Author Archive: DCPPress

Local Church et al v. Harvest House et al—Questions & Answers

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  1. Why did you sue over this book (ECNR)?
  2. What does ECNR say about you that is false and damaging?
  3. Why couldn’t you have waited longer before suing?
  4. Have you ever filed this kind of litigation before?
  5. Why did you sue for money?
  6. Why would people write such things about you and even sue to stop your protest?
  7. Who were the individual plaintiff churches (parties bringing the lawsuit) and why were not all the local churches named?
  8. Why do you think Scripture allowed for litigation in this case?

  1. Question: Why did you sue over this book (ECNR)?

    Answer: ECNR falsely portrays the Local Church, Living Stream Ministry and the local churches, their teachings and their practices in a most horrific manner. It promotes religious bigotry of the worst sort, extolling “intolerance” as a “virtue” and attempting to collectively demonize us along with all of the groups in the book.

    ECNR’s Introduction clearly labels all of the groups in the book as being guilty of the most deplorable, illegal and immoral acts and uses “guilt-by-association” to link a legitimate Christian ministry and thousands of innocent believers with the most vile and contemptible behavior. Its false statements affect our ministry and our relationships with fellow Christians, friends and relatives. Facts about the Pending Litigation supplies some of the history of our attempts to resolve this matter peacefully as brothers in Christ. The authors’ and publisher’s disregard for our efforts, their repeated delays in addressing the issues, and finally, Harvest House’s filing of a lawsuit against us convinced us that we really had no other reasonable alternative left. Based on our observations, if we do not protest such defamatory writing to the extent the law allows, others will believe and repeat these falsehoods, causing more harm to the churches and our ministry and stumbling untold numbers of people we are seeking to reach with the gospel of Christ.

  2. Question: What does ECNR say about you that is false and damaging

    Answer: The book ascribes many evil traits to us as a “cult”. In general we are likened to groups like the People’s Temple of Jim Jones that ended in mass murder and suicide in Guyana, and the David Koresh group that ended in destruction in Waco, Texas. The book ascribes many evil traits to the cults, including: “deception and evil,” “authoritarianism,” “isolationism,” “financial exploitation.psychological intimidation,” “often subjected to psychological, physical harm,” “degradation and perversion of sexuality,” “encourage prostitution;” “sometimes raped women, beaten their disciples, molested children, practiced black magic and witchcraft, engaged in drug smuggling and other criminal activities, including murder;” and “human sacrifice.” In addition the book twists our teachings beyond recognition to make us appear to conform to their mold of what occult groups believe and practice. For a more complete understanding of the book’s false and damaging portrayal of the churches, see Letter dated November 20, 2001 and Lawsuit filed in Harris County.

  3. Question: Why couldn’t you have waited longer before suing?

    Answer: Harvest House and the authors continued to advertise and reprint the book, despite our protests of the book’s falsity. The law requires anyone who has been libeled to file suit within a specific time from publication. Realizing that our letters and phone calls had gone unheeded, we wanted to assure that we would be within that time period. We tried to avoid filing a lawsuit by giving the publisher and authors an opportunity to voluntarily extend the statute of limitations while an equitable resolution was worked out. Instead of accepting this offer, Harvest House sued us. Even in the face of this, we gave them every opportunity to settle the problem in an equitable way and waited until literally the last day of 2001 to file suit.

  4. Question: Have you ever filed this kind of litigation before?

    Answer: This is this first instance of either Living Stream Ministry or the Local Church filing litigation. Some of the local churches were involved in successful defamation actions over twenty years ago. This history can be reviewed at Introduction, Retraction and Decision.

  5. Question: Why did you sue for money?

    Answer: Our main goal was to clear our name and to stop the damage this book is causing. The law requires that we claim the financial damages that we have suffered. A financial award is the court’s only way to right the wrong and to punish the wrong doers. (For example, the court cannot force the defendants to admit they were wrong, nor to admit that we are not a cult, nor to take their book off the market.) The actual amount of damages would have been determined at time of trial.

  6. Question: Why would people write such things about you and even sue to stop your protest?

    Answer: We believe that, knowing these accusations about us were false, the defendants proceeded to include us in the book. One can only assume they did this to hurt us and discredit our ministry. This book unjustly instills fear in others, causing people to avoid any association with us. One of the authors of ECNR, Mr. Weldon, was a good friend and co-worker with some of those who made false and defamatory statements about us 25 years ago. Mr. Weldon even joined them in their fight against the churches that filed that lawsuit. In the trial that resulted, six highly qualified expert witnesses came forward on our behalf. Their testimony and the Judge’s references to those defendants’ admissions under oath can be read at Decision and Experts. (see also Open Letter)

  7. Question: Who were the individual plaintiff churches (parties bringing the lawsuit) and why were not all the local churches named?

    Answer: The individual plaintiff churches were the local churches listed on our lawsuit filed in Harris County, Texas (see Lawsuit filed in Harris County). This matter was presented to many U.S. churches but had to be finalized quickly during the last week of 2001 (after we learned Harvest House had rejected extending the statute of limitations). Various churches decided not to join as individual plaintiffs due to considerations such as insufficient time for the church leadership to adequately discuss the matter. Nevertheless all the U.S. local churches were represented in the suit in that the authors wrote concerning the Local Church, and the Local Church is a plaintiff in the suit. Assumptions that there was some significance in a particular local church joining or not joining the lawsuit as an individual plaintiff are misguided. It is important to note that, from 2001 until the conclution of the suit in 2007, the churches’ leadership and co-workers among the churches consistently expressed united support regarding this action.

  8. Question: Why do you think Scripture allowed for litigation in this case?

    Answer: Romans 13:1-7 tells us that the civil authority has been ordained by God, “for he is a servant of God to you for good.” There is a crucial difference between the lawsuits Paul condemned in 1 Corinthians 6 and the appeal to the civil authorities Paul himself took in the book of Acts: first to appeal to them based on his Roman citizenship, and then to appeal to Caesar when the opposing religionists sought to end his life and his ministry. Paul’s appeal to Caesar was greatly used by the Lord to further Paul’s ministry and to complete the New Testament revelation, thus justifying Paul’s appeal to Roman law. Our action was taken based on the same principle of an appeal to civil authority. We care for the truth; this legal action was not filed with a selfish motive to defraud or avoid being personally defrauded, as mentioned in 1 Corinthians 6. Rather, it became a necessary step for us to continue the ministry the Lord has entrusted to us.

    The Christian way to resolve an unrighteous situation with brothers is described in Matthew 18:15-17. In 1 Corinthians 6:1, Paul rebuked the Corinthians for not giving “the saints” the opportunity to judge the matter (i.e. for not proceeding as described in Matthew 18). In accordance with Matthew 18, we repeatedly sought to meet with Robert Hawkins, Jr., the president of Harvest House Publishers, and with authors, John Ankerberg and John Weldon. Their republication of the false charges and refusal to meet with us to seek reconciliation left us with no other alternative than to “let them be to [us] just like the Gentile.” This does not mean we disregard them or think they are not Christians. Rather, we pray for their repentance and earnestly desire to be reconciled with them as brothers in Christ. However, it does mean that they have proved unwilling to submit to the Scriptural remedy for their actions and thus have fallen outside the sphere of Christian fellowship in this matter.

