Oneness Pentecostalism and Baptism

1. What Oneness Pentecostalism Is

Oneness Pentecostalism is the branch of the Pentecostal movement that confesses God as one indivisible Person who has revealed himself as Father in creation, as Son in redemption and as Holy Spirit in the life of the believer, and that baptizes converts in the name of Jesus Christ using the words of Acts 2:38. Its congregations preach the deity of Jesus Christ with great force, practise baptism by full immersion, expect the baptism of the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues, and in many cases teach detailed standards of dress and conduct. Members generally call themselves Apostolic, and many of them find the label Oneness serviceable in print and cold in conversation.

The movement is a distinct family inside Pentecostalism rather than a splinter at its edge. It arose from within trinitarian Pentecostalism in the second decade of the twentieth century, produced its own denominations, its own hymnody, its own preaching cadence and its own theological literature, and it now has congregations on every continent. Anyone who has driven past a church whose sign reads Apostolic, or Pentecostal Assemblies, or First United Pentecostal Church, has passed one.

The Two Claims That Define It

Two claims hold the whole system together, and everything else in Oneness teaching follows from them. The first is that the one God is one Person, so that the terms Father, Son and Holy Spirit name roles, offices or manifestations of that single Person rather than three who are really distinct within the Godhead. The second is that Jesus is the personal name of that one God, so the command to baptize in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit is fulfilled by pronouncing the name Jesus Christ over the candidate. Take away either claim and the position collapses; hold both and the baptismal practice is the natural consequence.

What This Page Covers

This guide states the Oneness position, traces its history, describes its main bodies, and works through the Catholic answer to it, ending with the concrete question of baptismal validity. The positive Catholic case for the doctrine of God, worked from Scripture and the councils, belongs to our guide to the doctrine of the Trinity, which sets out one God in three Persons on its own terms. The wider Pentecostal movement, including baptism in the Holy Spirit, the gift of tongues and the classical trinitarian denominations, is covered in our guide to Pentecostal Christianity.

2. Where the Movement Came From

Oneness Pentecostalism began in a controversy that early Pentecostals themselves called the New Issue, and it ran its course in three years. In April 1913 a large camp meeting was held at Arroyo Seco, near Los Angeles, and during a baptismal service the Canadian preacher R. E. McAlister observed that the baptisms recorded in the Book of Acts were administered in the name of Jesus rather than with the words of Matthew 28:19. The remark was made in passing. It did not stay that way.

1913 to 1916

The observation spread through the young movement with the speed that marked everything else about it. Frank J. Ewart, who had been at Arroyo Seco, worked the idea into a full doctrine of God, and in April 1914 he and Glenn A. Cook rebaptized each other in the name of Jesus Christ in Los Angeles. Ewart began publishing the teaching in his paper Meat in Due Season the following year. Cook carried the message east, and in Indianapolis the influential black pastor Garfield T. Haywood accepted it and brought his congregation with him.

Trinitarian Pentecostal leaders answered at the General Council of the Assemblies of God at St Louis in October 1916, which adopted a Statement of Fundamental Truths containing an explicit trinitarian article and, in doing so, made the Oneness position a bar to fellowship. A substantial minority of ministers on the roll withdrew or were removed. Those ministers regrouped, and the Oneness bodies of the present day descend from them.

Merger, Separation and Merger Again

The organisational history that followed was tangled, and much of the tangling ran along the colour line of the American church. The Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, gathered around Haywood in Indianapolis, was genuinely interracial in its early years and remarkable for it, and in the 1920s a large number of white ministers withdrew to form separate fellowships, a separation that Oneness historians themselves attribute in large part to the segregation pressures of the period. Further mergers followed among the white bodies, and in 1945 the Pentecostal Church Incorporated and the Pentecostal Assemblies of Jesus Christ joined at St Louis to form the United Pentecostal Church. The Pentecostal Assemblies of the World continued and continues as a predominantly African American body.

