Oneness Word Games

 In his book All in the Name, Mark McNeil discusses a word game that his old Oneness Pentecostal pastor would play in an effort to "gotcha" Trinitarians over John 1:1:

My Oneness pastor would often explain this text by asking, "Who is your God?" If you answered, "The Trinity," he then read John 1:1, inserting the word "the Trinity" each time the word "God" appears... This reading is [apparently] problematic for Trinitarians since it suggests the Word is something other than or outside of the Trinity, yet at the same time, identical to the Trinity. If we say, on the other hand, that the Word (or Son) was with the Father thereby interpreting the first use of "God" as a reference to the Father, he then suggested [that the Word or Son was the Father]....The Oneness solution is that the Word is simply an aspect of God, the divine plan or thought, and therefore can be said, rather poetically, to be with God but, at the same time, is, as an aspect of God, God. {pp. 65-66}

There is a problem here. I should say that, before addressing my thought on this, Mr. McNeil does a fine job of answering this in his book. I would add this comment: what is sauce for the goose becomes sauce for the gander. That is to say, I notice some equivocation in the Oneness explanation which is not allowed for the Trinitarians. After all, I could simply substitute "Jesus" for "God", as the Oneness Pentecostals do in claiming that Jesus is the one true name of the one true God. Now the Word is with (outside of, per their reading of "The Trinity") Jesus, and the Word is Jesus. If we allow the "poetic" reading, that "The Word" is Jesus divine plan, and yet that this divine plan is in some sense Jesus (e.g. we pivot to, say, the Incarnation). This is a neat interpretation, but it requires use to ask, as a former US President asked, what the meaning of the word "is" is.

As C.S. Lewis notes, there are different uses of the word "is," and they are not all equivalent. To say that God is love is not the same as to same that love is God--and indeed, the latter interpretation can have some rather disastrous effects. I would agree with the Oneness statement that the Incarnation "is" God, in that in Jesus Christ we have two natures--one human, one divine--which are united. Thus, Jesus is God. However, it is an entirely different use of the word "is" to say that the Incarnation was with God from the beginning, or to say that God was ("is" past tense) incarnate with a body and human nature from the beginning* (and, we know that Jesus' body changed in time, as He was born, grew, was tormented, dies, was resurrected). If we mean instead that this plan "is" with (outside of) God from the beginning, but also "is" God in the second sense (that is, God is present in the Incarnation), we have to the ask why "The Word" (divine plan) took on flesh and dwelt among us, as opposed to simply saying that "God took on flesh and dwelt among us." In some sense, this latter interpretation is what the Arians and semi-Arians were claiming.

It follows that there is no reason to force an interpretation which says that "with" means outside of (the Trinity), or alternatively that the second use of God must be identified with the first. After all, the Oneness solution requires that we equivocate on the meaning of "is." We could as easily read this to mean, "The Word was with [the other Persons of] the Trinity, and the Word was [a Person of] the Trinity," or "The Word was with God [the Father], and the Word was God [the Son]."

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*We would say here that God united his divine nature to human nature: rather than gaining or adding to His nature a human one, he instead added/united His divine nature to a human one so that a man has now also a divine nature.

The Fruit of Heresy Is More Heresy

One fruit of heresy is more heresy. Catholic apologists have for some time--decades, at least--been noting that the doctrine of the Trinity is not found in the Bible. By this, what is largely meant is that neither the word "Trinity" nor the understanding of the doctrine is to be found in the Bible alone: the Bible certainly points to it, supports it (and does not contradict it), and this is a "right reading" of the Bible. However, it is not self-evident from the Bible without the benefit of either hindsight or holy guidance. Now, as a Catholic, I do (or at least should!) read the Bible in the light of guidance from the Holy Spirit speaking through the Church and Tradition. Many Protestant exegetes would contend that we should of course consider guidance form the Church Fathers and maybe even some early councils, but these are no infallible (the Catholic or Orthodox might agree with the former but not the latter assessment).

Thus, it comes as no surprise that some Protestant (or even post-Protestant) sects end up rejecting even what may be called "Mere Christianity" or "Christian orthodoxy": some things which Protestants take for granted as being supported by Sola Sciptura had to be uncovered and developed over centuries.

The doctrine of the Trinity is one such thing. The idea of three distinct persons being one God, all coequal, coeternal, of one substance and of one being without confusion developed over several centuries. It makes the most "sense" out of the "data" (e.g. what has been revealed to us), but it had to develop, often by way of negation (e.g. by rejecting and responding to incorrect interpretations of what we find in the Scriptures). Thus, the Church had to contend with modalism on the one side (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not different persons but instead different "modes" of existence or revelation of the one God) and Arianism soon after on the other (the Son and the Holy Spirit are not God in the fullest sense, not coequal or coeternal with God the Father).

