[jleyank]

“I”, “We”…. These pedants sound like the Pharisees Jesus preached against. Also, 3-into-1 as a doctrine can lead to confusion, unless 2/3 of them don’t participate in baptism.

How to turn people against formal religion.

I always thought that if one approached a sacrament with an open, honest and clear conscience that the action was valid. Conversely, if you follow the form with a hard, closed heart it’s invalid. Guess there’s a lot of souls in the deep who are in trouble unless the ship’s captain had the correct form.

[DannyB2]

Based on what I read in the gospels, my take would be that God cares more about the heart of the one being baptized than a minor error of speech by the one doing the baptism.

The profession of faith of the one being baptized is what I believe God cares about.

[ksaj]

That's pretty hard for babies to do. I think in the Bible, only people of age to understand what they are professing ever get baptized. Even Jesus was in his 30's before he was baptized, and by definition he would understand better than anyone.