Matthew 2819 and its Detractors [Archive]

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steveb

07-17-2006, 08:23 PM

One claim made by those opposed to the Trinity is (as stated here recently by "called") the "Trinitarian Baptismal Formula was added by the Catholic church" to the book of Matthew.

I first encountered this claim about three years ago from an ex-member of the Oneness Pentecostal church of which I used to be a member; at that time I researched it a little and found it to be based on a booklet or research article written in 1961 by somebody (otherwise unknown) named "A. Ploughman." This same article is quoted as the basis for the study that "called" gave a link to when he made his claim here a couple of days ago. It's also quoted on every other site I found which were written by people who believe Matthew 28:19, and hence the Trinitarian baptismal formula, wasn't part of the original Gospel of Matthew; Ploughman's article, which uses writings of Eusebius (who lived from around A.D. 270 to A.D. 340) to establish its claims, appears to be the primary source of this belief. However, I must say I find it to be on the level of a hoax or fraud instead of a true work of scholarship.

One reason is that it includes this kind of thing as not only a credible source, but as the only source for a key premise:<blockquote>According to the editor of the Christadelphian Monatshefte, Eusebius among his many other writings compiled a collection of the corrupted texts of the Holy Scriptures, and "the most serious of all the falsifications denounced by him, is without doubt the traditional reading of Matthew 28:19."

Further inquiry has failed to pinpoint the exact compilation referred to, as Ludwig Knupfer, the Editor, has since written, "through events of war I have lost all of my files and other materials connected with the magazine." But various authorities mention a work entitled "Discrepancies in the Gospels," and another work entitled "The Concluding Sections of the Gospels."</blockquote>This apparently means that not only is the original article from the Christadelphian Monatshefte unverifiable, but that these two works of Eusebius are completely unknown outside of quotations from this Ludwig Knupfer.

For example, when I searched the Web with the Google search engine, every single instance (only six or seven total) of "The Concluding Sections of the Gospels" was in a quotation of this same article. Ploughman bases his claim about Eusebius's critical view of Matthew 28:19 (as distinct from the fact of simple difference in wording) on sources that cannot be verified, are unknown to all other authorities, and cannot even be proven to have ever existed. We aren't even told the names of "various authorities" who supposedly mentioned these works of Eusebius. It all smells very strongly of rotting fish. In other words, they're theological examples of "urban legends."

[Continued in the next posting...]

steveb

07-17-2006, 08:27 PM

[...Continued from the previous posting.]

The only verifiable fact here is that in known, extant works, Eusebius sometimes used Matthew 28:19 with "non-Trinitarian" wording, different from that in all known manuscripts of the New Testament, and sometimes he used it with the "Trinitarian" wording that comes from the text of Matthew 28:19 as it is in all existing manuscript versions of the NT. There is no evidence in his known works that Eusebius complained about it being changed or corrupted; he simply uses a different wording for the passage without comment. He doesn't claim that one or the other is the original wording of Matthew, and it is not even clear to me that he means to directly quote the book of Matthew. The Oneness claim that Eusebius' non-Trinitarian wording represents an original reading of Matthew 28:19 is based only upon speculation, assumption, and doctrinal bias. All the hard evidence is in the other direction - not only are there no variant readings in any manuscript or papyrus, but others quote the triadic formula more than a hundred years before Eusebius (see below).

Additionally, in doing my own research in quite a few different books and Web sites, I've found that there is not, in fact, a clear consistency to the way Eusebius quoted Matthew 28:19. He is said to quote it without the triune formula 17 (or 18 or 19 or 21) times before the council of Nicea. But he is also revealed to have quoted it with the triune formula 5 (or 7) times after the council of Nicea. The variation in the number raises my own suspicions about the way the references were counted. The dating of ancient works is far from precise - the assignment of the date (pre- or post-Nicene) of Eusebius' usage of the two readings could easily be massaged to fit a pre-ordained scheme.

Even if one could cleanly divide the occurence of the two different "quotations" of Matthew 28:19 by Eusebius into pre- and post-Nicene groupings, that wouldn't prove anything. It could mean that as a result of the council of Nicea (in A.D. 325), Eusebius became aware of better manuscripts and started using them; or that he decided to start quoting Matthew exactly instead of paraphrasing the passage according to his own preference (he is known to have been biased toward the Arian side). To automatically assume that he was coerced into using the triune formula by the evil world-wide Trinitarian conspiracy after the council of Nicea seems reasonable only if you have a predisposition to read history that way to begin with.

