Of course a reading of St Basil's first canonical epistle shows that he believes that schismatics have grace for a time, and that while he would personally like to baptise certain classes of heterodox, the majority of the bishops "in Asia" do not agree with the practice. Note that St Basil uses the term "accept", as in the bishops of Asia accept the baptisms of certain heterodox. That is an important word.
I have come to the conclusion from reading so much literature on both sides of the issue that there never was a consistent policy for receiving converts and that at various times in history, the Orthodox simply did accept some baptisms performed by Catholics, Armenians, and Lutherans as valid, in and of themselves, although there was never any speculation as to whether that led the baptizand to salvation and certainly no one created a false ecclesiology of "sister churches" around the issue. But to say that the norm was always baptism and that heterodox baptisms were never accepted as such is simply not the way the church has operated. The Pagodin article demonstrates this conclusively. However, I think it would be fair to argue that while there was precedent for such economy in the past, that it is better off today to baptise all converts normatively.
The argument about form was introduced by Eustratios Argenti I beleive, in his pamphlet in Greek, "Against Sprinkling" which is discussed in Timothy Kallistos Ware's "Eustratios Argenti" book. Of course a baptism done by sprinkling is not valid but certainly pouring can be considered valid if necessity dictated.
Given my investigation of the various practices, I am rather dismayed to find out that both sides have clearly misrepresented the position of hte other.
anastasios
Feel better now that you qualified that? 