    9. For a further treatment of this subject see Scriptural Basis for Appealing to the Courts.

Statement by Living Stream Ministry Regarding Aberrant Religious Groups in China

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Recently, stories have begun to surface in the West regarding problems the Chinese government is having with some splinter religious groups in Western China. At least one of these groups, “Lightning from the East” has been linked in government reports to the so-called “Shouters”, a designation given by the Chinese government to various groups in the early 1980s. Historically, the local churches in China have sometimes been wrongly identified by this term in official government documents and press accounts, as have many other genuine Christian groups. Living Stream Ministry and the more than 4000 local churches it supports around the globe have no connection or linkage, formally or informally, to either “The Shouters” or the groups that are currently the focus of the government crackdown, namely “Lightning from the East” and the “All Mighty God Sect.” Members of genuine local churches, like those who utilize the ministry materials put out by Living Stream Ministry, are proper, law-abiding citizens and condemn the extreme and anti-Christian teachings of these aberrant groups.

Brothers, Hear Our Defense (1) – Concerning Biblical Authority, the Twofoldness of Divine Truth, and the Incarnation

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Brothers, Hear Our Defense (1)

This book contains a series of articles concerning critical points of truth. The articles in this book address the dangers of:

  • Replacing the Bible with creeds as a Christian’s rule of faith and practice;
  • Sacrificing one aspect of biblical truth for the sake of defending another; and
  • Denying the truth that the infinite God became a finite man through incarnation.

This book also serves as a critique of the apologetic methods used by Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes. It highlights serious misrepresentations in their criticisms of Witness Lee and the local churches as well as some grave deficiencies in their understanding of biblical truth. This critique should call forth a determination among those involved in Christian apologetics to uplift the standard in their field of work so that the cause of truth may be served with integrity.

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Brothers, Hear Our Defense (2) – Concerning the Divine Trinity

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Brothers, Hear Our Defense (2)

This book contains a series of articles addressing critical points of truth concerning the Divine Trinity. The articles in this book address the errors of:

  • Insisting on use of the word person(s) as a litmus test of orthodoxy;
  • Accusing those who affirm the coinherence and co-working of the Three of the Divine Trinity of teaching heresy;
  • Denying the plain assertion in Isaiah 9:6 that the Son is the eternal Father; and
  • Denying the clear teaching of the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:17 that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Spirit.

This book also serves as a critique of the apologetic methods used by Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes. It highlights serious misrepresentations in their criticisms of Witness Lee and the local churches as well as some grave deficiencies in their understanding of biblical truth. This critique should call forth a determination among those involved in Christian apologetics to uplift the standard in their field of work so that the cause of truth may be served with integrity.

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Brothers, Hear Our Defense (3) – Concerning the State of Christendom

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Brothers, Hear Our Defense (3)

Since the Reformation many Christian teachers have critiqued the state of Christendom in light of the Word of God. As faithful servants of the Lord, Watchman Nee and Witness Lee provided biblically-based assessments of Christendom that are worthy of the attention of all who love the church and are concerned for her welfare. Recently, Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes assailed Witness Lee’s critique of Christendom, misusing short sentence fragments taken from one chapter of his copious ministry. This book examines their:

  • Misrepresentation of Witness Lee’s critique of the system of Christianity as an attack on Christians;
  • Misrepresentation of Witness Lee’s critique of the Roman Catholic Church; and
  • Double standard regarding criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church.

The contents of this book should call forth a determination among those involved in Christian apologetics to uplift the standard in their field of work so that the cause of truth may be served with integrity.

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Brothers, Hear Our Defense (4) – Against False Witness

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Brothers, Hear Our Defense (4)

 This book contains a series of articles correcting certain unfounded accusations repeated in a recent article by Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes. It presents factual information that challenges their assertions and demonstrates that:

  • Charges that the local churches use litigation to silence doctrinal criticism are based on false reports;
  • The Spiritual Counterfeits Project declared bankruptcy to avoid a court judgment against them; and
  • Geisler and Rhodes misrepresented many aspects of the Harvest House litigation.

In each instance, Geisler and Rhodes have seriously misrepresented the facts and have repeated false witness. The critique offered in this book should call forth a determination among those involved in Christian apologetics to uplift the standard in their field of work so that the cause of truth may be served with integrity.

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Brothers, Hear Our Defense

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Although the four books in the series Brothers, Hear Our Defense were written to correct many theological, factual, and historical errors in an article by Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes criticizing the teaching of Witness Lee, they also present many important matters of truth concerning the Bible, the significance of the incarnation of Christ, the nature of God, and other subjects.

Brothers, Hear Our Defense (1)

This book contains a series of articles concerning critical points of truth. The articles in this book address the dangers of:

  • Replacing the Bible with creeds as a Christian’s rule of faith and practice.
  • Sacrificing one aspect of biblical truth for the sake of defending another.
  • Denying the truth that the infinite God became a finite man through incarnation.

Read this publication


PDF
Web ePub


PDF en
PDF zh

Brothers, Hear Our Defense (2)

This book contains a series of articles addressing critical points of truth concerning the Divine Trinity. The articles in this book address the errors of:

  • Insisting on use of the word person(s) as a litmus test of orthodoxy.
  • Accusing those who affirm the coinherence and co-working of the Three of the Divine Trinity of teaching heresy.
  • Denying the plain assertion in Isaiah 9:6 that the Son is the eternal Father.
  • Denying the clear teaching of the Apostle Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:17 that the Lord Jesus Christ is the Spirit.

Read this publication


PDF
Web ePub


PDF en
PDF zh

Brothers, Hear Our Defense (1)

Since the Reformation many Christian teachers have critiqued the state of Christendom in light of the Word of God. As faithful servants of the Lord, Watchman Nee and Witness Lee provided biblically-based assessments of Christendom that are worthy of the attention of all who love the church and are concerned for her welfare. Recently, Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes assailed Witness Lee’s critique of Christendom, misusing short sentence fragments taken from one chapter of his copious ministry. This book examines their:

  • Misrepresentation of Witness Lee’s critique of the system of Christianity as an attack on Christians.
  • Misrepresentation of Witness Lee’s critique of the Roman Catholic Church.
  • Double standard regarding criticisms of the Roman Catholic Church.

Read this publication


PDF
Web ePub


PDF en
PDF zh

Brothers, Hear Our Defense (4)

This book contains a series of articles correcting certain unfounded accusations repeated in a recent article by Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes. It presents factual information that challenges their assertions and demonstrates that:

  • Charges that the local churches use litigation to silence doctrinal criticism are based on false reports.
  • The Spiritual Counterfeits Project declared bankruptcy to avoid a court judgment against them.
  • Geisler and Rhodes misrepresented many aspects of the Harvest House litigation.

In each instance, Geisler and Rhodes have seriously misrepresented the facts and have repeated false witness.

Read this publication


PDF
Web ePub


PDF en
PDF zh

The books in the Brothers, Hear Our Defense series also serve as a critique of the apologetic methods used by Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes, highlighting serious misrepresentations in their criticisms of Witness Lee and the local churches as well as some grave deficiencies in their understanding of biblical truth. The critiques in the Brothers, Hear Our Defense series should call forth a determination among those involved in Christian apologetics to uplift the standard in their field of work so that the cause of truth may be served with integrity.

Order this publication

Practicing the Lord’s Word in Matthew 18

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A Response to Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes’ Defense of the “Open Letter” and Critique of the Christian Research Journal’s Reassessment of the Local Churches

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Normal Geisler and Ron Rhodes faulted the local churches for what they contended was a failure to follow the pattern presented in Matthew 18. In verses 15-17, the Lord said:

Moreover if your brother sins against you, go, reprove him between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. But if he does not hear you, take with you one or two more, that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established. And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to hear the church also, let him be to you just like the Gentile and the tax collector.1

Geisler and Rhodes say, “Matthew 18 sets the pattern to follow, and in it the last recourse is to take it to ‘the church’” (v. 17). However, they nowhere define what it means to “take it to ‘the church’,” and the applicability of this particular phrase to a publication inflicting widespread damage is doubtful. As the Reformed scholar D. A. Carson has written:

The sin described in the context of Matthew 18:15-17 takes place on the small scale of what transpires in a local church (which is certainly what is envisaged in the words “tell it to the church”). It is not talking about a widely circulated publication designed to turn large numbers of people in many parts of the world away from historic confessionalism. This latter sort of sin is very public and is already doing damage; it needs to be confronted and its damage undone in an equally public way.2

Although Carson suggests that such a step may not be required, in every case the local churches have attempted to initiate dialogue with their critics. While such attempts have often been welcomed, in some cases they have not only been rebuffed but also publicly mischaracterized. It is striking that Geisler and Rhodes criticize the local churches for allegedly failing to practice Matthew 18 but defend those who have borne false witness and rejected biblical correctives.

