{"id":325,"date":"2008-05-15T09:59:34","date_gmt":"2008-05-15T09:59:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=325"},"modified":"2019-10-26T09:12:22","modified_gmt":"2019-10-26T14:12:22","slug":"baptism-in-the-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/baptism-in-the-name\/","title":{"rendered":"Baptism in the NAME"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/cooked-baby.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><figcaption>Mmmm&#8230; baby soup &#8211; the delicious end to any traditional baptism.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Father, Son, Holy Spirit&#8221;? Or <strong>&#8220;Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier&#8221;<\/strong>? The editors of the flagship magazine of American evangelicalism weigh in here: <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/ct\/2008\/may\/17.21.html\">Blessed Be <em>the Name<\/em> of the Lord | Christianity Today<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">While I share the editors&#8217; irritation with politically correct revision of liturgical and theological language, <strong>I think their reasoning in this opinion piece is poor.<\/strong> (Read their editorial, then see if you agree.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>For one thing (paragraph 4), <strong>it is not clear that Jesus ever commanded<\/strong> the use of &#8220;in the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit&#8221; as a mandatory formula at baptisms. For one thing, as oneness Pentecostals never tire of pointing out, in Acts baptism is apparently done &#8220;in the name of Jesus&#8221;. <ul><li>In my view, <strong>a concern with precise words is just not in this passage<\/strong>; the thought in this famous &#8220;Great Commission&#8221; passage at the end of the Matthew is that the assembly of Jesus is to baptize people <em>on the authority of<\/em> and <em>on behalf of<\/em> God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.<\/li><li>Other readers sometimes view this as a baptism <em>into <\/em>the power and life of those three. It could be both &#8211; but words were not the issue. It was a ritual designed to be the start of a whole new quality of life, in a new and better community, in fellowship with God. <\/li><\/ul><\/li><li>The <em>Christianity Today<\/em> editors also commit <strong>an exegetical fallacy so old, it was stale in Augustine&#8217;s time<\/strong>. Imagine this scene:<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><figure><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"max-width: 800px;\" src=\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/wedbabies.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The excited bride and groom, too hurried for a church wedding, enter the town hall and approach the justice of the peace. After the necessary paperwork, he says to the excited couple, &#8220;Jim-Bob and Bertha, <strong>I marry you in <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">the name<\/span> of the mayor of Bugtussle, of the governor of Missouri, and of the President.<\/strong>&#8220;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The groom Jim-Bob blurts out <strong>&#8220;Them guys all have the same name? What is it? Like, Fred? Anyway, I guess that guy is pretty busy with those three jobs.&#8221;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The justice of the peace stifles his eye roll, and wishes the new husband and wife a happy honeymoon. &#8220;Not my business if kids want to marry too young,&#8221; he mumbles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Again, suppose I pull out a photo album, and say &#8220;<strong>I&#8217;m going to show you a photo of the White House, of the Taj Mahal, and of the Grand Canyon.<\/strong>&#8221; That&#8217;s a vague sentence &#8211; it could mean I&#8217;ve got one print with those three famous sights in it. Or (more likely), I just meant that I&#8217;m going to show you three photos, one each of those three.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Friends, can we retire this one? Jesus&#8217; famous command uses &#8220;name&#8221; in the singular does nothing to support or to undercut traditional trinitarian claims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>But, the mistakes keep a comin&#8217;.<\/strong> The editors correctly point out that the new PC-formula (&#8220;Creator&#8221;, etc.) suggests <strong>modalism<\/strong>. But they think the only problem with modalism is that the three modes are not held to be &#8220;intrinsic to God&#8217;s nature&#8221;. \u00a0Again, they complain that the new PC formulas employ &#8220;words of function&#8221; &#8211; but arguably, &#8220;Father&#8221; and &#8220;Son&#8221; can be role- or function-words as well. It seems to me that both &#8220;Father&#8221; and &#8220;Creator&#8221; can be used as singular referring terms, similar to names.<\/li><li>Their last two paragraphs, equally unsatisfying. <ul><li>They quote a faulty diagnosis of the liberal mischief by theologian Jenson.<\/li><li>And then this: we can&#8217;t change the language because since he&#8217;s revealed it, we should infer that <strong>&#8220;God is serious about his name&#8221;<\/strong> Do they mean that God&#8217;s name is &#8220;Father, Son, and Holy Spirit&#8221;? That doesn&#8217;t look like a name &#8211; a singular referring term &#8211; at least, not in the New Testament, which is what they evidently have in mind here.<\/li><li>They then raise the specters of &#8220;parody&#8221; and &#8220;idolatry&#8221; on the part of the revisionist liberals. Huh? <\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sorry, ladies and gents of <em>Christianity Today<\/em> magazine. This piece can&#8217;t even move sympathizers like me, much less those inclined to strike a blow for justice by exorcising male terminology from theology and liturgy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Father, Son, Holy Spirit&#8221;? Or &#8220;Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier&#8221;? The editors of the flagship magazine of American evangelicalism weigh in here: Blessed Be the Name of the Lord | Christianity Today While I share the editors&#8217; irritation with politically correct revision of liturgical and theological language, I think their reasoning in this opinion piece is poor.&hellip;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/baptism-in-the-name\/\" rel=\"bookmark\">Read More &raquo;<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Baptism in the NAME<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":322,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"default","neve_meta_container":"default","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"off","neve_meta_content_width":70,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"off","neve_meta_disable_footer":"off","neve_meta_disable_title":"off","footnotes":""},"categories":[21,6,8,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bible","category-complaints","category-linkage","category-theologians"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41871,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions\/41871"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}