Is God one actor wearing three masks?

Steve Brown:
Is God one actor wearing three masks? Let’s talk about it, on Key Life.

Matthew Porter:
If you’ve suffered too long under a do more, try harder religion, Key Life is here to proclaim that Jesus sets the captives free. Steve invited Justin Holcomb to teach us this week. Justin is a priest, a seminary professor, and the author of God With Us: 365 Devotions on the Person and Work of Christ.

Steve Brown:
Thank you Matthew. Hi Justin.

Justin Holcomb:
Hello Steve.

Steve Brown:
Dr. Holcomb is joining me this week, and he’s teaching us about heresy and heretics. And you say, what does that have to do with anything? It has everything to do with what you believe. So, you listen and take notes cause we’re going to test you on this material. Justin, we looked at who yesterday?

Justin Holcomb:
Marcian.

Steve Brown:
And who are we going to look at today?

Justin Holcomb:
Sibelius.

Steve Brown:
How did he mess it up?

Justin Holcomb:
Well, Sibelius, just for those who were taking notes, which is probably nobody. S A B E L L I U S Sabellius he was a second and third century heretic. And he struggled because he was, like we said about all the heretics. The problem was that they read the Bible and took certain premises really firmly and very simplistically. So, he was reading Isaiah 45:5, which says.

I am the Lord and there is no other, the oneness of God.

He overemphasized the oneness of God. And so, what happens is, and then he reads Matthew 28:19 it says.

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Named there singular. So, he’s completely baffled. How is there one? And how is there three? So, we say the Christian tradition says God is one in nature or essence, and three in persons. He did not want to talk about the Threeness at all. And so, he basically said what you were getting to is God one person wearing three masks. Well, God in the Old Testament, we’ll call him Father, and then he gets to the New Testament and he takes off the Father mask and puts on the Jesus mask. And then God is now known as Jesus in the New Testament when he’s here. And then Jesus goes away and puts on a third mask of the Holy Spirit. So, it’s really one, and the Threeness is really an illusion. There’s nothing distinct between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And that’s because he was trying to take the Bible seriously, but he took it seriously on one side, but not the Threeness side. That’s the, and that’s called modalism, that God is in three different modes, Father mode, Son mode, Holy Spirit mode. And so, another term for that would be modalism, but it’s the whole idea of God wearing masks or hats as, in a different role.

Steve Brown:
And you hear it all the time. I mean, it’s probably the biggest heresy when Christians talk about the Trinity.

Justin Holcomb:
Oh yeah, absolutely.

Steve Brown:
I mean, and they almost always are Modalists and you want to correct them. And then you decide, nah.

Justin Holcomb:
You’re doing the best you can.

Steve Brown:
Okay. Talk about why that’s bad.

Justin Holcomb:
Yeah. Well, let’s go back to that one point real quick. Don’t want to spend too much time on all the negative stuff. Well, I do because I, fun to me, but that’s my own neuroses. Think about some of the analogies. Anytime you’re trying to do an analogy of the Creator of the universe, who’s mysterious and has revealed only what we can understand. Then you’re going to have some weird analogies. So, when people say, Hey, God’s like a three bladed fan, you turn it on high. There’s really three blades, but it really looks like one, that’s not going to work. God is like water, steam and liquid and ice because those are the modes. And so, there’s different ways that this gets done. Or my favorite one was a Christian comedian said, God’s like a cherry pie. You cut it three ways and there’s three lines of cuts, but really all the goo gets together in the middle. And it’s okay, whatever works,

Steve Brown:
you’re doing the best you can

Justin Holcomb:
just don’t do any, just don’t do analogies, I guess. So, the reason it’s so important. One, is because the Bible teaches the distinctiveness of the three persons. The reason that’s important for because the Bible says so, that’s a good reason. But another one is that there was love between the three persons of the Trinity before there was anything else. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit all loved each other before they created anything.

Steve Brown:
And that’s really important.

Justin Holcomb:
That’s beautiful.

Steve Brown:
Yeah, it is.

Justin Holcomb:
That before anything existed, there was love between the members of the Trinity. It wasn’t that God was lonely and needed to exert power to make something that he could love. It’s because God was loving God’s self. And then out of that love came the power to exert something that’s not them. And then, so love then acted in creation to then love that creation. That’s what the Trinity, there was a covenant before creation. We learned from Ephesians, that before the foundations of the world, before creation, there was a covenant of this is what we’re going to do. We’re going to make them and if they fall, we’re going to save them. I mean, so that’s a beautiful thing that our salvation was in the heart and mind of God before creation started.

Steve Brown:
And then when Jesus prayed, he prayed that we would join in that Trinitarian loving, profound relationship.

