No Distinction?

Pastor Phillips begins this segment (0:1 by saying:

“For someone to understand the Trinity they must infer meaning; they must say well this means this because this is what we infer; but when Jesus was asked about his deity was asked about his relationship; he says ‘he that has seen me has seen the Father’—he makes it very clear that there is no distinction…”

Let’s be clear in noting that Pastor Phillips is here confusing interpretation with inference.  Everyone has to interpret what Scripture says and means — just because some people arrive at the Trinity doesn’t mean that they’ve inferred the meaning into the text.  The accusation here is one of eisegesis but it is my contention that the doctrine of the Trinity is the only exegetically responsible conclusion after surveying all of the Biblical data.

Pastor Phillips said that Jesus makes it “very clear that there is no distinction”—but this is not the case at all.  Anyone who has read through the Gospel of John knows that Jesus makes the clearest distinction between himself and the Father.  For example, Jesus said:

“My Father is working until now, and I am working.” This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise. For the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And greater works than these will he show him, so that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whom he will. The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son, that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life. (Jo. 5:17-24)

Now I could easily extend this quote to the end of the chapter (and I will focus on later verses not included here) but this is representative of Jesus’ presentation that the Father is distinct from him.  Notice that in nearly every verse he speaks of the Father AND himself.  He says that he can do nothing other than what he sees the Father doing, that the Father has committed all judgment to him the Son, that the Son will be honored as the Father is honored, that the Father sent the Son, etc… But we notice in vss. 30-32 that Jesus says:

I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just, because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me. If I alone bear witness about myself, my testimony is not deemed true. There is another who bears witness about me, and I know that the testimony that he bears about me is true.

Immediately this precludes Jesus from being one and the same person as the Father with no distinction as it would be impossible for him to speak of the Father as ‘another’ (ἄλλος) if this were the case!  Also notice that Jesus says he can do nothing on his own—is it possible that Jesus would be anyone other than himself?  If Jesus is the Father and the Father is the one on whom Jesus relies, then how does this statement make sense?  The answer is that it doesn’t!  The Oneness position is self-contradictory!

Other notable passages include John 1:1b which says, “…and the Word was with God,” the Greek text reading, καὶ ὁ λόγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν—Here the verb ἦν [‘was’] tells us that the Word existed πρὸς [‘with/toward’] God which in connection with the previous clause extends to before the beginning (whenever the beginning may have been).  The preposition πρὸς is used in the New Testament to denote intimate relationships.  It carries with it the meaning of one facing another (the term πρόσωπον means ‘face’).  Again, no matter how far back we can conceive of, the Word already existed in intimate relationship WITH the Father.

John 10:30 is also of significance as Jesus says, “I and the Father we are (ἐσμεν) one” here employing the first person plural of the verb ειμί.  These are merely 3 examples out of literally hundreds in the Gospels alone!  The charge of inference on the part of the Trinitarian is unwarranted in light of such evidence.

Which Spirit?

At 0:50 Pastor Phillips asks:

“When you receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost do you receive the Spirit of the Son, do you receive the Spirit of the Father, or do you receive the Spirit of the Holy Ghost?”

The very simple answer is that we receive the Holy Spirit who is also called the Spirit of the Father (Mat. 10:20) and the Spirit of the Son (Gal. 4:6).  Does this somehow indicate that all three are the same person?  Not at all!  This is explained very simply in the perichoresis (co-inherence) of the three.  Jesus makes a distinction between himself and the Father yet in making this distinction says, “I am in the Father and the Father in me” (Jo. 14:11) showing clearly that two persons are in view, yet also presenting the fact that they have their being in one another.  Likewise, the Holy Spirit enjoys in this perichoretic relationship by being the Spirit of both the Father and the Son.  You will never read in Scripture anywhere about the “Spirit of the Holy Ghost” for the simple fact that the Holy Spirit does indwell himself, but he does the other two persons of the Trinity (not to mention it would be redundant to use such a phrase). 

Technicalities and Titles

At 1:16 Dr. Dobbs said:

“And you know it’s not just a technicality, there’s some people will argue that well it’s just a technicality, you believe in three manifestations in one God we believe in three persons in one God, but the only thing about it is, when you relegate God to titles you absolutely prevent the ability of having a personal relationship.”

Does he give us anything past this assertion in terms of support?  No!  This argument is flawed on 2 very fundamental levels.  The first is the assumption that God has been relegated to a title.  Forget the fact that God is called the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the important thing is that is who God is, not just what God is called.  The second flaw is the assumption that a Unitarian God can have a personal relationship with anyone.  The Trinitarian doesn’t struggle with this because we recognize that God is not dependant upon his creation for relationship.  There has existed an intimate and personal relationship between the three persons of God for all eternity.  Again, in John 1:1b we see an intimate fellowship between God [the Father] and the Word [the Son] which also extends to the Holy Spirit as the introduction to Genesis bears out (vs. 2 the Spirit is present for the creation of the universe).  It is for this reason and this reason alone that God is relational and that he can extend this to his creation.

