St. John Chrysostom & "Baptism of Desire"

By Brother Peter Dimond, O.S.B.

Source: vaticancatholic.com

Besides St. Gregory and the others, St. John Chrysostom provides us with a plethora of quotations explicitly against the idea of salvation for unbaptized catechumens (those preparing to be baptized) by baptism of desire.  That anyone else besides unbaptized catechumens could qualify for salvation without first receiving the Sacrament of Baptism was not even considered a possibility worth refuting in this context. (How horrified would these fathers be by the modern version of the theory of baptism of desire, which saves pagans, Jews, heretics and schismatics?) 

St. John Chrysostom, The Consolation of Death: “And well should the pagan lament, who not knowing God, dying goes straight to punishment.  Well should the Jew mourn, who not believing in Christ, has assigned his soul to perdition.”[1]

It should be noted that since the term “baptism of desire” was not in use at the time, one won’t find St. John Chrysostom or any other father explicitly rejecting that term.  They reject baptism of desire when they reject the concept that unbaptized catechumens can be saved without Baptism, as St. John Chrysostom repeatedly does.

St. John Chrysostom, The Consolation of Death: “And plainly must we grieve for our own catechumens, should they, either through their own unbelief or through the neglect of their neighbors, depart this life without the saving grace of baptism.”[2]

This statement clearly rejects the concept of baptism of desire.

St. John Chrysostom, Hom. in Io. 25, 3: “For the Catechumen is a stranger to the Faithful… One has Christ for his King; the other sin and the devil; the food of one is Christ, of the other, that meat which decays and perishes… Since then we have nothing in common, in what, tell me, shall we hold communion?… Let us then give diligence that we may become citizens of the city above… for if it should come to pass (which God forbid!) that through the sudden arrival of death we depart hence uninitiated, though we have ten thousand virtues, our portion will be none other than hell, and the venomous worm, and fire unquenchable, and bonds indissoluble.”[3]

This statement totally rejects the concept of baptism of desire.

St. John Chrysostom, Homily III. On Phil. 1:1-20:“Weep for the unbelievers; weep for those who differ in nowise from them, those who depart hence without the illumination, without the seal!  They indeed deserve our wailing, they deserve our groans; they are outside the Palace, with the culprits, with the condemned: for, ‘Verily I say unto you, Except a man be born again of water and the Spirit, he shall not enter into the kingdom of Heaven.”[4]

The “seal” is the fathers’ term for the mark of the Sacrament of Baptism, as we saw already.  And here we see St. John affirming the apostolic truth held by all the fathers: no one – including a catechumen – is saved without being born again of water and the Spirit in the Sacrament of Baptism.  St. John Chrysostom clearly rejected any possibility of salvation for one who has not received the Sacrament of Baptism.  He affirmed the words of Christ in John 3:5 with an unequivocally literal understanding, which is the unanimous teaching of Tradition and the teaching of defined Catholic dogma.