Are you a Modalistic Monarchianist? Huh?
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| Andrei Rublev's Trinity, representing the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in a similar manner. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The Jehovah’s Witnesses subscribe to Arianism, a movement that is a later development of Dynamic Monarchianism. It is important to have a good understanding of church history so that we might not be caught off guard by old errors.
Modalistic Monarchianism. Regarding the nature of God, we err when we emphasize the oneness of His essence over the threeness of His person, and vice versa. As the early church attempted to understand what the Bible says about our triune Creator, many heretics so emphasized His unity that they were unable to do justice to the distinction between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This was true of Sabellius, who caused problems for the church in the late second and early third centuries AD. Sabellius was influenced strongly by the Greek philosopher Plotinus, who taught that everything is divine, an emanation from God.
Sabellius believed God is like the sun that emanates light and heat. At different points in history we see God differently, just as we experience the sun’s light and heat and differently. Ultimately, Sabellius erased all distinctions between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and he taught that the Father is the Son is the Spirit: in ages past, God was the Father; during Jesus’ ministry, God was the Son; today, God is the Spirit. There is no eternal, personal communion between three distinct persons. We have one God who wears three masks, not three distinct persons in relationship with one another even though they share the same essence, according to Sabellius.
Without a proper distinction between the persons, passages such as John 17 do not make any sense. In this passage, the Son speaks to the Father, not to Himself as the Son. The Father is God and the Son is God, but the Father is not the Son.
Sabellius believed God is like the sun that emanates light and heat. At different points in history we see God differently, just as we experience the sun’s light and heat and differently. Ultimately, Sabellius erased all distinctions between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and he taught that the Father is the Son is the Spirit: in ages past, God was the Father; during Jesus’ ministry, God was the Son; today, God is the Spirit. There is no eternal, personal communion between three distinct persons. We have one God who wears three masks, not three distinct persons in relationship with one another even though they share the same essence, according to Sabellius.
Without a proper distinction between the persons, passages such as John 17 do not make any sense. In this passage, the Son speaks to the Father, not to Himself as the Son. The Father is God and the Son is God, but the Father is not the Son.
Dynamic Monoarchianism also taught that Jesus was exalted progressively, or dynamically, to the status of Godhood. The relation of the Father to the Son was perceived not in terms of their nature and being but in moral terms. That is, the Son was not regarded as possessing equality of nature with the Father (homoousios: homo means “same” and ousios means “essence”). Dynamic Monarchians proposed that there is merely a moral relation between Jesus and the purposes of God.
