A Study of Exorcism in Baptism

Introduction

Since the Lord Jesus spoke the words, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” (Matthew 28:19, Modern English Version), baptism has been an integral part of the Christian faith. Indeed, when the blessed Saint Philip came across the Ethiopian Eunuch, after hearing from Philip the Gospel, the Eunuch said to Philip, “Here is here water, what is stopping me from being baptized?” (Acts 8:38). Throughout Christian history and even to today, Baptism is viewed as the entrance rite into the body of Christ, the church. But more than that, baptism has been historically linked to a dominating practice of exorcism that, until very recently, was the defining feature of the liturgical tradition.^[1] Yet, in the modern context, the rite of exorcism seems completely lost and separated from the rite of baptism. This paper aims to look at the history of baptism and exorcism in the Christian church and see what liturgical movements and shifts have resulted in the rite of exorcism being largely excluded from today’s baptismal liturgies, to seek out the resurgence of such liturgies, and how modern Christians can have an ecumenical path forward.

The Baptismal Rite, which gives the Christian liberation from the demonic, has faced scrutiny through the centuries over various concerns, including those of superstition and melodrama related to its exorcistic elements, which has only intensified since the Protestant Reformation, and has ultimately led to their omission in the modern Lutheran liturgy.

Beginning by studying the early precedents of both baptism and exorcism, this paper hopes to lay a foundation of study on which to build by tracing modern baptismal liturgies as far back as possible, preferably to the apostolic era. In doing so, the hope is that the exclusion of exorcisms in modern baptismal rites can be fully understood. With its exclusion understood, the hope is that there will be enough catechetical information within this paper to argue for the return of exorcistic liturgies into baptism going forward, so that pastors and laity alike can understand their Christian heritage and stand on the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which sweeps the house clean of any unclean thing and allows room for the Holy Ghost to dominate in the life of the believer, and therefore the life of the Christian church.

Historical Foundations

In order to understand modern baptismal liturgies and their exclusion of the exorcistic rite, one must first understand ancient liturgies surrounding baptism, ancient exorcistic practice, and why such baptismal liturgies would include exorcisms. Thus the first point for this paper to explore is going to be the historical foundations of both baptism and exorcism, with an eye towards where they converge and where they diverge from one another. Thus the first thing to be examined here are patristic ideas around baptism and exorcism, and then a careful look at how those ideas shifted through to the middle ages. Once such a foundation is laid it will be possible to examine the modern practice.

New Testament & Patristic Baptisms and Exorcisms

Exorcism in the Biblical text is often seen as a very dramatic and powerful rite. While there were Jewish exorcists in Jesus’ day, the Biblical account of personal exorcism does not start until Jesus’ ministry in the Gospels.^[2] However, in the context of Scripture, demonic possession goes from a rarely reported, and rarely seen incident to something that appears to happen exceedingly commonly to Christ and His disciples.^[3] There are at least 6 major exorcisms across the Gospels, though there could be more depending on your definition of exorcism. In Matthew 17:14ff, the reader is told about a boy with seizures – a medical issue – and Jesus responds, not with healing, but with an exorcism. This makes one wonder how many other medical issues should be resolved with exorcism? Or how many healings are exorcisms? And finally, whether or not impious behavior would also be remedied with exorcism. These are questions the disciples likely would have had^[4] during and after the Earthly ministry of Christ. Once beginning their own ministries, following the ascension, the book of Acts records two instances of the Apostles performing exorcisms. Not as dramatic as the life of Christ^[5] but still more plentiful than the Old Testament’s zero. This idea of sin being attached to the demonic, along with the idea that baptism is a remedy for sin, naturally lead to the linking of baptism and exorcism together.

As noted by Jansons of the history of the exorcistic rite in baptism: “The practice of exorcism has been a distinct, even dominant, feature of the baptismal rite of many liturgical traditions […].”^[6] Starting very early in the patristic period we see exorcism make its way into the baptismal liturgy in three forms: Imprecation, Deprecation, and exsufflation. The Imprecation was a direct commanding of the evil spirits to depart, adjuring them by the power of Christ. The Deprecation was turning to the Lord, asking Him to remove the evil spirits from the poor, and helpless, sinner. And the Exsufflation was a blowing on the baptizand by the priest, to represent either blowing out the evil spirit, or the gentle blowing wind of the Holy Ghost. These elements would dominate baptismal liturgy for thousands of years in some form or another.

