   plea for believer's baptism becomes a mere archaeological idiosyncrasy, if
   it be not the expression of the fundamental constitution of the Church. We
   become members of the living body of Christ by being consciously and
   voluntarily baptized in the Spirit of Christ--a baptism witnessed by the
   evidence of moral purpose and character as the fruit of the Spirit. (10)

Robinson criticized much Baptist thought on baptism on the grounds that it is too negative, "concerned with showing what New Testament baptism is not, rather than what it is." (11) He also warned of the dangers of the Baptist tendency towards individualism, (12) asking, "Does not baptism express much more than a personal act?" As Baptists stood for the truth of a regenerated church membership expressed in believer's baptism, he believed that their testimony to that would never be as effective as it ought to be until they had added to it "a nobler Church-consciousness, and a profounder sense of the whole group, as well as the individual life, as the arena of the Spirit's activity." (13)

With an implicit reference to Baptist antagonism towards the Oxford Movement, Robinson stated that the reaction to a false doctrine of divine grace in baptism had made Baptists suspicious of the genuine sacramentalism of the New Testament. The emphasis had been so much on saying "believer's baptism" that they had failed, or at least were then failing, to say with anything like equal emphasis "believer's baptism," by which he meant the entrance of believers into a life of supernatural powers. Personal faith is the realm of the Spirit's activity, so the confession of that faith in believer's baptism brings a new opportunity for divine grace, precisely because it is an act of personal faith. (14)

Robinson's critique of baptismal theology, however, was not solely directed at British Baptists. In the report he prepared for the Baptist World Alliance in preparation for its sixth congress in Atlanta in 1939, he underscored the Baptist testimony to the necessity of personal faith as the prerequisite for baptism; that baptism is an acted creed; that Baptists are the only tradition which can maintain baptismal grace in the New Testament sense; that baptism should be made more of within Christian experience, and also criticized the inadequacy of much baptismal instruction.

Further, he recognized that other churches possessed truths that Baptists needed to learn and apply and while this was an argument for closer cooperation with other denominations, it was not an argument for organic reunion of the kind that would subordinate truths to institutions. (15) He believed that world Baptists needed a "`higher' doctrine of baptism (in the New Testament direction) if baptism is to claim and hold its place." It is significant that such a statement follows the discussion of the relationship between baptism and the Holy Spirit. He continued:

   We must make more of baptism, not less, if it is to retain its place and
   function in the Christian experience, and that `more' is surely in the
   direction of a humble and earnest willingness to be led by the New
   Testament teaching, and most of all when it rebukes Baptist failure to
   assimilate it. (16)

How, then, did Robinson understand "sacrament"? After referring to sacramentum as an oath of allegiance, he continued:

   The term "sacrament" is ... often used to imply what Baptists would regard
   as a mechanical or material conveyance of grace; but this misuse of a
   useful term ought no more to discredit it than the misuse of the term
   "baptism" by non-Baptists make us give up that term. (17)

This led him to reject what he termed "sacramentarianism," though he accepted and used the term "sacramentalism." (18) He also defined a sacrament as "something whose sacredness consists in the use to which it is put," (19) seeing sacraments as a means of union with Christ. (20) More precisely, a sacrament is "something which is a means by which the divine Spirit becomes active in the heart of reader or hearer." (21) Robinson knew that the most powerful motive to many Baptists was "the desire to obey the direct command of Christ" (Matt. 28:19) and "to imitate His own acceptance of baptism at the hands of John" (Mark 1:9-10) but he explained his emphasis on other themes of the doctrine of baptism when he wrote, "I do not doubt ... that our Lord instituted the baptism of believers, but I believe it is in accordance with His spirit to emphasize the intrinsic meaning of the rite, rather than its extrinsic aspect, as an act of formal obedience." (22)

