Practicing Baptism: Christian Practices and the Presence of Christ

By Bård Eirik Hallesby Norheim

Where is Jesus Christ? This fundamental question is the starting point of this book, which investigates the shape of Christian life and ministry in a post-Christendom context. Over the last decades there has been a shift in much of Western theology towards focusing on Christian practices in ministry and theological education. This may be seen as a way to deal with theological anxiety in an era of heightened personal autonomy. In Practicing Baptism Bard Norheim critically analyzes the engagement in Christian practices. As a response to this engagement Norheim develops a missional and diaconal theology for ministry, focusing on the presence of Christ in Christian practices. Fundamentally, this is an attempt to answer a pressing question for today: What do Christians do? Norheim draws on Martin Luther's theology and his notion of the three modes of Christ's presence, the present tense of baptism, and Luther's idea of the marks of the church. Based on this reading of Luther's theology, Norheim suggests that Christian life and ministry could be interpreted through the concept practicing baptism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Release date: Feb 19, 2014
• ISBN: 9781630872847

Bård Eirik Hallesby Norheim

Bard Eirik Hallesby Norheim is a Norwegian theologian, pastor, youth missionary, and musical artist (Reverend B). His first full-length book in English, Practicing Baptism (2014), came with a musical album and music video titled "Practicing Baptism" (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kVeQ9oL6kk). Norheim grew up on the west coast of Norway, by Bergen. After living and serving in post-Soviet Estonia for many years, he is passionately involved in researching and teaching youth ministry. He is now serving as Chair of the IASYM (International Association for the Study of Youth Ministry) and works at NLA University College in Bergen, Norway, as Associate Professor of Practical Theology and Head of Department of Theology and Religion.

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The Engagement in Christian Practices

A new paradigm for ministry

The emergence of a paradigm

The Christian practices paradigm has evolved in a context where more and more theologians argue that church and society exist in a post-Christendom climate. Craig Dykstra argues for the use of Christian practices from this perspective and claims that consumer society has made the church unable to recognize and meet the (spiritual) hunger for meaning. In other words, consumer society has made the construction of the Christian self something dubious and ambivalent. The other problem—and here Dykstra leans on his teacher Edward Farley—is that contemporary theology is plagued by insecurity on the most fundamental issue—knowledge of God.⁴¹ Therefore church and theology is ridden by a kind of practical atheism, where we are not really sure that all the things we do in church and as church count for much.⁴²

As the interest in Christian practices started with an interest to reform education in general, and education of clergy in particular,⁴³ Dykstra claims that theology, and theological education in particular, is troubled with an idea of practice that is harmfully individualistic, technological, ahistorical, and abstract. Departing from Edward Farley’s critique of the clerical paradigm Dykstra argues for a communal rather than an individual understanding of practice. Dykstra finds that too often we leave out the larger social and historical context and instead focus on the practicing individual, often perceived as the practicing expert.⁴⁴

The roots in Aristotelian ethics and modern social theory are fundamental for the engagement in Christian practices.⁴⁵ Craig Dykstra’s understanding of Christian practices was developed in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, but the most profound presentation of Dykstra’s theology on Christian practices is presented in his book Growing in the Life of Faith: Education and Christian Practices (1999/2005). Craig Dykstra here makes an effort to combine, discuss and critique the insights of theologians and philosophers such as Lindbeck, Hauerwas and MacIntyre.⁴⁶

In his examination of MacIntyre’s definition of social practices, Dykstra concludes that practices are those cooperative human activities through which we, as individuals and as communities, grow and develop in moral character and substance.⁴⁷ In this book Dykstra also defines practice as an ongoing, shared activity of a community of people that partly defines and partly makes them who they are.⁴⁸ Dykstra wants to learn from Alasdair MacIntyre’s definition of social practices and focus on practice as something cooperative, understanding practice mainly not as people doing things to each other, but people doing things with each other.⁴⁹

Dykstra also discusses whether a practice demands that the practicing subjects are within physical proximity, but he argues that the cooperation in a practice does not come primarily through persons interacting physically. Rather the cooperative element in practices comes through persons engaging in activities that gain their meaning from the form. Further, this form emerges through a complex tradition of interactions among many people sustained over a long period of time. Therefore Dykstra also defines a practice as participation in a cooperatively formed pattern of activity that emerges out of a complex tradition of interactions among many people sustained over a long period of time. Dykstra also underlines that a practice cannot be abstracted from its past, as the past is embedded in the practice itself.⁵⁰

