Transcript

When you think about modern Christian heresies, the two biggest that come to mind are Jehovah's Witnesses, with about eight million active members, and Mormonism, with about 17 million adherents.

But there's another huge heresy among self-professed Christians you rarely hear about, even though it's just as detrimental to the soul, and that is Oneness theology, often found among Oneness Pentecostals.

There are about 17 million Oneness Pentecostals worldwide, making them on-par with Mormonism, but the number could be even higher if you count those who belong to regular Pentecostal denominations, which are one of the fastest-growing denominations in the world.

So, what makes Oneness Pentecostals more like Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses than like Methodists, Evangelicals, or other Protestants?

The answer is their Trinitarian heresy, which invalidates the baptism they claim to celebrate.

Jesus said to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

But Oneness Pentecostals believe that the name of God just is Jesus.

According to them, the terms Father, Son, and Holy Spirit do not refer to three distinct persons, but to three manifestations of God, or three roles that God plays in our salvation.

That's why Oneness Pentecostals have an invalid baptism that only uses Jesus' name.

I now baptize you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of all your sins.

Can you hear Him?

Can you hear the sound?

Come on , give the Lord a shout right there.

Hey.

The denomination in this clip is probably Oneness Pentecostal, because their website says, We believe in one God who has revealed Himself in different ways throughout history: as the Father in creation, as the Son in redemption, and as the Holy Spirit in renewing believers' hearts.

Here's David Bernard, a leading defender of Oneness theology, summarizing their view.

The Oneness of God essentially has two propositions.

First of all, there was one God with no distinctions in His eternal essence, uh, no persons or centers of consciousness.

Uh, manifestations, works, yes, we believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

But at the end of the day, we believe in one personal God, with one personality, one center of consciousness.

This is very similar to the ancient modalist heresy associated with Sabellius and Praxeas in the third century.

Modalists say God is one divine person who acts at various times as the Father who created the world, the Son who redeemed us, and the Holy Spirit who sanctifies us.

They claim the only way there can be one God who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is if everything we know to be God, including the titles of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, belong only to one divine person, who is made known in the flesh as Jesus Christ.

Now, we have to be careful not to identify ancient modalism and modern Oneness theology as if they were exactly the same belief systems.

For example, some people think that ancient modalists believe that God becomes Father at one point, then He becomes the Son at another point in time, and then He becomes the Holy Spirit at yet other times.

Ancient modalists may or may not have believed this, since there were different people advocating for modalism at that time.

But here's Bernard saying modern Oneness theologians do not hold that view, but they at least have some things in common with the ancient modalists.

It seems what they did hold in common, they did believe in the absolute deity of Jesus Christ.

So, they weren't Arians.

They weren't Unitarians.

They believed that Jesus was truly God.

That's a first point, and we would agree with that.

Second point, they did not believe God was three persons, but they believed somehow that Jesus Christ was the fullness of God, that one of them quoted, uh, The Father is not the Son, the Father is in the Son, one God everywhere.

The main point for Oneness advocates is that God is not three distinct eternal persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who relate to each other.

Instead, Bernard says that God is only Father in relation to us, His creatures.

But one of the essential elements of the dogma of the Trinity is that not only are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit equal in divinity to one another, they are also distinct in identity from one another.

Here's what the Catechism says.

The divine Persons are really distinct from one another.

God is one, but not solitary.

Father, Son, Holy Spirit are not simply names designating modalities of the divine Being, for they are really distinct from one another.

He is not the Father who is the Son, nor is the Son he who is the Father, nor is the Holy Spirit he who is the Father or the Son.

They are distinct from one another in their relations of origin.

It is the Father who generates, the Son who is begotten and the Holy Spirit who proceeds.

The divine unity is triune.

One bad analogy for the Trinity compares it to how water can exist in three forms, solid, liquid, and gas, while still being the same molecular substance.

