Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. (Acts 2:3
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The Legacy of Arianism
Armstrongism in Contention with the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit
By Scout
In the formative years of the early Christian church, Arianism was a theological orthodoxy. Arius, a Greek-speaking Berber from Libya, ca. 256-336 BC, believed and taught that there was only one God. And the Son was not God but a created being subordinate to God and separate from God. Jesus was just a creature who was granted the dignity of being the Son of God. And the Holy Spirit is not a divine being co-equal with God but was, rather, “the illuminating and sanctifying power of God, which is neither God the Father nor God the Son (Bishop Ulfilas)”. The Arian Model was proclaimed heresy and refuted in the Councils of Nicaea (325 AD) and Constantinople (381 AD) and the Trinity Model was adopted by Christianity. Classical Armstrongism is not fully Arian but could be classed as Semi-Arian. Some points at issue follow.
Arguments for the Holy Spirit as a Divine Being
1. The Holy Spirit is revealed in the New Testament as having volition. Volition is the property of a Being that possesses will rather than the property of an impersonal energy. "So Barnabas and Saul were sent out by the Holy Spirit. They went down to the seaport of Seleucia and then sailed for the island of Cyprus." (Acts 13:42. There is language that categorizes the Holy Spirit with the other persons of the Trinity such as Matthew 28:19-203. There is the Armstrongist interpretation that the Holy Spirit is a kind of energy that emanates from God the Father. A scripture is: “But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me.” (John 15:264. Armstrongism claims that the Holy Spirit is an attribute of God. It is a force of God and also a mindset of God. Yet, the language of the New Testament indicates that the Holy Spirit is separate from the Father. Notice the logistical/spatial languagespoken by Jesus in John 16::
“Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.”
The Father and the Holy Spirit are without a doubt in complete agreement in attitude and purpose but the scripture above indicates that they are not the same as to personhood. Jesus speaks of the Holy Spirit as a separate being with role and volition. Even if the prepositions of motion are allegorical, the sense that there are two persons being described is undeniable. The Holy Spirit is not just an attribute of God.
5. The role of the Holy Spirit in uniting us with Christ requires that the Holy Spirit, acting separately but in harmony with the Father as we saw in point 4 above, be a God Being. Spiritual union with Christ is not accomplished by an impersonal force like some sort of adhesive. Moreover, it is a union of humans with God and not the uniting of two beings of equal parity. There is an uplifting of humanity into the Godly domain that cannot be initiated and executed from a subordinate position. A divine person at the level of God must accomplish the union. Notice this from 1 Corinthians 12:
“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.”
Don’t be distracted by the metaphors. They do not express the essence of what the Holy Spirit is. In the early part of the verse, the ceremony of baptism is mentioned which depicts immersion in water and then later the idea of “drinking” is mentioned. This mixing of metaphors used by Paul is not meant to imply that when we are immersed in the baptismal waters we are supposed to drink some of the water. In Jeremiah 2:13
6. Under the Armstrongist model of the Holy Spirit, it is difficult to understand how the Holy Spirit can be inherently holy. It is essentially a tool or a workable substance in that model (see citation below). The tool is not holy, it is the person who uses the tool that may be holy. The tool is just a tool. I doubt that Captain Kirk considered a tractor beam to be holy. Holy comes with being, will and intent. One may argue that it is holy because it originates with God but everything originates with God.
Arianism, the Adventists, the Church of God Seventh Day and Armstrongism
Arianism asserts the anti-trinitarian ideas that Jesus was created and the Holy Spirit is an impersonal force. Arianism seems to have been a property of Millerism from the beginning of that movement. The early Adventists were semi-Arians. They believed that Jesus was created but they departed from strict Arianism by believing that Jesus did partake of the divine nature. And they believed that the Holy Spirit was a divine power. This Ariainist theme found in the Millerite-derived Church of God Seventh Day when Herbert W. Armstrong fellowshipped with them.
