Oneness/Trinity Debate--Areas of Agreement and Disagreement

The Oneness/Trinity Debate--Areas of Agreement
and Disagreement

by
Jason Dulle
JasonDulle@attbi.com

Some believe the Oneness/Trinity debate is not much more than an argument over semantics. I would both agree and disagree with such a stance. Indeed, at times it can be a matter of semantics. I have met many "Trinitarians"1 who held to the basic Oneness position, but baptized it in Trinitarian terms with their use of the words "Trinity," "persons," and "God the Son." While I do not favor such terminology, this is not the most important issue here. What matters most is one's undestanding of God, not the terminology or the label they use to explain/identify it, although the latter is definitely important, and can affect the former. Words not only reflect our thoughts (descriptive), but words also will shape how we think about and understand that which is being considered (prescriptive). The words used to explain the Trinity often cause Trinitarians to have a tritheistic conception of God. In light of the role words play in shaping our understanding, we ought to do our best to have both a correct understanding and a correct vocabulary, employing words which most adequately reflect that understanding. Both our concept of God and the terms we employ to describe that concept are important, but we must distinguish the two, expending more energy to clarify the former, rather than the latter.

While many disagreements between Oneness believers and "Trinitarians" are largely disagreements over semantics, the Oneness/Trinity debate is not merely over semantics, but over concepts. The Trinitarian dogma (as it is properly set forth in the historic creeds of Nicea and Constantinople) has an entirely different framework through which it understands God than does Oneness theology. When comparing the scholarly formulation of historic and current Trinitarian theology, and the scholarly formulation of Oneness theology, one will readily confess that the two theologies are worlds apart, differing more than in semantics. The following will demonstrate the areas of agreement and disagreement between the two theologies.

Oneness believers and Trinitarians 1. both confess that God is one; 2. both believe that the Father, Son, and Spirit are God; 3. both confess that the Scripture makes a distinction between the Father, Son, and Spirit; 4. both believe that Jesus was praying to the Father, and not to Himself.

Oneness believers and Trinitarians differ in that 1. Trinitarians believe that the one God consists of three eternal persons while Oneness believes that the one God is one person; 2. Trinitarians believe that the second person of the Trinity became incarnated while Oneness believes that the Father, who is one person, became incarnated as the Son of God; 3. Trinitarians believe that the Son is eternal while Oneness believes that the Son did not exist until the incarnation, because the term refers to God as He exists as a man, and not as He exists in His essential deity; 4. Trinitarians sees the Biblical distinctions between the Father and the Son to be a distinction in both personality and flesh while Oneness believes that all distinctions are a result of the relationship of the Spirit of God to the incarnate God-man.

Where Trinitarians and Oneness differ is not in the fact that one confesses the full deity of Christ whereas the other does not, but whether or not the eternal deity Christ is the same personal deity as the Father, or a distinct person in the Godhead; whether the deity of Christ is a distinct eternal personality in the Godhead from the Father, or whether His deity is that of the Father, but incarnated in flesh.

While Oneness theology confesses that the deity of the Son of God preexisted the incarnation, it does not see that pre-existing deity as a second person known as the "Son" in contradistinction to Father/Spirit, but rather as the one uni-personal God of the OT, YHWH.

Oneness theology only sees one person in the Godhead, YHWH. He is uni-personal, not tri-personal. That one uni-personal God became a man, not the second person of a tri-personal God. In Oneness theology the deity of the Son (humanity and deity) is known as YHWH before the incarnation, and "Son" only after the incarnation, to distinguish God's new existence as a human being (the God-man) from God's continued existence beyond humanity (Father). In the incarnation "Son" and "Father" are used to describe the relationship between God transcendent and God immanent in flesh.

Oneness theology identifies the deity of the Son as the unipersonal God, YHWH, while Trinitarianism identifies Christ's pre-existing deity as "God the Son," the second person of the Trinity. Oneness theology believes it was the eternal uni-personal God who became flesh while Trinitarianism believes it was the second person of a tri-personal God that became flesh.

Oneness theology maintains that the distinctions between the Father and Son are not distinctions of personal deities in the Godhead, but distinctions between God's existence beyond the flesh, and that same uni-personal God's existence in the flesh. The distinction arises due to the hypostatic union of Christ's deity and humanity, in contradisction to God's continued existence beyond the incarnation as Spirit alone.

Oneness theologians and Trinitarian theologians also define "Son" quite differently. Trinitarians understand Son to refer to both a pre-incarnate eternal person, and the post-incarnational person made flesh in the person of Christ. Oneness theology understands Son to be applicable to God only after the incarnation; coming into existence only because of the addition of humanity to God's previously unmitigated deity; to describe the relationship between God transcendent beyond humanity and God limited in a human existence. Oneness understands Son to be a relational term arising only after the incarnation, and as calling attention to the humanity emerging from the incarnation. Oneness theology contends that "Son" never refers to the incorporeal Spirit alone apart from referencing the humanity of Christ. Oneness believers are against the term "God the Son" because it equates the word "Son" with deity alone, for which there is no Biblical support. Oneness theology sees the references to the Son as emphasizing the humanity God assumed in the incarnation, but do not exclude Jesus' deity from this reference. But only the whole person of Christ, both deity and humanity, can rightly be called the Son (Matthew 16:16-17; Hebrews 1:8-9).2

Footnotes

1. I have put "" around Trinitarian because these believers are not truly Trinitarians; i.e. they do not hold to the Trinitarian doctrine as set forth in the historic creeds. While they confess the label "Trinitarian," their concept of God is not what is taught in the creeds, and thus is not orthodox Trinitarianism. It has been my experience that most lay believers who claim to believe in the Trinity, and employ Trinitarian terminology, do not hold to the Trinitarian doctrine. They either have a concept of God that is similar to Oneness, or a concept which is bonafide Tritheism (the belief in three separate gods, as opposed to Trinitarianism which claims that God is one, but in three distinct persons). <back>
2. That "Son" cannot attributed purely to Christ's humanity is evidenced by the fact that Hebrews 1:8-9 connects "Son" with "God," saying, "But unto the Son He says, 'Your throne, O God...'." If Son referred only to Christ's human nature, such a statement would be meaningless. Clearly the author of Hebrews is attributing deity to Son. Another example is found in Matthew 16:16-17 when it is revealed to Peter that Jesus is the Son of God. If "Son of God" only refers to Jesus' humanity, no revelation from the Father would have been necessary. Anybody could have seen that Jesus was a human being by just looking at Him. Even the unbelieving Jews understood Him to be a genuine human being. It is what the Jews could not believe, that Peter understood by the revelation of God; i.e. Jesus was divine, being both God and man simultaneously.