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A Reply To The Article “Answering ‘Oneness’ Pentecostalism” By William B. Chalfant |
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Recently, I read an anonymous article on the web by some anonymous pundit attempting to “answer” Oneness Pentecostal teaching. He (or she) has failed completely. Actually, his tongue-in-cheek, foot-in-mouth “critique” is a miserable exercise in obfuscation, confusion, and downright lies. Let me demonstrate by pointing out just a few of the egregious and erroneous errors blatantly held forth as beacons of truth by this benighted soul, who has either not studied Oneness teaching to any degree, or is openly attempting to deceive his (or her) readers. I suspect the latter. AN INSULT TO THE INCARNATION The anonymous writer (hiding behind anonymity for reasons unknown to us) attempts to show that Oneness Pentecostals are confused in their approach to the Deity and the humanity of Christ. Knowing that what he (or she) is saying is untrue, he nevertheless brashly states that Oneness Pentecostals have two “Plans” to explain the Deity and the humanity of Christ. Plan A, which he (or she), for some unknown reason, states has “just crashed and burned” (where did he or she get this wierd idea?) tries “to get by” by presenting “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” as “titles borne by Jesus”. Oneness Pentecostals say the titles refer to “three offices” or “roles” (in Matthew 28.19). But this, according to our timid, reticent unknown author cannot explain the “I-thou relation of love presented in the gospels between the Father and the Son”. Therefore, according to him (or her), Oneness Pentecostalism writers drop “Plan A” altogether and “advance a totally different scheme, presenting with a flourish, as a center-piece of their new religion, the novel definition that the Son means ‘the flesh’ (by synecdoche, the humanity) of Jesus”. OUR REPLY: This is unsurpassed “drivel” with no basis in fact. I know of no Oneness Pentecostal who has ever advocated any such scheme called “Plan A” or “Plan B”. This is a wishful figment of our shy unknown author’s mind. He (or she) presents this as though there were some confusion between the teaching that “Father, Son and Holy Spirit” are titles belonging to the one true God and the teaching that the Son refers to the humanity. Any contradiction or confusion stems from the imaginative mind of our unknown polemicist. This criticism from our supposedly religious critic is actually an insult to the sacred incarnation of our Lord. He (or she) begins to mock at the teaching concerning the incarnation, going into out of control gyrations of delusion concerning our Lord’s flesh. I would like to remind our secluded critic that one of his own trinitarian ancestors, Apollinaris, tried to restrict the word “flesh” (sarx) to “the substance of the body”. He also made a mockery of John 1.14, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us”. Apollinaris would not allow the word “flesh” to be used in any other sense than “the substance of the body”. But, as another trinitarian, Athanasius, held: flesh can also mean the entire human being. Christ is both God and man. This timid theologian (he or she) knows this is true, yet he (or she) wishes for the reader to be so mindless as to think that Oneness Pentecostals do not know it! Apollinaris, along with a bunch of other heretics, was a trinitarian. After all, it was the Catholics and the Protestants who brought us the Spanish Inquisition, the murderer John Calvin, and various other bloodlettings through their cultic activities. After thinking that he (or she) has trashed the position on the Son of the Oneness Pentecostals, he (or she) makes another trite, “cutsy” comment, putting down the Oneness position: “Or wait-maybe the Son means ‘the Father in the flesh’...or something”. But this is the incarnation (“God manifest in the flesh”) and he (or she) mocks at it because he thinks it is the Oneness position (not realizing, apparently, that it is scripture- 1 Timothy 3.16). And this is “new” religion? This is orthodoxy? Spare us. Thus, he says, “The bottom-line definition of ‘the Son’ in Oneness Pentecostalism seems to be, ‘The Son’ means ‘the flesh’; except when it doesn’t, in which case it means ‘the Father’!). Now this is “cute” and bound to win the admiration of the mockers, but, unfortunately, for our secret critic, the Bible clearly teaches that Christ is God (the Father) and man (the flesh). Sometimes Jesus spoke as a human being (when He became “tired”, “hungry”, “thirsty”), while other times He clearly spoke as God (when He calmed the angry sea, raised Lazarus from the grave). So even though our secret critic mocks on about the dual nature of Jesus, the truth prevails. YOU CANNOT HAVE IT BOTH WAYS Our reticent friend wants to attack Oneness Pentecostals from two sides: (1) for Patripassianism (the belief that God Himself suffered on the cross and died) and (2) for affirming the humanity of Christ. He (or she) states trinitarians sing the Charles Wesley hymn “And Can It Be That I Should Gain?”, which states, “Amazing love! How can it be that thou, my God, shouldst die for me?”. But Oneness Pentecostals, according to our secret critic, cry, “Not so fast!” the Oneness Pentecostals “holler”, “God cannot die!”. So here we have the incongruous mockery of a trinitarian condemning Oneness Pentecostals for supposedly attacking the “God died” teaching, and yet also attacking them in turn for being “patripassians”! You cannot have it both ways. At least explain your gross inconsistency (although that doesn’t seem to bother our secret critic at all). What is it? Are you defending the death of God? Or are you attacking the fact that a man died on the cross? Jesus Christ is both God (the Father) and Man (the Son of God)-a fact you seem to be blissfully ignorant of. You attack His deity as God the Father, and then you turn around and attack His genuine humanity, mocking His “flesh”. Shame on you, Mr. Anonymous! THE ETERNAL SON? It is not even an embarrassment to our critic, hiding in the bushes, that there is no scriptural term “the eternal Son”. It is not an embarrassment to him (or her) that there is no scripture proving a pre-existent “Son”, and there is no scripture showing a pre-creational “birth” of any “Son”. None of these glaring omissions in the scripture stop him (or her) from affirming that there is more than one birth for the Son. He stubbornly and dogmatically believes in a pre-existent, separate divine Person from God the Father called the Word. He is mindless concerning the scriptures which show how the worlds were created by God speaking the Word (Gen. 1.3, Psalms 33.6-9). No, he must have another divine Person, a separate, divine Agent to satisfy his anti-monotheistic bent. In this, his old paganism hangs out like a sore thumb. He mocked Oneness Pentecostals for teaching that Jesus is both God and man, but now, in his attack upon the humanity of Christ, he (or she) insists that Christ cannot be God (the Father) but must perforce be another divine Person (a figment of the trinitarian mind). Jesus, in his (or her) mind, cannot pre-exist as God (the only God of the Bible), but must pre-exist as some other second divine Person, according to the trinitarian error. Thus he (or she) denies the true divinity of Christ by manufacturing another divine Person-not seen in the scriptures. This is blasphemy. By refusing to acknowledge the genuine humanity of Christ (in accepting the virgin birth as the only birth of the “only-begotten” Son of God), he (or she) thus concocts some sort of a “demi-god”. Christ, as God, in his (or her) view, has to derive His divinity from God the Father. He (or she) claims to believe that Jesus is fully God, but will not allow Jesus to possess every title that belongs to God (e.g., the title of “God the Father”, as in Isaiah 9.6). IS JESUS A ‘DERIVED’ GOD? Jesus is made into some kind of a “second divine Person”, a “derived God”, if you please, in some way, as God, preceded in some sense by God the Father, since He is supposedly “eternally begotten”, contradicting the clear, scriptural teaching on the birth of the man Jesus. Thus, because Oneness Pentecostals clearly uphold the true deity of Christ (as God the Father), they must lamely be accused of denying “the eternity of the Son” (knowing all the time that Oneness Pentecostals hold Jesus also to be God the Father and therefore do not deny the eternity or deity of Jesus, but deny the eternity of the Sonship). If our secret critic would be honest, he would also add that Oneness Pentecostals “while they deny the eternity of the Son, hold Jesus Christ to be God the Father and eternal”. But this truth he (or she) deceitfully holds back from his readers. HYPOCRITICAL HYPOCRISY Our timid theologican (hiding behind his anonymity) now makes a mockery out of the conversations between the Father and the Son, accusing Oneness Pentecostals of making God Himself “a hypocrite”. This is an utterly false allegation. He (or she) hauls out the tedious, old false accusations that Oneness Pentecostals teach that God “puts on various masks and disguies and pretends to carry on conversation”. This was a false interpretation of Sabellius’ teaching some 1700 years ago! What old hash! Let me ask a serious question: Which is more
hypocritical? To maintain that one divine Person is speaking to
another divine Person (contrary to all scriptural teaching that
there is only one divine Lord, only one God, and not Another |