(Oneness Pentecostalism and the Trinity by Robert M. Bowman, Jr. Continued)
OBJECTIONS
Confronted with the biblical evidence for a plurality of persons in the unity of the Deity, Oneness advocates are likely to turn away from the Biblical text itself to one or more stock objections to the doctrine of the Trinity, all of which are used by anti-Trinitarians of all persuasions. We can only respond briefly to two of these.
The most common objection to the Trinity is that the doctrine employs nonbiblical terminology ("Trinity," "person," etc.). While this is true, it proves nothing. The word "Oneness" is not in the Bible, either; nor does the Bible ever call the Father or Holy Spirit "manifestations" of God. On another subject, the words "Bible," "canon," and "inerrancy" cannot be found in Scripture, either: shall we then throw out these words, too, and the doctrines they represent? Christians use such nonbiblical terms as "Trinity" and "person" because they express the biblical truth about God in such a way as to exclude unbiblical perversions of that truth. As Calvin explained concerning Arius: "Arius says that Christ is God, but mutters that he was made and had a beginning. He says that Christ is one with the Father, but secretly whispers in the ears of his own partisans that He is united to the Father like other believers, although by a singular privilege. Say "consubstantial" and you will tear off the mask of this turncoat, and yet you add nothing to Scripture." (37)
The other common objection to the Trinity is that it was not formulated until the fourth century. It was supposedly imposed on the people by the Roman Catholic church (by then quite apostate, we are told) through the political agency of Constantine at the Council of Nicea in A.D. 325. This argument is a mix of historical truth and error. First of all, there was no "Roman Catholic church," in the sense of a hierarchical church structure encompassing churches over a wide area with the Roman bishop as the head, until the end of the sixth century. Indeed, the Roman bishop did not even attend the Council of Nicea, which was almost completely a Council of bishops from the Eastern churches. Second, the doctrine of the Trinity as such originated long before Constantine; all of the essential terms (three persons, one substance, Trinity) were used by Tertullian well over a century before Nicea. Third, although it is true that Constantine originally supported Athanasius (the champion of Trinitarianism) and deposed Arius, in A.D. 332 he reversed himself and supported Arius. For the next fifty years or so, Arianism was the ruling movement.
Moreover, many doctrines which we now consider essential to Christian faith came to us through an historical development similar to that of the Trinity. The Bible does not list the books which belong in the canon; such a list was not put together for the New Testament until the fourth century, in response to heretics who were adding or subtracting books from Scripture. The Bible never explicitly insists that it is inerrant in historical and scientific matters. Inerrancy "per se" was not explicitly formulated until the nineteenth century in response to those who said the Bible was inspired but contained errors.
Thus, doctrines that are taught or implied in Scripture become "formulated" (given formal structure and definition) in response to heresy.
The same is true of the doctrine of the Trinity, which was formulated to avoid the errors of Arianism and Modalism. Thus, far from being unbiblical, the Trinity is a faithful expression of the Biblical teaching concerning God, and it has guarded the church from heresy for centuries. To throw out the doctrine of the Trinity in favor of a modernized version of Modalism betrays an ignorance of Church history, as well as a misunderstanding of Scripture.
HERESY?
We have seen that the Oneness doctrine of God is not faithful to the Biblical revelation of the Father and Son as two persons, and that the Oneness rejection of the Trinity is in error. The question now must be asked how serious an error this is, since theological errors vary in their harmfulness.
Evangelicals commonly suppose that a professed Christian movement may be judged orthodox or heretical simply on the basis of whether or not it affirms the full deity and humanity of Christ. Consequently, some Christians have concluded that the Oneness doctrine, despite its denial of the Trinity, is essentially Christian.
This is far too simplistic, however. While it is true that adherence to the two natures of Christ is critical to orthodoxy, and while most pseudo-Christian sects do deny that Jesus is both fully God and fully man, simply affirming the two natures is not enough. Indeed, it is possible to call Jesus "God" and still have "another Jesus" (2 Corinthians 11:4), if in calling Him "God" one means something significantly different from what the Bible means.