Robert Coulter, former President of the Church of God Seventh Day stated concerning the Trinity: “When I grew up in the church, it was Arian. It taught the preexistence of Christ, but Christ was not God…Arianism tends to degrade the position of Christ, and it also tends to reflect on the work of the nature of the Holy Spirit, so I think some of us have come to the position of recognizing that the Holy Spirit is more than just a blind force. I think we're willing to assign personality.” By preexistence, Coulter explains that he did not mean eternal preexistence but that Jesus somewhere in the depths of the past was created by God. Classical Armstrongism follows Arianism with one exception – Armstrongists believe that Jesus is God. But they retain Arianist Subordinationism in that they believe that Jesus is a lesser God.
Armstrongists characterize the Holy Spirit sometimes as an energy and other times as a substance from which something can be composed. In an article co-authored by Garner Ted Armstrong and David Jon Hill, the Holy Spirit is defined in this way:
Robert Coulter, former President of the Church of God Seventh Day stated concerning the Trinity: “When I grew up in the church, it was Arian. It taught the preexistence of Christ, but Christ was not God…Arianism tends to degrade the position of Christ, and it also tends to reflect on the work of the nature of the Holy Spirit, so I think some of us have come to the position of recognizing that the Holy Spirit is more than just a blind force. I think we're willing to assign personality.” By preexistence, Coulter explains that he did not mean eternal preexistence but that Jesus somewhere in the depths of the past was created by God. Classical Armstrongism follows Arianism with one exception – Armstrongists believe that Jesus is God. But they retain Arianist Subordinationism in that they believe that Jesus is a lesser God.
Armstrongists characterize the Holy Spirit sometimes as an energy and other times as a substance from which something can be composed. In an article co-authored by Garner Ted Armstrong and David Jon Hill, the Holy Spirit is defined in this way:
“The truth is that the Holy Spirit is not one of the Persons of the Godhead, but is the substance of which those who are in the Godhead are composed. "God is a Spirit ... " (John 4: 24
A power? Or a substance? This seems to merge God’s essence and God’s energy and makes the Father, Son and Holy Spirit consubstantial. It seems to say there really is no discernable Holy Spirit – that the idea is at most rhetorical. One is led to ask then why does God even mention the Holy Spirit – does that not just complicate an otherwise clean and simplistic reality? Perhaps, God just has a penchant for flowery Biblical language. I think not. There is a personal, divine Being that is the Holy Spirit. Most of its metaphors are not anthropomorphic like those related to the Father and the Son that we are used to. The Holy Spirit seems to us a mystery because it is.
Armstrong, Ted and Hill, David Jon. “Who – What – was Jesus before his Human Birth?”, The Good News, January 1953.
Cartwright, Dixon, “Former Church of God (Seventh Day) president discusses Church of God history and Herbert Armstrong”, 2008.
SDANet. “Were the Early Adventists Arians?”
18 comments:
I feel embarrassed for the author. It's the same with other prominent theologians. The think they have it figured out and they are so far off base they aren't even in the park.
If the holy spirit is a divine being, Christ would have mentioned him more often in His long prayer to God the Father in the book of John.
The Trinity and personhood of the HS have been debated for hundreds of years, so I don't see it being resolved here, especially with blunt statements from scholarly works like the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia:
with Acts 2:38
).
)". See ISBE page 916, Word Studies on the HS, page 37-39. This would make the HS "of" God (personal possessive) but not a separate personage. Such is the conclusion of 1 Corinthians 8:4-7
, and the ISBE that concludes that "the NT is overall clearly binitarian in its data", page 917.
"the treatment of the HS is difficult, ambiguous and sometimes oblique to the interests of later trinitarianism". " Evidence for the divinity of the Spirit is thinner and HAZIER than symmetrical fifth century trinitarian statements suggest". (ISBE, 1986, vol.4, pg.916). Since it is that ambitious, maybe Captain Kirk's opinion on tractor beams can clear this up, but I don't think so.
Scout and others place a heavy emphasis on triadic formulas, which is interesting, for the ISBE relates that this argument is the "best the NT has to offer regarding the Spirit's personhood". Yet, it is also acknowledged that " it is absolutely possible that the authors of these formulas have combined a reference to a faculty or power with references to two persons".
Thomas Gaston says, "these passages cannot be taken as evidence of the belief in the co substantial unity of God. Names may be conjoined for any number of reasons (unity in greeting, purpose, etc.), so even the use of a three fold formula cannot be conclusive". (Proto-Trinity: The Development of the Doctrine of the Trinity in the First and Second Centuries, 2007).
The triadic formulas are suggestive if one reads their pre concieved ideas into them. But by themselves they do not establish personhood. Also, Scripture is not consistent with " names" (compare Matthew 28:19-20
Both Bullinger and the ISBE suggest "that God's spirit is to God as a human spirit is to a human being (1 Corinthians 2:10
The Trinity remains, as Scout writes, " a mystery ". Because of this, I see no reason to demean or impose negative labels on those who have different views from the majority, for that is an Armstrong tactic pure and simple. Also, for a subject so ambiguous, it should not be the main test of orthodoxy and required for salvation as insisted upon by the late Dr. Walter Martin.
Several years ago, there was a significant number of WCG and former WCG members and ministers who had fully bought into the "One God" Theory (Arianism).
Some of those who thought that they had discovered new truth were anxious to share and argue the point on the blogs and forums, and they had collected and arranged an exhaustive number of scriptures which they used as their proof texts. They even went into the Greek. Others quoted scriptures which countered this, based on what they had learned about the "binity" from Herbert W. Armstrong, and the "trinity" from their new churches in the mainstream. All participants were very headstrong.
This exercise, for me, went off in an entirely different direction. Someone many years ago at a natural childbirth class, in which numerous pregnant couples from the WCG were participating, had passed a comment that you can prove anything you want from the Bible. At the time that comment was made, I believed that we had found and proven the truth, and that all others who did not have it were deceived. They were the ones who were proving "anything." Yet, the One God" people on the internet had taken the proof blueprint and logic learned from Armstrongism, and had applied it very convincingly to their new Arian views. The argument on the forum appeared to be a stalemate with all participants believing they had won. The takeaway from these discussions for me was that the proof methodology used in Armstrongism was flawed. You can actually use it to prove heresy, and HWA did!.
BB
The Word was God ........ and made flesh.....and "many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh."
The commenters here who are best appreciated and most edifying may make statements such you did, 5:18, but then they continue and present some well-thought-out counterpoint, or a completely different model. How are these theologians off base, and how, in your opinion, do they get back in the park? I personally believe the author hit a home run out of the oark, but what is your perspective or alternative? Please don't just do a driveby. Elucidate!
(But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive: for the Holy Ghost was not yet given; because that Jesus was not yet glorified.) John 7:39
.
If the HS was a separate being why would Jesus have to be glorified?
Anonymous 7:20 wrote, "If the holy spirit is a divine being, Christ would have mentioned him more often in His long prayer to God the Father in the book of John."
The Holy Spirit was mentioned twice as the Comforter. Once in John 15 and once in John 16. In both cases, Jesus speaks of the Comforter as a Person.
Scout
Some good comments here. BB, you are right, even heresy can be proven lol.
This debate will rage on, of that I have no doubt. And I am not a prophet unlike some claimants. Comment at 10:48:09 AM PDT noted.
BP8 7:40 wrote, ”The Trinity and personhood of the HS have been debated for hundreds of years…”
Yes, it has been debated. And now we have on the Nicene side of the issue all of the main stream religious denominations. On the dissenting side (Arianists, Socinians), you find a collection of atypical denominations including the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Christadelphians, Unitarians, various Millerite-derived groups and the Mormons.
Do you see a trend?
The Nicene-Constantinopolitan conclusion is the best fit to the all of the data – not just the Triads. And I do not believe the Triads alone, although powerful, are the best data out there despite what the ISBE might say. My point 5, along with the Triads, is a much stronger argument.
Scout
... and?
Anonymous 10:48 wrote, "If the HS was a separate being why would Jesus have to be glorified?"
). This work of union could not proceed until Christ came into his full ontological state, that is, glorified.
The easy answer is that the work of the Holy Spirit is to create a union between those who become Christians and Jesus Christ. As Christians, we are part of the Body of Christ and live in the "unity of the Spirit" (Ephesians 4:3
The glorification of Christ has nothing directly to do with the personhood of the Holy Spirit. Jesus wasn't doing this himself because the Holy Spirit was not a Being. Jesus had a role to perform and the Holy Spirit had a role to perform. There was a plan.
Scout
Byker Bob 8:52 wrote, "The argument on the forum appeared to be a stalemate with all participants believing they had won."
Some stalemates really are not stalemates - they are just refusals. The Bible is rich in metaphor and, unfortunately, this also makes the Bible difficult to interpret. One man's metaphor is another man's literal statement. This principle has gotten us an anthropomorphic God.
I do not believe the case for the Nicene Trinity is pre-emptive. It is just way better than anything else in town. If I am taught one day that the Nicene Trinity was a misreckoning by sincere people, I would not be perturbed. We see through a glass darkly and God is on the other side of the glass from us.
Scout
The Gist or essence of it all, Scout, is that for the Holy Spirit to do what He does, He must be interactive with humans. That demands the ability to analyze or process data from each individual Christian. And it's not just a matter of exchanging impersonal signals. He is personalizing His work, crafting it for each of us, and saving that work to our muscle memory, and character. I just don't see us getting to where we need to be with Armstrong's force or energy model. HWA was in need of a higher concept, and somehow never realized it.
Even as advanced as AI is becoming, forgetting for the moment simple energy or a force field, you still just don't attain anything close to loving mentorship without a sentient being involved. Personhood. It's something to which people may not wish to apply that name, but the activity and results are what define it, not the name.
BB
The article starts out with total nonsense (and it only gets worse from there).
In the formative years of the early Christian church, Arianism was a theological orthodoxy. Arius, a Greek-speaking Berber from Libya, ca. 256-336 BC ...
The formative years of the Christian church were during the life of Jesus and his 12 original apostles (Assuming Jesus and his 12 apostles actually existed)., Arius came by LONG after the formative years.
Further, the church in the days of Arius was no longer the "Christian church" and Jesus never would have recognized it.
This is just further evidence that most "scholarship" is loaded with nonsense.
Scout 221
).
. Yet Paul, over and over again, calls himself, an Apostle of (one sent by) -not the HS, but CHRIST! See 1 Cor.1:1
, 2 Cor.1:1
, Eph 1:1
, Col. 1:1
, etc.
, " for Christ (not the HS) sent me not to baptise, but to preach the gospel ".
we read, " as they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the HS said, separate ME Barnabus and Saul for the work where unto (I) have called them".
, 16:10
, 26:15-17
). In verse 2, it is Christ speaking through the power, essence, and extension of HIS very being, HIS spirit, just as He cast out demons by the spirit of (finger of) God. (compare Matthew 12:28
with Luke 11:20
).
, where "Jesus began both to do and teach until the day in which HE (by and through the HS, an extension of Himself) had given commandment (as in Acts 13) unto the apostles whom (HE) had chosen".
Ron Dart use to say it's not the truth that usually wins debates but the best debater. That's the way of the world.
Concerning your point 5, I will answer with one scripture:
Now the LORD (IS) THAT SPIRIT, and where the spirit (of) the Lord is there is liberty (2 Corinthians 3:17
While we're at it, I will also comment on point 1, where it says, "Paul and Barnabus were sent out by the HS", Acts 13:4
1 Corinthians1:17
In Acts 13:2
The HS is said to be speaking, but WHO actually called and sent out Paul? It was the person of Jesus Christ, not a separate personage ( see Acts 9:15
This is clearly illustrated in Acts 1:1-2
This speaks for itself!
For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily - NKJV Col 2:9
.
We can't be sure the Holy Sprit is not a separate being for the mere order of things in this chapter of John
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