What, precisely, is “modalism”, and what, if anything, is wrong with it? I find the theological and historical literature to be depressingly unclear about this. Why? Partly it’s the sparseness and obscurity of the original sources. Partly it’s the habit of simply repeating the same lore over and over, couched in the same (sometimes unhelpful) terms, starring the same (not too well drawn) heroes and villains. Partly it’s just good old-fashioned intellectual lazines. In this series of posts, I’ll explore these issues; this first installment is an attempt to define “modalism” about the Trinity, and a shot at classifying some varieties of it.
In past writings, both in print and here online, I’ve described “modalism” as the view that God just is the Father just is the Son just is the Holy Spirit - that is, that those are four names for one and the same entity, the one divine person.
I now think that’s on the right track, but I wonder if it this is not the best way to characterize modalism in general. “Modalism” is often explained as the view that the Persons of the Trinity are mere “modes of” God, and it seems a necessary truth that no mode of a thing is identical to that thing (doctrine of divine simplicity notwithstanding - but please, let’s save that big can of worms for later). Thus, my being cold, or my pretending to be Santa Claus, aren’t identical to me, the entity which has the condition of being cold, or which acts in the manner of Santa. The modalist may want to say not that all four of those terms co-refer, but that some refer to the one God, whilst others refer to modes of that God.
Now the thought behind my earlier definition was that if you refer to a mode, you thereby, indirectly, refer to that thing to which that mode belongs, i.e. to that which it is a mode of. If that is so, then a modalist would indeed hold that all four terms refer (directly or indirectly, via a mode) to the same thing, God. Perhaps a better way of defining modalism is this: the modalist holds that if you use all of these terms: “God”, “Father”, “Son”, and “Holy Spirit”, you’ve referred to one and only one person, that person which is identical to the one God. One or more of these terms may name the divine Person himself, while the others refer to modes of that same person.
Thus, a modalist may say that “God” and “Father” are two names for the one God, while “the Son” and “the Holy Spirit” are names for ways in which that one God acts, or for personae he adopts. Or a modalist may say that “God” names the one deity, and the other three terms refer to his modes (ways of being). Or a modalist may say that those four terms are so many names for God. My previous definition made it sound as if all modalists were of this last type, but clearly, the earlier two would be modalists as well.
To put it ontologically rather than linguistically, the modalist is someone who takes some or all of the persons of the Trinity to be modes of the one God, the other(s) being identical to God. Thus, perhaps a modalist will say that the Father just is (is identical to) God, while the Son and Holy Spirit are only modes, i.e. ways in which God/The Father lives, acts, or appears. To put it in the plainest possible language, the modalist says - about one or more of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit - that it (they) ain’t “in God”, unless by “in God” means being either numerically identical to God or a mode of God.
Suppose Jan is grumpy in the morning, happy in the afternoon, and sad in the evening. Her family, let’s suppose, have taken to using the names “Grumpy Jan”, “Happy Jan”, and “Sad Jan”. Now if these three terms refer to modes, clearly, they refer to different modes. But if we take them to refer (whether directly or indirectly) to persons, then clearly, they refer to one and the same person. Probably, Jan can’t play more than one role at once. But she has a brother, named Phil. Sometimes, Phil is funny. Sometimes, he stinks. And sometimes, Phil talks loudly. Accordingly, his family has taken to calling him, at different times, Funny Phil, Stinky Phil, and Loud Phil. Note that none of these modes of Phil are contrary; at least in principle, he could exist in all three of those ways at once. For example, after not bathing for a week, he made loudly tell a hilarious joke.
This brings us to another crucial ambiguity in talk of “modalism”. Often, as here, “modalism” is thought of as the claim that first, God exists as Father, then he stops doing that and starts existing as Son, and then after doing that a while, he exists as Holy Spirit. This view is “refuted” with a simple proof-text that shows the Three together at one time, at Jesus’ baptism. One gets the impression here, that orthodox trinitarianism is simply what one could call eternally concurrent modalism - the view that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are modes of the one God, but modes which God eternally or everlastingly enjoys.