Such is the case with the Oneness understanding of the deity of Christ. When Oneness believers say that Jesus is God, what they mean is that He is the Father. That is not what the Bible means, as we have seen. Rather, when the Bible says that Jesus is "God," it means that He exists eternally as a divine person in relationship with the Father; or, to use the Church's theological shorthand, it means that He is the second person of the triune God.
The apostle John warns us, "Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also" (1 John 2:23). Oneness Pentecostals will not admit to denying the Son, of course; but that should come as no surprise. It is doubtful that any heretic, including those about whom John specifically warned, has ever admitted to denying the Son. Instead, heretics of all kinds have simply redefined the meaning of the term "Son" (and along with it the meaning of "Father"). Thus the Jehovah's Witnesses define "Son" as "direct creation," while the Mormons claim that Jesus is the "Son" of God by virtue of having been begotten through physical union between God and Mary. The Oneness redefinition of "Son" as the human nature of Jesus (and "Father" as His divine nature) may be less offensive than the Mormon version, and less obvious than that of the Jehovah's Witnesses, but it is a redefinition nonetheless. The fact is that the Son and the Father are two persons, co-existing eternally in relationship with one another. To deny this fact is to deny the biblical Son, and thus to have a false view of Jesus.
It turns out, then, that one's view of Christ cannot be separated from one's view of the Trinity. Deny the Trinity, and you will lose the Biblical Christ; affirm the Christ of Scripture, the Christ who was sent by the Father and who sent the Holy Spirit, and you will find that your God is the Trinity. It is, in fact, the doctrine of the Trinity that is the distinctive feature of the Christian revelation of the nature of the true God. As Calvin expressed it: "For He so proclaims Himself the sole God as to offer Himself to be contemplated clearly in three persons. Unless we grasp these, only the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains, to the exclusion of the true God." (38) Only the Christian God is triune, and consequently, to deny the Trinity is to say that, historically, Judaism and Islam have been right about the being of God, while Christianity has been wrong. Oneness writers have said as much. (39) Therefore, while there may be individual Oneness believers who are saved [Editor's Note: If, like the Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons, a Oneness believer does not have faith in the Biblical Jesus, then how can it be considered possible that such a person is saved?], the Christian community has no choice but to regard the Oneness movement as a whole as having departed from the Christian faith.
We must conclude, then, that the Oneness teaching is a heresy, that it denies a fundamental, basic belief of biblical Christianity, and that those churches and denominations which teach this heresy are actually pseudo-Christian sects. In popular Evangelical terminology, such a heretical sect is known as a "cult," a term which simply means that the group's beliefs are in some important respect non-Christian.
In this sense, we regretfully conclude that the Oneness churches are indeed cults, and we urge Christians to reach out to Oneness believers in love and share with them the triune God revealed in the Scriptures.
NOTES
l. On the history of Oneness Pentecostalism, see David Arthur Reed, "Origins and Development of the Theology of Oneness Pentecostalism in the United States," Ph.D. diss. (Boston, MA: Boston University Graduate School, 1978); and Oneness writer Frank J. Ewart, "The Phenomenon of Pentecost" (Houston: Herald Publishing House, 1947; rev. ed., Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 1975). Word Aflame Press (hereafter WAP) and Pentecostal Publishing House (hereafter PPH), both located in Hazelwood, are the official publishing houses of the United Pentecostal Church, the largest Oneness denomination in the world. Due to the brevity of this article, our analysis of Oneness Pentecostalism is largely restricted to the UPC.
2. David B. Barrett (ed.), "World Christian Encyclopedia" (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), p.837.
3. David K. Bernard, "The Oneness of God" (WAP, 1983), pp.321-322. This book is probably the best and most complete defense of the Oneness doctrine of God in print.
4. Bernard, op. cit., pp.257-258,287; Kenneth V. Reeves, "The Godhead" (Revised), 6th ed. (WAP, 1962), pp.26-28; John Paterson, "God in Christ Jesus" (WAP. 1966), p.40.
