Pagan Christianity?
Pastor Phillips and Dr. Dobbs begin their second video by saying that Constantine “Christianized Paganism” or “Paganized Christendom” but this claim is clearly ridiculous. What Constantine did was made Christianity legal and we should thank God that he did! Dr. Dobbs acknowledges this in saying “Constantine flattered the Christians by being the first emperor to accept them.” They appear to be taking issue with certain Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox practices such as the veneration of saints or iconography which I have no interest in defending as I do not hold to these practices personally.
At 1:55 in this video Dr. Dobbs says that:
“Most pagan religions and of course in that day believed in a Tritheism, they believed in a Trinitas, they had a father, mother, and son in most every pagan religion, and basically what they did was blending that together and finding it one passage of scripture that they could use to vindicate that in Matthew 28:19…”
This claim is all too common amongst those who deny the doctrine of the Trinity. The method is to look for things that have something in common with the doctrine and then equate it with those things. So what are the things that people look to? Well Tritheism of course! I mean the number 3 is common to both Tritheism and Trinitarianism—cased closed, right? The fatal flaw in this argument is that it is a false analogy to compare Christian belief in the Trinity which is defined as One Indivisible Being of God subsisting in Three Eternally Distinct Co-Equal Persons with Pagan belief in three gods that are singled out of dozens to thousands more and grouped together in a triad. Dr. Dobbs acknowledges the father, mother, son model of pagan triads and still for some reason equates the Christian doctrine of the Trinity with them.
B.B. Warfield aptly points out that:
In point of fact, the doctrine of the Trinity is purely a revealed doctrine. That is to say, it embodies a truth which has never been discovered, and is indiscoverable, by natural reason. With all his searching, man has not been able to find out for himself the deepest things of God. Accordingly, ethnic thought has never attained a Trinitarian conception of God, nor does any ethnic religion present in its representations of the divine being any analogy to the doctrine of the Trinity. Triads of divinities, no doubt, occur in nearly all polytheistic religions, formed under very various influences. Sometimes, as in the Egyptian triad of Osiris. Isis and Horus, it is the analogy of the human family with its father, mother and son which lies at their basis.1
Pagans begin with man and reason back to God, thus fashioning an image that resembles them, hence the father, mother, son motif. Christians on the other hand begin with Scripture which is the Word of God and form our conclusions from there. Obviously the doctrine of the Trinity does not present the father, the mother, and the son—on the contrary it presents the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—three eternally distinct persons enjoying fellowship with one another from all eternity.
One Passage?
Now Dr. Dobbs made the comment that Trinitarians rely on one passage of Scripture, namely Matthew 28:19 in order to “vindicate” the doctrine of the Trinity and then asserts that it is based on a “total mistranslation of that verse when you take it back to the original Greek” but again we must ask if this is truly the case. Pastor Phillips then chimed in, agreeing with the assertions just made and essentially repeated them saying that we have built a doctrine out of a single passage before Dr. Dobbs presents his explanation of the verse in question, which funnily enough never exposes any mistranslation.
In point of fact, Christians do not rely on one passage to support the doctrine. We rely on the Bible as a whole, interpreting the Hebrew/Aramaic Scriptures in the light of the Greek Scriptures, systematically observing what God has revealed. To assert that Trinitarianism rests solely on Matthew 28:19 is not only ridiculous—but it also shows either a severe lack of interaction with Trinitarianism or dishonesty on the part of the speakers.
The Name of God
At 2:31 Dr. Dobbs goes on to say:
“Matthew 28:19 says, ‘baptizing in the name’ which is a singular word ‘of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost’ which means there is a name that is the name of the Father, the name of the Son, and the name of the Holy Ghost, and we know that name… the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Now clearly the name of the Father is not Jesus Christ nor is the name of the Holy Spirit Jesus Christ. We know very well what the one name shared by the three persons of God is—Yahweh! Trinitarians rightly recognize that Jesus Christ was not the name of the Son until the incarnation (Jo. 1:14; 1Tim. 3:16)—but this line of reasoning forces the Oneness Pentecostal to believe that God had no name prior to the incarnation. This is obviously wrong and we know that Yahweh is the proper personal name of God as plainly stated in the Hebrew Scriptures.
God said moreover to Moses, ‘You shall tell the children of Israel this, ‘Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and this is my memorial to all generations. (Ex. 3:15, web)
God spoke to Moses, and said to him, ‘I am Yahweh; and I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty; but by my name Yahweh I was not known to them. (Ex. 6:2-3, web)
We could also add to these texts Exodus 15:3—‘Yahweh is his name’; Psalm 83:18—‘Thou alone whose name is Yahweh’; Isaiah 42:8—‘I am Yahweh, that is my name’; Deuteronomy 4:35 & Joshua 22:34—‘Yahweh, He is the God.’ The name is well established and it would be anachronistic to read a 21st century Oneness Pentecostal understanding into these ancient texts.
The remaining 6 minutes of the video are spent making offers to send people Bibles, emotional presentations about rediscovering the truth and throwing out all this doctrine to get back to the Bible. Pastor Phillips at one point says that to him “Nicaea goes back to the origin of the error” and then begins a mini-tirade about Roman Catholic practices that I do not wish to defend.
Pastor Phillips again asserts that for the first 300 years of Church history everyone was baptized in Jesus’ name which has been dealt with in the last post. They add to this a claim that people say baptism is not important to which I’d ask who? Who says that baptism is not important? Certainly not the Roman Catholics that these men take issue with. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says:
The Lord himself affirms that Baptism is necessary for salvation. He also commands his disciples to proclaim the Gospel to all nations and to baptize them. Baptism is necessary for salvation for those to whom the Gospel has been proclaimed and who have had the possibility of asking for this sacrament. The Church does not know of any means other than Baptism that assures entry into eternal beatitude; this is why she takes care not to neglect the mission she has received from the Lord to see that all who can be baptized are “reborn of water and the Spirit.” God has bound salvation to the sacrament of Baptism, but he himself is not bound by his sacraments.2
Protestants affirm the importance of Baptism as well, while recognizing that it is not necessary to be born again. The Westminster Confession of Faith says:
Although it is a great sin to condemn or neglect this sacrament, baptism is not inseparably connected with God’s grace and salvation. One can be saved and reborn without baptism, and, on the other hand, everyone who is baptized is not therefore unquestionably reborn.3
At 6:56 Pastor Phillips begins to ends this clip by saying:
“Nicaea deluded and, and deceived and is still deceiving billions of people, over the history of mankind by taking away from the scripture and the man saying well we have all agreed that we don’t really believe in the scripture, we’ve all decided that well, even though everybody up until now has been baptized in Jesus’ name, we’re gonna change it.”
Are we told what men said this exactly? No! Are we given exact quotes of what was said? No! Does history bear out the assertions made above? No! In fact the contrary was true. Athanasius himself said, “This enables us to see brethren, that they of Nicaea breathe the spirit of Scripture…”4 J.N.D. Kelly notes:
…if the concept of tradition was expanded and made more concrete in these ways [i.e. by Creeds], the estimate of its position vis-à-vis Scripture as a doctrinal norm remained basically unaltered. The clearest token of the prestige by the latter is the fact that almost the entire theological effort of the fathers, whether their aims were polemical or constructive, was expended upon what amounted to the exposition of the Bible. Further, it was everywhere taken for granted that, for any doctrine to win acceptance, it had to first establish its Scriptural basis.5
At 7:28 Dr. Dobbs says:
“Well in the first Council of Nicaea which is in 335 A.D. the bishops, o, only about a 158 bishops at that time, came and met in the Senatus room for 28 days and hammered out the beginnings of what would take 140 years for them to finally agree on.”
Dr. Dobbs again dates the council a decade too late and this time shortchanges the number of bishops in attendance. According to Athanasius who was in attendance, there were 318 bishops present6—160 more than Dobbs claimed! Out of these 318 bishops only 2 failed to sign the Nicene Creed, namely, Theonas of Marmarica and Secundus of Ptolemais who were devout followers of Arius. This is a far cry from the disagreement that these gentlemen would have us believe existed concerning the issues discussed at Nicaea. There was a nearly unanimous agreement instantly! Such a handling of history is nothing short of incompetence.
B”H
1 Warfield, Benjamin B. “Trinity” in International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, James Orr, ed. (E-Sword Bible Software, 1915).
2 Catechism of the Catholic Church, (New York: Double Day, 1995), 352, Par. 1257. [Italics theirs]
3 Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms in Modern English, (Livonia, MI: Evangelical Presbyterian Church, 2004), 56, Ch. 28, Par. 7.
4 Athanasius. Ad Afros Epistola Synodica in A Select Library of Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers, Second Series, Vol. 4: Athanasius: Select Works and Letters, Phillip Schaff, and Henry Wace, eds. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, rpt. 1995), 490.
5 Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 46.
6 Athanasius, Ad Afros Epistola Synodica, 489.
Posted in Apologetics, Oneness Pentecostalism, Trinity