Concerning Lawsuits Filed by Harvest House

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A Response to Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes’ Defense of the “Open Letter” and Critique of the Christian Research Journal’s Reassessment of the Local Churches

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Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes did not dispute the facts of Harvest House’s long history of litigation against Christians. Rather, they defended Harvest Houses by stating:

Further, CRI attempts in vain to show moral (or biblical) equivalence between this kind of theological and moral issue and other friendly and/or financial suits a corporation may take to get its rightful financial due.1

In First Corinthians 6:1-8 the Apostle Paul rebuked two brothers who went to a secular court over a matter related to fraud. Verse 7 says, “Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be defrauded?” Here Paul says that it is better to be deprived of one’s rightful due by a Christian brother than to take the brother to a secular law court. Although it is unclear what Geisler and Rhodes mean by “friendly” lawsuits, it is clear that they are seeking to excuse Harvest House from Paul’s words on the basis that Harvest House is a corporation. In other words, Geisler and Rhodes seek to justify Harvest House’s practice of pursuing monetary gain by taking fellow Christians to court, while condemning Living Stream Ministry and the local churches for appealing to the courts for relief from unlawful defamations. There are several flaws with Geisler and Rhodes’ argument:

  1. Even if their reasoning was correct (which it is not) and Harvest House is immune from scriptural restrictions because it is a corporation, then Living Stream Ministry and all the local churches that were the plaintiffs in the ECNR litigation should likewise be exempt from criticisms on the same basis because they also are corporations.
  2. Harvest House is a family-owned corporation. All of the proceeds of its lawsuits accrue to the Hawkins family through their corporation. Geisler and Rhodes provide no explanation of how this arrangement insulates Harvest House from the strictures of 1 Corinthians 6, since Harvest House purports to be a Christian publisher and the Hawkins family members who stand to benefit from Harvest House’s legal actions all profess to be Christians.
  3. Although Harvest House is a corporation, the authors of ECNR, who joined in the Harvest House litigation against a single local church, are not. Geisler and Rhodes offer no criticism of these individuals for joining in that lawsuit.
  4. In their arguments to the court Harvest House and its authors claimed that ECNR could not be deemed libelous because it addressed theological issues. Geisler wrote an amicus brief in which he made the same claim. Yet here Geisler and Rhodes admit that the litigation involved a “theological and moral issue.” The words “and moral” reflect ECNR’s false and reckless accusations of criminal, immoral, and antisocial activities, which were the actual subject of the litigation filed by LSM and the churches, and belie the defense of ECNR that was perpetrated on the court by Harvest House with Geisler’s assistance.
  5. In arguing that suing to get money from believers is somehow morally superior to protesting defamation, Geisler and Rhodes end up defending those who bear false witness (i.e., the authors and publisher of ECNR) against their brothers.
  6. In their “moral equivalency” argument, Geisler and Rhodes ignore the effects of ECNR in countries where religious freedom is not protected. In such countries, genuine believers in Christ have been arrested, imprisoned, and even executed. Prior to the conclusion of the litigation, there were already reports of threats made by government officials in one country based upon what was written in ECNR. The fact of almost certain persecution of believers overseas weighed heavily in the decision to litigate against Harvest House and its authors. Based on their recognition of this risk, several former ambassadors, human rights activists, and others familiar with volatile overseas religious freedom issues filed an amicus brief calling on the court in the Harvest House litigation to protect against such tragic consequences. Geisler and Rhodes are correct, albeit unintentionally—there is no moral equivalency between protecting lives and contending for one’s “rightful financial due.”
  7. On the one hand, Geisler and Rhodes justify Harvest House’s use of secular courts to recover bad business debts in spite of the clear applicability of Paul’s charge in 1 Corinthians 6. On the other hand, they condemn the local churches for appealing to the courts for protection against defamation out of concern for the preservation of the lives and liberties of its members. This they do in spite of the fact that the churches’ appeal to the courts is far more akin to Paul’s appeal to Caesar in Acts 25:11 for protection against false accusations that threatened his life and his service to the Lord.

Progress of Local Church et al v. Harvest House et al

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These pages provide information concerning the defamation action involving the Local Church (an unincorporated association), Living Stream Ministry, and a number of local churches (plaintiffs) and Harvest House Publishers, John Ankerberg and John Weldon (defendants) concerning the book “Encyclopedia of Cults and New Religions.” Legal action was taken only after several attempts had been made to get the authors and publisher to sit down with the plaintiffs as brothers in Christ to discuss the plaintiffs’ concerns. The purpose of these pages is to inform the public of the facts leading up to the lawsuit, the facts of the lawsuit itself, and surrounding relevant issues. We have included background information on the plaintiffs (the local churches, Living Stream Ministry and The Local Church) for the benefit of those who are not familiar with them.

Please note that the lawsuit concerned defamation, not theology. It was focused upon unsupported and unsupportable accusations of crimes and misdeeds; it did not involve teachings or doctrines, which are not in the purview of the courts. A simple reading of the complaint will verify this fact.

1. Facts about the Pending Litigation
2. Scriptural Basis for Appealing to the Courts
3. Relevant Documents:
4. Questions and Answers about the Litigation
5. Plaintiffs’ Background:

Progress of Local Church et al v. Harvest House et al:

Progress in the U.S. Supreme Court

June 28, 2007

Statement on the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court not to review the case

A letter to our friends

A letter to the saints in the Lord’s recovery
June 18, 2007 The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case.
June 7, 2007 Petition for Writ of Certiorari (May 16, 2007) supported by five amicus briefs:

Progress in the Texas Supreme Court

February 9, 2007 Amicus Brief Supporting Motion for Rehearing – Rodney A. Smolla
December 18, 2006 Motion for Rehearing – Texas Supreme Court
December 12, 2006 Statement on the Texas Supreme Court’s Decision
November 30, 2006 The Texas Supreme Court declined to review the case.
October 27, 2006 Reply to Response to Petition for Review Submitted
October 13, 2006 Response to Petition for Review Filed
September 13, 2006 Court Requests Response to Petition for Review
August 2, 2006 Petition for Review supported by five amicus briefs:

Progress in the Court of Appeals

May 15, 2006 Motion for Rehearing Denied
February 16, 2006 Appellees’ Motion for Rehearing of the Court’s January 5, 2006 Judgment filed with the Texas Court of Appeals
January 5, 2006 The Texas Court of Appeals reversed the lower court’s decision denying Defendants’ motion for summary judgment. See our Statement regarding the court’s decision.
October 27, 2005 The Texas Court of Appeals (First District) heard oral arguments on the Defendants’ appeal of the District Court’s denial of their Motion for Summary Judgment (see Brief of Appellees).
September 15, 2004 Brief of Appellees (Local Church et al) filed
July 6, 2004 Brief of Appellants (Harvest House et al) filed
June 21, 2004 Appellant’s Notice of Incomplete Record and Fourth Motion for Extension of Time
May 25, 2004 Appellant’s Notice of Incomplete Record and Third Motion for Extension of Time
May 4, 2004 Appellant’s Notice of Incomplete Record and Second Motion for Extension of Time
April 5, 2004 First Motion for Extension of Time to File Appellant’s Brief
March 24, 2004 Docketing Statement (indicating intention to file accelerated appeal of District Court’s summary judgment decision); the original due date for the Brief of Appellants is April 14, 2004

Progress in the District Court

April 2, 2004 Order overruling Defendants’ objections to summary judgment evidence. This evidence included: “Local Church” chapters drafted two years after the first printing of ECNR, as well as other affidavits and deposition testimony. The unpublished chapters admit: “The Local Church … is unique among the groups in this encyclopedia. It is not a cult in the negative sense of the term, nor do the characteristics of cults in the Introduction generally apply to them.”
April 2, 2004 Order denying Defendants’ motion to stay (delay) discovery during Defendants’ appeal based on his ruling in the March 31, 2004, telephone hearing.
March 31, 2004 In a telephone hearing Judge Kent Sullivan denied Defendants’ motion to strike all of Plaintiffs’ experts, based on Defendants’ unwillingness to affirm or deny the truth or falsity of the charges in the book regarding the Plaintiffs. Judge Sullivan ruled that all ten of the Plaintiffs’ expert witnesses may testify.
March 19, 2004 Living Stream Ministry and Local Churches Respond to Harvest House Corporate Statement on Recent Court Ruling.
March 17, 2004 Harvest House, John Ankerberg and John Weldon filed a notice to appeal the denial of their summary judgment motion.
March 9, 2004 Order denying Harvest House, Ankerberg and Weldon’s Second Motion for Summary Judgment.
October 15, 2003 Defendants filed their Second Motion for Summary Judgment
July 1, 2003 Defendants’ notice appealing their Summary Judgment being denied and motion requesting a stay of discovery were both withdrawn by defendants.
June 20, 2003 Press Release dated June 20, 2003, concerning denial of Harvest House, Ankerberg, and Weldon’s Motion for Summary Judgment.
June 13, 2003 Order denying Harvest House, Ankerberg and Weldon’s motion for summary judgment and lifting the stay on discovery.
February 4, 2003 Defendants filed a Motion for Summary Judgment
December 16, 2002 Order Granting Plaintiffs’ Motion To Compel Production Of Documents
December 16, 2002 Order Denying Defendants’ Motion for Protective Order and for Limitation of Discovery
August 12, 2002 Order Denying Defendants’ Motion for Partial Summary Judgment
July 2, 2002 Defendants file Motion for a Partial Summary Judgment
December 31, 2001 The Local Church, Living Stream Ministry, and 97 individual local churches file suit against Harvest House Publishers, John Ankerberg and John Weldon in the Houston District Court over Encyclopedia of Cults and New Religions

Disposition of Harvest House Publishers’ Oregon Lawsuit:

March 15, 2002 Harvest House’s Oregon lawsuit is dismissed.
December 14, 2001 Harvest House Publishers files suit against The Church in Fullerton Corporation in Oregon Circuit Court seeking a Declaratory Judgment that Encyclopedia of Cults and New Religions is not defamatory as to the local churches.

The Error of Denying the Involvement of the Father in the Son’s Work

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A Response to Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes’ Defense of the “Open Letter” and Critique of the Christian Research Journal’s Reassessment of the Local Churches

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In a recent special issue of the Christian Research Journal, veteran apologist Gretchen Passantino, who participated in the earliest criticisms of the local churches published in the United States over thirty years ago, made an impassioned appeal. She asked her fellow apologists and the signers of an open letter criticizing the teachings of Living Stream Ministry (LSM) and the local churches to reconsider their condemnation, saying that her own further research had changed her opinion.1 Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes rejected her appeal out of hand, saying:

However, it is clear that truth does not always reside with the persons who have read more or studied longer. Rather, it rests with those who can reason best from the evidence.2

Thus, Geisler and Rhodes dismissed the need for further research in spite of the lapse of thirty-five years since the original research was performed in which Gretchen Passantino participated. Instead, Geisler and Rhodes assert their own superior ability to reason apart from further evidence. In fact, their reasoning is flawed in many respects. This article examines one such case in which Geisler and Rhodes’ “reasoning” is woefully deficient. Geisler and Rhodes backhandedly accuse the local churches of espousing the ancient heresy of patripassianism, which states that Jesus Christ, as the Son of God, was simply the Father in another mode of existence, so that it was the Father who suffered on the cross. Geisler and Rhodes say:

Likewise, the LC’s alleged repudiation of patripassianism (the heresy that the Father suffered on the cross-17) is unconvincing since they also claim (and CRI apparently supports) the view, based on the doctrine of coinherence, that both the Father and the Son are involved in each other’s activities.

There are several defects in Geisler and Rhodes’ analysis:

Geisler and Rhodes’ Dismissal of the Local Churches’ Rejection of Patripassianism

Brushing aside the local churches’ disavowal of patripassianism by calling it “alleged” is in keeping with Geisler and Rhodes’ dismissal of the need for research. In fact, as early as 1976, LSM published Modalism, Tritheism, or the Pure Revelation of the Triune God according to the Bible,3 which clearly rejected the heresy of modalism upon which patripassianism is based. Furthermore, in a book published in 1985, Witness Lee said:

Also, we cannot say that the Father became flesh and that the Father lived on this earth in the flesh. Furthermore, we cannot say that the Father went to the cross and died for our redemption, and we cannot say the blood shed on the cross is the blood of Jesus the Father. We must say that the blood was shed by Jesus the Son of God (1 John 1:7). We can neither say that the Father died on the cross nor can we say that the Father resurrected from the dead.4

In addition, in an article entitled “The Divine Trinity in the Divine Economy” in a 1999 issue of Affirmation & Critique, Kerry Robichaux clearly explained the distinction between patripassianism and the co-working of the Divine Trinity in Christ’s crucifixion. This distinction and Kerry Robichaux’s explanation will be considered in more depth below.

Geisler and Rhodes ignore not only these three clear declarations but also all such repudiations of modalism and patripassianism published by Living Stream Ministry. Thorough research is indispensable to Christian apologists who desire to understand and represent their subjects in a fair and balanced way. Geisler and Rhodes, however, have simply labeled the local churches as heretical, while rejecting all evidence to the contrary.

Geisler and Rhodes’ Flawed Reasoning

The error of modalism (and by extension, patripassianism) is that it does not recognize the distinctions among the three of the Divine Trinity. Modalism developed out of a desire to protect the oneness of God, but it erred in making the Father, the Son, and the Spirit temporary manifestations of God in time. Both modalism and patripassianism are heresies that are firmly and unambiguously rejected in the teaching of Witness Lee and the local churches.5 Geisler and Rhodes, however, label the local churches as heretical by claiming that espousal of the coinherence of the Divine Trinity and of the involvement of the Father and the Son in one another’s activities necessarily leads to patripassianism. Their logic is flawed in three major respects:

  • Geisler strongly affirms God’s immutability, but he and Rhodes avoid endorsing coinherence, something that is clearly revealed in the Lord’s own words in the Gospel of John. Geisler and Rhodes seem to make allowance that coinherence is within the realm of orthodoxy. However, if we accept Christ’s own word that He was coinhering with the Father in John 10, 14, and 17, then the Father and the Son must also have been coinhering as Christ was being crucified on the cross or else God’s immutability would be compromised.
  • By insisting that if the Father was coinhering with the Son on the cross, the Father must have suffered, Geisler and Rhodes contradict Geisler’s own writings on God’s impassibility.
  • Equating “involvement” with “patripassianism” is an unwarranted conclusion.

