Was Jesus baptism a trinitarian event?
I’d like to pick up on Peter’s comment in the ‘different views of the trinity thread’ that Jesus’ baptism was a ‘trinitarian event attended by Father, Son and Holy Spirit’. Apart from the fact that this makes it sound like Father, Son and Holy Spirit turned up at the church like three close relatives (I’m sure the humour was intended), it seems to me that this illustrates rather well the problem of using ‘trinitarian’ in such a context. It’s all very well saying that an expression such as ‘trinitarian framework’ is shorthand for something more complex, but it still must introduce some sort of argument about relational ontology – it has to do unavoidably with discussions about the relationship between three persons within the one godhead. But this is surely a very long way from the interests of the account of Jesus’ baptism. The baptism marks Jesus out as Israel’s messiah, but I think it is reading far too much into the text to suggest that at the level of the biblical narrative Father,
