Below are my impressions of what happened in this four-hour discussion between Marcus Rogers Vs. Steven Bancarz on the issue of Trinity or Oneness.  Bancarz, of course, exemplifies the position of classic Trinitarianism, and Rogers of the more recent Modalism, but it occurred to me that Rogers’s position was shakey, volatile, and unstable at every point of the discussion; it exhibited the quality of restlessness, fluidity, and disagreement (and I will explain what I mean by that).

Restlessness revealed itself in the constant shifting away from any direct and objective statement the Bible says to newer subjective tangents.  These tangents seemed to reinforce what was already confronted in the previous claims he made.  An example of this was how Rogers dealt with Genesis 1:26 where Trinitarians and Oneness proponents agree that ONLY GOD created anything and both men agreed that God referred to himself with plural Us, however, Rogers refused to conclude that it indicated a plurality of persons—why not?  Because of a rejoinder: Moses wrote, “So GOD (singular) made man in his own (singular) image.”  The point was lost on Rogers that only God made man in his own image (which both gentlemen agreed with from the very start of their talks).  The point here is that Rogers seems to resist acknowledging that Genesis 1:26 directly supports a multi-personal God, not a uni-personal one.

One way Oneness advocates try to escape from the implications of Genesis 1:26 is to claim that God was speaking to the angels.  But how does it work to say God made such a declaration to the angels if the US did not include any angel’s helping hand or assistance?  The US can only refer to some kind OF MULTIPLICITY within the Deity (which is precisely the Trinitarian point). 

Oneness proponents try to deflect by lodging a grievance that makes no sense, they typically say things like, “It could have said this, or it could have said that,”  But wherever we go this could be a tactic for any passage, chapter, or verse anybody disagreed with; someone could always raise the objection”  “Since it does not state it exactly the way we want to hear it then it proves nothing!”

Rogers Wants Jesus to Be God the Father, But. . .

In this debate/ discussion, it is evident that the Oneness position does not sit squarely upon any New Testament claim about who Jesus is.  A classic example of this can be seen in how Rogers dealt with Hebrews 1:8 where God says to the Son, “Thy throne O, God, is forever and ever, a scepter of righteousness is the scepter of your kingdom. . . ”  The Greek of the text reads as follows, 

“Πρὸς δὲ τὸν Υἱόν: Ὁ θρόνος σου, ὁ Θεὸς, εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα τοῦ αἰῶνος, καὶ ἡ ῥάβδος τῆς εὐθύτητος ῥάβδος τῆς βασιλείας σου.” (Hebrews 1:8)¹

The fact that it is evident that God is the first person calling the Son, the second person “God” escaped his attention altogether.  By all appearances, it is as if there are two gods in the text!  The first person (who is obviously God) said to the second person (who is also God), “You did this and you did that.” but it did not say, “I did this and I did that.”  In other words, a Someone said to Someone else, “Your throne O God, is forever and ever. . .”—and that Someone else is our Lord Jesus, the eternal Son.

Clearly, here God speaks of his Son unequivocally as “GOD” (ὁ Θεὸς), and accords to him an eternal throne (verse 8) and creator (verse 10) long before the Bethlehem incarnation event of the first century B.C., but Rogers does not comprehend this.  Why?  Why does it escape or elude his attention?  Nobody can say for sure, but we can surmise that he is ransacking the Bible for reasons why Oneness Theology is right and anything that contradicts that quest is quickly overturned in search of all evidence that God is absolutely one (which, by the way, the Bible never claims)!

The Yachid Versus Echad Battleground

The “Yachid versus Echad” issue is a battleground where Christians and their Oneness opponents should spend some time seeing what the philological and theological stakes are.  If the Hebrew writers of the Old Testament were concerned that ancient Israel and Biblical Judaism would champion an absolute unipersonal deity that chance was forever lost when they, one and all, declared God to be Yachid, see more on this here.  Rabbinic Judaism, of course, would like us to believe that word should have been Echad but that is a post-Biblical position that even complicates the Two powers in Heaven revelation given to the Prophet Daniel in his night vision (see Daniel 7:1-28).  

One could say that the entire theology of the New Testament is squarely built on the Two Powers theology from Matthew to the Book of Revelation.  In Daniel 7 the Ancient of Days and the Son of man are both worshiped.  How is that different from the New Testament where the Father and the Son must be equally honored (John 5:23)  and both are equally worshiped (Revelation 5:13)?  In the end, Jesus is very clear about who he is to victorious Christians (Revelation 21:7).  Moreover, the Father and the Son [together] are the Temple of the New Jerusalem, (Revelation 21:22) and the Father and the Son [together] are the light of it (Revelation 21:23).  Finally, the Father and the Son [together] emit a stream of pure water from their shared throne (Revelation 22:1) and, finally, the Holy Spirit and the Church call all who hear the Gospel, and all who are thirsty, and whoever will to come to take the water of life freely (Revelation 22:17).

And so, what is the difference?  Trinitarians believe one God is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit and they are all one God, but in Oneness reckoning, Jesus is the Father and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and the Son (somehow), was a plan in his own mind in eternity, but now Jesus is (somehow), the Holy Spirit in this present redemptive age. 

On one hand, they proclaim that Jesus is the one God, but on the other hand, they proclaim that Jesus was only an idea in God’s mind in the beginning.  Then, on the other hand, they believe Jesus only came into being at Bethlehem (wrongly using 1 Peter 1:20 and Revelation 13:8).  In fact, Rogers goes so far as use these two passages to prove that Jesus was merely a plan in God’s mind.  

Jesus Was a Plan?  Wait, What!? 

If Jesus is God the Father, how could he only be a plan?  There seems to be a fundamental contradiction and confusion here that we should not ignore.  Oneness advocates can’t have their cake and eat it, too!  However, throughout the entire discussion, there is a merry-go-round of claims, Jesus is the Father, no, Jesus was only in God’s mind, no, he’s God in the flesh, well, he’s never called “the eternal Son.”  Nevermind that God said of the Son, “THOU, Lord, in the beginning hast laid foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of your hands” (Hebrews 1:10).  The Bible does not have to say the Son is eternal if it plainly says he was in the beginning and the heavens and the earth are the works of his hands.  If the Son’s throne is forever and ever, then his eternality is directly inferred–and if Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever (Hebrews 13:8)–then of course the Son of God is eternal.

Christians Are Right to Question Modalism

The purpose of this review is to buttress the idea that Christians should be very concerned about claims people are making about the Deity that clearly run counter to the claims of the Bible.  In the earliest years of Christianity, the Church came away from sectarian Bible Judaism with a firm idea that Jesus and the Holy Spirit were included in the identity of the one God of Israel.  And over the centuries this concept of the triunity of God has prevailed as the dominant view.

Nevertheless, since the Azuza Street revival of 1906 the Christian world has been bombarded with Modalist savants who seek to undermine ordinary Christian churches with their highly unstable theological notions.  But Trinitarians are right to question a theology that gives an inkling that Jesus is the Father from eternity, Jesus was only an idea in God’s mind in eternity past, and Jesus only came into being (per the Petrine declaration of 1 Peter 1:20 and Revelation 13:8) in the last days of the Second Jewish Commonwealth.² 

Modalism Seems to Be a Form of Ontological Blindness

Ontology is the study of the nature of being and ontological blindness is the inability to understand or see the nature of being.  In the issue before us, I think it is fair to ask if Modalism is a form of ontological blindness (willful or unintentional) about the nature of God.

Please do not misunderstand me here: No one is arguing that anyone knows everything about God–because that obviously is not possible.  But it is possible and it is even desirable that we accept the information God has given to us about himself, whether or not we can fully comprehend the implications or the logic of it for, let’s face it, who can understand a Being who has no beginning and has no end?  

Now, getting back to the discussion Bancarz questions Rogers about Acts 7:55 where Luke writes that Jesus was standing at the right hand of the glory of God while Stephen was being martyred.  But Rogers still did not see it as declaring that God is more than one person!  When asked if God was standing at his own right hand Rogers does not seem to comprehend the question.³

In view of Jesus’ priestly prayer to the Father, Oneness Pentecostals allege that Jesus (before the world existed), was only an idea (a Plan!!) in God’s mind.  They refer to a strange crossreference in 1 Peter 1:20 and Revelation 13:8 to support this bizarre interpretation.⁴  But neither the Jewish Tanakh nor the Christian New Testament actually supports the notion that Jesus was “an idea” in God’s mind, yet whenever they see information like this their theory about the nature and identity of  Jesus immediately begins to spin back and forth in a continual effort to repudiate that God’s identity includes more than one person: This is the error of Modalism seeking to evade exposure and repudiation.⁵

Bancarz’s Startling Remarks About the Holy Spirit

Do we worship the Holy Spirit and is the Holy Spirit also the Spirit of God?  Is God one spirit and do the Father and the Son share that one spirit?  These are important questions because there are many Trinitarians and Unitarians who believe things about the Holy Spirit that allow them to say he is not worshiped—namely because he is not God, on one hand, or on the other hand his job is to direct the people of God into the worship of the Father and the Son. 

I can see where Bancarz is coming from; it is in direct reference to John 16:13 and I can see where Rogers is coming from when he asks is the Spirit of God also the Holy Spirit (John 4:24)?  I would opine that both gentlemen are actually right here.  The Holy Spirit is the only spirit that God has if we take all that the Bible says at face value (Genesis 1:2, Psalm 139:7-12; Matthew 12:32; Ephesians 4:4, but see 2 Corinthians 3:17, and Hebrews 9:14). 

When Jesus declared of the Holy Spirit and “He shall not speak of himself,” this is the expression that distinctly makes theologians and Bible students conclude that the Holy Spirit’s role in the so-called “economic” Trinity is assigned to support in uplifting God through his people, Christians. 

According to this view, the Holy Spirit’s function is to direct the people of God to and into the worship of the Father and the Son (and we, of course, cannot say we disagree with this).  Nevertheless, it is plain and clear that the Holy Spirit is himself an integral part of the Deity in that he is the ONLY spirit God has. 

Now, according to the Apostle Paul, the Holy Spirit searches the mind of God even as a man searches his own thoughts.  So we need to ask ourselves what being could be so privy to God’s thoughts as to be able to search God’s mind (1 Corinthians 2:10)?  In order to do this, the Holy Spirit would have to be inside God (which is exactly what Christians believe).

The Lord is That Spirit

Besides that, the Holy Spirit is so fundamental in who God is that he is the Lord (2 Corinthians 3:17). And yet he is not the Son, nor the Father (John 14:26), for if he were the Father how could he be sent from the Father?  And if he was the Son, how could he but not speak of himself when he speaks of Christ who is the Son?  Carefully observe these notes about the Holy Spirit being sent by the Son from the Father, 

“If ye love me, keep my commandments.

16 And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, that he may abide with you forever;

17 Even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him: but ye know him; for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you.

18 I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you” (John 14:15-18).

_____________________________________________

“Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come” (John 16:13).⁶ 

We must not be misled to conclude that the Holy Spirit is somehow less than or that he does not matter!  The Holy Spirit is very real and very important inasmuch as blasphemy against him is considered a capital offense in the eyes of Almighty God (Matthew 12:31, Mark 3:29, and Hebrews 10:29).

We have already said God is a Spirit and the New Testament both affirms that there is one Spirit and that that one Lord is that Spirit.  Consequently, it is inevitable that when we direct our adoration toward the Father and the Son we are also worshipping the Holy Spirit and do so whenever and wherever we worship God.  

Zeroing in On the Fundamental Denial

Finally, Rogers’s hopeless explanations about John 1:1 and John 17:5 closely conform to Socinian and Modalist notions and it defeats every claim Oneness Pentecostals make that they believe Jesus is the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit because, in the final analysis, this claim would mean that the Godhead (God) itself was a “plan” or an “idea”–which is utterly ridiculous!

Oneness theory insistently denies that one person is talking to another person and they do not believe the Holy Spirit was sent from the Father by Jesus; and they disagree that David’s Yahweh said anything to David’s Adonai like, “Sit on my right hand until I make Your enemies Your footstool.”7  

We could recount numerous places in the New Testament where it is obvious Jesus and the Father are not one and the same person:

• 1 The Holy Spirit, and the Father are all present at Jesus’s baptism - Matthew 3:16-17.
• 2 A person (the Father) and a plan (the Son) do not and cannot know each other - Matthew 11:27.
• 3 To grant anyone to sit on his right hand or his left hand was not Jesus’ to give - Mark 10:40.
• 4 The Son did not know the day or the hour of the return, only the Father knew this -Mark 13:32.
• 5 The Father judges no man but has committed all judgment to the Son - John 5:22.  If the Father is the Son and the Son is the Father John 5:22 makes no sense at all.
• 6 Jesus asked the Father to glorify his name and the Father spoke from heaven, “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.” - John 12:27-30.  This voice came from heaven and if it was Jesus projecting his own voice, that in and of itself would have been a trick of ventriloquism!
• 7 The Father is greater than the Son - John 14:28.
• 8 Those who only heard of John’s baptism but not heard of the Holy Spirit and by this omission the Apostle Paul immediately knew they had not received baptism into Christ (otherwise they would certainly have heard of the Holy Spirit -Acts 19:1-5.  This demonstrates that baptism in the name of Jesus entails the formula Christ commanded after he arose from the dead in Matthew 28:19.  All the earliest extra-Biblical documents, including the Didache (ca. A.D.70) and the Diatessaron of Tatian (ca. 150), demonstrate that the Triune Benediction was said over the catechumen at the moment of his or her baptism.
• 9 After the end of the world the Son becomes subject to the Father - 1 Corinthians 15:28.  Subordination within the Godhead does not disprove Jesus’ deity but it would certainly be impossible for Jesus to do anything or be anything if God were actually unipersonal, as Modalists insist.
• 10 Near the First Jewish War (A.D.66-70) God gave Jesus the day and hour of his return he did not know nearly 30 years before - Revelation 1:1 cf. Matthew 24:36.

Going through this list let us say that the Father and the Son cannot be a person and a plan because although a person can know a plan, a plan certainly cannot know a person.  And if Jesus is the only person in the Godhead why is permission to sit on his right or left not his to give?  If nescience about the day and hour of the Destruction of the Second Temple was withheld from the Son and belonged only to the Father; then the Father cannot be the Son!

The Trinity vs. Modalist controversy is at once fascinating and frustrating.  In the midst of it, however, I wish to encourage Christians to speak compassionately with those we disagree with and seek to build genuine bridges to make every sincere effort to reach out in dialogue.   

Study and highlight the many ways Modalism refuses to confront or accept what the New Testament is clearly saying about the Father and the Son like, for example, the surprising switch of roles from what one might naturally suppose where Jesus declared that the Father has committed all judgment to the Son,

“For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son:

23 That all men should honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him” (John 5:22-23).

This is a very high Christology that Modalism cannot afford to recognize! How can it be explained that the Father has committed the judgment of all mankind to the Son and that the Son should be honored in the same way that the Father should be honored?  If the Father is the Son, of course, he is honored, no matter what (but this is not the implication of the text).  The implication of the text is that some would want to honor the Father but NOT the Son, however, Jesus gives crystal clear notice that BOTH must be honored and this boggles the mind!

At the very same time that Jesus was alleging that he who had seen him had seen the Father, he also affirmed that the Father was greater at one and the same time.  This has to mean the Father is greater in terms of role if it does not mean in terms of nature.  Not only this, but at the subjugation of the Jewish age the Apostle Paul affirmed that the Son would become subject to the Father “that God might be all in all.” This subordinance in the Godhead makes no sense if there are no variable persons to begin with!

Finally, near the eve of the Destruction of Jerusalem, possibly around the autumn of A.D.62, God gave Jesus the day and hour of his return to render vengeance upon Jerusalem (Revelation 1:1 cf. Matthew 24:36)!

Conclusion

It should be remembered that in Modalism nobody said anything to anyone else and in Modalism nobody did anything for anyone else because only one person is real in God!  By denying the reality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all the Bible says or hints at about the Deity ends up canceling itself out and this is the inevitable tragic dead-end road of Oneness Pentecostalism.  The entire 4 hours 15 minute and 4-second debate were boiled down to their essence in this review.  Nothing personal, demeaning, or disgraceful was intended in this analysis for the simple reason that we need to love others as we love ourselves.  

In all events, we take for granted that Oneness people are grappling with the meaning of their position just as we are wrestling to be sure of ours.  Nevertheless, since they believe God is absolutely unipersonal and not uniquely tripersonal a study in the Bible ends up being a predictable runaround and this unfortunate averting, deflection, and obviation invariably ends with the Deity canceling itself out of existence all because Oneness Pentecostals insist that there is one person in the beingness of the God of Israel instead of three!

The New Testament itself evinces communication back and forth between the Father and the Son (Matthew 3:17, 17:5, 26:39, John 12:29, 17:5, Luke 22:42, and Hebrews 10:5-9).  However, Oneness theologians, savants, and enthusiasts refuse to endorse this kind of theology ridiculing and falsely accusing Trinitarians of making up an unbiblical idea that there are multiple persons in God.  The bottom line is this: they roundly denounce and attempt to dissuade Christians from believing fundamental Bible tenets that they suspect may be from Satan himself, proving themselves to be non-Christians and in fundamental and radical error. 

Endnotes

¹ What Hebrews 1:3-12 says about the Son of God is very troubling in light of both Sabellian ideology as well as Arian theology.  Either way, anyone should be concerned and troubled if they espoused either notion for they blatantly contradict the declarations of the New Testament, see, e.g., John 16:27-28, Colossians 1:15-17 and Philippians 2:5-11).

² See https://jroeloffs.weebly.com/blog/yachid-vs-echad-a-battle-for-the-trinity, on this. 

³ Silas’s comments would better support the idea that God planned for Jesus to do something at the foundation of the world (in the Garden of Eden) than that Jesus himself was the plan!  The reference to Revelation 13:8 would make a similar point but neither text can be used to support the concept that Jesus was only an idea in God’s mind when Adam and Eve first fell into sin (Genesis 3:15).  Socinians and Modalists allege that the Logos (of John 1:1) was a plan in the mind of God in the beginning, but this hardly satisfies what John 1:1-3 says, “that the Logos was God and was with God and all things were made by the Logos”—or we could substitute the word plan in order to see the result of the Socinian/Modalist interpolation of the verse, 

“In the beginning was the Plan, and the Plan was with God, and the Plan was God.  The same was in the beginning with God.  All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. . .and the Plan was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.”

This reading of John 1:1-3, and 14 is exactly where we would end up if we accepted the Oneness Pentecostal rationalization that the Word was not a person but a plan in the mind of God.  We would be forced to conclude that a plan in the mind of God created everything and that sometime near the end of King Herod’s reign and life that plan became flesh in the person of Jesus our Lord.  This is not what the New Testament teaches at all! 

⁴ The combined affirmations, gainsayings, and doubletalk of Oneness Pentecostals show obvious inner ideological turmoil, confusion, and instability.

⁵ https://biblehub.com/greek/hen_1520.htm.

⁶ The interplay of three separate persons can clearly be seen in these two Johannine passages.

⁷  Matthew 22:44.  In Psalm 110:1 Yahweh and Adonai are clearly two persons and Jesus in the Matthean account confronts the Pharisees with this in order to make them reflect on who the Adonai is that the Pharisees call “the son of David.” How and why would David call his own descendant “Adonai”?  Jesus is David’s Lord because he came before David ever existed (John 8:54-59, 1 John 1:1, and Revelation 22:13).  Yet Oneness ideology does not recognize that there are “persons” in the Deity and flatly disregards these instances of communication back and forths that happen throughout the Bible (Genesis 1:26-27; 3:22; 11:7; Psalm 110:1; 110:4, and Isaiah 6:8).

Caption source: gettyimages.com