Baptists have always been a confessional rather than a creedal people, and Robinson developed the notion of baptism not only as an "acted parable" but as an "acted creed." (23) He understood both sacraments as acted parables of the Lord's death, burial, and resurrection, "the cardinal verities of evangelical faith and the historical basis of Christianity." It was by these expressive acts that believers identify themselves with Christ, professing the simplest form of confession of faith, "Jesus is Lord" (Rom. 10:9). (24) Robinson developed this understanding of baptism:

   Its symbolic significance, i.e., the spiritual death to self, union with
   Christ, and resurrection of the believer was emphasized by Paul: it
   expressed in vivid manner the very heart of Christian experience, as he
   conceived it. It is an action that speaks louder than words; by its
   unspoken eloquence, it commits those who are baptized to the most essential
   things. Yet it leaves each generation free to interpret the fundamental
   truths in its own way. (25)

Concerned that both the objective and subjective elements of baptism should be held together, Robinson declared that the New Testament never considered these issues apart, that the baptism of which it spoke was no formal act, but a genuine experience. Only later generations separated the outer act from the inner experience, and this development made possible the rise of sacramentarianism on the one hand and the entire rejection of the sacraments on the other. The later history of baptism was, he stated, in large measure, the history of this separation. Only then did it become "possible to administer baptism to unintelligent recipients ... through the transference of emphasis from the moral and spiritual to the sacramental side of the rite." (26)

Accordingly, the mode is not essential, only appropriate, for to equate the practice with the principle was to stultify the principle itself, which emphasizes the inner essential of faith, declaring that without it all outward ceremonies are valueless. (27) Baptists, he claimed, only value the external rite in so far as it emphasizes the spiritual change wrought in human nature by the Spirit of God in Christ, implying both a profession of faith and a change of heart. (28) Thus, baptism is the "cardinal ceremony of union with Christ, the objective aspect of what is subjectively faith." (29)

Later, he outlined the triple aspect of baptism: it implies the historical events of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, of which submersion is the suggestive symbol; it consists of a series of acts on the part of the baptized, who goes down into the water, is submerged and rises out of it; and it supplies a visible parallel to the spiritual experience of the believer which Paul called the baptism of the Holy Spirit--their death to sin and resurrection to newness of life. "All these three aspects are implied in the single series of visible acts, and they become Sacramental to the participant for whom they have this implication." The charge of "sacramental" magic can be dismissed because the person is a conscious believer, the efficacy of the rite depending on their conscious and believing participation in it. Equally there is no question of "mere symbolism," for the act is the "partial and fragmentary, but very real accomplishment of a divine work, the work of the Holy Spirit." (30)

Therefore, Robinson's is an ethical sacramentalism, standing apart from other interpretations of the rite because it is "the only baptism which is strictly and primarily an ethical act on the part of the baptized." (31) He maintained that "whatever else Christian baptism may mean, it means something profoundly moral." (32) Romans 6 is a key passage, for baptism here forms the foundation for Paul's moral exhortations. (33) This recognition led Robinson to the view that the foremost contribution Baptists could make to the church catholic, like that of the Hebrew prophets, was the essential and primary place of the moral within the religious. "The moral change wrought within conversion, the personal repentance and faith which are the religious features of that conversion, the open confession which commits the life to a new purpose--these great truths are admirably and forcibly expressed in believer's baptism by immersion, and expressed as no other Church expresses them." (34)

Robinson's sacramental theology, then, was grounded in Christian experience and in his reading of the New Testament in which he found that "conversion is an act in which both God and man share; it belongs to two worlds at once." (35) In light of all this, Robinson challenged Baptists as to whether they were loyal to New Testament baptism, where to be baptized into Christ was to put on Christ, that is, to enter that realm of the Spirit under Christ's Lordship.

Robinson insisted that the moral and spiritual conditions of personal faith became the real, channel of the Spirit's highest energies. Indeed, he said, it was the very divorce of baptism from personal faith which made sacramentarianism possible, and it was this against which Baptists rightly protested. But the energy of their protest brought its own peril, as they tended to become suspicious of any pronounced sacramental emphasis, even the genuine sacramentalism of the New Testament. They had so stressed the subjects of baptism that they failed to say anything about baptism itself. In this respect, he admitted, "we have much to learn from the sacramental Churches themselves."