3. The Oneness Doctrine of God

The Oneness doctrine of God begins from the Shema and refuses to move off it. Deuteronomy 6:4 says that the Lord our God, the Lord is one, and Oneness teachers hold that the numeral there governs everything the New Testament later says about the Father, the Son and the Spirit. God is one Person, one centre of consciousness and will, and the three names of the New Testament describe how that one Person has made himself known in creation, in redemption and in the Church.

Jesus as the Name of the One God

From that starting point the Oneness argument moves to Christ. If God is one Person and the fullness of the deity dwells in Jesus bodily (Colossians 2:9), then Jesus is that one Person present in flesh. Oneness writers press Isaiah 9:6, where the child born to us is called Mighty God and Everlasting Father, and John 14:9, where Jesus tells Philip that whoever has seen him has seen the Father, and John 10:30, where Jesus says that he and the Father are one. On this reading the name Jesus is the personal name of the God of Israel, the name given for salvation in Acts 4:12, and the New Testament's language about the Father and the Spirit describes the same Person under other aspects of his self-disclosure.

How the Son Is Understood

Oneness theology commonly holds that the title Son of God refers to God in his incarnation rather than to an eternal relation within the Godhead. On this account there was no Son before Bethlehem, since sonship names what God became when he took flesh of Mary, and the Son will hand the kingdom to the Father at the end (1 Corinthians 15:24-28) when the incarnate office is complete. The deity in Christ is the Father; the humanity is the Son. This is why Oneness writers say they honour the deity of Christ more highly than trinitarian Christians do, and they mean it as a serious claim rather than as a slogan.

How Oneness Writers Answer the Obvious Objection

The obvious objection is that Jesus prays to the Father, is sent by the Father, and promises to send the Spirit. Oneness theologians answer it directly rather than avoiding it. Their standard reply is that the prayers of Jesus are the prayers of his genuine human nature to the divine Spirit who indwells him, so the exchange is real without requiring two Persons. They deny that they teach three successive phases, insisting that God was present as Father throughout the years the Son walked in Galilee, and they distinguish their position from ancient patripassianism by holding that the humanity of Christ suffered while the deity as such did not. David K. Bernard, whose The Oneness of God is a standard statement of the position and who later served as General Superintendent of the United Pentecostal Church International, argues the case at length in those terms.

The account of Oneness belief in this section is drawn from Oneness sources themselves, chiefly the Articles of Faith of the United Pentecostal Church International and the published doctrinal writing of David K. Bernard. Catholic assessment of the position begins in section 12 below.

4. Jesus Name Baptism and the Book of Acts

Jesus name baptism is the practice of baptizing with the words in the name of Jesus Christ instead of the words of Matthew 28:19, and it is the point on which the whole Oneness movement is most easily recognised. The argument rests on a genuine feature of the New Testament text: every baptism narrated in the Book of Acts is described with reference to the name of Jesus, and none is described with the triune wording.

The Four Texts in Acts

Four passages carry the argument. At Pentecost, Peter tells the crowd to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 2:38). In Samaria, those who had believed Philip had simply been baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus (Acts 8:16). At the house of Cornelius, Peter orders the new believers to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ (Acts 10:48). At Ephesus, the disciples who had received only the baptism of John are baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus (Acts 19:5). Oneness teachers conclude that the apostles knew what their Lord had commanded and that the wording in Acts is the wording he intended, so Matthew 28:19 is understood as naming the one God whose name is Jesus.

How the Same Texts Read Without the Oneness Premise

The passages in Acts describe whose baptism it is rather than dictating the words spoken over the water. Luke is distinguishing Christian baptism from the baptism of John, which is exactly the contrast in view at Ephesus, and the phrase in the name of the Lord Jesus marks the baptism as belonging to Christ and placing the candidate under his lordship. Acts nowhere quotes a formula, and Luke uses several different phrasings for what would be, on the Oneness reading, a fixed set of words whose exact pronunciation is decisive.

