Tag: Nature of God

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The Trinity Doctrine and Modalism Compared

Modalism

In Modalism, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are mere “modes” of how the one God interacts with creation. Like an actor on a stage, God sometimes appears as the Father and other times as the Son or the Spirit, but it is one and the same Person. For example, He appears as the Father in the creation, the Son in Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit after Christ’s ascension.

For the Modalist, Christ is not only God, he is the Father himself. This would mean that the Father suffered and died on the Cross. This view was rejected in the third century. Sabellius, who taught a version of it, was excommunicated in AD 220.

The Trinity Doctrine

The Trinity doctrine, as taught by the mainstream church, including most Protestant churches, like Modalism, regards the Son and the Holy Spirit to be “God” but describes the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as three distinct Persons. To maintain the oneness of God, so that the doctrine does not teach Tri-theism (three Gods), the Father, Son, and Spirit share one undivided essence or substance. It is then said that they are one Being with a single mind and will.

So, both Modalism and the Trinity doctrine proclaim one God and one substance. But while Modalism describes the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as modes, the Trinity doctrine describes them as Persons. For the Trinity doctrine to differ from Modalism, personhood must be real. For three reasons, in my view, the Persons in the Trinity doctrine are NOT real persons but mere modes of God:

1. The Persons are Identical.

Firstly, on the principle of divine simplicity, a remnant of ancient Greek philosophy, but still today accepted by theologians as valid, the Trinity doctrine teaches that God does not have parts. Consequently, the three Persons are not three parts of God. Rather, each of them is the full divine essence. In other words, each Person is the entire God. This means they are identical, which means they are mere modes of God. [Show More]

2. The Persons share one single Mind.

Secondly, in the orthodox doctrine, the Father, Son, and Spirit share one single mind and will.

Secondly, while the term ‘person’ implies a self, a thinker, with his own will and mind, in the Trinity doctrine, the Father, Son, and Spirit share one single mind and will because the mind and will are rooted in the substance of God, not in the Persons. [Show More]

The disastrous consequence is that the Father cannot love the Son and the Son cannot love the Father. Similarly, the Son cannot truly intercede with the Father.

Ordinary Christians may think of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as each having His own mind, but that would be three Gods (ri-theism).

Since the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, in the standard Trinity doctrine, share one single mind and will, they are mere modes of God.

3. Relations make no difference.

In the orthodox Trinity doctrine, as already stated, the three Persons are identical because they share one single divine substance and one single mind. The only difference between them is their relationships, namely:

      • The Father begets the Son and
      • The Spirit proceeds from the Father (and from the Son in Western catholic thinking). [Show More]
The following from Thomas Aquinas:

“So then the only question left is what makes the persons distinct from one another? What makes the distinction real? The answer is that they are distinct only in their relation to one another.” [Summa 1028]

“The divine persons are distinguished from each other only by the relations.” [Summa 1036]

Aquinas’ justification of the view that the Spirit must proceed from the Son as well confirms that the only difference between the Father, Son, and Spirit is their relations, for, he says, if the Spirit proceeds from the Father alone, then the Spirit is the same as the Son because both have a relationship only with the Father. For the Son to be distinguished from the Holy Spirit, there must be a relationship between them as well. [Summa 1036] Quoting Aquinas:

“It must be said that the Holy Ghost is from the Son. For if He were not from Him, He (the Holy Ghost) could in no wise be personally distinguished from Him (the Son).”

However, in the Trinity, created beings cannot see or understand what those distinctions are: “The distinctions between them are real: but we do not know what it is to exist distinctly in this state.” (Ayres, p. 295) So, as far as we can tell, there is no distinction. [Show More]

Conclusion

In conclusion, in Modalism, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are mere “modes” of how the one God interacts with creation. In contrast, the Trinity doctrine describes the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as Persons but if we analyze what these Persons are, we discover that they are identical in all respects. Consequently, they effectively are “modes” of God. [Show More]

Consequently, the Trinity doctrine is a form of Modalism. Claims to the contrary does not help. We need to consider the substance of the matter.

The Arian Controversy was a war between two main views:

One Being – Second-century Modalism, third-century Sabellianism, and fourth-century Nicene theology claimed that only one divine Being exists. Different theologians explained this differently, but in all instances, there is only one divine Being:

        • Modalism said that ‘Son’ and “Father’ are two names for the same Being.
        • Sabellianism described them as parts of one Being.
        • In Nicene theology, the Son is part of the Father.
        • The Trinity doctrine describes them as one Being who is divided invisibly.

Three Beings – Second-century Logos theology, Origen’s third-century theology, and fourth-century Arianism taught three distinct divine Beings, but with the Son and Spirit subordinate to the Father.

The ‘one Being’ view is based on the Old Testament (OT). It argues that the OT reveals only one divine Being. Since the Son is also divine, He must somehow be part of that one divine Being.

The ‘three Beings’ view accepts that the Son is a second divine Being and tries to find evidence of such a second Being in the OT.

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