It seems to me that we need some analysis, and some more descriptive names. Here’s a proposal. Modalism is defined as above, and any modalistic theory will fit into one of the three following categories.
At the other extreme, we have
Then in the middle, as it were,
Let me makes some comments on the suggested scheme.
First, none of these are single theories, but rather, families of modalistic theories. For example, a variant of the first might be what is often attributed to some ancient modalists: the in Old Testament times God existed as Father, during the earthly ministry of Jesus God existed as Son, and since Pentecost, God exists as Holy Spirit. Or it might be (for example) the view that every Monday through Wednesday, God exists as Father, then Thursday and Friday as Son, and he acts as Holy Spirit only on the weekends. As to the second, we haven’t yet said what these eternal modes are - just the Son and Holy Spirit, or are there three modes of God - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And there would be infinite varieties of the third view, depending on which modes are said to overlap when.
Second, all of these views may understand God’s “modes” to be or involve God’s having certain intrinsic features; modes needn’t be ways in which God appears. Saying that modes involve God’s having intrinsic features, of course, comes at a price. For instance, it seems to me that strict believers in divine eternity, understood as timelessness, could consistently hold only the second view, if they take modes to involve God’s having intrinsic features. And the orthodox might argue against the first and third views, understood as attributing intrinsic features to God, as follows: God is eternal/timeless, but on a modalist theory of the first or third kind, God is temporal, hence, those kinds of modalism are false. Those theories would make God temporal by attributing to him properties of being or acting a certain way at and through times. Modalists of the second kind who hold that all three modes are timelessly enjoyed by God would escape this objection.
Third, it is not easy to separate some of what are supposed to be orthodox theories of trinitarianism from the second kind of modalism, eternally concurrent modalism. One might think - what else are the Persons of the Trinity if not ways God eternally lives? Good question - but we won’t answer it here.
Sometimes modalism is cast, as here, as the view that “God’s threeness” is in appearance only, rather than in God’s own nature. Thus, this sort of “modalist” thinks that God only appears to be three Persons, but is in fact one Person. Here, the “modes” aren’t God’s being a certain way, that is, of his having certain intrinsic properties, but only of his appearing to creatures a certain way. I suggest that we could borrow some terms from Kant, and call this “phenomenal” modalism, and it it could conceivably come in any of the three varieties above. (The second kind of modalism could be phenomenal only if eternally or omnitemporally, there were creatures to be the subjects of these illusory misperceptions of God.) If a traditionalist casts “modalism” in this way, then she has a built-in answer to what separates her view that “God eternally exists as three Persons” from “modalism” - the latter takes these Persons to be mere appearances, but for her, the Persons are three ways that God really is. But if a modalist is rather what we could call (again stealing and adapting Kant’s terms) a “noumenal modalist”, who takes these modes to be ways that God is, then it is less clear what the orthodox refutation should be.
We can sum up our findings thus far as follows. Varieties of modalism “reduces” one or more members of the Trinity to either God (that is, to being identical to God) or one of God’s modes. But “modes” as opposed to what? Is the problem that they’re mistaking multiple persons for different modes of one person? Or is the problem that they’re taking the divine persons to be ways God appears, as opposed to how God really is in himself? Or is the problem simply that they hold that the persons never overlap in time, or never act simultaneously? We should distinguish noumenal from phenomenal modalism, and realize that in principle, both kinds can be sequential, eternally concurrent, or partially overlapping. My suggestion, then, is that kinds of “modalism” can all be sorted into the following six categories.
Kinds of modalism about the Trinity
| Â | phenomenal | noumenal |
| sequential | 1 | 2 |
| concurrent | 3 | 4 |
| partially overlapping | 5 | 6 |
We could call this last variant, “full modalism” or “FSH modalism”, and I think often, in discussions of “modalism”, only these kinds are meant. But clearly, it is possible to be a modalist about, say, only the Holy Spirit. And I’d say that some of the ancients who are usually called “Arians” or “subordinationists”, are FH modalists, of either type 4 or 6. That is, they’d say that God just is the Father, and the the Holy Spirit is, as it were, God in action.