Significance of Exorcism in Baptism

Exorcism wasn’t just seen as a dramatic expulsion of the devil to early Christians. In fact, if anything, exorcism was rarely seen as a dramatic expulsion of the devil! Rather, exorcism acted as a pedagogical tool in which to help form the new Catechumen around the doctrines of Christian living. According to Whitaker, this is because, “Exorcism not only tells a clear story effectively: it tells a story which needs to be told. The transference of the candidate from the realm of darkness to the kingdom of light is an integral part of baptism.”^[7] Indeed, “Traditional baptismal liturgies used imagery of a person’s passage from the realm of darkness to the realm of light,”^[8] including even spitting on the devil!^[9]

Exorcisms in the early church were a required part of the initiation into Christendom. Indeed, a prospective Christian would need to go before the bishop with a sponsor. Should the bishop accept the person as a catechumen, they would immediately undergo an exorcism and then be expected to learn the doctrines of Christianity.^[10] The catechumen would then begin learning the tenets of the Christian faith and strive their best to live those tenets during a period of catechesis that usually lasted three years, and was required to be satisfactorily completed before baptism would be administered. During this period of catechesis, the catechumen would undergo frequent (read: weekly) scrutinies, where they would be questioned about the doctrines they had been taught, examined as to how they were living those doctrines out, and given an exorcism.^[11] “[T]hese exorcistic rites were conducted as an intense ministry of the word. Candidates were scrutinized by exorcism and the word.”^[12] In the early Christian context, exorcism had less to do with a dramatic removal of the unclean spirit, and more to do with the active ministry of the Holy Ghost, conforming the believer to the life of Christ.^[13] In this way, it is seen that exorcism is more about the church aiding the process of sanctification. A catechumen can’t begin to live out the Godly virtues of Christ unless the evil that is within him is first expelled. And so, these frequent exorcisms, along with a preaching ministry and profound connection to the Word of God, were seen as ways to both remove evil and instill good. Essentially sweeping the house clean before the glory of Baptism was conferred upon the catechumen. After the catechetical period was complete,^[14] the catechumen would enter a period known as election, which was the forty days of lent. During this period of election, the exorcism rite was repeated daily upon the catechumen! ^[15] This would lead up to the baptismal rite, to take place immediately at the start of Easter.

In the baptismal rite, the catechumen would once again receive an exorcism along with an exsufflation, where the priest would blow on the catechumen.^[16] This would be followed by various prayers for strength and fortitude in the Christian life, along with the sign of the cross, and the giving of salt – a practice in which consecrated salt was put on the tongue of the baptizand with a prayer for their faithfulness, including that the Holy Ghost would protect and preserve them in the faith in the same way that salt preserves food. There was then usually a full exorcism and the laying on of hands. The priest would then perform the Ephphatha, where he would declare the baptizand’s eyes, ears, and heart open to the Gospel in the same way Christ opened the deaf man’s ears and loosed his tongue^[17]: The priest would literally spit on his hand and wipe the saliva on the baptizand’s nose, mouth, eyes, and ears while saying Ephphatha and praying a specific prayer. From here, the baptismal liturgy begins to look very similar to the modern liturgy.

The baptizand would renounce the devil, profess their faith, declare their intent, and finally be baptized.^[18] They would then go from Catechumen to Christian. They were chrismed with oil, dressed in a white robe (indicating they had been washed clean by the Lamb of God in the waters of Baptism), and brought into the church to commune. A monumental step to take after years of initiatory rites, exorcisms, and teaching. While the large number of exorcisms would

Luther's Baptismal Liturgies

Through the late patristic period and into the early medieval period, the scrutiny would begin to radically reshape. Particularly around the 6th century onward. This was due, as most shifts in the early church were, to a demographic shift. Christianity was now not only legal, but dominated the world. What you had at this point, say one-hundred-and-fifty to two-hundred years after the legalization of Christianity was a religion that people no longer converted to, but were born into. While the legalization of Christianity shifted the church into dealing with mass converts, now the church had to grapple with babies. So the scrutiny became less focused on determining whether or not the person had imbibed the catechetical instruction, and became more focused on the exorcism itself, until the exorcism was all that remained. The catechetical process also looks different for babies than adult converts, and so the election period and the daily exorcisms begin to fade as well. Eventually, what is concretized in the church, is a baptismal liturgy that includes various exorcistic components and old historic practices, just now placed into a single rite instead of spread out over a course of days or weeks or months.