Here, then, was an opportunity for Baptists to give a forceful testimony to the work of the Spirit on the believer. He continued:

   If any reader is afraid that this may mean a sacramentalism of the lower
   kind, where the channel of the Spirit is thought to be the material
   element, rather than the evangelical truth in the hearts of believers, let
   it be said distinctly that we are pleading for the connection of
   water-baptism with the Holy Spirit exactly in the sense in which we plead
   for its connection with personal faith. If the New Testament teaches the
   latter, it assuredly teaches the former, and Baptists are really committed
   to both. Let us tell that the Church is the home of supernatural powers,
   and not merely a human society, that faith is not a mere opinion, but a
   personal surrender to Him through whose Spirit these powers are to be
   experienced, and that baptism is not simply an act of faith, but "the sign
   and seal" that that faith is answered by the Holy Spirit of God. So, and
   only so, will He Himself have led us into all the truth concerning New
   Testament baptism. (36)

For him, New Testament baptism was a sacrament precisely because it was "the vehicle of the Holy Spirit" and was "administered, as alone it ought to be, to a converted" person. Until Baptists fearlessly taught this, he believed they would "never enter into the full New Testament heritage." (37)

Robinson argued that the present Baptist emphasis fell too exclusively on the personal act of faith and not adequately on the spiritual energies which that act of faith mediated. On Acts 2.38 he wrote: "The manifestation of the Spirit's power (which, of course, does not exclude the preparatory work of the Spirit prior to repentance) is regarded as the sequel or close accompaniment of baptism. As men were made disciples (according to the Great Commission) before they were baptized, so, ordinarily, they were baptized before the Holy Spirit gave visible proof of His indwelling activity and power," a point he supported with 1 Corinthians 12:13:

   I am not afraid of the consequences of such loyalty to New Testament
   teaching, so long as baptism is administered to believers only. We may
   easily teach our candidates for baptism to expect too little; we can hardly
   lead them to expect too much from the Spirit of God. New Testament writers
   knew nothing of the distinction between the subjective (faith) and the
   objective (water) conditions of baptism which Baptists have felt compelled
   to urge, because the New Testament knows nothing of unbaptized believers,
   or of a water-baptism divorced from faith. The later abuse of water-baptism
   by its application to infants ought not to rob Baptists of the full meaning
   of New Testament baptism, as the expressive symbol of new powers underlying
   new life, as well as of the personal act of faith by which that new life is
   consciously entered. (38)

Like many Baptists who have advocated a sacramental understanding of baptism, Robinson was suspected of advancing baptismal regeneration despite his clear repudiation of it. So Robinson contrasted the regeneration by the Holy Spirit with the theory of baptismal regeneration:

      There are two distinct ways of representing the operation of the Spirit
   of God in regard to baptism. We may think of the external act, and the
   material means, as the prescribed channel of the work of the Spirit, and
   then the result is what is commonly known as sacramentarianism. Or we may
   think of the internal conditions, the personal faith and conversion
   emphasized in Believer's Baptism, and see in them the true realm of the
   Spirit's activity.... In fact, when we speak of Believer's Baptism, we mean
   that baptism in the Spirit of God, of which water baptism is the
   expression. (39)

Robinson tried to bring the baptism of the Spirit and water baptism together though he continued to speak of the external act as subordinate and secondary to the baptism of the Spirit. (40) On 1 Corinthians 12:13, he wrote:

   Here the double reference to water-baptism, as an immersion and a
   saturation, suggests that the ideal beginning of the Spirit-filled life is
   at the water-baptism of the believer, which in those days would follow
   immediately on the credible confession of faith. A believer who did not
   express his faith by baptism would not then have been regarded as a
   believer. At the baptism, oral confession of the faith was made, and this
   was regarded as the decisive moment. (41)