This is philosophy, people: answering questions only raises more questions! ( 
or maybe rather, 
) To wit:
You philosophers & theologians out there - What say you? I’m going to hold off a while on the next post in this series, so that everyone has a chance to jump into the discussion.
Comments 11
First, let me thank you for this ongoing introduction/analysis of the issues and possible accounts of the Trinity.
I want to express my doubt about the noumenal/phenomenal distinction, or my problems with it.
First about this sentence: “The second kind of modalism could be phenomenal only if eternally or omnitemporally, there were creatures to be the subjects of these illusory misperceptions of God.”
Why would appearing in specific way be illusion? We can imagine three people.. one able to touch a pear, one able to see a pear, and one able to taste a pear. It seems to me that none of those would be misperception.
One option is to say that it is not misperception because it is the property of the pear to feel to touch the way it feels to the first person, the pear really looks the way it looks to the second person, and the pear really tastes the way it tastes to the third person, and say it is not a misperception in this case as we the modalities are noumenal and not phenomenal.
But what does “feels to touch” means if there is no being who can touch it, what does it mean to “look some way” if there is no being with possibility to look/observe, and what does it mean that “it tastes some way” unconnected to the being with possibility to taste?
Even appearing in general, seems to me, fails into meaninglessness if we try to remove implicated relation in the term “appear” - that there is other to which the thing appears, and which is as important in the relation of appearance, as the thing which appears.
We can similarly take the noumenal modalism (in the case of maximally overlapping modalism), and ask if there are three modes of/in the thing itself, how do we know about those three, if they didn’t appear to us as different, hence connect to the phenomenal modalism.
Posted 03 Jul 2006 at 2:42 pm ¶Hi Tanasije,
Thanks for reading and commenting!
My thought behind the phenomenal / noumenal distinction was that some modalism is metaphysically “shallow”, only making claims about how God appears. Other modalists, though, are making metaphysically “deep” claims - God really does act/live in those ways.
So by phenomenal, I perhaps should have said “merely phenomenal”. You’re of course right that not all perception is illusory. If a thing appears to me to be 8 meters long, that may be because my faculties are properly functioning, and it really is 8 meters long.
You’re also right to think that it makes sense to attribute dispositional properties to an object. Perhaps there’s a single property of the pear, because of which it appears green to you and I, and orange to visiting space aliens (who have different eyes).
One could take God’s modes to be dispositions to appear as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then, those modes could be everlasting, even though creatures are not. I think some trinitarians think of them as ways God relates primarily to himself…
I also have to agree - we’d never have grounds for attributing three modes to God unless God appeared in three different ways to various folks among us.
So both kinds - phenomenal and noumenal modalists - will believe that God has appeared in various ways. But only the noumenal modalists will hold that by knowing of these appearances, we know something about how God is (as Kant would say) “in himself”.
There’s an interesting tension here. If one sticks to the phenomena, one will be accused of heresy. However, if one takes the phenomena to reveal how God really is, then one will be accused of heresy, in some circles, on the grounds that no human can grasp how God is, but only, that he is.
D
Posted 06 Jul 2006 at 2:05 pm ¶I have a question that is related to modes. I wonder if one individual can have different flows of consciousness. I’m not sure how to put this in terms of different subjects of consciousness, because I’m not sure whether it’s possible to have one subject but different flows within that subject, only one of which can be accessed at the time or whether two flows of consciousness entail two subjects of consciousness.
I wouldn’t think this is possible but the split-brain cases involve different processing channels (e.g., the left hemisphere can communicate via external motion to the right hemisphere). In addition, some of the reports of multiple personalities sound like there are different flows of consciousness, although I’m not sure what to make of these reports.
My background idea is this. I’m told God and Jesus have conversations and have different thoughts. This suggests that they have different flows of consciousness. I wonder if this is enough to show that they are different individuals. The tie-in here is that a flow of consciousness seems to be mode-like attribute.
Posted 07 Jul 2006 at 4:04 pm ¶I have another question, I’m not sure it’s appropriate to this section, but I’ll ask it anyway. If Jesus is divine and distinct from God, why isn’t Christianity a polytheistic religion?
