Paidion wrote:If
it is absolutely necessary to baptize in the name of the Father, and of
the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, then Peter must have gotten it wrong.
Is that your position?
The Orthodox faith is nothing if not the faith of Peter.
The
problem is those pesky heretics. For two thousand years they have
incessantly distorted the faith. Perhaps a good name for heresy in
general would be Legion, since it seems they have countless ways of
distorting things. They take good old terms, empty them of Orthodoxy,
and fill them up with heresy and proclaim, "Hey, we believe in _______
too!"
Consequently, the Orthodox Church has had to ever more
rigorously define its terms. This was the main task of the Nine
Ecumenical Councils (the first held in A. D. 325 and the ninth in A. D.
1341-51).
Let me give a hypothetical example. Suppose someone in
the circle of assemblies you attend, Paidion, legally changed his name
to "Jesus" and started claiming that he was Jesus of Nazareth returned
to planet Earth from outer space. Further suppose that he taught that
all of the miracles recounted in the Bible were accomplished by highly
advanced nanotechnology beamed down from the starship that was orbiting
the earth, commanded by the astronaut named Yahweh. Said astronaut came
down to earth in a small space ship, met a fetching young Jewish girl
named Mary, impregnated her the typical way, then returned to his
starship. Jesus, of course, was resuscitated by Yahweh's nanotechnology
and beamed up to the mother ship accompanied by some of its crew. Let us
further suppose that this Jesus started getting a lot of followers in
your circle of assemblies and baptized them "in the name of Jesus
Christ". Of course, when
he says
Jesus Christ, he means himself: Jesus Christ Spaceman, biological son
of Captain Yahweh of the Federation Starship Celestial 3.
I would
imagine your circle of assemblies would have to address this issue.
They'd have to make sure that those baptized were NOT being baptized in
the name of our spaceman Jesus, but in the name of the biblical Jesus.
Perhaps, "You are baptized in the name of the biblical Jesus Christ."
Then some of the spaceman's followers would say, "Peter said to baptize
in the name of Jesus Christ. Full stop. Are you saying that Peter was
wrong?"
In short, like the heretics before him, Spaceman Jesus
would take good old terminology and fill it full of his nonsense. (And
if you think Spaceman Jesus would be stranger than any historical
heretics, then I would recommend reading about the 2nd-century Gnostics.
Those guys were supremely weird. Ol' Spaceman Jesus would be kind of
tame compared to some of them. Or consider the numbskull(s) implied in I
Corinthians 12:3 who thought that the Holy Spirit inspired them to
curse Jesus. My goodness.)
