I. To the Question

A. How Baptism can have a Definition

9. In the solution of this question, one can speak similarly to the way spoken above in d.1 nn.181-187 about the definition of a sacrament.

For if one lays down from the usage of speakers the meaning of the word ‘baptism’, namely that baptism signifies a certain special sacrament so that, if baptism signifies cleansing (as the baptisms, that is the cleansings, of bodies and vessels was among the Jews), then a sacrament of baptism (understanding this in transitive sense) is that which signifies a special sacrament. This is plain both from specifying the signification and the effect signified (namely purifying the soul from original sin), and from specifying the foundation of this sort of signification and relation - it is plain, I say, from this supposition how baptism can have a definition. For since what is definable should be a positive being, per se one, real, and common (as maintained above, d.1 n.187), then baptism cannot be a pure non-being (as something impossible is).

10. The proof follows the way used above about a sacrament [d.1 n.181]:

For the idea of baptism is not in itself false, since there is no repugnance in any sensible thing or things being instituted by God for signifying, as an effect, the cleansing of the soul from sin.

11. Nor is baptism a pure non-being, as is a negation or privation - as is plain [d.1 n.182].

12. Baptism is also, second, something per se one as to what it principally per se signifies, which is the sort of relation a sign has to the sort of thing signified [d.1 n.183].

13. Nor is it an objection that baptism connotes its correlative and foundation, because thus also does any relation signify; nor is it an objection that many things are connoted in the foundation, because (as said above, d.1 n.199) a single relation of reason can be founded in any number of things distinct in reality. However, such connotation can very well prevent a thing’s having a definition in the primary sense; for nothing has a definition in the primary sense save substance, which is not defined by anything added on, either in the way the correlative is added in the definition of a correlative, or as a subject is added in the definition of an accident. Now many things have a definition but not in the primary sense, as is plain from Metaphysics 7.4.1030b4-7.

14. Only the third condition, then, namely that the definable thing must be a real being [d.1 n.184], prevents the sacrament of baptism having an altogether perfect definition; but it has a definition in the way that second intentions or any relations of reason are defined, because (as far as concerns an intellect possessed of science through definition) it is a definition in the way that a definition is that which a quiddity in reality corresponds to [d.1 nn.200-204].

B. Whether the Definition of Baptism is the One that the Master Posits

15. Second one needs to see in the first place whether the definition of baptism is the one the Master posits [n.6].

16. Here one must note that what baptism imports can be posited of the foundation of the relation in two ways:

In one way that the relation is founded in the whole thing (namely the cleansing together with the words) as in one foundation; and this, notwithstanding the unity of the foundation, is indeed possible, since the relation is one of reason.

17. In another way that the foundation of the relation is only the cleansing, so that nothing else is foundation, whether as total foundation or as part of the foundation - but not the cleansing by itself, that is not it without certain other things; rather it must have many other things accompanying it so as to be foundation, namely the words and that it is done by such and such a minister with such and such an intention. Nor is it unacceptable that real respects in the foundation should precede the relation of reason as presuppositions for that relation of reason. And so in the cleansing there precedes a relation to the accompanying words and to a receiving person in some way consenting. And one can posit that the relation of signification that baptism imports is founded in all the real relations of this sort that precede and thus determine the related foundation.

18. If the first of these ways [n.16] were set down, then since in the case of an accident taken in the concrete the whole of its subject and not precisely a part of it is placed in the accident’s definition (just as neither is an accident in the concrete predicated of a part of its subject but of the whole of it), then cleansing would not be the baptism (or the sacrament of baptism) but the cleansing and the words together would be. Because the cleansing alone is not the subject or the foundation of this relation, but both cleansing and words together are. Therefore neither one nor the other would be per se denominated by it.

19. But if the second way [n.17] be set down, then just as the definition of baptism would be predicated denominatively of the cleansing (although the cleansing is understood to be circumstanced by many real relations in order for the relation to belong to it), so too conversely could in the definition of this relation (taken in the concrete) be put the cleansing alone directly and all the others indirectly, along with certain determinations signifying that they determine or circumstance the cleansing.

20. Of these two ways the first [n.16] seems to be truer, because the words would not seem to be simply necessary unless they were the sign or part of the sign.

If however it were said that the words were certain determinations of the cleansing, which is the sign, since positing the cleansing as the sign rather than both [sc. words and cleansing] is sufficient when a sufficient idea of signifying can be found in that one, and since the exterior cleansing can adequately be posited to signify the interior cleansing - if one holds this view, the following could be set down as the idea of baptism, that “baptism is the cleansing of a man somehow consenting, done with water by another, who at the same time pronounces certain words with the due intention, this cleansing signifying efficaciously, by divine institution, the cleansing of the soul from sin.”

21. But if the other way is maintained [n.17], namely that the words are part of the foundation, then another idea of baptism could be set down, namely the following: “baptism is a sacrament of cleansing the soul from sin, which consists in the cleansing of a man somehow consenting, done with water by someone else who cleanses, and in certain words that are pronounced by the same cleanser along with due intention.”

22. But as to how the particulars placed in each idea or definition are necessary for the idea of baptism, this will become very clear about each of them in what follows [d.3 qq.2-3].

23. Nor is the difference between these ideas such that the same elements in each are not necessary for baptism; but one of them puts cleansing alone directly in its definition while the other posits that the cleansing and the words belong to the idea equally - and this difference arises from a diverse way of thinking about the foundation of this relation, whether it is the circumstanced cleansing alone or is the cleansing and the words together.

C. Solution of the Question

24. The solution of the question, then, is plain, because the Master seems to be speaking according to the opinion that circumstanced cleansing is baptism; and, taking this position, he touches on what principally belongs to the idea of baptism, although many concomitant things need to be implicitly understood, which are expressed in the idea of “the cleansing of man somehow consenting etc.” [n.20].