Trinity-Part 3

The first distortion of the biblical view of the Trinity was proposed by a man named Sabellius. In his attempt to protect the view of God being one, he suggested that God has manifested Himself throughout history in three different forms. The Father first revealed Himself as Creator and as the One who appeared to Moses and the Prophets. In the New Testament, He appears in the flesh as the Son of God. And when Jesus ascends to heaven, God came in the form of the Holy Spirit. This view is called "modalism" because it emphasizes that the Father, Son, and Spirit are all God appearing in different "modes" each time. Modalism falls apart when the Scripture tells us that the Father, Son and Spirit are present at the same time, such as when Jesus is baptized. Modalism never gained a large following, even though I still come across many believers that think about the Trinity in this way.

The biggest heresy regarding the Trinity was formulated by Arius. He suggested that although Jesus is a supreme Being and worthy of great honor, He was merely the first and greatest creation of God. Like modalism, the intent was to protect Christianity as a monotheistic religion. This teaching became popular enough that the early church called a council (The Council of Nicea in A.D. 325) to deal with this threat. The hero of the council was a theologian named Athanasius. He successfully argued that the New Testament teaches that Jesus is of the same substance, or essence, as the Father. The Council affirmed this and it proved to be a defining moment in the history of Christianity. You could argue that if the church had left behind the divinity of Jesus, we would have eventually died as a Great Commission movement. Remember, Jesus commands us to go and make disciples baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. If the Son and the Spirit aren't God, the Great Commission is meaningless.

These historical distortions of the Trinity have crept back into the church throughout the years in different forms. In fact, you may have already been exposed to it if you have read a recent bestseller, The Shack. We'll talk about that next.