Here's Lutheran satire showing what would have happened if St. Patrick tried to evangelize pagans with this bad analogy.

Could you use an analogy, Patrick?

Sure.

Uh, the Trinity is like, uh, water and how you can find water in three different forms, liquid and ice and vapor.

That's modalism, Patrick.

What?

Modalism, an ancient heresy confessed by teachers such as Noetus and Sabellius, which espouses that God is not three distinct persons, but that He merely reveals Himself in three different forms.

This heresy was clearly condemned in canon one at the First Council of Constantinople in 381 AD, and those who confess it cannot rightly be considered a part of the Church Catholic.

Come on, Patrick.

Yeah, get it together, Patrick.

Another bad analogy for the Trinity compares it to how a man can be three different relatives at the same time.

But here's Oneness Pentecostal Gino Jennings using this analogy to defend the Oneness view.

He explains how God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the same way that he is a father, son, and husband at the same time.

I'm certainly the father, because me and my own wife got 70 young'uns.

But what is the name of this son, husband, and father?

Jennings is my name.

That's right.

That's right.

Son, husband, and father are just different titles-

That's right.

That's right.

pertaining to this one Jennings.

Yeah.

I don't have three different personalities.

Oh, no, sir.

No, sir.

But it was three different functions-

That's right.

as this one individual.

That's right.

I function as a son at birth, function as husband, marriage, function as father because we got children.

Right.

I don't have multi-personality.

All right.

I'll try again.

Uh, the Trinity is like how the same man can be a husband and a father and an employer.

Moralism again.

By the way, Gino Jennings has a hilarious, over-the-top style, complete with backup members of his posse chiming in when he makes a point.

If you want to see more of it, check out the episode I did a while back with Joe Heschmeyer critiquing Jennings' arguments against Mary being the Mother of God, where he ends up using the heretical Oneness view to make his argument against Mary being Theotokos.

Now, in response, Oneness Pentecostals say their explanation of the Godhead is better than an illogical Trinity.

But the Trinity is the most logical answer to common objections to Christianity, like this one: If Jesus was God, then when Jesus was praying in the Bible, was he praying to himself?

You can see this attitude in this meme that describes Jesus as, A cosmic Jewish zombie who was his own father.

Or this woman's objection to the deity of Christ.

In Luke 6:12, Jesus prays all night to God.

But if Jesus is God, why would he pray all night to himself?

How does that work?

It works if you don't assume that God must be a single person.

Jesus was praying to the Father.

The Father is God.

The Son is God.

The Father is not the Son; therefore, God must be more than one person.

God is not a being like you or me, whose most rational ability manifests in being a single person.

God isn't even a being at all.

God is the infinite act of Being who exists as three divine persons that have relations with one another.

At the very least, this makes more sense than saying the Father and Son are the same divine person, or that the Father is merely some part of the person of Jesus.

Here's David Bernard trying to explain how Jesus could pray to the Father if God is only one person under the Oneness view, the person Jesus Christ.

So, if you still say, Well, it sounds like Jesus is praying to himself, well, that's because you're trying to force hi- the incarnation onto a template of our experience of being only human, so that's the wrong way to say it.

Here's the right way to say it.

Jesus prayed as an authentic human being.

He pr- Who did he pray to?

He prayed to God, at the same time realizing God was in Christ, God was in him, not as a separate person.

So, the answer is Jesus prayed to God.

Did we say Jesus prayed to himself?

No, that's confusing his identity as human and his identity as God.

Uh, and so the- that would be a wrong way to say it.

But we should simply say Jesus prayed to God as all humans should pray to God, just at the same time realizing that God was incarnate in Christ in a unique way different from any other human, so God was in Christ.

Notice that Bernard can't say Jesus was praying to the Father because that would compromise Oneness theology.

Instead, Bernard has to equivocate on the word God.

By God, Christians mean the Holy Trinity or a divine person, depending on the context.