5. Bernard, op. cit., pp.142-143,288.
6. Reeves, op. cit., pp.24-26.
7. Philip Schaff, "The Creeds of Christendom" (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1983 reprint), Vol. III, pp.607-608.
8. Schaff, op. cit., Vol. II, p.67. An excellent line-by-line discussion of the creed is found in "Creeds, Councils and Christ," by Gerald Bray (Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 1984), pp.175-191.
9. Bernard, op. cit., pp.257-260; Reeves, op. cit., p.9.
10. See Bray, op. cit., pp.78-79,146-171.
11. Bray, op. cit., p.78.
12. Paterson, op. cit., p.12.
13. Albert Barnes, "Notes on the Old Testament Explanatory and Practical: Isaiah," Vol. I (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1950 reprint), p.193.
14. Benjamin Davidson, "The Analytical Hebrew and Chaldee Lexicon" (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 1981 reprint), pp.1-2.
15. For example, see R.C.H. Lenski, "The Interpretation of St. John's Gospel" (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1961), pp.759-761.
16. David Campbell, "All the Fullness" (WAP, 1975), p.43; John Paterson, "The Real Truth About Baptism in Jesus' Name" (PPH, 1953), p.16; Bernard, op. cit., pp.126,137.
17. F.F. Bruce, "The Gospel of John" (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1983), p.138.
18. Bernard, op. cit., pp.42-44.
19. (Pasadena, TX: Gordon Magee, n.d.).
20. Reed, op. cit., pp.97-103; Ewart, op. cit., (WAP ed.), pp.105-109.
21. Paterson, "The Real Truth," p.12.
22. The Corinthian Christians were predominantly Jews and God-fearing Greeks from the synagogue (Acts 18:1-8; cf. 1 Corinthians1:13).
23. F.F. Bruce, "The Spreading Flame" (Exeter, England: Paternoster Press, 1958), pp.240-241.
24. Space does not permit a discussion of the distinct personhood of the Holy Spirit. However, it is safe to say that, once persuaded of the fact that the Father and Son are two persons of an indivisible God, most will concede the truth of the Trinity. This writer has never yet encountered a "binarian."
25. William F. Arndt and F. Wilbur Gingrich, "A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature" (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), p.39.
26. Bernard, op. cit., p.184; Magee, op. cit., p.24.
27. Bernard, op. cit., p.186. 28. Bernard, op. cit., p.177.
29. Notably Adam Clarke; see David Campbell, "The Eternal Sonship" ("A Refutation According to Adam Clarke")(WAP, 1978). Walter Martin also rejects the eternal Sonship doctrine, while insisting on the eternal preexistence of the Word (Logos): see "The Kingdom of the Cults" (Minneapolis: Bethany House Publishers, 1985), pp.115-117.
30. J. Oliver Buswell, Jr., "A Systematic Theology of the Christian Religion" (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1962), Vol. I, pp.111-112.
31. Bernard, op. cit., pp.50,159-160; Magee, op. cit., p.23.
32. Bernard, op. cit., p.116.
33. Alan F. Johnson, "Revelation," in "The Expositor's Bible Commentary," edited by Frank E. Gaebelein, Vol.12 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1981), p.528.
34. Bernard, op. cit., pp.61,188.
35. In John 1:1 we have "pros ton theon", "with God," whereas in Hebrews 2:17 and 5:1 we have "ta pros ton theon", "the things {"ta"} having to do with God." The use of the neuter plural article "ta" changes the meaning of "pros."
36. Arndt and Gingrich, op. cit., p.615.
37. "Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion," edited by John T. McNeill, translated by Ford Lewis Battles; Library of Christian Classics (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), Vol. I, p.127 (I.xiii.5).
38. Calvin, op. cit., p.122 (I.xiii.2).
39. Bernard, op. cit., pp.17,19,244,299,319; Reeves, op. cit., p.23.
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