The "fact" that the usage of the triune formula by Eusebius was restricted to the post-Nicene period becomes even harder to explain when one learns that Trinitarianism triumphed only in theory at the council of Nicea. In reality, Arians continued to dominate the Roman church until about A.D. 380. Athanasius, the chief Trinitarian, was even banished a couple of times during that period. There was no immediate, wide-spread cleansing of non-Trinitarian theology that would explain a sudden switch by Eusebius to the triune formula. The references that Oneness people come up with to the burning of Christian works refer to pre-Nicene persecutions of all Christians, not to an effort to eradicate only non-Trinitarian works after Nicea.

[Continued in the next posting...]

steveb

07-17-2006, 08:30 PM

[Continued in the next posting...]

So If the claim is made that later authorities went back to change the work of Eusebius, then why would they not change all of his references to Matthew 28:19?

Similarly, if evil Trinitarian authorities changed all New Testament manuscripts to include the triune formula in Matthew 28:19, why would they leave the other two references (in the book of Acts) to baptizing in Jesus' name unchanged?

These are major inconsistencies in the picture that we're being asked to believe. If the victorious Trinitarians eradicated all non-Trinitarian literature, or changed it to make it appear Trinitarian, then how did the Book of Acts and all those citations of Matthew by the well-known Eusebius slip through?

Another thing that I find odd about this claim is that it comes from people who are usually rigid "Bible-only" folks. Now all of a sudden a quotation from a church father is supposed to trump all existing manuscripts of the New Testament in spite of the fact there is not one New Testament manuscript that has the reading they claim is the correct one. Their claim represents a striking departure in their theological method from solid Biblical foundations to blatant doctrinal bias.

However, as long as they want to be guided by references to Matthew 28:19 in the church fathers, here are a few others for them, all before Eusebius (plus one from Eusebius himself that uses the Trinitarian formula):

The Didache
"After the foregoing instructions, baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living [running] water. If you have no living water, then baptize in other water, and if you are not able in cold, then in warm. If you have neither, pour water three times on the head, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Before baptism, let the one baptizing and the one to be baptized fast, as also any others who are able. Command the one who is to be baptized to fast beforehand for one or two days" (Didache 7:1 ).

[b]Tatian the Syrian
"Then said Jesus unto them, I have been given all authority in heaven and earth; and as my Father has sent me, so I also send you. Go now into all the world, and preach my gospel in all the creation; and teach all the peoples, and baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit; and teach them to keep all whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you all the days, unto the end of the world [Matt. 28:18-20]" (The Diatesseron 55 [A.D. 170]).

[Continued in the next posting...]

steveb

07-17-2006, 08:32 PM

[...Continued from the previous posting - more early references to Matthew 28:19 from the church fathers.]

Hippolytus
"When the one being baptized goes down into the water, the one baptizing him shall put his hand on him and speak thus: Do you believe in God, the Father Almighty? And he that is being baptized shall say: I believe. Then, having his hand imposed upon the head of the one to be baptized, he shall baptize him once. Then he shall say: Do you believe in Christ Jesus . . . ? And when he says: I believe, he is baptized again. Again shall he say: Do you believe in the Holy Spirit and the holy Church and the resurrection of the flesh? The one being baptized then says: I believe. And so he is baptized a third time" (The Apostolic Tradition 21 [A.D. 215]).

Tertullian
"After his resurrection he promises in a pledge to his disciples that he will send them the promise of his Father; and lastly, he commands them to baptize into the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, not into a unipersonal God. And indeed it is not once only, but three times, that we are immersed into the three persons, at each several mention of their names" (Against Praxeas 26 [A.D. 216]).

Origen
"Why, when the Lord himself told his disciples that they should baptize all peoples in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, does this apostle [Paul] employ the name of Christ alone in baptism, saying, We who have been baptized into Christ; for indeed, legitimate baptism is had only in the name of the Trinity" (Commentary on Romans 5:8 [A.D. 248]).

Cyprian of Carthage
"He [Jesus] commanded them to baptize the Gentiles in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. How then do some say that though a Gentile be baptized . . . never mind how or of whom, so long as it be done in the name of Jesus Christ, the remission of sins can followwhen Christ himself commands the nations to be baptized in the full and united Trinity?" (Letters 73:18 [A.D. 253]).

Eusebius of Caesarea
"We believe . . . each of these to be and to exist: the Father, truly Father, and the Son, truly Son, and the Holy Ghost, truly Holy Ghost, as also our Lord, sending forth his disciples for the preaching, said, Go teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Concerning whom we confidently affirm that so we hold, and so we think, and so we have held aforetime, and we maintain this faith unto the death, anathematizing every godless heresy" (Letter to the People of His Diocese 3 [A.D. 323]).

[I got these quotations from the Reformation Today site on the page titled Patristic Testimony Concerning Baptizing in the Triune Name of God (http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://reformationtoday.tripod.com/chemnitz/id44.html).]