Dorothy C. Bass, in her first book on practices, Practicing Our Faith (1997), underlines that the book originated in Dykstra’s insight that the idea of practices provides a fruitful way of addressing what Bass labels the yearning of contemporary people for deeper understanding of and involvement in the redemptive practice of God in the world.⁵¹ Related to this, Bass therefore argues that practices are shared activities that address fundamental human needs, and which woven together, form a way of life.⁵²

Together Bass and Dykstra underline several important components in practices:

Practices address fundamental human needs and conditions through concrete human acts. Practices are done together and over time. Practices possess standards of excellence.⁵³

In later contributions on Christian practices Bass and Dykstra still relate their understanding of practices to MacIntyre, but also underline that their account of practices differs from MacIntyre on certain points in that their account is theological and normed not only internally but also through the responsive relationship of Christian practices to God.⁵⁴

Bass also points out four distinct components, which characterize practices in general:

Practices resist the separation of thinking from acting. Practices are social, belonging to groups of people across generations. Practices are rooted in the past but are also constantly adapting to changing circumstances. Practices articulate wisdom that is in the keeping of practitioners who do not think of themselves as theologians.⁵⁵

Concluding on what defines a practice, Bass therefore highlights the following:

Practices are borne by social groups over time and are constantly negotiated in the midst of changing circumstances: Practices are clusters of activities within which meaning and doing are inextricably interwoven. Therefore practices shape behavior, but they also foster practice-specific knowledge, capacities, dispositions, and virtues. Finally, those who participate in practices are formed in particular ways of thinking about and living in the world.⁵⁶

As I have already pointed out, other theologians in the US have also engaged in defining and interpreting Christian practices. One of them is Kathryn Tanner, who gives a distinct contribution to the understanding of Christian practices. She underlines that the meaning of Christian practices is not internal to them, but rather this meaning is established in relationships. This happens by what is done or not done in church about the practices of the wider society, by what Christian practices do or don’t do to them.⁵⁷ Amy Plantinga Pauw, on the other hand, underlines the importance of keeping the focus on a theology of grace in understanding practices. In regard to this, Pauw points out there may be exemplary cases of discipleship, where the coherence of belief and practice is so impressive that it masks the extent to which beliefs and practices undermine each other. More often, however, the ordinary struggles of religious people tend to lay bare the ligaments that hold beliefs and practices together.⁵⁸

Diana Butler Bass suggests a grouping of three different categories of practices:

1. moral practices, like hospitality and healing (Bass and Dykstra inspired by MacIntyre)

2. ascetical practices, like contemplation and silence (Sarah Coakley inspired by the mystics)

3. anthropological practices, negotiating the faith in relation to the larger culture (Kathryn Tanner inspired by Bourdieu and de Certeau).⁵⁹

Bass and Dykstra have been criticized for not paying enough attention to the standards of excellence in practices, that it is not enough to have a set of practices that shape us, we must also have a set of Christian practices that shape us in a particular way: The definition of Christian practices should have a specific reference to internal goods, that acknowledges that kingdom of God is internal to Christian practices.⁶⁰

Miroslav Volf also gives his distinct definition of beliefs and practices. Volf defines practices as cooperative and meaningful human endeavors that seek to satisfy fundamental human needs and conditions and that people do together over time. Based on this, Volf argues that what he calls core Christian beliefs are "by definition normatively inscribed in sacraments but not in practices." Hence sacraments ritually enact normative patterns for practices.⁶¹ Therefore Volf claims that Christian beliefs are indispensable for the creation of the Christian moral space in which alone engagement in Christian practices makes sense.⁶²

Volf also claims, however, that "basic Christian beliefs as beliefs entail practical commitments, therefore Christian beliefs are not simply statements about what was, is, and will be the case; they are statements about what should be the case and what human beings should do about that."⁶³ Based on this, Volf advocates that it is Christian beliefs that normatively shape Christian practices. Therefore engaging in practices can lead to acceptance and deeper understanding of these beliefs. Further Volf argues, drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s idea of the socially informed body, that people make Christian beliefs their own and understand them in particular ways partly because of the practices to which they have been introduced—in which their souls and bodies have been trained—in the course of their lives. Volf finally points out that we engage in practices for the sake of God; we don’t construe a picture of God so as to justify engagement in a particular set of practices.⁶⁴

With their focus on Christian practices and their social setting (Tanner), Christian practices and a theology of grace (Pauw), Christian practices and how it relates to the work of the Spirit (Muthiah), and Christian practices and their relationship to normative, core Christian beliefs and sacraments (Volf), Bass and Dykstra’s approach to Christian practices is both complemented and challenged. This short overview of the variety of approaches to practices also shows the need to reflect further theologically on Christian