Loofs on the Christology Views of the New Testament

Loofs on the Christology Views 

of the New Testament

Thomas Allen

In What Is the Truth about Jesus Christ? Problems of Christology Discussed in Six Haskell Lectures at Oberlin, Ohio (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), pages 177-184, Friedrich Loofs presents and discusses five points that show that orthodox Christology does not agree with the New Testament views. Dr. Loofs is a professor of church history at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. His discussion of the Christological views of the New Testament follows.

[1] It is a view of vital importance to orthodox Christology that the historical Jesus is the preexistent Son of God. Do we find anything about this in the New Testament? Certainly many New Testament passages assert the pre-existence of Christ; that is, they assert or assume that Jesus did not begin to exist when his earthly life began. “O Father,” Jesus says in the high priestly prayer in the Gospel of John, “glorify me with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” (John 17:5.) But where in the New Testament is this prehistoric, yea, this antemundane, Christ called the “Son of God”? Where are we told that he is as such begotten of the Father before the world? In the prologue of the Gospel of John, the pre-existent Christ is not called the “Son” but the “word,” and we are told that “this was in the beginning.” (John 1:1, 2.) Only one passage in the Pauline epistles might be suspected of referring to an antemundane birth of Christ. In Colossians 1:18 Paul calls Christ “the first-born of every creature.” But here the Greek equivalent for first-born only means that he was before every creature and above all creatures. Then the only remaining support of the later doctrine is Jesus’ title “Son of God,” which, as we all know, occurs very often in the New Testament. But in the New Testament it is applied to the historical Jesus, either with reference to his birth out of the Spirit of God, (Luke 1:35.) or because the Spirit came down upon Jesus at his baptism, (Mark 4:11.) or without reference to a date of its entrance because the Spirit of God lived in him, (Rom. 1:3.) or because Jesus was the Messiah, (Matt. 16:16.) or because he stood in a unique position of love toward God. (Matt. 11:27.) The term, “the only begotten Son,” too, only signifies what was mentioned last. For the Greek equivalent for “only begotten” does not mean anything else than unique or peerless. And it was not modern exegesis that first interpreted the term “Son of God” thus. In the first half of the fourth century Marcellus of Ancyra emphatically pointed out that in the New Testament Jesus is called the Son of God only after the incarnation, and not in his pre-existence. And the older apostolic fathers, the so-called first epistle of Clement, dating from about 95 A. D., and the Ignatian letters interpret the term “Son of God” in this manner only.

[2] It is easier to show, secondly, that the idea of the triune God, as dogmatized later, is foreign to the New Testament. We surely find the belief in the New Testament that God was in Christ, and that the Holy Spirit that lives in the single Christians and in the whole community is the spirit of God. That God the Father reveals himself also in the Son and in the Spirit, that is a conviction which is in accordance with the New Testament. But there cannot be the least doubt, nor can we alter the fact, that when  the New Testament speaks of “God,” it is thinking only of the one God whom Jesus called his Father and the Father of the faithful, too. This is shown without the shadow of a doubt by the apostolic greeting: “Grace be unto you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.” (Rom. 1:7; I Cor. 1:2; II Cor. 1:1; Eph. 1:1.) And the case is not different throughout the New Testament. In the Gospel of John, in the high-priestly prayer of Jesus, we even read: “This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ.” (John 17:3.) Also the well-known prayerful wish of the apostle Paul: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the communion of the Holy Ghost be with you all”(II Cor. 13:13.) points in the same direction. For the apostle does not speak here about three persons in the one God, but about the love of the one God, and in addition thereto, or better: in connection with it, of the grace of Jesus Christ and the communion of the Holy Ghost.

[3] It is easier still to show that orthodox Christology does not agree with the New Testament views in a third respect. According to the  orthodox Christology, the personal subject, the supreme I, of the historical Jesus is the second person of the holy Trinity. Does the fact that Jesus prayed harmonize with this? Does the circumstance that he said to Mary Magdalene: “I ascend unto my Father and your Father and to my God and your God,” (John 20:17.) harmonize with it? We have seen, indeed, that the self-consciousness of Jesus surpassed the measure of a human self-consciousness. But can we deny that in the whole New Testament a human self-consciousness is the frame in which the inner life of Jesus first comes to our notice? His humility, his obedience, his trust in God cannot be interpreted differently. We shall discuss in the last lecture how this view can be reconciled with the fact that the frame of a human self-consciousness proves to be too strait to make the personality of Jesus intelligible. Here it will suffice to have shown that the orthodox Christology which considers a divine person as the personal subject in Christ does not correspond with the New Testament views. 

[4] The fourth point I wish to mention is, that the experiences of Jesus, like his self-consciousness, are at variance with orthodox Christology. Orthodoxy of all ages was worried by the fact that we are told of Jesus, with regard to his youth, that “he increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and men.” (Luke 2:52.) Could this be harmonized with the assumption that the real subject of the historical Jesus was the eternal Son of God? Orthodoxy of ancient times considered these two statements as being harmonized by the assertion that the eternal Son of God grew, suffered, and died only according to his human nature. But who will deny that our very self itself is growing during our life? And certainly it sounds very forced to say that the Son of God, who by his own nature could never suffer, suffered nevertheless in his human flesh and in his human soul! Surely such forced constructions are quite foreign to the New Testament.

[5] Fifthly and lastly, I shall have to point out that in the New Testament Jesus, even after his exaltation, appears in such an organic connection with the human race as hardly to agree with orthodox Christology. Especially those very writers of the New Testament who most obviously do not assume that the life of Jesus was a purely human one viz., Paul and John make this very clear. For Paul the risen Lord “is the first-born from the dead,” (Col. 1:18.) “the first-born among many brethren.” (Rom. 8:29.) The faithful, in Paul’s opinion, are predestinated by God “to be conformed to the image of his Son as heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.” (Rom. 8:29 and 8:17.) Very similarly we read in the high-priestly prayer in the Gospel of John: “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:16.)  and: “Father, I will that they also, whom thou hast given me, be with me where I am; (John 17:24.) “that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us, . . . that they may be one even as we are one; (John 17:21.) and “Thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me.” (John 17:23.) In Revelation we find the same thoughts. Here the exalted Christ says: “He that overcometh I will give to him to sit down with me in my throne, as I also overcame and sat down with my Father in his throne.” (Rev.  3:21) . . .  

These five points show that orthodox Christology does not agree with the New Testament views. And those who are impartial enough to see this are thereby convinced that the old orthodox Christology cannot give us the correct interpretation of the historical person of Jesus.

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Loofs on the Trinity Doctrine

Loofs on the Trinity Doctrine

Thomas Allen

In What Is the Truth about Jesus Christ? Problems of Christology Discussed in Six Haskell Lectures at Oberlin, Ohio (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1913), pages 171-176, Friedrich Loofs identifies three major difficulties or contradictions of the orthodox Trinity Doctrine and its Christology. Dr. Loofs is a professor of church history at the University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany. His discussion of the difficulties of the orthodox Trinity Doctrine and its Christology follows.

[1] The first one Augustine already experienced as a disturbing element, and the scholastic theology of the Middle Ages tried in vain to get rid of it. If, as Augustine thinks and this has been the orthodox opinion since the distinction of persons in the Trinity is limited to their internal relation to each other within the triune God, how was it possible that only the second person was incarnated? And, on the other hand, if the incarnation of the second person only is certain, how can the oneness of the triune God, i.e., how can Christian monotheism be retained? This unsolvable dilemma, perhaps, may be escaped and the incarnation of the Son only be retained, without endangering monotheism, by emphasizing that the Father and the Holy Ghost were not separated from the incarnated Son.

[2] But then the second difficulty I was going to mention becomes all the greater. Even as it is in itself, the idea of the incarnation, the idea that a divine person became the subject of a human life, restricted with regard to time and space, involves the greatest difficulties. For we cannot imagine the Godhead as being constricted by the limitations of human existence. Then only two alternatives remain. We must either assume that the “Son of God,” when he became man, did not cease, separate from his humanity, to pervade the world in divine majesty. Or, with Luther, we must venture the bold thought that, in virtue of the union of the two natures, the human nature from the first moments of its beginning has been partaking of the divine omnipotence and omnipresence.

