The Legacy of Arianism: Armstrongism in Contention with the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit

 

Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. (Acts 2:3)

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 13:4) There are many such examples in the NT.

2. There is language that categorizes the Holy Spirit with the other persons of the Trinity such as Matthew 28:19-20 where it says, “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost”. These statements are known as Triads.

3. 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 15:26) But Jesus, a member of the Trinity, also comes from the Father but Jesus is not categorized as an energy: “I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.” (John 16:28) The verbs “proceedeth from” and “came forth” are simple Greek logistical terms and are comparable.

4. 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, Yahweh compares himself to a fountain of living waters. This does not mean that he somehow is a liquid consisting of molecules of hydrogen and oxygen. Neither do the metaphors in the scripture from 1 Corinthians 12 above have the purpose of describing the ontological essence of the Holy Spirit.

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:

“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?”

 

COGWA: After discovering they have actual members and need to care for them, they anounce a new building campaign---there are priorities, after all

Why is it that all of the current batches of COG's seem to have just discovered 

they have members and need to "care" for their brethren?

 

A reader here has notified us of new fun things happening in the Church of God a Worldwide Association (COGWA).

Always eager to outdo the United Church of God, their spiritual mother, they continue to flaunt how rich and increased with goods they are. What is really obvious is how slick of a propaganda campaign they are doing to con members into the belief they need new facilities.

They announced two recent land deals that dumped a lot of money into their pockets. The reader here wrote:

COGWA just announced the expansion of their office building. Two articles have been published on their website. I find particularly interesting their comment about two property sales, one of a house they own, and another of some land elsewhere. I find especially noteworthy they make the claim that land is worth $1,000,000. Vanity, vanity, all is vanity. 

Here are the links:

January-February 2025 Special Member Letter

In the midst of all this sad news, there is some very encouraging news to report from the Church at the conclusion of another fiscal year. The fiscal year 2024, which ended on Dec. 31, produced the largest increases in the work of the Church that we have ever witnessed in a single year. Our income was 10 percent more than the previous year (2023). Our numbers in Media continue to increase as well. We had a record number of people contact us in 2024. These are primarily new people who are reading our literature or watching our video programs. Our Life, Hope & Truth Presentsprograms continue to improve and grow, and a couple of them have logged more than 150,000 views. We find this very encouraging for a program that only debuted in the fall of 2023.

I also have news about our proposal to build on our property here in McKinney, Texas. More than two years ago, in August of 2022, I proposed to the Ministerial Board of Directors (MBOD) that our finances coming out of the COVID pandemic made it possible for us to build an auditorium/education center on the remaining 3 acres of our property. This was part of our original plan when we built the office back in 2018. In the case of the office, the Church paid cash for the property and then took out a mortgage for the building. That was indeed a leap of faith for us as a small organization that was still just getting its feet on the ground. But God blessed us abundantly during the two years of planning and construction, and we paid off the mortgage in June 2021, roughly two years after completing the office in 2019. The Church was debt-free at that point, and we have remained that way ever since.

Today, with four out of the past five years showing increased income, our amount of available cash has also increased. With no debt and a very healthy cash reserve, we are in position now to add the second building to our property. Following is an artist’s drawing of what the building could look like. Its outward appearance will be very similar to our current office building.

The seating capacity of the auditorium, as drawn, will be 466, but there will also be three additional rooms that can be used for overflow, bringing the total capacity to over 600.

 

There will be a separate section for Foundation Institute that will seat 48 students at tables. This section can be closed off so that classes can be in session while other events are taking place in the auditorium. And by moving FI to the new building, we will free up an additional 1,000-plus square feet in the office that will be converted to accommodate the growing needs of our Media department. We envision that this new space will be used for equipment storage, a second studio, offices and workstations for employees.

It is certainly appropriate to ask, What will the building be used for in addition to Sabbath services for the local Dallas congregation? In our discussions with the MBOD, we have all agreed that there are many possibilities. Here is a partial list.

• Home for Foundation Institute students and instructors.
• Home for our biennial International Ministerial Conference.
• Home for our Pastoral Development Program, which is also conducted biennially in the off years from the conference.
• Home for the FI continuing education summer classes.
• Home for occasional regional and national weekends.
• Home for a national Young Adult Leadership Weekend program. This year we had 150 who attended from around the country and a few from outside the United States.
• Home for national seminars on marriage and other educational topics. These would be developed as part of an overall education program for the membership.
• Home for a regional Feast site. Currently we don’t have any plans for such a site, but this could become a need as more people are unable to travel long distances for the Feast.
• Home for special combined services in the Dallas/Fort Worth/Sherman metroplex.
• Home for special social and sports activities. Currently we are running out of space in the office for our local FI and young adult weekend activities.

The Church is now in a position to pay cash for this new structure, but our proposal is to secure a mortgage for up to half the cost instead of decreasing our cash reserves to an unacceptable level. Our desire would be to pay this mortgage off within three to five years of the building being completed. We also own two pieces of property that we hope to sell in this current fiscal year—a house in Portland (donated to the Church a couple of years ago) and a 1.5-acre section of land that is currently on the market for $1 million. With no debt, a solid cash reserve and properties to sell, we have a proposal to cover all the costs for the new building without impacting our budget and still keeping an adequate cash reserve. 

This brings me to an important announcement. On Tuesday afternoon, Jan. 21, 2025, the Ministerial Board of Directors unanimously approved our proposal for building a new auditorium/education center. We have already selected a builder and are currently working on a contract to build. If all goes well with the contract and the building permits from the city, we hope to break ground during the summer with a tentative completion date of May 2026. 

March 2025 Member Letter

One chapter in the book is all about planning. His logic is quite simple—have a plan for the future and make it as detailed a plan as you can put together. He titled the chapter “Hope Is Not a Strategy.” To hope things will work out is important, but without also having a true plan and a sound strategy, it rarely leads to the fulfillment of your goals. While I don’t base my pre-Passover plan on Admiral McRaven, I have found the idea of always having a plan extremely helpful, whether in preparing strategies for life and work or in preparing for the Passover. Scripture is very clear as to how we prepare for the Passover: “examine [yourself], and so … eat and drink of the cup.”

At the office we are now making plans for the new auditorium and education center. We have presented our civil drawings to the city and wait for their response. Our contractor feels that if the city approves quickly, we could break ground as early as April and hopefully no later than May. This is indeed exciting. When we built the office in 2019, our finances were such that we paid for the land but we had to borrow the entire amount for the construction. God provided, and we paid the office mortgage off in less than two years.

Now, because of the strength of our finances, we can pay for the building outright without affecting any of our programs. From a financial perspective, the past two years have seen excellent increases. Based on Admiral McRaven’s advice to always have a plan, we have put one together for the new building. It is our plan to borrow half the funds as a construction loan (paying interest only during the construction period) and pay cash for the other half. Then, after the building is completed, we will repay the money we borrowed either immediately or within a fairly short period of time. By following this plan, we will keep more of our cash in the initial stages of the construction.

If all goes well and the city of McKinney approves our permits, the breaking of ground for the building should take place just before or just after our international ministerial conference scheduled for the first week of May. We hold an international conference for the ministry every two years. Our past two conferences were under the cloud of the COVID pandemic. In 2021 we were still in the pandemic, and in 2023 we had just come out of the pandemic. To be planning a conference without this weight over us is truly exciting. We should have our largest attendance thus far for the conference, with many internationals planning to attend. Combined with the locals, our attendance should be around 350. 

The Banned reader concludes:

I find particularly amusing their list of reasons to justify this decision...

Dave Pack: We Will Soon Be Debt Free!

 

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