“Oneness Pentecostalism” and the “Trinity”

First of all, it is important for me to point out that I am not writing based on any commitment, view, or side with any denomination, movement, belief system or tradition. In doing so, it does not have any aim to fit or coincide with any movement’s interpretation or established system of belief. This exposition is an attempt on my part to interpret (as best as possible) the biblical text itself and to allow it to speak to on its own. 

In terms of the relationship between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, I am interested in how the Bible itself defines this relationship rather than how post-biblical credal constructs have labeled and categorized it. Those serve no real purpose for our knowing the truth. It seems to me that Scripture reveals, functions, and saves in terms of this relationship more than it abstractly defines it in metaphysical or in philosophical terms. 

Additionally, my goal here is to be a responsible interpreter of Scripture and to let the language, logic, and storyline of Scripture itself control the conclusions reached.  And finally, I indeed believe in the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the relationship of the Father and the Son is more real as it is seen in the human structure, yet more interment. The one God revealed to us in Scripture was done in inseparable yet distinguishable ways of divine self-disclosure in the work of creation and redemption.

In every case, I believe that the job is to listen to the biblical witness as it traces how God has revealed Himself in creation and in the history of salvation, and the manner in which the text makes clear the unity and distinction found in the titles Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – whereas the terms Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not names. If Scripture is allowed to interpret Scripture, a coherent whole can be reached in my interpretation as well.

The One that we know as the Holy Spirit is not revealed as a being or person distinguishable or apart from the Father by nature or essence but is the very self-manifestation and active presence of the Father Himself. The biblical Father–Son relationship is not defined on biological or ontological terms as subsequent metaphysical reasoning would suggest but is derived from the history of God’s incarnational work. Jesus was not conceived by a human father but by the Holy Spirit (Matt. 1:18–25; Luke 1:26–38). 

In human relationships the male who causes the conception of a child is the father, and Scripture does not stop this logic in mid-sentence. If Jesus is the Son of God, and if He was conceived not by a human father but only by the Holy Spirit, then the Holy Spirit must be the One that Jesus called Father. This is not a conclusion derived from later abstract philosophy, but the direct testimony of the biblical record itself.

In this context, the title “Father” does not identify a separate divine center of consciousness co-eternal or co-equal with the Father, but a relational aspect of the one God as the source of the incarnate Christ. Scripture not only attests to the unity of God (Deu 6:4) but the New Testament also affirms that this one God was manifested (revealed, made known) in the flesh (1 Tim. 3:16). The Father is never apart from the Son, nor is the Holy Spirit a distinct agent apart from God but is described again and again as God’s own Spirit (Rom 8:9–11; 2 Cor 3:17). 

Jesus makes this explicit when He says, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14: 9) and, “It is the Father dwelling in Me who does the works” (John 14:10). Statements like these are hard to understand if Father and Spirit are separate foci of divine consciousness, but they are easy to understand if the one God is a personal being who reveals Himself in multiple ways of activity and relation.

This use of the Father–Son language requires some serious leave of later doctrinal assumptions and the willingness to let the canonical witness speak for itself on its own terms. The incarnation does not divide God into parts; it displays God in flesh. Simply put, God was made flesh and dwelt among us! The Son is fully man and truly the Son of God, and the Father is the one divine source from whom the Son proceeds in the power of the Spirit. 

When the Bible is allowed to say what it has to say, the relationship of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is not a bewildering or contradictory aspect of Christian theology, but an integrated witness to the one God who is at work redemptively in history for the sake of human salvation. Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human with two complete natures (divine and human) united in the one person of Christ without division, confusion, or competition. The divine and human do not cancel out the other nor override each other in Christ’s human nature. In the incarnation, God became fully human which voluntarily suspended the free exercise of divine attributes. [1] He depended on faith in His Father to perform ministry like every other human being (see Acts 10:38).

John’s Gospel begins: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (1:1). Here we are told that the Λόγος eternally existed and is wholly identified as God. John continues with the great mystery of the incarnation: “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” (1:14). The eternal God did not stop being what He was, but became what He was not for all eternity past, a human being. He took upon Himself the complete humanity of the flesh without compromising His eternal existence as God.

This is not a description of a divine hologram or temporary visitation, but an eternal union in which God went all in. He, without reserve, fully entered into the narrative of human history, time, and experience. He was born, grew up, and learned (Luke 2:52; Heb. 2: 14–17), became hungry (Matt 1-4;  21:18-22; Luke 4:1-4), was despised and rejected (Matt 12:14; 26:3-5; Mark 3:6; 14:1-2; Luke 22:1-2; John 11:45-57, suffered and died a human death (Phil. 2: 6–8). At the same time while being a man, He, at times, exercised divine prerogatives: forgiving sins (Mark 2:5–12), exercised power over nature (Matt. 8:26–27), and received worship (John 20:28). 

Paul affirmed the same, in saying that “in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col 2:9). The whole fullness of God’s being is permanently present in the incarnate Christ. It is not a philosophical system forced on the text, but an act of faithfulness to the biblical witness, that we confess Jesus as fully God and fully human. In Christ God is revealed not at arm’s length but in human flesh and blood, reconciling people to Himself by the lived obedience, suffering, death, and resurrection of the incarnate God in Christ, and Father in the Son (Rom 5:18–19; 2 Cor 5:19). 

The great doctrine of the incarnation sits at the center of Christian faith, the truth that salvation is not accomplished as humanity reaches up to God, but as God graciously stoops down to humanity in Jesus Christ. This doctrine needs no dissecting God into pieces because the God simply was made flesh without ceasing to be who He was from all eternity. The many labels placed on God are of human origin and not as God revealed Himself in Scripture. The same OT God is also the same NT God. He simply became flesh to ultimately die on the cross for our sins.

If one says God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, they have said God three times. This is foreign to any teaching in the OT that violates God’s oneness and completeness as One Being. In Scripture, Jesus is not called God the Son, but called Son of God. And the Holy Spirit is never referred to as God the Holy Spirit. In reality, it is the Holy Spirit that is called God the Father, and the man Christ Jesus is referred to as the Son of God.

And the only way that someone – other than – is to be different from the one being referred to is to be someone or something different. The only way there can be three co-equal and co-eternal persons is for each person to be different in some way from the other. This is not the language of Scripture but language other than Scripture. They are later post-biblical human constructs imposed upon the revelation to the way God revealed Himself.