This latter view, viz., the Lutheran doctrine of the “ubiquity of Christ’s” leads us to absurdities. If we wish to avoid these really unbearable absurdities we are referred to the former view. But does it not destroy the idea of incarnation? Could we still say of the divine person who was also outside the historical Jesus, pervading the world in divine majesty, that he was in reality incarnated? Is not the idea of the incarnation in this manner really changed into the idea of a divine inspiration, an inspiration such as the prophets experienced without any change in God's position to the world? But then it would be impossible still to say that the second person of the holy Trinity was the acting subject in the historical Jesus. This difficulty evidently becomes greater still if the Father and the Holy Ghost were not separated from the incarnated Son. For in that case it is still more impossible to retain the idea of a real incarnation of the Son. Perhaps these arguments are too difficult to be made intelligible with a few short words. But I may not spend more time on them. I must be satisfied with having just mentioned them. This mention of them was necessary. For here lie the greatest difficulties of the orthodox Christology, which cannot be surmounted by any tricks of reasoning.

[3] More easily understood is the difficulty which I am going to mention in the third and last place. The divine Trinity can, if need be, perhaps be thought of as the one God, the triune God, before the incarnation of the second person. But how is it after the incarnation? It is orthodox doctrine that the incarnated Son of God retained his human form, i.e. the human nature he had assumed, even after his ascension. Can, then, the distinction between the incarnated Son, on the one hand, and the Father and the Holy Ghost, on the other, be conceived of as being confined to the internal relations in which each person stands to the other within the one Godhead? And if this is not the case, the oneness of the Trinity is dissolved after the incarnation; the Trinity has become something different after the incarnation from what it was before. If neither is the case, then the humanity of Christ stands beside the Trinity. And then, also during the earthly life of Jesus, it could not have stood in a real personal union with the second person of the Trinity. Then the idea of the incarnation here again changes into that of an inspiration. Our dogmatics, I think, does not frankly face these difficulties. This, however, does not overcome them. These difficulties alone are sufficient to wreck the orthodox Christology. Augustine, the creator of the Occidental doctrine of the Trinity, when pressed by others, asked himself whether the exalted Christ could see God with his bodily eyes, and he answered the question in the negative. This proves that the difficulties we have discussed broke up the dogma of the Trinity and the closely related Christology even for Augustine himself. And the cause of this was not only that Augustine and the whole church orthodoxy as far as the eighteenth century pictured Christ’s body of glory too much like an earthly body when speaking of the bodily eyes of the exalted Christ; the difficulties, on the contrary, unavoidably remain so long as the humanity of the exalted Christ is conceived as something different from his Godhead. 

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Is Jesus Impeccable?

 Is Jesus Impeccable?

Thomas Allen

In “Why Is Christ’s Impeccability Essential?” (Grace in Focus Magazine, January/February 2023, pages 36-38), Anneka Muller argues that Jesus not only did not sin, but he also was incapable of sinning. The foundation of her argument is the Trinity Doctrine: Jesus is God the Son. Since God cannot sin, Jesus, who is God, cannot sin. Moreover, his impeccability is essential for the assurance of salvation.

Muller briefly discusses Hebrews 4:15 (“For we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but one that hath been in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.”) People who believe that Jesus could sin, but did not, cite this verse to support their claim that Jesus was capable of sinning. She refutes this claim by arguing that whether or not Jesus “was capable of sinning has no effect on His ability to be tempted and to sympathize with us in our temptation” (p. 38).

True, the ability of Jesus to be tempted is independent of whether he could sin (is peccable) or could not sin (impeccable). However, Hebrews 4:15 goes beyond this. It says that Jesus was tempted as we are tempted. If sinning were impossible for him, he could not have been tempted as we are because we can sin. He had to be able to sin if he were tempted as we are.

According to the Christology of the Trinity Doctrine, Jesus is 100 percent God and 100 percent man. As stated by Muller, the Deity part of Jesus makes him impeccable. Thus, if Jesus’ Deity affected his experience of temptation and prevented him from sinning, he could not be tempted as we are. Based on James 1:13 (“Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempteth no man:”), God cannot be tempted. (Muller uses this verse as proof that Jesus cannot sin because he is God.) Consequently, being God, Jesus could not be tempted and, therefore, could not have given in to temptation and sin. Accordingly, his temptations were not a genuine test of character. Being God, not only could Jesus not be tempted as we are, but he also could not have been tempted at all because God cannot be tempted.

Hebrews 4:15 argues against the Christology of the Trinity Doctrine and the deity of Christ. If Jesus were God, he could not have been tempted and could not have sinned. However, this verse claims that he was tempted in every way that we are, which means that he could have succumbed to temptation and sin. Only if Jesus were not God and could have succumbed to temptation and sin, could he have been tempted as we are. (Unitarians use this verse as a proof text against Trinitarians [Jesus is God the Son] and Modalists [Jesus is God]. If Jesus were God as the Trinitarians and Modalists claim, he could not be tempted as we are because God cannot be tempted. Since he was tempted as we are, he is, therefore, not God.)

Furthermore, Muller asserts that because Jesus was God and could not succumb to temptation and sin, the temptations that he endured were far worse than the temptations that we can endure because we can succumb to temptation and sin. In effect, what she is saying is that for a person to resist temptation and not sin is worse than succumbing to temptation and sinning. Nevertheless, for someone who is impeccable, temptation is meaningless.

If Muller’s premise that Jesus is God is true, then her conclusion that Jesus is impeccable is true. However, if her premise is false, then her conclusion is false; Jesus is peccable.

Is Jesus impeccable? If one believes in the man-derived Trinity Doctrine and its Christology of the dual nature of Christ, the answer is “yes.” However, if one believes in the God-inspired Hebrew 4:15 as it is written, the answer is “no.”

Copyright © 2023 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Socinus’ Unitarian Views

Socinus’ Unitarian Views

Thomas Allen

In History of the Dogma of the Deity of Jesus Christ (revised edition of 1876, translated 1878), Albert Reville, a minister of the French Reformed Church, gives a brief description of Faustus Socinus’ Unitarian views. Socinus (1539-1604) was the most famous Unitarian of the sixteenth century. His system of theology is known as Socinianism.

Socinus’ first argument against the Trinity of orthodoxy is that it is a mass of contradictions. It claims that the Deity consists of three persons “distinguished from each other by individual and exclusive properties” (p. 191): “the Father by the absoluteness of his being, the Son by the qualification of having been begotten, the Holy Spirit by that of being proceeded” (p. 191). Yet, it claims “to remain faithful to Monotheism” (p. 191). To justify the contradiction of its Trinity, orthodoxy takes “refuge in the idea of the mystery transcending human reason” (p. 191). However, “its Trinity does not transcend reason, it subverts and disowns it. . . . None of those who have endeavoured to reconcile it, however subtitle they might be, have been able to avoid either the Tritheism which denies the unity or the Modalism which denies the persons” (pp. 191-192).

Socinus’ second argument against the Trinity is that it “cannot stand against the idea of the Divine perfection” (p. 192). God can have no imperfection. So, is the property that “makes each person distinct from the other two a perfection or an imperfection” (p. 192)? If it is a perfection, then it is lacking in two out of the three persons.

Likewise, this perfection is lacking in the special relation of the Father and the Son. Orthodoxy claims that “the Son is a Divine person eternally begotten by the Father of his own substance” (p. 192). However, “God the Father possesses in Himself all perfection immutably” (p. 192). Therefore, “if He begets another God exactly similar to Himself[,] He is no longer absolutely perfect, for the existence of two absolute perfections side by side implies a contradiction” (p. 192).

Further, orthodoxy claims, “that the Son, God infinite and perfect like the Father, became man, uniting in his single person the perfect divine nature with the human nature complete” (p. 192). Thus, Christ has a “double consciousness, knowing itself to be at once infinite and finite, perfect and imperfect, insusceptible to pain and yet suffering, incapable of sin and yet tempted, knowing all things and yet ignorant of many things, praying to itself and hearing its own prayers” (pp. 192-193).

“Before the incarnation there were three Gods having the Divine nature in common” (p. 193). After the incarnation, human nature became inherent in the Deity. Thus, according to the doctrine of the Deity of Christ, “the Creator of the universe was born in the condition of the human embryo” (p. 193), and, therefore, he cried like a baby, ate, drank, slept, and died by human hands. As a consequence of his two natures, did “the man in Jesus alone passed through these vicissitudes while God remained exempt from them” (p. 193)? If so, then Nestorius, whom the Church condemned as a heretic, was correct. Optionally, “the Man-God has borne or felt in his single personal consciousness all these imperfections, . . . or the consciousness of Jesus was double; what one consciousness thought and felt was neither thought or felt by the other” (p. 193).

