When I was in my last church I would always look for ways to teach Bible Studies, engage in dialogue, make Facebook posts, and a list of other things with the intentions of trying to get people to convert to Oneness Pentecostalism.
Now that I am on the other side, I’m still doing the same thing (although now I am trying to get people out of Oneness Pentecostalism), but now I’m constantly told that I am trying to stir the pot, just looking for a fight, or that I’m just bitter.
The truth is, in the past I have handled things poorly. I haven’t always addressed things with the grace and love that it deserved. For that I apologize. I never want to be a battering ram, hitting people over the head with my views, but at the same time, I feel a deep obligation to share the truth as I see it in Scripture.
Maybe you disagree with my views, that’s ok! Maybe you think I’m flat out wrong or deceived, if so I appreciate your prayers! Maybe you think I should just stop talking theology altogether, that’s never going to happen! But feel free to unfollow or hide my posts if it is not something you want to see. I won’t get my feelings hurt.
So why do I say things against my former movement? Am I bitter? At times probably. Just being honest. But that’s not why I write. That’s not why I share. I share because there was a time where I felt like I was drowning in an ocean of doubts and fears, I was overwhelmed and I didn’t know where to look.
Luckily after a few months I found a group of people who had similar questions and fears. We formed a bond by searching the Scriptures together, learning church history, learning as much as we could. We didn’t always come to the same conclusions on every topic. But we saw a pattern.
For those of you who have always been a part of traditional Orthodox Christianity and have never had any doubts about doctrines like the Trinity, justification by Faith, or any of the Orthodox doctrines of Christianity, this may not seem like a big deal.
But we didn’t have the luxury of just taking your word for it. We didn’t know what was true. We had to seek these things for ourselves and make sure that we didn’t leave one thing for something worse.
This is why I am so adamant about learning, growing, and challenging, it’s the only way to make sure you have found the real thing.
There’s lots of accusations hurled at Orthodox Christianity, by Orthodox, I mean what is generally or traditionally accepted as true. Some of these accusations have merit, some are straw-men.
But there’s a rich history of Christian tradition. 2000 years of teaching and debate. We’ve seen from the first century to today how heresy rises up and how the church deals with it. Creeds were formed, not due to any conspiracy to change things, but to combat the false views of who Jesus was and to defend the Orthodox positions.
Some of these heresies have been repackaged in our modern times. Arianism was the heresy that brought the Council of Nicea together. Arius taught that Jesus was not God, but a created being. This ancient heresy is still seen today in the doctrines of the Jehovah Witnesses who teach that Jesus is the first of the created beings of God.
Gnosticism is one of the earliest and most prevalent heresy dating back to even the times of the Apostles. Gnosticism has a range of meanings but two of the most common ideas associated with Gnosticism is secret knowledge and a dualistic view of the world.
The Gnostic believes they have access to secret knowledge that others are not aware of. This secret knowledge or revelation is usually salvific in nature. Also, the Gnostic’s dualism divides the world into matter (evil) and spirit (good). Mormons, New Age/New Thought, Word of Faith, and Pentecostalism all have elements of Gnosticism.
But for the sake of this post, I want to focus on 3 ancient heresies that directly affect the Oneness view of God.
The Oneness of God simply states that Jesus is the one person of God. That Jesus is the Father manifest in the flesh, and also the Holy Spirit working within us. It denies the Orthodox position of the Trinity.
The three heresies that creep up within the Oneness framework are, Modalism, Nestorianism, and Patripassianism.
These three early church heresies continue to appear in Oneness Pentecostal teaching today. Modalism is the most commonly noticed, but Nestorianism and Patripassianism are connected to the modern OP teachings as well. Some have even outright acknowledge that they hold to Patripassianism.
Modalism - the doctrine that the persons of the Trinity represent only three modes or aspects of the divine revelation, not distinct and coexisting persons in the divine nature.
Modalism or sometimes referred to as Sabellianism, teaches that God is Unipersonal. That Jesus is the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. That these are just titles used by the one person of God.
