Oneness Pentecostals and the Trinity by Gregory A. Boyd

Author:Gregory A. Boyd
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780801010194
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).

“But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31).

Baptism, Salvation, and The Name

We have thus far demonstrated that the Oneness view of God and of Christ and the Oneness rejection of the Trinity are unbiblical However, while the antitrinitarianism of Oneness Pentecostalism constitutes its most blatant and fundamentally damaging heresy, its denial of the Trinity is hardly its only heretical belief. This is really quite typical. Historically speaking, heresies have almost always “come in packages.”

No Trinity—No Salvation by Grace

More specifically, groups that have denied the doctrine of the Trinity, opting either for a modalistic or for an Arian view of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, have almost always held to a number of other esoteric and unhealthy beliefs, particularly in regard to the doctrine of salvation by grace.

The theological reason for this is that the doctrine of the Trinity, far from being a “merely speculative” piece of church theologizing, is intrinsically connected with everything else that is distinctly Christian. As we shall see in chapter 8, without this doctrine the reality of God’s eternal love and self-sufficiency, as well as the authenticity of God’s self-revelation, God’s sacrificial love on the cross, and thus of God’s grace, is undermined. It is not a coincidence, then, that antitrinitarian groups as otherwise diverse as (for example) the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the United Pentecostal Church, and the Worldwide Church of God all arrive at a sub-Christian view of God and an aberrant, legalistic view of salvation.

To speak specifically concerning the United Pentecostal Church and related Oneness Pentecostal groups, the denial of the Trinity results in an understanding of salvation that exchanges the perfect security and the total sufficiency of the work of Christ on the cross for the “security” of a precise baptismal formula (“Jesus’ Name baptism”), the “security” of a momentary and sometimes questionable experience (speaking in tongues), and the very shallow “security” of one’s own ability to keep a prescribed set of rules (the standards). Oneness adherents claim that if any of these so-called prerequisites for salvation are absent or are altered, one cannot hope to be saved.

We do well to note the extremity of the chasm existing between these two distinct sources of security and the difference between the two views of God they entail. The God of orthodox Christianity is a God who loves undeserving, vile sinners with an unconditional love, a God who voluntarily suffers on the cross the hellish nightmare that the sin of these sinners produces, in order that they might share in the heavenly dream he has for them. This is a God who sent his own eternal Son and gave his own eternal Spirit to envelop these sinners with his own eternal love and cause them to share in the eternal joy of this eternal triune fellowship.

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