Posted 07 Jul 2006 at 4:37 pm ¶Is Christianity polytheistic? There will be later postings (probably a number of them) devoted to this, so I’ll just give the cheapo, off-the-shelf answer.
No, it isn’t supposed to be. Jesus isn’t the same person as his Father, but he is the same God as his Father.
Don’t like that answer? Stay tuned…
Dale
Posted 10 Jul 2006 at 3:52 pm ¶Hi Objectivist!
I’ll give a more serious answer to this one. It is quite metaphysically loaded, but it will explain one reason why I don’t think split brain cases are of help in theorizing about the Trinity.
I think it is a category mistake to think of a “person” as a personality, or as any series of events. Persons or selves are (by the meaning of the term) entities or substances, things which can last through time. Thus, when I read of a split brain experiment, I’m not tempted to think of each “center of consciousness” as a person. I’d want to say that what he have is a single malfunctioning person, one which can think in several manners or ways, and in so doing now fails to be aware of other things it is doing and thinking.
Still, suppose that split brain experiments do result in multiple persons. Maybe, there were already multiple persons acting in a coordinated way, and the surgery merely frees them to act independently. Or maybe, the surgery annihilates the original person, and creates three new ones. Or maybe, the original person remains, but now the surgery has brought into existence two other, newly-minted persons. I don’t see how any of this could help trinitarian theorizing…
But maybe your thought was this: split brain experiements show that FSH-modalism ain’t so bad.
Suppose Ann Coulter has her brain split, and as a result she now sports three “centers of consciousness” - call ‘em Rush Limbaugh, Satan, and Church Lady. She remains one substance/entity, and if a “person” is a type of entity, then she remains one person as well. Now, though, there are three things within her which are quasi-persons - they can be different from one another, act independently, and be morally responsible, say, for calling Ted Kennedy a pinhead.
Now God, like the tin man, doesn’t have a brain, and unlike the tin man, doesn’t need one. So he can’t get his brain split. But, so this line of thinking goes, he, like Split-Ann sports three “centers of consciousness”, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is plainly a kind of modalism, but is it not also orthodox and even plausible trinitarianism as well?
I don’t think so. Go back to Ann. Church Lady and Satan do not like each other. They fight all the time. Rush and the Church Lady, though, get on all right. But what are we to make of these “relationships”? This is a sad specter of a single malfunctioning person, right? If Rush and the Church Lady “fell it love”, we wouldn’t be happy for them - we’d just fell sorry for Ann.
Back to God. It’s hard to see how the suggested model would give us a believable or attractive conception of the personal relationship between the Father and the Son that is portrayed in the New Testament. “God is like a brain trauma victim!” - just doesn’t do it for me, as it seems that the Father-Son friendship would be a sham relationship, and not a real one.
We’ll have to return to this, of course, when I get around to reviewing Trenton Merricks’ interesting paper on this theme.
Dale
Posted 10 Jul 2006 at 4:14 pm ¶Dear Dale:
I agree that persons are concrete particulars and not events. However, I still don’t see how this solves the split brain case as we’ve now split one concrete particular into two. Let us assume we take one half and transplant it in a body located in Australia and another is located in Nebraska (the former is luckier). Now assuming the two brains or minds act independently, it looks to me like we have two where previously we had one mind we now have two. I suspect you agree with me here (let us leave aside whether the two are new or whether one persisted).
It may be that split-brain theories don’t apply to God (I have my doubts whether a concrete particular can occur outside of space - but I probably need to think about it more). I would argue that any concrete particular that exists in space can be split.
I take it you hold the following conclusions. I might be misreading you. If so, I apologize.
(1) Jesus is not the same person as the Father
(2) Jesus is the same God as the Father.
How is this possible?
Anyway, your site is excellent. I sent the address to my brother so we can discuss it.
Posted 10 Jul 2006 at 5:27 pm ¶Hi Objectivist,
I don’t see how split brain cases are relevant to God, except to motivate the idea that “centers of consciousness” are good enough for the separateness of the three - i.e. that quasi-persons and not persons are all that’s required.
