Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18 Page 19 Page 20 Page 21 Page 22 Page 23 Page 24 Page 25 Page 26 Page 27 Page 28 Page 29 Page 30 Page 31 Page 32 Page 33 Page 34 Page 35 Page 36 Page 37 Page 38 Page 39 Page 40 Page 41 Page 42 Page 43 Page 44 Page 45 Page 46 Page 47 Page 48 Page 49 Page 50 Page 51 Page 52 Page 53 Page 54 Page 55 Page 56 Page 57 Page 58 Page 59 Page 60 Page 61 Page 62 Page 63 Page 64 Page 65 Page 66 Page 67 Page 68 Page 69 Page 70 Page 71 Page 72 Page 73 Page 74 Page 75 Page 76 Page 77 Page 78 Page 79 Page 80 Page 81 Page 82 Page 83 Page 84Plough Quarterly • Spring 2016 51 This is evident in the Lord’s Supper. Its hallmark, the early church’s cry “Come, Lord Jesus” 28 is still heard in churches today when the congregation prays, “We proclaim your death, O Lord, and profess your resurrection, until you come again.” The same is true of baptism. It is an eschatological sign, a sealing for the end of the age – and yet at the same time this sacrament obligates us to begin a new life in the present world. Whoever has died with Christ in baptism is born into the new society of the church. The sacrament of reconciliation, too, is an eschatological sacrament. By confessing our guilt before the church, we come before the seat of God’s final judg- ment. The verdict of the church anticipates and stands for the verdict of the Last Judgment – and does so as a word of forgiveness and reconciliation. The sacraments contain eschatological dynamite  –  and they are the place in which the church has lived out and does live out Jesus’ eschatology of the now. I will close with a single text. It comes from the great theologian and bishop Cyprian, who shortly before, probably in the year 245, had received baptism. This had transformed him. In a self-portrait that anticipates Augustine’s Confessions, Cyprian hints at the uncertainties of his earlier life – the dark aspects, the wrong paths, the moral aberrations, the hardness of heart, the deeply rooted sins, the despair. Cyprian says he had thought it impossible to divest himself of the old man. But after [baptism], when the stain of my past life had been washed away by the aid of the water of regeneration, a light from above poured itself upon my chastened and pure heart; afterwards when I had drunk of the Spirit from heaven a second birth restored me into a new man; immediately, in a marvelous manner, doubt- ful matters clarified themselves, the closed opened, the shadowy shone with light, what seemed impossible was able to be accomplished, so that it was possible to acknowledge that what formerly was born of the flesh and lived submissive to sins was earthly, and what the Holy Spirit already was animating began to be of God. 29 Cyprian describes his baptism entirely with words drawn from Scripture. But his own experience, that of a man for whom everything has been turned upside- down, grips and permeates the text. Something similar must have happened to countless other Christians. There is no other way to explain how so many found the courage to face persecution and martyrdom by imperial officials. Cyprian, too, died a martyr. During the Valerian persecution, on September 14, 248, he was beheaded near Carthage. By receiving the Spirit in baptism, the Christians of the early church expe- rienced the power of God’s reign. They knew that with baptism, a new life had begun for them. From then on, they lived in the today of the kingdom of God.  Translated from German by Emmy Barth Maendel and Peter Mommsen. 27 Matt. 12:28; Rom. 8:18–30; 2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5; Heb. 6:4–5. 28 1 Cor. 16:22; Rev. 22:20; Didache 10:6. 29 Ad Donatum 4; trans. Roy Deferrari. By receiving the Spirit in baptism, the early Christians experienced the power of God’s reign.