While I reject the theology of the Oneness movement, I acknowledge that it is a very logical result of embracing Sola Scriptura and rejecting all outside/historical interpretations of Scripture (excepting of course the local Oneness pastor's, of course). It is also, alas, looking to become the next big Challenge for the Church to confront from within Christianity.

The Mute Speaking in Tongues

Speaking in tongues is a possible charism* which we may receive from the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, though as St. Paul says, it is not given to all but to some. Pentecostals in general, and "Oneness" Pentecostals** in particular, seem to have latched onto this one gift and made it the ultimate sign of the working of the Spirit, to the extent that it seems to have become a major point in their theology that this is a necessary sign of a believer's salvation.

I have a few thoughts on this, but there is one that is in a sense wanting to be written down, even if in a disorganized manner. This is the problem of mute (and, I suppose, deaf) people's speaking in tongues. There is a distinction made (by Pentecostals and other Charismatics alike) between glossolalia and xenoglossia/xenolalia, with the former being maybe more correctly interpreted as "ecstatic utterance."

Back to deaf and mute people: how can either practice "speaking in tongues?" I have seen the answer returned that this could involve simply making "gibberish sounds" or "speaking in tongue via signing." This seems a reasonable interpretation, but on the other hand, it seems to me that there is something just "off" from this explanation. I can't put words to it (ironic, I know), but there seems to me to be a problem in all this: perhaps that, if "signing" is a form of speaking in tongues, it just seems odd to me that only the deaf and the mute would be moved to this, that those who can speak normally speak aloud (or quietly in their heads) in tongues, but do not seem to sign in tongues as well.

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*The gifts of the Holy Spirit include: counsel, piety, knowledge, understanding, wisdom, fortitude, and fear of the Lord. I'm using the word gift or charism here in the sense of 1 Corinthians 12:4-11. Perhaps "charism" is a better term here than gift, therefore.

**Other Pentecostals, such as Assemblies of God, do not take this to necessarily be a requisite for salvation, though they still emphasize it.

Three Errors About the Trinity

 The stated belief of most Christians is that God is a Trinity: three distinct persons united as one God. Thus, the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. The Father is not the Son, the Sone is not the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit is not the Father (nor vice-verse). Catholics would add that this is a mystery: we can know that this is true, it has been revealed to us as true through Tradition and the Church's teaching authority. Most other Christians--C.S. Lewis' "Mere Christians" (whether Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican, or other ecclesial communities) would agree with these ideas; they might say with Peter Kreeft that while we cannot fully understand the Trinity, it makes the most sense out of the data (truths about God revealed to us, e.g. in Scripture).

There are, nonetheless, several errors about the Trinity, a few of which have appeared in one form or another as being among the larger and more widespread or pernicious of heresies. I want to mention three such errors in this post.

The first error is that the Trinity is a belief in three different Gods. Thus, a form of polytheism. This error would make God less than all-powerful, all-good, and all-knowing, as the three Gods might strive against each other: a three-person version of the early Gnostic and Manichaen heresies. I don't think that this error is especially common in a formal sense (it quickly becomes untenable), but it may be materially present in the ways that many Christians (Catholic or otherwise) interact with God practically.

The second error is that there are not indeed three persons, but only three modalities, three ways in which God presents Himself to us (or, more insidiously--three ways in which God has presented Himself to us...so far!). This error is Modalism or Sabellianism (the latter named after the third-century bishop who taught this idea, largely in response to other errors of his day). Modern days "Oneness" Pentecostals embrace a version of this error, and it perhaps will be making its way through the "Holiness" Pentecostal ranks by contact osmosis. Pentecostalism is one of the fastest growing Christian sects, and Oneness Pentecostals are themselves growing rapidly as a sect. Among other things, they teach that Jesus is God's name, and that Father, Son, Holy Spirit are different offices of the one God named Jesus*; this is analogous to how most Mere Christians would consider God as Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. As a consequence, the Oneness Pentecostals do not baptize using a Trinitarian formula ("I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit"). 

The third error is related to the first: there are three divine persons, but they are not coequal. Hence, the Father might be greater than the Son and the Spirit. All three are divine and participate in being God, but not all three to an equal degree. The pagan Plotinus taught a version of this in conceiving of a divine trinity, and one of the great heresies--Arianism and its offshoots--likewise allowed for Christ to be divine yet lesser that the Father.

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*It seems odd to me that God's "true" name means "YHWH is Salvation" or "God is Deliverance," since this means that God's true name (and hence nature) is thus dependent on the existence of an other to save.