trinities

Below are some more comments on Fred Sanders’ piece. Here is Part 1.

After pointing out that Oneness people have a hard time interpreting passages relating to the pre-existence of the Son, Sanders gets theological:

The fundamental problem of all forms of modalism is this: if God, in order to reveal Himself, becomes something other than what He is, then he has not revealed Himself but has revealed something else. In this case, if God emerges from a state of being a non-modal and non-interpersonal being to become a modal, interpersonal being in the story of Jesus, then He has not revealed His true non-modal, non-interpersonal self. He has revealed instead a Father-God who has interpersonal fellowship with Himself in the modal person of the incarnate God, Jesus Christ. But according to Oneness theology, that interpersonal fellowship of Father and Son is precisely the thing He is not. So the unipersonal God attempts to reveal Himself but instead reveals an interpersonal divine being. The early Christians recognized this dilemma and solved it by confessing that if God reveals Himself to us by showing Himself to have a Son, then He must always have had a Son to show us in the fullness of time. Modalists, including Oneness Pentecostals, should face the unpleasant implication that their view makes God reveal Himself as that which He is not. Such a revelation, by its nature, cannot be true.

I don’t believe that Sanders’ diagnosis is correct. Suppose that the Son is a new mode of God. So long as the Son accurately represents God’s character by his life and teaching, then that Son can be the revelation of how God really is; that is, God can reveal how he really is by acting in this new Son-mode. An analogy: an adept actor may reveal to us how he really is by playing roles that represent aspects of his character. Sanders’ idea, if I understand him, is that if the oneness theory were true, God would have given a pretty misleading revelation of himself in Jesus, who went around praying to God, as if God were someone else. Well, OK, but there’s no conceptual difficulty for modalism per se here. Modalists may, but needn’t, claim that the modes don’t convey how God really is. In short, modalists needn’t be phenomenal modalists. A modalist can even say (contrary to UPCI theology, of course) that the three modes are essential to God, and are not mere appearances, but three ways he eternally lives, his nature requiring precisely those three ways of acting or self-relating.

Further on, Sanders observes:

Some of the advanced work going on at the UPCI’s Urshan Graduate School of Theology already shows signs of moving toward real change in the direction of orthodoxy. Some scholars there are explicitly embracing the ancient Chalcedonian doctrine of the two natures of Christ, which is no small feat for Oneness people. If their views are considered acceptable by the official UPCI and its churches, then Oneness Pentecostalism will have taken a substantive step toward clarifying their doctrinal position.

This isn’t so surprising to me. The mainstream “Latin” trinitarian position has always been close to modalism. Thus, it is no big surprise when modalists find certain elements of that tradition congenial. Chalcedon – that’s another can of worms! (I won’t crack it open now.)

Some more interesting information:

Recent years have indeed seen the outbreak of a major theological controversy within the ranks of Oneness: a handful of pastors have begun teaching that Christ did not receive a body from Mary, but rather that he brought it with him from heaven. This “divine flesh” Christology is driving UPCI headquarters to distraction, especially because it is centered in the ministry of a few pastors in Ethiopia, a church which the UPCI would like to be able to point to as a symbol of everything that is good, vital, and expanding in their movement.

“Divine flesh”? What on earth? (heaven) What is the motivation for this claim? Fred – you out there? Got any links about this controversy?

At the end of his piece, Sanders spends some time wondering whether or not UPCI modalists can be saved. (Short answer: yes.) Then, he looks back at the mainstream proto-Catholic tradition:

…the ancient church did in fact speak strongly on this issue, and decided that in fact the broad outlines of trintarian Christianity are among the things necessary for salvation. The 5th-century Athanasian Creed says it memorably:

Whosoever will be saved,
before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic [universal] faith;
Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled,
without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.
And the catholic faith is this:

That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity;
Neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance.
For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son,
and another of the Holy Spirit.