The rite of infant baptism lends itself to a mechanical and quasi-magical conception of faith and grace that Baptists have found offensive to the gospel on the grounds that it perverts the evangelical message. On the other hand, Baptists maintain that believer's baptism stresses and preserves the personal meaning of both faith and grace. Robinson proposed that Romans 6:3-5 could legitimately be regarded as a form of symbolic magic were it not for the fact that baptism was the act of a believer. (42)

Robinson also recognized that Baptists have tended to elevate the spiritual to the detriment of the material. While they are willing to accept spiritual means by which God works in peoples' lives, they have been reluctant, even refused, to accept that God uses material means to effect his grace. While he believed that "any adequate theory" of the sacraments unites "the spiritual and the material" (43) and rejected the separation of the spiritual and material, he nevertheless emphasized that it was the former that gave meaning to the latter, because "form can have no spiritual value apart from the attitude of the baptized to it." (44) He believed that one of the beliefs that distinguished the New Testament era from the present was that people believed in the supernatural "and in influences from without which could act on human nature without passing through the channels of the senses." (45)

What prevents baptism from becoming merely a rite is that baptism is "faith-baptism." (46) For Robinson, "Baptism means for Baptists the intelligent act of a believer; apart from the personal faith of the baptized person there is no validity or, indeed, meaning in the act itself." Retention of the original form of-immersion is because it is the more impressive and intelligible form of the rite which, more than sprinkling ever could, brings out "the faith-union of the believer with the Lord in His death and in His resurrection. No Baptist believes that an external ceremony, apart from the faith of the recipient, can ever confer grace, or that water in itself can ever be the vehicle of grace." He then immediately stated: "On the other hand, the New Testament clearly shows that the baptism of believers--the only baptism of which it speaks-was definitely and constantly associated with the gift of the Holy Spirit." (47) This position led him to add that "Baptists have not adequately realised that believer's baptism can itself be a sacramental `means of grace,' without any risk of `ritualism' when it is confined to believers." (48)

The belief that baptism is a means of grace is inseparably linked to an identification of baptism with the working of the Holy Spirit. Robinson clearly believed that it was the marginal place given to the doctrine and work of the Holy Spirit in Baptist life and theology which prevented the rediscovery of the true, sacramental nature of New Testament baptism. He observed: "There is increasing recognition amongst thoughtful Christians that we have unduly neglected [the doctrine of the Holy Spirit], and that it holds a central place in the Christian life of the New Testament." (49)

In his The Christian Experience of the Holy Spirit (1928), Robinson described the sacraments as the acts of believers, baptism supplying a visible parallel to the spiritual experience which Paul called the baptism of the Holy Spirit--the believer's death to sin and resurrection to newness of life. (50) Since the action corresponded to the spoken word, as with the prophetic symbolism of Israel's prophets, (51) there could be no question of "mere symbolism" in baptism (or the Lord's Supper) "for the act is the partial and fragmentary, but very real accomplishment of a divine work, the work of the Holy -Spirit." (52)

His clearest thoughts on the Spirit, however, are to be found in his other works, particularly his Baptist Principles. (53) Discussing the nature of the church as a spiritual society of the converted, he declared that the church is the creation of the Spirit, for he is the agent in that regeneration which is the godward side of conversion. As the church in the New Testament is illustrated by the three metaphors of a spiritual house, God's family, and a Spirit-animated body, there is little surprise that the New Testament so closely links the gift of the Spirit with believer's baptism. (54) Water baptism is thus the expression of the baptism in the Spirit, (55) and it is this aspect, he admitted elsewhere, that Baptists had failed to emphasize. (56)

Traditionally, Baptists have focused on the subjective-what the believer does in baptism--omitting reference to God's activity in and through the rite. Robinson challenged fellow Baptists, arguing that if his interpretation of the New Testament were sound, "then there is something yet to be done if Baptists are to substantiate their claim to be fully loyal to the New Testament. Baptism is not only a necessary profession of repentance and faith; it is also a sacrament of grace...." (57)

