Category Archives: Heresies

By his stripes you are healed

Is it physical healing or eternal salvation?

clip_image002

(image courtesy Pinterest)

By Spencer D Gear PhD

I have a question for all Christians: Because of Jesus’ death on the cross, does this guarantee that Christians who pray for healing will be healed? True or False?

I refer to 1 Peter 2:24 (NASB), ‘He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed’.

This is the prophetic fulfillment of Isa 53:5 (NASB), ‘And by His scourging we are healed’.

I’ve heard it over and over from preachers, mainly in Pentecostal-Charismatic churches: ‘By his stripes you are healed’. Then comes something like this: Those who are sick, please come forward and we’ll pray for you. On the authority of God’s Word, because of Jesus’ suffering he is obliged to heal you. ‘By his stripes you are healed’.

Here are three examples from the Internet of this kind of teaching:

clip_image004Benny Hinn Ministries

gives ‘7 Purposes of Divine Healing’.[1]

This article begins:

God’s will for you to walk in divine health is emphasized throughout His Word.

  • Jesus heals because He is full of compassion.
  • The blood of Jesus was shed to forgive sin and provide healing.

The wonderful English Bible teacher Smith Wigglesworth used to tell about traveling one day in a railway coach. Two others on the train-a mother and daughter-were very sick, so Wigglesworth said to them, “Look, I’ve something in the bag that will cure every case in the world. It has never been known to fail.”

The mother and daughter were quite interested, so the minister went on to tell them about this “remedy.” When they finally asked for a dose, he opened the bag, took out his Bible, and read them the verse that says;

“I am the Lord who healeth thee” (Exodus 15:26).

What a wonderful way to share how the Bible is filled with promises and accounts regarding health and healing for His children.

clip_image004[1]Andrew Wommack Ministries

teach,

Matthew [18:17], under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, substituted the words “infirmities” and “sicknesses” for Isaiah’s words “griefs” and “sorrows.” Indeed, a study of the Hebrew words in Isaiah 53:4 will reveal that they were always speaking of physical healing. The following verse, Isaiah 53:5, makes it very clear that this was speaking of physical healing when Isaiah said, “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed”.

Couple this with the example of Jesus healing every single person who came to Him for healing, and the truth that healing is a part of Christ’s atonement is undeniable
.

Not all sickness is caused by something we do. Regardless of the reason, however, there is always something we can do about it. We can believe God, and He will heal ALL our diseases (Ex. 15:26, Ps. 103:3).

If it is God’s will to heal all our diseases, why isn’t everyone healed? That’s a simple question with a complex answer.

The bottom line is faith. The prayer of faith saves the sick (James 5:15). Prayer doesn’t save the sick; the prayer of faith saves the sick (Healing & Niki’s Miracle).[2]

I find Wommack’s teaching especially concerning. We’ll examine its biblical authenticity below:

There are a number of keys to seeing the miraculous power of God manifest on a consistent basis. One of the least understood, and therefore seldom practiced, is the fact that healing is under the authority of the believer. God has already provided His healing power and placed it on the inside of every born-again believer. It is up to us to release it. Understanding and using our authority is the key to seeing miracles happen
.

I know this goes contrary to popular Christian doctrine. We’re constantly told that it’s not us but God who is the Healer, and I agree with that totally. But, I also believe that God has placed His healing power under our authority, and it is up to us to release it. If we don’t take our authority and become commanders instead of beggars, God’s power will not be released. There needs to be a radical renewing of our thinking on this issue (Our Authority Releases God’s Power, emphasis in original).[3]

Elsewhere Wommack continues his teaching on healing:

Here’s another indispensable basic truth you must know and understand about healing: It’s never God’s will for us to be sick; He wants every person healed every time. That’s nearly-too-good-to-be-true news, but that’s the Gospel (Faith for Healing Is Based on Knowledge, emphasis in original).[4]

Andrew Wommack is an American Charismatic TV evangelist and faith healer now based in Colorado Springs CO.[5]

Is that an accurate teaching of Scripture?

clip_image004[2]Joseph Prince

wrote:

‘Every curse of sickness that was supposed to fall on you fell on Jesus instead. He bore every one of those stripes, so that you can walk in divine health all the days of your life. The price has been paid so that you can rise up and get out of your bed of affliction!’ (By Jesus’ stripes you are healed).[6]

Prince is an evangelist and senior pastor of New Creation Church based in Singapore. His TV program, Destined to Reign, is broadcast in more than 150 countries. He attended the Hillsong Conference 2007 in Sydney.[7]

Is that what the Bible teaches? If so, we should head down to Caboolture Hospital, Qld and then Royal Brisbane & Women’s Hospital and pray for all the people who are sick. Then they will be able to get out of their bed of sickness without any further help from medical doctors.

If we did that, we may be called nutty or labelled members of a cult. Why?

1. Is physical healing taught in these Scriptures?

Read 1 Peter 2:22-25 (NET):

22 He committed no sin nor was deceit found in his mouth. 23 When he was maligned, he did not answer back; when he suffered, he threatened no retaliation, but committed himself to God who judges justly. 24 He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we may cease from sinning and live for righteousness. By his wounds you were healed. 25 For you were going astray like sheep but now you have turned back to the shepherd and guardian of your souls (emphasis added).

Verse 24 is quoted from Isa 53:5 (NET).

The prophecy in Isaiah 53:3-6 reads:

He was despised and rejected by people, one who experienced pain and was acquainted with illness; people hid their faces from him;
he was despised, and we considered him insignificant.

4 But he lifted up our illnesses, he carried our pain; even though we thought he was being punished, attacked by God, and afflicted for something he had done.

5 He was wounded because of our rebellious deeds, crushed because of our sins; he endured punishment that made us well; because of his wounds we have been healed.

6 All of us had wandered off like sheep; each of us had strayed off on his own path, but the Lord caused the sin of all of us to attack him.

How do we decide if it’s physical healing or spiritual healing, i.e. salvation?

The context determines the truth of verse 5 if there is concern over the meaning of a word, in this case, ‘healed’.

1.1  In Isaiah

This verse confirms:

  • He was despised and rejected.
  • He was lifted up for ‘our illnesses’ (‘born our griefs, carried our sorrows’, ESV).
  • Punished, attacked by God; afflicted for something he had done.
  • Wounded for our rebellion,
  • ‘crushed because of our sins’;
  • Endured punishment to make us well;
  • ‘Because of his wounds we have been healed’.

Are those phrases and prophetic predictions referring to physical or spiritual healing?

Verse 6 answers with a thunderous response:

  • Like sheep, we wandered off.
  • We strayed doing our own thing.
  • The Lord caused the sin of all of us to attack him. Or as the ESV puts it, ‘the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all’.

This confirms that Jesus’ death for sinners was not for physical healing but for salvation – spiritual healing.

1.2  First Peter chapter 2

What do verses 22-25 (ESV) teach us in context?

  • Jesus was not a sinner or deceiver.
  • When he was maligned (insulted ERV; shouted at him & made fun of him NIRV), he didn’t back answer.
  • He suffered without retaliation.
  • Committed himself to God, the judge;
  • He bore our sins in his body on the cross 

  • So we would stop sinning and live righteously. 
  • By his wounds people are healed. That’s how the English reads but the words for ‘his wounds’ or ‘his stripes’ are not plural but singular, tw mwlwpi – the wound. This is the only time this word is used in the NT.
  • The classical Greek writers, Aristotle (384–322 BC) and Plutarch (c. AD 46 –120) used it to mean ‘bruise or bloody wound’. Robertson says that if Peter were ‘writing to slaves who may have received such stripes, Peter’s word is effective’ (Robertson 1933:106).

Why would that wound on Jesus be recorded by Peter is in the singular when we know from other verses that Jesus was mocked, flogged, and crucified. Matt 27:29 (NASB) states, ‘And after twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on His head
.’ (See also Mark 15:17 and John 19:2, 5).

One commentator stated: This was perhaps ‘suggesting that his body was one massive welt’ (Believer’s Bible Commentary, p. 2357).[8]

Listen to the language from the Gospels:

forward and right arrow sign

‘Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him’ (John 19:1 ESV).

forward and right arrow sign

Jesus predicted that would happen to him. Matt 20: 18-19 (ESV), ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem. And the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and scribes, and they will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, and he will be raised on the third day”.

forward and right arrow sign

 ‘They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and twisting together a crown of thorns, they put it on his head and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him, they mocked him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” And they spit on him and took the reed and struck him on the head’ (Matt 27:28-30, ESV).

The OT prophesied this would happen to Jesus:

clip_image010(image courtesy Pinterest)[9]

forward and right arrow sign

‘But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed
. Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him’ (Isa 53:5, 10a ESV).

Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC), Roman statesman, orator, lawyer and philosopher, described crucifixion as “a most cruel and disgusting punishment” and suggested that “the very mention of the cross should be far removed not only from a Roman citizen’s body, but from his mind, his eyes, his ears”.[10]

 Our sins will not be healed in the future. They were healed. When? By Christ’s death on the cross.

 Theodoret of Cyrus was an early church father who lived AD 393 – 457. He wrote about 1 Peter 2:24, ‘A new and strange method of healing; the doctor suffered the cost, and the sick received the healing’ (in Selwyn 1981:181).

 People were like sheep going astray but now have been turned back.

What kind of healing is stated in this context? Salvation! ‘He was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed’ (Isa 53:5; 1 Peter 2:24-25).

This conclusion is reinforced by:

Image result for clipart star public domain  The verb for ‘you were healed’ that indicates it happened – full stop. You were healed by Christ’s shed blood.[11]

It’s the verb used in James 5:16 (NET), ‘So confess your sins to one another and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great effectiveness’.

Image result for clipart star public domain  However, in James it is the grammatical mood of doubt:[12] It may happen or may not. You ‘may be healed’.

Image result for clipart star public domain  So it is not a command to God: ‘In the name of Jesus, I command that you heal this person’. It is more like, ‘If it be your will, please raise this person to health’.

Wait a minute. What kind of healing is it in James 5:16? Look at the context.

The answer is found in James 5:14-15:

  Is anyone ill? (sick ESV) It’s an old word that means ‘to be weak (without strength)’
. The use of olive oil was one of the best remedial agencies known to the ancients. They used it internally and externally’ (Robertson 1933:64). See also Matt 10:8.

  Why was it needed for Christians to care for the physically sick? See 1 Thess 5:14 (ERV), ‘We ask you, brothers and sisters, to warn those who will not work. Encourage those who are afraid. Help those who are weak. Be patient with everyone’.

2. A question for you

I ask: ‘In what sense 
 did Christ “bear” our sins?’

He took the blame for sinners. ‘He suffered the “curse” for them’ (see Deut 21:23 which is quoted in Gal 3:13). That “curse” is separation from God and he ‘endured our penal consequences’ (Selwyn 1981:180).

See the article: What does it mean that “by His stripes you were healed”? (Got Questions)[13]

I have two more issues associated with this topic.

3. Is there a place for divine healing in the contemporary church?

Yes, there is on two accounts:

3.1 Believers do the works of Jesus

Jesus teaches it in John 14:12-14 (NIV) states:

Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13 And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. 14 You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it.

  Whoever believes in Jesus will be able to do his works (including miracles);

They will do greater things/works because the one person of Jesus will not be here any longer. Many true believers will be scattered around the world.

Whatever believers ask in Jesus’ name he will do to glorify the Father and the Son.

  In context, believers can ask for any of the ‘greater things’ and Jesus ‘will do’ them. Does this open the floodgates to Andrew Wommack’s kind of theology, ‘It’s never God’s will for us to be sick?

Definitely not, because believers asking “in Jesus’ name” means

Prayers that are offered in thorough accord with all that his name stands for (i.e. his name is not used as a magical incantation: cf. 1 Jn. 5:14, and in recognition that the only approach to God those who pray enjoy, their only way to God (cf. vv. 4-6) is Jesus himself (Carson 1991:496).

We pray for a person’s illness and recovery and leave the results with God himself. It’s not a farcical kind of prayer but a realisation that God Almighty is Lord of all and he sovereignly decides what happens through prayer for healing.

3.2 Heresies of Hinn, Wommack and Prince

Some of you may consider my assessment too condemning and rather see me put these three prominent preachers into the category of false teachers rather than teachers of heresy.

What is a heresy?

In NT Greek, the term from which we get the English, ‘heresy’ is hairesis. Arndt & Gingrich’s Greek Lexicon (1957:23) states that hairesis means ‘sect, party, school’. It was used of the Sadducees in Acts 5:17; of the Pharisees in Acts 15:5; of the Christians in Acts 24:5. It is used of a heretical sect or those with destructive opinions in 2 Peter 2:1 (‘destructive heresies’ ESV, NIV). This latter verse uses ‘haireseis (plural) of destruction’.

The Lexico/Oxford dictionary gives these meanings of heresy:

(a) ‘Belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious (especially Christian) doctrine’;

(b) ‘Opinion profoundly at odds with what is generally accepted’ (Lexicon/Oxford Dictionary (2019. s. v. heresy).[14]

From the NT, we see the term, heresy, being used to mean what Paul called strange doctrines, different doctrine, doctrines of demons, and every wind of doctrine (I Timothy 1:3; 4:1; 6:3; Ephesians 4:14). This is in contrast to sound doctrine, our doctrine, the doctrine conforming to godliness, and the doctrine of God (I Timothy 4:6; 6:1,3; 2 Timothy 4:3; Titus 1:9; 2:1, 10).

Therefore, I am justified in labelling the teaching on healing by Hinn, Wommack and Prince as heresy as it does not conform to sound doctrine, is a strange, unbiblical doctrine that is contrary to God’s teaching in Scripture.

4. Are these faith healers teaching heresy?

This is why these prominent ‘faith healers’ are promoting heresy.

4.1 Benny Hinn

He used Smith Wigglesworth as an example to support his theology:

‘I am the Lord who healeth thee’ (Exodus 15:26).

What a wonderful way to share how the Bible is filled with promises and accounts regarding health and healing for His children.[15]

What does Exodus 15:26 teach?

This is the context:

22 Then Moses led Israel from the Red Sea and they went into the Desert of Shur. For three days they travelled in the desert without finding water. 23 When they came to Marah, they could not drink its water because it was bitter. (That is why the place is called Marah.) 24 So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, ‘What are we to drink?’

25 Then Moses cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a piece of wood. He threw it into the water, and the water became fit to drink.

There the Lord issued a ruling and instruction for them and put them to the test. 26 He said, ‘If you listen carefully to the Lord your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, who heals you’

27 Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs and seventy palm trees, and they camped there near the water (Ex 15:22-27 NIV).

Not once in this passage is there a hint that this was a general text for healing of people throughout human history, whether the 20th century with Wigglesworth or the 21st century with Hinn.

This is what it teaches:

Image result for clipart star public domain

 After crossing the Red Sea and going into the Desert, the Israelites could not find water, only finding bitter water at Marah.

Image result for clipart star public domain

  The people grumbled against Moses, wanting something to drink.

Image result for clipart star public domain

 Moses sought the Lord who showed him a piece of wood which he threw into the water and the Israelites were now able to drink it.

Image result for clipart star public domain

 Then the Lord tested the Israelites: If you listen carefully to the Lord, do what is right towards him, paying attention to his commands, then the Lord will not bring onto the Israelites that diseases inflicted on the Israelites.

Image result for clipart star public domain

 At this point the Lord gave the reason for saving Israelites from those diseases: ‘For I am the Lord who heals you’.

This passage has nothing whatsoever to do with contemporary healing by Benny Hinn or Smith Wigglesworth. It only applied to the Israelites in specific circumstances.

Hinn has cherry picked a verse to make it say what it does not state. It inflicts his theology on the text and thus promotes his strange heresy of OT Jewish healing for all people.

4.2 Andrew Wommack

This Charismatic preacher is even more extreme. He promotes the heresy that:

 ‘If we don’t take our authority and become commanders instead of beggars, God’s power will not be released. There needs to be a radical renewing of our thinking on this issue’

I have not found a shred of NT or OT evidence to support such an extremist, heretical claim. Jesus said believers would be able to ‘do whatever you ask in my name’ (Jn 14:13) but that is only according to the Father’s will. We cannot command or demand or ‘take our authority’. Human authority is useless in the presence of the sovereign God who answers or refuses to answer human requests.

As for Wommack’s statement,

God has already provided His healing power and placed it on the inside of every born-again believer. It is up to us to release it. Understanding and using our authority is the key to seeing miracles happen.[16]

This is fanciful nonsense that has Charismatic, irrational enthusiasm behind it, but it does not stand up against the Scriptures. Sadly, I need to condemn it a ‘destructive heresy’ (2 Pet 2:1).

I wonder how many Christians have become disillusioned with the faith because of this kind of fake theology. It is fake news with a supposed biblical ‘coating’ of Charismatic gloss.

4.3 Joseph Prince

The pastor of a large church in Singapore has sealed his own heretical fate with this view:

Every curse of sickness that was supposed to fall on you fell on Jesus instead. He bore every one of those stripes, so that you can walk in divine health all the days of your life. The price has been paid so that you can rise up and get out of your bed of affliction![17]

As the above exposition demonstrated, those stripes that Jesus bore were for our salvation – spiritual healing – and not for curing physical illnesses. Poor exegesis by Prince causes him to promote heresy.

5. Does Jesus heal today?

From the dampener I’ve placed on physical healing by my exposition of the biblical texts above, maybe you ask: Has God provided any means for physical healing? Does God perform miracles today?

See my articles:

Image result for photos flowers public domain

  Are Miracles Valuable?

Image result for photos flowers public domain

  Why doesn’t God heal everyone who is prayed for?

Did Jesus promise more physical miracles would continue after he departed from his earthly ministry?

5.1 John 14:12-14

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes in me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I am going to the Father. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me for anything in my name, I will do it.

The ‘works’ (erga) available to all believers, that Jesus was doing, ‘cannot legitimately be restricted to deeds of humility (13:15) or acts of love (13:34-35) still less to proclamation of Jesus’ ‘words’ [14:10]. Jesus’ ‘works’ may include more than his miracles; they never exclude them” (Carson 1991:495).

What about ‘greater works’ (v. 12)? To what does it apply? Carson wrote:

Greater works is not a transparent expression. It cannot simply mean more works – i.e. the church will do more things than Jesus did, since it embraces so many people over such a long period of time – since there are perfectly good Greek ways of saying ‘more’, and since in any case the meaning would then be unbearably trite. Nor can greater works mean ‘more spectacular’ or ‘more supernatural’ works: it is hard to imagine works that are more spectacular or supernatural than the raising of Lazarus from the dead, the multiplication of bread and the turning of water into wine.

The clues to the expression’s meaning are two: first, the final clause, because I am going to the Father, and second, the parallel in 5:20: ‘For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, to your amazement he will show him even greater things than these‘ (meizona touton, as in 14:12). The two clues point in the same direction. Jesus’ disciples will perform greater works because he is going to the Father: this cannot mean that they will have greater scope for their activity because he will have faded from the scene and relinquished the turf to them, but that the very basis for their greater works is his going to the Father. Their works become greater precisely because of the new order that has come about consequent on his going to the Father (Carson 1991:495-496, emphasis in original).

Lenski agrees that the present participle of v. 12 refers to the person who continues in this faith. The universality of this designation is demonstrated by the language of ‘whoever believes’. ‘The works that I am doing’ refers to the very works of which Jesus spoke in 14:10-11, i.e. ‘the mighty miracles’, However, Lenski considers that the ‘greater works’ means to ‘convert sinners by God’s grace, carry the gospel to the ends of the earth, save souls for life eternal’; cf. John 4:35-38; 10:16; 12:24 and 32; and the story of the Acts.

He emphasises that Jesus ‘returns to the Father as one having completed his mission, and this it is possible that, with redemption accomplished, the greater works of the gospel of redemption can begin.’ He rejects the meaning ‘that believers today must do miracles such as Jesus and the apostles and others performed in the first church’ (Lenski 1943:988-989).

I’m supportive of Jesus’ teaching that the “works” of Jesus in John 14:12 include his miracles and much more. Don Carson’s words are concise and accurate: ‘Jesus’ “works” may include more than his miracles; they never exclude them’ (Carson 1991:495).

See examples of the continuation of miracles into the fourth century through St Augustine:

Augustine’s last illness: A divine healing encounter

St. Augustine: The leading Church Father who dared to change his mind about divine healing

See further examples of miracles in the time of Augustine in my article: Are Miracles Valuable?

What about verified miracles in the twenty-first century? There are verified accounts of physical healing in Delores Winder with Bill Keith (2009), Surprised by healing.

A few months before writing this article, I experienced severe pain in one of my calf muscles of the leg during the night. The pain was so excruciating I was about to hobble to the phone and call for an ambulance. The Lord prompted me to pray for it and the pain ceased immediately. That’s impossible for anybody else to verify as I was the only one in my bedroom when it happened.

See evidence in: Famed heart doctor tells the dramatic story of how a patient of his was ‘raised from the dead’ after prayer

Steve Stewart explained his experience with the supernatural of God:

I have been asked it in England, New Jersey and Canada: “Why don’t we see the same kind of healing here (in England, the U.S., Canada) as you do in Africa and India?”

I usually respond to this in several ways. First of all, I do see God heal in the same way in the West as in the developing world. I have watched in North America, Europe and Australia as deaf ears were opened, cataracts dissolved, cancer instantly disappeared (verified by doctors), and paralysis and pain have gone.

In my living room, the Lord healed a woman who had been totally blind in one eye for 20 years. He is the same God in Canada as Kenya, in the U.S. as Uganda, in England as India.

Although I have seen the Lord open the ears of nine deaf people—one after another—in North America, in fairness, I would say that although the quality of healing that I see is the same everywhere, the quantity seems higher in the developing world. However, I need to clarify this statement.

It is not that I see more people not being healed when prayed for; it seems to me there are fewer people looking to be healed in the West. (To clarify once again, I am not saying the people on the streets of our cities do not want to be healed; it is just that they are not being asked and therefore do not think of healing as an option in their lives) [Stewart 2014].

5.2 James 5:13-15

This is a clear account of how God offered physical healing or relief from distress to people in the early church:

Are any of you suffering hardships? You should pray. Are any of you happy? You should sing praises. Are any of you sick? You should call for the elders of the church to come and pray over you, anointing you with oil[18] in the name of the Lord. Such a prayer offered in faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will make you well. And if you have committed any sins, you will be forgiven (NLT).

clip_image015 Here in 5:12, people are ‘sick’ or ‘suffering’; also in 5:10. It is not parallel to the English idea of suffering with pain. It places an emphasis on enduring hardship, experiencing adversity or calamity. You’ll appreciate this means more than physical sickness and extends to general trouble and distress (Hiebert 1979:316-317).

For people in such a situation, what should they do?

clip_image015[1]They call for the elders who engage in prayer and anointing with oil in ‘the the name of the Lord’, i.e. because of the power of the Lord.

The NABRE[19] translation makes an excellent comment about this ministry of anointing with oil:

In case of sickness a Christian should ask for the presbyters of the church, i.e., those who have authority in the church (cf. Acts 15:2, 22–23; 1 Tm 5:17; Ti 1:5). They are to pray over the person and anoint with oil; oil was used for medicinal purposes in the ancient world (see Is 1:6; Lk 10:34). In Mk 6:13, the Twelve anoint the sick with oil on their missionary journey. In the name of the Lord: by the power of Jesus Christ’ (Note for James 5:14 NABRE).

It is a well-documented fact that oil was one of the most common medicines of biblical times. See Isaiah 1:6 and Luke 10:34. Josephus (Antiq. XVII, 172 [vi. 5] reports that during his last illness Herod the Great was given a bath in oil in hopes of effecting a cure. The papyri, Philo, Pliny, and the physician Galen all refer to the medicinal use of oil. Galen described it as `the best of all remedies for paralysis” (De Simplicium Medicamentorum Temperamentis 2.10ff). It is evident, then, that James is prescribing prayer and medicine (Burdick 1981:204, emphasis added).

Is this relevant for contemporary Australia and other Western countries? It would be applicable to countries with inadequate medical facilities.

clip_image016‘A priest, a minister and a guru sat discussing the best positions for prayer, while a telephone repairman worked

nearby “Kneeling is definitely the best way to pray,” the priest said.

“No,” said the minister. “I get the best results standing with my hands outstretched to Heaven.”

“You’re both wrong,” the guru said. “The most effective prayer position is lying down on the floor’.

The repairman could contain himself no longer. “Hey, fellas,” he interrupted. “The best prayin’ I ever did was when I was hangin’ upside down from a telephone pole.” [20]

clip_image017

clip_image015[2]Who are to pray for the sick or suffering person? They are the presbuteros, i.e. elder, bishop (overseer), and pastor. All three seem to refer to the same office (see Titus 1:5, 7; Acts 20:17, 28; I Peter 5:1-4). These are the church leaders.

However, in James 5:16 we are exhorted to pray for one another:

Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results (NLT).

In context, there may be a connection between physical illness and spiritual condition (needing forgiveness).

clip_image015[3]What is ‘a prayer offered in faith’ for healing the sick?

All faith must be ‘in faith’. This is the basis of the Christian life. What’s the point of any prayer if it does not believe fully that God is able to do it?

Faith was the secret of the Lord’s earthly life and gospel: its value, even outside religion, is recognized in some modern psychosomatic medicine. The faith James here has in mind is, of course, both that of the patient and that of the elders, shown in his calling for them and their response to his call (Adamson 1976:198).

clip_image015[4]Does this prayer guarantee healing? Of course not! Answers to prayer are always conditioned on God’s sovereign will that effects what is best for us in our growth in Christ.

See my articles:

sync Should God heal all Christians who pray for healing?

sync DIVINE HEALING: IS IT FOR EVERYONE?

clip_image015[5]What is the connection between physical healing, sins committed, forgiveness and repentance?

Donald Burdick summarised these verses:

The assurance is given that prayer “will make the sick person well.” In the final analysis this is what effects the healing. In answer to “the payer offered in faith,” God uses the medicine to cure the malady. The statement “the Lord will raise him up” means that the sick man will be enabled to get up from his sick bed. If it was sin that occasioned the sickness, “he will be forgiven.” This suggests the possibility that, because of persistence in sin, God sent sickness as a disciplinary agent (cf. 1 Cor 11:30). The conditional clause “if he has sinned” makes it clear that not all sickness is the result of sin (Burdick 1981:204).

6. Conclusion

Benny Hinn, Andrew Wommack and Joseph Prince promote heretical doctrines regarding healing because they maintain positions that are contrary to Scripture and lead to false hope for believers. This fake theology is seen in statements such as, ‘It’s never God’s will for us to be sick; He wants every person healed every time’ (Wommack).

Exegesis and exposition of 1 Peter 2:24-25 and the parallel verses in Isaiah 53 demonstrate that, in context, these narratives deal with Jesus’ punishment of being wounded for the sins of human beings. They don’t teach physical healing but spiritual healing, i.e. salvation.

Scripture provides support for the continuation of the physical healing ministry, based on Jesus’ teaching to his disciples in John 14. Physical healing in association with prayer and medicinal means by church leadership is possible (God willing), based on the teaching of James 5.

7. Works consulted

Adamson, J B 1976. The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The Epistle of James. F F Bruce (gen ed). Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Arndt, W F & Gingrich, F W 1957. A Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian literature.[21] Chicago: The University of Chicago Press (limited edition licensed to Zondervan Publishing House).

Burdick, D W 1981. James, in F E Gaebelein (gen ed), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol 12, 159-205. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House.

Carson, D A 1991. The Gospel according to John. Leicester, England / Grand Rapids, Michigan: Inter-Varsity Press / William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Hiebert, D E 1979. The Epistle of James: Tests of a Living Faith. Chicago: Moody Press.

Lenski, R C H 1943. Commentary on the New Testament: The Interpretation of St. John’s Gospel. Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers (1943 Lutheran Book Concern; assigned 1961 to Augsburg Publishing House).

Robertson, A T 1933. Word Pictures in the New Testament, vol 6. Nashville, Tennessee: Broadman Press.

Selwyn, E G 1981. Thornapple Commentaries: The First Epistle of St. Peter (The Greek Text), 2nd ed. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House.

Stewart, S 2014. Why Are There More Miracle Healings in Third World Countries? Charisma (online). Available at: https://www.charismamag.com/spirit/supernatural/22521-why-are-there-more-miracle-healings-in-third-world-countries (Accessed 7 September 2019).

Winder, F & Keith, B 2009. Surprised by Healing. Shippensburg, PA: Destiny Image Publishers Inc.

8.   Notes

[1] Benny Hinn Ministries 2019. 7 Purposes of Divine Healing (online). Available at: https://www.bennyhinn.org/your-life/healing/7-purposes-of-divine-healing/ (Accessed 21 August 2019).

[2] Andrew Womack Ministries n.d. Healing & Niki’s Miracle (online). Available at: https://www.awmi.net/reading/teaching-articles/healing_niki/ (Accessed 14 August 2019).

[3] Available at: https://www.awmi.net/reading/teaching-articles/authority_releases/ (Accessed 6 September 2019).

[4] Available at: https://www.awmi.net/reading/teaching-articles/healing_knowledge/ (Accessed 6 September 2019).

[5] Details from Wikipedia 2019. Andrew Wommack (online). Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Wommack (Accessed 6 September 2019).

[6] Joseph Prince Ministries 2008-2019. By Jesus’ stripes you are healed (online). Available at: https://www.josephprince.org/blog/daily-grace-inspirations/by-jesus-stripes-you-are-healed (Accessed 14 August 2019).

[7] Details from Wikipedia 2019. Joseph Prince (online). Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Prince (Accessed 14 August 2019).

[8] Available HERE (Accessed 12 August 2019).

[9] Available at: https://www.pinterest.com.au/pin/32299322315108885 (Accessed 6 September 2019).

[10] Cited in Wikipedia 2019. Crucifixion. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crucifixion#cite_note-24 (Accessed 13 August 2019).

[11] It is iathete, aorist passive indicative of iaomai, a common verb meaning to heal.

[12] It is aorist, passive, subjunctive.

[13] Available at: https://www.gotquestions.org/by-His-stripes-healed.html (Accessed 10 August 2019).

[14] Available at: https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/heresy (Accessed 06 September 2019). Throughout this document I’ll use ‘s.v.’ as an acronym for the Latin ‘sub verba’, i.e. under the word. When I write ‘ s.v. heresy’, it means that you need to go to the reference in the resource to obtain the meaning (here it is Lexico/Oxford Dictionary online) and check the word, ‘heresy’. The abbreviation s. v. is used primarily for dictionary and encyclopaedia entries.

[15] Hinn op. cit.

[16] Wommack op. cit.

[17] Prince op. cit.

[18] ‘In case of sickness a Christian should ask for the presbyters of the church, i.e., those who have authority in the church (cf. Acts 15:2, 22–23; 1 Tm 5:17; Ti 1:5). They are to pray over the person and anoint with oil; oil was used for medicinal purposes in the ancient world (see Is 1:6; Lk 10:34). In Mk 6:13, the Twelve anoint the sick with oil on their missionary journey. In the name of the Lord: by the power of Jesus Christ’ (Note for this verse in NABRE translation).

[19] The NABRE (New American Bible Revised Edition) is a Roman Catholic dynamic equivalence modern translation of the Bible. Please don’t confuse the NAB with the NASB.

[20] Illustration taken from Stone United Methodist Church 2019. Available at: http://www.stoneumc.org/653550 (Accessed 7 September 2019).

[21] This is ‘a translation and adaptation of Walter Bauer’s Griechisch-Deutsches Wörtbuch zu den Schriften des Neuen Testaments und der ĂŒbrigen urchristlichen Literatur’ (4th rev & aug ed 1952) (Arndt & Gingrich 1957:iii).

Copyright © 2019 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 07 September 2019.

clip_image019 clip_image021 clip_image023clip_image019clip_image021

How to understand three persons in the Trinity

clip_image002

(image courtesy slideplayer.com)

By Spencer D Gear PhD

I refer you to my previous articles that document the biblical teaching on the Father, Son and Holy Spirit each being regarded as God. The second link below raises some objections to the Trinity.

clip_image004 Is the Trinity taught in the Bible?

clip_image004[1] Problems with the Trinity

This study begins with an assessment of some indications of Father, Son and the Holy Spirit of the Trinity in the Old Testament. It also deals with actions of the separate Persons in the Trinity throughout the Bible.

1. Hints of the Trinity in the Old Testament [1]

This is not a comprehensive list but give a few indications of the Trinity in the Old Testament.

1.1 Plural nouns and pronouns are applied to God

See: Gen. 1:26; 3:22; 11:6, 7; 20:13; 48:15; Isa. 6:8. The plurality of the Godhead also is indicated in Gen 1:1, 26 and 48:15-16.

For example, Gen 1:1 (NIV) states, ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth’. The word translated ‘God’ is Elohim. It is an abstract plural.

The term includes, as a plural, all persons in the Trinity but itself does not declare the fact. There is a plurality of persons. It is a title, not a name, denoting either intensification of the original meaning, or is a plural of that majesty which is deity (Stigers 1976:50).

Francis Schaeffer explained this with precision for our contemporary culture:

When we read, “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” we are not left with something hung in a vacuum: Something existed before creation and that something was personal and not static; the Father loved the Son; there was a plan; there was communication; and promises were made prior to the creation of the heavens and the earth. This whole conception is rooted in the reality of the Trinity. Without the Trinity, Christianity would not have the answers that modern man needs (Schaeffer 1976:18).

1.2  God’s name is plural (Elohim) and the verb is singular.

The verb, “Come,” in Gen. 11:7 is really in the plural and must be addressed to at least two others. This seems not to be the angels as God SENDS them. The NLT translates as, “Come, let’s go down and confuse the people with different languages. Then they won’t be able to understand each other”.

Neither is Gen. 1:26 addressed to angels because in the next verse we are told, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (ESV), or as in the NLT, ‘So God created human beings in his own image. In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them”.

2. More OT indicators of plurality in unity

This sounds like strange language but there is biblical evidence that indicates 


2.1  Jehovah is distinguished from Jehovah

See Gen. 19:24 and Hosea 1:7. Genesis 19:24 (NIV) states: ‘Then the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah sulfur and fire from the Lord out of heaven’. There are intricacies in this text in understanding how the ‘LORD rained’ and ‘from the LORD out of heaven’.

One of the finest commentaries with a high view of Scripture is by H C Leupold, Exposition of Genesis. Of Gen 19:24 he wrote:

The view which the church held on this problem from days of old is still the simplest and the best
. “God the Son brought down the rain from God the Father,” as the Council of Sirmium[2] worded the statement. To devaluate the statement of the text to mean less necessitates a similar process of devaluation of a number of other texts like Ge 1:26, and only by such a process can the claim be supported that there are no indications of the doctrine of the Trinity in Genesis. We believe the combined weight of these passages, including Ge 1:1, 2, makes the conclusion inevitable that the doctrine of the Holy Trinity is in a measure revealed in the Old Testament, and especially in Genesis (Leupold 1942:570).[3]

2.2  Jehovah has a son

See Ps. 2:7; cf. John 3:16, 18; 9:36; Rom. 1:7; Heb. 1:6). He was a son before he was “given” (Isa. 9:6); Micah 5:2 (ESV) “whose origin is from of old, from ancient days”; he is called “the mighty God” (Isa. 9:6).

2.3 The Spirit is distinguished from God (the Father)

See Gen. 1:1-2; 6:3; Num. 27:18; Ps. 51:11; Isa. 40:13; 48:16; Hag. 2:4-5.

This is evident from Gen 1:1-2 (NET): ‘In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was without shape and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the watery deep, but the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the water’.

Here, Elohim (God) created while Ruach (the Spirit of God) moved over the waters. We have plurality in the one God in action, thus providing early indications of the Trinity.

2.4 “The angel of Jehovah” is regarded as a pre-incarnate manifestation of the Logos, the Son

An exception is Hag. 1:13 where Haggai himself is the “messenger” which is the same word as “angel”.

Examples of the angel of the Lord manifestations include to Hagar (Gen. 16:7-14); to Abraham (Gen. 22:11-18); to Moses (Ex. 3:2-5); to Elijah (1 Kings 19:5-7), etc. In Gen. 18, one of the “men” who appeared to Abraham is repeatedly represented as Jehovah (vv. 13, 17, 20, 22-23).

2.5  The three-some of Isa. 6:3 (“Holy, holy, holy is Jehovah of hosts”)

See also the Aaronic benediction (Num. 6:24-26) that could point to the Trinity. Although this is a three-fold benediction, there is only one God who blesses. cf. Rev. 4:8.

The Scriptures declare Father, Son and Holy Spirit each is God, as I’ve explained in the article, Is the Trinity taught in the Bible? How do we know these three are Persons in the Godhead?

3. How do Father, Son and Holy Spirit relate in the Godhead?

These diagrams by Wayne Grudem are the most helpful I’ve seen for explaining the Trinity, comparing false views with his orthodox understanding. Originally they were from Grudem (1994:253-258).[4]

clip_image006This (to the left) is an heretical view of the Trinity where God’s being is divided into three equal parts, Father, Son and Holy Spirit – thus making three Gods. The Athanasian Creed was written to address this error.

clip_image008Since I’m examining the personhood of each member of the Trinity, how can we speak of Father, Son and Holy Spirit in unity and yet they are separate persons. ‘If each person is fully God and has all of God’s being, then we also should not think that the personal distinctions are any kind of additional attributes added on to the being of God, like this pattern (to the left).

Human beings (and I’m one of them) find it difficult to comprehend the nature of the Trinitarian God. However, this teaching is straight from Scripture. Analogies fail and diagrams have disadvantages. It is essential doctrine that we understand ‘each person of the Trinity has all of the attributes of God, and no one person has any attributes that are not possessed by the others’ (Grudem 1994:253).

‘The three persons of the Trinity are not just three different ways of looking at the one being of God’.

clip_image010‘What are the differences between Father, Son and Holy Spirit? There is no difference in attributes at all. The only difference between them is the way they relate to each other and to the creation (Grudem 1994:254).

clip_image012While Grudem regarded the above three diagrams as flawed representations of the Trinity, he considered this diagram (to the left), although imperfect, was a representation of the orthodox understanding of the Trinity.