Moreover, according to the Socinians, the Arian Christ “is no more truly man than is the orthodoxy Christ” (pp. 193-194 fn).

Also, according to orthodoxy, “the absolute deity of Jesus is necessary for the accomplishment of his work as Redeemer, since the infinitely outrage justice of God called for an infinite satisfaction” (p. 194). However, the redemption involved some “inextricable difficulty.” “Who suffered in Jesus, the God and the man at the same time? If so, God has made satisfaction to himself, which is absurd; and we have a God suffering and dying who is no longer God. Or if only the man suffered, what becomes of the infinite expiation which was supposed to be necessary” (p. 194).

Nevertheless, the above reasoning about the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation were secondary to Socinus. Arguments from the Bible were his primary method. He asked his “opponents where the New Testament had taught the doctrine of the Trinity; in what passage Jesus had said that he was the second Divine person, and that he possessed two natures; and how they could explain, without doing violence either to their common sense or their own system, the numerous declamations in which he absolutely subordinated himself to his Heavenly Father” (p. 195). Likewise, where did his apostles make such claims?

Like Calvin, Socinus saw the unity between Jesus and God as a purely moral unity and not as any degree or identity of substance.

According to Socinus’ Christology, Jesus is a man, which is his first principle. Nevertheless, he accepts the miraculous birth of Jesus, which he maintained did not alter his true humanity. Afterward, God miraculously carried Jesus locally to heaven and revealed to him the heavenly mysteries so that he could speak them to men from personal knowledge. Then, Jesus descended from heaven and discharged his commission. After his death, he again ascended into heaven, and God deified him as a reward for his virtue. Henceforth, he lives as the dispenser of divine grace. Unlike Calvin, who opposed praying to Jesus, Socinus accepted praying to Jesus.

In the name of protecting free will, Socinus limited the omnipotence and omniscience of God.

For Socinus, the Holy Spirit was “the mechanical, external gift of certain particular graces to such men as God judged to be worthy of them” (p. 199). Consequently, Socinianism “comprehended nothing of the idea of an indwelling presence of the Divine Spirit in creation and the human soul” (p. 199).

Reville concludes “that the Socinians doctrine, apart from its criticism of orthodoxy is somewhat poor and common place, too nearly resembling the vulgar rationalism of another period, and unsuited to our modern modes of thought from a certain rigid quality it has, a something mechanical and capricious, which replaces the difficulties of orthodoxy only with affirmations quite as embarrassing” (p. 196). Socinianism used “a method of biblical exegesis intended to reconcile reason with faith in the written revelations. It assumed the necessity of submitting to Scripture, but the real meaning of each passage is what reason determined” (pp. 196-197). Socinianism “was in its dogmatic views as supernaturalistic as orthodoxy — perhaps even more so” (p. 199).

Copyright © 2021 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Calvin’s Views of Jesus and the Trinity

Calvin’s Views of Jesus and the Trinity

Thomas Allen

In History of the Dogma of the Deity of Jesus Christ (revised edition of 1876, translated 1878), Albert Reville, a minister of the French Reformed Church, gives a brief description of Calvin’s views on the Trinity and Jesus. Although Calvin claimed to support the orthodox Trinitarian and Incarnation doctrines of the Catholic Church, his Christology and explanation of the Trinity approached the unitarianism of the modalists or Sabellians.

Calvin maintained “that the finite cannot contain the infinite” (p. 179). This axiom, he used against the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist, which holds that the bread is the actual body of Christ and the wine is his actual blood.

If this axiom is applied to the person of Jesus, it results in a contradiction: “‘the whole plenitude of the Deity dwelt in the human nature of Christ,’ and at the same time, ‘the whole Deity was without him’” (pp. 179-180). Thus, “the Son, or the Word[,] was not circumscribed or enclosed in the man Jesus” (p. 180). While intimately united with Jesus, the Word never ceased to fill the infinite.  Consequently, “the Word was united to the man Jesus, so far as human nature, without false to itself, was capable of embodying the divine perfection” (p. 180). Reville concludes, “If in the place of the Word, we put here the Holy Spirit, which after all only differs from the Word in name, we are on the verge of the most decided Unitarianism” (p. 180).

The divine attributes of which human nature is capable are not omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence. They are moral attributes like holiness, justice, and goodness. Thus, the perfection of Jesus is “moral perfection, holiness, not absolute perfection” (p. 180). Calvin seriously accepted “all those details of the evangelical history in which the truly human nature of Jesus is positively indicated” (p. 180). Reville asks, “Did Calvin himself see that his exegesis . . . disposed of almost all scriptural proofs generally brought forward in support of the Trinity? On thing is certain, that his Commentaries reduced them to nothing” (p. 181). Accordingly, Calvin claimed that the formula of baptism (baptizing in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit — Matthew 28:19) did “not relate to the Trinity of the Divine Persons, but to the triple relation in which God stands towards man in the new economy” (p. 182).

Moreover, Calvin modified “the strict notion of personality as applied to the three terms of the trinity. The three persons (the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) became simply divine attributes or modes. Thus, his doctrine of the Trinity is essentially Sabellianism (which was considered heresy by the fourth century). “In effect, the personality of Jesus, which in the old orthodoxy was a divine personality, becomes once more the human personality of primitive Unitarianism” (p. 182). Consequently, Mary is no longer the Mother of God. Faith becomes one of Jesus’ virtues. Worship should not be paid to Christ because he “possesses only a part of the Divine perfections” (p. 183). Although Jesus is the Mediator, “he cannot be the object of that worship which can be properly addressed only to the absolute Being” (p. 183).

For Calvin, the Holy Spirit “is no longer a person in the true sense of the world; . . . it is God in action in the world and the soul” (p. 183).

Nevertheless, Calvin and his followers claimed to follow the Catholic orthodoxy of the Trinity and defended it against its opponents. However, Calvin had changed the fundamental idea of the Trinity.

Copyright © 2021 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Issues with Trinitarianism and its Christology — Part 3

Issues with Trinitarianism and its Christology — Part 3

Thomas Allen

    36. How could the preexisting God the Son become a man without any diminishment of his deity? How could God the Son live a fully human life while continuing to exercise his divine function?
    37. How can Christ be both finite (human) and infinite (Deity) simultaneously? How can one be both God and the Son of God simultaneously?
    38. Do today’s Trinitarians follow the early Trinitarians and believe the Trinity Doctrine and its dual-nature Christology because it is impossible?
    39. Jesus states that God is spirit. If Jesus is God, how could he be flesh — unless the heretical Docetists are correct?
    40. How can the Son be God’s equal if God has appointed the Son heir? If the Son is the heir, there must have been a time when he was not the owner. If Christ were God, he would be the owner, or under the Trinity Doctrine, part owner. Therefore, he could not be an heir.
    41. If the Son were equal to the Father, why did he derive his power from the Father? Would not he, being God and equal to the Father, already have these powers and authority?
    42. The Bible states that blaspheming the Son will be forgiven, but blaspheming the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. If the Son and the Holy Spirit are coequal persons in one God, should not the result of blaspheming one be the same as blaspheming the other? Why are these coequal persons treated unequally?
    43. Many verses of the Bible clearly and plainly call Jesus a man. Also, the Bible declares that “God is not a man” (Numbers 23:19), If God is not a man and if Jesus is a man, then how can Jesus, a man, be God, who is not a man? Likewise, if God is not “a son of man,” how can Jesus, who is called “a son of man,” be God?
    44. If Jesus Christ is God, why does he lack the attributes of God: self-existent, immortality, unchanging, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent? The Trinitarian would reply that Jesus’ human nature lacks these attributes, but his divine nature does not.
    45. In developing their Christology, the Trinitarians abandoned the Scriptures in favor of the Church Fathers. The Scriptures did not support their dual-nature doctrine. However, they could find statements in some of the writings of the Church Fathers that did.
    46. Both God the Father and God the Son have thrones in heaven. However, God the Holy Spirit does not have a throne in heaven. Why not? (Anyone who claims that the Holy Spirit does have a heavenly throne, needs to provide the Scriptural support that explicitly states that the Holy Spirit has a heavenly throne.) If the Holy Spirit does not have a heavenly throne, how can he be equal to God the Father and God the Son as the Trinity Doctrine declares?
    47. According to the Trinity Doctrine, God the Holy Spirit is omniscient. Yet, Mark 13:32 declares that only God the Father knows when the end will occur. Not knowing when the end will occur, God the Holy Spirit is not omniscient. Nor is God the Son. However, Trinitarians avoid God the Son lacking omniscience in the passage by claiming that Jesus is speaking in his human nature and not in his God nature. Yet, unless Jesus had two minds, which Trinitarians deny, how could his mind both know an event and be ignorant of it simultaneously? Further, they do not have the dual-nature out for the Holy Spirit. Lacking omniscience, which is an essential characteristic of God, God the Holy Spirit is not equal to God the Father, who is omniscient. Thus, the Trinity Doctrine of three coequal Gods collapses.
    Further, Trinitarians may not even use the Jesus-speaking-in-his-human-nature argument to avoid God the Son’s lack of omniscience without risking heresy. Cyril’s Twelve Anathemas or Twelve Chapters were accepted as orthodox at the Council of Ephesus (where Mary was formally declared the Mother of God) and the Council of Chalcedon (where Jesus was declared to have two independent natures and wills). The fourth anathema reads: “If anyone distributes between the two persons or hypostases the expressions used either in the Gospels or in the apostolic writings, whether they are used by the holy writers of Christ or by him about himself, and ascribes some to him as to a man, thought of separately from the Word from God, and others, as befitting God, to him as to the Word from God the Father, let him be anathema.” (The Word is the God the Son.) Thus, whenever Jesus spoke, he always spoke as God the Son and never as a mere human. As Mark 13:32 clearly shows, Jesus, who spoke as God the Son, was not omniscient. Not being omniscient, God the Son cannot be equal to God the Father. Thus, the Trinity Doctrine falls.
    48. If the Holy Spirit is one of the three coequal Gods of the triune God, how can he be given to people? How can such a divine person be given by another divine person unless he is under the authority of the giver? Coequals cannot be under the authority of other coequals and remain equal. Moreover, if the spirit of God is the third person of the triune God, how can he be divided and distributed?
    49. If the Holy Spirit is the third person of the triune God, why does the Bible fail to command the worship of the Holy Spirit? Being a coequal person of the triune God, should not the Holy Spirit receive the same amount of worship as the Father, who is his coequal?
    50. The description of the Holy Spirit given in the Bible suggests that he not be independent or self-existent, and, therefore, should be referred to as “it” instead of “he.” Moreover, the relation of the spirit of God is to God as the spirit of man is to man. If the spirit of man is not another person distinct from himself, and it is not, then the spirit of God is not another person distinct from Himself.
    51. Since the “breath of God” is synonymous with the “spirit of God,” is the breath of God a distinct person from God — one of the coequal Gods of the triune God? It is if the Trinity Doctrine is correct. Moreover, if the breath of God is a distinct person, then the breath of man has to be a distinct person from man. Likewise, the “spirit of God” is synonymous with the “hand” and the “finger.” Does this make the hand and finger coequal Gods of the Godhead? Or, are they and the spirit of God subordinate to the will of God?
    52. Every writer of the New Testament epistles identifies himself with God and the Lord Jesus Christ, yet none identifies himself with the Holy Spirit. Did they fail to understand the Trinity Doctrine and its importance, even its necessity, for salvation? Further, did they fail to believe in a triune God?
    53. The Greek word for “spirit” is neuter; therefore, the appropriate pronoun referring to the Holy Spirit should be “it” instead of “he.” (In Hebrew, the word for spirit is feminine.)
    54. Except for a few difficult verses that are often misunderstood, the Bible offers no incontrovertible proof or even indication that the Holy Spirit is a coequal, coeternal person with the Father and Son.
    55. God usually speaks through one or at most a few people. Almost never does he speak through councils and committees: for example, the 400 prophets of Ahab versus the one prophet of God. The unanimous majority of Ahab’s prophets were wrong, whereas the minority of one prophet was right. A majority in some council has adopted all the major creeds of Christendom.
    56. Trinitarians are notorious for changing the meaning of everyday words, e.g., person and begotten, when they apply to God. As most of the Bible is about God, how does one know what the words in the Bible really mean? Are they being used in the ordinary sense, or are they being used in a theological technical sense? Does a word mean what it means in its ordinary, everyday use, or does it mean something else? Only a trained, enlightened theologian knows. Therefore, only a trained and enlightened theologian can really understand the Bible. Unless such a theologian explains the Bible and its meaning to the laity, the laity forever remains ignorant even if he reads and studies the Bible daily. (Were the Bereans who searched the Scriptures to see if what Paul told them was true trained theologians? If not, were they wasting their time because they were searching in ignorance?)
    57. Trinitarians maintain that biblical truths are incomprehensible mysteries. Examples of such truths being mysteries are the Trinity Doctrine and the doctrine of the dual nature of Christ. Thus, Trinitarians depend on mysticism instead of the Scriptures and reason. Yet, speculation about this mysterious, unknowable God has brought forth the Trinity Doctrine. If God is incomprehensible, then how does one know that he is a triune God?
    Moreover, honest Trinitarians admit that they worship an incomprehensible Deity. Furthermore, no attempt should be made to try to understand their God.
    58. Most Trinitarians maintain that God had to die so that man could be saved; the crucifixion of a human who possessed no divine nature is not enough for salvation. Salvation depends on God dying. Besides the human egotism involved in this assertion, it also suffers from the inability of God to die and still remain God.
    59. An underlying premise of the incarnation of God is that it is necessary for the deification of man. Maximus the Confessor, Athanasius, and other Orthodox Trinitarians declared that God had to become man so that man could become God. Was not the desire to become like God the great sin of Eve and Adam? (Additionally, one of the Mormon doctrines that cause Trinitarians to consider Mormonism a heresy is the doctrine of man becoming a god.)
    60. Under the creeds related to the Trinity adopted by the ecumenical councils, salvation ceased depending on faith in Jesus or even good works. Salvation came from believing, or at least claiming to believe, in what some council said about Jesus.
    61. The notion that only an uncreated, eternal being, i.e., God Himself, can redeem mankind comes from Gnosticism and was incorporated into orthodox Christology. Where is the scriptural support for this notion? According to the Scriptures (v. Romans 5:15), redemption came from a man, Jesus Christ.
    62. If belief in the triune God of the Trinity Doctrine is necessary for salvation as many Trinitarians claim, why did Jesus never teach such a doctrine? Further, why did Jesus never even teach the doctrine of the Trinity? Nowhere does the Bible give a systematic presentation of the Trinity. Nor does it state that God is a triune God of three coequal, coeternal persons: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Moreover, it does not claim that Jesus is 100 percent God and 100 percent man.
    63. Do Trinitarians agree with Bernard of Clairvaux that “faith in God has no merit, if human reason provides proof for it”? Is faith believing what one does not comprehend, or does faith require some kind of mental understanding?
    64. Why did Jesus teach his followers to pray only to the Father? Why did he not also teach them to pray to the Father’s coequal Gods: the Son and the Holy Spirit?
    65. Often, Trinitarians seem to stress the theoretical over the practical, a system of dogmas over the development of principles, and a series of unknown and unintelligible propositions that must be subscribed to and believed in over a revelation of truths which common minds may understand and sincere and honest hearts appreciate.

Copyright © 2019 by Thomas Coley Allen.

Part 2

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Issues with Trinitarianism and its Christology — Part 2

Issues with Trinitarianism and its Christology — Part 2

Thomas Allen

    15. Except for the heretical subordinationists and modal trinitarians, one question that Trinitarians have never been able to answer satisfactorily, except perhaps to themselves, is how three distinct persons, each of whom is fully God, are not three Gods. That is, how can God consist of three distinct Gods without being three Gods? Most Trinitarians just assert that three Gods are one God with no real Scriptural proof. Others claim that it is all a mystery beyond human comprehension, although they offer no Scripture that explicitly states such mystery. How can the Godhead consist of three persons, each of whom is fully God, while not having three Gods? Furthermore, where do the Scriptures explicitly claim that God is three persons, three beings, three Gods, three modes, three attributes, or three somewhats, etc.?
    16. The more honest Trinitarians admit the doctrine of the Trinity is nowhere expounded in the New Testament. It cannot be found in either the Old Testament or the New Testament. Neither Paul nor any of the other apostles taught it — and would not understand today’s orthodox Trinity Doctrine. The Trinity Doctrine rests upon the authority of the Church, i.e., the Pope: The Church declares that the Trinity Doctrine is true; therefore, it is true.
    17. The Trinity Doctrine seems to have been developed — albeit, most likely, subconsciously — primarily to justify error. Christ instructed people to pray to and worship God the Father, whom Christ claimed was the only true God (John 17:3). He never instructed them to pray to or worship the Messiah; neither did Paul, Peter, nor other apostles. After the apostles died, people began praying to and worshiping Christ. Instead of correcting this error, the leaders and intellects of the Church began applying Greek philosophy to the teachings of Jesus and the apostles to justify worshiping Christ. The same can be said for other errors that became doctrines of the Catholic Church. Examples are praying to saints and Mary and declaring Mary to be the mother of God (she eventually supplanted Christ, who had become God, as the mediator between man and God). Instead of correcting errors, Church leaders and intellects sought to justify them.
    18. Platonic philosophy and Gnosticism have defined and defended the Trinity Doctrine. They provide the terms, e.g., one substance, person, and trinity, used to define the Trinity.
    19. Unlike various subordination doctrines, the orthodox Trinity Doctrine did not grow organically from the Scriptures. Moreover, many Scriptures that Trinitarians use to support their doctrine testify against it.
    20. If the Trinitarians are correct, then the God of the Old Testament cannot be the God of the New Testament. In the Old Testament, God is described as a unipersonal God. Most Trinitarians now admit that the Old Testament describes a unipersonal God and not a triune God. However, according to the Trinitarians, the New Testament describes God as a triune God. That is, three Gods, persons, or whatevers are one God. Moreover, a triune God of three Gods, three persons, or three whatevers differs significantly from a unipersonal God of one God, one person, or one whatever. Now more Trinitarians, especially Catholics, are admitting that the Scriptures do not support the Trinity Doctrine as expressed in the Athanasian Creed or other similar creeds. It relies on revelation and Church tradition.
    If the Trinitarians and Jewish rabbis are correct, then Marcion was correct when he said that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are two different Gods. However, his explanation of the two different Gods was incorrect.
    21. Honest Trinitarians acknowledge that they worship a triune God. Thus, they are not monotheists in the sense of the Old Testament worship of a unipersonal God, whom good Jews worship. If Christians claim that the God of the Old Testament is a triune God and the Jews claim that he is a unipersonal God, then either one is wrong or God suffers from dissociative identity disorder. (If Christians assert that the Jews are wrong, then they need to explain their antisemitism.)
    22. Trinitarians claim that God became flesh so that he could experience suffering, ignorance, death, etc. like humans. Such a claim impinges on God’s omniscience. If God is omniscient, he knows how it is to suffer and die like humans. He knows how it is to be a dog or a flea without becoming one.
    Furthermore, if most theologians, both orthodox and heterodox, are correct about God being impassible, how could he experience pain, etc. like a human? Yet, many Trinitarians claim that God had to become man so that he could suffer like man.
    Moreover, how could God really die and still be eternal? If he were to die, he would cease being eternal. Or, is the pagan Greek idea of death, which most Christians believe, correct: Death is not a cessation of consciousness; it is a metamorphosis from one state of conscious being to another state of conscious being. And, the Hebrew idea of death is wrong: Death is the cessation of consciousness; this is the concept taught in the Old Testament. If death is a metamorphosis, then the Son changed state or condition. An attribute of God is that he is unchangeable. In any event, God the Son either ceased being eternal or changed state. Therefore, he ceases being equal to God the Father, who is eternal and unchangeable. Thus, the Trinity Doctrine collapses.
    According to the Hebrews, the body and soul are one. When the body dies, the soul also dies. All consciousness ceases at death.
    According to the pagan Greeks, the body and soul are two. When the body dies, the soul continues to exist in a conscious state.
    23. The triune God is not a personal God, a real being with a personality, will, and desire. He, or perhaps more correctly, it, is an essence, substance, and entity — an abstraction.
    24. If Jesus is God, why does he always pray to the Father and never to himself, who is also Deity, or to the Holy Spirit? Why does he ask the Father for what is in his own power as God the Son?
    25. If God the Father is the God of God the Son (Jesus declares that his Father is his God in John 20:17), then who is the God of God the Father? For God the Son, who has a God, to maintain his equality with God the Father, God the Father must also have a God. Likewise, God the Holy Spirit must also have a God. Who is the God of God the Holy Spirit? Moreover, if Jesus is God, how can he have a God?
    26. According to the Trinity Doctrine, the Son is eternal and is also begotten. He who is begotten cannot be eternal because he has a beginning — when he is begotten. An eternal being has no beginning or ending. Thus, the Trinity Doctrine contradicts itself with an oxymoron: the Son being begotten and eternal.
    Moreover, God is self-existing. He who is begotten, the Son, is not and cannot be self-existing. Furthermore, how can an unbegotten being, the Father, be the same kind of being as a begotten being, the Son?
    27. Unless the separationists are correct, why did Jesus cry out while he was dying on the cross? After all, according to many Trinitarians, Jesus’ God nature did not abandon his human nature while he was dying on the cross. As God the Son indwelt him, why did he need to cry out to God? God was already a part of him.
    28. To prevent God from dying on the cross, Trinitarians must have Jesus’ divine nature abandoning Jesus’ human nature by or at the time Jesus dies. The Valentinians solve the problem of God dying by having Christ, who is the divine nature, separating from Jesus, who is the human nature, just before the crucifixion. To avoid having God die, Trinitarians must adopt a Valentinian-like doctrine. However, to avoid the heresy of Valentinianism, Trinitarians seem to have the human nature of Jesus leaving the divine nature of Jesus at death. Whereas Valentinians have the divine leaving the human, Trinitarians have the human leaving the divine.
    29. Trinitarians subvert the title of the “Son of God” into “God the Son,” a title that the Scriptures never give Jesus. The two phrases mean different things. “X the son” has an entirely different meaning than “the son of X.” Isaac the son means Isaac as the son of Abraham; he is not Abraham. The son of Isaac means Jacob; he is not Isaac; nor is he Abraham. Likewise, “God the Son” has a different meaning than “the Son of God” and refers to a different person, being, entity, or whatever.
    30. When Jesus speaks, is he speaking in his divine nature as God or is he speaking in his human nature as man? Most assume that when he says something that sounds godly to them (e.g., “I and the Father are one” – John 10:30), he speaks as God. However, if he says something that sounds humanly to them (e.g., “the Father is greater than I” – John 14:28), he speaks as man. How do they know with absolute certainty which is speaking? Moreover, being ignorant of a triune God and the incarnation of God, which thus made Jesus have two natures and two wills, his audience would have always understood him speaking as a man. (Clergy often preach “context relevance” and the “way the audience at that time who received the remarks would have understood them.” Jesus’ audience at that time would have always understood him to be speaking as a man. If he intended otherwise, he was deceiving, i.e., lying to, his audience.)
    Where does the Bible expressly state that Jesus has two natures and two wills? Where does the Bible even strongly imply such?
    31. The doctrine of Jesus possessing two natures raises several questions. Did the two natures exist before the Incarnation? If they did, how did or could the Father and Son still be of one substance? If they did not, when and how was Jesus’ human nature combined with his divine nature? What prevented the divine nature from dominating? How can Jesus’ humanity be like the rest of humanity if he lacked the ability to sin like the rest of humanity? What Scriptures support the answers to these questions?
    Jesus was tempted like all other men (Hebrews 4:15). If he were God or had a divine nature, he could not have been tempted like other men. Being tempted like other men implies the ability to sin. Under the Christology of the Trinity Doctrine, Jesus could not sin. An attribute of God is his inability to sin. If Jesus consisted of two natures, divine and human, then his divine nature would have coerced the human will not to sin.
    32. An angel strengthened Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. However, if he possessed divinity in conjunction with humanity, why would he have needed such assistance? Such assistance would have been wholly unnecessary.
    33. When Christ speaks of himself, he uses the pronoun “I.” He is speaking of his whole person and not of only part of his person. According to Trinitarian Christology, Christ is one person who consists of a divine nature and a human nature. So, when he says, “My Father is greater than I” (John 14:28 ), he is speaking of himself as the whole person consisting of both divine and human natures. Therefore, by this assertion, he declares himself, both of his natures, inferior to God the Father.
    34. If Thomas calling Jesus God (John 20:28) identifies Jesus as one of the Persons of God, then God making Moses God (Exodus 7:1) should make Moses a Person of God. If not, why not? After all, God speaks much more authoritatively than Thomas.
    35. An important part of the Christology of Trinitarianism is the doctrine of the Incarnation. Not until 451 was this doctrine formerly defined when the Council of Chalcedon promulgated it. The reason that 350 years were needed to develop it was that nowhere does the Scriptures described such a doctrine — although the first chapter of John may weakly hinted at it. Moreover, the doctrine of the Incarnation resembles pagan mythology more than biblical truth. That is, the notion that God Himself descended from Heaven, took the form of a man, and dwelt among humans strongly resembles pagan mythology.

Copyright © 2019 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Issues with Trinitarianism and its Christology — Part 1

Issues with Trinitarianism and its Christology — Part 1

Thomas Allen

    Trinitarianism and its Christology may be 100 percent correct, which would be surprising because they are manmade. The following issues and problems with Trinitarianism and its Christology are presented in no order of importance.
    1. The way that the creeds relating to the Trinity Doctrine and its Christology were developed and adopted is a disgrace to Christianity and an insult to Jesus. Their development and adoption depended mostly on speculation, intrigue, and violence and little on Christian charity, forgiveness, humility, restraint, and the Scriptures. They were long on speculation and short on Scripture. Their adoption depended much more on conniving and coercing than on reasoning and persuading. The doctrine of the faction that excelled in cunning, scheming, bribing, and wielding the sword won and became orthodox. Most of the leaders at the councils that adopted these doctrines seemed to be extremely egotistical and void of humility. More often than not, individual egos seemed to be more important than God, Christ, or the Scriptures. The winner got everything, and the losers were anathemized and were often exiled and stripped of their property. Thus, the dissidents were not allowed the dignity of maintaining their opinion. They had to agree with the majority of the council or be anathemized and, otherwise, punished.
    Especially in the Eastern Empire, Christians believed in the vendetta and carried their grudges for a century or more. When they gained enough power in a council, they would declare the theological ancestors of their theological opponents heretics, even if they had been dead for more than a century.
    Furthermore, the discussions of the various councils often concerned church politics more than Christian doctrine. Usually, the side that won the debate had imperial support and became orthodoxy. Imperial support came not only from the emperor, but also his family, courtiers, and the bureaucracy. Moreover, religious issues were often used to advance political issues. Thus, the development and adoption of the Christian creeds on the Trinity and related issues depended much more on politics, both secular and church, than on theological debate.
    When these doctrines were adopted, the behavior of Christians was like that of radical Muslims of today. Both the clergy and laity behaved like today’s college students who seek to oppress all with which they disagree; they disdained the free exchange of ideas. The councils that developed these Christian doctrines often behaved like political conventions at their worst. All sorts of corruption (bribery, threats, violence, etc.) and political influence were used to win the agreement. Slogans, symbols, stereotypes, and guilt by association were used much more frequently to advance doctrinal discourse than reasonable, intelligent, and logical debate.
    Moreover, the laity did not behave any better than their leaders in the councils. Often, they acted worse. Although the laymen were ignorant of the theology involved, they were hostile toward anyone who disagreed with them.
    Arguments for the various competing doctrines were often written so convoluted, complex, and technical that few could understand them.
    If it were not for several emperors of the Roman Empire, the Nicene Trinity may never have become the orthodox doctrine of the Catholic Church. These emperors enforced the Nicene Trinity doctrine, while suppressing competing doctrine.
    Christianity would have been a more peaceful and Christlike religion if both the “orthodox” and “heterodoxy” had followed the Scriptures instead of abandoning them in favor of speculation. In developing their doctrines, both the orthodox and heterodoxy seem to prefer speculation to the Scriptures, although both used selected Scripture to support their speculations. Moreover, to have used persuasion instead of coercion to convince opponents of the error of their doctrine would have resulted in a more peaceful, trusting, and loving society.
    If the clergy had expended the effort of living as Christ taught instead of forcing their speculations about his being on everyone else, this era would have been much more peaceful and probably would have made greater advancement in Christianity. Moreover, a united Roman Empire would most likely have lasted longer, and Islam may never have left the Arabian peninsula.
    2. Jesus’ rise to become God Himself, i.e., the eternal God the Son, who is equal to the Father, had much more to do with Christianity becoming the state religion of the Roman Empire than with anything in the Scriptures. Jesus had to lose his image as a human rebel against the Empire. Furthermore, having Jesus as God suited the autocratically ruled Empire much better than having Jesus remaining a humble man. As a result, the gospel texts that stressed Jesus’ humanity and supported his subordination to the Father, were minimized. Paul’s letters describing Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection were transformed from the political context in which these events occurred to a cosmic event.
    3. How many orthodox Trinitarians realize that the prevailing (orthodox) idea of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for about 200 years before Constantine made Christianity the state religion was similar to the heresy of the Jehovah Witnesses: the preexisting Son was subordinate to the Father and was not eternal and the Holy Spirit was an attribute or operation of the Father instead of a person of a triune God (however, many believed that the Holy Spirit was a person, but inferior to the Father and the Son). Before then, the prevailing idea of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit was similar to the heresy of the Biblical Unitarians (not to be confused with Unitarian Universalists) and Christadelphians.
    4. In the early days of Christianity, people believed that if the state (country) practiced an incorrect form of Christianity, God would punish that state and society with wars, plagues, famines, and other disasters. If true, Orthodoxy must have been an incorrect form of Christianity because the Roman Empire collapsed under Christianity. Furthermore, Orthodox Christianity in North Africa and the Middle East fell to Islam.
    5. The Church Fathers who developed the Nicene Creed used Platonic philosophy and speculative reasoning in deriving their Creed. Scriptural support in its development was scant. Scriptural support came later when the Scriptures were interpreted to support a predetermined dogma.
    6. A majority vote in a council of bishops decided to change the unipersonal God about whom Jesus preached and to whom he prayed to a triune God of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Thus, they elevated the man Jesus to Deity (Paul, Peter, and John referred to Jesus as a man and never as God Himself). Moreover, the council was not even representative of the Church as a whole — as though a council could change God.
    7. From the late fourth century onward, anyone who disagreed with the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity (or any other Catholic doctrine) has been branded a heretic. For more than a thousand years, free religious debate ceased. Apparently, the Trinity Doctrine is so insecure that Trinitarians must suppress any questioning of their doctrine. Moreover, Trinitarians became notorious for their book burning.
    8. Ask a Trinitarian if there is only one God, and he will answer, “Yes.” Ask him if Jesus is God, and again he will answer, “Yes.” Next, ask him if the Heavenly Father is God, and he will answer, “Yes.” Finally, ask him if Jesus is the Heavenly Father, and he will answer, “No.” Thus, the Trinitarian says that there is one God, and then he says that there are two Gods. Which is correct? For there to be only one God, the answer to one of the questions must be incorrect: Jesus is not God; the Heavenly Father is not God; or Jesus is the Heavenly Father. This is the logical and reasonable conclusion. However, the Trinitarian would muster all the logic that Trinitarianism allows and declare, “Not two Gods, but three Gods who are one God” and then quote the Athanasian Creed, “So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; and yet they are not three Gods, but one God.” Thus, he shows that the Trinity Doctrine is void of logic and reason and relies mainly on mere assertion (and for hundreds of years, on political power).
    9. For many Trinitarians, the test of a true Christian is not believing Jesus, loving him, and striving to follow his example and teachings. It is believing what some ancient councils, about which most Christians know nothing, said about his nature.
    10. Why do Protestants reject the doctrine of Mary being the Mother of God? It is such a component part of the Nicene Trinity Doctrine that for a thousand years any Trinitarian who questioned it was excommunicated and condemned as a heretic.
    11. Jesus, Paul, and John had plenty of opportunities to explain clearly this previously unknown triune God, yet they failed to do so. Why? Completely alien to their Jewish audience, who believed in a unipersonal God, was the concept of a triune God. So obscure is the support of the doctrine of the Trinity and dual nature of Christ in the New Testament that around 400 years after the crucifixion of Jesus, a good application of Greek philosophy, and the frequent use of force against dissenters were needed to discover it.
    12. Nowhere does the Bible declare that there are three equal, eternal beings, each of whom possesses all the attributes of Deity, yet they together constitute but one God. Moreover, nowhere does the Bible claim that Jesus had both a human nature and a divine nature and that these two natures made one person. As these concepts would have been completely new to the Jewish audience to whom Jesus and the apostles preached, one would think that they would have explained these new concepts in detail.
    13. The Trinity Doctrine and its Christology of Jesus having two natures are two dogmas that have been so deeply inculcated in the Christian mind that few Protestants question it — and the few who do are usually condemned as heretics. Yet, these two dogmas are based on Catholic tradition instead of the Scriptures. Whatever scriptural support is given for them it is via Catholic traditional interpretation of Scriptures. However, these supporting verses can just as easily and usually more legitimately be interpreted such that they do not support the Catholic dogma of the Trinity Doctrine and its Christology. (Another Catholic doctrine based more on tradition than on the Scriptures is that of the unity of man, i.e., all humans are descended from a common set of parents. It has been so ingrained in the minds of men that even secular humanists, atheists, and nearly all other non-Christians do not question this dogma. The disagreement between them and the traditional Catholic dogma is when the initial set of patents came into being and how they came to be. Moreover, both believe in Darwinism although many of the followers of the traditional Catholic doctrine deny it.) So much for Protestantism’s boast of freeing itself from Catholic dogma.
    14. Beyond the comprehension of mere Christians are the Trinity Doctrine and its concomitant Christology. Only an enlightened elite, the illuminated ones, can truly understand them — so asserts Gregory of Nazianzus, a principal force behind making the Holy Spirit a coequal, coeternal God along with the Father and the Son. Moreover, Gregory rejected the notion that one can come to know God by applying rational thought to the Scriptures. Apparently, a great deal of philosophical speculation is necessary to really know God. Consequently, Gregory’s claim that only the enlightened can understand the mystery of God is akin to Gnosticism, for the Gnostics maintained that only the enlightened can comprehend the mystery of God.

Copyright © 2019 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Valentinian Christology

Valentinian Christology

Thomas Allen

    As shown below, the similarities between the Gnostic Christology and Trinity of the Valentinians and the orthodox Trinitarians are striking. The Valentinians were teaching a Christology very similar to the Christology of the Trinity Doctrine expressed in the Athanasian Creed about 350 years before the proclamation of the Athanasian Creed.
    Valentinus (c.100-c.160) was a teacher in Rome, who almost became Pope. Before coming to Rome in about 140, he had studied in Egypt. About 160, he died in Cyprus. He claimed to have received his ideas from Theodas, a disciple of Paul. Valentinianism survived into the fifth century.
    Valentinus’ teachings merged Christianity with Greek and Oriental speculation. He developed a metaphysical system that incorporated Christianity with paganism and Greek philosophy, primarily Platonism. His theology fluctuated between Gnosticism, esotericism, and orthodox Christianity of his time.
    Valentinus believed that Christ’s flesh was spiritual. Although Jesus ate and drank, he did not defecate. Because Jesus’ body received heavenly substance, it only appeared to need food. (This idea of Jesus conflicts with the New Treatment: Jesus was “like his brethren in all things” [Heb. 2:17]. Like the Valentinians, the Trinitarians also have a Jesus who is incompatible with the New Testament Jesus.)
    Fundamental to the Valentinian Christology is Christ’s deity and preexistence. Furthermore, Christ is a special emanation of God and embodies all the powers of God. They believe that the fullness of the Godhead consists of three persons: Wisdom (Sophia), Truth (Aletheia), and Word (Logos). Jesus was the manifestation of these divine powers. Thus, Christ is the fullness of the Godhead. Pressense described Valentinus’ concept of the Father and the Son as follows:

The principle of all things — the Immortal, the Ineffable, He who deserves the name of Father in the absolute sense — is an unfathomable abyss. He is linked neither to space nor time; He is above all thought, and, as it were, shut up within Himself. Around Him is eternal silence. The Father is not willing to remain in solitude, for He is all love, and love can only exist where it has an object. Thus He produced by emanation the Intellect and the Truth. The Intellect is the consciousness which the Father has of Himself; it is the only Son, His living image, who alone makes known the Father, The Intellect is at the same time the Truth, because of this identity. The Intellect and the Truth produce the Word and the Life. This is the great quaternion of the absolute. The Intellect finds its perfect expression in the Word; that expression is not a mere symbol, since it is also the Life. The Word and the Life produce Man and the Church. . . . The transcendently divine blends with the essentially human. . . . The Intellect and the Truth give birth to the Christ and the Holy Spirit (Pressense, pp. 26-27, 29)

(For further description of Valentinus’ ontological metaphysical speculation, see Pressense, pages 27-33 and Hase, pages 78-80.)
    Further, Valentinus taught that the God of the Old Testament, i.e., Yahweh, was not the Supreme God.
    Valentinians divided into two schools: the Western (or Italian or later) and the Eastern (or Oriental or earlier). According to the Western School, Jesus came down from heaven with a special incorrupted human body. The virgin Mary birthed this human Jesus. Later, either at the birth or baptism of this human Jesus, the divine Christ joined the human Jesus. Thus, Jesus possessed two persons or natures: One is fully human and the other is fully divine. According to the Eastern School, Christ, who has a purely spiritual body, is born through the virgin Mary. The divine person of Jesus absorbs the human person, and, by that, makes Jesus one person. Thus, the Eastern School was partly Docetic.
    The Valentinians were ahead of the Trinitarians in recognizing Christ, the Son of God, as consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father, which is an essential element of the Trinity Doctrine. Moreover, Valentinus may have been the first to teach the doctrine of three hypostases and three persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This notion, he got from Hermes and Plato. (Hermes was a recorder of Egyptian mythology and paganism.) Unlike the Platonists, whose “hypostases” was impersonal, Valentinus’ “hypostases” was personal.
    As the Valentinus’ notion of three persons in the Godhead was between that of the Arians and the Sabellians, Trinitarians adopted his idea (indirectly via his techniques) to avoid and to condemn the Arians and Sabellians. (The Arians believed that the Son was a created being and subordinate to God. Sabellians believed that the Son, as well as the Father and Holy Spirit, was an aspect or manifestation of God.) Like the Valentinians, the Trinitarians adopted a trinity doctrine of a triune God of three distinct persons (or Gods) in one person (or God). (One motivation for adopting the Trinity Doctrine was to distinguish and separate Christianity from the absurdity of Jewish Monotheism, as Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 – c. 395), one of the greatest Trinitarian theologians of the fourth century, stated it.)
    However, the Trinity of the Trinitarians differs significantly from the Trinity of the Valentinians in one important aspect. For the Trinitarians, God the Father and God the Son are coequal. For the Valentinians, the Son is subordinate to the Father. Another important difference between the two is that according to the Trinitarians the three persons of God are male. According to the Valentinians, the Father and Son are male, and the Holy Spirit is female.
    Another essential component of the Trinity Doctrine is the eternal Son. Valentinians taught the eternal generation of the Son, i.e., the eternal Son. God the Father is the eternal Father of the eternal Son. However, they seem to mean that the Son is eternally begotten out of the Father instead of eternally being with or in the Father.
    Similar to the Christology of the Valentinians is the Christology of the Trinitarians. Trinitarians have the preexisting God the Son coming down from heaven to earth and uniting with a human body. However, according to the Trinity Doctrine, Jesus consists of two persons: a human and God. He is 100 percent God and 100 percent human. Yet, he is one person. That is, the Trinitarian Jesus is one person with two wills and two minds. Thus, the Trinitarian Jesus is not a personal man; he is human nature without personal substance. He becomes an abstraction void of personality united with God.
    According to the Valentinians, Christ, who emanates from the Intellect, the consciousness of the Father, the Supreme God, has of Himself, is the highest anointed. Jesus, who is born of Mary is the “ensouled body” that the Savior puts on. The Savior is a lesser anointed, who is also called Jesus, Christ, Word, Son, and All. Jesus was earthly with a human body into which the heavenly Savior descended, yet the Savior’s body was apparently not material. The spiritual Christ departs just before the crucifixion — thus, Deity does not die — and the human body, Jesus, suffers and dies.
    Both the Trinitarian Christ and the Valentinian Christ are similar to the Docetic Jesus. According to Docetism, Christ is not a man; God took the form of a man to Himself. According to the Trinitarians, when God the Son became man at the incarnation, he gave up none of his divine attributes by taking manhood to himself. Like the Trinitarians, the Valentinians hold that Christ is not a true or real man because God subjected all his properties to His divine personality while He preserved a complete and functional human nature. Thus, both the Trinitarians and Valentinians agree that Jesus Christ is not “a true man”; he is God united with human qualities.
    Nearly all Trinitarians maintain that only the human bodyof Christ died on the cross. God the Son, Christ’s divine nature, left the body of Christ at the crucifixion, for God cannot die. (If he died, he would no longer be immortal or eternal.) Valentinians hold the same doctrine of the crucifixion. Christ, i.e., the divine nature, left Jesus, i.e., the human nature, before Jesse died. The primary difference between the two is that for Trinitarians, the human nature left the God nature at death whereas for Valentinians, the God nature left the human nature before the human nature died.
    According to the New Testament, the Son of God died on the cross. Propitiation is by the death of the person of Jesus. However, for Valentinians and Trinitarians, the divine person did not die; only a human image or body died. Both have the divine person experiencing death without having to die.
    Nevertheless, Valentinians and Trinitarians do differ on their view of Jesus Christ. For the Valentinians, Christ is deity and Jesus is human; that is, Christ and Jesus are two distinct persons. Therefore, Jesus dies, but Christ escapes death. (This notion that Christ did not die conflicts with Paul’s teachings: Romans 14:9.)
    For the Trinitarians, Jesus and Christ are one person, although he is two distinct persons, divine and human. According to the Trinity Doctrine, Jesus has both a divine person, the Logos, and a rational human soul. Therefore, Jesus’ human nature retains a human mind and will, and he also has a divine mind and will. Nevertheless, Jesus has only one person in himself. Thus, Trinitarians have more difficulty in explaining Christ’s death without the Son of God dying than do Valentinians.
    Like the Trinitarian Jesus, the Valentinian Jesus consists of the deity and a rational human. Both have Jesus with two souls, but with only one ego, the divine person, dominating. Both believe that the divine must dominate Jesus, or else he would sin. Basically, the difference between the Valentinian and the Trinitarian doctrine of two natures of Jesus is that the Valentinians present theirs in a clear and undeniable fashion, while the Trinitarians present theirs in a hazy and incoherent way.
    Although the Valentinian Jesus had both a human mind and will and a divine mind and will, the divine controlled. Most Trinitarians maintain the same position: Jesus’ divine mind and will controlled his human mind and will. Both have the divine suppressing, at least to some degree, the humanity of Jesus. Thus, Jesus never sinned and could never sin. One significant difference between the Valentinian Jesus and the Trinitarian Jesus is that the Valentinian Jesus is two different persons: one divine, and one human. The Trinitarian Jesus is one person in spite of having two minds and two wills.
    According to the Valentinians, the human body of Jesus descended from heaven and passed through Mary. Thus, Jesus’ human body preexisted in heaven. This Valentinian doctrine, the Trinitarians reject.
    A great problem that Trinitarians have encountered over the centuries is explaining the two natures of Jesus and the crucifixion of Jesus without God dying on the cross while avoiding Gnosticism. Even today, some Trinitarians, e.g., Congdon, accuse many evangelicals of preaching a Docetic and Valentinian Christology.
    So that ordinary people can understand the Christology of the Trinitarians as expressed in the Athanasian Creed, Lord Bacon, a Trinitarian, translates it:

He believes a Virgin to be a Mother of a Son; and that very Son of hers to be her Maker. He believes him to have been shut up in a narrow room, whom heaven and earth could not contain. He believes him to have been born in time, who was and is from everlasting. He believes him to have been a weak child carried in arms, who is the Almighty; and him once to have died, who only hath life and immortality in himself (Norton 82-83).

In other words, God is contained in a womb and stable but is omnipresent. He is eternal yet born in time. He is a vulnerable infant yet omnipotent. He died but is an eternal, immortal God who cannot die. This is the Christology that a good Christian believes whether he realizes it or not. Except Mary being the mother of her Maker, i.e., God, Bacon’s description of Christ fits the Christology of the Valentinians.
    The similarities between Valentinian Christology and the Trinitarian Christology are remarkable. Both hold that Christ was deity and a hypostasis [a person] of the Supreme God. Further, both have him descending from heaven and having two complete natures. While the divine nature performs the miraculous and  salvific works of the Supreme God, the human nature experiences the life of a human body capable of hunger, pain, and death.
    In developing their Christology, the Trinitarians did not copy the Valentinians. Their Christologies are similar because both used the same technique in interpreting the Holy Scriptures. Both read the Scriptures through the thick lens of Platonism. As for the differences, they primarily result from the Valentinians incorporating more paganism and Gnosticism than the Trinitarians. The notion of a God-man and even a Triad (Triune) God comes from paganism. These notions certainly did not come from the staunchly monotheistic Old Testament or the staunchly monotheistic writers of the New Testament.
    Although the teachings of the Valentinians were extremely similar to that of the Trinitarians, they are condemned as a major enemy of orthodoxy. Perhaps the similarity is a cause of the Valentinians being condemned as heretics.
    When theologians develop a doctrine and especially a dogma, they seem not only to discard Occam’s razor, but, to the contrary, they seem to adopt its inverse. (According to Occam’s razor, when two theories are competing, the simpler explanation is to be preferred as it is usually the better of the two.) Do they do so to keep the masses ignorant and depended on them and, thereby, increase their status and importance? They seem to strive to create the most complex, incomprehensible doctrines and dogmas that they can.
    Further, most theologians seem to believe that when a few passages appear to disagree or conflict with many passages in the Bible, the many should be interpreted in light of the few. The few should not be understood in light of the many. Thus, the best doctrines allow or even demand the few to govern the many. For example, 53 scriptures support the doctrine that Jesus is God, while 386 scriptures show that he is not God (Holt, p. 311).
    One of my bosses said, partially joking, that the best way to get data points to fall on the curve is to draw the curve first and then plot the data. Some doctrines of the Church seem to have been developed this way. First, the doctrine is declared, and then verses are found to support the doctrine or are forced via interpretation to support the doctrine. Better yet, is to write the doctrine so that it can void any scripture that contradicts it. An example is the doctrine of the dual nature of Jesus (Jesus is 100 percent human and 100 percent God, yet he is only one person); the doctrine itself makes everything that Jesus says that proves that he is not God irrelevant.

REFERENCES
Allen, Thomas. “Early Church Theories of Christ.” Franklinton, North Carolina: TC Allen Co., 2009.

Brons, David. “The Gnostic Society Library: Valentinian Theology.” http://www.gnosis.org/library/valentinus/ValentinianJTheology.htm. Accessed December 27, 2017.
           
Cash, Billy “Origen’s Trinitarian Theology.” April 21, 2010.

Chandler, Kegan A. The God of Jesus in Light of Christian Dogma: The Recovery of New Testament Theology. McDonough, Georgia: Restoration Fellowship, 2016.

Congdon, David W. The Fire and the Rose. “American Evangelicalism Christology: The Heresies of American Evangelicalism, Part III: Christology: Part III: A Docetic Christ.” July 28, 2006. https://fireandrose.blogspot.com/2006/07/heresies-of-american- evangelicalism_28.html. Accessed December 27, 2017.

“A Correct Christology.” http://www.jesuswordsonly.com/aboutauthor/189-correct-christology.html. Accessed Dec 27, 2017

Craig, Ryann Elizabeth. “Anastasis in the Treatise on the Resurrection How Jesus’ Example Informs Valentinian Resurrection Doctrine and Christology.”

Fahy, Paul. “Early Christological Heresies.”  Understanding Ministries: 2012. http://www.understanding-ministries.com.

Hase, Charles. History of the Christian Church. Translators Charles E. Blumenthal and Conway P. Wing. New York: D. Appleton, 1870.

Healy, Patrick J. “Valentinus and Valentinians” https://www.catholic.com/index.php/encyclopedia/valentinus-and-valentinians. Accessed  Dec 27, 2017.

Holt, Brian. Jesus God or the Son of God: A Comparison of the Arguments. Mt. Juliet, Tennessee: Tell Way Publishing, 2002.

Neidhart, Ludwig. Biblical Trinity Doctrine and Christology. Augsburg: 2017.

Norton, Andrews. Statement of Reasons for Not Believing the Doctrines of Trinitarians, Concerning the Nature of God, and the Person Of Christ. Cambridge: Brown, Shattuck, and Company, 1833.

Pressense, E. De. The Early Years of Christianity: Heresy and Christian Doctrine. Translator Anne Harwood. New York: Nelson & Phillips, n.d.

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen

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