THE CHRISTOLOGY OF JOHN THE BELOVED AS REFLECTED IN HIS GOSPEL, HIS EPISTLES, AND HIS APOCALYPSE
—A Cure for Unitarianism, Arianism, Sabellianism, and Certain Excesses of Tertullianism
By Charles P. Schmitt
PART I: INTRODUCTION
WELL MAY WE ASK: “WHAT ARE THESE “ISMS”, AND HOW ARE THEY RELEVANT TO US TODAY?”
Unitarianism, Arianism, Sabellianism and Tertullianism represent post-apostolic doctrinal understandings about Jesus Christ (in many cases wrong and extreme), and these impact us today because they have powerful modern-day counterparts in our religious world, influencing the people we love and live with and work with &emdash; people we are seeking to win to Jesus Christ and to nurture in Him.
Also, any attempt to denigrate or diminish our Lord Jesus Christ dishonors Him—hence, these issues are to be of deepest importance to us. Likewise, any unnecessary excesses that arise from man's systematic doctrinal structures can (and do) serve to aid in the disunity of Christ's Body. Consequently, these issues are of grave importance to us as we seek out a sound biblical theology. Finally, if the core of all sound doctrine is to foster a deeper personal relationship with God (and it is!) then we must guard carefully the soundness of that doctrine! Hence, these issues are deeply relevant to us today!
Unitarianism is the belief that there is only one person in the Godhead. Unitarianism emphasizes the oneness of God at the expense of denying the preexistence and the deity of Jesus Christ and the Person of the Holy Spirit. In their book, The Doctrine of the Trinity: Christianity's Self-Inflicted Wound, Unitarian authors Anthony F. Buzzard and Charles F. Hunting (who present themselves as evangelicals), define their Christological position in these words: “Jesus could not have been God. He was a being created by the Father…Jesus was the first-born of God's new creation. His origin was unique, involving a miraculous conception (Luke 1:35), but he was neither God nor literally preexistent.” (1) The modern-day non-evangelical Unitarian-Universalist Association is a consolidation of Unitarian and Universalist Churches created in May 1961, which influences hundreds of thousands of people in our country.
Arianism is an ancient doctrinal error representing the christological views of Arius (280–336), presbyter in the church at Alexandria, Egypt. Arius declared of Jesus that “the Son has a beginning, but God is without beginning.” (2) Arianism came close to overrunning the Catholic Church of the fourth century, but was condemned at the Council of Nicea in 325 and again at Constantinople in 381. The modern-day expression of Arius' doctrines is most clearly found in the mouths of some 4.5 million Jehovah's Witnesses of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. The Watch Tower defines its Christology in these words: “Jesus had a glorious existence long before he was born as a human here on earth. The Bible informs us that he is God's 'firstborn' Son. This means that he was created before the other sons of God's family. He is also God's 'only-begotten' Son, in that he is the only one directly created by Jehovah God; all other things came into existence through him as God's Chief Agent… Jesus was not God, but God's Son…” (emphasis added) (3) The Jehovah's Witnesses are a most aggressive movement, whose influence is felt in every part of the world.
Sabellianism is the modalism preached by Sabellius in Rome around 215 AD. Modalism declares that “Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit are not eternal distinctions within God's nature but simply modes (methods or manifestations) of God's activity. In other words, God is one individual being, and various terms used to describe Him (such as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) are designations applied to different relationships He has to man.” (4) The modern-day counterpart to Sabellianism is the Oneness Movement — prominent in twentieth century Pentecostalism. Modern-day Oneness Christology in one regard is amazingly similar to Unitarian Christology. David K. Bernard in his book The Oneness of God writes: “the Son did not pre-exist the Incarnation except as a plan in the mind of God, namely as the Word.” (5) However, unlike both Unitarianism and Arianism, Sabellianism then defines Jesus as “the incarnation of the fullness of God. In His deity, Jesus is the Father and the Holy Spirit.”( 6 )
One of the current practical implications in this Oneness issue is the recent controversy between Hank Hanegraff and T.D. Jakes and Tommy Tenney. Jakes and Tenny come from a Oneness Pentecostal background. In Hanegraff's Christian Research Journal (Vol.22/Issue 2, p.18) editor Jerry L. Buckner describes Jakes' views: “Whether it is called Modalism, Sabellianism, Oneness, or 'Jesus Only', this view of the Trinity is heretical” (emphasis added). What then do we practically do with these two men of God who have brought God's grace to thousands of souls across our nation, now that they have been implicated as “heretical”? The Christology issue indeed has far reaching implications for us!