Coinherence and God’s Immutability

Coinherence refers to the mutual indwelling of the three of the Divine Trinity. In the Gospel of John the Lord repeatedly told His disciples that He was in the Father and the Father was in Him (John 10:38; 14:10, 20; 17:21, 23). The coinhering oneness of the Divine Trinity is fundamental to understanding how the Father, the Son, and the Spirit can be one God. The coinherence of the Divine Trinity is beyond illustration, as it has no corollary in the physical universe. Even more, it is beyond the ability of man-made systems of logic to explain. It is the greatest mystery concerning the Triune God and shatters all attempts to neatly explain the Trinity.

Perhaps for this reason, it is not a point that Geisler and Rhodes stress. Coinherence is not mentioned in either Geisler’s Systematic Theology, Volume 2: God, Creation or his Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, even though both deal extensively with the Trinity. If the Scripture Indexes in these two books are accurate, Geisler himself makes no reference in either book to any of the verses that clearly show the coinherence of the Father and the Son in the Gospel of John. The only reference to any of these verses is a citation to John 14:10 in a quote from John Calvin which strongly confirms the mutual indwelling of the Father and the Son:

The whole Father is in the Son, and the whole Son is in the Father, as the Son himself also declares (John xiv. 10), “I am in the Father, and the Father is in me”; nor do ecclesiastical writers admit that the one is separated from the other by any difference of essence.6

Nonetheless, it is not at all clear if Geisler and Rhodes embrace the importance or even the truth of the coinherence of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in understanding the Trinity. However, they do appear to make allowance for coinherence within the realm of orthodoxy in their critique of CRI’s reassessment of the local churches. There they say, “Even if one holds to the doctrine of coinherence…” [emphasis added]. In other words, they themselves equivocate. They do not commit themselves to coinherence, but neither do they say it is a false teaching. Such equivocation is inexcusable in a work that claims to defend a truth as crucial as the Trinity against purported error. The problem for Geisler and Rhodes is that if they affirm coinherence, then they must admit that the Father and the Son were coinhering essentially even as Christ was being crucified. To claim otherwise would be to deny God’s immutability. It would be to say that God’s essential being changed at some point either during Christ’s incarnation or His crucifixion.

Immutability refers to the fact that God does not change in His attributes, in His nature, or in His intrinsic being. Since the coinherence of the three of the Divine Trinity is an aspect of God’s intrinsic being, the coinherence of the three of the Divine Trinity is eternal and immutable. Since that coinherence is immutable, then it was unchanged throughout the entire course of Christ’s incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection. Herein lies the basic issue that Geisler and Rhodes seem unwilling to address. If they endorse coinherence but say that the Father was no longer coinhering with His Son as Christ was being crucified, then they are saying that a basic aspect of God’s being—His coinhering oneness—changed. Geisler and Rhodes say:

God was certainly present in His omnipresence, but God the Father is not God the Son, and the Father certainly was not involved in the experience of Christ’s suffering on the cross.

This statement sidesteps the basic issue—whether the Father was coinhering with the Son during the crucifixion. God’s omnipresence, which we also affirm, refers to His being everywhere simultaneously. However, God’s omnipresence is particularly related to the physical universe, not to the relatedness of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in the Godhead. That relationship is one of coinherence. Geisler and Rhodes switch subjects from coinherence to omnipresence. The problem with this argument is that if we accept the Lord’s word in the Gospel of John that He was in the Father and the Father in Him, but then claim the Father was at the crucifixion of Christ in His omnipresence only and was no longer coinhering with the Son, as Geisler and Rhodes seem to imply, then God changed in His essential being. This cannot be.

Impassibility

Impassibility, as it related to the crucifixion of Christ, is a term used by theologians to indicate that God cannot be caused to suffer by His creation.7 As Geisler and Rhodes state, the Patripassian heresy taught that God the Father suffered at the cross. This teaching was rightly rejected by the early church as heresy. Based on the assertion of God’s impassibility, the inability to cause God to suffer has come to be applied not just to the Father but to the entire Godhead, including the divine nature in the incarnate Son of God. The 19th century Calvinist theologian Charles Hodge wrote:

He was not a mere man, but God and man in one person. His obedience and sufferings were therefore the obedience and sufferings of a divine person. This does not imply, as the Patripassians in the ancient Church assumed, and as some writers in modern times assume, that the divine nature itself suffered. This idea is repudiated alike by the Latin, Lutheran, and Reformed churches.8

Geisler himself wrote:

Patripassianism means literally the “Father suffered.” It arose in the early third century in the form of monarchianism, holding that God the Father suffered on the cross as well as Christ. However, the divine nature possessed by Christ did not suffer or die: God is impassible and, hence, incapable of undergoing suffering.9

The incarnate Christ has two natures—the divine nature and the human nature. What Geisler is saying is that Christ’s divine nature was impassible and, as a result, did not suffer on the cross. Yet Geisler maintains that Witness Lee’s teaching that the Father and the Son coinhere means that the Father must have suffered on the cross. However, if, as Geisler claims, the divine nature in Christ is impassible and did not suffer during His crucifixion, then the divine Father who coinheres with the Son likewise could not, by definition, have suffered on the cross. It is significant that Geisler and Rhodes cannot produce a single quote that even intimates that Witness Lee and the local churches teach that the Father suffered on the cross, yet they make such an accusation based on their own presumptive and faulty reasoning.

“Involvement” Is Not “Patripassianism”

Furthermore, the leap Geisler and Rhodes make from “involvement” to “patripassianism” is unwarranted. Hebrews 9:14 states that on the cross Christ offered Himself as the unique sin offering to God through the eternal Spirit. To say, based on this verse, that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are all involved in Christ’s accomplishment of an eternal redemption (9:12) is not patripassianism; it is the divine revelation in the Holy Bible. Kerry Robichaux explained:

What shall we say then concerning the death of Christ? Here most believers blanch. Even the most minimally educated in theology understand the error of patripassianism, against which Tertullian took careful aim (Against Praxeas II, XIII, XXIX-XXX). We must be careful to avoid understanding that the Father (or the Spirit) was the subject of the suffering in the death of Christ, but we must be equally careful to avoid understanding that the Son was separate from the Father and the Spirit in the crucifixion. What we must maintain is that in the visible death of Christ the three of the Trinity operated so as to make manifest the distinct activity of the Son on the cross. It was indeed the Son whom we should identify as the subject of the death of the God-man (even though we confess that God Himself does not die!), but we must hold at the same time the realization that the Father and the Spirit were also in operation and that the operation of the three made the distinct action of the Son possible. The Scriptures bear this testimony as well. Paul tells us that in the death of Christ God was:

wiping out the handwriting in ordinances, which was against us, which was contrary to us; and He has taken it out of the way, nailing it to the cross. Stripping off the rulers and the authorities, He made a display of them openly, triumphing over them in it. (Col. 2:14-15)

There was more to the death of Christ than what met the eye. As the God-man hung on the cross dying for all humankind, God operated to forgive the offenses accumulated against us and to triumph over the fallen angelic host that opposed Him through humankind, and this operation issued in our redemption. We understand that redemption is of the Son, but in operation redemption is the activity of the entire Godhead, Father, Son, and Spirit. The writer of Hebrews likewise recognizes the operation of the Trinity in the death of Christ: “How much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (9:14). To gain a redemption that was eternal in quality and effect (v. 12), the Son offered Himself through the eternal Spirit to the living God.10

By claiming no need to do further research, Geisler and Rhodes seek to avoid dealing with such a careful and balanced exposition of the truth concerning the Triune God and the crucifixion of Christ. Instead, Geisler and Rhodes make a sweeping and unwarranted generalization that “involvement” necessarily implies “patripassianism.” As Kerry Robichaux’s article makes clear, the presumption by Geisler and Rhodes is wrong. Thomas F. Torrance, an esteemed Scottish reformed theologian, also attested to the involvement of the entire Triune God in the work of redemption when he wrote:

‘God crucified’! That is the startling truth of the Gospel. Of course only if God is a Trinity, does this make sense, for it was not the Father or the Spirit who was crucified but the incarnate Son of God, crucified certainly in his differentiation from the Father and the Spirit, but nevertheless crucified in his unbroken oneness with the Father and the Spirit in being and activity. The whole Trinity is involved in the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross.11

Geisler and Rhodes’ Deficiency in Apprehending the Revelation in the Bible

If Geisler and Rhodes truly believe that the Father was in no way involved in the Son’s incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection, they are deplorably deficient in apprehending the revelation in the Bible concerning the Trinity and concerning the Person and work of Christ.

