One name shared by three, Matthew 28:19

Sources

• Matthew 28:19, NASB. (opens in a new tab)

  Matthew 28:19, NASB.

Objections & responses

Didn’t Eusebius quote Matthew 28:19 without “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” suggesting the Trinitarian wording was added later?

In several of his works Eusebius quotes the verse in a short form, “make disciples of all nations in my name,” and some critics take that as evidence the fuller wording is a later insertion. The manuscript evidence points the other way: every surviving Greek manuscript of Matthew, and every early translation, carries the full formula, and Eusebius himself quotes the full form in other writings. The Didache, a church manual usually dated around AD 100, already directs baptism “into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (chapter 7). The short form is best read as Eusebius abbreviating a text he knew, not as a window onto a different original.

Reading “name” (singular) as proof of one divine essence is a grammatical stretch. “In the name of X and Y and Z” is a natural way to say “by the authority of.”

Fair. The singular name is suggestive rather than probative and should not carry much weight. What is harder to explain on a non-Trinitarian reading is the company: a Jewish text placing the Holy Spirit and the Son alongside the Father as the authority into which people are initiated, with no hint that two of the three are creatures. Acts’ baptism in the name of Jesus is best read as a summary of whose baptism it was rather than a competing formula.

Appears under 1 claim in this case

• The New Testament shows Father, Son, and Spirit as distinct from one another, speaking to and sending one another.