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kenod

07-18-2006, 02:53 AM

Steve,

I'd just like to say that not all Oneness believers think Mat 28:19 was added to the Scriptures ... in my experience it would be a very small minority who believe that. In fact I have never met one personally!

The argument among Oneness believers is that "the name (singular) of the Father, and of the Son, and of the and Holy Ghost" is the Lord Jesus Christ. They will also point out, correctly, that no one in the NT was baptised using the formula in Mat 28:19.

The fact that error crept into church practice is evident from the Didache ... which was considered for inclusion in Holy Scripture, but rejected.

steveb

07-18-2006, 06:35 PM

Ken,

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you don't have the latest revelation: the old Oneness doctrine is, according to many members of my former church, "too Trinitarian." It was a solid first step out of Trinitarianism, but its originators were still too influenced by the hundreds of years the church spent in a mistaken Trinitarianism, wrongly seeing Jesus as both man and God. They still hadn't completely thrown off the Trinitarian mysticism that fogs up our understanding of who Jesus is, and prevents us from following him and knowing him in the deep, intimate way he wants to be known - as a human just like us who fully shared all of our sufferings. Jesus was (according to them) a man who fully manifested God while on earth, but he wasn't, of course, literally God.

That's why they cannot tolerate Matthew 28:19 in the Bible. They can't admit that "Jesus" is (according to the older Oneness doctrine) the name of a person who is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit" because that of course would mean he IS literally God.

But (I claim) the whole reason they find themselves in the position of denying Matthew 28:19 a place in the Bible is because of the mistaken view of the creators of modern Oneness theology in the first place, who thought Matthew 28:19 refers to a literal name. It doesn't. "In the name of" means "by the authority of." Therefore when the apostles said they baptized "in the name of Jesus" in the Book of Acts, they meant they baptized by the authority of Jesus' command to baptize "in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." It amounts to the same thing, if one has the proper understanding of who it is that saves us. Salvation is a work possible only for the triune God.

kenod

07-19-2006, 06:21 AM

Steve,

I think I'll stick with the "old revelation" ... the Holy Bible. I don't believe in discarding Scriptures that "don't fit", be it Mat 28:19 or 1 John 5:7.

Each person needs to be able to reconcile Mat 28:19 and Acts 2:38, and you have your way ("by the authority of"). I take them both literally.

called

07-22-2006, 04:04 AM

Ok Steveb
So what your saying is that on the day of Pentecost the Apostle Peter literally told the 3000 Jews that was their they {MUST} be Baptized {{{in the Name of Jesus Christ}}} but what he realy meant without literaly saying it was they were to be baptized by the authority of Jesus' and command them to baptize "in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit."

Steveb This is 1000% UNBIBLICAL!!! The Apostle Peter meant exactly what he said in ACTS 2:38 and the 3000 believed it and was baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ the same exact way each and every NT Convert in the 27 Books of the NT Canon was Baptized without exception!!!! and this My friend is a Biblical Fact!!! that can not be changed or overlooked!!!
Are Your asking us to believe what you personaly think Peter may have meant and not what the Bible clearly says word for word????
This only gives me one more reason to deny the Trinity, Matthew 28:19 and 1 John 5:7
The hard cold {Fact} is that this unbiblical "Trinitarian Baptismal Formula" was Never Ever Once Taught nor Practiced by the Apostles! and its another Fact that it diden't start being Taught or Practiced until the Catholic church got a hold of it!!! Let us Please stick to hard cold Biblical Facts here and not our own beliefs Brother!
Yours in Christ
Johnny

called

07-22-2006, 04:18 AM

Although i do not hold to the oneness Doctrine as the UPC teaches it any longer i have to go along with Ken here!!!
"""Steve,

{{{I think I'll stick with the "old revelation" ... the Holy Bible}}}. Becouse I take it literally Brother.
Johnny

steveb

07-22-2006, 03:41 PM

Johnny,

You write,<blockquote>Let us Please stick to hard cold Biblical Facts here and not our own beliefs Brother!</blockquote>That's what I'm doing. It seems to me that you are the one ignoring the Biblical facts and denying a verse of scripture because it doesn't fit your theology. I'm just pointing out that there is no manuscript evidence at all for your claim that Matthew 28:19 isn't a part of the Bible, and the scant patristic evidence you have is heavily contradicted by other patristic evidence.<hr width=75% size=2><center><table><tr><td>More Chapel reflections (http://home.comcast.net/~sr_born/Chapel/index.html)</TD><TD>Steve Born</TD><TD>My Home page (http://home.comcast.net/~sr_born/)</td></tr></table></center>

called

07-23-2006, 01:00 AM

Pro610
:::Some of these Church Father,s like Polycarp were direct disciples of the Apostles thus if someone does not believe their writings they are essentially calling the Apostles lier,s!!!