Grudem explained:

In this diagram (to the left), the Father is represented as the section of the circle designated by F, and also the rest of the circle, moving around clockwise from the letter F; the Son is represented as the section of the circle designated by S, and also the rest of the circle, moving around clockwise from the letter S; and the Holy Spirit is represented as the section of the circle marked HS and also the rest of the circle, moving around clockwise from the HS. Thus, there are three distinct persons, but each person is fully and wholly God. Of course the representation is imperfect, for it cannot represent God’s infinity, or personality, or indeed any of his attributes. It also requires looking at the circle in more than one way in order to understand it: the dotted lines must be understood to indicate personal relationship, not any division in the one being of God. Thus, the circle itself represents God’s being while the dotted lines represent a form of personal existence other than a difference in being. But the diagram may nonetheless help guard against some misunderstanding
.

Because the existence of three persons in one God is something beyond our understanding, Christian theology has come to use the word person to speak of these differences in relationship, not because we fully understand what is meant by the word person when referring to the Trinity, but rather so that we might say something instead of saying nothing at all.

Can We Understand the Doctrine of the Trinity? We should be warned by the errors that have been made in the past. They have all come about through attempts to simplify the doctrine of the Trinity and make it completely understandable, removing all mystery from it. This we can never do. However, it is not correct to say that we cannot understand the doctrine of the Trinity at all. Certainly we can understand and know that God is three persons, and that each person is fully God, and that there is one God. We can know these things because the Bible teaches them. Moreover, we can know some things about the way in which the persons relate to each other
. But what we cannot understand fully is how to fit together those distinct biblical teachings. We wonder how there can be three distinct persons, and each person have the whole being of God in himself, and yet God is only one undivided being. This we are unable to understand. In fact, it is spiritually healthy for us to acknowledge openly that God’s very being is far greater than we can ever comprehend. This humbles us before God and draws us to worship him without reservation (Grudem 1994:255-256).

I found Grudem’s diagrams of the errors and a suggested solution to be first-rate when confirming the deity of each person of the Trinity and expressing the differentiation of persons in the Godhead.

Louis Berkhof’s assessment is profound:

It is especially when we reflect on the relation of the three persons to the divine essence that all analogies fail us and we become deeply conscious of the fact that the Trinity is a mystery far beyond our comprehension. It is the incomprehensible glory of the Godhead (Berkhof 1939/1941:88)?

4. Duties of each person[5]

clip_image014

(image courtesy slide 6, slideshare.net)

For practical purposes, what does each member of the Godhead do differently from the others? How do the ‘job descriptions’ differ?

Personhood normally has the attributes of

intellect, feeling, and will. All three of these characteristics are attributed to all three members of the Trinity in Scripture [which I’ll discuss below]. Essentially, personhood refers to an “I,” a “who,” or a subject. Each “I” in the Trinity possesses (by virtue of its common nature) the power to think, feel, and choose. Personhood itself is its I-ness or who-ness (Geisler 2003:379).

4.1  God the Father is a person

Which biblical evidence verifies the Father’s activities as that of a person (acting as ‘You’ or ‘He’):

The Father is a person who has attributes of personhood:

clip_image016Intellect: According to Matt 6:32, ‘For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them’ (NIV);

clip_image018Emotional attribute to feel: Gen 6:6 (NIV), ‘The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled‘.

clip_image020The will. The Father has power to choose. See Matt 6:9-10 (NIV), ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’.

clip_image022The ability to communicate: Matt 11:25, ‘At that time Jesus said, ‘I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children‘.

clip_image024Teach: “Jesus answered, ‘My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own'” (John 7:16).[6]

4.2   Jesus the God-man is a person

He demonstrates the attributes of personhood as demonstrated in Scripture:

clip_image016[1]He has the power of intellect according to John 2:25 (NLT), ‘No one needed to tell him about human nature, for he knew what was in each person’s heart’.

clip_image018[1]He had feelings for people: ‘Jesus wept’ (John 11:35). ‘But as he came closer to Jerusalem and saw the city ahead, he began to weep’ (Luke 19:41). Luke 10:21 exposes another side of Jesus’ emotions:

‘At that same time Jesus was filled with the joy of the Holy Spirit, and he said, “O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, thank you for hiding these things from those who think themselves wise and clever, and for revealing them to the childlike. Yes, Father, it pleased you to do it this way”’ (Luke 10:21).

You may disagree that joy is a feeling or an emotion. What then is it?  This article from God Questions supports what I understand is the biblical view that joy is an emotion: Is there a difference between joy and happiness?

clip_image020[1]The will of Jesus: In John 6:38 Jesus declared, ‘For I have come down from heaven to do the will of God who sent me, not to do my own will’. These three verses indicate Jesus had the power of the will:

Just as my Father knows me and I know the Father. So I sacrifice my life for the sheep
.

“The Father loves me because I sacrifice my life so I may take it back again. No one can take my life from me. I sacrifice it voluntarily. For I have the authority to lay it down when I want to and also to take it up again. For this is what my Father has commanded” (John 10:15, 17-18).

clip_image025Jesus taught (attribute of a person): ‘Anyone who wants to do the will of God will know whether my teaching is from God or is merely my own.

As the God-man, Jesus had the characteristics of a physical being – a person: He became tired (John 4:6), got thirsty (John 19:28) and hungry (Matthew 4:2). He developed physical weakness (Matthew 4:11; Luke 23:26). He died (Luke 23:46). He had a real human body after his resurrection (Luke 24:39; John 20:20, 27).[7]

4.3  God the Holy Spirit is a person

Like the Father and the Son, the Holy Spirit had attributes of personhood. ‘He’ was not an impersonal ‘it’.

clip_image016[2]John 14:26 demonstrates the Holy Spirit ‘reminds’ and teaches: ‘But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you’.

clip_image026Ephesians 4:30 expresses the feelings of the Holy Spirit: ‘And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption’. Also, ‘and so I tell you, every kind of sin and slander can be forgiven, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven’ (Matt 12:31). The Spirit can be insulted: ‘So think how much more punishment people deserve who show their hate for the Son of God—people who show they have no respect for the blood sacrifice that began the new agreement and once made them holy or who insult the Spirit of God’s grace’ (Heb 11:29 ERV).

clip_image020[2]This is another dimension of the Holy Spirit’s feelings: ‘Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace and was strengthened. Living in the fear of the Lord and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers’ (Acts 9:31).

1 Corinthians 12:11 demonstrates that the Holy Spirit has a will to dispense the gifts: ‘It is the one and only Spirit who distributes all these gifts. He alone decides which gift each person should have’ (NLT).

clip_image025[1]John 16:13 refers to the ‘Spirit of truth’ with the Greek masculine, ekeinos, i.e. ‘He’ and not ‘it’, although pneuma (Spirit) is neuter gender: ‘But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come’ (NIV)

The Person of the Holy Spirit has the attributes of being a ‘he’ who guides, speaks and hears.

clip_image027There is more NT evidence that the Spirit ‘searches, knows, speaks, testifies, reveals, convinces, commands, strives, moves, helps, guides, creates, recreates, sanctifies, inspires, intercedes, orders the affairs of the church, and performs miracles (see Gen 6:3; Luke 12:12; John 3:8; 16:7-8; Acts 8:29; Rom 8:26; 1 Cor 2:11; Eph 4:30; 2 Peter 1:21, etc’.[8]

4.4  Communication within the Godhead[9]

Another dimension to better understand the persons in the Trinity is to be aware of the ‘many times in Scripture one member of the Trinity is speaking to another. This indicates that they are not one and the same person’ (Geisler 2003:288).

4 .4.1  The Father speaks to the Son

Hebrews 1:5 (quoting Psalm 2:7) states: ‘For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father”? Or again, “I will be his Father, and he will be my Son”’.

Psalm 110:1 states, ‘The Lord (Father) says to my Lord (Son): “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool’ (ESV). Jesus used this Scripture to demonstrate his deity in Matt 22:41-46.

See also Psalm 45:6-7; Heb 1:8-9 and three examples where God, the Father, spoke from heaven approving Jesus Christ, the Son (Matt 3:17; 17:5; John 12:28).

4.4.2  The Son speaks to the Father

In Zechariah 1:12 we read: ‘Upon hearing this, the angel of the Lord [regarded as the Son] prayed this prayer: “O Lord [Yahweh] of Heaven’s Armies, for seventy years now you have been angry with Jerusalem and the towns of Judah. How long until you again show mercy to them?”’ (NLT) Yahweh, the ‘I AM’ of Exodus 3:14 is the name reserved for God alone.

Both Father and Son are referred to in Prov 30:4 (NLT),

Who but God goes up to heaven and comes back down? Who holds the wind in his fists? Who wraps up the oceans in his cloak? Who has created the whole wide world? What is his name—and his son’s name? Tell me if you know!

In the NT there is a similar emphasis of the Son communicating with the Father:

clip_image029John 17:1, ‘After saying all these things, Jesus looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son so he can give glory back to you”’.

clip_image030Luke 23:46, ‘Then Jesus shouted, “Father, I entrust my spirit into your hands!” And with those words he breathed his last’.

4.4.3  The Spirit acting separately from the Father and the Son, but connected  with personal acts performed by them

Strong (1907:325) explained:[10]

Matt. 3:16 – 17, “ And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased”; Luke 3:21- 22, ‘Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased”’.

4.4.4  The three persons speaking together

These are but three examples:

clip_image032Isaiah 63:7-10 (ESV):

I will recount the steadfast love of the Lord,
the praises of the Lord,
according to all that the Lord [Father] has granted us,
and the great goodness to the house of Israel
that he has granted them according to his compassion,
according to the abundance of his steadfast love.
8 For he said, “Surely they are my people,
children who will not deal falsely.”
And he became their Saviour.
9 In all their affliction he was afflicted,
and the angel of his presence [Son] saved them;
in his love and in his pity he redeemed them;
he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.
10 But they rebelled
and grieved his Holy Spirit;
therefore he turned to be their enemy,
and himself fought against them.

Here Father, Son and Holy Spirit act together.

clip_image032[1]We also see this co-operative action at Jesus’ baptism:

And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” (Matt 3:16-17).

clip_image033In the baptism formula given in Matt 28:19 it is stated: ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’. ‘Name’ is singular.

There are a number of other examples that there are three different and distinct persons existing concurrently and eternally and share the same essence or nature of the one God (e.g. 2 Cor 13:14).

‘This is in stark contrast to modalism (sabellianism), which claims there is only one person in God who appears at different times in the form of different persons’ (Geisler 2003:289).

4.4.5 The three persons acting together

In Jesus’ resurrection, we see the three persons of the Godhead acting together:

(1) The Spirit raised Jesus from the dead (Rom 8:11 NLT);
(2) The Father raised Jesus from the dead (
Acts 2:32-33 NLT);
(3) Jesus raised Jesus from the dead (
John 10:18 NLT).

Dr Walter Martin, founder of the Christian Research Institute, rejected the Trinity description as a triplex. A triplex is ‘a building divided into three self-contained residences’ or ‘a flat on three floors’ (Lexico 2019. s.v. triplex). A triplex consists of 3 separate substances and is complex.

Martin’s statement was: ‘God is not triplex (1+1+1)—He is triune (1X1X1), and he has revealed Himself fully in the Person of our Lord, Jesus Christ (Col. 2:9, John 14:9).” — Christian Research Institute tract, Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Trinity’ (cited in, Is the Trinity a Biblical Concept? Ex-Jehovah’s Witnesses for Jehovah).

St Augustine rejected this view. He explained it in On the Trinity:

Chapter 7.–God is a Trinity, But Not Triple (Triplex).

But God is truly called in manifold ways, great, good, wise, blessed, true, and whatsoever other thing seems to be said of Him not unworthily: but His greatness is the same as His wisdom; for He is not great by bulk, but by power; and His goodness is the same as His wisdom and greatness, and His truth the same as all those things; and in Him it is not one thing to be blessed, and another to be great, or wise, or true, or good, or in a word to be Himself.

9. Neither, since He is a Trinity, is He therefore to be thought triple (triplex) [615] otherwise the Father alone, or the Son alone, will be less than the Father and Son together. Although, indeed, it is hard to see how we can say, either the Father alone, or the Son alone; since both the Father is with the Son, and the Son with the Father, always and inseparably: not that both are the Father, or both are the Son; but because they are always one in relation to the other, and neither the one nor the other alone. But because we call even the Trinity itself God alone, although He is always with holy spirits and souls, but say that He only is God, because they are not also God with Him; so we call the Father the Father alone, not because He is separate from the Son, but because they are not both together the Father.

Footnotes

[615] [The Divine Unity is trinal, not triple. The triple is composed of three different substances. It has parts, and is complex. The trinal is without parts, and is incomplex. It denotes one simple substance in three modes or forms. “We may speak of the trinal, but not of the triple deity.” Hollaz, in Hase’s Hutterus, 172.–W.G.T.S.]

‘Trinal’ means ‘having three parts; threefold; triple’ (yourdictionary.com 2019. s.v. trinal).

Scriptural reasons for my conclusion re the persons of the Trinity are spread through this article. Each person of the Trinity being regarded as God, and the biblical basis for such, is in my earlier article, Is the Trinity taught in the Bible? A couple other verses are included in a polemical article, Problems with the Trinity.

4.5  Don’t forget the implications of John 14:28

This verse states: ‘You heard me say to you, “I am going away, and I will come to you.” If you loved me, you would have rejoiced, because I am going to the Father, for the Father is greater than I’ (John 14:28 ESV).

This verse leads us to a very important dimension of the Trinity:

clip_image035Father, Son and Holy Spirit are co-equal and co-eternal in the Trinitarian godhead. Each member of the Trinity has an identical essence. By essence I mean nature. Therefore, God has one nature but Scripture confirms there are three distinct persons who are God. All are called God so are co-equal and are eternal, i.e. co-eternal.

BUT

clip_image036This does not exclude a purposeful (functional) order in the Trinity. This perfect design or focus can be explained as a ‘functional subordination’ among the persons and not a subordination of being (i.e. ontological subordination). If the being of the Father were superior to the being of the Son who is superior to the Holy Spirit, the three persons in the Godhead could not each be God in nature – which is not the case. For an examination of these details, see my article, Is the Trinity taught in the Bible?

R C Sproul explained this functional subordination (technically labelled in theology by a misleading title, ‘the economic Trinity’):

What are the individual, personal qualities that belong to the three persons of the Godhead? From all eternity, the Father begets[11] the Son [Heb 1:5-6, 8]; the Son is begotten by the Father [Jn 1:14, 18], and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son [Jn 15:26, Gal 4:6]” (WLC 10).[12] With regard to the economic Trinity, we distinguish among the three persons of the Godhead in terms of their roles in creation and redemption. It is the Father who sends the Son into the world for our redemption. It is the Son who acquires our redemption for us. It is the Spirit who applies that redemption to us. We do not have three gods. We have one God in three persons, and the three persons are distinguished in the economy of redemption in terms of what they do (Sproul 2014).

This functional subordination can be summarised:

‘The Father is the Planner, the Son is the Accomplisher, and the Holy Spirit is the Applier of salvation to believers. The Father is the Source, the Son is the Means, and the Holy Spirit is the Effector of salvation—it is He who convicts, convinces, and converts
. [The nature and duration of this subordination] is not just temporal and economical: it is essential and eternal
. Paul wrote:

After that the end will come, when he will turn the Kingdom over to God the Father, having destroyed every ruler and authority and power
. Then, when all things are under his authority, the Son will put himself under God’s authority, so that God, who gave his Son authority over all things, will be utterly supreme over everything everywhere (1 Cor 15:24, 28 NLT)’ (Geisler 2003:291).

5. Conclusion

Norman Geisler, eminent apologist and theologian, who left this earth to be present with the Lord on 1 July 2019[13] when I was preparing this article, provided this precise conclusion to how three persons can be one God:

By saying God has one essence and three persons it is meant that he has one ‘What’ and three ‘Whos.’ The three Whos (persons) each share the same What (essence). God is a unity of essence with a plurality of persons. Each person is different, yet they (sic)[14] share a common nature (Geisler 1999:732).[15]

6. Notes

[1] Based on Thiessen (1949:136-145).

[2] The Council of Sirmum was held between AD 357 and 359. See: http://www.self.gutenberg.org/articles/eng/Council_of_Sirmium (Accessed 12 July 2019).

[3] The commentary is online at Bible Hub: Exposition of Genesis: Vol 1. Available at: https://biblehub.com/library/leupold/exposition_of_genesis_volume_1/index.html (Accessed 12 July 2019).

[4] I copied them from Calvary Baptist Church, Available at: http://www.calvarydothan.com/public/system/PodcastOutlines/2017_03_15_1.pdf (Accessed 5 July 2019).

[5] This section is based on formation from Geisler (2003:287-288).

[6] Much of this summary of the Persons in the Godhead is based on Geisler (2003:287).

[7] These personal characteristics were given by Mathis (2016).

[8] Geisler (2003:288). This list of personal actions by the Holy Spirit in Geisler mainly comes from Augustus Strong’s Systematic Theology (1907:324).

[9] Much of this section is from Geisler (2003:288-289).

[10] In the Bible quotes I have replaced the KJV with the ESV here.

[11] Modern translations replace the older word, ‘begets’, with something more comprehensible to modern readers: ‘For God never said to any angel what he said to Jesus: “You are my Son. Today I have become your Father [or today I reveal you as my Son’ (quoting Ps 2:7) NLT.

[12] WLC refers to the Westminster Larger Catechism. I have quoted from a modernised English version of the WLC. Available at: https://dansonnenberg.com/2015/12/21/the-westminster-larger-catechism-modern-english-version/ (Accessed 11 July 2019).

[13] As I wrote this portion of the article on 5 July 2019 I learned of Dr Geisler’s death. See Toalston (2019).

[14] Grammatically, ‘each person’ is singular and ‘their’ is a plural possessive pronoun. The correction of this sentence should be: ‘Each person is different, yet he shares a common nature’. Or, better: ‘Every person (plural) is different, yet they (plural) share a common nature’. You can tell I’m a grammar policeman.

[15] However, I’m aware of the challenges made to Geisler’s view of ‘persons’ in the Godhead in ‘The Error of Insisting on Three “Persons” as a Litmus Test of Orthodoxy’ (Contending for the Faith).

7. Works consulted

Berkhof, L 1939/1941. Systematic theology (online). London: The Banner of Truth Trust. Available at: http://archive.org/stream/SystematicTheology/93884037-Louis-Berkhof–Systematic-Theology_djvu.txt (Accessed 5 July 2019).

Geisler, N L 1999. Trinity. Baker encyclopedia of Christian apologetics. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books.

Geisler, N 2003. Systematic theology, vol 2: God, creation. Minneapolis, Minnesota: BethanyHouse.

Grudem, W 1994. Systematic theology. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House.

Mathis, D 2016. Jesus is fully human. Desiring God (online), 15 December. Available at: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/jesus-is-fully-human (Accessed 10 July 2019).

Schaeffer, F A 1976. Genesis in space and time. London: Hodder and Stoughton (1972. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press).

Sproul, R C 2014. What’s the Difference between the Ontological and the Economic Trinity? Ligonier Ministries (online), 15 August. Available at: https://www.ligonier.org/blog/whats-difference-between-ontological-and-economic-trinity/ (Accessed 11 July 2019).

Stigers, H G 1976. A Commentary on Genesis. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House.

Strong, A 1907. Systematic theology, 3 vols in 1. Philadelphia: The Judson Press. Project Gutenberg EBook. Available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/44035/44035-h/44035-h.html (Accessed 10 July 2019).

Thiessen, H C 1949. Lectures in systematic theology. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Toalston, A 2019. Norman Geisler, defender of Christian faith, dies, Baptist Press (online), 2 July. Available at: http://www.bpnews.net/53217/norman-geisler-defender-of-christian-faith-dies (Accessed 5 July 2019).

Copyright © 2019 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 20 April 2020.

clip_image038clip_image039clip_image039clip_image039clip_image039clip_image039clip_image039

Heresy or not: First-born of creation

File:People burned as heretics.jpg

(people burned as heretics, image courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

By Spencer D Gear PhD

Colossians 1:15-20 (ESV)

15 He [God the Father’s beloved Son[1] – Jesus Christ] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16For by[2] him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things were created through him and for him. 17And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. 19For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.

1. The Controversy

There’s a highly contentious and controversial phrase in this passage about the Son, Jesus Christ. He is:

3d-red-star‘the firstborn of all creation’ (v 15).

For us as English speakers, what immediately comes to your mind when you hear the word, ‘firstborn’?

3d-red-star I think of the first child born in my family. He was conceived in a sexual union between mother and father and he was then born as the first child of the family

We must get rid of that idea when we are dealing with this phrase that Jesus is ‘the firstborn of all creation’.

There was a heresy that emerged in the Christian church in the fourth century that devastated the church and part of its teaching was a wrong view of the meaning of Jesus being ‘the firstborn of all creation’.

This false teaching is known as 


2. The heresy of Arianism

Arius portré.jpg(image of Arius, courtesy Wikipedia)

What is a heresy?

In NT Greek, the term from which we get the English, ‘heresy’ is hairesis. Arndt & Gingrich’s Greek Lexicon (1957:23) states that hairesis means ‘sect, party, school’. It was used of the Sadducees in Acts 5:17; of the Pharisees in Acts 15:5; of the Christians in Acts 24:5. It is used of a heretical sect or those with destructive opinions in 2 Peter 2:1 (‘destructive heresies’ ESV, NIV). This latter verse uses ‘haireseis (plural) of destruction’.

The Oxford dictionary gives these meanings of heresy:

(a) ‘Belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious (especially Christian) doctrine’;

(b) ‘Opinion profoundly at odds with what is generally accepted’ (Oxford dictionaries 2016. s v heresy).[3]

From the NT, we see the term, heresy, being used to mean what Paul called strange doctrines, different doctrine, doctrines of demons, and every wind of doctrine (I Timothy 1:3; 4:1; 6:3; Ephesians 4:14). This is in contrast to sound doctrine, our doctrine, the doctrine conforming to godliness, and the doctrine of God (I Timothy 4:6; 6:1,3; 2 Timothy 4:3; Titus 1:9; 2:1, 10).

For much of this analysis on Arianism, I’m indebted to systematic theologian, Wayne Grudem (1994:243-245).

Arianism is a heresy that was taught by Arius, a presbyter (church elder) of Alexandria in northern Africa, on the Mediterranean coast of what is Egypt today. Today it’s a bustling sea port on the left bank of the Nile River. Founded in 331 BC by Alexander the Great, it is understood that Christianity was brought to this city by the evangelist, Mark. In 2006, it had a population of 4.1 million people and about 80% of Egypt’s exports and imports come through it. It’s the 2nd largest city in Egypt. In the first century (based on a papyrus from AD 32), it had a population of between 500,000 and 1 million.[4]

But that’s not what made it famous in the 4th century. Church historian, Earle Cairns, stated that it unfolded like this: In about 318 or 319, the bishop of Alexandria, Alexander by name, preached to his presbyters on the topic of ‘The Great Mystery of the Trinity in Unity’. One of his presbyters and an ascetic scholar and popular preacher, Arius, attacked that sermon because he thought it failed to support a distinction between the persons in the Godhead. Arius wanted to avoid polytheism and its understanding of many gods, but in opposing Bishop Alexander, he ‘took a position that did injustice to the true deity of Christ’. The issue related to the nature of salvation. ‘Could Christ save [human beings] if He were a demigod, less than true God, and of a similar or different essence from the Father as Eusebius of Nicomedia and Arius respectively asserted? [I use ‘essence’ in the sense of the substance or being of God.] Eusebius of Nicomedia is not to be confused with the distinguished early church historian, Eusebius of Caesarea. Just what was Jesus’ relationship to the Father? (Cairns 1981:133-134).

Arius put Alexandria on the map with views that were condemned by the Council of Nicea that met in Nicea (near Istanbul, Turkey) in AD 325. Arius died in AD 336. Istanbul was formerly called Constantinople.

clip_image001(map courtesy YouTube)

Arius’s teachings included the following (based on Grudem 1994:243-244):

  • God the Son, Jesus, was at one point created by God the Father;
  • Before that creation, the Son did not exist; neither did the Holy Spirit. Only God the Father existed.
  • The Son was a created heavenly being who existed before the rest of creation and he is greater than all of the rest of creation.
  • BUT 
 he was not equal with God the Father in all of his attributes.
  • It could be said that he was ‘like the Father’ or even ‘similar to the Father’ in nature. But he most definitely could not be ‘of the same nature’ as the Father.
  • The Arians relied heavily on texts that stated that Christ was God’s ‘only begotten’ Son (e.g. John 1:14; 3:16, 18; 1 John 4:9). What does ‘begotten’ mean? It’s an old-fashioned adjective that means something is generated by procreation – by being fathered. So it means to father or produce an offspring.[5] To ‘beget’, according to the Oxford dictionary means ‘(Especially of a man) bring (a child) into existence by the process of reproduction’ (2016. s v beget).[6]
  • That is what got them into theological trouble. They reasoned like this: If Christ is begotten by God the Father, he is conceived by God.
  • Then they turned to a verse like Col 1:15, ‘He is the image of the invisible God, the first-born of all creation’. Therefore, ‘first-born’ implies that the Son was brought into existence by the Father. If that were true of the Son, it was also true for the Holy Spirit as well. Both were created beings.

Arius and the Arians met a formidable foe in Athanasius, who lived from about AD 295-373. He was only a young man when he became embroiled in refuting this heretical doctrine. His name is associated with the orthodox view.

His wealthy parents had provided for his theological education in the famous catechetical school of Alexandria. His work De Incarnatione[7] presented his idea of the doctrine of Christ. At the council [of Nicea] this young man, slightly over thirty, insisted that Christ had existed from all eternity with the Father and was of the same essence (homoousios) as the Father, though He was a distinct personality. He insisted on these things because he believed that if Christ were less than he had stated Him to be, He could not be the Savior of [human beings] (Cairns 1981:134).

Athanasius contended that the question of people’s eternal salvation was dependent on the relationship between the Father and the Son. ‘He held that Christ was coequal, coeternal, and consubstantial [i.e. of the same substance] with the Father, and for these views he suffered exile five times’. However, Athanasius was promoting the orthodox biblical view (Cairns 1981:134).

2.1 Who are the modern day Arians?

They include:

gold-button Jehovah’s Witnesses;

gold-button Locally to where I live in an outer, northern Brisbane suburb, Qld., Australia, there is another active, but small, group of Arians known as the Christadelphians. The Maranatha retirement village on Anzac Ave, Kallangur, Qld 4503[8] is operated as an aged care facility by the Christadelphians.

2.1.1 Jehovah’s Witnesses

(photo of worship at a JW Kingdom Hall, courtesy Wikipedia)

This cult uses Rev. 3:14, where Jesus calls himself ‘the beginning of God’s creation’ to promote a heretical doctrine. According to their publication, Should You Believe in the Trinity?[10] they state that

the Bible plainly states that in his prehuman existence, Jesus was a created spirit being, just as angels were spirit beings created by God. Neither the angels nor Jesus had existed before their creation.

Jesus, in his prehuman existence, was ‘the first-born of all creation’. (Colossians 1:15 NJB). He was ‘the beginning of God’s creation’. (Revelation 3:14, RS Catholic edition)
. Jesus was created by God as the beginning of God’s invisible creations.[11]

But Rev 3:14 does not mean that Jesus was the first being created. Why? The same word for ‘beginning’ (Gk. arche) is used by Jesus when he says that he is ‘the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” (Rev. 22:13). In that verse, ‘beginning’ is a synonym for “Alpha” and ‘first’.

We also have God the Father saying of himself, ‘I am the Alpha and the Omega” (Rev. 1:8). In both cases, to be ‘the Alpha’ or ‘the beginning’ means to be the one who was there before anything else existed.

The word does not state or imply that Jesus, the Son, was a created being who was begotten by God or that there was a time when he began to be. This is because both the Father and the Son have always been ‘the Alpha and the Omega’ and ‘the beginning and the end’, since they have existed eternally.

The NIV translates Rev. 3:14 with a different emphasis, ‘the ruler of God’s creation’. Remember that the NIV is a dynamic equivalence translation that gives meaning-for-meaning and not word-for-word translation. The NIV for Rev. 3:14 is an acceptable alternative for arche: see the same meaning in Luke 12:11 and Titus 3:1.

See the article by Ryan Turner, ‘Arianism and Its Influence Today’.[12]

2.2 These texts do not support the Arian position

Grudem puts it this way:

Colossians 1:15, which calls Christ “the first-born of all creation,” is better understood to mean that Christ has the rights or privileges of the “first-born”—that is, according to biblical usage and custom, the right of leadership or authority in the family for one’s generation. (Note Heb. 12:16 where Esau is said to have sold his “first-born status” or “birthright”—the Greek word protokia is cognate[13] to the term protokos, “first-born” in Col. 1:15.) So Colossians 1:15 means that Christ has the privileges of authority and rule, the privileges belonging to the “first-born,” but with respect to the whole creation. The NIV translates it helpfully, “the firstborn over all creation” (Grudem 1994:243-244).

2.2.1 Christ the ‘only begotten Son’

What about the texts that say that Christ was God’s ‘only begotten Son’? The early church was convinced that there were many texts that supported Christ as being fully and completely God so they concluded that ‘only begotten’ did not mean ‘created’ and that is how they put it in the Nicene Creed of 325. It affirmed that Christ was ‘begotten, not made’. This is what the first version of the Creed stated:

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible.

And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, the only-begotten; that is, of the essence of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance (homoousion) with the Father.[14]

This was reaffirmed at the Council of Constantinople in 381. But a phrase, ‘before all ages’ was added after ‘begotten of the Father’, so that people would understand that this ‘begetting’ was eternal. There was no point in time when Jesus’ begetting was happening. It was eternally true.

Grudem’s view was that ‘the nature of that ‘begetting’ has never been defined very clearly, other than to say that it has to do with the relationship between the Father and the Son, and that in some sense the Father has eternally had a primacy in that relationship’ (Grudem 1994:244).

3. Conclusion

The phrase ‘firstborn of all creation’ (Col 1:15 ESV) led to the heretical interpretation by the Arians that Jesus was a being created by God the Father who existed before the rest of creation, but he was not equal with God. They relied on texts which emphasised ‘firstborn’ and ‘only begotten’ to describe the origin of Jesus.

In this short exposition, it was shown that ‘firstborn of all creation’ means that Jesus has the rights or privileges of the family’s firstborn but it means that Christ has the privileges and authority of the firstborn in regard to all of creation. Thus he is ‘the firstborn over all of creation’ (NIV). However, he is not a created being but has existed eternally.

To speak of Christ as the ‘only begotten Son’ does not mean that he was begotten as a creation of the Father but that he was fully and completely God, of one substance with the Father. While ‘begetting’ has not been defined clearly from a biblical understanding of the text, it deals with the relationship of the Father and the Son, and the Father in some sense has eternally had a priority in the relationship with the Son (and the Holy Spirit).

Modern promoters of the heresy of Arianism include the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christadelphians.

Works consulted

Arndt, W F & Gingrich, F W 1957. A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (4th ed). London: The University of Chicago Press (limited edition to Zondervan Publishing House).

Cairns, E E 1981. Christianity through the centuries: A history of the Christian church. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.

Grudem, W 1994. Systematic theology. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House.

Notes


[1] The context is vv 13-14 which identifies the Father God (v. 13) and ‘his beloved Son’ (v. 14).

[2] Footnote, ‘That is, by means of; or ini.

[3] Available at: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/heresy (Accessed 12 May 2016). Throughout this document I’ll use ‘s v’ as an acronym for the Latin ‘sub verba’, i.e. under the word. When I write ‘ s v heresy’, it means that you need to go to the reference in the resource to obtain the meaning (here it is Oxford dictionaries online) and check the word, ‘heresy’. S v is used primarily for dictionary and encyclopaedia entries.

[4] This is based on information from Catholic Encyclopedia (1907. s v Alexandria); Encyclopaedia Britannica (2016. s v Alexandria, Egypt); Wikipedia (2016. s v Alexandria).

[5] This definition is from ‘begotten’, vocabulary.com, available at: http://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/begotten (Accessed 18 March 2014).

[6] Available at: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/beget (Accessed 12 May 2016).

[7] An English translation of this document is available as, ‘On the Incarnation of the Word’ at New Advent (online). Available at: http://newadvent.org/fathers/2802.htm (Accessed 12 May 2016).

[8] It is at 1582 Anzac Ave., Kallangur, Qld 4503. Details at: http://www.chomes.com.au/facilities/maranatha (Accessed 12 May 2016).

[10] Brooklyn, N.Y.: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1989, p. 14. This booklet was previously available online by the Watch Tower, but it has been removed. Another source, The Snarky Apologist INFO blog, has provided this booklet online at: http://thesnarkyapologist.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/should-you-believe-in-trinity-booklet.html (Accessed 19 March 2014). I located an abbreviated edition of the JW article at: https://www.jw.org/en/publications/magazines/g201308/trinity/ (Accessed 12 May 2016).

[11] Ibid., p. 14.

[12] CARM (online). Available at: https://carm.org/arianism-and-its-influence-today (Accessed 12 May 2016).

[13] ‘Cognate’ is used in linguistics to mean, ‘(Of a word) having the same linguistic derivation as another (e.g. English father, German Vater, Latin pater)’ [Oxford dictionaries online 2016. s v cognate].

[14] In Grudem (1994:244). Grudem noted that ‘this is the original form of the Nicene Creed, but it was later modified by the Council of Constantinople in 381 and there took the form that is commonly called the “Nicene Creed” by churches today. This text is taken from Philip Schaff, Creeds of Christendom, 3 vols (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1983 reprint of 1931 edition), 1:28-29’ (Grudem 1994:244, n. 25).

 

Copyright © 2016 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 8 June 2016.

Jesus’ work not finished, says Roman Catholic

(courtesy clker)

By Spencer D Gear

Was Jesus’ work on the cross to accomplish salvation completed then or not? Or does it have do be done over and over in some sort of way?

A person wrote on a Christian forum, ‘I believe that when Jesus said, “It is finished.” He was referring to his work of paying the penalty for our sins. That means, everything has been paid. It’s up to us to accept the free gift of salvation by faith’.[1]

A Roman Catholic responds

This response confirmed that a Roman Catholic has a very different view of the finished work of Christ on the cross than a Protestant. His response to the above was:

And you would be wrong, sir.

What happened at the exact instant that Jesus expired? The veil of the Temple was torn in two, exposing the Holiest of All. That was the place that the Old Covenant was renewed every year by the presentation of the Yom Kippur sacrifice by the high priest (Lev. 16).

When the veil of the Temple was ripped apart, it exposed the Holiest of All, making it unfit to ever use again for Yom Kippur. “It is finished” has to do with the Old Covenant. THAT is what Jesus was talking about, not your personal sins.

Yes, as the Lamb of God, Jesus is the Sacrifice for our sins. But the idea that He paid “once and forever” and it is all done is heresy. Every time you sin, you have to present that Sacrifice to God to renew your covenant relationship with Him. He has not paid for all your sins in advance of you committing them, and certainly they are not paid for if you refuse to repent and find sin so attractive that you stay in it.[2]

Three evangelical exegetes disagree with the Roman Catholic

My response[3] was that three leading evangelical commentators disagree with him.

John 19:30 states, ‘When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit’ ESV).

This is how three evangelical scholars respond to the meaning of ‘It is finished’ in their commentaries:
cubed-redmatteLeon Morris stated:

‘In the Greek this is one word, ?????????? [tetelestai], which is another of John’s ambiguous terms. It could mean that Jesus’ life was finished. This is part of the meaning, but it is highly improbable that it is the whole meaning. More important is the truth that Jesus’ work was finished. He came to do God’s work, and this meant dying on the cross for the world’s salvation. This mighty work of redemption has now reached its consummation. It is finished’ (Morris 1971:815, n. 73).

cubed-redmatte D. A. Carson‘s understanding was:

In the Greek text, the cry itself is one word, tetelestai (cf. notes on v. 28). As an English translation, It is finished captures only part of the meaning, the part that focuses on completion. Jesus’ work was done. But this is no cry of defeat; nor is it merely an announcement of imminent death
 The verb teleo from which this form derives denotes the carrying out of a task, and in religious contexts bears the overtone of fulfilling one’s religious obligations. Accordingly, in the light of the impending cross, Jesus could earlier cry, ‘I have brought you glory on earth by completing (teleiosas; i.e. by accomplishing) the work you gave me to do’ (17:4). ‘Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them eis telos‘—not only ‘to the end’ but to the full extent mandated by his mission. And so, on the brink of death, Jesus cries out, It is accomplished! (Carson 1991:621, emphasis in original).

cubed-redmatte R. C. H. Lenski wrote:

‘It is finished!’  tetelestai, exactly as in v. 28, the perfect [tense] of a completed state, denotes an action brought to its termination, it is like a line that ends in a point ———————‱ Jesus speaks this word to his Father. He makes his report to the father who sent him. Uttered with a loud voice, it is also intended for all men to hear. Recorded now in Scripture, it still rings out to  all the world. Since the whole passion and death of Jesus were intended for us, why set up the contention that this conclusion is intended only for him and not also for us? The verb has no subject. What is it that is here brought to an end? Some think that Jesus has in mind his suffering, which, of course, in a way is true and quite obvious. But this cry cannot mean that Jesus is thinking only of himself and is glad that his pain now ceases. Some think of the ancient prophecies and their fulfillment, which, of course, in a way is also true (v. 28). This is better than the previous view, yet it still is indefinite, and other prophecies are still unfulfilled, namely the resurrection and the exaltation. Many are satisfied to say that the work or task of Jesus is concluded, or even that no further duty holds Jesus to life; this is equally indefinite. A word so important cannot be explained by so general an interpretation. The death of Jesus finishes His redemptive work, the work of reconciliation and atonement. This specific work is now brought to a close. The Lamb of God has made His great sacrifice for the world. It is this that is now done. Our great Substitute has paid the great price of ransom, paid it to the uttermost farthing. ‘It is finished’ indeed! Others will yet preach and teach, and Jesus will work through them; as the Kong on David’s throne his regal work will continue forever; but the redemptive shedding of His blood, done once for all, is finished and stands as finished forever. Heb. 7:27; 9:12, 26; Rom. 6:10 (Lenski 1943:1309).