In Oneness theology Jesus is only the Son of God in his incarnation, it is a title that refers to his humanity only. In other words, Jesus isn't the Son of God in His relationship to the Father, it's merely a title given to His human nature. He's viewed as the Father manifest in the flesh.
Oneness theology has a difficult time answering the question of who Jesus prayed to in John 17. There’s only 3 answers that I have seen, none of which make any sense.
First, they will say that Jesus was an authentic human so he had to pray like one or he has to be our example.
This view limits the prayers of Jesus to mock prayers. He's not really praying to God, he's merely teaching us the importance of prayer. In my opinion it turns the relationship between the Father and the Son into an act.
Second, they will say that it was just self talk, like when we talk to ourselves.
The Scripture used to support this is Exodus 32:14. The KJV says it like this, "And the Lord repented of the evil which he thought to do unto his people."
From this it is argued that since God is one, He cannot repent to anyone else. Therefore He must be repenting to Himself. Self talk.
From this reasoning it is then used to show how each of us talk to ourselves whether just in our minds or sometimes out loud, but we are not talking to someone else.
This is a fundamental flow in the understanding of repentance. To repent doesn't mean you talk to someone else and ask for forgiveness, to repent means to change course.
It's pretty easy to check with other translations to make sure you are understanding a passage correctly.
NIV "Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened."
ESV "And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people."
NASB "So the Lord relented of the harm which he said he would do to his people."
Third and this leads to the next heresy, they say that it was his human nature praying to his divine nature.
Nestorianism - the doctrine that there were two separate persons, one human and one divine, in the incarnate Christ.
This is harder to recognize simply because it’s not as well known. Oneness teachings lean hard into Nestorianism when they put too much emphasis on Christ’s dual nature to the point that they become distinct and separate natures.
This can be seen when they mention Jesus human nature praying to his divine nature or when they talk about Jesus alternating between his human nature and his divine.
This goes against the Orthodox position of the Hypostatic Union.
“Jesus has two complete natures: one fully human and one fully divine. What the doctrine of the hypostatic union teaches is that these two natures are united in one person in the God-man. Jesus is not two persons. He is one person. The hypostatic union is the joining (mysterious though it be) of the divine and the human in the one person of Jesus.” - John Piper
Natures do not communicate, persons do. I've seen some argue that just like our flesh needs to pray to God's Spirit, so does Jesus flesh need to pray to the Spirit. This is illogical. Either Jesus is God or He is not. If He is God then He is either praying to himself, or He is praying to His Father.
Patripassianism - the doctrine that in the sufferings of Jesus Christ, God the Father also suffered.
This makes sense because Oneness teaching says Jesus is the Father manifest in the flesh. Patripassianism is an unbiblical understanding of the relationship between the Persons of the Trinity and in fact denies Persons (plural), insisting on only one Person in the Godhead.
Pastor Steve Waldron of New Life of Albany, Ga, has a YouTube video titled, Are Sabellianism, Patripassianism, and Modalism the same thing? His answer is yes. For him, a UPC pastor, these represent the Oneness position.
Around AD 153, Justin Martyr wrote against those “who affirm that the Son is the Father,” a clear reference to Patripassianism (First Apology, ch. 63). Other early Christian leaders who refuted the heresy of Patripassianism include Tertullian, Origen, Athanasius, and Chrysostom.
Oneness Pentecostalism is a restorationist movement. They believe the book of Acts church fell into apostasy and God is restoring that original church through them. Oneness Pentecostals are not unique in this regard, many other movements such as the Mormons, the Jehovah Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventism, Church of Christ Scientists, and a list of other groups have all made claim to the idea that they are the original church being restored in this time.
The problem with Restorationism is that it denies the Scripture. Jesus said the gates of hell would not prevail against the church (Matthew 16:17-19), yet these restorationist groups believe that the church fell completely into apostasy within 100 years of its inception.
Restorationism also tends to rejects church history in its entirety because nobody outside of the original Apostles got it right until them.
When we ignore or out right reject Church history, we open ourselves up to repeat the same mistakes the early heretics made.