Now returning to the first flaw we can see why Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are more than mere titles, but they reflect who God is—because we know each person in relation to the others.  Robert Letham summarizes this point beautifully in saying:

. . .[T]he three persons are not identical to one another. They are eternal and distinct. It was modalism that confused them, and this still resurfaces whenever the personal distinctions are in any way blurred or confined to human history. The particular relations that the three persons sustain to each other are inseparable from their identity and so are eternal and unchangeable.

Thus, the Father is the Father of the Son, and the Son is the Son of the Father. The Father begets the Son, and the Son is begotten by the Father. This relation is not interchangeable, nor can it be reversed—it is eternal and unchangeable. Mutatis mutandis, the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father (the West adds “and the Son”—the filioque clause added to C), while the Father (and the Son, according to the West) spirates the Spirit. Again, this is never reversed. The Father is not begotten nor does he proceed; the Spirit neither begets nor spirates. These relations exist in the context of the mutual indwelling of the three (perichoresis). Indeed, the Spirit is the Spirit of the Son, and the Father is the Father of the Son. Also the relation of the Father and the Son is in the midst of the perichoretic relations of the three, and thus in the Holy Spirit. Hence there are distinctions (not divisions) among the three as they distinctly and yet together constitute the one undivided being of God and, at the same time, among them in their eternal and distinct personal relations.¹

Now some might object that this is difficult to understand, but so what?  God is infinitely greater than we are and as such he is ultimately incomprehensible.  It is through the revelation of his Word and the personal relationship that we enjoy with the Trinitarian creator that we are able to know as much as we do.  Dr. Dobbs went on to relay a story of a young minister who had difficultly with the Trinity that would have surely been cleared up had he received proper teaching on the perichoresis (co-inherence) of the Trinity.

Jots and Tittles

At 2:56 we are told:

“There are no vowels in the Hebrew language there are only tittles, jots and tittles, jot is a yud which is a letter, tittle are dots that are placed at a particular place to indicate which vowel is being used for what word.”

Dr. Dobbs is correct concerning he Hebrew letter י (yod) being the ‘jot’ (see Mat. 5:18 where the Greek reads ἰῶτα referring to the smallest letter in the language), but absolutely incorrect concerning the meaning of the word ‘tittle.’  In fact his anachronism betrays an ignorance of both the Hebrew and Greek languages.  The Greek term that Matthew used in quoting Jesus was κεραία and refers to a ‘little horn’ meaning the smallest stroke of any Hebrew letter.  Dr. Dobbs has represented the tittle as the vowel points known as nikkudot which were created no earlier than the 7th century by a group of Jewish scribes known as the Masoretes—and this 800 years after Jesus spoke!

Yahweh (יהוה) and Yeshua (ישוע)

He continued and said:

“And you take the word Yahweh Y-H-W-H, you take the word Yeshua which is the Hebrew word for Jesus, Y-H-S-W-H, the only difference between those two names is the letter S…”

Once again Dr. Dobbs exposes his unfamiliarity with the Hebrew language.  As can be seen in my subtitle above, the shin (ש) or as he calls it the S is not the only difference between the two names.  Yeshua (ישוע) doesn’t have the letter hey (ה) in it and it does contain the letter ayin (ע).  Now it must be pointed out that ישוע is a contraction of Yehoshua (יהושע) or (יהושוע) as well as an Aramaic name (see Ezra 5:2).  Now if Dr. Dobbs had יהושע in mind then there would be a hey (ה) but that doesn’t solve the problem of his transliteration or of the ayin that is extant in the name. 

To properly transliterate the name ישוע not accounting for the nikkudot we would write Y-S-W-A (note that in order to stay consistent with Dr. Dobbs, I am using W to transliterate vav (ו) as opposed to V and S for shin (ש) as opposed to Sh which is the correct transliteration).  To transliterate יהושע or יהושוע we would write Y-H-W-S-A or Y-H-W-S-W-A, which still disagrees with Dr. Dobbs’ presentation.  But this gives rise to another problem and that is that in the Tetragrammaton the letter vav (ו) functions as a consonant, not a vowel but in both the names ישוע and יהושע or יהושוע the vav (ו) functions as a vowel (u and o respectively).