Justin Holcomb:
We get folded into the love of the Trinity. I mean, that’s the beautiful part of this is that, and it answers some other questions like who is Jesus praying to? Well, I mean, Sibelius said, when Jesus prayed to the Father, he was really praying to himself because he was showing you how to pray. He was, he was demonstrating prayer. So, makes sense of the Bible that there is one God in three persons. Now, just by me saying that doesn’t make it sound like that’s still mysterious because we don’t know anything that’s really in creation. One in three at the same time in that way, but it’s one in essence, three in persons So, there might be some people have looked at music notes, and other light, can be a wave in a particle. And people have tried to come up with things in creation, but God’s not created So, I’m not surprised that we don’t see something in creation that mimics the Trinity. Another reason this is so important is that it undercuts the atoning work of Jesus. If there is only one God who merely appears in different forms in history, you have to question whether Jesus Christ was truly human. Because if he’s just God, but not fully human, then we’re undercutting salvation. If he only appeared to be human, then he, we actually, if Jesus is not fully God and fully man, then he can’t be the one mediator between God and man. And so, we will look at some heresies later on where the deity of Jesus is called into question. So, Jesus is fully God, and we’ll explain why that’s important for salvation. But he’s also fully human. Humans are, and modalism undercuts the humanity, the full humanity of Jesus. He’s fully human but without sin. And people go, was he really human because he didn’t sin? Sin’s not essential to being human. Adam and Eve were fully human before they sinned.

Steve Brown:
That’s true.

Justin Holcomb:
And so, it doesn’t, his obedience isn’t somehow minimized because he didn’t have a sinful nature and that he was not a sinner. And so, that’s important, but Jesus being fully human is essential for our salvation because humans are responsible for violating the holiness of God and we’re the ones that need to pay the penalty. And so, Jesus says, hold my beer, watch this, and

Steve Brown:
That’s in Hebrew.

Justin Holcomb:
Yeah, it’s the Aramaic translation of, we’ll see if we get in trouble for that one, right? But he says, well, okay, if that’s the problem, then the second person of the Trinity, the Son takes on a human nature, adds to his divine nature, a human nature, and says, I will be the mediator between the holiness of God and the simpleness of humanity. I am the mediator. This is the language of mediator that we have access to the Father because of his humanity, because we needed a representative of all humanity. Adam was the representative of all humanity when he launched us headlong into sin and destruction, and Jesus is called the second Adam. Paul refers to him as the second Adam. Because Jesus, unlike the first Adam, was obedient and did not sin. He actually did what the first Adam was supposed to do. And so, he fixed the first Adam’s problem. And that’s why the humanity is, of Christ is so important. That’s undercut by modalism. So, you miss out on the love of the Trinity and you miss out on the humanity of Jesus if you go the modalism route.

Steve Brown:
And that’s the whole infrastructure of Christian theology.

Justin Holcomb:
It is.

Steve Brown:
If we miss the that, we missed the whole thing. What happened to him? I mean, did they burn him at the stake, or what?

Justin Holcomb:
Well, what ended up happening with Sabellius was, he was not really that well known. And so, his teachings, we don’t have a lot of his teachings because we have all of the people who wrote against him who kept his teachings. And so, he ended up getting deemed as a heretic by some famous Christian theologians like Tertullian, who’s the one that came up with the word Trinity origin, Irenaeus, some of those early ones ended up. And so, he ended up being deemed a heresy, a heretic and kind of just disposed of and some people got exiled. We’re not really sure of all the different things that happened with Sabellius.

Steve Brown:
But he wasn’t that well known.

Justin Holcomb:
No.

Steve Brown:
We know him through his enemies.

Justin Holcomb:
Yeah, yeah, we do. And he was in Egypt for a little bit, and like most of them, we actually know the teachings because of the theologians who wrote against them. So, we actually have quotes from his teaching in the arguments against his teaching.

Steve Brown:
That is so good, Justin. By the way, you can go on Amazon and pick up the book that Justin wrote called Know the Heretics. It’s a great little book, and it’s not just flippantly easy, but you can get it, and you get good stuff, like you got today on Key Life. Because of the Trinity, you’re free, you’re forgiven, you’re loved, you’re going to live forever. Hey, you think about that. Amen.

Matthew Porter:
Well, just like you, I woke up this morning assuming I wouldn’t be learning about the heresy of modalism today, and well yet here we are. Thank you Steve and Justin for that fascinating explanation. And what a beautiful picture it leads us to, right? That love and unity within the Trinity. More good stuff from Steve and Justin tomorrow, do join us then, won’t you? Well, you know, it’s funny, all of these seemingly academic questions about God’s nature very quickly lead to practical applications. Here are some other questions, maybe you’ve asked some of them. Why does God allow bad things to happen? Is He really a loving God if He allows suffering? Well, if you’d like some answers to those questions, then check out a classic sermon from Steve called When Bad Things Happen. We’ll send you that entire sermon on CD for free if you’ll call us right now at 1-800-KEY-LIFE that’s 1-800-539-5433. You can also e-mail [email protected] to ask for that CD. To mail your request, go to keylife.org/contact to find our mailing addresses. Again, just ask for your free copy of the CD called When Bad Things Happen. Finally, if you value the work of Key Life, would you join us in that work through your financial support? You can charge a gift on your credit card or include a gift in your envelope. Or you can give safely and securely through text. Just pick up your phone right now and text Key Life to 28950 that’s Key Life, one word or two. It doesn’t matter. Text that to 28950. Key Life is a member of ECFA in the States and CCCC in Canada. And as always, we are a listener supported production of Key Life Network.