However, even with this truncated timing, the theology backing the need for exorcisms prior to baptism hasn’t shifted. We can see St. Thomas Aquinas demonstrate this in his Summa Theologia, when he says, “Whoever purposes to do a work wisely, first removes the obstacles to his work; […] Now the devil is the enemy of man's salvation, which man acquires by Baptism; and he has a certain power over man […]. Consequently it is fitting that before Baptism [he] should be cast out by exorcisms, lest [he] impede man's salvation.”^[19] Thus it is no surprise to us to see that Luther maintains this order pretty strictly at the front of the reformation. An examination of his 1523 taufbüchlein shows that his order matches exactly the medieval order of the rite of baptism that we expect to see. It opens with the exsufflation, moves through an imprecatory exorcism, an deprecatory exorcism, includes the reception of salt, the inclusion of Luther’s flood prayer, more imprecatory exorcisms, the ephphatha, renunciations, anointing with oil, baptism, the giving of a robe and a candle.[20]
However, in his 1523 taufbüchlein, Luther includes for his reader this note in the preface:

Now remember also that in baptism the least importance attaches to these external things, namely, breathing under the eyes, signing with the cross, placing salt in the mouth, putting spittle and clay on the ears and nose, anointing with oil the breast and shoulders, and signing the top of the head with chrism, vesting in the christening robe, and giving a burning candle into the hand, and whatever else there is that men have added to embellish baptism. For certainly without all such things baptism may take place, and they are not the kind of devices that the devil shuns or avoids. He despises much greater things than these. Here is earnestness required.^[20]

It is clear that Luther, however, that while Luther would certainly defend the necessity of an exorcism taking place in the baptismal rite, he would not tolerate anything he saw as getting in the way of the act of baptism itself. This becomes apparent in view his 1526 taufbüchlein, published just three years later, that had an incredibly brief order in it. Immediately up for chopping block were nearly all of the things Luther listed in his preface in the 1523 edition, including the salt and the ephphatha. Luther did want people to become so enamored with the various dramatic components of the rite that they would begin to imbue those things with a talismanic ability to ward of evil.^[21] Here we begin to see the drama of the exorcism viewed critically as a liability and not as a catechetical moment. This view would only increase in the next few centuries.

18th Century Debates

In his landmark 1731 encyclopedia, Universal Lexicon, Johann Heinrich Zedler maintains a firmly Lutheran view of baptism, maintaining that, “Die Taufe ist Bad der Wiedergeburt, befreit von der Macht des Teufels und der Sünden und ersäuft den alten Menschen.”^[22] However, his view was not the only view at the time. Thanks to the enlightenment, more rationalist views like those of Wilhelm Abraham Tellers were also gaining popularity. As summarized by Thea Sumalvico, “In seiner Religion der Vollkommnern von 1792 macht Teller sehr deutlich, dass er sich das Christentum als etwas Fortschreitendes, immer reiner Werdendes vorstellt.”^[23] This idea of a “Perfect Religion” evolving out of Christianity^[24] to Tellers meant that Christians would soon be disabused of “childish notions such as demonic possession,”^[25] and would eventually cast away baptism altogether as an antiquated Jewish ritual.^[26] The idea was beginning to gain traction among the educated that the world had purely rationalistic explanations. Science and math were growing by leaps and bounds, and philosophy was taking a more abstract view of God. This would greatly impact the church’s liturgical forms as various schools of thought on the supernatural would begin the debate over just how much of the scriptural account was to be taken at face value. Even through our modern day, this line of thinking can be seen in more mainline and liberal theologies, where the question of just who or what God really is is often raised. It became obvious to the theologians of this time period that if God Himself is a bit of an abstraction, then surely there is no personal devil. And if there is no personal devil, then there is no need for an exorcism rite to remove him. It is true that “exorcistic rites […] reflected the contemporary worldview.”^[27] This was true of the very early Christian that was covered in the previous section, where we see that exorcism is seen as a necessary catechetical tool. Once the church’s growth shifts to a pattern of babies being born, and not new converts being evangelized, we see the exorcistic rite decouple from the catechetical work of the church and join more to the baptismal work of the church. It seems to retain its place at the front of the baptism only because it is understood to be in the gray area between pagan and Christian. A necessary sweeping of the house so that the Holy Spirit may have a place to dwell. But once the culture moves into the rational period of the enlightenment, exorcism again must shift to grapple with the times. Unfortunately this shift isn’t so merciful as to leave the rite intact. Instead, the goal is to remove the superstitious elements of Christian practice from the church. There is a push during this time for the idea that Tellers was quoted so succinctly in earlier: That Christianity must grow and evolve beyond its superstitious roots into something more modern and acceptable for the modern mind. Even Lutherans were not immune from this thinking. ^[28]From Sumalvico:

