By Apprising Ministries special correspondent Daniel Neades of Better Than Sacrifice
This is a repost of an original article on Better Than Sacrifice
James MacDonald’s invitation to T.D. Jakes to participate in The Elephant Room 2 has been nothing if not controversial, as I outlined in my previous post.
MacDonald’s invitation to Jakes was no doubt well intentioned, and part of the motivation was surely to help break down the racial divide still all too evident in the visible church within the United States. Such intentions are commendable.
Why, then, was MacDonald’s invitation to T.D. Jakes controversial? For two primary reasons:
- Since he began his ministry, Jakes has been associated with the heresy of modalism, and has hitherto refused to embrace orthodox Trinitarian creeds or formulas.
- Jakes has consistently preached a false prosperity gospel, promising people that God will bless them materially if they give generously to Jakes’ ministry.
The Heresy of modalism vs. the orthodox view of the Trinity
Before we can examine Jakes’ statements at the Elephant Room, it is necessary to understand both the heresy of modalism and the Church’s historic orthodox confession of the Trinity.
In his excellent book, Heresies: Heresy and Orthodoxy in the History of the Church, Harold O.J. Brown (Ph.D. Harvard University, and professor of biblical and systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical International University) writes this about modalism (p. 99):
The word “modalism” is unfamiliar to most Christians, yet it is the most common theological error among people who think themselves orthodox. It is the simplest way to explain the Trinity while preserving the oneness of God; unfortunately, it is incorrect. Adoptionism [the heresy that Jesus became God at his baptism] preserved the unity of the godhead by sacrificing the deity of Christ; modalism, by abandoning the personhood of Christ and the Holy Spirit. Modalism frequently reappears as the result of failure to teach the doctrine of the Trinity clearly. An implicit or naive modalism is sometimes found in modern fundamentalistic circles that insist on the deity of Christ but are unwilling to make the theological effort to formulate a clear doctrine of the Trinity.
Modalism upholds the deity of Christ, but does not see him as a distinct Person vis-à-vis the Father. It holds that God reveals himself under different aspects or modes [hence, modalism] in different ages—as the Father in Creation and in the giving of the Law, as the Son in Jesus Christ, and as the Holy Spirit after Christ’s ascension. Modalism stresses the full deity of Christ and thus does justice to the tremendous impact he made upon his age, and it avoids the suggestion that he is a second God alongside the Father. Unfortunately it abandons the diversity of Persons within the godhead, and thus loses the important concept that Christ is our representative or advocate with the Father.
Notice that the error of modalism is not that it denies God’s working distinctively as Father, Son and Holy Spirit – modalism expressly affirms this – but rather, that it denies the existence of three distinct Persons within the Godhead.
In theological language, modalism affirms an economic trinity (three distinctive ways of God’s working), but denies an ontological Trinity (three distinct Persons subsisting in one Godhead). Thus, modalists are able to affirm their belief in a trinity, but what they are confessing by that term is something other than the essential doctrine of the Trinity taught by the historic orthodox Christian Faith and believed by the Christian Church throughout the ages.
With Brown’s explanation of modalism in mind, read the statement of belief concerning God from Jakes’ own congregation, The Potter’s House:
There is one God, Creator of all things, infinitely perfect, and eternally existing in three manifestations: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
It is immediately clear that this is the language of classic modalism, not that of Trinitarian orthodoxy.
We need also to understand why modalism is a deadly error condemned by the Church.
Here is Brown, again (Heresies, p. 99):
Logically, modalism makes the events of redemptive history a kind of charade. Not being a distinct person, the Son cannot really represent us to the Father. Modalism must necessarily be docetic [believing that Jesus’ physical body was an illusion] and teach that Christ was human in appearance only; the alternative, on the basis of modalistic presuppositions, is that God himself died on the Cross. Since such an idea is considered absurd—except by death-of-God theologians—the normal consequence is the conclusion that while Christ was fully God, he only appeared to be man.
Thus, modalism is considered heresy because it necessarily means that Christ did not really become incarnate. The Word did not really become flesh, and thus Jesus did not die with a real physical body, or shed His real blood. In other words, modalism necessarily invalidates the central doctrine of the entire Christian faith: that Jesus died bodily for our sins and rose from the dead.
Brown continues his discussion of modalism, explaining why some find it attractive (Heresies, p. 100):
Like adoptionism, modalism has a basis in Scripture. The adoptionists emphasize the Synoptic Gospels [Matthew, Mark and Luke] and their portrayal of the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus at his baptism. The modalists emphasize the Gospel of John with its statements stressing the oneness of Christ with the Father, for example, “I and my Father are one,” and, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 10:30, 14:9). Instead of understanding these verses to mean that Christ is a second Person in perfect communion with the Father, they are taken to mean that he and the Father are a single Person, in other words, that he is the Father.
The word “one” in the Greek text of John 10:30 is the neuter hen, which suggests that the meaning is “one deity, one divine essence,” rather than one Person, but this is a rather sophisticated insight. It makes sense only if one can conceive of God as subsisting in distinct Persons, namely, in the Father and the Son (and of course in the Holy Spirit as well). Anyone who has not yet been able to formulate the concept of the Trinity in this explicit way will of course find it simpler and more plausible to understand Christ as saying, “I and the Father are one Person,” in other words, as presenting himself as a mode of the Father.
If the Son is not a real Person who can stand before the Father and address him, then the later Christian concept of substitutionary satisfaction, which holds that Christ takes our place and pays our debt to the Father, becomes at best a symbol, not a reality. Where modalism prevails, the concept of substitutionary satisfaction, or vicarious atonement, will necessarily be absent, and so modalism is sometimes adopted by those who object to the doctrine of vicarious atonement. More commonly, however, it simply arises as an attempt to reduce the mystery of the Trinity to a more understandable concept, even at the cost of the true humanity of Jesus and the doctrine of substitutionary satisfaction.
Modalism destroys the basis of the Christian Faith.
One can, of course, mistakenly hold modalistic beliefs out of ignorance. But one cannot understand and confess modalism while simultaneously holding on to the historic orthodox Christian faith. The two are simply incompatible.
By the early fourth century, the Arian heresy was raging. Arianism taught that, although divine, Jesus was nevertheless a created being. (Jehovah’s Witnesses are modern day Arians.) The Church responded to the Arian heresy with the Nicene Creed, adopted in its original form by the First Council of Nicaea in AD 325 and subsequently revised:
I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made; who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man, and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again with glory to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.
And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified; who spake by the Prophets. And I believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church.I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins; and I look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.
(Note that the English word ‘catholic’ is derived from the Greek word meaning ‘universal’. Thus, when the Nicene Creed uses the word ‘catholic’, it is simply referring to the fact that the true Christian Church is universal, or worldwide.)
The Nicene Creed enabled the Church to distinguish between those teaching and believing the Arian heresy, and those who were believing, teaching and confessing the historic orthodox Christian Faith delivered by the Apostles and recorded in the Scriptures.
Further heresies arose, including modalism. The Church therefore developed language and confessions to refute those heresies. By the early sixth century, the Church was using the Athanasian Creed. The text of this creed is carefully designed to exclude a number of Trinitarian and Christological heresies. It adopts the earlier language of Augustine’s On the Trinity (415 AD), and the confession concerning the Trinity arising from the Council of Chalcedon (451 AD). The Athanasian Creed therefore reflects the historic orthodox Christian Faith as received from the Apostles, recorded in Scripture, and understood by the worldwide Christian Church.
Here is the text of the Athanasian Creed:
Read the rest
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