{"id":42,"date":"2019-10-22T04:14:35","date_gmt":"2019-10-22T09:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/archives\/42"},"modified":"2019-10-21T22:26:55","modified_gmt":"2019-10-22T03:26:55","slug":"if-modalism-about-the-son-were-true-then","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/if-modalism-about-the-son-were-true-then\/","title":{"rendered":"If Modalism about the Son were true, then…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’ve been harping on modalism about the Son (thinking of the Son as a way God is) for a long time, even giving what I think is a convincing argument against it<\/a>. Still, what if it is<\/em> false? Why do I care? Why do I think it matters?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Son-modalism has a couple of very unacceptable consequences. If Son-modalism is true, then:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. The New Testament writers are either incompetent metaphor users, or they’re just mistaken about Jesus and God.<\/strong> Jesus is described in the New Testament as a “priest” and as the “Son of God”. Those metaphors would be inappropriate if Jesus were a mode of God. Again, the Son is supposed to me a “mediator” between God and the rest of us. But if a mode of God is the “mediator,” it would have turned out that God has a friendly, approachable side – no mediation required! So if Son-modalism is true, the New Testament writers who use that metaphor are either ill-informed or are incompetent metaphor users. I resist both conclusions. Why? Because the authors of the New Testament were all, directly or indirectly, taught by Jesus, and I hold that Jesus was a competent teacher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.<\/strong> If Jesus is a mode of God, then he is not a human. Every human is a substance\/entity\/individual thing, and no substance in this sense is a mode of any other substance, so no mode of anything is a human. Ergo, if Son-modalism is true, Jesus isn’t a human being.<\/strong> This is inconsistent with the New Testament, as well as with other things that Christians want to say about Jesus. Yes, I know – “two natures.” If only such speculations left us with a clearly human Jesus!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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3. Jesus can’t be a mediator<\/strong> between God and us if he’s just God being or acting or appearing in a certain way. A mediator can’t be either party which he’s mediating. And human beings feel that we need such a mediator – the holiness and glory of God demand it. How about Mary? Or maybe, a priest? Maybe a patron saint? So much for the Pauline vision of Christians accessing God through Christ, a kingdom filled with “priests” with no need of other, merely human intermediaries. I suggest that Son-modalism was a big factor in the development of the cult of Mary<\/strong>, the manifold forms of saint-worship (honoring – whatever), and the strongly bishop- and later priest-oriented direction that catholic Christianity took. You can even see this in medieval and modern art – Jesus is portrayed as God himself in images like this. Emperor-like, he reigns with no one above him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Conversely, if you believe that Jesus is your “advocate” with the Father, then all<\/em> these other suggested intermediaries are superfluous. But this requires Son-modalism to be false.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

How do you know if someone is a Son modalist?<\/strong> In a church context, the main way is this – they throw around the terms “Father,” “God,” “Jesus” with no discernible rhyme or reason. They may start a prayer with “Father,” address the object of prayer two sentences later as “Jesus,” then end with “in your name,” leaving unclear which is meant. If those three terms refer to one and the same thing, then there’s no point in being picky about how they’re used. The modalist or one-self Trinity theorist thinks there is but one self (agent, intelligent being) between the Father and the Son. Even if “Father” and “Son” refer to different modes (ways God is), they both equally refer to God (via his various modes). That’s what a modalist thinks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But they should think again!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A claim which implies falsehoods is itself false. Son-modalism is such a claim.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":41852,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"default","neve_meta_container":"default","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"off","neve_meta_content_width":70,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"off","neve_meta_disable_footer":"off","neve_meta_disable_title":"off","footnotes":""},"categories":[15,6,10,5,92,65,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-christology","category-complaints","category-logic","category-modalism","category-oneness","category-repost","category-theories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41860,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions\/41860"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}

4. Again, if he is a mode of God, Jesus can’t realistically be a model for us to imitate<\/strong>. We can’t imagine ourselves into the place of an essentially all-knowing, all-powerful, and untemptable being. We’re humans, and we need a genuinely human example to imitate. Faced with a Jesus who is basically God in disguise, we’ll go looking for other examples of faith<\/a>, hope, and love, and many will be far inferior to the Lord Jesus himself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n