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