The coinherence of the three of the Divine Trinity is eternal and immutable. It did not cease when the Son of God became a man through incarnation, nor was it limited to the brief time when the Son lived on earth in His humanity. Although it was the Son of God who was the subject of the incarnation and who lived as a man, was crucified, and resurrected, the clear testimony of the Bible is that the entire Triune God was involved with every step of the process that God passed through in Christ. Jesus was conceived of the Holy Spirit (Matt. 1:18, 20; Luke 1:35); thus, His source was the Holy Spirit, and His element was divine. According to John’s Gospel, the Son was never alone; the Father was always with Him (John 8:16, 29; 16:32). The Bible tells us that all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily (Col. 2:9) and that He was God manifested in the flesh (1 Tim. 3:16) and was God with us (Matt. 1:23). It does not say that the fullness of one-third of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily, nor does it say that one-third of God was manifested in the flesh or that He was one-third of God with us.

As a man, the eternal Son of God, who is the embodiment of the fullness of the Godhead, passed through human living, was crucified, entered into resurrection, and was exalted to be Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36). In each of these stages of His existence in humanity, the Son of God was still coinhering with the Father and the Spirit; at no time was He separate from Them. To claim otherwise would be to claim that the essential nature of God changed. That would be a great heresy.

At His baptism the Spirit anointed Christ economically for the carrying out of His ministry (Matt. 3:16; Luke 4:18). This outward anointing does not mean that prior to this time the Spirit was not already coinhering with Him, just as the pouring out of the Spirit economically in Acts 2 to empower the apostles in their gospel service does not negate the fact that they had already received the Spirit essentially in John 20:22. Following Christ’s baptism, He lived, moved, and worked by the Spirit (Luke 4:1). When He cast out demons, He did so by the Spirit (Matt. 12:28). Furthermore, it was as the God-man that He declared that the Father was always with Him (John 8:29; 16:32) and that He and the Father mutually indwelt one another (14:10-11; 17:21). It was on the basis of His coinherence with the Father that He could say that since the disciples had seen Him, they had seen the Father (14:9) and that in His, the Son’s, speaking, the Father who abode in Him did His works (14:10).

In Christ’s crucifixion God forsook Him economically (Matt. 27:45-46), but as the divine only begotten Son of God, He was still coinhering with the Father and the Spirit essentially. In this sense, what happened in the crucifixion of Christ is truly a mystery, the depths of which we cannot fully penetrate; we can only affirm what the Bible affirms. The Bible tells us that at the cross:

  • God (not one-third of God) was in Christ reconciling us to Himself (2 Cor. 5:18-19);
  • God purchased the church through His own blood (Acts 20:28); and
  • Christ offered Himself to God (the Father) as the unique sacrifice for sin through the eternal Spirit, giving His redemption eternal efficacy (Heb. 9:14, 12).

Concerning the Triune God’s operation in accomplishing redemption, Witness Lee said:

An eternal redemption was accomplished by the blood of the Son of God through the eternal Spirit (Heb. 9:12, 14; 1 John 1:7). The blood He shed on the cross was not only the blood of Jesus the Man, but also of the Son of God. First John 1:7 tells us that the blood of Jesus the Son of God cleanses us from all sin. The blood of Jesus the Man qualifies His redemption for us as men. He was a genuine man who died for us and shed genuine blood for us. But the efficacy of His redemption has to be secured by His divinity and it has been secured for eternity by Him as the Son of God. Therefore, His redemption is the eternal redemption (Heb. 9:12) because this redemption was accomplished not only by the blood of Jesus the Man but also by the blood of Jesus the Son of God, which the Apostle Paul even called “God’s own blood” (Acts 20:28). This is marvelous!12

Similarly, concerning Christ’s resurrection, the Bible testifies that the entire Triune God was involved. It says:

  • God (the Father) raised Him from the dead (Acts 2:24, 32; 10:40; Gal. 1:1);
  • The Lord raised Himself up (John 2:19; Acts 10:41; 1 Thes. 4:14);
  • The Spirit also was involved (Rom. 1:4; 1 Pet. 3:18).

If we receive the Bible’s testimony concerning the eternal coinherence of the Divine Trinity,13 then we must affirm that even as Christ was passing through death and entered into resurrection, He was never separated from the Father and the Spirit essentially. Of this truth, Thomas F. Torrance wrote:

The Son and the Father were one and not divided, each dwelling in the other, even in that ‘hour and power of darkness’ when Jesus was smitten of God and afflicted and pierced for our transgressions.14

Geisler’s theology seems to have no room for biblical statements that do not conform to what he presupposes as logical imperatives. However, the coinhering oneness of the Triune God transcends the ability of human logic to systematize. Perhaps it is this dogged reliance on human logic that causes Geisler and Rhodes to equivocate on the coinhering oneness of the Triune God and leads them to espouse a position that is contrary to the biblical record. While they profess to believe in one God, they seem to view the three of the Godhead as operating separately and independently from one another. Thus, in their understanding it was the Son alone, in isolation from the Father and the Spirit, who came into humanity through incarnation and went to the cross to accomplish redemption. Furthermore, according to this view, it is the Spirit alone who indwells the believers.

It is true that the Son is the central figure and subject of the incarnation (John 1:14; Rom. 8:3) and that it was the Son who went to the cross to accomplish redemption (Eph. 1:7; 1 John 1:7). It is also true that the Spirit plays the central role in the believers’ indwelling (Rom. 8:11; 1 Cor. 3:16). But that is not the complete revelation of the Bible. Yes, the Father sent the Son, but in what way did He send the Son? He sent the Son through the divine conception by the Holy Spirit (Matt. 1:18, 20; Luke 1:35), and in the Son’s coming, the Father came with Him and even in Him (John 8:29; 14:10-11; 16:32). When Christ died on the cross, God was in Him reconciling the world to Himself (2 Cor. 5:19; cf. Rom. 5:10). Furthermore, when the Father sent the Spirit to indwell the believers, this was equivalent to the Son coming to indwell the believers (John 14:16-17, 20; cf. Rom. 8:9-11; 2 Cor. 13:5; Gal. 2:20; Col. 1:27) and the Father and the Son coming to make Their home in them (John 14:23). Not only so, in the Spirit’s coming, we have come to know that the Son is in the Father, that we are in the Son, and that the Son is in us (John 14:20).15

Conclusion

Geisler and Rhodes’ rejection of the need for more research to understand the teaching of Witness Lee and the local churches is itself disturbing. It is even more so when their “reasoning” is examined. Their logic is flawed and leads them into contradictions involving two basic attributes of God—His immutability and His coinherence—as well as with Geisler’s own writings about God’s impassibility. It also leads them to assert a false dilemma, that is, that one must either embrace patripassianism or reject the testimony of the Scriptures that all three of the Godhead participate in the work peculiarly ascribed to one of Them.

The root of the problem is that Geisler and Rhodes have an insufficient grasp of the divine revelation in the Bible concerning the coinhering and co-working of the three of the Divine Trinity in the incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ. Further, they seek to impose their deficient understanding on others as a litmus test of orthodoxy. The crucial truth of the coinherence of the Divine Trinity is completely missing from their theological writings because it shatters their tidy, yet deficient, model of the Trinity. Their insistence on narrowly applying their own logical standards to the divine revelation in the Bible causes them to stumble on this point to the extent that they seem to lack the mettle to either affirm or deny coinherence. Yet, this vital truth concerning the relationship among the Three in the Godhead was so clearly spoken by the Lord Himself in John 14 and 17. Furthermore, Geisler and Rhodes not only refuse to definitively affirm the clear import of the Lord’s words, but they also seek to prevent the Lord’s people from entering into the precious implications of coinherence for the believers’ experiential apprehension of and oneness with the Divine Trinity (John 14:20; 17:21, 23) by associating coinherence with a charge of heresy (cf. Matt. 23:13).

Many students of the Bible err because they have confidence in their own mental capacities to understand the divine revelation. As Watchman Nee wrote in 1927:

In Philippians 3:3 the apostle mentioned “confidence in the flesh.” “Confidence” in the original text is “belief.” He said that he himself did not “believe in the flesh.” The greatest work of the flesh is self-confidence! Since one thinks he is able, he does not need to trust in the Holy Spirit. Christ crucified is the wisdom of God, but a believer trusts in his own wisdom. He can read the Bible, preach the Bible, hear the Word, and believe in the Word; however, all of these are done through the power of his own mind, and he does not think that he absolutely must ask for the Holy Spirit to teach him. Many people believe they have received all the truth, even though what they have is something which they have received from others and from their own searching and what they have is more of man than of God! Furthermore, they do not have a teachable heart that is willing to wait on God and to let Him reveal His truth in His light.16

Pride in our education or abilities is a major obstacle to receiving the revelation contained in the Word of God. What is needed is a proper humility, as Witness Lee explains:

Being proud of your education will hinder you from knowing the Scriptures. No matter how educated you are, you must humbly tell the Lord that you are a teachable little child and that in your whole being you are utterly empty. You should be able to say, “Lord, although I have three Ph.D.’s, I know nothing. I am not filled up by my education. I am empty in my spirit, in my mind, and in my whole being.” Many highly educated professional people are filled to the brim. For this reason, even after they are saved, they are unable to receive anything from the Word. Their pride has usurped them.17

As the Lord’s children we should all learn to look to the Lord for His grace to be preserved in simplicity and purity toward Christ (2 Cor. 11:3) so that we may receive all that He speaks in His holy Word, unfiltered by preconceived theological or philosophical constructs.

Notes:

1Gretchen Passantino wrote:

My previous research (developed with and shared by Bob [Passantino], Walter [Martin], Elliot [Miller], and Cal [Beisner]) was inadequate to the extent that my conclusion was wrong. My current research (developed with and shared by Hank [Hanegraaff] and Elliot) is far deeper and wider than the previous, and is adequate to the extent that it has overturned my previous conclusion. No matter how many people sign the Open Letter and how many times the same inadequate sources are cited, the conclusion supported in this issue of the Journal prevails in the arena of truth. The local churches believe the essentials of orthodox Christian theology and should be embraced as brothers and sisters in Christ rather than opposed as believers in heresy. I pray other apologists will rescind their condemnation, if not reengage the issue to the same depth we have. We risk either being guilty of accusing a brother or of falsely embracing a heretic. What spiritual right do we have to refuse to revisit this issue? (Gretchen Passantino, Christian Research Journal 32:6, 2006, p. 50)

2The complete paragraph says:

One argument used by CRI is that their conclusions in favor of the LC should be believed because they have done better and more research on the topic (50). First of all, as we all know, more does not necessarily mean better. So, we can concentrate on what really matters. Gretchen Passantino Coburn claims she has done more research on this topic than most others and that she has been doing it for a longer time (50). However, it is clear that truth does not always reside with the persons who have read more or studied longer. Rather, it rests with those who can reason best from the evidence.

3Ron Kangas, Modalism, Tritheism, or the Pure Revelation of the Triune God according to the Bible (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1976).

4Witness Lee, Elders’ Training, Book 3: The Way to Carry Out the Vision (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1985), pp. 70-71.

5E.g., in Witness Lee, The Clear Scriptural Revelation Concerning the Triune God (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, n.d.) and Witness Lee, The Revelation of the Triune God According to the Pure Word of the Bible (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1976).

6Norman Geisler, Systematic Theology, Volume 2: God, Creation (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2003), p. 305, quoting from John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1.13.2, 19. Unlike Geisler, Calvin strongly affirmed the truth of coinherence in his commentary on John 17:3:

[T]hen we perceive that he is wholly in the Father, and that the Father is wholly in him. In short he who separates Christ from the Divinity of the Father, does not yet acknowledge Him who is the only true God, but rather invents for himself a strange god. – John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries, Volume XVIII: John 12-21; Acts 1-13, William Pringle, trans. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1848, 1981), p. 167

7This article does not attempt to evaluate the merits of the doctrine of God’s impassibility. Rather it demonstrates the inconsistency between Geisler’s espousal of the impassibility of the divine nature and his accusation that when the local churches teach that the three of the Godhead participate in one another’s activities they are teaching patripassianism.

8Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, Volume 2 (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979), p. 483.

9Norman Geisler, Systematic Theology, Volume 2: God, Creation (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2003), p. 296.

10Kerry S. Robichaux, “The Divine Trinity in the Divine Economy,” Affirmation & Critique IV:2, April 1999, pp. 40-41.

11Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons (London: T&T Clark, 1996), p. 247.

12Witness Lee, God’s New Testament Economy (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1986), pp. 49-50.

13Concerning the basic truths concerning the biblical revelation of the Triune God, see Ed Marks, “A Biblical Overview of the Triune God,” Affirmation & Critique, I:1, January 1996, pp. 23-31.

14Torrance, The Mediation of Christ (Colorado Springs, CO: Helmers & Howard, 1992), p. 43.

15For a discussion of the implications of coinherence for our Christian life, see “The Error of Denying that the ‘Son’ Is the ‘Eternal Father’ in Isaiah 9:6.“

16Watchman Nee, The Collected Works of Watchman, vol. 12: The Spiritual Man (1) (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1992), p. 108.

17Witness Lee, Life-study of Genesis (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1987), p. 1114.

Scholars Who Affirm the Working Together of the Three of the Divine Trinity

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A Response to Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes’ Defense of the “Open Letter” and Critique of the Christian Research Journal’s Reassessment of the Local Churches

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Gregory of Nyssa — But in the case of the Divine nature we do not similarly learn that the Father does anything by Himself in which the Son does not work conjointly, or again that the Son has any special operation apart from the Holy Spirit; but every operation which extends from God to the Creation, and is named according to our variable conceptions of it, has its origin from the Father, and proceeds through the Son, and is perfected in the Holy Spirit.
Gregory of Nyssa, “On Not Three Gods,” Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series 2, Volume 5, Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1892, 1979), p. 334

Augustine — [T]he will of the Father and the Son is one, and their working indivisible. In like manner, then, let him understand the incarnation and nativity of the Virgin, wherein the Son is understood as sent, to have been wrought by one and the same operation of the Father and of the Son indivisibly; the Holy Spirit certainly not being thence excluded, of whom it is expressly said, “She was found with child by the Holy Ghost.”
Augustine, “On the Holy Trinity,” Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Volume 3, Philip Schaff, ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1887, 1978), p. 41

The Son indeed and not the Father was born of the Virgin Mary; but this very birth of the Son, not of the Father, was the work both of the Father and the Son. The Father indeed suffered not, but the Son, yet the suffering of the Son was the work of the Father and the Son. The Father did not rise again, but the Son, yet the resurrection of the Son was the work of the Father and the Son.
Augustine, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Volume 6, “Sermon II: Of the words of St. Matthew’s Gospel, Chap. iii. 13, ‘Then Jesus cometh from Galilee to the Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him.’ Concerning the Trinity.”, Philip Schaff, ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1887, 1979), p. 261