Jesus’ death as ‘once for all’ a heresy

As indicated above, the Roman Catholic stated that ‘the idea that He paid “once and forever” and it is all done is heresy. Every time you sin, you have to present that Sacrifice to God to renew your covenant relationship with Him’.[4]

Let’s check out a couple of Scriptures to see if the RC is on target or is simply perpetrating his own human-made theology. Two verses come to mind:

Hebrews 9:26-28,

24 For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25 Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, 26 for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27 And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgement, 28 so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him (ESV).

This is extremely clear:

  • Christ appeared in the presence of God himself;
  • Jesus did not offer himself repeatedly as the high priest did when he entered the high places every year with blood other than his own;
  • Jesus did not suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world;
  • Jesus’ sacrifice at the end of the ages was to put away sin by His own sacrifice;
  • Christ has been offered ONCE to bear the sins of many;
  • When Jesus appears a second time, it will not be to deal with sin.

But there is more in 1 Peter 3:18, ‘For Christ also suffered[5] once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit’ (ESV).

Conclusion

So the idea that Jesus paid for sin, ‘once and forever’, is not heresy, but it is orthodox, biblical Christianity. Scripture affirms it.

Bible New Testament Christ Carrying the Cross El Greco

(courtesy public domain)

Works consulted

Carson, D A 1991. The Gospel according to John. Leicester, England: Inter-Varsity Press / Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.

Lenski, R C H 1943. Commentary on the New Testament: The Interpretation of St. John’s Gospel. Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers (assigned by Augsburg Fortress).

Morris, L 1971. The New International Commentary on the New Testament: The Gospel according to John. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.

Notes


[1] biblestudyresources#51, 23 July 2014, Christian Forums, Salvation (Soteriology), ‘What Christians must do to keep their salvation’, available at: http://www.christianforums.com/t7828815-6/ (Accessed 23 July 2014).

[2] Ibid., Light of the East#54, emphasis added.

[3] Ibid., OzSpen#56.

[4] Ibid., Light of the East#54, emphasis added.

[5] Some manuscripts have ‘died’.

 

Copyright © 2014 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 20 November 2015.

Damning evidence against theological liberalism

By Spencer D Gear

J Gresham Machen wrote this book in 1923, Christianity & Liberalism (New York: Macmillan). It is now in the public domain. An html version is HERE.

(image courtesy Eerdmans)

He wrote:

In the sphere of religion, in particular, the present time is a time of conflict; the great redemptive religion which has always been known as Christianity is battling against a totally diverse type of religious belief, which is only the more destructive of the Christian faith because it makes use of traditional Christian terminology. This modern non-redemptive religion is called “modernism” or “liberalism.” Both names are unsatisfactory; the latter, in particular, is question-begging. The movement designated as “liberalism” is regarded as “liberal” only by its friends; to its opponents it seems to involve a narrow ignoring of many relevant facts. And indeed the movement is so various in its manifestations that one may almost despair of finding any common name which will apply to all its forms. But manifold as are the forms in which the movement appears, the root of the movement is one; the many varieties of modern liberal religion are rooted in naturalism–that is, in the denial of any entrance of the creative power of God (as distinguished from the ordinary course of nature) in connection with the origin of Christianity. The word “naturalism” is here used in a sense somewhat different from its philosophical meaning. In this non-philosophical sense it describes with fair accuracy the real root of what is called, by what may turn out to be a degradation of an originally noble word, “liberal” religion (Machen 1923:4-5).

If it was bad then, imagine what it is like in the early 21st century?

What are the differences in belief between orthodox Christianity and liberal Christianity? How do we define ‘orthodox Christianity’ and ‘liberal Christianity’?

The orthodox, evangelical Christianity with which I am associated can be defined according to the Statement of Faith of the National Association of Evangelicals:

  • We believe the Bible to be the inspired, the only infallible, authoritative Word of God.
  • We believe that there is one God, eternally existent in three persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
  • We believe in the deity of our Lord Jesus Christ, in His virgin birth, in His sinless life, in His miracles, in His vicarious and atoning death through His shed blood, in His bodily resurrection, in His ascension to the right hand of the Father, and in His personal return in power and glory.
  • We believe that for the salvation of lost and sinful people, regeneration by the Holy Spirit is absolutely essential.
  • We believe in the present ministry of the Holy Spirit by whose indwelling the Christian is enabled to live a godly life.
  • We believe in the resurrection of both the saved and the lost; they that are saved unto the resurrection of life and they that are lost unto the resurrection of damnation.
  • We believe in the spiritual unity of believers in our Lord Jesus Christ.

The liberal Christianity to which I refer can be defined according to ‘This we believe’ of the Progressive Christian Network (PCN) in Britain. The development of this credo was explained:

Gradually the focus of discussion changed. The statements in the Nicene Creed do not make any reference to the implications for us as followers of Jesus, they are historic statements to meet the particular need of the time when they are created 
 but for all of us, it was the commitment to follow Jesus which was paramount. It was agreed that we all regarded ourselves as “followers of Jesus whose life expressed something utterly profound and took to the limit the idea that power is not all important, that expressed the values of love, peace and justice.” We are all “committed to the way of Jesus which we find worthwhile and which takes us nearer to the underlying sacredness 
. To God” and therein is mystery.

This is a developing, possible statement of faith or credo of progressive, liberal Christian faith by the Progressive Christian Network (Britain). It states:

    We are committed to:

  • being Jesus’ followers
  • imitating / living Jesus’ values
  • valuing Jesus’ example
  • sharing Jesus’ way to deity
  • trusting life’s ultimate goodness, sacredness and purpose.

The National Council of Churches (USA) has a liberal Christian statement of faith that lacks the essential theological specifics, just like the PCN’s credo. The NCC’s statement of faith it:

The National Council of Churches is a community of Christian communions, which, in response to the gospel as revealed in the Scriptures, confess Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word of God, as Savior and Lord.

These communions covenant with one another to manifest ever more fully the unity of the Church.

Relying upon the transforming power of the Holy Spirit, the communions come together as the Council in common mission, serving in all creation to the glory of God.

Both of these affirmations of theological liberalism don’t want to get into the specifics of the nature of God, human beings, sin, salvation, and Jesus Christ. Nebulous is the way to go!

Enter John Shelby Spong

Bishop John Shelby Spong portrait 2006.png

(photo courtesy Wikipedia)

One of the most damning pieces of evidence against John Shelby Spong’s theologically liberal views are what happened when he was bishop of the Episcopalian Church, Newark, NJ. It is reported in ‘Newark’s Disastrous Decline Under Spong: Post-Mortem of a Bishop’s Tenure’.[1] Here it was reported:

Prior to Spong’s arrival as bishop coadjutor in 1977, the Diocese of Newark, like the Episcopal Church in the U.S.A (ECUSA), was facing a slow but steady decline from its peak membership in the 1960s. After Spong became the bishop in 1979, the rate of decline began to pick up.

Between 1978 and 1999, the number of baptized persons in the diocese fell from 64,323 to 36,340, a loss of 27,983 members in 21 years. That’s a disastrous 43.5% decline. The Episcopal Church, by contrast, saw a decline in the number of baptized persons from 3,057,162 in 1978 to 2,339,133 in 1997, a loss of 718, 499, or a substantial 23.4%, according to the 1998 Church Annual.

The Diocese of Newark under Spong, thus, has declined at a rate 20.1 percentage points higher than the rate for the entire Episcopal Church. This rate of decline is 86% faster than the Episcopal Church, whose losses are considerable in and of themselves.

As any statistician would note, the losses in the Diocese of Newark represent a highly statistically significant variation from the trends within the Episcopal Church. No systematic effort has been made to get at the exact causes that made losses in the diocese so much greater.

Ominously for the future, church members in the diocese are also getting older and there are fewer children in Sunday School. In 1976 there Were 10,186 children pupils in Sunday School. In 1999 there were only 4,833, a loss of 5,353. That’s 52.6% decline.

By 1997 the diocese had closed at least 18 parishes or missions which had existed when Spong became bishop. All of these parishes or missions were in urban areas. The details of the closing of these churches was reported by the author in an article in United Voice in 1997 titled “The Diocese of Newark’s Graveyard of Urban Ministry.”

The rate of decline under Spong – already fairly torrid – sharply accelerated after 1995. During the 1980s and early 1990s, there was often a loss of 1,000 members a year. From 1995 to 1998, there was a stunning drop from 44, 246 to 36,597 in only three years, a drop of 7,649 — or more than 2,500 a year.

The rate of membership decline under Spong is disastrous by any reasonable measure. Such a pace of decline cannot continue if the diocese is to survive and if the Episcopal church is to retain more than a marginal presence in northern New Jersey.

What’s the truth about the death of theism? Wherever theological liberalism has taken hold, church numbers have declined. Frank Pastore put it this way: ‘We’ve all witnessed the plummeting attendance of liberal mainline denominations for decades’ (‘The National Council of Churches should have died’).

An example would be the USA Episcopal Church. This recent article, ‘Episcopal Church Task Force Releases Report on Restructuring Plans’ (July 17, 2013).

“Entrenched bureaucracies and dozens of committees or commissions have accumulated over time. This has occurred even as the Episcopal Church has dropped from a high of 3.6 million members in the mid-1960s to 1.9 million members today,” said Walton. “The large amount of money that sustained these structures in the past is long gone, and the church looks very different than it did a generation ago.”

What’s the evidence for Church growth & decline?

Missions Jump

(image courtesy ChristArt)

Go to Christian forums on the Internet and you can find those who are promoting theological liberalism and want to put down anything that seems to be of a conservative Christian persuasion. Here are samples:

In my research on church growth or decline, I found these helpful statistics on church growth and decline:

As these links indicate statistically and generally, conservative, evangelical Protestants and conservative Roman Catholics around the world are growing in numbers while liberal Christian denominations are diminishing in size. The statistics are in and they are not applauding theological liberalism. Conservative, orthodox Christianity is on the upswing (generally) while liberalism is on the decline.

Frank Pastore’s assessment of the theologically liberal National Council of Churches (USA) was:

So much for the ‘church’ part of the National Council. These liberal groups really are putting their money where their mouth(piece) is, right onto the lips of the NCC.

The next time you hear or read the words “National Council of Churches”, remember they don’t represent the people in the pews, they represent the liberal foundations and organizations that are keeping them on life support.

The market had shouted. The NCC should have died.

Notes:


[1] This is referring to retired Episcopal bishop, John Shelby Spong. See his website HERE. See also:

(1) Bonhoeffer versus John Shelby Spong;

(2) John Shelby Spong: Anglican Nightmare;

(3) Spong, the Measure of All Things;

(4) Bishop Spong, the Theological Criminal: The Virtual Atheism of John Shelby Spong;

(5) Spong Kong Phooey: Why Spong’s “Christianity” is already dead;

(6) What’s Wrong With (Former) Bishop Spong? Rethinking the Scholarship of John Shelby Spong;

(7) Things John Shelby Spong Thinks He Knows About the Gospel of John;

(8) The bishop who was not.

Copyright © 2013 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 13 March 2017.

Spong promotes salvation viruses called ‘offensive’ and ‘anathema’

Rotavirus (image courtesy Wikipedia)

By Spencer D Gear

When a bishop, clergy person or any church leader plants seeds of a salvation virus, it is a reasonable deduction that there will be a decline in denominational numbers and indications of ‘death’ in a congregation or denomination of that bishop or clergy person.

Spong’s own diagnosis of the virus is called ‘offensive’ and ‘anathema’. Stay tuned for details.

Ex-archbishop of Canterbury, Lord George Carey, pointed in this direction, but he did not lay the blame at the feet of liberal theology. It was reported in the British newspaper, The Telegraph:

The Church of England is “one generation away from extinction”, the former Archbishop of Canterbury has warned.

Lord Carey, 78, said churchgoers should be “ashamed” of themselves for failing to invest more in young people and called for urgent action before its too late.

The outspoken Lord said that unless more was done to attract new worshipers then every one of the 43 CofE dioceses across the world could be wiped out within 25 years.

He also expressed fears that the modern church was too old fashioned and “not the most exciting place to meet new people” (Riley-Smith 2013).

A follow-up article by A N Wilson stated: ‘So what do I make of Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, saying that the Church is only one generation from extinction, its clergy gripped by a “feeling of defeat” and its congregations worn down with “heaviness”? Is he just suffering from peevish-old-man syndrome?’ (Wilson 2013).

His claim was that ‘there are two simple reasons for this, and there is nothing anyone can say that will make these reasons go away’. Those are:

(1) The church’s view on sex and living together, with no sex permitted outside of marriage;

(2) Unbelief in the churches. Wilson stated:

The second reason is a much bigger thing. That is the decline of belief itself. Most people simply cannot subscribe to the traditional creeds. No number of Alpha courses can make people believe that God took human form of a Virgin, or rose from the dead. They simply can’t swallow it. They see no reason, therefore, to listen to a Church that propounds these stories and then presumes to tell them how to behave in the bedroom.

When there was a tradition of church-going, there was more room for unbelief. When a young priest told Archbishop Michael Ramsey that he had lost his faith in God, Ramsey replied, after a long pause: “It doesn’t matter – it doesn’t matter.” You can’t imagine Lord Carey saying that (Wilson 2013).

1.  How would Christians respond to Carey’s views?

Archbishop george carey1.jpg

George Carey (photo courtesy Wikipedia)

I posted links to the above two articles on a large Christian forum[1] and asked for discussion on reasons for the demise of the Church of England (Anglican) and the apologetic issues these raised.

Here are a few grabs from the responses:

6pointblue-small ‘Yes, liberal Christianity is coming to an end. Also, with OBAMA Care, Liberals are coming to an end. Now we can really start preaching the True Gospel. Praise God’.[2]

6pointblue-small ‘We need a more objective stand than liberals take, and a more inclusive acceptance of reality than fundamentalists do, so we can present a unified understanding of reality that we can defend and that has something substantive to offer. Either extreme will undermine our relevance to the world, as well as our own faith’.[3]

6pointblue-small A response to the above post that ‘liberal Christianity is coming to an end’, was: ‘On the contrary, it appears that while political liberalism may be limited, liberal Christianity is spreading and becoming even more brazen and extreme’.[4]

2.  Enter John Shelby Spong

J S Spong (photo courtesy Wikipedia)

My response to the last comment was:[5]

You will need to provide me with statistical documentation that supports your claim.

One of the most damning pieces of evidence against John Shelby Spong’s theologically liberal views is contained in what happened when he was bishop of the Episcopalian Church diocese of Newark, NJ. It is reported in ‘Newark’s Disastrous Decline Under Spong: Post-Mortem of a Bishop’s Tenure’. Here it was reported:

Prior to Spong’s arrival as bishop coadjutor in 1977, the Diocese of Newark, like the Episcopal Church in the U.S.A (ECUSA), was facing a slow but steady decline from its peak membership in the 1960s. After Spong became the bishop in 1979, the rate of decline began to pick up.

Between 1978 and 1999, the number of baptized persons in the diocese fell from 64,323 to 36,340, a loss of 27,983 members in 21 years. That’s a disastrous 43.5% decline. The Episcopal Church, by contrast, saw a decline in the number of baptized persons from 3,057,162 in 1978 to 2,339,133 in 1997, a loss of 718, 499, or a substantial 23.4%, according to the 1998 Church Annual.

The Diocese of Newark under Spong, thus, has declined at a rate 20.1 percentage points higher than the rate for the entire Episcopal Church. This rate of decline is 86% faster than the Episcopal Church, whose losses are considerable in and of themselves.

As any statistician would note, the losses in the Diocese of Newark represent a highly statistically significant variation from the trends within the Episcopal Church. No systematic effort has been made to get at the exact causes that made losses in the diocese so much greater.

Ominously for the future, church members in the diocese are also getting older and there are fewer children in Sunday School. In 1976 there were 10,186 children pupils in Sunday School. In 1999 there were only 4,833, a loss of 5,353. That’s 52.6% decline.

By 1997 the diocese had closed at least 18 parishes or missions which had existed when Spong became bishop. All of these parishes or missions were in urban areas. The details of the closing of these churches was reported by the author in an article in United Voice in 1997 titled “The Diocese of Newark’s Graveyard of Urban Ministry.”

The rate of decline under Spong – already fairly torrid – sharply accelerated after 1995. During the 1980s and early 1990s, there was often a loss of 1,000 members a year. From 1995 to 1998, there was a stunning drop from 44, 246 to 36,597 in only three years, a drop of 7,649 — or more than 2,500 a year.

The rate of membership decline under Spong is disastrous by any reasonable measure. Such a pace of decline cannot continue if the diocese is to survive and if the Episcopal church is to retain more than a marginal presence in northern New Jersey.

What’s the truth about the death of theism? This is but one example of what happens when theological liberalism has taken hold. Church numbers have crashed.

Continuing with the USA Episcopal Church as an example, this recent article, ‘Episcopal Church Task Force Releases Report on Restructuring Plans’ (July 17, 2013), stated.

“Entrenched bureaucracies and dozens of committees or commissions have accumulated over time. This has occurred even as the Episcopal Church has dropped from a high of 3.6 million members in the mid-1960s to 1.9 million members today,” said Walton. “The large amount of money that sustained these structures in the past is long gone, and the church looks very different than it did a generation ago.”

A response to the above information I provided was:

“Statistical evidence” for a cultural trend?

It’s apparent to me that you are approaching this solely in terms of membership figures, whereas I clearly addressed the growing influence and brazenness of liberal theology overall.

While it is true that the denominations already known to be among the more liberal have been losing members recently, my point was that liberal views are becoming more accepted in the remaining churches and also that the liberalism itself is pushing boundaries that would have been thought shocking or outrageous only a few years ago.[6]

Another replied:

6pointblue-small ‘Here’s a site with historical data for the UK: British Religion in Numbers | News about BRIN.ac.uk, and religious data in general .

As I read it, this isn’t an Anglican problem. It affects all Christianity in the UK except Catholics. And Catholic growth is probably immigration, not conversions.

Furthermore, there seems to be an assumption here that unpopularity implies there’s some problem with the Church. What reason is there to believe that? Does the Bible suggest that truth will be popular?[7]

My response was:

The theme I started in this thread was ‘the demise of liberal Christianity’. I was not meaning to convey a concept of ‘unpopularity’, but to try to promote discussion on why liberal Christianity (theological liberalism was my target) is leading to the demise of the CofE in the UK.

This person asked: ‘Does the Bible suggest that truth will be popular?’ The theological liberal could use that same kind of question to point to the demise of liberalism and that the ‘truth’ of liberalism was not popular.

I know that this issue raises lots of possibilities, some of which are:

  • What is liberal Christianity?
  • Does it primarily relate to historical-critical assaults on the Bible?
  • Is it associated with politically correct doctrines on homosexual marriage, equality of men and women in ministry, inclusion of clergy who no longer believe in the Christian faith, etc?
  • Are many evangelical, charismatic and Pentecostal churches promoting agendas by which sound doctrine is minimised?
  • How do various denominations define scriptural authority?
  • Etc.[8]

3.  Were they slanted questions?

These types of questions sounded too conservative for Hedrick:

I assume you’re aware that almost all of your questions are inherently slanted.

Are you by chance associated with the conservative assault on Scriptural authority, replacing what Jesus said with conservative traditions?

Surely we can do better than this.[9]

Of course the questions are slanted. I’m an evangelical Christian and I’m asking questions relating to the evangel – the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ:[10]

I provided links to 2 articles and the second one raised the issue of unbelief among the people and clergy in the church. Here we are dealing with theological liberalism or disbelief in the ranks.

