Regarding "Jesus only" believers, our moderator writes:     [There may be some misunderstanding over terms here...]  I agree.  Quite likely, actually.                                                        [...I believe "Jesus    only" originally was in the context of baptism.  These are folks who    believe that baptism should be done with a formula mentioning only    Jesus, rather than Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  This may have    doctrinal implications, but as far as I know it does not mean that    these folks deny the existence or divinity of the Father.  I'm not the    right one to describe this theology, and in fact I think there may be    several, including what would classically be called monophysite or    Arian (two rather different views), as well as some who have beliefs    that are probably consistent with Trinitarian standards, but who won't    use Trinitarian language because they misunderstand it or simply    because it is not Biblical.  --clh]  Not Biblical?  What then can they make of the end of Matthew?  (28:18)And Jesus came and said to them, "All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. (19)Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, (20) and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded to you.  And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." {Other ancient authorities add *Amen*} [NRSV]  The notes give no sense that this is emended.  Do other texts contradict this regarding Baptism?  Or is a misunderstanding of the Trinity the most likely explanation after all?  But maybe I simply misunderstand their views.  (Is anyone else out there forced to read this group with both a good Bible and an unabridged dictionary??  Christianity really is an education in itself.)  -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ |David R. Tucker		KG2S		     drt@athena.mit.edu| ------------------------------------------------------------------------  [Arrgggghhhh.  When I talked about people who rejected Trinitarian language as unBiblical, I was speaking of Trinitarian theology, things like "one essense and three persons".  Obviously the three-fold baptismal formula is Biblical, as you point out.  (I normally use the term "three-fold" in referring to Mat.  While it is certainly consistent with belief in the Trinity, the Trinity is a doctrine whose full formulation occurred in the 4th and 5th Cent's.  It's unlikely that Mat. had in mind the fully-developed Trinitarian doctrine. Indeed the three-fold baptismal formula is used by some groups that do not believe in the Trinity.)  The disagreement over baptismal formulae occurs because of passages such as Acts 2:38, which command baptism in the name of Jesus.  (There are a couple of other passages in Acts as well.)  This leaves us with sort of a problem: we're commanded in Mat. to baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and in Acts to baptize in the name of Jesus.  "Jesus only" groups baptize in the name of Jesus.  They consider this consistent with Mat 28:18, because they say that Jesus is the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  I'm not the right one to ask to explain what this means.  I will simply say that it does not appear to be normal Trinitarian theology.  (It is also an odd way of dealing with the idiomatic phrase "in the name of".)  Those who use the three-fold formula don't seem to have a standard answer to the passages talking about baptizing in the name of Jesus. I suspect that the most common explanation is to say that "in the name of" need not be a verbal formula.  To say that you baptize in the name of Jesus may simply mean that you are doing baptism under Jesus' authority.  In the 1st Cent. context, it contrasts Christian baptism with the baptism of John or other Jewish baptism.  Of course there's a certain parallelism between these passages.  That suggests that we could just as well say that Mat 28:18 doesn't require the specific three-fold formula to be used in baptism, but simply characterizes baptism done by those who follow the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  One might well suspect that in the early church, more than one baptismal formula was used.  So long as we consider following Jesus to be the same as following the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, no great damage would be done by such a difference.  This does *not* mean that I think we should go back to using both formulae.  Baptism is one of the few things that almost all Christian groups now recognize mutually, so I do not think doing something to upset that would be in the interests of the Gospel.  This is reinforced by the fact that those groups that actually use "in the name of Jesus" now do seem to have in mind a difference in doctrine.  But as I've said before, I'm not the one to explain what their doctrine is.