Category: Daniel 9 – Dispensational Interpretation

Overview

This website opposes the orthodox doctrine of God because it teaches that the Son of God is not a distinct Person and, therefore, did not die on the Cross. That may sound strange, but it is the hidden reality of this Doctrine. The discussion below shows the following:

This Doctrine teaches that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are a single immortal, invisible, and immutable (cannot suffer) Being with a single mind and will.

Therefore, since the term ‘Person’ implies a distinct mind, describing the Son of God as a ‘Person’ is misleading. The Father, Son, and Spirit are more appropriately described as modes of existing as God.

Since the Father and Son are a single immutable and immortal God with a single mind, the Son cannot become separated from the Father to become incarnate. Since God is immutable, the Son cannot suffer. Since God is immortal, the Son cannot die.

Therefore, what happened at the Incarnation was that the Holy Spirit inspired a mere man with God’s Word. That man, Jesus, has a human mind. Many of the things he said came from that human mind. That mere man suffered, died, was resurrected, ascended to heaven, and now sits at God’s right hand.

This Doctrine of God is not explained to people but is hidden behind a cloud of cliches. People are kept away from it by warnings that it is impossible to understand because we cannot understand God and by threats of excommunication. But the reality is that it contradicts the Bible, which presents the Father and Son as distinct Minds and says that the Son died for our sins.

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Doctrine of God

The phrase “three Persons” is misleading.

The orthodox Trinity doctrine is often explained to people by saying that the Father, Son, and Spirit are one God existing as three Persons. Show More

The phrase “three Persons” implies three distinct minds. However, in the Trinity doctrine, the Father, Son, and Spirit share a single mind and, therefore, a single will, consciousness, and self-awareness. They do not each have a distinct mind. For example:

Karl Rahner, a leading Catholic scholar, in ‘The Trinity,’ wrote that the term “persons” implies distinct minds, but there exists in God only one power, one will, one mind, one self-presence, one consciousness, and only one self-awareness. These qualities do not distinguish the divine “persons” one from the other but come from the shared essence. Show More

Lewis Ayres stated similarly that the Persons do not “possess different natures, wills, or activities.” Show More

Consequently, leading Trinitarian scholars confirm that it is misleading to describe the Father, Son, and Spirit as “Persons.” Show More

The phrase “three hypostases” is also inappropriate.

The orthodox Trinity doctrine is sometimes explained, using Greek terms from the fourth century, as one ousia (substance) and three hypostases. But the term hypostasis is also not appropriate because, while the Father, Son, and Spirit in the Trinity doctrine are a single Being with one mind, the Greek term hypostasis means something that exists distinctly from other things. Show More

Therefore, in the fourth century, each hypostasis has a distinct mind. For example, the Eusebians (misleadingly called ‘Arians’) of the fourth century confessed “three in hypostasis but one in agreement.” (Ayres, p. 118) The phrase “one in agreement” means that the church fathers used hypostases for distinct minds. Show More

People are unable to distinguish between the Father, Son, and Spirit.

In the Trinity doctrine, the distinction between the Father, Son, and Spirit is invisible to the created universe. The creation only sees one Being:

“By the last quarter of the fourth century, halting Christian attempts … had led … to what later generations generally think of as ‘the doctrine of the Holy Trinity’: the formulated idea that the God … is Father and Son and Holy Spirit, as one reality or substance, operating outward in creation always as a unity, yet always internally differentiated by the relationships of origin that Father and Son and Holy Spirit have with one another.” (Anatolios, xiii)

“The distinctions between them are real: but we do not know what it is to exist distinctly in this state.” (Ayres, p. 295)

“Three modes” is more descriptive.

So, if the terms ‘Persons’ and ‘hypostases’ are misleading and the distinction between them is invisible, how should the ‘Persons’ in the Trinity doctrine be described? Hanson refers to the Father, Son, and Spirit as “three ways of being or modes of existing as God:”

“The champions of the Nicene faith … developed a doctrine of God as a Trinity, as one substance or ousia who existed as three hypostases, three distinct realities or entities (I refrain from using the misleading word’ Person’), three ways of being or modes of existing as God.” (Hanson Lecture)

The challenge would be to show how this differs from Modalism (the name Von Harnack gave to second-century Monarchianism). 

Three equal Minds would be Tritheism.

One might respond and say, yes, that may be the orthodox Trinity doctrine, but I believe in a Trinity of three Persons with three distinct minds. That would be consistent with the Bible, but if the three Persons are equal, there would be three Gods (Tritheism). As soon as one speaks of three Minds, two of the Minds must be subordinate to the other; otherwise, one has three Gods. But to admit that the Son and Spirit are subordinate to the Father would be ‘Arianism.’ To avoid both Tritheism and Arianism, the orthodox Trinity doctrine has to say that the Father, Son, and Spirit are a single Being with a single mind. 

In the first four centuries, the Church believed that the Son is a distinct but subordinate divine Being.

The orthodox doctrine of God may be compared to the traditional doctrine of God of the first four centuries, today misleadingly called ‘Arianism.’ It is often claimed that the ‘Arians’ believed that Jesus is a created being. That might have been what Arius taught, but it was certainly not what most anti-Nicenes believed. They taught a trinity of three divine Beings. They regarded the Son as a distinct divine Person (hypostasis) with a distinct mind, subordinate to the Father. Show More

Incarnation

The different views of the Incarnation are discussed in more detail here. In summary:

In the orthodox Trinity doctrine, a mere man died on the Cross.

In the orthodox Trinity doctrine, it is a mere man who died, was resurrected, ascended, and now sits at God’s right hand:

Since the Father and Son are a single Being with a single mind, the Son cannot be separated from the Father to become a human being. Rather, the Holy Spirit inspired a mere human being (Jesus) with the Word of God.

That human has a human mind. Some things Jesus said came from that human mind, for example, that he does not know the day or hour (Matt 24:36). At other times, it was God’s Word speaking through the Holy Spirit, for example, when He said that the Father and He are one.

Since the Father and Son are a single God and since God cannot suffer or die, the Son cannot suffer or die either. It was a mere man who suffered and died on the cross, was resurrected, ascended to heaven, and now sits at God’s right hand. One may object that that implies that we are not saved, for the death of a normal human being cannot save sinners. The Bible is clear that we are saved by the death of God’s Son (e.g., I Thess 5:9-10; 1 Peter 3:18).

In the first four centuries, the Church believed that the Creator was crucified.

In the doctrine of God that dominated during the first four centuries (today known as Arianism), to redeem the world, God produced a distinct divine Person (the Son) with a reduced divinity. That allowed the Son to become incarnated, suffer, and even die. In this view, Jesus does not have a human mind. Rather, the Logos (the Son) functions as Jesus’ mind. Consequently, Jesus Christ is the same Person as the pre-incarnate Son of God:

Everything Jesus said was said by God’s eternal Son.

The Logos (the eternal Son) experienced all of Jesus’ suffering, and He died. Consequently, the Creator and God of the earth was crucified, died, was resurrected, and ascended.

In this view, that was not the first time the Son appeared in human form. They taught that all personal appearances of Yahweh in the Old Testament are, in fact, the one we know as Jesus Christ:

“It is he who appeared in the Old Testament epiphanies. He took a body to appear under the New Testament as Saviour and Redeemer.” (RH, p. 103) [RH = Bishop R.P.C. Hanson, The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God – The Arian Controversy 318-381, 1987]

For the Eusebians, “the pre-existent Christ who appeared in the Old Testament on various occasions was the same as he who was crucified” (RH, 40, quoting Asterius, a leading early ‘Arian’)