Just Water?

Abstract

Although key baptismal theologians like Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, and John Calvin made explicit connections between the sacrament of baptism and ethical living, they did so only in relation to Uri Bronfenbrenner’s categories of micro-, meso-, and exosystems. They did not spell out connections between baptism and social witness in relation to the macrosystem of society as a whole. The linkage between the praise of God in and through baptism and public witness must today include attention to the macrosystem.