I affirm 1 (Leibniz’s Law), and deny 2. In my view, if 2 were true, then 1 would have to be false. I think this topic deserves a fuller treatment, so I’ll have to give a raincheck, untill we get into the NT basis for the doctrine, and into the issue of polytheism, which isn’t quite as cut and dried as philosophers tend to assume.
Posted 11 Jul 2006 at 2:09 pm ¶Why is it so difficult for you to accept that God is one God existing in three separate persons, called THE GODHEAD? Even Jesus Himself was explaining the Godhead, when He gave His last Commandment to His Disciples in Matthew 28. There are so many examples in the Scriptures where it talks about the Godhead as being three separate beings that can have interaction with others, and each have a distinct job to do. Such as at Jesus’ Baptism, where we hear the voice of God the Father speaking to God, the Son, and we can see part of the personality of God the Spirit in the form of a dove. Again, when Jesus, the Son was in the garden praying, He was NOT praying to Himself, but to His Father, when He asks His Father (God) to please let the cup pass by Him. Or when Jesus Himself is on the cross cries out to His Father and ask the Father why has he Forsaken Him? If God existed in only modes of one person, how then can there be more than one mode being expressed at one time? There cannot be…. therefore.. the only explaination of the Godhead is as Tertullian called it THE Trinity or Tri-Unity or the Latin word for Trinitas as Three Persons in one essence… God! This is definitely a Monotheistic belief, if it were not it would be called Tritheism. However; Christians all over the world would deny that in the Godhead exists three separate Gods. But they would say there are three separate beings in one essence.. God. And all three beings exist at one time and are No Less God than any of the others. I like to give the example of an apple. Three parts, but one, Apple!!
Posted 07 Nov 2007 at 6:38 am ¶Hi Gretchen - thanks for your comments. Despite your apple analogy at the end (which I assume you’ll admit isn’t a very good analogy, as the mainstream tradition denies that the Persons are parts of God), I take it that you’re a FSH modalist - for you, each “person” of the Trinity is no more or less than a way in which God lives, or maybe a way in which he interacts. Is this right? If so, what do think of my theological objections to modalism about the Son, here?
Best,
Posted 07 Nov 2007 at 4:05 pm ¶Dale
Here is what I used to believe:
I used to believe there was one God. He sometimes is called Father, sometimes called Jesus, and sometimes called the Holy Spirit. And sometimes called all at the same time. In addition to existing outside of space / time he entered our world in physical form into a specific time as Jesus. In addition to his physical form he is simultaneously in all things in our time / reality while also being beyond time. I used to think the Trinity meant God manifesting himself simultaneously as God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit. I largely understood Father, Son, and Holy Spirit at Titles (as opposed to names). I also understood everything in terms of manifestations (Like Ice, Liquid Water, and Steam are all manifestations of H2O) I have never before had a problem with thinking God could manifest himself in all three forms at the same time. (In fact, I often wondered whether there are other forms we will never know about).
To summarize: To me it’s been Titles (instead of Names) and Forms (instead of Modes). There is a prophecy in Isaiah about Jesus with a whole bunch of additional names (Redeemer, Father, etc).
That’s what I used to believe until in discussion with someone I realized that’s not what the Trinity is supposed to be.
So - what was it I was believing?
As to what I believe now — I don’t honestly know.
Posted 26 Nov 2007 at 5:32 pm ¶Trackbacks & Pingbacks 18
[...] In my last post, I tried to answer the quesion “What is modalism about the Trinity?” The basic idea is that there are things, and there are modes of things, or ways those things are. The upshot was that there are many possible kinds of modalism. The main questions any modalist has to answer, in order to disambiguate her position, are: [...]
[...] Here’s an argument against any form of modalism about the Son, which says that the Son just is, or is a mode of God, or of the Father. The following objection would apply, then, to any form of modalism which affirms one of these claims. So it would apply to a modalism which says that only the Son is a mode of God, or to (as I understand it) historical Sabellianism, and to any form of what I called FSH-modalism in a previous post. I’ll put the objection in terms of the Son being a mode of God, but I think the argument works the same way if you substitute “Father” for “God”. [...]
[...] Get it? The phrase “in the name of” just means “in the authority of” or “on behalf of”. If you ask what that name is, that just shows that you don’t understand the sentence. Why isn’t this more widely acknowledged? My guess is that some want to mine the passage for a trinitarian argument - i.e. since it says “name” and not “names”, this shows that the three “are” the one God. But that argument also misreads the passage, and is thus worthless. The passage is neutral about whether or not the three are in various senses “one”. In this piece Sanders uses the term “modalism” for the UPC doctrine, by which he means what I would call either partially overlapping FS modalism - the idea is that God exists as Father, and at the Incarnation, he starts also existing as Son - or just non-eternal S modalism, if they want to simply identify God and the Father, rather than saying that the Father is a mode of God. I’m not to clear about which the (most clear headed) UPC theologians want to say, but I’m guessing the former. Sanders says, “The Son of God,†for Oneness Pentecostalism, is the new mode of existence that the one God entered into in the incarnation. This brings up the most obvious question that trinitarians want to ask Oneness Pentecostals: [...]
[...] Schwarz is saying, then, that God is (numerically identical to) one divine, personal being. And this one being appears in three ways. We have direct access only to to these appearances, and not to how God is in himself. (cf. p. 10) The terms “Father”, “Son”, and “Holy Spirit” refer to the three ways God relates to us (pp. 8, 9, 12), and through these appearances, God reveals “his own nature.” (p. 8 ) In short, he holds to some form of what I call FSH-modalism. (He doesn’t say enough to get more specific than that.) [...]
[...] The polemical label slapdown is more than lazy, though. It’s way of lumping your opponents together so you can heap scorn on them whilst ignoring important differences between them. It’s sort of like Rush Limbaugh calling Hilary Clinton, Chairman Mao, and Michael Moore “communists”. As I’ve pointed out, a lot of different views go by the name “Sabellian” or “Monarchian” or “modalism” (used in the traditional heresy-labelling way). Same thing with the term “Arian”; often, the term is slapped on any theology that posits any sort of priority or difference among members of the Trinity. This is simply confused and confusing. I also think there’s also something inherently disrespectful about it. [...]
[...] Basically, Pugliese argues “no, he isn’t” if we understand “modalism” to mean “Sabellianism”, as historically denounced by the Catholic church. What’s supposed to get Rahner off the hook, basically, is that he isn’t what I call a phenomenal modalist; he instead holds that the three “persons” are so many ways that God eternally lives, or in Rahner’s jargon, three “distinct manners of [God’s] subsisting”. (quote on p. 239) God is one person “in the modern sense”, that is, a one thinking thing/substance, but God contains three persons in the ancient sense, as Pugliese says, “more [the idea of] a role acted, or mask used, in a play.” (p. 239) In Rahner’s words, “the Father, Son, and Spirit are the one God each in a different manner of subsisting…” (quoted on p. 243) Yeah, that sounds like modalism, just not the Sabellian kind - neither serial nor phenomenal, but rather noumenal, maxmimally overlapping FSH modalism - type 4 on my chart here. And he also holds that each of the modes is essential to God. [...]
[...] Is she a modalist? Yes, pretty clearly so, specifically, an eternally concurrent noumenal FSH modalist. To her credit, she stands up and says pretty clearly and concisely what others only think, or assert and then withdraw. In her own words, Unity of essence or substance means that the three Persons of the Trinity are the very same thing or concrete substance in three modes or forms of presentation. They are like three distinct appearances of the same thing from different angles, although here such appearances are objective and lasting, unlike the transient effects of perspective, and although here the whole is presented differently and not just one side or part becoming visible from a particular point of view. The very same thing is therefore found repeated in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, although none of these Persons is to be identified with any other: the Father is all that the Son is except the Son is not the Father, etc. The three therefore co-inhere, they are in one another, in virtue of this same essence or substance reappearing in them in different modes of existence. (pp. 38-9) [...]
[...] Note Lash’s all-too-common move - it’s OK, because it ain’t Sabellianism. (What I call sequential modalism.) His motivation is also interesting; the idea is that we either go for (non-Sabellian) modalism, or we’re stuck with tritheism. [...]
[...] Note Lash’s all-too-common move - it’s OK, because it ain’t Sabellianism (aka sequential modalism). [...]
[...] What, precisely, is the objection to Sabellius’ “diseased theory”? (i.e. Serial FSH modalism.) Is it this? [...]
[...] Wow. That’s straight up modalism, presumably noumenal, concurrent FSH modalism. To be most specific, each divine “person” is identified with a (timeless?) event, with God’s having a certain property - being a real thing (Father), being articulate (Son), and being alive (Spirit). The classic Muslim objection to trinitarianism is that it is simply a kind of polytheism. Note how neatly this move beats that objection! There’s only one God, only one divine Person here, who has three properties. This “victory” comes, though, at a heavy price. A couple of comments. First, I haven’t traced this modalistic move to its earliest known source in Christian-Muslim interaction, but I strongly suspect that it didn’t start with Paul of Antioch. I believe it may go back as early as some time in the 800s. Maybe I’ll post on that when I find it. Could it be that for hundreds of years, this is the best that many Christian apologists could come up with? I’m assuming that this was how they really understood the doctrine, and was not merely a convenient, temporary “spin” on it, adopted for polemical purposes. (Could be wrong, but this seems the safest course in the absence of contrary information.) Second, to my knowledge, this spin on the Trinity doctrine was never decried as heresy, in either Western or Eastern Christianity. Actually, it seems very close to, though genuinely different than, mainstream thinking. Surely, Augustine’s many analogies in his On the Trinity had some influence here. Third, Christians still jump to, or expose their allegiance to, various forms of modalism when interacting with Muslims. My next post will be on a contemporary example of this. [...]
[...] Last time we looked at an exchange between Christian and Muslim apologists in the early 14th century, in which the Christian side, under pressure from longstanding Muslim accusations of polytheism, spells out the doctrine of the Trinity in a plainly modalistic way. This practice is ongoing, as we’ll see. [...]
[...] Some statements which seem to imply something like eternally concurrent noumenal S- or FSH modalism. “To say ‘Jesus is Lord’ is the New Testament way of declaring the deity of Jesus Christ - of affirming his essential oneness with the Father.” (62) “…Jesus our Redeemer - is of the same essence as the Father. We are not talking about two different gods. We are talking about only one God, but this one God has forever known himself as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” (65, italics are original emphasis) [...]
[...] This definition / mini-lecture is unhelpfully metaphorical (”blurring or erasing”). Worse, it treats it as a matter of degree - as if “modalism” were not a claim or set of claims, but was rather some quality to some degree or other had by various writings. Worse, it seems to embody the error, common in theology, of thinking of modalism as simply phenomenal and/or serial modalism. This is confirmed, when he sort of defends Barth against the charge: In fact, [for Barth] God is eternally the Father, eternally the Son, and eternally the Spirit… Barth certainly does not consider himself to be a modalist. This is clear again when he firmly opposes any refusal to see that God’s self-revelation grants us access to God himself. (289) [...]
[...] seems to reduce to classical modalism.” (587) Well no, gents, not Sabellianism, but rather another kind of modalism, where the persons are eternal, intrinsic properties or aspects of [...]
[...] “modalism” isn’t some one theory, but it is rather a whole family of theories. We have to say what is a mode of what, and also what we mean by “mode”. So I talk [...]
[...] Mr. Whitt is treating Trinitarians as abecedarians by stating “its very simple”, and associating the Trinity to an Abbot and Costtello, or musical chair caricature. The Trinity has been debated since the beginning of the church, so his point is not as simple as Eph 4:4-7 proving the Trinity inferior. I want to point out that the Oneness position has had its troubles defining itself through the course of church history. It is not a homogeneous movement in its view historically, nor theoretically (trinties.org). [...]
[...] that the three modes are not held to be “intrinsic to God’s nature”. On that, see here, here, and here. Again, they complain that the new PC formulas employ “words of [...]
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