Oneness and the Trinity: The theological and ecumenical implications of creation ex nihilo for an intra-pentecostal dispute

Pneuma

Volumn 19, Issue 1-2, 1997, Pages 81-107

  Yong, Amos ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 84856338588     PISSN: 02720965     EISSN: 15700747     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1163/157007497X00064     Document Type: Article

References (107)

1. Karl Rahner, "Remarks on the Dogmatic Treatise 'De Trinitate,'" Theological Investigations, vol. 4, tr. Kevin Symth (London, England: Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd., 1966), 89. Without getting involved in the details of Rahner's theological discussion, I will for simplicity's sake refer to this equation as Rahner's Axiom in the remainder of this paper.
2. Quotations from David Bernard, "A Response to Ralph Del Colle's 'Oneness and Trinity: A Preliminary Proposal for Dialogue with Oneness Pentecostalism,'" 7. Both paper and response were read at the 25th Annual Meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, Toronto, Ontario, 7-9 March 1996.
3. G. W. Bromiley, "Trinity," in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1984), 1112.
4. Roger Nicole, "The Meaning of the Trinity," in One God in Trinity: An Analysis of the Primary Dogma of Christianity, ed. Peter Toon and James D. Spiceland (Westchester, IL: Cornerstone Books, 1980), 1-2.
5. See example, the work of the Assemblies of God ecclesiastic, Ernest Swing Williams, Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1953), 199ff; the is titled, "The Unity of God - The Trinity."
6. Williams, Systematic Theology, 1:199.
7. For a trinitarian view of this history and the ensuing division, see William W. Menzies, Anointed to Serve: The Story of the Assemblies of God (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1971), 106-21;
8. a more neutral presentation is Edith L. Blumhofer, The Assemblies of God: A Chapter in the Story of American Pentecostalism, vol. 1, To 1941 (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1989), 217-247.
9. For a Oneness view, consult Arthur L. Clanton, United We Stand: A History of Oneness Organizations (Hazelwood, MO: The Pentecostal Publishing House, 1970), 13-26.
10. While diverse in themselves, against their older trinitarian siblings, Oneness Pentecostals are together in espousing a Jewish-Christian theology of the name, and affirming rebaptism in Jesus' name alone. In addition, most Oneness bodies have maintained the classical Pentecostal piety of strict holiness codes, while some Oneness strands collapse regeneration and new birth with water and Spirit baptism into a single stage or event in accordance with an exclusivistic reading of Acts 2:38. Central to the divide, however, is the Oneness rejection of historic trinitarianism in favor of a modalistic monarchian doctrine of God, and it is this which is of concern here. For a concise look at Oneness history and theology, see David A. Reed, "Oneness Pentecostalism," in Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements, ed. Stanley M. Burgess and Gary B. McGee (Grand Rapids, MI: Regency/Zondervan Publishing House, 1988), 644-651;
11. this summary article is a distillation of Reed's "The Origins of the Theology of Oneness Pentecostalism in the United States" (Ph.D. diss.; Boston, MA: Boston University, 1978).
12. David Bernard, et. al., Meet the United Pentecostal Church International (Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Publications, 1989), 56. Although this volume was jointly authored by ten Oneness leaders, Bernard is their most distinguished theologian and recognized spokesman. I will rely primarily on his work in my exposition.
13. Bernard reminds us that Socinus' (1539-1604) denial of the Trinity was predicated on his rationalistic rejection of the deity of Jesus; see his discussion and rejection of Socinus and the unitarian movement he spawned in A History of Christian Doctrine, vol. 2, The Reformation to the Holiness Movement, A.D. 1500-1900 (Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 1996), 108-10.
14. David K. Bernard, "The Oneness View of Jesus Christ," paper presented at the 19th Annual Meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies, Fresno, California, 16-18 November 1989, 17.
15. David K. Bernard, The Oneness of God (Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 1983), 60.
16. See also Marvin D. Treece, "The Oneness Exposition of John 1:1-14," Symposium on Oneness Pentecostalism 1986 (Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 1986), 223-58.
17. Bernard, The Oneness of God, 103ff.
18. The reference to Origen is On First Principles, 1.2, 4;
19. (all references and quotations from the Church Fathers are from Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series reissued by Hendrickson Publishers, 1994).
20. See, for example, ch. 8, "New Testament Explanations: The Gospels," in Bernard. The Oneness of God.
21. Bernard's insistence that "one cannot merge Christ's humanity and deity totally and still maintain the Oneness doctrine" inevitably leads him to affirm the broad contours of Nestorius' christology even if he does accept follow the Patriarch of Constantinople on every point; see "Oneness Christology," Symposium on Oneness Pentecostalism 1986 (Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 1986), 127, 143.
22. Bernard, The Oneness of God, 144.
23. Thomas Weisser, "Was the Early Church Oneness or Trinitarian?",
24. and William B. Chalfant, "The Origin of the Trinity," both in Symposium on Oneness Pentecostalism 1986 (Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 1986);
25. also, Chalfant, "The Fall of the Ancient Apostolic Church," Symposium on Oneness Pentecostalism 1988 and 1990 (Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 1990).
26. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, rev. ed. (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978), 109.
27. William B. Chalfant, Ancient Champions of Oneness: A History of the True Church of Jesus Christ (Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 1979).
28. See also the two volumes of David K. Bernard: Oneness and Trinity, A.D. 100-300: The Doctrine of God in Ancient Christian Writings (Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 1991))
29. and The Trinitarian Controversy in the Fourth Century (Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 1993).
30. Tertullian, Against Praxeas, II and III.
31. Bernard, Oneness and Trinity, 170.
32. On the Oneness side, see Meet the United Pentecostal Church International, 60-62,
33. and David K. Bernard, "God," in Doctrines of the Bible, ed. J. L. Hall and David K. Bernard (Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 1993), 15-22;
34. in this latter manual, Bernard discusses in successive sections "The Oneness of God" and "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." On the trinitarian side, the quote is from Myer Pearlman, Knowing the Doctrines of the Bible (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1937), 68; mention has already been made of E. S. Williams's approach in note 7.
35. Pearlman, Doctrines of the Bible, 68-69.
36. Bernard, The Oneness of God, 115.
37. Bernard, The Oneness of God; 116.
38. See Bernard, The Oneness of God, 30,
39. and Williams, Systematic Theology, 1:182.
40. See Bernard, "God," 1-2;
41. Pearlman, Doctrines of the Bible, 34-37.
42. Williams, Systematic Theology, 1:169.
43. My italics capture the Pauline witness of Christ as "before all things" (Col. 1:16-17); see "The Doctrine of Creation," in Where We Stand: The Official Position Papers of the Assemblies of God (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1994), 103. More importantly, it underscores the classical Pentecostal theological understanding of eternity as infinite temporal duration, to which I will return below.
44. David Reed, "Aspects of the Origins of Oneness Pentecostalism," in Aspects of Pentecostal-Charismatic Origins, ed. Vinson Synan (Plainfield, NJ: Logos International, 1975), 152.
45. "Sara," in Theological Workbook of the Old Testament, vol. 1, ed. R. L. Harris, G. L. Archer Jr. and B. K. Waltke (Chicago, IL: Moody Press, 1980), 127.
46. While also cited to undergird creation ex nihilo, Hebrews 11:4 is more ambiguous. "What is seen was not made out of what was visible" can refer just as well to the arrangement of unformed or chaotic matter; this is Augustine's interpretation of ex nihilo in The Confessions 13.33. The author of the Hebrews, however, probably had in mind Genesis 1:1, and may also have known of 2 Maccabees 7:28, which tells of how the world was created "out of things that had no existence" (ek ouk onton), and 2 Baruch 21:4, which tells of God having "called forth from the beginning of the world that which did not yet exist" (translations from F. F. Bruce, The Epistle of the Hebrews [1964; reprint, Grand Rapid, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1984], 281).
47. G. Ch. Aalders, Genesis, vol. 1, tr. William Heynen (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing Company, 1981), 51
48. Beginning with his Ph.D. dissertation at Yale in 1963, revised and published as God the Creator: On the Transcendence and Presence of God (1968; reprint, Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992).
49. The speculative hypothesis of creation ex nihilo defended in this early volume is elaborated in parts of three other volumes: The Tao and the Daimon: Segments of a Religious Inquiry, where it is tested against the broader religious public; A Theology Primer where it is applied rigorously and systematically to Christian theology; and Eternity and Time's Flow, where the ideas of divinity, eternity, and temporality and their relations are more comprehensively investigated (all from Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1982, 1991, and 1993 respectively). Our all-too-brief synopsis of his argument in this paragraph is drawn primarily from God the Creator, Part One.
50. Neville, God the Creator, 70.
51. Neville, The Tao and the Daimon, 80-81.
52. See Neville's trinitarianism developed in The Tao and the Daimon, 73ff.,
53. and Theology Primer, 37ff. In what follows, I am simply outlining in brief Neville's own trinitarian theology. Where I depart from Neville at crucial points can be seen in my own constructive proposal later in the fourth and final section of this article.
54. See the Ch. V on Brightman in my "From Pietism to Pluralism: Boston Personalism and the Liberal Era in American Methodist Theology, 1876-1953" (M.A. thesis; Portland, OR: Portland State University, 1995).
55. Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation, tr. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 86ff.
56. Neville, Eternity and Time's Flow, 154.
57. Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, tr. Margaret Kohl (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1981), 160.
58. Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 159.
59. Mottmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom, 160.
60. Robert Jenson, The Triune Identity (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1982), 125-126.
61. Leonardo Boff, Trinity and Society, tr. Paul Bums (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1988), 214.
62. Boff, Trinity and Society, 215; emphasis mine.
63. Boff, Trinity and Society, 233.
64. See Douglas Hedley, "Pantheism, Trinitarian Theism and the Idea of Unity: Reflections on the Christian Concept of God," Religious Studies 32 (March 1996): 61-77.
65. Meister Eckhart, "Sermon 7," in Selected Writings, tr. Oliver Davies (London, England: Penguin Books, 1994), 136.
66. Wolfhart Pannenberg summarizes this state of affairs as follows in an effort to rescue orthodox trinitarian doctrine: "Now the trinitarian concept of God does in fact include an impersonal element. That is the divine essence as such. This one divine essence that makes for the unity of God is not personal by itself, but personal only as it becomes manifested in each of the three persons," in "The Christian Vision of God: The New Discussion on the Trinitarian Doctrine," Trinity Seminary Review 13 (fall 1991): 60.
67. For the philosophical aspects, see Frederick Copleston, Religion and the One: Philosophies East and West (New York, NY: Crossroads, 1982).
68. Neville has further explored the religious significance of this convergence in Behind the Masks of God: An Essay Toward Comparative Theology (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1991).
69. Basil, Letter to the Caesareans, 2.
70. Neville, God the Creator, 167;
71. italics mine. Elsewhere, Neville speaks of the indeterminate divine reality as "infinite" (Eternity and Time's Flow, 146,
72. and The Truth of Broken Symbols [Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1996], 65).
73. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, tr. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1991), 293-94;
74. Pannenberg refers to Lucke's essay, "Fragen und Bedanken uber die immanente Wesentrinitat, oder die trinitarische Selbstunterscheidung Gottes (1840).
75. For a synopsis of the Ritschlian influence on trinitarian speculation, see Claude Welch, In This Name: The Doctrine of the Trinity in Contemporary Theology (New York, NY: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1952), ch. 1.
76. Piet Schoonenberg, "Trinity - The Consummated Covenant: Theses on the Doctrine of the Trinitarian God," Studies in Religion, tr. Robert C. Ware, 5 (1975-76), 11-16; quote from Thesis 8.
77. This is Catherine LaCugna's argument - "that the doctrine of the Trinity is not above a theory about God's 'internal self-relatedness' but an effort to articulate the basic faith of Christians" - in her God For Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (1973; reprint, San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1991), ix.
78. Basil, On the Spirit, 16, 38.
79. Process theology in the Whitehead-Hartshorne line has thus argued for a variant of James's finite God. More recently evangelicals have posited that while divine time may not be measurable by created time, nevertheless, God exists in such ontologically conditioning time relative to the world (see the chapters by Clark Pinnock and William Hasker in The Openness of God. A Biblical Challenge to the Traditional Understanding of God, ed. Clark Pinnock et al. [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994],
80. and Alan G. Padgett, "God and Time: Toward a New Doctrine of Divine Timeless Eternity, Religious Studies 25 (1989]: 206-215).
81. Neville, Eternity and Time's Flow, 60. The difference from Augustine is that the African theologian considered eternity as timeless while Neville sees both as integrally related and mutually defining. The dualism of time and eternity is eschewed in the latter.
82. G. R. Lewis, "God, Attributes of," in Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, ed. Walter A. Elwell (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1984), 451.
83. Jonathan Urshan, "The Last Things," in Doctrines of the Bible, ed. J. L. Hall and David K. Bernard (Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 1993), 286
84. See Bernard, "Response to Ralph Del Colle," 8.
85. See Documents of the Christian Church, 2nd ed., ed. Henry Bettenson (Oxford, Enaland: Oxford University Press, 1963) 26-27; italics mine.
86. Bernard, Oneness and Trinity, 179. Colossians 2:8 reads: "See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ."
87. See Carl Brumback, God in Three Persons (Cleveland, TN: Pathway Press, 1959). Of course, undergirding Brumback's entire polemic is the dualistic metaphysics of time and eternity which I am addressing. Brumback queries neither the historical context during which the doctrine of the Trinity was forged nor the philosophical presuppositions of the church fathers. To their credit, Oneness thinkers have at least begun to grapple with these issues. They have devoted much more attention to the historic Christian tradition than their trinitarian siblings, even if they are motivated to rescue their own doctrinal emphases by re-visioning the history of doctrinal development. Along with the sources cited in notes 20 and 22,
88. see also Bernard's two-volume A HIstory of Christian Doctrine (Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 1995 and 1996).
89. Gregory A. Boyd, Oneness Pentecostals & The Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1992), 178-180.
90. Bernard, "Response to Ralph Del Colle," 4.
91. David K. Bernard, The New Birth (Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 1984), 334-335.
92. Thus the call for a retrieval of the Father by Thomas A. Smail, The Forgotten Father (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1980).
93. Theologically Pentecostals are not far from the mark as Yves Congar has noted that "the texts that speak of the Spirit of the Son or of Christ are all concerned with the economy, God's plan in the world" (The Word and the Spirit, tr. David Smith [San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1986], 103).
94. David Reed, "Oneness Pentecostalism: Problems and Possibilities for Pentecostal Theology," paper presented at the Congress on the Holy Spirit and World Evangelization, Orlando, Florida, 26-29 July 1995, 29.
95. For an astute analysis of the trinitarian character of Pentecostal affections, see Steven J. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality: A Passion for the Kingdom (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1994), 125 ff.
96. Reed, "Oneness Pentecostalism," 249.
97. Kart Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. 1/1, The Doctrine of the Word of God, ed. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh, Scotland: T. and T. Clark, 1975), 295ff.
98. Raymond Panikkar, The Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1973), 61.
99. Cf. my own effort to overcome Chalcedonian dualism in "The Doctrine of the Two Natures of Christ: A Historical and Critical Analysis," M.A. thesis, Western Evangelical Seminary, 1992, ch. 9.
100. With regard to the Filioque, for Pentecostals, God being "actually present in the practical life of faith is far more important than specifying precisely what hypostasies [sic] distinguish the mysterious inner working of the Persons of the Trinity (Gerald T. Sheppard, "The Nicene Creed, Filioque, and Pentecostal Movements in the United States," Greek Orthodox Theological Review 31:3-4 [1986], 416). Thus, as doctrinal Protestants, Pentecostals confess the Filioque. In faith and practice, however, theirs is a curious sort of chiliastic movement in the spirit of the eschatological Trinity. The Spirit as the activity of God in the world exalts the Son and through the Son, draws creation back to the Father, "so that God may be all in all" (1 Cor. 15:28).
101. D. William Faupel clearly identifies the eschatological core of the Pentecostal message in The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), Ch. 2.
102. Land, Pentecostal Spirituality, 197. The notion of an eschatological Trinity in my own thinking has developed in part out of dialogue with the work of Moltmann (see note 86 below), as appears to be the case with Professor Land. My quoting Professor Land simply shows how two Pentecostals have found a mutual fecund source in re-visioning Pentecostal trinitarian thinking; it does not imply that Professor Land would agree with my criticisms of Moltmann above, nor that he would accept my proposal in this paper to abandon the concept of the immanent Trinity apart from creation.
103. Jensen, The Triune Identity, 141; Jensen himself eschews the notion of an immanent Trinity "before" creation, and develops more so from a philosophical perspective the idea of an eschatological Trinity.
104. In contrast to the less insightful implications flowing from his speculations about the immanent Trinity and the mode of creation discussed previously, it is here in eschatology that some of Moltmann's lasting theological contributions lie. Following the fundamentally sound thesis developed in his Theology of Hope regarding the centrality of eschatology to the Christian message, he writes: Eschatologically, the unity of God is therefore linked with the salvation of creation, just as his glory is linked with his glorification through everything that lives and rejoices. Just as his glory is presented to him from creation through the Spirit, so his unity through the union of creation is also brought to him through the Spirit. In the eschatological considerations of historical thinking, the idea of the unity of God has a high soteriological content. For that reason it would be better to talk in this respect about the 'union' with God The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology, tr. Margaret Kohl (London, England: SCM Press, 1977), 61.
105. See also W. Waite Willis Jr.'s discussion of the liberative effects of an eschatological trinitarian consummation in Theism, Atheism and the Doctrine of the Trinity: The Trinitarian Theology of Karl Barth and Jürgen Moltmann in Response to Protest Atheism (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1987), 149-179.
106. Ralph Del Colle, Christ and the Spirit: Spirit-Christology in Trinitarian Perspective (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1994), 154.
107. Reed briefly touches on how Oneness theology is "a problem for the ecumenical interests of trinitarian Pentecostals and charismatics" ("Oneness Pentecostalism: Problems and Possibilities," 30).