How can I explain the Trinity to a Oneness Pentecostal?

Full Question

How can I explain the Trinity to a "Oneness" Pentecostal who says that Jesus is the only God and that the Father and the Holy Spirit are manifestations and not different persons of the Divinity? And how can I explain baptism in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost when this person insists on Acts 2:38, repent and be baptized in the name of Jesus? He claims the name of the three persons, or manifestations in his view, is Jesus.

Answer

In Matthew 28:19 Jesus explicitly commands his apostles to baptize in the name of the Trinity. This is where the Church received the Trinitarian formula. It wasn’t some pope’s idea. In Acts 2:38 the author is not presenting a liturgical formula. He is concerned with distinguishing Christ’s baptism from John the Baptist’s. The practice of the early Church was thoroughly Trinitarian. For further information, go to www.catholic.com/library/Trinitarian_Baptism.asp.
Fr. Vincent Serpa O.P.

“What a tremendous blessing! You have come into our life just in time to defend our faith. We are growing from your great work. God bless you all.”

~ Beth, Boston, Massachusetts
 

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"Let us then not be ashamed to confess the Crucified. Be the cross our seal, made with boldness by our fingers on our brow and in everything; over the bread we eat and the cups we drink, in our comings and in goings out; before our sleep, when we lie down and when we awake; when we are travelling, and when we are at rest."

~ St. Cyril of Jerusalem in his "Catecheses" (xiii, 36), on the sign of the cross, a practice familiar to Christians in the second century and which had passed into a gesture of benediction by the fourth century, as many quotations from the Fathers show