In the last chapter of his Baptist Principles, Robinson proposed three conditions that would ensure for Baptist churches a great future, the second of which was the recovery of the New Testament emphasis on the Spirit of God. (58) It was this emphasis, more than any other single truth, that gave the New Testament its "expansive and vital atmosphere, the sense of great things to be and do, and great powers with which to attain them.". He called on Baptists to set themselves open-mindedly to the study of the New Testament references to baptism, for they might be surprised to find how closely baptism is related to the gift of the Spirit. A sharp distinction exists between John's baptism expressed as a moral decision and Christ's baptism which is with or in the Spirit. For Paul, baptism was not solely descent into the waters of baptism meaning death and burial with Christ and that mystical union with him which carried with it death to sin, but also ascent into new life, defined by Paul as newness of "Spirit" (Col. 2:12). Robinson identified Baptist hesitation over the place of the Spirit in baptism not in the exegesis of biblical texts, but fear, even nearly a century after the Tractarian movement, of baptismal regeneration and magical interpretations of the rite's operation and efficacy. (59) He concluded The Life and Faith of the Baptists:

      There is needed a new and clear teaching of the doctrine of the Holy
   Spirit, as against the rationalism that rejects all mystery, and the
   externalism which materializes mystery into manageable forms. The true
   emphasis is that of the New Testament--on personal faith as the human
   condition of divine activity, which is the truth supremely expressed in
   believer's baptism. (6)

Conclusion

Wheeler Robinson did more than anyone else in twentieth-century Britain to help Baptists rediscover the sacramental understanding of baptism, (61) and the key to his sacramentalism is the person and work of the Holy Spirit.

In several ways, Robinson anticipated later developments in the debate on baptism. He anticipated the move from the discussion of baptism as such to the broader discussion of Christian initiation which began in the late 1940's-50s. (62) His discussion of conversion as "a spiritual journey" (63) was not really taken up until the 1970s-'80s (64) and was developed by Baptists in several important works in the mid-1990s. (65) Robinson's recognition that conversion is both a divine and human act was taken up by Emil Brunner who spoke of "the divine-human encounter," (66) a phrase increasingly used by Baptists and others. (67) However, Robinson's attempt to dispel Baptists' dis-ease with the material as a means of grace has largely gone unheeded, though Paul Fiddes has recently discussed the sacraments as pieces of matter which God uses as places of encounter with himself. (68)

Robinson, supported by A. C. Underwood and others, was successful in paving the way for later scholars to develop a sacramental theology of baptism from a truly Baptist perspective, the foremost being George Beasley-Murray and R. E. O. White, but also Robert C. Walton, Neville Clark, and most recently Paul Fiddes and Christopher Ellis. (69) Such observations should not, however, lead Baptists into thinking that all that can be said on baptism has been said, for it is the case that while a great many British Baptists accept the use of sacramental terminology for baptism (70) this has not been accompanied by a truly sacramental theology or practice of baptism, which is still widely understood to be a personal testimony to conversion, an evangelistic opportunity which continues to be separated from conversion (71) and from entrance into church membership.

A comment, written over half a century ago by George Beasley-Murray, still holds true today for Baptists. He noted the irony of the present generation witnessing New Testament baptism being championed by pedobaptist theologians, while Baptists lapsed into a sub-theological view of the rite. "If we are to take that opportunity, which Wheeler Robinson foresaw a generation ago would come, of leading the Body of Christ to the true view of Baptism, we shall do it only if we rise to a clearer apprehension of it than we appear to possess to-day." (72)

(1.) Baptist Principles (London: Carey Kingsgate Press, 1938; reprint, [4th ed.]), 1966, 16-27.

(2.) See "The Road to Unity," Baptist Times and Freeman (March 17, 1916): 164 (hereafter BT&F); "`Unity' and `Schism,'" BT&F (May 3, 1918): 271; "Expediency and Principle," Baptist Times (December 11, 1941): 612. Hereafter BT. Also Payne, Robinson, e.g., 92, and Cross, Baptism, 49-51, 55.

