As to the charge of being an anabaptist, I reject this notion completely. As is says in the Nicene Creed, I confess one baptism for the remission of sins. If you read the short testimony I offered, you would have discovered that I believe in Apostolic Succession, Apostolic Authority, and Apostolic Tradition. So, for my Baptism to be valid and a conveyor of Grace, it had to be one that complied with things Apostolic. And thus I sought (and received) Baptism within the Orthodox Church. For a short summary of how the Orthodox Church handles Baptism when it comes to receiving schismatics and heretics, read further below. For a more thorough discussion and interpretation read "The Basis on which Economy May be used in the Reception of Converts" that was written early 1900s by the Blessed Metropolitan Anthony in response to debate in Russian Ecclesiastical circles over how the Anglican heterodox ought to be united to the Orthodox Church.
Symeon-Anthony :-)
Apostolic Canon 49
"If any Bishop or Presbyter baptize anyone not into the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in accordance with the Lord's ordinance..., let him be deposed."
Apostolic Canon 50
"If any Bishop or Presbyter does not perform three immersions in making one Baptism, but a single immersion...., let him be deposed...."
Canon 91 of St. Basil the Great:
"Of the dogmas and preachings kept safely in the Church, we have some from written doctrine, and some, from tradition handed down to us by the Apostles, we have received in mystery, both of which have the same validity and force as regards piety (i.e., the religion); accordingly, no one gainsays these, at least no one that has any experience at all in ecclesiastical matters. For if we should undertake to discard the unwritten traditions of customs, on the score that they have no great force, we should unwittingly damage the Gospel in its vital parts, and should rather be left with preaching confined to the mere name...And whence comes the form of immersing three times in Baptism?...From what Scripture is it? Is it not from this unpublished and confidential teaching which our Fathers have kept?"
Canon VII of the 2nd Ecumenical Council:
"As for heretics who convert to Orthodoxy...we receive Arians, Macedonians,...Tetradites, and Apollonarians...when they submit written statements, and anathematize every heresy that does not believe as the holy, catholic, and Apostolic Church of God believes, and are first sealed, i.e. chrismated, with holy Myron on the forehead, and the eyes, and the nose, and the mouth, and the ears; and in sealing them we say: "Seal of the gift of the Holy Spirit." However, as for Eunomians (a sect of Arians), who are baptized with one immersion, and Montantists...and Sabellians..., and any other heresies....all of them that want to join Orthodoxy we receive like pagans...and we baptize them."
In explaining why the holy Fathers of the 2nd Ecumenical Council decided it was permissible to allow, if expedient, the reception of some of the aforementioned heretics by Chrismation, rather than Baptism, the most eminent of the authoritative Canonists, John Zonaras, writes: "These persons, therefore, are not rebaptized, because as respects holy Baptism, they differ in nothing from us, but are accustomed to be baptized in the exact same manner as are the Orthodox." As to why this option was not offered to "Eunomians, who baptize with one immersion", and other heretics mentioned in the Canon, Zonaras explains: "As for these, then, and all other heretics, the sacred Fathers have decreed that they are to be baptized. For whether they received baptism or not, they have not received it correctly, nor in the form and style prescribed by the Orthodox Church. Therefore they were regarded as not baptized." Patriarch Theodore Balsamon of Antioch (A.D. 1203), the famous canonist, also states that "those baptized with a single immersion must be baptized again." The other leading Byzantine canonists, Matthew Blastaris (13th century) and Joseph Bryennios (A.D.1450), explained the canonical law on Baptism and economia in the same way.
This is the canonical boundary for the use of economy: [Saint John Chrysostom: "Economia is permissible only as long as it involves no transgression of the law." [Cited in "The extant ecclesiastical writings of Constantine Presbyter and Oikonomos of the Oikonomoi" (pub. Soph. C. of the Oikonomoi), vol.1, (Athens, 1863) pp. 433-434 (and note 1); cf. St. Eulogios of Alexandria, PG 103:953]. But the law of the holy Apostles says that Baptism must be administered by three immersions in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit; therefore, anything differing from this, such as baptism by single immersion, is an incomplete baptism and is a transgression of the Apostolic Law and cannot be permitted or accepted, even by economia. The parameters of economy, in fact, were also given by the holy Apostles, the practice being based on the example of St. Paul's laying hands on those baptized by St. John the Baptist and their receiving the Holy Spirit that way, as was explained in his canons by St. Timothy, Patriarch of Alexandria. However, the Baptism of John, according to Tradition, was like that of the later Apostles; and, as we have already seen, triple immersion in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is required for the use of economy, for anything else is not a baptism.
To this may be added the consistent testimony of the holy Fathers that a baptism not given in accord with the requirements of holy Tradition is not a baptism. For example St Basil the Great teaches us:
"Whether a man has departed this life without Baptism, or has received a baptism lacking in some of the requirements of the tradition, his loss is equal...For the tradition that has been given us by the quickening grace must remain forever inviolate. He who redeemed our life from destruction gave us power of renewal, whereof the cause is ineffable and hidden in mystery, but bringing great salvation to our souls, so that to add or to take away anything involves manifestly a falling away from the life everlasting...In three immersions and an equal number of invocations (of the individual Persons of the Trinity) the great Mystery of Baptism is made complete." (On the Holy Spirit [10, 12, 15].)
St. John Chrysostom likewise instructs: "In Baptism...all these take place at once: death, burial, resurrection and life. For when we immerse our heads in the water, the old man is buried as in a tomb below, and completely submerged forever; then as we raise them again, the new man rises in turn. Thrice is this done that you may learn that the power of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit fulfills all these things." "The complete immersion or submersion of an individual in Baptism is the figure of the death of the old man, and his emergence from the water as reborn is a figure of the renewal and consecration of a new life in the figure of the Resurrection. We do not bury people by sprinkling a handful of earth over their heads or by shaking a little shovel full of dirt over them. No, we bury them completely, deep in the earth. Immersion, that is, Baptism is one thing and sprinkling is another. They are not the same, and that is why the holy Scriptures make a point of telling us that Saint John the Forerunner was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, "because there was much water there." Indeed, why should St. John the Baptist, or our Savior, take the trouble to go all the way down to the Jordan River if any little washbasin elsewhere would have served the same purpose?" [Hom. 25, P.G. 59:146 (col. 151); and Hom. On the Holy Pascha, P.G. 50: 437.]
Therefore, as St. John Chrysostom admonishes us, every Bishop has a strict duty to see that no believer departs this life without Baptism, or else both his and that bishop's soul are lost:
"I do not think there are many among Bishops that will be saved, but many more that perish: and the reason is, that it is an affair that requires a great mind [attention]...Do you not see what a number of qualifications the Bishop must have?...What trouble and pains does this require! And then, others do wrong, and he bears all the blame. To pass over everything else: if one soul departs unbaptized, does this not subvert all his own prospect of salvation? The loss of one soul [which is lost because it was not baptized] carries with it a penalty which no language can represent. For if the salvation of that soul was of such value, that the Son of God became man, and suffered so much, think how sore a punishment must the losing of it bring! And if in this present life he who is cause of another's destruction is worthy of death, much more in the next world. Do not tell me that the presbyter is at fault or the deacon. The guilt of all these comes perforce upon the head of those who ordained them...When you covet the episcopal rank, put in the other scale, the account to be rendered after this life...I mean, that even if you have sinned, but in your own person merely, you will have no such great punishment, nothing like it: but if you have sinned as a bishop [e.g., by permitting a believer to die unbaptized], you are lost." [3rd Homily on the Acts of the Apostles III.]