The Barna Research organisation in the USA has found that nearly 60% of youth disconnect with the church after age 15.

See Barna’s articles:

How should I reply?[11]

With respect, these are genuine questions that I’m raising about issues in the church.

Neither you nor I comes to this forum with complete objectivity.

Did you not note that your response here to me is inherently slanted? I could ask of you: Are you by any chance associated with the non-conservative stance on scriptural authority and have replaced what Jesus said with non-conservative traditions?

We can do better than this by providing exegesis of the Scriptures (or is that considered too conservative?) to demonstrate our beliefs.

His reply was: ‘No, unbelief has nothing to do with liberal theology, though unbelief in conservative theology certainly does’.[12]There is information to the contrary:

Reformed Theological Seminary (RTS), in The Aquila Report, does not agree with you (and neither do I). RTS’s headline was:

What is the Root of Liberal Theology?
Unbelief is the root of Liberal Theology. Never forget, the attacks we are witnessing in our day on our faith are coming from within the visible Church.

Written by Mike Ratliff, Monday, November 18, 2013

4.  The Spong ‘virus’

John Shelby Spong sits at his desk at his New Jersey home on Sept. 12, 2013. The liberal churchman writes longhand with a fountain pen on yellow legal pads. RNS photo by David Gibson

[Photo courtesy Religion News Service (RNS)]

This link from RNS stated, ‘John Shelby Spong sits at his desk at his New Jersey home on Sept. 12, 2013. The liberal churchman writes longhand with a fountain pen on yellow legal pads. RNS photo by David Gibson’

This was a challenge presented to me:

Now you just need to prove that decline was all because of Bishop Spong. In many western countries there was a decline in many mainstream churches while big increases in other places. How much of that decline was due to Spong and how much was a national trend as more people walk away from the church because of poor views put out by the church*? I’m sure some of the decline was because of Spong but certainly not all of it and I dare say not the majority of it.[13]

These are some of the viruses against eternal salvation that Spong has developed and promoted, some of which relate to core Christian doctrines? Examples include:

clip_image002The atonement is an ‘offensive idea’ (Spong 2001:10)

clip_image002[1]‘I am a Christian. I believe that God is real. I call Jesus my Lord. Yet I do not define God as a supernatural being. I believe passionately in God. This God is not identified with doctrines, creeds, and traditions’ (Spong 2001:3, 64, 74).
clip_image002[2]He rejoices that ‘the blinding idolatry of traditional theism [read, supernatural Christianity] has finally departed from my life’ More than that, he proclaims, “Theism is dead, I joyfully proclaim, but God is real” (Spong 2001:74, 77)

clip_image002[3]He’s against evangelism and missionary enterprises, the latter being ‘base-born, rejecting, negative, and yes, I would even say evil’ (2001:178). This redefinition of missions as ‘evil’ is associated with his universalism and theory that ‘we possess neither certainty nor eternal truth’ (Spong 2001:179).

clip_image002[4]‘The idea that Jesus is the only way to God or that only those who have been washed in the blood of Christ are ever to be listed among the saved, has become anathema and even dangerous in our shrinking world’ (Spong 2001:179).

clip_image002[5]‘There is a strong probability that the story of Joseph of Arimathea was developed to cover the apostles’ pain at the memory of Jesus’ having no one to claim his body and of his death as a common criminal. His body was probably dumped unceremoniously into a common grave, the location of which has never been known-then or now. This fragment in Paul’s sermon in Acts thus rings with startling accuracy
.
The empty tomb tradition does not appear to be part of the primitive kerygma. It was attached to the Jerusalem tradition, which I have suggested was quite secondary to the Galilean tradition’ (Spong 1994:225).

clip_image002[6]‘If the resurrection of Jesus cannot be believed by assenting to the fantastic descriptions included in the Gospels, then Christianity is doomed. For that view of resurrection is not believable, and if that is all there is, then Christianity, which depends upon the truth and authenticity of Jesus’ resurrection, also is not believable’ (Spong 1994:238).

clip_image002[7]‘I dismiss heaven as a place of reward, and I dismiss hell as a place of punishment. I find neither definition either believable or appealing’ (Spong 1994:288).

clip_image002[8]‘For Paul there were no empty tombs, no disappearance from the grave of the physical body, no physical resurrection, no physical appearances of a Christ who would eat fish, offer his wounds for inspection, or rise physically into the sky after an appropriate length of time. None of these ideas can be found in reading Paul’ (Spong 1994:51).

clip_image002[9]‘Christianity is not about the divine becoming human so much as it is about the human becoming divine. That is a paradigm shift of the first order’ (Spong 2013).

Therefore, it is not surprising that Spong’s salvific disease led to this kind of spiritual ‘death’ in the Episcopal diocese of Newark NJ when Spong was bishop:

Spong [had] been the Episcopal Bishop of Newark [New Jersey] since 1976. He has presided over one of the most rapid witherings of any diocese in the Episcopal Church [USA]. The most charitable assessment shows that Newark’s parish membership rolls have evaporated by more than 42 percent. Less charitable accounts put the rate at over 50 percent. (Lasley, 1999).

With this kind of salvific disease being spread by Spong, it is a reasonable assumption that this kind of liberal Christianity will lead to the demise of that brand. Of course, Spong’s view is radically different. He wrote:

‘The evidence that God, understood theistically, is dying or is perhaps already dead is overwhelming…. the death of the theistic God was first announced by Friedrich Nietzsche in the nineteenth century…. As this theistic God dies visibly in the very midst of our present civilization…. The old myth of theism has lost its power and its appeal’ (Spong 2001:21, 33, 35).

Spong has nailed it. His interpretation of the supernatural theistic God is that this view is dying and it is an old myth that has lost its power. Is that the truth or not?

5.  Has the supernatural theistic God lost his power?

Bread from God

(image courtesy ChristArt)

What does the evidence demonstrate? James Wellman conducted 300 interviews in a limited survey of carefully selected evangelical and liberal churches in the Pacific Northwest of the USA to try ‘to wrestle with the internecine [mutually destructive] conflicts percolating in the American Protestant landscape’. He ‘could find few liberal churches that were were actually growing, financially or in membership’. He located 12 liberal  congregations to participate in the research, but the criteria were limiting. These had to be liberal congregations that ‘maintained or at least come close to maintaining their membership and financial levels over three years. I also sought out churches that had a sustained a distinct institutional identity led by a stable core of leaders, clergy and lay’.  So this research is based on limited criteria. It is not a random sample of evangelical an liberal churches. He noted that ‘the liberal churches that I chose were dynamic and spiritually rich congregations’, but he had ‘difficulty in discovering vital liberal Protestant churches’ as ‘there were no few thriving liberal churches’ (Wellman 2008:xiii).

His research concluded that,

evangelical entrepreneurial congregations can and do thrive
. At the same time, though with less numerical success, liberal congregations can create vital congregations
. A countervailing factor to growth for liberals is the focus on individualism within their churches. Paradoxically, this emphasis on autonomy both attracts northwesterners to these churches, but also mitigates strong commitments to these groups
. In particular, Episcopal churches have achieved a mix of allowing liberals to ‘think what they want’ while at the same time offering a liturgical experience that is deeply rooted in a tradition
. I am not sure that liberals know they want both a form of tradition and the space of free thought, but in practice this combination allowed for the most vital forms of liberal congregational life.

From my research [in the Pacific Northwest, USA], I saw a bouquet of evangelical churches, large and small, flourishing and ambitious to grow in the future. There are few obvious signs that this will change. I do think that the growth will plateau in the near future, but only time will tell. The libertarian and liberal nature of the region is powerful and enduring
. Liberal religionists in this study have much more in common with those who practice nature religion and in this way liberals are more susceptible to this form of relatively unorganized religion than are evangelicals
.

As I’ve mentioned throughout this study, American evangelicals have made significant strides, nationally, in gaining a greater share of the Protestant pie (Wellman 2008:272, 282-283).

What was Wellman’s worldview? He spoke of ‘being a liberal Christian myself’ (Wellman 2008:284).

Works consulted

Lasley, D M 1999. Rescuing Christianity from Bishop Kevorkian, review of John Shelby Spong’s, Why Christianity Must Change or Die, for Anglican Voice, posted June 2 1999. Retrieved on November 4, 2001, from http://www.anglicanvoice.org/voice/spong0699.htm. It is no longer available on Anglican Voice, but is available at: http://listserv.virtueonline.org/pipermail/virtueonline_listserv.virtueonline.org/1999-June/000415.html (Accessed 25 November 2013).

Riley-Smith, B 2013. Church of England ‘will be extinct in one generation’, warns ex-archbishop. The Telegraph (online), 18 November. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10457520/Church-of-England-will-be-extinct-in-one-generation-warns-ex-archbishop.html (Accessed 25 November 2013).

Spong, J S 1994. Resurrection myth or reality? A bishop’s search for the origins of Christianity. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.

Spong, J S 2001. A  new Christianity for a new world: Why traditional faith is dying and how a new faith is being born. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.

Spong, J S 2013, Gospel of John: What everyone should know about the fourth Gospel. Huffington Post: Religion, The Blog (online), 11 June. Available at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-shelby-spong/gospel-of-john-what-everyone-knows-about-the-fourth-gospel_b_3422026.html?ref=topbar (Accessed 25 November 2013).

Wellman Jr, J K  2008. Evangelical vs. liberal: The clash of Christian cultures in the Pacific Northwest. New York, New York: Oxford University Press.

Wilson, A N 2013. Lord Carey’s vision for the Church might kill it off. The Telegraph (online), 19 November. Available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/10460230/Lord-Careys-vision-for-the-Church-might-kill-it-off.html (Accessed 25 November 2013).

Notes:


[1] Christian Forums, Apologetics, ‘Demise of liberal Christianity’, OzSpen #1,21 November 2013. Available at: http://www.christianforums.com/t7788780/ (Accessed 25 November 2013).

[2] Ibid., johnregnier #2.

[3] Ibid., Pervivale #6.

[4] Albion #12, http://www.christianforums.com/t7788780-2/.

[5] Ibid., OzSpen #14.

[6] Ibid., Albion #15.

[7] Ibid., Hedrick #18.

[8] Ibid., OzSpen #19.

[9] Ibid., Henrick #21, http://www.christianforums.com/t7788780-3/.

[10] Ibid., OzSpen #22.

[11] Ibid., OzSpen #23.

[12] Ibid., Hedrick #28.

[13] TheDag #38, http://www.christianforums.com/t7788780-4/.
Copyright © 2013 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 15 April 2016.

Is Jesus a God and not the God?

Colored in Cross

(courtesy  ChristArt)

Spencer D Gear PhD

It is common among some cults that they do not acknowledge Jesus Christ’s deity as being God. It was promoted in the early days of the Christian church by Arians. Two contemporary examples of an Arian philosophy would be the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Christadelphians.

The Jehovah’s Witness view of John 1:1

Jehovah’s Witnesses outside the British Museum, 2017 (Courtesy Wikipedia)

I first encountered this quote when a Jehovah’s Witness was in my house sharing his views and when I challenged him, he leapt from the seat and left his trusty trouble shooting manual behind. This is called, Reasoning from the Scriptures (1985:212-213). However, it is now available online:

Does John 1:1 prove that Jesus is God?

John 1:1, RS: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God [also KJ, JB, Dy, Kx, NAB].” NE reads “what God was, the Word was.” Mo says “the Logos was divine.” AT and Sd tell us “the Word was divine.” The interlinear rendering of ED is “a god was the Word.” NW reads “the Word was a god”; NTIV uses the same wording.

What is it that these translators are seeing in the Greek text that moves some of them to refrain from saying “the Word was God”? The definite article (the) appears before the first occurrence of the·os? (God) but not before the second. The articular (when the article appears) construction of the noun points to an identity, a personality, whereas a singular anarthrous (without the article) predicate noun before the verb (as the sentence is constructed in Greek) points to a quality about someone. So the text is not saying that the Word (Jesus) was the same as the God with whom he was but, rather, that the Word was godlike, divine, a god. (See 1984 Reference edition of NW, p. 1579.)

What did the apostle John mean when he wrote John 1:1? Did he mean that Jesus is himself God or perhaps that Jesus is one God with the Father? In the same chapter, John 1 verse 18, John wrote: “No one [“no man,” KJ, Dy] has ever seen God; the only Son [“the only-begotten god,” NW], who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” (RS) Had any human seen Jesus Christ, the Son? Of course! So, then, was John saying that Jesus was God? Obviously not. Toward the end of his Gospel, John summarized matters, saying: “These are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, [not God, but] the Son of God.”—John 20:31, RS (Watchtower Online Library: Jesus Christ n d)

That is very clear. The JW view is that John 1:1 does not teach the deity of Christ but that Jesus is ‘a god’. John was teaching that Jesus was obviously not God. That’s JW false teaching, as we will see below.

Denial of Jesus’ deity by the Christadelphians

Christadelphian Hall in Bath, United Kingdom (Courtesy Wikipedia)

In an article, “Why was Jesus Christ?” the Christadelphians wrote:

These New Testament Scriptures make it clear that the teaching of the Old and New Testaments is entirely consistent. Throughout the Bible the message is that God is One, not three persons in one Godhead
.

For us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live (1 Corinthians 8:6);

There is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus
 (1 Timothy 2:5);

Keep this commandment without spot, blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ’s appearing, which He (God) will manifest in His own time, He who is the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honour and everlasting power. Amen (1 Timothy 6:14-16).

Notice how careful Scripture is at all times to distinguish between the Father and the Son. God is the source and originator of everything. He dwells in unapproachable light and has never been seen by any mortal. Jesus is His Son and came into existence when he was born of the virgin Mary by the power of God – the Holy Spirit. He is described as “the man Christ Jesus” (Ipswich Christadelphians n d).

So there you have it. Jesus is not God; he is the man Christ Jesus and there is no Trinity. That’s Christadelphian false teaching as the following biblical data will demonstrate.

Pushing Arianism on an evangelical forum

What is Arianism? Matt Slick of CARM summarised this heretical view promoted by some in the early church:

Arianism developed around 320, in Alexandria Egypt concerning the person of Christ and is named after Arius of Alexandar (sic).[1]  For his doctrinal teaching he was exiled to Illyria in 325 after the first ecumenical council at Nicaea condemned his teaching as heresy.  It was the greatest of heresies within the early church that developed a significant following.  Some say, it almost took over the church.

Arius taught that only God the Father was eternal and too pure and infinite to appear on the earth.  Therefore, God produced Christ the Son out of nothing as the first and greatest creation.  The Son is then the one who created the universe.  Because the Son relationship of the Son to the Father is not one of nature, it is, therefore, adoptive.   God adopted Christ as the Son.  Though Christ was a creation, because of his great position and authority, he was to be worshipped and even looked upon as God.  Some Arians even held that the Holy Spirit was the first and greatest creation of the Son.

At Jesus‘ incarnation, the Arians asserted that the divine quality of the Son, the Logos, took the place of the human and spiritual aspect of Jesus, thereby denying the full and complete incarnation of God the Son, second person of the Trinity.

In asserting that Christ the Son, as a created thing, was to be worshipped, the Arians were advocating idolatry (Slick n d).

However, even on an evangelical forum on the Internet, this kind of teaching emerged through the deceptiveness of a person wanting to push his Arian epistemology that denies the deity of Jesus Christ. A person wrote:

The word was a God but not Almighty God that is the difference.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God.
They missed the A out, it’s obvious to any one reading that line of scripture’
Almighty God did not come in the flesh, it was his only begotten son that came, that’s why just before his death Jesus prayed to his Father and said let your will be done not mine.
Then when he was being put to death he said My God! My God! why have you forsaken me.
So there is no Controversy about that Jesus is not his Father God Almighty.
Your treating Jesus if he was some sort of Con-man, play acting, how disrespectful is that.
I am sorry to the board if I am not allowed to discuss it on this forum, but it’s very important as lives are at stake.
[2]

A person responded: ‘This is false. The (sic) is no justification to add an “a” so the John 1:1 says “…the word was a god.” It’s just not in the original. Also, there is no difference between “Almighty God” and “God”’.[3]

How does one respond to someone who claims that Jesus is not God? Earlier in the thread, this promoter of Arian, anti-deity of Jesus, stated,

What did the apostle John mean when he wrote John 1:1?
He said the word was God but not Almighty God, did he?
Did he mean that Jesus is himself God or perhaps that Jesus is one God with the Father?
In the same chapter, verse 18, John wrote: “No one [“no man,” KJ, Dy] has ever seen God; the only Son [“the only-begotten god,” NW], who is in the bosom of the Father, he has made him known.” (RS)
Had any human seen Jesus Christ, the Son?
Of course! So, then, was John saying that Jesus was God?
Obviously not.
[4]

How should we respond to these kinds of statements?[5]

If one does not understand the nuances of Greek grammar, there will be a translation of John 1:1 like that in the New World Translation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, which reads, ‘In [the] beginning the Word was, and the Word was with god, and the Word was a god‘ (NWT, John 1:1, emphasis added).

To the person unfamiliar with Greek grammar, this looks like a reasonable translation as the Greek for ‘and the Word was a god’ (NWT) in the Greek is kai theos en ho logos (transliteration of the Greek). You will notice that theos is not ho theos. Therefore, to the untrained eye it could be translated ‘and a God was the Word’ or ‘the word was a god’.

However, The Granville Sharp Rule of Greek grammar refutes this JW translation. In English, if we want to indicate the predicate nominative after the verb to be, it is indicated by its place in the sentence – after the verb. That is not so in Greek as word order does not indicate meaning. Conjugation and declension of words determine their places and meaning in a sentence. [In my part of the English-speaking world, what is called the predicate nominative of a sentence in the USA is called the complement of a sentence.]

The Granville Sharp Rule means that to help us determine which is the subject of a sentence and which is the predicate nominative in Greek, the definite article is dropped before the noun that is the predicate nominative – when the verb ‘to be’ is used in the sentence.

So in this section of John 1:1 we have, kai theos [predicate nominative] en ho logos [subject]. Therefore, based on correct Greek grammar, the translation is: ‘And the Word was God’ or to emphasise this, we could correctly translate as, ‘The Word was the God’.

Thus, the JW translation has not taken into consideration how one identifies the predicate nominative from the subject nominative of a sentence using the verb ‘to be’. The link to the fuller explanation I have given above of the Granville Sharp Rule provides other NT Greek examples of its use.

To the JW, Arian promoter, I responded:

You make this kind of statement that Jesus, the Word, is only a God because you are ignorant of the Greek grammar. When you don’t understand the Granville Sharp Rule of Greek grammar, you will come to your ungrammatical kind of JW translation that ‘the word was a God’. See my fuller explanation above.

You call yourself ‘kingdomfirst’. Are you a member or are you promoting the Jehovah’s Witness Watchtower view of the non-deity of Jesus Christ?

Your knowledge of Greek grammar is deficient. That’s what causes you to mistranslate John 1:1 as ‘the Word was a God’.[6]

What biblical evidence is there to affirm Jesus as God?

See:

clip_image002 Sue Bohlin, ‘Jesus claims to be God’;

clip_image002[1] Matt Slick, ‘Jesus is God’;

clip_image002[2] Norman Geisler, ‘The uniqueness of Jesus Christ’;

clip_image002[3] Matt Slick, ‘Bible verses that show Jesus is Divine’;

clip_image002[4] Bill Pratt, ‘Did Jesus’s Disciples Think He Was God? Part 1’;

clip_image002[5] Bill Pratt, ‘Did Jesus’s Disciples Think He was God? Part 2’;

clip_image002[6] Matt Perman, ‘How can Jesus be God and man?’

clip_image002[7]Spencer D Gear, ‘Was Jesus omniscient while on earth?’

The Nicene Creed rejects Arianism and promotes orthodox Christianity. It states:

We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible; and in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten of his Father, of the substance of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten (gennethenta), not made, being of one substance (homoousion consubstantialem) with the Father. By whom all things were made, both which be in heaven and in earth. Who for us men and for our salvation came down [from heaven] and was incarnate and was made man. He suffered and the third day he rose again, and ascended into heaven. And he shall come again to judge both the quick and the dead. And [we believe] in the Holy Ghost. And whosoever shall say that there was a time when the Son of God was not (en pote hote ouk en), or that before he was begotten he was not, or that he was made of things that were not, or that he is of a different substance or essence [from the Father] or that he is a creature, or subject to change or conversion51—all that so say, the Catholic and Apostolic Church anathematizes them (Wikisource 2013).

Works consulted

Cairns, E E 1981. Christianity through the centuries: A history of the Christian church. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.

Ipswich Christadelphians n d. Who was Jesus Christ? (online). Available at: http://www.ipswichchristadelphians.info/index.php/component/content/article/13-minute-meditations/105-120819a (Accessed 4 October 2013). This is Ipswich in the United Kingdom.

Reasoning from the Scriptures 1985. Brooklyn, New York: Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York, Inc.

Slick, M n d. Arianism (online). CARM, available at: http://carm.org/arianism (Accessed 4 October 2013).

Watchtower Online Library n d. Jesus Christ (online). Available at: http://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1101989240 (Accessed 4 October 2013).

Notes:


[1] Arius was a presbyter to Alexander, the bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, in AD 318 or 319 and Alexander ‘preached to his presbyters on “The Great Mystery of the Trinity in Unity.” One of the presbyters, Arius, an ascetic scholar and popular preacher, attacked the sermon because he believed that it failed to uphold a distinction among the persons in the Godhead. In his desire to avoid a polytheistic conception of God, Arius took a position that did injustice to the true deity of Christ’. The orthodox view promoted by Athanasius and others was that ‘Christ had existed from all eternity with the Father and was of the same essence (homoousios) as the Father, although He was a distinct personality
. Christ was coequal, coeternal, and consubstantial with the Father’. This wasaffirmed at the Council of Nicea in 325 (Cairns 1981:133-134).

[2] Christian Forums, Christian Apologetics, ‘The Holy Trinity’, kingdomfirst#136, available at: http://www.christianforums.com/t7775663-14/ (Accessed 4 October 2013, emphasis in original). I suspect that this person is a Jehovah’s Witness or a person of similarArian belief who is promoting his views. This seems to be inferred by his statement above, ‘I am sorry to the board if I am not allowed to discuss it on this forum, but it’s very important as lives are at stake’. By 5 October 2013, this post had been removed from this Christian Forums; thread because, I expect, of kingdomfirst’s violation of the Statement of Faith of Christian Forums’ website, which affirms the content of the Nicene Creed (his post was not able to be accessed 5 October 2013).

[3] TomZzyzx #142, available at: http://www.christianforums.com/t7775663-14/ (Accessed 4 October 2013). However, because kingdomfirst’s posts have been removed, some of the other links to his posts, including my own as OzSpen, could have been removed from the thread.

[4] This is part of what kingdomfirst#120, ibid, wrote.

[5] OzSpen#146, ibid.

[6] OzSpen#147, ibid.

Copyright © 2013 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 08 August 2020.

Was Jesus a hermaphrodite? Did Jesus have both male and female sex organs?

image

(image courtesy www.naij.com)

By Spencer D Gear

You might ask: What weird questions you ask? Are you serious? Yes, I am, because of what follows.

It is becoming predictable how depraved liberal theology can become in desecrating who Jesus Christ is. But this one must come close to the top of the list of false teachings. Take a read of this article in The Telegraph [UK] in which a feminist theologian at Manchester University, Susannah Cornwall, claims that “Jesus may have been a hermaphrodite, claims academic“. A hermaphrodite has both male and female sex organs.

I had better define theological liberalism first. How better to do that than to incorporate its definition from one of the prominent opponents of liberalism, Dr. J. Gresham Machen from Christianity & Liberalism (1923:2):

This modern non-redemptive religion is called “modernism” or “liberalism.” Both names are unsatisfactory; the latter in particular, is question-begging. The movement designated as “liberalism” is regarded as “liberal” only by its friends; to its opponents it seems to involve a narrow ignoring of many relevant facts. And indeed the movement is so varied in its manifestations that one may almost despair of finding any common name which will apply to all its forms. But manifold as are the forms in which the movement appears, the root of the movement is rooted in naturalism – that is, in the denial of any entrance of the creative power of God (emphasis added).

These are some of Cornwall’s points from The Telegraph:

  • It is ‘simply a best guess’ that Jesus was male;
  • In her blog she states that she specialised in ‘research and writing in feminist theology, sexuality, gender, embodiment, ethics and other fun things like that’.
  • In her paper, ‘Intersex & Ontology, A Response to The Church, Women Bishops and Provision’, she promotes the view there is no certainty that Jesus did NOT have an intersex condition, with both male and female organs.
  • She makes the outlandish statement that “It is not possible to assert with any degree of certainty that Jesus was male as we now define maleness”. Has she been reading Minnie Mouse comics instead of the Bible?
  • We cannot know if Jesus had a body that appeared externally to be male, but he might have “hidden” female physical features. This proposal is that Jesus could have been a hermaphrodite.

Are sons male or female?

There is not a single piece of evidence in the New Testament to support Susannah Cornwall’s claim that Jesus was not male. Speculation by liberalism is classical fare. It demonstrates that Cornwall does not take any notice of what the New Testament states.

The birth of Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14, “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son” (Matthew 1:23). Sons are male, but that seems to escape Cornwall’s academic abilities. Jesus step-father, Joseph, had no intercourse with Mary “she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus” (Matthew 1:25). Sons are male.

I’ll just about die of theological heart-failure when I hear liberals like Cornwall take the Bible seriously. The evidence is right before her, but she doesn’t seem to have any qualms about inventing her false teaching.

In an extraordinary paper she stated:

“There is no way of knowing for sure that Jesus did not have one of the intersex conditions which would give him a body which appeared externally to be unremarkably male, but which might nonetheless have had some “hidden” female physical features”.[1]

Dr Cornwall argues that the fact that Jesus is not recorded to have had children made his gender status “even more uncertain”.

She continues: “We cannot know for sure that Jesus was male – since we do not have a body to examine and analyse – it can only be that Jesus’ masculine gender role, rather than his male sex, is having to bear the weight of all this authority.”

Let’s check some further evidence. When Jesus was tempted by the devil in the wilderness, the devil said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God
” (Matt. 4:6). He did not describe him as the daughter or hermaphrodite of God.

What was the purpose of John’s Gospel?

Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name (John 20:30-31).

Dr Cornwall, are you blind or are you pushing your own agenda that is contrary to what the Scriptures state? You are imposing on the Scripture your presuppositional uncertainty of Jesus’ masculine gender. The Bible is unequivocal. Jesus is the Son. He is a male. There is no doubt about it as we see also that
.

New Testament Greek uses the male pronoun to refer to Jesus

image

In a follow-up, brief article to refute Cornwall’s theology, Rev. Dr. Peter Mullen[2] wrote:

The gospels were written in Greek and they always use the male pronoun to refer to Jesus. Not once do they use the equally available feminine or neuter pronouns. So the gospel writers seem to have assumed that Jesus was a man. And if masculinity is recognised by particular characteristics, there is a pretty huge pile of circumstantial evidence. In the infancy stories, Jesus is referred to as a male child. On his ritual pilgrimage to the temple when he was twelve, he is described as a boy. So can we hazard the suggestion that he grew up to become a man? I don’t think they had sex change operations in first century Galilee
.

No irreverence meant, but I think if Jesus were in Manchester today and could read Dr Cornwall’s thesis, he would laugh out loud.[3]

Was Jesus circumcised as a male or female?

Luke 2:21-24 states:

On the eighth day, when it was time to circumcise the child, he was named Jesus, the name the angel had given him before he was conceived. 22 When the time came for the purification rites required by the Law of Moses, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord 23 (as it is written in the Law of the Lord, “Every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord”), 24 and to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord: “a pair of doves or two young pigeons.

Notice these features from this passage in Luke 2:

1. Jesus’ human parents were having this child circumcised eight days after birth. Was the child a male, female or hermaphrodite? This was the Jewish tradition that is articulated in Genesis 17:12-14 and Leviticus 12:2-3. These verses from the Law of Moses, the Pentateuch, confirm that Jewish circumcision was only for a male child.

2. This circumcision is confirmed by Luke 2 to be following the ‘Law of Moses’, which is ‘the Law of the Lord’, and was applied to male babies.

Dr. Cornwall’s argument for Jesus as a possible hermaphrodite is again found wanting. She’s into practising her liberal, feminist invention.

The inventions of liberal theology

C. S. Lewis once wrote:

All theology of the liberal type involves at some point—and often involves throughout—the claim that the real behavior and purpose and teaching of Christ came very rapidly to be misunderstood and misrepresented by His followers, and has been recovered or exhumed only be modern scholars. The idea that any man or writer should be opaque to those who lived in the same culture, spoke the same language, shared the same habitual imagery and unconscious assumptions, and yet be transparent to those who have none of these advantages, is in my opinion preposterous.[4]

In an interview with J. I. Packer when he was teaching at Regent College, Vancouver, Canada, he said that he expected congregations in The Episcopal Church (USA) and the Anglican Church of Canada, which are

being fed on liberal theology will continue to wither on the vine as they have done for the last half century. Liberal theology, without the gospel, proves to be the smell of death rather than of life.[5]

While Common Cause[6] is a minority group today that is committed to orthodox doctrine in the Anglican Church of North America, Packer expects that will change ‘as liberal churches get smaller and smaller and become in turn a minority’.

Dr. Susannah Cornwall is an example of a liberal, feminist theologian who invents things about Jesus. This kind of thinking kills churches and denomination. She is promoting a false doctrine of Christology and is therefore defending heresy.

Conclusion

Paul, the apostle, instructed Titus that false teachers ‘must be silenced, because they are disrupting whole households by teaching things they ought not to teach—and that for the sake of dishonest gain’ (Titus 1:11).

This is the instruction that must be given to false teachers such as Susannah Cornwall. They must be exposed and silenced. It is not a GUESS that Jesus was a male. It is an invented false teaching by Dr. Cornwall. The biblical evidence is that Jesus is a male, a son.

I refer you to my article, ‘Is liberal theology heresy?’

Notes:


[1] Cited in the article by John Bingham, ‘Jesus may have been hermaphrodite, claims academic’, The Telegraph, 2 March 2012, available at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/9116974/Jesus-may-have-been-a-hermaphrodite-claims-academic.html (Accessed 16 March 2012).

[2] This article stated this about the Dr who wrote the article: ‘The Rev Dr Peter Mullen is a priest of the Church of England and former Rector of St Michael, Cornhill and St Sepulchre-without-Newgate in the City of London. He has written for many publications including the Wall Street Journal’.

[3] Peter Mullin 2012. Jesus was a man: look at the evidence, Dr. Cornwall, The Telegraph [UK], 2 March. Available at: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/petermullen/100141058/jesus-was-a-man-look-at-the-evidence-dr-cornwall/ (Accessed 16 March 2012).

[4] C. S. Lewis 1981. ‘Modern theology and biblical criticism’, now titled, ‘Fern-seed and elephants’, available at: http://orthodox-web.tripod.com/papers/fern_seed.html (Accessed 16 March 2012).

[5] David Virtue 2008. ‘Liberal theology without the gospel has the smell of death: J. I. Packer’, 25 January. Virtueonline, available at: http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/article.php?storyid=7564#.T2K2UHnwqnK (Accessed 16 March 2012).

[6] Anglican Churches from four states in the USA form ‘Common Cause’, which is ‘committed to working together for the advancement of Christ’s Kingdom. “We are united in Biblical truth and love of the Anglican worship tradition and are striving to improve relationships with faithful Anglicans worldwide”’. Available from VirtueOnline at: http://www.virtueonline.org/portal/modules/news/print.php?storyid=4087 (Accessed 16 March 2012).

 

Copyright © 2012 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 1 May 2016.

image

The Rhema Barb and Its Poison: The Rhema vs. Logos Controversy

Related image

(courtesy Player FM)

By Spencer D Gear

John Dawson, as Director of Youth with a Mission, wrote Taking Our Cities for God, in which he stated: “There is always the release of God’s power when we declare out loud His word.  The Greek word rhema is the biblical term for the specific personal communication of God with His children here and now.  This is different from the logos, which refers to the already revealed word recorded in Scripture.” [2]   Is this really the case?

Kenneth E Hagin (photo courtesy Wikipedia)

The name, rhema, is particularly associated with the ministry of the late Kenneth Hagin Sr. (died 2003). The doctrine of “rhema,” as proclaimed by the Hyper-Faith Movement, claims that “you can have what you say” or “how to write your own ticket with God” (the language of Kenneth Hagin Sr.) [3]  if you will only confess it.  So, health, wealth and many other outcomes are based on a confession of the “rhema” in one’s life.  “Name It and Claim It” theology is based on this understanding of “rhema.”  Can this distinction of rhema be sustained by a study of the New Testament? 

These statements have developed a doctrine of the spoken word, known as, “rhematology,” or “positive confession.”  It stresses the power of one’s thoughts and words in affecting reality in a person’s life. 

It is common, particularly in Pentecostal and charismatic circles, to try to distinguish between the two Greek words that are translated, “Word, ” in the New Testament – rhema and logos. The point made is that rhema is “often a word spoken for a particular occasion.”  It is God’s word for you in your present situation. 

This is seen at the popular level in Dr. Paul Choo’s article on the Spirit-filled life and victorious faith: “Logos refers to the whole revelation of God (e.g.. John 17:17). Rhema (which is found in Rom. 10:17) refers to a part of God’s Word, i.e. a specific promise.” [4] A search on the www revealed that this was a common theme: “‘Rhema’ means ‘spoken word’, and ‘Logos’ means ‘written word.'” [5]

It is claimed that “the logos is universal while rhema is particular.  The logos is objective, while the rhema is subjective.  The logos is eternal, while the rhema is contemporary.” [6]   However, when we examine the biblical evidence, the differences between rhema and logos cannot be sustained.

Both rhema and logos for spoken word

Both rhema and logos are used in situations where the “spoken word” is indicated.  In Luke 5:5, Peter’s words to Jesus were, “But at your word [rhema] I will let down the nets” (ESV). [7]   On the other hand, it is said of the nobleman whose son was healed by Jesus, that “the man believed the word [logos] that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way” (John 4:50).

Some want to conclude that rhema is never applied to the person of Christ.  In Matt. 4:4, Jesus stated, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word [rhema] that comes from the mouth of God.”  Another example is the use of rhema in verses such as Matt. 27:14, where Jesus was on trial before his crucifixion: “But he gave him no answer [rhema], not even to a single charge”

When Peter denied the Lord, he “remembered the saying [rhema] of Jesus.”  As already indicated, Luke 5:5 says, “But at your word [rhema] I will let down the nets.”  Luke 7:1 is a telling example: Speaking of Jesus, it states:  “After he had finished all his sayings [rhemata, the plural of rhema] in the hearing of the people, he entered Capernaum.”  Therefore, the honest interpreter of the New Testament must conclude that it is incorrect to say that rhema is never applied to the person of Christ.

Peter, in his epistle, used both rhema and logos without thinking that there was any difference in meaning.  He said that we are born again “through the living and abiding word [logos] of God” (I Peter 1:23).  Two verses later, Peter writes that “the word [rhema] of the Lord remains forever” (v. 25).

Korean Pentecostal leader, Paul Yonggi Cho, maintained that we as Christians “can link our spirit’s fourth dimension to the fourth dimension of the Holy Father—the Creator of the universe—we can have all the more dominion over circumstances.”  The Holy Spirit causes this through dreams, visions, and visualisation.  By the latter we “incubate our future” and “hatch the results.”  This happens through our speaking that rhema word that “releases Christ.”   How does one receive this rhema?  According to Cho, it is a “specific word to a specific person in a specific situation” and is attained by “waiting upon the Lord.” [8]

“If rhema is supposed to be a spoken word and logos the written word, Paul [the apostle] apparently did not recognize that distinction.  When talking about the gifts of the word of wisdom and the word of  knowledge, he used logos rather than rhema (1 Corinthians 12:8).  It seems that rhema would have been more appropriate if the distinction which some make is valid.” [9]

Logos and rhema are synonymous words in Greek

Two passages that seem to be referring to the same action, use rhema and logos interchangeably.  Jesus said, “Already you are clean because of the word [logos] that I have spoken to you” (John 15:3).  When Paul spoke about Christ sanctifying and cleansing the church, he indicated that Christ “might sanctify her [the church], having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word [rhema]” (Eph. 5:26).

This is further illustrated in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint (LXX), the translation which was completed about 250 BC.  The first two verses of Jeremiah read: “The word [rhema] of God which came to Jeremiah” (v. 1) and “the word [logos] of God which came to him” (v. 2). [10] It is clear that even as far back as the third century before Christ, rhema and logos were used interchangeably.

For NT Greek buffs, this technical information confirms that rhema and logos are synonyms.  If we examine the Greek verb forms of these two words we find:

“In the present tense, the verb form of logos is lego.  But other tenses for this verb contain the stem used in rhema (ero, eireka, eiremai, errethen).  It is an irregular Greek verb.  The present tense (I say) and the logos use the same stem, but most other tenses use the stem from which rhema is derived.” [11]

The Englishman’s Greek-English Concordance [12] lists every mention of the words, rhema and logos in the New Testament.  An examination of these will clearly show that the contemporary distinctions between rhema and logos do not hold up under careful investigation.