The earliest surviving description of how Christians actually baptized supports the ordinary reading. The Didache, a short church order from the first or early second century, instructs that baptism be given in living water in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and permits pouring three times on the head when running water is not available. The same document, a page or two later, describes the baptized simply as those baptized into the name of the Lord. One writer, one community, both expressions, no sense of conflict. Justin Martyr, writing at Rome around the middle of the second century, likewise describes baptism given in the name of God the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Saviour Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit (First Apology 61).

5. The New Birth: Repentance, Water, Spirit

Most Oneness bodies teach that the new birth has three elements, all of them drawn from Acts 2:38: repentance, water baptism in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and the baptism of the Holy Spirit evidenced by speaking in other tongues. The three are read as a single act of entry rather than as a sequence of optional stages, and the standard Oneness sermon on the text moves through them in order and asks the hearer which of the three is missing.

Why It Sounds Familiar to Catholic Ears

A Catholic hearing that outline for the first time is often surprised by how much of it he recognises. Oneness preaching insists that baptism actually does something, that it is for the remission of sins rather than a public sign of a decision already complete, and that the Christian life begins in water and the Spirit as John 3:5 says. That is closer to Catholic sacramental teaching than most evangelical preaching is, and it is worth saying so. Our guide to baptism and what it does sets out the Catholic doctrine of baptismal regeneration, and a Oneness Pentecostal would find much of it congenial.

The pattern of water followed by a distinct gift of the Spirit also has a Catholic parallel in the two sacraments of baptism and confirmation, where the Spirit given in baptism is sealed and strengthened in a further sacrament. The disagreement falls on two narrow points: which words make the washing a Christian baptism, and whether speaking in tongues is the necessary evidence that the Spirit has been received.

Where the Difference Is Sharp

Many Oneness congregations teach that all three elements are necessary for salvation, which means in practice that a Christian baptized with the trinitarian formula and not yet speaking in tongues is regarded as not yet fully born again. Converts from other churches are therefore rebaptized. Catholic teaching holds instead that the one baptism for the forgiveness of sins, validly conferred with water and the trinitarian form, is never repeated, that it incorporates the person into Christ once for all (Ephesians 4:5), and that the charism of tongues is one gift among many which the Spirit distributes as he wills (1 Corinthians 12:11, 12:30). On the necessity of tongues, trinitarian Pentecostals and Catholics disagree with each other as well, and our guide to Pentecostal Christianity treats that question separately.

6. The United Pentecostal Church International

The United Pentecostal Church International, generally called the UPCI, is the largest Oneness Pentecostal body in North America and the one most people mean when they say United Pentecostal Church. It was formed by the 1945 merger of the Pentecostal Church Incorporated and the Pentecostal Assemblies of Jesus Christ, meeting at St Louis, and the word International was added to the name in 1972. Its headquarters is in Weldon Spring, Missouri, and it maintains a foreign missions programme, a publishing house and a network of Bible colleges.

The Fundamental Doctrine

The UPCI Articles of Faith contain a paragraph headed the Fundamental Doctrine, which states the basic and fundamental doctrine of the organisation to be the Bible standard of full salvation: repentance, baptism in water by immersion in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and the baptism of the Holy Ghost with the initial sign of speaking with other tongues as the Spirit gives utterance. The same Articles confess the absolute deity of Jesus Christ and reject the doctrine of three Persons in the Godhead in explicit terms.

The Fundamental Doctrine and the articles on the Godhead are published by the United Pentecostal Church International in its own Articles of Faith, which the body makes freely available. The summary above paraphrases that document and does not quote it in full.

Governance and Life

Governance is congregational in local matters and connectional above them, with district organisations, a General Conference and a General Superintendent. Local churches call their own pastors, own their own property in most cases, and license their ministers through the district. Worship is loud, participatory and long by Catholic standards, built around congregational singing, extended prayer at the altar and expository or exhortatory preaching. Sunday school, youth camps, foreign missions giving and street evangelism carry a great deal of the congregational energy.

What a Catholic Should Notice

Three things about the UPCI are worth a Catholic's attention. It is confessionally clear, so there is no guessing what it teaches. It is evangelistically serious, and a good deal of its growth has come from people no other church was visiting. And it is doctrinally firm about the one question that decides baptismal validity, which means that a person raised in it who enters the Catholic Church has a settled fact to deal with rather than an ambiguity. Section 13 below sets out what that entails.