[Friedrich Germanus] Lüdke Vernunft mit der Ablehnung des Taufexorzismus gleich: »Alle vernünftige[n] Leute« seien dankbar, dass der Taufexorzismus in vielen lutherischen Gemeinden abgeschafft worden sei. Den Exorzismus bezichnet Lüdke als anstößig und »magischen Zauberbeschwörungen nicht unähnlich[…]«^[29]

And so, through the 18th and 19th centuries, the Enlightenment and rationalism did their work on yet another area of the Christian faith, and changed the cultural view of the spiritual and demonic, and the exorcistic rite – after several thousand years – was an unfortunate casualty.

Contemporary Views and the Modern Omission

Modern Liturgies are no strangers to the rationalist views of the previous centuries, especially among the American church. As Jansons notes: “In time, under the influence of rationalism and pietism, exorcistic elements would all but vanish.” This is especially true in the American context, where traditional understandings have long been challenged and where baptism now stands as nothing more than a social ritual.^[30] And this influence is not limited to the protestants. Indeed, even in the Roman Catholic church, the laity felt that “some ‘demythologising’ of the baptismal rites was long overdue.”^[31]

While some churches today may maintain a shorter deprecatory exorcism, most churches today – including the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod – have jettisoned all exorcistic language from their liturgies. The new Pastoral Care Companion from Concordia publishing house includes an ‘alternate form of baptism’ that is purportedly based on Luther’s Taufbüchlein, but even that ejects the few exorcistic elements Luther kept.^[32] Jansons, about this very phenomenon, says, “The renunciation (apotaxis) of Satan and his works is the oldest, most widespread, and most enduring of the various exorcistic rites.”^[33] However, it is not correct to call the renunciation an exorcistic rite. Renunciation was always a part of the baptismal service from the very beginning, and has always been separate from the exorcistic elements of the rite. It is also a difficulty because the renunciation has always been attached specifically to the baptismal rite, where as exorcism was only placed into the baptismal rite as an extension of the catechetical rite, by way of the new demands of ever-evolving church right. That is to say, exorcism was a pedagogical and catechetical practice of the church, but the renunciation has always been a part of the baptismal rite. To so that the exorcism is retained in the renunciation is disingenuous.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the church has a long and rich history of exorcism. Despite dramatic modern ideas of what an exorcism ought to be,^[34] exorcism has always been a tool of the church to teach the catechumen what is happening to them as they become one with Christ and join the community of the church (the body of Christ).

Where the baptismal rite has always been viewed as giving the Christian liberty from demonic forces, those forces have become less real to the modern mind over time. As a result of this, the exorcistic elements of the rite have come under major scrutiny throughout the years and have been largely removed from the rite over concerns of superstition and melodrama, such to the point that today that the idea of including an exorcism in a baptismal rite is foreign and completely unheard of for the average Christian.

While this is a huge loss for the church, the careful observer will see that the rational age of the enlightenment appears to be coming to a bit of a close. The modern person is very open to spirituality and seeks to find comfort in all manner of strange spiritual practice. Not only will this increase the very real need of exorcisms for future generations of pastors, it will also make people more receptive to the very idea of performing an exorcism as a matter of course in the life of the church. This could prove to be a great tool to teach and catechize in the near future! As Dowd notes, “The repeated exorcisms and imprecations against the devil teach that the Christian life is a combat; that Baptism is not a free pass into Heaven, but the enrolling in an army, under a great Leader.”^[35] And indeed, the Great Leader has destroyed sin, death, and the devil! And including these exorcistic elements in the catechetical and baptismal process are a great way to remind the catechumen and the rest of the church of this reality. As Sumalvico writes, of the power of exorcism, “Taufe und Exorzismus erfüllten die gleiche Funktion wie die exorzismen Jesu an leiblich Besessenen: Dadurch werde angezeigt, dass Jesus in die Welt gekommen sei, um die Macht des Teufels zu zerstören, und dass der Teufel die Menschen nicht mehr leiblicher Weise besitzen dürfe.”^[36] Let the church go forth into the new world armed with the same things she has always been armed with: The Word of God and the Person of the Holy Ghost. By these things she overcomes the world and all devils, because she belongs to the One who has already overcome these things. Amen.

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