Should we baptize in the name of the Trinity? Or just Jesus?

Recently, I’ve had conversations with people with a very specific question. Should we baptize new believers in the name of Jesus Christ, or in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

The reason this question arises is that the New Testament doesn’t seem to have a consistent teaching on this point. When Jesus tells the apostles how to do it, he says,

“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” (Matt 28:19 ESV)

So that would seem to answer it, right? If that’s what Jesus commanded, we should do it.

However, it’s not so simple. When the book of Acts describes baptism, it speaks of baptism in the name of Jesus (Acts 2:38, 8:16, 10:48, 19:5). So if the apostles were consistently baptizing in the name of Jesus Christ, that would seem to be what we should do, doesn’t it?

Is Matthew 28:19 a mistake?

So how do we reconcile this? Some argue that the original text of the book of Matthew didn’t contain the verse that contains the three persons of the Trinity. It’s possible that it originally simply said, “Jesus Christ,” or maybe that entire verse was inserted. I’ve even heard it said that not all the ancient manuscripts of the Gospel of Matthew contained that verse.

On the face of it, this theory seems to make a lot of sense. It produces consistency. For many people who don’t like the traditional view of the Trinity, this also removes one problematic verse for them. But is it really the best explanation?

The early church

Interestingly, it appears that the early church consistently baptized in the name of the Trinity, rather than simply in the name of Jesus. The Didache, an extremely early document, says to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Tertullian and Cyprian both support and attest to this practice (Tertullian, Against Praxeas 26; Cyprian Letter 72.18).

On the other hand, I’m not aware of anyone in the early church who only baptized in the name of Jesus. So that suggests one of two things. Either that their copies of Matthew included the Trinitarian formula, or that they were following the oral teaching of the apostles, which taught to baptize in the name of the Trinity. Either way, this presents a problem for the view I’ve just described.

The manuscript evidence

Still, if the earliest manuscripts didn’t include the Trinitarian formula in Matthew 28:19, we would have some grounds for accepting this theory. But is that the case? Actually, no. The footnotes of the NET Bible often contain excellent information on the manuscripts behind each Scripture passage. For Matthew 28:19, a note says this:

Although some scholars have denied that the trinitarian baptismal formula in the Great Commission was a part of the autographic text of Matthew, there is no ms support for their contention. F. C. Conybeare, “The Eusebian Form of the Text of Mt. 28:19, ” ZNW 2 (1901): 275-88, based his view on a faulty reading of Eusebius’ quotations of this text. The shorter reading has also been accepted, on other grounds, by a few other scholars. For discussion (and refutation of the conjecture that removes this baptismal formula), see B. J. Hubbard, The Matthean Redaction of a Primitive Apostolic Commissioning (SBLDS 19), 163-64, 167-75; and Jane Schaberg, The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (SBLDS 61), 27-29.

So there is actually no manuscript evidence for this theory. But what about the claim that Matthew 28:29 is missing in some manuscripts? I don’t know whether this is true or not, because I haven’t heard of such a manuscript. However, this could even be technically true without actually supporting this theory. Typically the first and last pages of a manuscript are the most likely to be damaged, and if there are any manuscripts that contain only Matthew, this verse would be likely to be on the last page. However, according to the NET Bible, it seems that no manuscripts of Matthew with the full last page are missing the Trinitarian formula.

Why the discrepancy, then?

So if the Trinitarian formula is actually in the original text or Matthew, why is there a discrepancy between Matthew and Acts? Actually, there is no discrepancy.

Why not? Simply because, if we baptize in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, we are baptizing in the name of Jesus Christ. Jesus is included in the list of the persons of the Trinity.

Consider this example. Suppose my wife and I helped to prepare for an event. Someone asks me, “What did you bring?” I reply, “We brought the cookies.” Someone else asks my wife the same question, and she replies, “We brought the dessert, the platters, and the napkins.” Is there a discrepancy? Certainly not. I didn’t say that we only brought cookies.

Or take this example that’s a little closer. Suppose you hear a knock on your door, and someone says, “Open in the name of the police, the garbage collector, and the meter reader!” You would open the door, and find the deputy sheriff standing there with the garbage collector and the meter reader. If someone asked you why you opened the door, you might say, “They asked me to open in the name of the deputy sheriff.” And you would be absolutely correct.

There are no Scripture passages that say that the apostles baptized only in Jesus’ name. If we baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are in fact baptizing in Jesus’ name, since Jesus is the Son. So if we baptize in the name of the Trinity, we have no discrepancy. It’s only if we baptize in the name of Jesus alone that we have a discrepancy.

Why, then, would Acts mention Jesus’ name specifically? Well, Acts mentions another type of baptism—the baptism of John (1:5, 1:22, 10:37, 11:16, 18:25, 19:3). So when Acts mentions baptizing in the name of Jesus Christ, it is most likely pointing at the big difference between John’s baptism and the apostles’ baptism. Those who were baptized by John might have been baptized in God’s name; however, they probably hadn’t yet heard of Jesus, much less committed themselves to him. So to differentiate the two baptisms, the writer of Acts would want to specify that the Christian baptism was in the name of Jesus. Since Acts is primarily a history, and not a handbook on church life, it makes sense that the writer wouldn’t have seen the need to mention the exact baptism statement.

I conclude that, when we baptize, we should follow Jesus’ words as they are recorded in the extant manuscripts of Matthew’s Gospel. We should baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.