(image courtesy sharefaith.com)

What can we conclude?  The evidence does not point to any kind of difference of  meaning between rhema and logos.  They “are very close synonyms, and we must not force on them a distinction in meaning.  Often a change is made from one word to the other simply to give literary variety.” [13]

David Watson gave a helpful summary of the evidence for rhema vs. logos. [14]  His conclusion supports the evidence above:

“In no New Testament dictionary or Greek lexicon of any substance can the claimed distinction between the two words be found….  The massive weight of evidence shows that there is no clear distinction to be made between logos and rhema in the Scriptures.  Thus the two far-reaching inferences mentioned above are based on a false premise.” [15]

I endorse Anthony Palma’s practical conclusion:

“This matter is of more than academic significance.  Among some who promote this distinction in meaning, a danger exists that the so-called spoken or contemporary word will be esteemed more highly than the Scriptures.  But the principle given in 1 Corinthians 14:29 is that all messages must be evaluated, and the only sure basis for evaluation is the written Word of God.”[16]

This wrong-headed doctrine of rhema has had some materialistic and threatening outworking in ministries such as that of Paula White on a Benny Hinn Telethon, LeSEA Network, April 16, 2004.  In her promotion of the alleged meaning of rhema, she proclaimed, “Now, get up and go to the phone!  When God begins to speak to you dial that number on your screen.  Don’t you miss this moment!  If you miss your moment you miss your miracle!….  He’s [God’s] giving you a Rhema Word right now….  The God that I serve is speaking to you right now!”  She proclaimed that “God is looking for somebody to believe that this is a Rhema Word.”[17]

The contemporary confusion in understanding of rhema and logos is “a reminder that a little ‘knowledge’ is a dangerous thing.” [18]  How many more people are going to be hurt and misled by the false rhema doctrine of a “special word for an occasion” that comes with a barb like that of Paula White, in this same Benny Hinn Telethon.  She gave this threatening message: “You will die!  You will die unless you go to the phone and do what God says to do.” [19]

Conclusion

What difference does it make?  When preachers with a high public profile or ordinary believers proclaim that sickness can be healed when a person experiences God’s rhema [special word for the occasion], and it doesn’t happen, some people are left disillusioned with the Christian faith because their God has not met His obligations.  One other alternative is that these people are accused of not having enough faith or having the wrong kind of faith.  For the ill, this is a particularly cruel accusation — their God did not come to the party OR their faith is sub-standard.  These are the people who need God’s encouragement and not condemnation. 

The real issue does not amount to a wrong kind of faith but it is the promotion of a theology of health and wealth that is a false doctrine.  These preachers and teachers need to be exposed for what they are – false teachers!

Based on an examination of the biblical material, we can conclude that the differences between rhema and logos promoted by some prominent preachers in the charismatic movement, cannot be sustained.

They promote a false distinction between rhema and logos and are thus false teachers.

Endnotes:

[2]  John Dawson 1989, Taking Our Cities for God, Word Publishing, Milton Keynes, England, p. 197.

[3] Hagin Sr., K. E. 1979. How to Write Your Own Ticket with God, Kenneth Hagin Ministries, Tulsa, OK.

[4]  Pastor Dr. Paul Choo, preached at Gospel Light Christian Church, Singapore, 10 December 2000,”The Spirit-Filled Life I – Faith Is the Victory,”available from: http://www.glcc-online.com/sermons/sglcc0012101.htm [Accessed 4 May 2005].

[5]  From Arthur Chiang, “The Power of Words”, 17 September 2004, Free Community Church, available from: http://www.freecomchurch.org/05-170904.htm [Accessed 4 May 2005].  Jason Clark wrote of “logos being the entirety, like a full-sized sword; and rhema, a small portion” in “What Do You Think About Preaching?”, available from: http://emergent.typepad.com/jasonclark/2005/03/what_do_you_thi.html [Accessed 4 May 2005].

[6]  For a critique of this popular view, see Anthony D. Palma, “Word
Word,” Advance, May 1977, p. 27.  Palma alerted me to the distinction between rhema and logos in this article from this  Assemblies of God (USA) magazine, Advance.  Much of the following information is based on Palma’s article.

[7]  Unless otherwise stated, all Bible quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version 2001, Crossway Bibles, Wheaton, Illinois.

[8]  Paul Yonggi Cho 1979, The Fourth Dimension: The Key to Putting Your Faith to Work for a Successful Life, Logos, Plainfield, NJ, pp. 41, 44, 81,91, 97-100.  For an assessment of Cho’s theology of the Holy Spirit, see Simon K.H. Chan 2004, “The Pneumatology of Paul Yonggi Cho,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies (7:1), pp. 79-99, available from: http://www.apts.edu/ajps/04-1/04-1-SimonChan.pdf [Accessed 4 May 2005].

[9]  Palma, p. 27.

[10]  Please note that these are literal translations from the Septuagint and are not following modern English translations of Jeremiah1:1-2, such as the ESV.

[11]  Palma, p. 27.

[12]  For example, Jay P. Green, Sr. 1976, The New Englishman’s Greek Concordance of the New Testament, Associated Publishers & Authors, Wilmington, Delaware, p. 4483.

[13]  Palma, p. 27.
[14]  David Watson 1982, Called & Committed: World-Changing Discipleship, Harold Shaw Publishers, Wheaton, Illinois,
pp. 110-112.

[15]  Watson, p. 111.[16]  Palma, p. 27.
[17]  Cited in “Paula White,” available from: http://www.myfortress.org/paulawhite.html [4 May 2004].
[18]  Watson, p. 112.

[19]  Paula White, Forgotten Word Ministries, available from: http://www.forgottenword.org/white.html [12 January 2007].

Copyright © 2012 Spencer D. Gear. This document last updated at Date: 16 November 2018.

Flower9Flower9Flower9Flower9Flower9Flower9Flower9

 

Double faults and not aces: Margaret Court

The falsehood of ‘blab it and grab it’ theology

By Spencer D Gear

The cover story in New Life Christian newspaper (Melbourne, Australia), “Tennis great aces crowd” (King & Woodall 2004:1), should have come with a warning.  The headline should have read, “Tennis great also serves faults, even double faults, to the crowd.”  It was stated that Margaret Court, former international tennis player, was “the only tennis player in the world, male or female, ever to win 64 major tournaments and [was] the founder of Victory Life Centre, a Western Australian [Perth] church with an average Sunday attendance of 1300 people” (p. 1).  No matter what the size of her congregation, I have grave concerns about the content of some of her theology.

Margaret Court 1964.jpg
Margaret Court AO MBE in 1964
(Courtesy Wikipedia)

Based on this article, it is stated that Margaret Court gave a great testimony about her Christian life and ministry at the 21st Melbourne Prayer Breakfast, Melbourne Convention Centre, 7am 29 October 2004.  However, it was served up with some spiritual poison.  I am referring to these statements: “I have learned the power of words.  God created the world with words.  He framed it in words.  We need to teach our young ones to speak in a way that shapes their destiny” (King & Woodall 2004:2).

I have spoken with Christians in the charismatic movement who have been devastated by this teaching.  They have sought prosperity in following this formula of visualisation and making positive affirmations, but it left them devastated – and still in poverty.  Others go around confessing their healing, but the sickness continues.  I find this to be cruel Christianity.  It promises much, but has a habit of not delivering all of the time.

This is known as positive confession, promoted by a segment of charismatic Christianity known as the Faith Movement.  The Watchman Fellowship (2000) defines positive confession as: “the belief that if a believer speaks ‘spiritual’ or ‘faith-filled’ words then he [or she] can have what he [or she] says.”  Kenneth E. Hagin Sr. (who died in 2003 at the age of 86) advocated it with these kinds of statements [2] :

3d-red-star-small“Did you ever stop to think about having faith in your own faith?  Evidently God had faith in His faith, because He spoke words of faith and they came to pass. . .  In other words, having faith in your words is having faith in your faith.  That’s what you’ve got to learn to do to get things from God: Have faith in your faith” (Hagin 1980a:4-5).

3d-red-star-small Hebrews 4:14 states, “Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to  the faith we profess” (NIV)  Hagin uses this verse to claim that “you are what you say” (Hagin 1974: 86-87).

3d-red-star-small  “Don’t pray it; say it” (Hagin 1979b:78).
3d-red-star-small  “Your lips . . . can make you a victor or keep you a captive” (Hagin 1974:91).
3d-red-star-small  “What I confess, I possess” (Hagin  1974:93).
3d-red-star-small  Hagin uses Rom. 10:8 to justify his belief that “believing with the heart and saying it with the mouth . . . creates reality” (1974:89).

3d-red-star-small  “If you are defeated, you are defeated with your own lips” (Hagin 1980b:10).
3d-red-star-small  If a believer states, “According to God’s word ‘I’m healed'” and then says, ‘Yes, I’ve got heart symptoms,” the latter confession will nullify the result of the first confession (Hagin 1980c,:90, 138).

3d-red-star-small Hagin uses Prov. 6:2 to justify this statement: “The reason so many are defeated is that they have a negative confession” (Hagin 1974:90-91).

3d-red-star-small “Every time you confess . . . your weakness and your disease, you are openly confessing that the Word of God is not true” (1974:118).  Since he began following this procedure, Hagin claims that he has not had a headache since 1933 (Hagin 1979a:6).

Margaret Court’s teaching was stated by Hagin in this way, “The kind of faith that spoke the universe into existence is dealt to our hearts” (Hagin  1980d:74). It seems as though Hagin got his teaching from E. W. Kenyon who stated, “What I confess, I possess” (Kenyon 1970:98; Hagin 1974:92; see McConnell 1988, for an assessment).

This kind of teaching is found in other leaders of the Faith Movement:

3d-red-star-small Kenneth Copeland:

“Confession is a powerful word. It’s a Bible word that means far more than just an affirmation of something.

Romans 10:10 says, “For with the heart man believeth
and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”

In other words, confession brings possession. It brings possession of everything God has promised us in His Word. It brings salvation, healing, protection, prosperity and so on.
That’s why, when we confess our faith, we’re not simply affirming something positive we want in our lives. We’re staking our claim on what is already ours according to God’s Word.
In light of that, our responsibility is to go to the Word, find scripture that covers whatever we’re believing God for, and then stand in faith on the truth of that Word. If it’s something not promised in the Word, we have no business confessing it” (Copeland 2007).

3d-red-star-smallJoyce Meyer: “We must realize and understand the power carried by our thoughts and words.  They are so powerful that they can bring either blessings or curses into our lives, depending on their nature.  Our thoughts and words are like the rudder of a ship — they may seem small, but they affect the very direction of our lives” (Meyer 2004).
3d-red-star-smallCharles Capps has written a book titled, The Tongue: A Creative Force (original edition 1976; rev 2012).
3d-red-star-smallFred Price said, “When I first got saved they didn’t tell me I could do anything. What they told me to do was that whenever I prayed I should always say, ‘The will of the Lord be done.,’ Now, doesn’t that sound humble? It does. Sounds like humility, it’s really stupidity. I mean, you know, really, we insult God. 1 mean, we really do insult our Heavenly Father. We do; we really insult Him without even realizing it. If you have to say, If it be thy will or’ Thy will be done’-if you have to say that, then you’re calling God a fool because he’s the One that fold us to ask. . .  If God’s gonna give me what He wants me to have, then it doesn’t matter what I ask. I’m only gonna get what God wants me to have. So that’s an insult to God’s intelligence” (Price 1990).

I was alerted to the dangers of “name it and claim it” or “blab it and grab it” theology a number of years ago by a friend who became a Christian after many years as an occult practitioner.  Her question to me was: “Why are these Pentecostal Christians using the same kind of technique I used in witchcraft?”

In David Conway’s book, Magic: An Occult Primer, he wrote:

“Unseparable from magical speculation about words is the theory of vibrations, which supposes that certain sounds have a powerful acoustic impact on both the spiritual and astral worlds. Like the spiritual world and astral plane can in some circumstances be affected by sound, so that verbal magic may be said to derive its power not only from the idea contained in certain words, but from the peculiar vibrations these words create when spoken” (Conway 1972:74-75).

Many teachers in the Faith Movement would justifiably deny any association with psychic and occult powers in their doctrines of prosperity and healing, but the origins of this technique are found in witchcraft.  Also read Mary Baker Eddy of Christian Science.  She has a similar kind of false teaching.

I am concerned about this heretical teaching for these reasons:

button, flashing, ac1009 I understand it is idolatry because it promotes faith in a god of metaphysics and not the Lord God of the universe, as revealed in the Christian Scriptures. The problem relates to the fact that biblical language for God is used, but the theology taught is that of metaphysics.
button, flashing, ac1009[1] God is sovereign and does not obey human laws.  Psalm 115:3 (NIV) states, “Our God is in heaven; he does whatever pleases him”.  See also Dan. 4:34-35 and Eph. 1:11.

button, flashing, ac1009[2] The Almighty God is a person and not a principle.  If we speak of the “force of faith” (Kenneth Copeland 2012), it sounds more like Luke Skywalker in Star Wars who manipulated the “good side of the force” with mind control.

button, flashing, ac1009[3] Exodus. 20:7 (NIV) states, “You shall not misuse the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.”  The “force of faith” seems to me to be taking the Lord’s name in vain.

button, flashing, ac1009[4] Human beings are creatures and not the Creator.  Who are we to create healing and prosperity through the words we speak? That is the responsibility of the sovereign Lord God.
button, flashing, ac1009[5] A. W. Tozer wrote that “what comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us
.  The gravest question before the Church is always God Himself”  (Tozer 1961:1).  Positive confession exalts human beings with the “creative powers” of the word of faith.  It’s a poor view of the nature of God, claiming that we can manipulate God by the words we speak.  Back in 1988 when Dan McConnell wrote his critique of the Faith Movement he made a sound assessment: “Creation is from the Father; through the Son, and by the Holy Spirit.  Man is a creature and no creature in the Bible is ever accorded creative powers: no man, no angel, no devil, no animal” (McConnell 1988:145).

button, flashing, ac1009[6] Faith theology in its positive confession twists the relationship between God’s Word and His will.  The universe is not held together by spiritual  laws, but by God Himself (see Heb. 1:3; Col. 1:17).  The Word of God is not an independent force that manipulates God

button, flashing, ac1009[7] Faith theology is based on an erroneous translation of Mark 11:22 by translating it as a subjective genitive: “Have the faith of God” (‘The God Kind of Faith’, Kenneth E. Hagin).  New Testament Greek scholar, C.E.B. Cranfield, has called this translation as a subjective genitive, “have the sort of faith God has,” a “monstrosity of exegesis” (Cranfield 1959:361).  “Have faith in God,” an objective genitive, is the correct translation.  God is not granting godhood to us (i.e. have the faith of God) but we are exhorted to have faith in the person of God Himself.  Renowned Greek scholar of the 20th century, A. T. Robertson, agrees that the translation ought to be, “Have faith in God.”  He refers us to other examples in Gal. 2:26; Rom. 3:22, 26 (Robertson 1930:361).

In speaking of the context of Mark 11:23, Kenneth E. Hagin stated, “You can have what you say” (1974:117).  See also Hagin (1979a:3; 1980a:3-4).


Margaret Court Arena, Melbourne, Australia (public domain)

I have so much appreciated Margaret Court’s feats on the tennis court and I don’t find it a pleasant task having to expose this false teaching, but the Scriptures call upon us to “do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15 NIV).

Some will not like the fact that I have mentioned names when exposing false doctrine, but that is exactly what Paul did to Peter in Galatians 2:11 (NIV), “When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he was clearly in the wrong”.  Consider other examples of Paul’s correction of people by naming them: I Tim. 1:20 (NIV), “Among them are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan to be taught not to blaspheme” and 2 Tim. 4:14 (NIV), “Alexander the metalworker did me a great deal of harm. The Lord will repay him for what he has done.”  What did the apostle John do with somebody who publicly taught false doctrine?  “I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to be first, will have nothing to do with us.  So if I come, I will call attention to what he is doing, gossiping maliciously about us. Not satisfied with that, he refuses to welcome the brothers. He also stops those who want to do so and puts them out of the church” (3 John 1:9-10 NIV).  We have had these examples in writing for about 2000 years.

These verses confirm F. F. Bruce’s wise counsel: “Since the offence was public, the rebuke had also to be public” (Bruce 1982:132).

Positive confession is a spiritual cancer in the body of Christ and we dare not present it as an ace when it is a fault.

It has been promoted openly; it needs to be exposed in public as well.

For further refutations of the positive confession and the prosperity false teaching, see:

References:

Bruce, F. F. 1982, New International Greek Testament Commentary on Galatians, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Capps, C. 1976, The Tongue: A Creative Force, Harrison House Publishers, Tulsa, OK..

Conway, D 1972. Magic: An Occult Primer.  New York: E P Dutton.

Copeland, K 2007. Tame Your Tongue and Set Your Course By Kenneth Copeland. Available at: http://christianebuymarketplace.blogspot.com.au/2007/11/tame-your-tongue-and-set-your-course-by.html (Accessed 13 January 2016).

Cranfield, C. E. B. 1958, The Gospel According to Saint Mark, Cambridge University Press, London.

Hagin Sr., K. E. 1974, Bible Faith Study Course, Kenneth Hagin Ministries, Tulsa, OK.

Hagin Sr., K. E. 1979a, Words, Kenneth Hagin Ministries, Tulsa, OK.

Hagin Sr., K. E. 1979b, What To Do When Faith Seems Weak and Victory Lost, Kenneth Hagin Ministries, Tulsa, OK.

Hagin Sr., K. E. 1980a, Having Faith in Your Faith, Kenneth Hagin Ministries, Tulsa, OK.

Hagin Sr., K. E. 1980b, You Can Have What You Say, Kenneth Hagin Ministries, Tulsa, OK.

Hagin Sr., K. E. 1980c, The Name of Jesus, Kenneth Hagin Ministries, Tulsa, OK.

Hagin Sr., K. E. 1980d, New Thresholds of Faith, Kenneth Hagin Ministries, Tulsa, OK

Hanegraaff, H. 1993, Christianity in Crisis, Harvest House Publishers, Eugene, Oregon.

Kenyon, 1970, The Hidden Man (5th ed), Kenyon’s Gospel Publishing Society, Lynwood, WA.

King, A. & Woodall, H. 2004, ‘Tennis great aces crowd’, New Life, 11 November 2004, pp. 1-2. Now available at: http://www.marketplaceconnections.com/archive/2004/mpb_2004.htm (Accessed 24 May 2015).

McConnell, D. R. 1988, A Different Gospel, Hendrickson Publishers, Peabody, Massachusetts.

Meyer, J. 2004, ‘The mouth has a mind of its own’, Available from: http://www.joycemeyer.org/cgi-bin/msoft/msoft.cgi [18 November 2004]. Now available at: www.joycemeyer.org/articles/ea.aspx?article=the_mouth_has_a_mind_of_its_own (Accessed 24 May 2015).

Price, F. 1990, ‘Ever Increasing Faith’ television programme on TBN November 16 ,1990, cited in ”I have what I think and say I have’, Let Us Reason Ministries, Available from: http://www.letusreason.org/Wf8.htm [18 November 2004].

Robertson, A. T. 1930, Word Pictures in the New Testament, vol. 1, Broadman Press, Nashville, Tennessee.

Simpson, S. 1999, ‘Dear Saint, Don’t believe what they say!  Rebuttal to the Believer’s Voice of Victory, “Q&A” section, October 1999’. Available at: http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/vov.html [18 November 2004].

Tozer, A. W. 1961, The Knowledge of the Holy, Harper & Row, Publishers, San Francisco.

Warrington, K. 2000, ‘Healing and Kenneth Hagin’, Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 119-138, Available at: http://www.apts.edu/aeimages/file/ajps_pdf/00-1-kwarrington.pdf (Accessed 13 January 2016).

The Watchman Fellowship 2000, ‘Positive confession’, The Watchman Expositor, vol. 10, no. 3, 1993, Available from: http://watchman.org/reltop/posconf.htm [18 November 2004].

Endnotes

2.  Most of these quotes were accessed through Warrington (2000) and McConnell (1988).  See especially McConnell’s chapter, “The Doctrine of Faith” (1988:134 ff).

Copyright (c) 2007 Spencer D. Gear.  This document last updated at date:  13 January 2016.

3d-red-star-small3d-red-star-small3d-red-star-small3d-red-star-small3d-red-star-small3d-red-star-small3d-red-star-small