We would be remiss not to note at this juncture the obvious fact that one can rarely find a truly born again believer in any Unitarian or Arian (Jehovah's Witness) context. In contrast, most all Oneness people in our day, though often highly sectarian, are genuine believers in Jesus and evangelically born again. Unfortunately, the ranks of born again believers can thin quite dramatically in certain traditional Trinitarian churches that are seemingly orthodox but not evangelical.
Lastly, we want to consider Tertullianism. “History credits Tertullian (died 225?) with being the father of Christian Trinitarianism, for he was the first person to use the Latin word trinitas (trinity) for God. He was also the first to use the formula, “una substantia et tres personae” (“three persons in one substance”). Trinitarianism asserts that there are three persons in one God — God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost — and that these three persons are co-equal, co-eternal, and of co-essence…. The council of Nicea in 325 AD marked the first official acceptance of Trinitarianism by Christianity. The Council of Constantinople in 381 reaffirmed and further clarified the doctrine.” (7) One could wish, from an evangelical perspective, that Tertullianism were a problem-free theological framework of thinking; but that, unfortunately, is not the case. Even Tertullian himself frankly admitted in Chapter III of Against Praxeas the problems inherent in his Trinitarian understandings: “The simple — I will not call them unwise or unlearned — who always constitute the majority of believers, are startled at the dispensation of the three in one, on the ground that their very rule of faith withdraws them from the world's plurality of gods to the one only true God.” Historian Williston Walker comments on Tertullian's concerns: “It was difficult for them [this majority of simple believers] to see in Trinitarian conceptions aught else but an assertion of trithesim [i.e., three gods].” (8) The problem becomes clearer when we realize that Tertullian's word “persons” (personae) itself does not appear in the Holy Scriptures, no less any biblical definition of that word, and we are left with the only definition that our human experience provides — our knowledge of three persons as three distinct beings, which above all the objections that Tertullian could muster, would still be construed by many in his day and in ours as three distinct gods. Thus Tertullian's Trinitarianism has been painted down through the ages as polytheism by Unitarians, by Sabellians (Oneness), by Arians (Jehovah's Witnesses) and also by Jews and by Muslims all of whom are fiercely monotheistic, almost to a fault.
Hopefully without unjustly impugning Tertullian, we must also point out that in his tract Against Hermogenes, Tertullian writes: “There was, however, a time when neither sin existed with Him [the Father], nor the Son...” (Herm. Chapter III). This statement had been cited as proof that Tertullian believed in the preexistence of the Son, but expressly denied his eternity. Origen (c.185-254), the Alexandrian who lived at the same time as Tertullian, likewise muddied the Christological waters with his extremes on the subordination of the Son to the Father, which later fueled the whole Alexandrian Arian controversy, which declared Jesus to be a subordinate and “lesser god” — the foundation for modern-day Jehovah's Witness thinking. Origen wrote: “God, the Logos is surpassed by the God of the Universe…. The Son is in no respect to be compared to the Father…. The Father who sent Jesus is alone good and greater than he who was sent.” (9 )
The one saving grace to come out of the Christological debates of the third and fourth century was the Nicene Creed, which in its careful wording seemed to avoid the serious pitfalls cited above. The Nicene Christological segment reads as follows: “I believe…in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of light, Very God of Very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father; by whom all things were made: who for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made man….” (One could but hope, however, that the statement, “begotten of His Father before all worlds” did not carry with it any tincture of either Tertullian's belief of “Jesus' preexistence while denying His eternity”, or of Origen's extreme “subordinationism of the Son to the Father.” But I guess only our Lord Himself knows the answer to that concern!)
