Trinity in Matt28:19? To speak in "the name" of something does not necessarily mean that the subject is a pesonality. Even today an officer of the law may call out to an escaping criminal, "Stop in the name of the law". The law is certainly not a personality. The phrase simply means by the authority of something. If one wanted to show in plain language what Christ meant in the baptism formula of Matt28:19, it could go like this: "Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them by the authority of the Father and of the Son and of the holy spirit. And since the spirit is the means by which man is convicted of sin thru a communication from God (john16:9), a baptism on this earth would not have been effective unless the authority of the power which reproved the person of sin, and activated his mind towards righteousness, would have been involved. After all, it was to be the holy spirit which would guide christians into all the truth from the time of christ onward john16:13.
Posted on: Sun, 08 Sep 2013 11:03:13 +0000