(3.) See M. J. Walker, Baptists at the Table: The Theology of the Lord's Supper Amongst English Baptists in the Nineteenth Century (Didcot: Baptist Historical Society, 1992), 84-120; J. H. Y. Briggs, The English Baptists of the Nineteenth Century (Didcot: Baptist Historical Society, 1994), e.g., 48-50, 52, 68; Cross, Baptism, 10, 15.

(4.) "Conversion," BT&F (May 8, 1925): 319.

(5.) The Christian Experience of the Holy Spirit (London: Nisbet, 1928), 4.

(6.) Ibid., 190. See also 160-83, especially 162, 172. Robinson also explored "sacramental mediation" in his Redemption and Revelation in the Actuality of History (London: Nisbet, 1942), xxxii, 103-06. His theology of baptism cannot adequately be discussed without reference to the centrality of his "sacramental" understanding of the rite. It is precisely for this reason that D. A. Garrett's contribution on "H. Wheeler Robinson" to T. George and D. S. Dockery, eds., Baptist Theologians (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1990), 402, is to be criticized. Though Garrett's discussion of baptism is brief, the omission of even the word "sacrament" perhaps reflects more Southern Baptist aversion to the term than the desire to fairly represent and assess Robinson's baptismal theology.

(7.) "The Five Points of a Baptist's Faith," Baptist Quarterly 11, nos. 1-2 (January/April 1942): 9. Hereafter BQ.

(8.) "The Baptism of Power," BT&F (January 16, 1920): 35.

(9.) "The Distinctive Baptist Principle," BT&F (April 20, 1923): 275, italics his. Cf. "The Place of Baptism in Baptist Churches To-day," BQ 1, no. 5 (January 1923): 215, where he spoke of the necessity of showing the intrinsic worth of believer's baptism. These were: "the importance of acts as influencing thoughts" [p. 215]; immersion as a "symbolic expression of the historical truths on which our faith rests," personal union with Christ by faith--in short, baptism is an acted creed [p. 216]; and the relation of the gift of the Spirit and water-baptism [pp. 216-18].

(10.) The Life and Faith of the Baptists, 2nd ed. (London: Kingsgate Press, 1946), 73.

(11.) "Place of Baptism," 209.

(12.) "Baptists and the Bible," BT (February 24, 1938): 151.

(13.) Life and Faith, 142-43.

(14.) Ibid., 146.

(15.) "Report of Commission No.2. The Baptist Contribution to Christian Unity," in J. H. Rushbrooke, ed., Sixth Baptist World Congress: Atlanta, Georgia, USA, July 22-28, 1939 (Atlanta: Baptist World Alliance, 1939), 115-21, quotation from p. 120.

(16.) Ibid., 117-18.

(17.) Baptist Principles, 29n.

(18.) Life and Faith, 145. Cf. "The Faith of the Baptists," Expository Times 38, no. 10 (July, 1927): 455.

(19.) "The Baptist Doctrine of the Lord's Supper," BT&F (May 20,1904): 389.

(20.) "The Sacramental Principle," BT&F (March 17, 1905): 200.

(21.) Experience of the Holy Spirit, 190.

(22.) Life and Faith, 81.

(23.) See Cross, Baptism, 31-32.

(24.) Life and Faith, 77-78.

(25.) Baptist Principles, 28.

(26.) Ibid., 14-15.

(27.) Ibid., 15.

(28.) Ibid., 7-8.

(29.) Tomorrow's Man, 124.

(30.) Experience of the Holy Spirit, 193-94.

(31.) Life and Faith, 73, italics his.

(32.) Baptist Principles, 13. On pages 13-15, he progressed from baptism as a moral act to implying four things: cleansing from sin; association with the gift of the Spirit; its administration to believers; and experimental union with Christ.

(33.) "Place of Baptism," 215.

(34.) Life and Faith, 144.

(35.) "Conversion," 319.

(36.) "Are Baptists Loyal to the New Testament Baptism?" BT&F (June 26, 1914): 518.

(37.) "Conversion," 319, citing Kennedy, St. Paul and the Mystery Religions (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1914), 249.

(38.) "Are Baptists Loyal?" 601, italics his.

(39.) Baptist Principles, 24-25.

(40.) E.g., "Place of Baptism," 212, and Experience, 198.

(41.) "Believers' Baptism and the Holy Spirit," 392, italics added.

(42.) "Hebrew Sacrifice," 137-38.

(43.) Experience of the Holy Spirit, 82.

(44.) Baptist Principles, 27. Cf. page 15.

(45.) "Reality of the Spirit," 251.

(46.) Cf. R. E. O. White, The Biblical Doctrine of Initiation (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1960), 226.

(47.) "Baptism and the Gift of the Holy Spirit," BT (March 29, 1928): 209, italics added.

(48.) "The Baptist Church," BW (January 20, 1938): 321, italics his.

(49.) "Reality of the Spirit," 251. In "The River of the Spirit," BT (September 23, 1926): 672, he wrote, "When we begin to think seriously about the Holy Spirit (and large numbers of Christian people have never got so far as this)...."

(50.) Experience of the Holy Spirit, 194.

(51.) Ibid., 193.

(52.) Ibid., 194.

(53.) Baptist Principles, 13-t4.

(54.) Ibid., 24.

(55.) Ibid., 25.

(56.) "Place of Baptism," 214.

(57.) "Believers' Baptism and the Holy Spirit," 395. This article, pp. 387-97, is Robinson's most detailed biblical treatment of the relationship between baptism and the Holy Spirit.

(58.) Baptist Principles, 65-66.

(59.) "Place of Baptism," 216-17.

(60.) Life and Faith, 147.

(61.) Cf. A. C. Underwood, A History of the English Baptists (London: Kingsgate Press, 1947), 268-69: "Largely under the influence of the writings of Dr. H. Wheeler Robinson, many English Baptists have abandoned this view [a symbolic view of baptism] in favour of a sacramental interpretation of believers' baptism." See also Cross, Baptism, passim; Perkin, "Baptism," 435-440; D. M. Thompson, "Baptism, Church and Society in Britain Since 1800" (unpublished Hulsean Lectures 1983-1984, 1984), 83; Fowler, "Baptism," 94-104; and Randall, Experiences, 193-95.

(62.) See Cross, Baptism, 320-21.

(63.) "Conversion," 319. Cf. "The Holiness of Believers' Children," BT&F (October 20, 1905): 739.

(64.) E.g., Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry (Faith and Order Paper 111; Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1982), 4.

(65.) See P. S. Fiddes, "Baptism and Creation," in P. S. Fiddes, ed., Reflections on the Water: Understanding God and the World through the Baptism of Believers (Oxford: Regent's Park College/Macon: Smyth and Helwys, 1996), e.g., pp. 55-56, 60; and Believing and Being Baptized: Baptism, So-called Re-baptism and Children in the Church (Didcot: Baptist Union of Great Britain, 1996), e.g., pp. 9-12. See Cross, Baptism, e.g., pp. 372-84.

(66.) E. Brunner, The Divine-Human Encounter (London: SCM Press, 1944).

(67.) See Cross, Baptism, 127-30, 346, and "`One Baptism' (Ephesians 4:5): A Challenge to the Church," in S. E. Porter and A. R. Cross, ed., Baptism, the New Testament, and the Church: Historical and Contemporary Studies in Honour of "R. E. O. White (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 188.

(68.) Fiddes, "Baptism and Creation," 47.

(69.) On these see Cross, Baptism, passim.

(70.) Cross, Baptism, 345.

(71.) See Cross, "`One Baptism,' 173-209, in which I argue for a return to the New Testament theology and practice of conversion-initiation.

(72.) G. R. Beasley-Murray, "The Sacraments," The Fraternal 70 (October, 1948): 5.

Anthony R. Cross ia a research fellow of the Centre for Advanced Theological Research, Roeehampton Institute, London, England