7. The Pentecostal Assemblies of the World

The Pentecostal Assemblies of the World, usually abbreviated PAW, describes itself as the oldest Oneness Pentecostal organisation in the world, and it is the historic home of the movement's African American majority. It is headquartered in Indianapolis, Indiana, governed by a board of bishops under a Presiding Bishop, and organised into districts across the United States and beyond. Its worship, its music and its preaching tradition belong recognisably to the black church, and its doctrine is the Oneness doctrine set out above.

Garfield T. Haywood

The body's early history is bound to Garfield Thomas Haywood, pastor of a large Indianapolis congregation, hymn writer, editor and one of the most influential Oneness leaders of his generation. Haywood accepted Jesus name baptism in 1915 and brought his congregation into the movement, and he was later elected Presiding Bishop of the PAW, serving until his death in 1931. His hymns are still sung in Oneness congregations, and his standing gave the young movement a theological voice that white Oneness leaders themselves deferred to.

The Racial Division and Its Legacy

The PAW was interracial in its early years at a time when almost nothing in American church life was, and that arrangement did not survive the decade. Through the 1920s most white ministers withdrew into separate fellowships, and those fellowships eventually became the bodies that merged into the United Pentecostal Church in 1945. Oneness historians on both sides of the line have written about the separation candidly, and the two families remain distinct today while holding substantially the same doctrine. A Catholic writing about Oneness Pentecostalism should say plainly that the division ran along the colour line and not along a doctrinal one, because that is what the record shows and because Oneness writers say it themselves.

Related Apostolic Bodies

Several other Apostolic organisations grew from the same soil, each with its own polity and its own founding story. The Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith was founded by Robert C. Lawson in 1919 and has long been centred in Harlem, New York. The Bible Way Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ World Wide separated from it in the middle of the twentieth century. The Assemblies of the Lord Jesus Christ is a further Oneness fellowship of ministers. Their doctrine of God and their baptismal practice follow the Oneness pattern described in sections 3 and 4.

8. The Apostolic Assembly of the Faith in Christ Jesus

The Apostolic Assembly of the Faith in Christ Jesus, in Spanish the Asamblea Apostolica de la Fe en Cristo Jesus, is the principal Oneness Pentecostal body among Spanish-speaking Christians in the United States. It grew among Mexican and Mexican American believers in California and the Southwest in the years after the Jesus name message spread, was formally incorporated in California in 1930, and it holds the Oneness doctrine of God with the baptismal practice that follows from it. Its national offices are in southern California and its congregations reach across the border states and well beyond them.

Founding and Character

The body's own published history names Francisco Llorente, Antonio Castaneda Nava and Marcial de la Cruz among its founding figures, with Nava serving as its presiding bishop across several decades and giving the organisation its shape. It has always been a Spanish-language church first, with worship, hymnody and preaching in Spanish, and this has made it a point of first contact for many migrant families. The Apostolic Assembly maintains a close relationship with the Iglesia Apostolica de la Fe en Cristo Jesus, its sister body in Mexico, and the two have long treated their members as belonging to a single spiritual family across the border.

Why This Matters Pastorally in Catholic Parishes

Latin American and Latino Catholic families are the population the Apostolic churches most often draw from, and a Catholic parish with a Spanish-language Mass will meet the question sooner or later. The pastoral shape of the encounter is usually the same. A family finds warmth, immediate involvement and a name known at the door in an Apostolic congregation, and finds the same things missing in a large parish where they were never greeted. That is a real Catholic failure and it is worth naming before any doctrinal argument is made. Our guides to why people leave the Church and to the Christian denominations and their families treat the wider pattern.

9. The True Jesus Church

The True Jesus Church is a Oneness body of Chinese origin, founded in Beijing in 1917, which reached its Oneness doctrine of God independently of the American movement and combined it with sabbatarian practice. It teaches that Jesus Christ is the one true God, baptizes in the name of Jesus Christ by full immersion in natural flowing water with the candidate face downward, keeps Saturday as the Sabbath, practises footwashing as a sacrament, and expects the baptism of the Holy Spirit with speaking in tongues. Its international assembly is based in Taiwan, and it has substantial congregations in Taiwan, mainland China, Southeast Asia and the Chinese diaspora worldwide.

Origins

The church traces its beginning to a small group of Chinese believers around Paul Wei, Zhang Lingsheng and Barnabas Zhang, who came out of existing Protestant missions convinced that they had received a direct restoration of apostolic Christianity. That conviction shaped the body's self-understanding: it regards itself as the true church restored in the last days rather than as one denomination among many, and it is correspondingly reserved about ecumenical contact. Its growth in the mid twentieth century, and its survival through decades in which church life in mainland China was severely restricted, are part of the wider story told in our guide to Christianity in China.

How It Differs from American Oneness Bodies

Three differences are worth marking. The True Jesus Church is sabbatarian, which no major American Oneness body is. Its baptismal rite specifies natural living water, immersion with the head bowed forward, and administration by a duly appointed minister, with a precision the American bodies do not require. And it holds a restorationist ecclesiology, teaching that the churches around it are not the true church, where the UPCI and the PAW describe themselves in the ordinary language of denominational fellowship. The doctrine of God, and the consequence for the baptismal form, are the same.

10. Holiness Standards and Congregational Life

Holiness standards are the codes of dress, grooming and conduct that many Oneness congregations teach as the visible mark of a life set apart, and they are the feature outsiders notice first. In their stricter forms these standards ask women not to cut their hair, drawing on 1 Corinthians 11:15, to wear skirts or dresses rather than trousers, and to use little or no cosmetics or jewellery, and they ask men to keep their hair short and dress modestly. Television, cinema, dancing, mixed swimming and popular entertainment are discouraged or forbidden in many congregations.

Where the Standards Come From

The standards are inherited rather than invented. They come from the nineteenth century holiness movement out of which Pentecostalism grew, and they were common across early Pentecostalism generally before most trinitarian bodies relaxed them through the twentieth century. Oneness bodies kept them, and in some places tightened them. Practice varies a great deal between congregations, and an outsider should ask rather than assume, since one Apostolic church may be considerably stricter or looser than the one down the road.

How to Assess Them Fairly

A Catholic assessment should separate two questions. On modesty as such, the Catholic tradition agrees that how a Christian dresses is a moral matter and that the culture's standards are not the Church's, and the Catechism of the Catholic Church treats modesty as part of the virtue of chastity in paragraphs 2521 to 2524. On uniform rules imposed as a mark of salvation, the Catholic answer is the apostolic answer to the same question: the observance of external prescriptions is not what justifies (Galatians 2:16), and Christ warned against binding heavy burdens on people's shoulders (Matthew 23:4). The Church legislates fasting and abstinence for the sake of the interior life and does not identify them with grace.

The Human Cost, Said Honestly

People who leave strict Apostolic congregations often describe years of scrupulosity afterwards, and their accounts deserve a hearing. They also frequently describe a congregation that fed them, visited them in hospital and knew every one of their children by name. Both accounts are usually true of the same church. A Catholic who wants to speak usefully with a Oneness Pentecostal, or with someone who has left one, should hold both facts at once, and should be able to say what the Church actually teaches about grace, works and the fear of losing salvation, which our guide to faith and works sets out.

11. Oneness and Trinitarian Pentecostals Compared

Oneness and trinitarian Pentecostals share almost everything about worship and differ on the two points that decide the Catholic judgment. The table sets the positions side by side so the difference is visible without a paragraph of qualification.

Positions in the Oneness and trinitarian Pentecostal columns are summarised from each family's own doctrinal statements, chiefly the Articles of Faith of the United Pentecostal Church International and the Statement of Fundamental Truths of the Assemblies of God. The Catholic column follows the Catechism of the Catholic Church at 253 to 255 on the Trinity and 1240 on the baptismal form.

The row that decides everything is the third. Trinitarian Pentecostal bodies use the words the Lord gave, so the Catholic Church recognizes their baptism and regards their members as Christians in a real though imperfect communion with it (CCC 838). Oneness bodies do not use those words. That single difference in the rite is the whole of the Catholic judgment. The volume of the singing and the strictness of the dress code have no bearing on it.

12. The Catholic Response to the Oneness Position

The Catholic response begins by granting what Oneness Pentecostals are right about. They are right that there is one God and not three, right that the fullness of the deity dwells in Jesus Christ bodily, right that Christ is worshipped as God without qualification, and right that any account of the Trinity which produces three gods has failed. The Church condemned tritheism as firmly as it condemned modalism, and a Catholic who explains the Trinity badly usually errs in that direction.

What the Church Actually Confesses

The Nicene faith is that the one God exists as three who are really distinct from one another, distinguished only by their relations of origin: the Father unbegotten, the Son eternally begotten of the Father, the Spirit proceeding. The Catechism puts the point in three consecutive paragraphs: the Trinity is one, and we do not confess three gods but one God in three Persons (CCC 253); the divine Persons are really distinct from one another, and Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not simply names designating modalities of the divine being (CCC 254); the Persons are relative to one another and the real distinction among them resides solely in the relationships which relate them to one another (CCC 255). Paragraph 254 is the sentence that meets the Oneness position directly, and it was written with modalism in view.

Why the Modal Reading Cannot Carry the Gospels

The strongest Catholic argument is exegetical rather than technical. The Gospels present the Father and the Son addressing one another, loving one another and acting toward one another in ways that require two who are distinct. At the baptism of Jesus the Son stands in the water, the Spirit descends upon him and the Father speaks from heaven (Matthew 3:16-17). Jesus asks the Father to glorify him with the glory he had with the Father before the world existed (John 17:5) and speaks of the Father's love for him before the foundation of the world (John 17:24), which places the relation earlier than Bethlehem and undoes the claim that sonship begins with the incarnation. He promises to ask the Father, who will give another Advocate (John 14:16), and the word another is doing work in that sentence.

The Oneness reply, that the human nature of Christ prays to the divine Spirit within him, runs into a problem of grammar as much as of theology. Natures do not pray. Persons pray, and they pray to persons. If the one praying in Gethsemane is the same Person as the one addressed, the prayer is a soliloquy performed for an audience, and the anguish of Luke 22:42 becomes a demonstration rather than an act. The Church's account keeps the prayer real: one Person, the eternal Son, in two natures, addressing another Person, the Father, in the human nature he has assumed.

The Ancient Precedent

The Church met this position before. Noetus of Smyrna, Praxeas at Rome and above all Sabellius in the early third century taught that Father, Son and Spirit were successive modes of one divine Person, and the resulting doctrine was called patripassianism by its critics because it seemed to make the Father the one who suffered on the cross. Tertullian wrote Against Praxeas to answer it, Hippolytus attacked it at Rome, and Sabellius was excommunicated under Pope Callistus. When the whole Church settled its language at Nicaea in 325 and Constantinople in 381, it settled it against Arius on one side and against Sabellius on the other. Oneness writers rightly point out that their position differs from Sabellius in detail, and the substance of the Catholic objection is unchanged: three who are really distinct cannot be reduced to one who appears in three ways.

Say This Carefully

Two cautions belong here. Oneness Pentecostals are not Arians and should never be described as though they were, since they affirm the full deity of Christ in terms an Arian would find intolerable. And they are not Jehovah's Witnesses, whose doctrine of God is the opposite error and who are treated separately in our guide to Jehovah's Witnesses. Lumping unlike positions together is the fastest way to lose the conversation, and our survey of the nontrinitarian churches keeps them distinct for that reason.

13. Why the Baptism Is Not Recognized

The Catholic Church does not recognize Jesus name baptism because Christian baptism requires water and the form of words the Lord gave, and that form names the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Catechism gives the words used in the Latin Church at paragraph 1240: the minister pours water three times and says, N., I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Canon law states the same requirement, that baptism is validly conferred only by a washing with water together with the required form of words (canon 849). Where those words are absent, the sacrament is not conferred.

The Rule Applies to Catholics Too

The most useful thing to know about this rule is that the Church enforces it against her own ministers without softening. In August 2020 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith responded to submitted questions about baptisms conferred with the words We baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, an improvisation intended to stress the role of the community. The response was that such baptisms are invalid and that those who received them must be baptized in the proper form. Priests in the United States and elsewhere discovered that they had themselves never been validly baptized, and in some cases that their ordinations had to be repeated. A single altered pronoun was enough. The Church is not applying a stricter standard to Oneness Pentecostals than to her own clergy.

A second precedent runs the other way and is worth knowing. In 2001 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith responded that baptism conferred in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is not valid, even though the words spoken there do name Father, Son and Holy Spirit, because those names are understood to signify three separate gods. Form and meaning are assessed together. The Oneness case is the simpler one, since the required words are not spoken at all.

The Question Aquinas Raised

Catholic theology has not ignored the passages in Acts. Thomas Aquinas takes up the question directly, asking whether baptism can be conferred in the name of Christ alone (Summa Theologiae III, q. 66, a. 6), and he reports the opinion, resting on a much discussed statement attributed to Pope Nicholas I, that the apostles baptized in the name of Christ by a special dispensation so that the name of Christ might become known. Aquinas holds that no minister may do so now without such a revelation, and that the form commanded by Christ binds the Church. The honest summary is that the ancient discussion existed, that its conclusion was the requirement of the triune form, and that the Church has held to that requirement ever since.

What This Means in Practice

Someone raised in a Oneness body who wishes to enter the Catholic Church is baptized, following the path a person who has never been baptized takes. The parish will normally take the person through the ordinary process of Christian initiation, ending with baptism, confirmation and first Communion, and the pastor should be told at the outset which body the person comes from so that the record can be established properly. If the actual words used are uncertain, for instance where a person was baptized as a child in a congregation whose practice cannot now be verified, canon law provides for conditional baptism where a genuine doubt remains after investigation (canon 869). Our guide to baptism, its form and its effects covers the sacrament in full.

14. Talking with a Oneness Pentecostal

A useful conversation with a Oneness Pentecostal starts by getting their position right, because they are used to hearing it stated wrongly and they stop listening when it happens. Do not say they deny the deity of Christ. Do not call them Arians. Do not confuse them with Jehovah's Witnesses or with trinitarian Pentecostals. Say instead that they hold God to be one Person revealed as Father, Son and Spirit, and that they baptize in the name of Jesus following Acts 2:38, and watch the temperature of the room change.

Be Able to State the Trinity Without Erring

Most Catholics who lose this conversation lose it by explaining the Trinity badly. Water as ice, liquid and steam is modalism. One man who is a father, a son and an employee is modalism. Three separate beings who cooperate closely is tritheism. The accurate formula is short enough to memorise: one God, three Persons, each fully God, distinguished only by their relations of origin. If your explanation would make a Oneness Pentecostal nod in agreement, you have just taught his doctrine rather than yours.

Three Questions Worth Asking

Ask what the word another is doing in John 14:16, where Jesus promises to ask the Father, who will give another Advocate. Ask about the glory the Son had with the Father before the world existed in John 17:5, and what it means for the claim that sonship begins at Bethlehem. Ask why Luke, if the wording of the rite is decisive for salvation, never quotes the words spoken over the water and varies his own phrasing from chapter to chapter. Ask, and then listen to the answer, because a serious Oneness believer will have one ready and the answer will show you what he actually holds.

Keep the Order Right

The doctrine of God comes first and the baptismal formula follows from it. Arguing about the words at the font while leaving the doctrine of God untouched wins nothing, because the practice is a conclusion rather than a premise. The question underneath is whether the Father and the Son are two who love one another eternally, or one who has appeared in two ways. Everything else, including the validity of a baptism, turns on the answer.

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