A History of Christian Doctrine #3 - Online Christian Library

A History of Christian Doctrine
and today they generally regard it as an unfair mischaracterization.
Instead, they call themselves Apostolic,
Jesus Name, or Oneness Pentecostals.
Historical Roots
The Oneness doctrine did not arise in a vacuum. As
volumes 1 and 2 of A History of Christian Doctrine discuss,
throughout history many Christians have baptized
in the name of Jesus, and many have promoted a concept
of God that is essentially the same as the Oneness view.
There is no historical link between these earlier groups
and Oneness Pentecostals, however.
We do find roots of Oneness thinking in American
revivalism of the eighteenth century and in the Holiness
movement of the nineteenth century. These movements
were characterized by a strong devotion to Jesus Christ
and frequent use of the name of Jesus in prayer, praise,
testimony, and song. In a way, as Episcopalian priest
David Reed has argued, the Oneness doctrine was a theological
expression of the practical piety of American
revivalism, Holiness groups, and the earliest Pentecostals.
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In these movements, there was also a strong impulse
toward restorationism, that is, restoring the message and
experience of the apostles and the first-century church.
Indeed the entire Pentecostal movement was based on
restorationist thinking. Given this focus, it was only a
matter of time until people began to realize that the apostles
always baptized in Jesus’ name and never spoke of
God in the terms of fourth-century trinitarian orthodoxy,
and further to see these points as doctrinally significant.
In this regard, Edith Blumhofer, an Assemblies of God
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