The Proplem im seeing here and everywhere elese with Trinitarians is you guys put the writings of the Catholic church Fathers on the same level as Scripture or seem to believe they have the same authority as the apostles or something when the fact is they {DO NOT}!!!
You can quote Catholic church father writings until your tongue falls out but that still dosent make it the word of God that was given to us by the 12!!! Please understand that!!!

Steve
i love you brother and im not coming against you yourself but against the doctrines brought into the church by the catholic church fathers that i believe are unbiblical like infant baptism and others!!!

Pro610
i love you to Bro but you have to understand that church fathers like Polycarp was a follower of a follower or a disciple of a disciple of Christ and nothing more!!! that dose not put him or any other catholic church father on the same level as the Apostles nor does it give them the same authority nor does it make their writings equal with scripture!
Please understand that Brother!!!

look at this please!!!
Polycarp was baptized as an infant i believe in the year 69AD!!! answer me this brother under what authority was this infant baptism given??? it wasent given by the apostles themselfs!!! they did not practice infant baptism!!! so please tell me where did this unbiblical practice come from???
Johnny

schmuel

07-23-2006, 07:10 PM

Hi Folks,

Matthew 28:18-20
And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying,
All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth.
Go ye therefore, and teach all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost:
Teaching them to observe all things
whatsoever I have commanded you:
and, lo, I am with you alway,
even unto the end of the world. Amen.

Good discussion.
There are even more Patristic references than above ..
Here are a few of them.

A Treatise on Re-Baptism by an Anonymous Writer. (est 230 AD)
http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-05/anf05-148.htm#TopOfPage
Neither must you esteem what our Lord said as being contrary to this treatment:
"Go ye, teach the nations; baptize them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost."

The Epistle of Ignatius to the Philippians, Chapter 2
http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-01/anf01-31.htm#P2846_461430
Wherefore also the Lord, when He sent forth the apostles to make disciples of all nations, commanded them to
"baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,"

Tertullian (200 AD)
http://www.ccel.org/fathers2/ANF-03/anf03-49.htm#P11646_3280473
On Baptism.-- Chapter XIII.
"For the law of baptizing has been imposed, and the formula prescribed: "Go," He saith, "teach the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

I will point out that the latter part of the Cyprian quote up above, with 'full and united Trinity' I have not been able to find in the actual primary sources, and I wonder if it is a mistranslation of convenience. On the other hand, Cyprian actually has about four quotes affirming Matthew 28:19, 100 years before Eusebius (who was simply using a common shortcut terminology frequently used today). Cyrpian is fascinating because, like in the Rebaptism document below, his writing indicates the tension already existing between those baptising in two different manners, likely as today, in the name of Jesus Christ, or in repeating Matthew 28:19 as a formula rather than a command.

The evidence is so overwhelming for Matthew 28:19 that anybody from any doctrinal base that fights it simply does not believe the Bible. Early church writers, hundreds of Greek manuscripts, all manuscript lines, Old Latin, Latin Vulgate, Aramaic Pe****ta. Essentially, this verse is as strongly attested as any verse in the Bible. If you don't believe Matthew 28:19 as scripture you simply cannot trust any verse at all. You can redact and (snip) anything.

(continues)

schmuel

07-23-2006, 07:17 PM

Now, I do want to make one distinction clear. Generally the non-Trinitarian folks who fight this verse are 'biblical unitarian' (and ebionites denying the virgin birth and a few others) ie. they deny the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ. Ergo they do not want the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost to be ... the Lord Jesus Christ.

From a oneness perspective Matthew 28:19 is a fulcrum verse, as the water baptism and much doctrine rests on the beautiful harmony between Matthew and the book of Acts, verses declaring the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ and the majesty and supremacy of His name.

Are there a handful of oneness folks who join the nonsensical 'Ploughman' .. lol ... attack? Yes, a couple, out of thousands of web sites, churches and organizations, and it only stains those couple of websites. Afaik, none of the reputable writers from any demonination/organization/independent (examples: Bernard, Sabin, Chalfant) ever took this stance. Personally, I occasionally write to the cornfused folks, but some are simply way out there (eg. Cohen Reckhart).

From a true oneness perspective, Matthew 28:19 is one of the most beautiful and signifcant and powerful verses in the Bible, placed together with Acts 2, 10, 19, Hebrews 6, Romans 5 and 1 Peter.

And as some of the posters nicely indicated above, better to believe the whole Bible .. and if your doctrine does not fit with the whole Bible .. change your doctrine .. and leave the Bible alone. http://www.factnet.org/discus/clipart/happy.gif

All for now.

Yours in Jesus name,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic