Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: v111hfq3@ubvmsd.cc.buffalo.edu (Robert C Weiss) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Reply to The Local Church Posts Message-ID: Date: 29 Oct 90 06:26:50 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: University at Buffalo Lines: 433 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu Since Robert Johnson has decided to cross-post items that were originally written on a private list that only reflected a certain view... I thought it germane to post a reply to the Local Church Posts that appeared elsewhere.... Subj: The opinion of the Christian Research Institute on The Local Church The following is excerpted from the booklet: The Teachings of Witness Lee and the Local Church Which was produced by the Christian Research Institute, San Juan Capistrano, CA 92693. Apparently it was put together by Cal Beisner (Research Consultant) and Robert & Gretchen Passantino (Research Associates), in 1978. Tom, I will be continuing are specific exchange covering much of the same ground that is described in this post. But since I had it, and since they seem to state some things more succinctly than I could, I thought it still valuable to post this material. PLEASE - correct any misquotes in this material - I will include the footnotes. I will forward your corrections back to CRI. (You, of course, are welcome to as well.) If indeed their opinions are based on misinformation, it would be good to let them know. (It is my impression however, that they are quoting from source documents produced by Living Stream ministry.) Excerpt.... beginning on page 2. The nature of God The doctrine of the Trinity is usually stated essentially as: "In the nature of the one eternal God, there are three eternally distinct Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. All three are the same God, all fully God, yet the Father is neither the Son nor the Spirit, the Son is neither the Father nor the Spirit, and the Spirit is neither the Father nor the Son."(2) The Local Church, however, teaches contrary to this. The Local church teaches that the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit are all the same Person as well as the same God, and that each is a successive step or stage in the revelation of God to man. Witness Lee writes: Thus, the three Persons of the Trinity become the three successive steps in the process of God's economy.(3) Likewise, the Father, Son, and Spirit are not three Gods, but three stages of one God for us to possess and enjoy.(4) In the heavens, where man cannot see, God is the Father; when He is expressed among men, He is the Son; and when He comes into men, He is the Spirit. The Father was expressed among men in the Son, and the Son became the Spirit to come into men. The Father is in the Son, and the Son became the Spirit -- the three are just one God. (5) Formerly it was impossible for man to contact the Father. He was exclusively God and His nature was exclusively divine. There was nothing in the Father to bridge the gap between God and man...... But now he has.... become incarnate in human nature. The Father was pleased to combine His own divinity with humanity in the Son. (6) After death and resurrection he (the Son) became the Spirit breathed into the disciples. (7) ....The Son became the Spirit for us to drink in as the water of life.... (8) The Father, as the inexhaustible source of everything, is embodied in the Son. (9) In the place where no man can approach Him (I Tim. 6:16), God is the Father. When He comes forth to manifest Himself, He is the Son. ....We know the Lord is the Son and that He is also called the Father.... Now we read that He is the Spirit. So we must be clear that Christ the Lord is the Spirit, too.... As the source, God is the Father. As the expression, He is the Son. As the transmission, He is the Spirit. The Father is the source, the Son is the expression, and the Spirit is the Transmission, the communion. This is the Triune God...(10). We can see in these passages the clear teaching that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three successive stages in the revelation of God to mankind. Thus the Son is not really a Person distinct from the Father, but is the Father "come forth to manifest Himself." Neither is the Holy Spirit a Person distinct from the Father and Son, but "the transmission," the "communion;" He is in fact the Father and the Son in a different stage of expression to man. This doctrine of successive steps in the revealing of God to man, denying the eternal distinction of the three Persons of the Trinity, is known historically as Sabellianistic modalism, and, more broadly, as "modalistic Monarchianism". Dr. Louis Berkhof describes "Sabellianistic modalism" as: "....Sabellius... distinguished between the unity of the divine essence and the plurality of its manifestations, which are represented as following one another like the parts of a drama. Sabellius indeed sometimes spoke of three divine persons, but then used the word 'person' in the original sense of the word, in which it signifies a role of acting or a mode of manifestation. According to him the names Father, Son and Holy Spirit are simply designations of three different phases under which the one divine essence manifests itself. God reveals Himself as Father in creation and in the giving of the law, as Son in regeneration and sanctification. (11) Remember the teaching of Mr. Lee: "Thus, the three Persons of the Trinity become the three successive steps in the process of God's economy." (12) There can be no doubt that this aspect of Lee's teaching is modalistic in the Sabellian sense: that is, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three successive modes (hence the name "modalism") or stages in the manifestation of God to man, rather than three internally, essentially distinct Persons. This doctrine was declared heretical in the third century (A.D. 263 under Bishop Dionysius of Rome), and has since crept into the teaching of the Church from time to time, always to be rejected in favor of the Scriptural teaching of the essential Trinity. The Scripture affirms that Father, Son, and Spirit are not three successive steps, for they are eternal and sumultaneous. Hebrews 9:14 tells of Christ offering Himself through the "eternal Spirit." They both existed at the same time, and Christ was not the Spirit. Yet Lee wrote, "But now (the Father) has...become incarnate in human nature. The Father was pleased to combine His own divinity with humanity in the Son." (14) The concept of the Father becoming the Son and the Son becoming the Spirit is contradicted in other ways by Scripture. Malachai 3:6 tells us that God does not change: yet this modalism would certainly entail changes in God. In Is. 44:6 we have the Father (Jehovah, the King of Israel) and the Son (His Redeemer, Jehovah of Hosts) speaking simultaneously, affirming at once that they are the same God, yet presented clearly and directly as distinct Persons. In Luke 22:42 Christ prays to the Father, "not my will, but thine be done." There is a clear distinction between the Father and the Son, yet they exist simultaneously. They have separate (though never conflicting) wills, and hence must be separate Persons, yet the same God. In John 14:26 we find that the Father will send the Holy Spirit; in 15:26 we find that Jesus will send the Spirit (see also 16:7); and in 17:8 and 20:21 we find that the Father has sent Jesus. We see a complete distinction among the Persons of the Trinity. None of them becomes another, none is another. All are eternally distinct, not successive stages in God's revelation of Himself to man. All relate to each other as one Person to another Person. The Local Church also teaches another view of the Trinity, also modalistic. For the purpose of this booklet, we will call this "static modalism," because in this form there is no succession of one becoming another: Father, Son, and Spirit are presented as separate but simultaneous modes or aspects of the revelation of the same Being to man. Static modalism appears in the writings or Mr. Lee: Although He is one God, yet there is the matter of three-foldness, that is, the threefold Person -- the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. (15) He (the Father) is the One hidden within, and the Son is the One manifested without; yet the One who is manifested without is the One who is hidden within -- the two are just one! (16) Thank the Lord, He also has two ends: at the end in heaven He is the Father, and at the end on the earth He is the Son; at the end in heaven He is the One who listens to the prayer, and at the end on earth He is the One who prays. He is both the One who prays on earth and the One who listens in heaven. (17) The Son who prays is the Father who listens. (18) Therefore the Bible clearly reveals to us that the Son is the Father, and the Son is also the Spirit. Otherwise, how could these three be one God? (19) The Son is the Father, and the Son is also the Spirit. (20) ...The Lord Jesus is the Holy Spirit... (21) It is clear from the above quotations that Mr. Lee also teaches that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are each other simultaneously. At one and the same time, the Son is the Father and the Holy Spirit. The statement concerning the Father and the Son that "the two are just one" is actually unclear: we are forced to ask, "One what?" their answer is that they are the same Person, for we are told that the threefoldness in God is the "threefold Person." (15) This implicates the Holy Spirit in this one Person as well. The fact that this teaches simultaneous, non-successive modalism cannot be denied, regardless of the fact that it is thereby in direct contradiction to Lee's teaching, shown above, of developmental modalism. The term applied to this teaching in the history of Christian doctrine is generally Patripassianism (from "pater", Father, and "patior" to suffer), because it logically implied the suffering of the Father on the Cross as Christ. Philip Schaff writes of this class of thinkers: "The second class of Monarchians, called by Tertullian 'Patripassians'.... together with their unitarian zeal felt the deeper Christian impulse to hold fast the divinity of Christ; but they sacrificed to it his independent personality, which they merged in the essence of the Father. They taught that the one supreme God by His own free will, and by an act of self-limitation became man, so that the Son is the Father veiled in the flesh. They knew no other God but the one manifested in Christ, and charged their opponents with ditheism." (22) One of the most famous teachers of this doctrine was Prazeas, of who Schaff wrote: "Praxeas, constantly appealing to Is. 45:5; John 10:30..., as if the whole Bible consisted of these three passages, taught that the Father Himself became man, hungered, thirsted, suffered, and died in Christ." (23) Two other early thinkers taught this doctrine, bishops of Rome Zephyrinus and, with some modifications, Callistus: "Zephyrinus (201-219) and Callistus (219-223) held and taught (according to the "Philosophumena" of Hippolytus, a martyr and saint) the Patripassian heresy, that God the Father became incarnate and suffered with the Son." (24) Louis Berkhof writes of Praxeas and Noetus, the two most prominent teachers of this doctrine: "Praxeas... seems to have avoided the assertion that the Father suffered, but Noetus did not hesitate at this point. To quote the words of Hippolytus: "He said that Christ is Himself the Father, and that the Father Himself was born and suffered and died." According to the same Church Father he even made the bold assertion that the Father by changing the mode of his being literally became the His own Son. The statement of Noetus referred to runs as follows: "When the Father had not yet been born, He was rightly called the the Father; but when it pleased Him to submit to birth, having been born, He became the Son, He of Himself and not of another." (25) While we can see the beginning of the successionism in Noetus' doctrine, the primary teaching represented in these and other quotations is the simultaneous identity of one Person as Father and Son, which Witness Lee also propagates. Like Sabellianistic (or successionalistic) modalism, static modalism also fails to conform to Scripture. The presentation of distinction among the Persons of Father, Son, and Spirit in Scripture is unmistakable: Father and Son have separate, though never conflicting wills (Lk. 22:42); the Father sent Jesus (Jn. 17:8; 20:21), and Jesus and the Father send the Spirit (Jn. 15:26, 16:7, 14:26). Even the Hebrew word which tells us that God is one (Dr. 6:4; "echod") has implicit within it the concept of plurality. (26) In Luke 3:22 the Father addresses the Son, saying, "Thou are my beloved Son:" if Father and the Son are the same Person, this makes no sense. John 1:1, which reads "in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." gives a perfect presentation of the unity of Father and Son as the same God (third clause), and yet their personal distinction, since the Word is "with God". Even John 10:30, where Jesus says, "I and the Father are one," carries within it their personal distinction, since the Greek verb is "we are". With such Scriptural evidence against both successionalistic and static modalism, it is easy to understand the conclusion of W.H. Griffith Thomas in regard to modalism in general: "Sabellianism both ancient and modern has always proved impossible in the long run. Modalism even without Successionalism is wholly inadequate to the Scripture testimony. There is scarcely anything more significant in the history of the Church than the recurrence and also the rejection of Sabellianism, for it is at once apparently easy, and soon seen to be utterly impossible to consider the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as mere aspects of manifestations of one God." Lee's two doctrines of modalism are no exception to this conclusion. They disagree with the testimony of Scripture. They are revivals of two ancient heresies. They are contradictory not only to Scripture but even to each other. They must be rejected by all Christians, since Mal. 3:6 declares the unchangeableness of God. As a result of these errors, we can expect more errors, and the primary one we find in Lee's teaching is that God becomes the Church, or "vice versa". For most Christians such a teaching is so incredible that we tend to refuse to believe that anyone could seriously teach it. Yet it has actually been taught, and rejected, time and again throughout the history of Christianity, and has sometimes been referred to as the doctrine of the "extension of the incarnation." ********************** End of excerpt. If your curious about the remainder of this booklet, you can order it from the Christian Research Institute, PO Box 500, San Juan Capistrano, CA 92693. [I'm going to insert my comments here, since I suspect many may not read all the footnotes. There's always a problem with the Trinity, in that (as someone has observed here before), almost everyone who opens his mouth on this subject ends up saying something that could be interpreted as heretical. Thus you have to be very careful to find out exactly what people mean, to see whether they are using words metaphorically, not speaking precisely, etc. However some of the things quoted here seem to be pretty unambiguous. They also use technical language associated with the heresies described above, so it is not likely to be an accidentally-created impression or a misunderstanding. It appears that these documents are consciously using modalist language. There are certainly modern theologians and even whole churches who disagree with the orthodox position, and are not afraid to say so. But if I can judge from the samples posted by ROBERT (which include some of this material), it gives the impression that it is simply explaining the meaning of the standard Trinitarian concepts, but in fact is describing a doctrine that opposed to the historic Trinitarian doctrine. Lest some think that this issue is only a technical one, or that the Trinity is not "Biblical", I should note that problems with the Trinity have always been reflected in problems in one's conception of Christ. I don't know of any theology that denies the Trinity and manages to avoid serious misconceptions about Christ. The problem with modalism is that the Son's separate existence is not acknowledged. This typically results in either the concept that Jesus is simply a human mask for God, but did not have a real human existence, or that the human being Jesus was not truly God incarnate. The quotations here are not sufficient to be sure what position is taken, but my suspicion would be that Christ's true humanity is probably denied. In particular, if the Son is only temporary, one wonders what Lee does with the Biblical picture of Christ as living in eternity with the Father, and interceding on our behalf with Him. --clh] Footnotes: (from booklet) 1. Witness Lee, THE PRACTICAL EXPRESSION OF THE CHURCH Anaheim: Stream), 1974, pp. 92, 111. 2. For more detailed statement, and Scriptural proof of the doctrine of the Trinity, see Charles Hodge, SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, (Grand Rapids, Mich. Eerdmans), 1973, Vol. I, ch. vi., pp 442ff., and other systematic theologies. 3. Witness Lee, THE ECONOMY OF GOD (Los angeles: Stream), 1968, p. 10. 4. Witness Lee, "Concerning the Trinue God" (Los Angeles: Stream), no date, p. 31. 5. IBID., pp. 8-9 6. Lee, THE ECONOMY OF GOD, p. 11. 7. Lee, "Concerning the Trinue God," p. 8, parentheses added. 8. IBID., p. 8. 9. Lee, THE ECONOMY OF GOD, p. 8. 10. Lee, THE ALL-INCLUSIVE SPIRIT OF CHIRST (Los Angeles: Stream), 1969, pp. 4, 6, 8. 11. Louis Berkhof, THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES (Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth Trust), 1975, p. 79; cf. pp. 78-79. Dr. Abraham Kuyper writes of Sabellianism: "... Sabellius... came to the conclusion that the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost were after all but one Person; who first wrought in creation as Father, then having become the Son wrought out our redemption, and now as the Holy Spirit perfects our sanctification." (Kuyper, THE WORK OF THE HOLY SPIRIT, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975, p.45.) William Kelly writes: "Taking its name from the the third century Sabellius, this... reduced the three persons of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost to three characters, modes or revelations of the Godhead assumed for the purpose of the divine dealings with man. Thus God is eternally and essentially one, but economically, i.e., for specific purposes, he takes the form of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit...." (Kelly, SABELLIANISM, in E.F. Harrison, ed., Baker's Dictionary of Theology, Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1975, p. 465.) Augustus Strong writes: "... Sabellius and Schleiermacher hold that the One *becomes* three in the process of revelation, and the three are only *media* or *modes* of revelation. Father, Son, and Spirit are mere names applied to these modes of the divine action, there being no internal distinctions in the divine nature. This is modalism, of a modal Trinity." (Stron, SYSTEMATIC THEOLOGY, Old Tappan, N.J.: Revell, 1976, P. 327.) Philip Schaff wrote: "While the other Monarchians confine their inquiry to the relation of the Father and Son, Sabellius embraces the Holy Spirit in his speculation, and reaches a trinity, not a simultaneous trinity of essence, however, but only a successive trinity of revelation. He starts from a distinction of the monad and the triad in the divine nature. His fundamental thought is, that the unity of God, without distinction in itself, unfolds or extends itself in the course of the world's development in three different forms and periods of revelpation, and, after the completion of redemption, returns into unity. The Father reveals Himself in the giving of the law or the Old Testament economy....; the Son, in the incarnation; The Holy Ghost, in inspiration." (Schaff, HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, USA: Associated Publishers and Authors, no date. Vol. II. p. 262.) 12. Lee, THE ECONOMY OF GOD, p. 10. 13. Lee, "Concerning the Trinue God," p. 8. 14. Lee, THE ECONOMY OF GOD, p. 11, parentheses added. 15. Lee, "Concerning the Trinue God," p. 11 16. IBID., p. 8., parentheses added. 17. IBID., p. 28. 18. IBID., p. 25. 19. IBID., p. 23. 20. IBID., p. 17. 21. IBID., p. 20. 22. Philip Schaff, HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, II:260. William Nigeel Kerr writes: "Patripassianists... with the modalists confused the persons of the Trinity and denied the union of the two natures in the one person of Christ. Defending monotheism they held that since God was one essence there could not be three persons but instead three modes of manifestation. Thus the Son was the Father appearing in human form. Noetus taught that Christ was the Father and so the Father was born, suffered and died upon the cross, hence the name patripassian." (Kerr, "Patripassianism," in E.F. Harrison, ed., BAKER'S DICTIONARY OF THEOLOGY, pp. 396-7.) 23. Philip Schaff, HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH, II:260. 24. Philip Schaff, THE CREEDS OF CHRISTENDOM (Grand Rapids: Baker), 1977, Vol. II, p. 177 25. Louis Berkhof, THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINES, p. 79