Hello everyone!
We have just started a student ministry class at my church and are currently talking about Oneness vs. Trinity. Now the people who are teaching the class strongly believe in Oneness meaning God is only ONE being and the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not separate. This is probably the most confusing thing in the Bible to me...I have always thought of God being 3 that are separate but ALL make up God, and God is One because they are all in one accord, same heart, same mind, same purpose kind of like marriage and the scripture that says "the two shall become one flesh" of course that belief is being challenged in this class. I believe Jesus is fully God the bible clearly says that in 1 John "In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God." It also says the Word became flesh...that's Jesus.
What I'm stuck on is is God only ONE being or is God made up of 3 beings?
I have been studying several scriptures and asked God to help me see the truth....I'm curious what's your take on this? Do you believe God is made up of 3 beings or is God only One being who manifest himself in 3 ways? Please back up your answer with scripture I'm not looking for just a personal opinion or what someone else told you, if its not in Gods word it wont help me.
I was a Trinitarian for 28 years, 12 of those being in a pulpit after Bible College. I was lost without salvific faith. In the ensuing 15 years, I've devoted a great portion of my life to Theology Proper and an intimate study of historicity and biblical languages relative to God's nature and consititution.
Over recent years, I've been quite adversarial toward Trinitarians because of the damage that doctrine can inflict, because it has become merely a conceptual ideology that has replaced actual theology. Most modern professing Trinitarians aren't even actual Trinitarians; and they've staked out a nebulous semi-doctrine based on untranslated English semantics.
But in more recent months, I've taken a less aggressively volatile approach to illustrate that ALL the historical God-models are incomplete. Though there are as many as 80 variations, the main conflicting historical views are Unitarian, Sabellian (Oneness), Arian, Binitarian, and Trinitarian. ALL of these (and the others) share three primary central omissions of misunderstanding as their core foundation. ALL of them are 90% truth from the various aspects they've all utilized to compensate for the core foundational misrepresentations they all share.
The problem is that since Trinity is considered O/orthodox (right teaching), then all the others are determined to be "heresy". Yet all those who see the scriptural impossibiliby of Trinity and its self-refuting paradoxes have embraced another view and determine Trinity to be "heresy". It's just a giant mud-slinging match, and I've utilized the same tactics in my zeal for truth (and still find it all too easy to revert to that mode in response to others who are "difficult"). But it's all just error against error, with each being incomplete and misrepresenting God as being impotent without realizing it. As for Trinity, it's built solely upon distilled points of attempted inference that are passed off as undeniable. In reality, Trinity doctrine is utterly impossible from the inspired text. But its status makes it the status quo, and the modern gradual conceptualization of it has created an ideology shrouded in mystery.
The Oneness view represents essentially the same percentage of truth, but still has the same dilemna as Trinity and the others in not being able to account for the three central omissions that ALL competing historical God-models share. In the meantime, all proponents of each view are general anathematizing everyone else and prescribing a doctrinal threshhold for salvific faith. Though I'm not advocating ANY degree of Universalism, since all of these views are majority truth but still in error, then it becomes an individual heart issue based on whose heart has heard the rhema for faith unto salvation.
Trinity maintains the central theme of F/S/HS all being distinct, eternal, uncreated, non-modal, subsistence-Deity; but it has self-inflicted and self-refuting paradoxes that arise from its foundation of attempted inference (mostly from personal pronouns). Oneness doesn't allow for the problematic issue of three "persons" (hypostases) in one "being" (ousia) as representing just razor-thin semantics away from Triadism (three beings as one God) or full Tritheism (three Gods); but Oneness most often presents there being no real distinction between F/S/HS. The Father IS the Son via manifestation. Though most modern Oneness believers (YES, they're eligible to be believers according to personal faith) aren't Sequential Modalists like the early Sabellians/Monarchians/Patripassians, they still don't present a clear eternal distinction between F/S/HS.
Trinity presents a F/S/HS that are too discreet (and cannot be literally accounted for beyond failed attempted inference); and Oneness presents a F/S/HS that are too INdistinct. The Father is not the Son is not the Father (are not the Holy Spirit). Arians are just Trinitarians or Binitarians who insist the Father created the Son as Deity in eternity before creation of the natural universe. Unitarians insist the Son is the unique virgin-born son, and this was a direct creative act in the womb by God. Other views and sub-variations take different positions, but all the beliefs attempt to maintain Monotheism while accounting for the Son and the Holy Spirit according to the inspired text.
The problem is... the entire process that started as a vital means of defending the faith from extreme error and heresy both outside and inside the faith became an adversarial power struggle that also took on political overtones. The result was a leveraged O/orthodoxy that declared all others outside the faith, and it was grievously enforced by exile and murder. Today, the same exact process ensues at any mention of Theology Proper, and the Trinity position still holds sway. But one of the real problems is that the vast majority of modern professing Trinitarians aren't even real and actual Trinitarians.
While I can thoroughly deconstruct Trinity doctrine and show it as being paradoxically impossible from the inspired text, that seldom matters to Conceptual Trinitarians who never arrived at their belief by study of scripture and historical doctrine and its formulation process, etc. As with most beliefs, Theology Proper is an issue of indoctrination; and most believe and confirm only what they've initially been told and taught. Since a spiritual sense of worth is tied to such a central belief, few can and will reevaluate it from a neutral standpoint; and most will be hopelessly afflicted with cognitive dissonance in their denial that their pet central doctrine could be wrong in ANY way or to ANY degree.
As I said, ALL the above views (all others) contain a vast majority of truth, and each is sufficient to convey the message of the Gospel for savlific faith. But ALL are built upon the same three shared omissions of misunderstanding. All CAN be reconciled to the central truth of scripture.
Everybody's right. And everybody's wrong. Each choice is a false dichotomy. Nobody wants to be wrong. Nobody has searched out the truth. O/orthodoxy is unyielding, as are the responses TO it from those who recognize its issues.
I can be as condescending as anyone, but I've tried to curb all that in favor of having ALL things reconciled to Christ. Each and every view can be reconciled very simply to the truth. All can be shown for the relative merit of their perspectives. In a way, Trinity/Binity IS the closest. In a way, Oneness IS the closest. In a way, Unitarians are the closest. But all omit and misrepresent three central fundamental truths while prioritizing certain preferred emphases.
Let me know if you'd like me to help you sort through all this.
