It has occurred to me that many readers, especially new readers, may misread my ongoing discussion of modalism and modalists. As I use the term “modalism”, it is a descriptive term for how some people think about one or more of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Most people, though, use it as a tag for a certain heretical theology, long denounced by mainstream Christianity.… Read More »modalism and “modalism”
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… Read More »What is Modalism?
Apparently, modalism like Geisler’s is fairly common in the world of evangelical apologetics. Here’s an example I stumbled upon today, this post by Steve Cowan. The doctrine of the Trinity is not the view that there are three gods. Neither is it the absurd view that there are three gods and one God at one time. Early church leaders explained that the Son and the… Read More »more “personalities” modalism
Ice, ice, baby. (image credit)
A reader emailed me this question, and I thought others would be interested in my (attempt at) an answer. Also, this is a good chance to review and summarize some of my previous postings on modalism.
I was wondering if you could read [the following] and tell me what I was believing? (I think it might have been a form of Modalism) Also, I search everywhere and find that Modalism is wrong, but no explanations specifically why. Can you help me out on some links explaining that?
…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. Read More »Reader Question About Modalism
To readers who aren’t philosophers – thanks for your patience! We philosophers feel compelled to pick through these things at a slow pace. Stay tuned for less exploratory and technical stuff. 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… Read More »What is “modalism”? – Part 2
Dr. Timothy George is the founding dean of Beeson Divinity School and a very active evangelical author and editor. I was curious to see if his Is the Father of Jesus the God of Muhammad? also exhibited Islam-Inspired modalism. This is a lucidly written, brief, popular book, which would be a good place for many Christians to pick up a lot of basic information about… Read More »Islam-Inspired Modalism – Part 3
One final example, this time from veteran evangelical apologist Norman Geisler. In chapter 12 of his Answering Islam: The Crescent in Light of the Cross, Geisler gives a sort of standard exegetical argument for “the” doctrine of the Trinity. But he also addresses some Islamic concerns, and when he does, his modalism jumps to the foreground. Here, he tells us what is wrong with “modalism”.… Read More »Islam-inspired Modalism – Part 4
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. Thomas F. Michel is a Jesuit priest and scholar who edited and translated the largest response… Read More »Islam-Inspired Modalism – Part 2
A bit of background: Once upon a time, Islam seemed unstoppable. Coming out of nowhere, it had quickly spread over what seemed like much of the world. They had a vigorous culture, formed around a relatively simple and appealing theology, and a book, the Qur’an, about the length of the New Testament. Further, they were leaders in many areas of human culture, including philosophy. Many… Read More »Islam-Inspired Modalism – Part 1
Kathyrn Tanner is a well-known theologian and author. While some of her work focuses on theological support for certain political views, she has also written Jesus Humanity, and the Trinity: A Brief Systematic Theology. To a philosopher’s eyes, this book is typical of much of the current theological literature. There’s not much argumentation for her views or against others’, nor is there any effort to… Read More »Kathryn Tanner’s non-Sabellian modalism
I’ve been reading Robert Letham’s The Holy Trinity lately. He’s a Reformed kind of guy, and like many contemporary theologians, he’s spent a lot of time thinking about Karl Barth. Now it’s well known that Barth in many places denies that he’s a “modalist” about the Trinity, and yet he says many things like these (these are quoted from Barth’s works by Letham): God is… Read More »yet more on Modes and Modalism: Barth and Letham
Here’s a second application for my Latin Trinity chart (see the first post for what the letters designate). Let’s say that a state of affairs is a thing/substance having a property at a time or timelessly.
The “persons” here are just modes of D, that is, states of affairs involving D. So the Son just is D having Fi. And the Father just is D having P. And the Holy Spirit just is D having Sp. Regarding each of F, S, and H, each of them “just is” D – in the sense that in each of them, there is one and the same D.Read More »The Latin Trinity Chart 2 – a version of FSH modalism
Thanks to reader Peter Tyson, for sending me a copy of The Threefold Art of Experiencing God: The Liberating Power of a Trinitarian Faith. It’s a short book by church growth guru Christian Schwarz, who has made his fortune advising churches on how to become healthier and grow, offering principles like these. Here is his official site. His approach goes by the name Natural Church… Read More »Modalism: the solution to your all of your church’s problems
Why he dismissed biblical unitarian theology and why he decided to give it another look.
Andrew Davis on the church fathers, the Bible, and finding his way through clashing theologies.
The traditional Christian doctrine of the Trinity is commonly expressed as the claim that the one God “exists as” Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or as the claim that there are three divine persons “in” God, or as the claim that God “exists in three Persons”. I have to say: this drives me nuts. The “exists as” formula strongly suggests modalism, the idea that Father,… Read More »“the” Trinity doctrine – Part 1
Two installments ago, we looked at Brian Leftow’s setup of the issue, and last time we surveyed his distinctive “Latin” trinitarian theory. This time, we’ll wrap it up. A rather obvious and potentially serious objection to Leftow’s theory is that it makes the doctrine of the Trinity out to be modalism, for plainly, in his view, each of the Persons is a mode of God… Read More »Leftow 4: “A Latin Trinity” – Part 3
Here’s a brief comment on Marc A. Pugliese’s “Is Karl Rahner a Modalist?“, Irish Theological Quarterly 68 (2003), 229-49. 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”… Read More »“Is Karl Rahner a Modalist?”