At 3:23 in the video Dr. Dobbs continues to fabricate definitions in saying:

“…and in the Hebrew language every alphabet every letter of their alphabet has a definition where we do not have a definition, […] every letter is basically a word or it has its own identity. So the 26 letters of the Hebrew, er 22 actually, plus the 4 special letters, are letters that have a definition in themself; so the insertion of one letter actually adds the definition of that letter to that name; the letter is shin, it’s an S and, and the letter shin has a definition and the letter shin means to take something that is abstract and make it concrete, something that is spiritual and make it physical, or something that is invisible and make it visible. So the name Yeshua literally means Yahweh has made himself a human form or a man.”

I hardly know where to begin… First of all, it is true that every Hebrew letter has a meaning more than the letter itself—this is represented in the various pictographs that the ancient Israelites used in writing.  The pictograph ^|_|_| which eventually evolved into the ש represents the two front teeth which corresponds with the Hebrew/Aramaic word shēn (שן) meaning tooth/teeth.  It carried with it the meaning of eating/consuming/destroying.  The Kabalistic (i.e. Jewish mystical) interpretation of the letter shin is that it represents the eternal flame.  It is said “The secret of the shin is ‘the flame [Divine Revelation] bound to the coal [Divine Essence].’ A simmering coal actually possesses an invisible flame within it, which emerges and ascends from the surface of the coal when the coal is blown upon.”² 

In terms of grammatical function, the letter shin when used as a prefix is translated as the relative pronouns ‘who,’ ‘that,’ and ‘which’ in English.  Nowhere have I been able to locate this contrived interpretation of the letter shin among any Hebrew reference material that I own or have been able to access online.  I’d ask for a specific reference to where he received this information.  So does the name ישוע literally mean “Yahweh has made himself a human form or a man”?—not even close! 

According to Paul D. Gardner the name ישוע (Jeshua) means, “the Lord saves.”³  Likewise, Dr. Gardner tells us that “Jesus comes from the Greek form of the name ‘Joshua’ which means ‘Yahweh [the Lord] saves’.⁴  In the same volume Dr. Richard Hess says, “The name Joshua means, ‘Yahweh is salvation’.”⁵  Philo of Alexandria tells us in the first century that “Joshua means ‘the salvation of the Lord.’”⁶  The Brown-Drivers-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon is in agreement with all of the above definitions (see p. 221). 

This is yet another example of Dr. Dobbs’ approach to study.  His hermeneutic is one that allows for any idea he wishes to think up to be imposed on a text and presented as fact.  I believe this is also a sad commentary on the level of study that your average Oneness Pentecostal engages in.  Pastor Phillips sat there agreeing with everything this man said as if it were gospel truth—and these are not the laity—these are the leaders!

At 4:20 Dr. Dobbs says:

“You see God the Father was in the body of the Lord Jesus Christ, and you can see that sometimes brother Scott when you see sometimes that the Father would speak through Jesus and then sometimes Jesus would be speaking under the inspiration of the Father, when he told them ‘before Abraham was I am’ that was not the 33 year old Jesus speaking, it was his lips moving but the Father was giving utterance because that would not have been true for a 33 year old to say that; but it was true for Father God who dwelled in him to give utterance and say that.”

We have a classic example of question begging in this assertion.  It is already assumed that the Son came into existence at the point of the incarnation without this being proven and then this assumption is read back into the comments of Jesus in John 8:58.  In point of fact it was absolutely true for the Son to say that he pre-existed Abraham.  John 1:1 as well as 17:5 bear witness to this by their use of the verb ἦν which is in the imperfect tense.   

What the Oneness Pentecostal does is confuse the two natures of Christ with the person of Christ.  The Son is the one person who has two natures, i.e. divine and human.  Those two natures exist simultaneously in the one person and have done so since the incarnation (Jo. 1:14; Phil. 2:6-7; 1Tim. 3:16).  The person of the Son did not come into being at the incarnation but pre-existed it (cf. 1Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:15-20).  Pastor Phillips closed this segment with a reference to 1Timothy 3:16 which is not without its textual difficulties, but let’s grant the reading that ‘God was manifest in the flesh’—this is something that Trinitarian wholeheartedly believe!

B”H

---

¹ Letham, Robert. The Holy Trinity: In Scripture, History, Theology, and Worship, (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2004), 179-180.

² Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh. “The Mystical Significance of Hebrew Letters: Shin, The Eternal Flame” in The Inner Dimension: A Gateway to the Wisdom of Kabbalah and Chassidut.  Available at http://www.inner.org/hebleter/shin.htm

³ Gardner, Paul D. “Jeshua” in New International Encyclopedia of Bible Characters, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1995), 320. [Hereafter NIEBC]

⁴ Gardner, Paul D. “Jesus (The Lord Christ)” in NIEBC, 321.

⁵ Hess, Richard. “Joshua, Son of Nun” in NIEBC, 378.

⁶ Philo of Alexandria. “On the Change of Names, XXI, 121” in The Complete and Unabridged Works of Philo, C.D. Young, Trans. (E-Sword Bible Software).

 

Your response: