At the end of the Gospel Matthew recounts how the nations are to be made disciples (Matt. 28:19–20), the Abrahamic promise having reached fulfillment in the new covenant. Hence, baptism—together with the Lord’s Supper—is the sacrament of the new covenant. Thus, Jesus the Son names God as the one God who is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, God’s crowning revelation of himself, the new covenant name of God.

Gregory of Nazianzus, one of the most significant figures behind the resolution of the fourth century Trinitarian crisis at the Council of Constantinople in 381, remarked “when I say God, I mean Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”[1] For him, as for those who stood with him at the time, the trinity was not an abstract puzzle but the heart of the Christian faith and the center of true worship. Indeed, the answers the church provided to the challenge of Arianism in its various forms, particularly the most articulate expression in Eunomius, emerged from issues surrounding worship.

For Gregory, the presenting issue was the identity and status of the Holy Spirit. If the Spirit was not God, and if he was not one with the Father and the Son, then we would be baptized into the one name of two divine persons (Father and Son) and a creature (the Spirit). This would be blasphemous. Moreover, central to the Greek church’s understanding of salvation was deification. Although humans never become divine, deification describes the process by which we are transformed into the image of the glorified Christ, to reach its zenith at his return. Clearly, only one who is himself God can effect such a remarkable and renovative work; it would be impossible for a creature to do so. “How can one who is not God deify me in baptism?” so it was asked. In short, these were very practical matters; the proponents of the Trinitarian orthodoxy were bishops, engaged in preaching to their congregations and leading in the liturgy. They were not innovators. They were conscious of expressing the faith handed down from the apostles. Their case was grounded on biblical exegesis from both Testaments.

Matthew 28:18–20

This can be demonstrated by focusing on baptism. Baptism is common to all members of the visible church of Jesus Christ. It is the common denominator that identifies old and young, rich and poor, Jew and Gentile. We have all been baptized by the Holy Spirit into the one body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:13). As Jesus presented it in Matthew 28:18–20, we are all baptized into the one name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Moreover, the apostle Paul reflects on this when addressing the Corinthian church. Despite all of its many problems, he states that “you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God [theos]” (1 Cor. 6:11). Since the Greek term theos frequently refers to the Father, we have here a reference to a washing that all had received in the name of the Son, the Spirit and the Father. Paul was no proto-gnostic or docetist; it is clear that baptism is in view. Baptism marked the point of transition from wrath into the church in an open, vivid, and visible way.

That statement in Matthew 28:18–20 needs to be seen in the context of the Gospel as a whole and, behind that, in the history of God’s covenantal dealings with his people. At each stage in the historical development of redemption, in the enactment of the various covenants, God reveals his name.

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1. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 38.8, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, vol. 7, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, trans. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing, 1894).