Baptism <i>and</i> Confirmation? A Possibility for Reconciling the Book of Common Prayer 1979’s Rites

In this paper, I suggest that a distinctly Protestant reclamation of the concept that confirmation can be a component of Christian sanctification could help clarify its place and present form in the Book of Common Prayer 1979 (BCP). More specifically, I synthesize an Anglican account of baptismal regeneration with Andrew Torrance’s recent work to describe accountability as a theological virtue in order to suggest that baptism pertains to justification, as understood according to the classical Protestant ordo salutis , while confirmation pertains to sanctification. In this way, the two rites can be teased apart as they are in the BCP without denigrating or sacrificing either for the sake of the other.