PART II: A BIBLICAL FOUNDATION FOR OUR CHRISTOLOGY
Beisner in his book God In Three Persons makes a riveting observation regarding the Nicene Creed: “We must not contend that the Nicene Creed looks like the New Testament. The creed is an exercise in systematic theology. Although there are portions of the New Testament which are highly theological, the one thing we cannot say is that any of it is systematic theology as it was practiced three hundred years later.” (10) One could not but wonder how much pain might have been prevented over these nearly 1700 years had the early catholic Fathers clung to the plain statements of Holy Scripture alone in support of the biblical doctrine of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and the related biblical doctrine of Christ as true God and true man, rather than adding their own systematic thinking into the mix! Well might we ask, are not the Holy Scriptures themselves sufficient to answer the errors of Unitarianism and Arianism? Is not God's Holy Word sufficient in itself to balance the extremes between Sabellius's “modes” and Tertullian's “persons”? (Neither of which expressions appear on the pages of Holy Scripture!) Is it possible that Proverbs 30:4-6 is a proleptic prophecy addressing this very issue: “who has gone up to heaven and come down?…What is his name, and the name of his son? Tell me if you know! Every word of God is flawless; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him. DO NOT ADD TO HIS WORDS, or he will rebuke you and prove you a liar” (NIV). What then says our God Himself on these very important Christological and theological issues?
TEN IMPORTANT SECTIONS OF JOHN'S GOSPEL
John 1:1-18, John's Prologue, clearly declares (if words mean anything): (1) the Deity of our Lord Jesus Christ (“the Word was God,” “God the One and Only”; (2) the preexistence and eternity of our Lord Jesus Christ (“In the beginning was the Word…through him [at creation] all things were made; without him nothing was made”); (3) the eternal fellowship between our Lord Jesus Christ and the Father (“He was with God in the beginning…He came from the Father…He “who is at the Father's side”); and (4) the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ (“The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us.”) I quote the whole passage, noting certain nuances from the Greek: “In the beginning [continually] was the Word, and the Word was [face to face] with God, and the Word was God [Himself (emphatic)]. He was [face to face] with God in the beginning. Through Him all things were made; without him nothing [not even one thing] was made that had been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men…He was in the world and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him…[then] the word became flesh [the Incarnation] and made his dwelling [tabernacled] among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only [lit, monogenous, the 'one of a kind'] who came from the Father, full of grace and truth…. No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only [the 'unique' one] who is at the Father's side ['who is in the bosom of the Father,' lit.], has made him known [exegeted him].” What a marvelous and clear Scripture declaring Jesus' Deity, His preexistence and eternity, His eternal relationship with His Father, and His Incarnation! Of this passage and its doctrine we can only say, “ Let God be true and every man a liar!” (Romans 3:4)
John, Chapter 3, Jesus' Dialogue with Nicodemus, clearly declares (if words mean anything) Jesus' preexistence &emdash; not simply as a thought in God's mind, but as the living, dynamic Son in fellowship with His Father and sent forth from Him! “No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven &emdash; the son of man” (3:13). God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world…” (3:17). “The one who comes from above is above all…. The one who comes from heaven is above all” (3:31). Nothing could be clearer than these words concerning Jesus' preexistence!
John, Chapter 5, Jesus' discourse at the Pool, contains clear statements concerning Jesus' equality with His Father — Jesus “was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God” (5:18). [Please note that this “equality” was John's observation, not an accusation from Jesus' opponents.] Jesus consequently taught that it was expedient that “all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father…” (5:23), implying His equality with the Father.
John, Chapter 6, Jesus, the Bread from Heaven, clearly declares Jesus' preexistence before His Incarnation (and not merely as a thought in the mind and heart of the Father, but as One sent forth out of a living fellowship with His Father) “My Father…gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (6:32-33). “What if you see the Son of Man ascend to where he was before!” (6:62).
John, Chapter 8, Jesus — the Great “I AM”, further declares both Jesus' Deity and His preexistence. “I know where I came from and where I am going…” (8:14). “I came from God and now am here…” (8:42). If you do not believe that I AM…you will indeed die in your sins” (8:24). “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I AM, and that I do nothing on my own but speak what the Father has taught me” (8:28). “I tell you the truth,” Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, 'I AM'” (8:58). To these verses we must add the seven great “I AMs” of Jesus in John (John 6:48; 8:12;10:9; 10:11; 11:25; 14:6; 15:1). To understand how these “I AMs” are Jesus' affirmation of His Deity, we must recount Jehovah's commission to Moses in Exodus 3:14 — “God said to Moses, 'I AM WHO I AM.' This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you'”. Jesus is clearly the Great “I AM” of the Old Testament!