These infamous “damnatory clauses” are hard to maintain in the face of sincere, and sincerely wrong, people who look to Jesus Christ for salvation.

Understatement alert! It’s more than hard to maintain – it is very implausible. The so-called Athanasian Creed embodies a tradition of speculation on God’s nature; to insist that one will go to hell for not agreeing with this speculation is absurd. If, say, Tom Morris went around saying that you’re going to hell unless you affirm his brand of two-minds Christology, there’d be a justified and widespread reaction – Dude! You’re out of line! Why is it that ancient perpetrators get a free pass? Mustn’t God react with fury when such damnations are heaped on obedient if somewhat theologically confused disciples of Christ? Why, then, should we agree with the damnation-happy, or passively ignore the issue?

Sanders continues:

What would lead the ancient church to say this? I believe it has to do with the question of identifying God. If the question is, “Who is God and how can I recognize Him,” then the Christian answer is, “God is the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, one God forever.” Confessing Jesus Christ as God necessarily entails that the true God must be thought of as being like Jesus Christ, as including in his very being the eternal Son.
It is possible to identify the right God and yet have some wrong, unbiblical ideas about him. Where is the line between worshiping the wrong God, and worshiping the right God the wrong way? At some point in our doctrinal apprehensions of God (which are our human responses to his revelation), we approach a line beyond which we are not merely having some bad ideas about God, but are actually mis-construing his very identity. A Christian should be able to walk into a room full of putative gods and pick out the true one. The true one is that one divine Being who in the Old Testament made his oneness clear, and in the New Testament made clear that as the one God, he “eternally exists as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

I guess there is a hard philosophical puzzle here, something like: how mistaken can you be about X and still sucessfully refer to X in one’s thoughts, words, and actions? I’m not sure what the complete solution to that puzzle is, but on the face of it, one can be very, very mistaken about something, and still refer to it. Take John Dominic “Jesus was probably thrown in a common grave and eaten by dogs” Crossan. This guy can’t appear for 15 seconds on TV without me loudly disagreeing, and if he talks for more than 30 seconds, I’m likely to actually throw some inanimate object at the TV. Still, suppose he says, “Jesus was a Jew.” And I say, “Yup.” Seems we’re referring to the same individual, all the while differing wildly about his nature, life, message, and so on. An interesting biblical example: Jesus and the Samaritan woman in John 4. There’s another can of worms here, about religious pluralism that I don’t want to open. My only points are two:

(1) It’s hard to charge that UPCI people are referring to nothing, when say, they talk about God, or about Jesus. Still less can they be charged with accidentally referring to real beings other than God and Jesus, say, some false gods or demons.

(2) Sanders’ diagnosis of the damnation-happy Athanasian creed is too charitable. There was a long-standing push in the era of the Church Fathers to combat heresy by bringing all matters of faith and practice under the local bishop, and then, under the emerging early medieval orthodoxy, and the proto-Catholic network of bishops that enforced it. Thus, there was a lot more going on than a philosophical worry about common folk being too mistaken to successfully refer to God and Jesus. In fact, aren’t those damnatory clauses plainly an attempt to scare dissenters into submission? It works like this: You say X, but we disagree, and if you don’t shut up, we’ll kick you out. And that’s bad for you, as there’s no salvation outside the One True Church (i.e. our network of churches). So dangit, STOP SAYING X! Either that, or the idea is: God is very, very strict about the matter of theological beliefs: if he finds but one which departs from “the catholic faith”, then it’s hell for you, buddy. Yeah, sure.

Whichever they intended, it isn’t pretty.

To end on a lighter note, in addition to his heavier stuff, Fred Sanders is the author/artist of perhaps the only comic book about the doctrine of the Trinity. I’d get me a copy, but apparently it is out of print and is now a much-soughtafter collector’s item – as of today it can’t be had on Amazon for less than $27! Maybe this guy scooped ‘em all up. Still, the world has access to Fred’s whimsical, off the cuff cartoons on his blog.