But Bernard has to always mean a single divine person or, at best, an aspect of that single divine person.

Oneness Pentecostals like him try to avoid the problem of Jesus praying to himself by turning Christ's human and divine natures into quasi-persons that communicate with each other.

But just as my fatherness and my sonness cannot speak to one another, Jesus' human nature, what some Oneness proponents call the Son, and his divine nature, what they call the Father, cannot speak and have relationships with each other.

But Scripture is full of cases where the Son not only communicates with the Father through prayer, but the Father answers Jesus as an objectively distinct person.

For example, John 12:28 describes Jesus praying to the Father saying, Father, glorify they name.

John then tells us that a voice came from heaven saying, I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again.

Likewise, at both Jesus' baptism and transfiguration, the Father speaks in a voice so that people can hear, declaring that Jesus is his beloved Son.

If Oneness Pentecostalism were true and God is just one person with three titles or three roles, then how could these conversations between divine persons be happening?

Oneness advocates also believe that God did not become the Son until the incarnation.

But what about scripture verses that distinguish the Father and the Son before anything was created?

Jesus said he, quote, come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.

Oneness advocates say Jesus existed before the creation as a concept or a plan in God's mind he would later send.

But this contradicts what Saint Paul tells us in the Great Kenosis, or Emptying Him, in his letter to the Philippians.

After describing self-serving preachers that Paul had to deal with, Paul encourages the Philippians to be humble- and act with one another's best interests at heart.

He writes, Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

Two points here.

First, we should not be seeking after greatness, we should imitate Christ and we should be humble.

So, I humbly ask you, if you really like this content, if it's helped your faith, if it's helped other people come to the Catholic faith or come to know who Jesus is, then please support us by clicking the subscribe button or going to trenthornpodcast.com, to help us create more edifying content to build other people up.

That's the first point.

The second point is that Paul could not be referring here to the pre-existent Jesus merely being a plan or wisdom in the Father's mind that would later be sent to earth.

He's clearly speaking of the pre-existent Christ, the son, as a person who did not cling to divinity, but voluntarily l- relinquished His divine glory for our sake in order to become man.

Plans and wisdom cannot be models of humility for us to imitate.

Only persons can be that.

Finally, the very first verse of John's Gospel declares, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The Greek word translated with in this verse is pros, which has a personal connotation.

It usually refers to facing towards someone else.

The Greek grammarian A.T.

Robertson writes, Pros with the accusative case presents a plane of equality, an intimacy face-to-face with each other.

This means the Word was not a plan in the Father's mind, but a person who, as Jesus tells us, was sent by the Father, and shared glory with Him before the creation of the world.

This can be seen when Jesus petitioned the Father in this prayer, Glorify thou me in thy own presence with the glory which I had with thee before the world was made.

John 17:5.

Mark McNeill, who converted to Catholicism from Oneness Pentecostalism, provides a really good summary of how the plain meaning of this scripture verse refutes the idea that God is only one person, or that the Father and the Son were not persons who shared glory together before the creation of the world.

He writes, The Greek preposition translated with in John 17:5 is para.

The word simply means one is alongside another.

Since the Son is addressing the Father and refers to the glory He shared with the Father before creation, it is most natural to draw the conclusion that the personal relationship expressed in that moment of time refers to a relationship that is eternal.

Now, in response, David Bernard says this about John 17:5.

It's not talking about eternal glory of the second person of the Godhead.

If that's what it's talking about, you've got multiple problems.

Number one, if Jesus is the second eternal person, could He lose glory?

Can God lose His glory?

Can God l- d- did the second person of the Trinity get rid of His glory?

How could, how could God not have glory and still be God?

So, if it's talking about, well, f- uh, first person, give me my glory back, well, did He lose it?

Uh, second problem is Isaiah, f- uh, 43 says, I will not give my glory to another.

So, if Jesus is another person, if the Father is the only true God, God says, I will not give my glory to anyone else.

And then the clincher, if you keep reading this prayer, Jesus proceeds to pray for His disciples who are there and then if you keep on reading down, um, He says, The glory that you've given me, verse 22, I have given them.

So, the same glory He's now giving to His disciples or if it's glory of God as the second person of the Trinity, does that mean now the disciples are also members of the Godhead?

But I thought God doesn't give His divine glory to other people, but here Jesus is saying, Well, the glory you gave me, the glory of the second person of the Trinity, now I'm gonna give to Peter, James, and John.

They're gonna have the same glory.

They're gonna be three, four, five, 12 more members of the Trinity.

These aren't good objections.

First, the context of Isaiah 42 is that Yahweh does not share His glory with any other god.

He is the only God, and so His creatures should only give glory and praise to Him as the creator of the world.

Isaiah 42:8 says, I am the Lord, that is my name.

My glory I give to no other, nor my praise to graven images.

But that doesn't prevent God from sharing His glory with other persons, even if He doesn't share His glory with other false gods.

In Colossians 1:16-17, Paul says of Christ that, quote, All things were created through Him and for Him.

He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

If the Son shared in the Father's glory as creator of the world, then that means Yahweh is not a single person but a trinity of persons, each of whom was involved in the creation of the world and rightfully deserves glory as the one creator.

Even the agnostic scholar Bart Ehrman, who has no side in the Trinitarian versus Oneness debate, says of John 17:5 that, In this Gospel of John, Jesus talks about existing in a glorious state with God, the Father before He became human.

But if that's true, how could Jesus not have the glory of Yahweh during His incarnation?

The answer is that Jesus voluntarily set His glory aside when He became man, though glimpses of it could be seen in things like Jesus' transfiguration.

Hebrews 2:7 says of Christ that during the incarnation He was, quote, For a little while lower than the angels.

And then He returned to glory as we see later in Philippians chapter 2. Finally, as I noted, the passage from Isaiah is talking about glory being given to false gods.

It does not preclude God from sharing His glory or aspects of it in other ways.

This means that Jesus can share with His disciples an aspect of the glory He received from the Father before the world was made.

One plausible candidate for the kind of glory being shared is the Holy Spirit, which the Son received from the Father, because in John 17:22, Jesus talks about giving His disciples the Holy Spirit.

In John 7:38, Christ says, He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart shall flow rivers of living water.

In the next verse, John tells us, Now this he said about the Spirit, which those who believed in him were to receive; for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

Oneness Pentecostals also say that their beliefs are apostolic and that Trinitarian doctrine was a later corruption.

But even by the early second century, Justin Martyr was teaching that the Son and the Father are distinct persons.

He cites Genesis 1:26, Let us make man in our image, to show that, quote, We can indisputably learn that God conversed with someone who is numerically distinct from himself and also a rational being.

Justin also says, He who is said to have appeared to Abraham, and to Jacob, and to Moses, and who is called God, is distinct from him who made all things; numerically, I mean, not distinct in will.

Not only did the first Christians believe in the Trinity and not espouse Oneness theology, they explicitly rejected the Oneness heresy.

In the third century, heretics like Praxeas and Sabellius advocated for modalism, though Praxeas later recanted of this heresy.

Pope Dionysius and several regional councils condemned their errors and Tertullian said of the Trinity, This rule of faith has come down to us from the beginning of the Gospel, even before any of the older heretics, much more before Praxeas, a pretender of yesterday.

In the early fifth century, St. Augustine plainly said that, quote, He who is the Son is not the Father, and the Holy Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son.

Some Oneness Pentecostals cite John 10:30 as evidence that Jesus and the Father are the same person because Jesus said, I and the Father are one.

But the verb in this verse, , is in first person plural case, so the text literally says, I and the Father, we are one.

Similar language elsewhere in scripture also argues against the Oneness interpretation of God.

When Genesis 2:24 says a husband and wife become one flesh in marriage, that doesn't mean the husband and wife become the same person.

It means a special unity exists in their bodies through the marital act.

In John 17:21, Jesus prays that all believers may, Be one, even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee.

Just as Jesus is not praying for all believers to become one person, he is not declaring the Father and himself to be one person either.

In John 10:30, Jesus speaks of the special unity of love, purpose, and divine nature that only exists between him and the Father.

Tertullian said this verse, quote, Does not imply singularity of number, but unity of essence, likeness, conjunction, affection on the Father's part, who loves the Son, and submission on the Son's, who obeys the Father's will.

In other words, Jesus is proclaiming that he is just as divine as the Father, not that he is the Father.

Oneness advocates also try to use John 14:9 to make this point because Philip says to Jesus, Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.

And then Jesus said to him, Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip?

He who has seen me has seen the Father.

How can you say, 'Show us the Father'?

Nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus say that he is the Father.

And just a few verses earlier, Jesus says he is the only way to the Father, not that he is the Father.

In this context, Jesus is acting, as Paul says in Colossians 1:15, as the image, in Greek the icon of the invisible God.

In the next verses, Jesus says, Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me?

The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.

The Father dwells in Jesus not as another name for Christ's divine nature, but as part of the unbroken relationship they have had for all eternity.

Finally, the early church's rejection of Oneness theology is evident in its use of the Trinitarian baptismal formula.

Oneness P- Pentecostals reject this formula by claiming that in the Book of Acts, no one is baptized with it and that several verses command baptism to be done in the name of the Lord or in the name of Jesus Christ.

But this refers to a baptism under Christ's authority, like if I were to say, Stop in the name of the law.

The evidence from history shows that the early church understood the baptismal formula as referring to three distinct persons of the Trinity.

In the second century, Justin Martyr noted that converts are baptized, quote, In the name of God, the Father and Lord of the universe, and of our Savior Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit.

A first century catechism called the Didache also contains instructions for baptism that contradict the in Jesus name formula of Oneness Pentecostals, and it contradicts the Oneness Pentecostal belief that baptism is only valid when it's done through full immersion.

The Didache says, And concerning baptism, baptize this way.

Having first said all these things, baptize into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, in living water, running water.

But if you have not living water, baptize into other water, and if you cannot in cold, in warm.

But if you have not either, pour out water thrice upon the head into the name of Father and Son and Holy Spirit.

Finally, some Oneness advocates may ask, what's the big deal?

What does it matter if we believe God is three in one or one in three?

What does it matter in whose name we baptize people?

It matters because the Trinity and the incarnation are not abstract peripheral issues of theology.

The sacraments are not just trivial rituals.

These truths and commands were given to us from the almighty God for the good of our souls to save us from sin, and only a fool would casually ignore them.

The catechism says the Trinity is the central mystery of our faith and the incarnation is the distinctive sign of Christian faith.

A person who misunderstands either risks placing their salvation in a false Christ who is incapable of saving anyone.

For example, David Bernard says, One way to explain the human and divine in Christ is to say he was God living in a human house.

If Jesus were just a divine person wearing a human costume, then we couldn't say Jesus is the Word become flesh who dwelt among us.

Christ's death on the cross would just be the Father being released from a human body, not a sacrifice of love from the Son to the Father as an act of love between persons for the forgiveness of our sins.

That's why Tertullian bluntly told his modalist opponents that they were, quote, Contending against the definite purpose of the Gospel, for these things certainly are not written that you may believe that Jesus Christ is the Father, but the Son.

The foundational proclamation that God loved the world and gave his Son to save it in John 3:16 cannot be reconciled to Oneness theology.

Such a distortion of the faith would undermine the glorious truth that God is love and that this eternal love is fully revealed by the love that is shared between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

If you'd like to learn more about this subject, I recommend Mark McNeill's book, All in the Name, available from Catholic Answers Press.

Thank y'all so much for watching, and I hope you have a very blessed day.