John, Chapter 10, Jesus' “I AM THE GOOD SHEPHERD”, further underscores Jesus' Deity. When Jesus declared that He was the Good Shepherd (10:14), He thus identified Himself with Jehovah of Psalm 23:1. When He then declared “I and the Father are one” (10:30), the Jews immediately “picked up stones to stone him” (10:31) because, they stated, “you, a mere man, claim to be God” (10:33). They saw the issues clearly. Jesus' response to their outrage was not to deny their insights, but simply to point out that even mere men were called “gods” (10:34–35) in the Old Testament; how much more “the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world” (10:36)!
John, Chapter 12, Jesus' Final Days, contains a powerful commentary by John the Beloved concerning Jesus. In explaining why “even after Jesus had done all these miraculous signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him” (12:37), John quotes from Isaiah 6:10: “He has blinded their eyes and deadened their hearts….” He then adds this profound statement — “Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus' glory and spoke about him” (12:41). The wider passage from Isaiah 6, which John quotes, is clear. Isaiah, in Chapter 6 writes, “I saw the Lord [Adonai] seated on a throne…the whole earth is full of his glory…my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty [Jehovah of Hosts]” (6:1, 3, 5). John pointedly declared that this glorious one, Jehovah of Hosts, Adonai, was JESUS! In his vision of Chapter 6, Isaiah “ saw Jesus' glory and spoke about him”!
John, Chapter 14, Jesus' Final Words, describe Jesus' deep relationship with His Father, illustrating the self-emptying (kenosis) spoken of by Paul in Philippians 2:7, as a result of which Jesus could do “nothing by himself” (5:19). Rather, He declared, “I am in the Father, and…the Father is in me…it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work…I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (14:10-11). In His “self-emptying” incarnation, Jesus would then declare: “the Father is greater than I” (14:28).
John, Chapter 17, Jesus' High Priestly Prayer, beautifully underscores Jesus' preexistence, and His conscious eternal relationship with His Father. “I came from the Father and entered the world; now I am leaving the world and going back to the Father” (16:18). “Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began” (17:5). “Father…you loved me before the creation of the world” (17:24).
John, Chapter 21, Jesus' acceptance of Thomas' confession, contains the capstone of John's revelation of Jesus. As true man, Jesus would call His Father, “my God” (20:17); as true God, Jesus would then receive Thomas' confession: “Thomas said to him [Jesus], 'my Lord [lit, ' the Lord of me'] and my God' [lit, 'the God of me']!” Jesus was Thomas' Lord and God! (Note: Thomas did not say Jesus was “a god” but the God!) Jesus' response to Thomas was not to refuse his confession, but to observe: “because you have seen me, you have believed…” (20:29). And we too; as we see Him — not with our natural eyes, but with the eyes of our heart, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, will also declare of Jesus: “You are My Lord and My God”!
CONCLUDING TESTIMONY FROM JOHN'S EPISTLES AND HIS APOCALYPSE
John's statements in his first letter are clear concerning Jesus' eternal preexistence, His relationship with His Father, and His Deity: “That which was from the beginning [His preexistence], which we heard, which we have seen with our own eyes, and which we have looked at and our hands have touched [His Incarnation; see also 4:2] — this we proclaim concerning the Word of Life…. We proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father [His eternal preexistent relationship with the Father] and has appeared to us [His incarnation]” (1:1-2). We note in particular that Jesus is here called “the eternal life, which was with the Father” (1:2). In I John 5:20 we are further told: “We are in him who is true — even in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.” John could not express the Deity of Jesus Christ in any clearer words!
II John, verses 7 and 9 contain two amazing statements of truth —first of all, an emphatic declaration concerning the Incarnation: “Many deceivers, who do not acknowledge Jesus Christ as coming in the flesh, have gone out into the world. Any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist”! (v.7) And then, in verse 9, John clearly defines God as “both the Father and the Son.” “Anyone who runs ahead and does not continue in the teaching of Christ does not have God; whoever continues in the teaching has both the Father and the Son.”
Finally, the Christological implications of John's Revelation are profound
In the opening vision of John's apocalypse (Rev. 1:12-16) Jesus is presented to us by John as “someone 'like a son of man',” a clear reference to Daniel 7:13. John then describes Jesus as “dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet…. His head and hair were like wool, as white as snow and his eyes were like blazing fire.” This is essentially the description in Daniel 7:9 of “the Ancient of Days” — whose “clothing was as white as snow; the hair of his head was white like wool. His throne was flaming with fire.” John apparently saw Jesus as the “son of man” who was Himself the embodiment of “the Ancient of Days”, illustrating John's understanding of Jesus' words in John 14:11: “I am in the Father and the Father is in me.” This is the essence of John's Christology!
John then borrows certain key names from the prophet Isaiah &emdash; names describing the Jehovah of the Old Testament &emdash; and John gives them to Jesus! In Isaiah 44:6, Jehovah declares, “I am the first and I am the last; apart from me there is no God.” (So, if Jesus is God in any sense of the word, He must be this God — Jehovah; for apart from Him “there is no God”!) In Isaiah, Jehovah says, “I am the first and I am the Last….” In Revelation 1:17 Jesus says, “I am the First and the Last.” So Jesus in the New Testament is clearly declared to be the Jehovah of the Old Testament! In Revelation 1:8 God Himself declares: “ I am the Alpha and Omega, says the Lord God, 'who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty'.” But in Revelation 22:12 Jesus Himself declares, “Behold, I am coming soon!…. I am the Alpha and Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.” Clearly, then, Jesus is the Lord God, the Almighty (see also 21:5-6). This is John's Christology!
Finally, in the message to the seven churches, each begins with the statement that it is Jesus Himself who is speaking —“These are the words of him who holds the seven stars in his right hand” (2:11)… “These are the words of him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again” (2:8)… “These are the words of the Son of God…” (2:18), etc. Interestingly, each of these messages then concludes with the statement, “He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches” (2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22). These statements are a clarification of Jesus' words in John 16:13: “But when he, the Spirit of truth comes…. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears…. He will bring glory to me by taking from what is mine and making it known to you.”
In John's Revelation, when Jesus appears, the Father appears; when Jesus speaks, the Holy Spirit speaks. It is these concepts that Tertullian and Origen (though poorly, at times) sought to communicate; it is these insights that are at the heart of the Nicene Creed. And so in considering the whole of John's writings, we find in them a cure for Unitarianism's erroneous decree: “He was neither God nor literally preexistent” and also for modern-day Arianism's error: “Jesus was not God, but God's Son…created before the other sons of God's family”, and also for modern-day Sabellianism's erroneous Oneness declaration: “the Son did not pre-exist the Incarnation except as a plan in the mind of God”, and also for Tertullian's short-sighted error: “There was a time when neither sin existed with Him [the Father], nor the Son…”, and also for Origen's grave error: “The Son is in no respect to be compared to the Father.” Because John's writings are the inspired, life-giving, life-changing, infallible Word of God, we are, also able to present them with confidence to both Jews and Muslims, knowing that His Holy Word will not return to Him empty (Isaiah 55:11), but will “achieve the purpose for which He sent it”!
And in the final analysis, all of our considerations of Jesus — as Son of Man and Son of God — must always draw us to that very same place that the women came to on that first resurrection morning: “They came to him, clasped his feet and worshipped him.” Amen and amen!
(1)Anthony F. Buzzard and Charles F. Hunting; The Doctrine of the Trinity (Lanham, MD: International Scholars Publications, 1998), 74
(2)Arius to Eusebius (c.321), in Documents of the Christian Church, ed., Henry Bettenson (London: Oxford University Press, 1943), 55
(3)The Truth That Leads to Eternal Life (New York: Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society, 1968), pp.47, 48
(4)David K. Bernard, The Oneness of God (Hazelwood, MO: World Aflame Press, 1983), p.318
(5)Bernard, op cit., 302
(6)Bernard, op cit., 295
(7)Bernard, op cit., 325. See also E. Calvin Beisner's God In Three Persons (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House, 1984), p56: “The Latin word for Trinity (trinitas) occurs for the first time in Tertullian's Against Praxeas, and his phrases tres personae and una substantia anticipated the orthodox Trinitarian formula.”
(8)Williston Walker, A History of the Christian Church (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1959), 68
(9)Origen, Commentary on John (II, 3; XIII, 35;VI, 23)