John Owen — I say not this as though one person succeeded unto another in their operation, or as though where one ceased and gave over a work, the other took it up and carried it on; for every divine work, and every part of every divine work, is the work of God, that is, of the whole Trinity, inseparably and undividedly…
John Owen, Pneumatologia, p. 94, available at www.ccel.org/ccel/ owen/pneum.i.v.iv.html

Millard Erickson — Perichoresis means that not only do the three members of the Trinity interpenetrate one another, but all three are involved in all the works of God. While certain works are primarily or more centrally the doing of one of these rather than the others, all participate to some degree in what is done. Thus, while redemption is obviously the work of the incarnate Son, the Father and the Spirit are also involved.
Millard J. Erickson, God in Three Persons: A Contemporary Interpretation of the Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1995), p. 235

Cornelius Van Til — When Scripture ascribes certain works specifically to the Father, others specifically to the Son, and still others specifically to the Holy Spirit, we are compelled to presuppose a genuine distinction within the Godhead back of that ascription. On the other hand, the work ascribed to any of the persons is the work of one absolute person.
Cornelius Van Til, An Introduction to Systematic Theology (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Theological Seminary, 1961), p. 228

Carl F. H. Henry — When believers complain that they cannot distinguish between the separate activities in their lives of the Father, the Risen Lord, and the Holy Spirit, the matter is sometimes phrased in a way that obscures God’s unity, a fundamental doctrine of both the Old and New Testament. Every action of any of the persons of the Trinity is an action of God, although in many actions the persons of the Godhead may be active in different ways. All authentic spiritual experience is an experience of the one God.
Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, VI:2 (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1983), p. 400

Bruce Demarest and Gordon Lewis — Yet by virtue of the common essence, what one divine person performs each may be said to perform (the principle of perichoresis). Accordingly, the Son creates (1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16) and the Spirit creates (cf. Job 33:4; Ps. 33:6); the Father redeems (2 Cor. 5:18-19; Eph. 2:4-5, 8) and the Spirit redeems (Rom. 8:4; Titus 3:5); and the Father sanctifies (Eph. 1:3-4; 1 Thess. 5:23) and the Son sanctifies (Eph. 4:15-16; 5:25-27).

Bruce Demarest and Gordon Lewis, Integrative Theology, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1987), p. 267

William Lane Craig — The ancient doctrine of perichoresis, championed by the Greek Church Fathers, expresses the timeless interaction of the persons of the Godhead. According to that doctrine, there is a complete interpenetration of the persons of the Trinity, such that each is intimately bound up in the activities of the other. Thus, what the Father wills, the Son and Spirit also will; what the Son loves, the Father and Spirit also love, and so forth.
William Lane Craig, “Divine Timelessness and Personhood,” International Journal for Philosophy and Religion, 43:2, April 1998, p. 122

Loraine Boettner — Since the three Persons of the Trinity possess the same identical, numerical substance and essence, and since the attributes are inherent and inseparable from the substance or essence, it follows that all of the Divine attributes must be possessed alike by each of the three Persons and that the three Persons must be consubstantial, co-equal and co-eternal. Each is truly God, exercising the same power, partaking equally of the Divine glory, and entitled to the same worship. When the word “Father” is used in our prayers, as for example in the Lord’s prayer, it does not refer exclusively to the first person of the Trinity, but to the three Persons as one God. The Triune God is our Father.
Loraine Boettner, Studies in Theology (Phillipsburg, NJ: The Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1947), p. 107

Bruce Ware — This chapter will argue, in part, that the “success” of the atonement depends on the identity of Christ as the theanthropic person, the One who is both fully God and fully man in the incarnation. But adding to the importance of seeing the atonement as the accomplishment of the God-man is the realization that the atonement’s accomplishment depends just as much on the work of the Father and the Spirit in conjunction with the Son.
Bruce Ware, “Christ’s Atonement: A Work of the Trinity,” Jesus in Trinitarian Perspective, Fred Sanders and Klaus Issler, eds. (Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2007), p. 156

Michael L. Chiavone — All actions carried out through the omnipotence of the divine essence necessarily involve all three divine persons, for each of them fully possesses that divine essence. Thus, any physical action which God undertakes in the material creation should be understood to be the action of all three divine persons.
Michael L. Chiavone, The One God: A Critically Developed Evangelical Doctrine of Trinitarian Unity (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2009), p. 214

The Coinherence and Coworking of the Divine Trinity

The coworking of the three of the divine Trinity based on Their coinherence (or mutual indwelling) is a particularly strong emphasis in the teaching of the distinguished Scottish reformed theologian Thomas F. Torrance, from whose books the following selections are excerpted:

Thomas F. Torrance — It was, of course, not the Godhead or the Being of God as such who became incarnate, but the Son of God, not the Father or the Spirit, who came among us, certainly from the Being of the Father and as completely homoousios with him, yet because in him the fullness of the Godhead dwells, the whole undivided Trinity must be recognised as participating in the incarnate Life and Work of Christ.
Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons (London: T&T Clark, 1996), p. 108

Since God’s Being and Activity completely interpenetrate each other, we must think of his Being and his Activity not separately but as one Being-in-Activity and one Activity-in-Being. In other words, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit always act together in every divine operation whether in creation or redemption, yet in such a way that the distinctive activities of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, are always maintained, in accordance with the propriety and otherness of their Persons as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This may be called the ‘perichoretic coactivity of the Holy Trinity’.

…The primary distinction was made there, of course, for it was the Son or Word of God who became incarnate, was born of the Virgin Mary, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and rose again from the grave, and not the Father or the Holy Spirit, although the whole life and activity of Jesus from his birth to his death and resurrection did not take place apart from the presence and coactivity of the Father and the Spirit.
Ibid., pp. 197-198

…Thus the atonement is to be regarded as the act of God in his being and his being in his act. That is not to say, of course, that it was the Father who was crucified, for it was the Son in his distinction from the Father who died on the cross, but it is to say that the suffering of Christ on the cross was not just human, it was divine as well as human, and in fact is to be regarded as the suffering of God himself, that is, as the being of God in his redeeming act, and the passion of God in his very being as God… While the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are personally distinct from one another, they are nevertheless of one and the same being with one another in God, and their acts interpenetrate one another in the indivisibility of the one Godhead.
Thomas F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ (Colorado Springs, CO: Helmers & Howard, 1992), p. 113

It was not of course the Father but the Son who was incarnate and suffered on the cross, but the distinctiveness of the Persons of the Father and of the Son, does not imply any division in the oneness of their being, or in the oneness of their activity, for God’s being and act are inseparable.
Ibid., p. 118

The Error of Denying “the Lord Is the Spirit” in 2 Corinthians 3:17 Refers to Christ

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A Response to Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes’ Defense of the “Open Letter” and Critique of the Christian Research Journal’s Reassessment of the Local Churches

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2 Corinthians 3:17 – And the Lord is the Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

1 Corinthians 15:45 – So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul”; the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.

Romans 8:9-11 – [9] But you are not in the flesh, but in the spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you. Yet if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not of Him. [10] But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the spirit is life because of righteousness. [11] And if the Spirit of the One who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who indwells you.

Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes condemn Witness Lee’s affirmation of the Apostle Paul’s word in 2 Corinthians 3:17 as heresy. In this verse Paul plainly says, “The Lord is the Spirit.”1 This word tells us clearly that today Jesus Christ is not only the resurrected and ascended Lord in bodily form seated at the right hand of God in the third heavens (Acts 2:33, 36; 5:31; Heb. 12:2), but He is also the Spirit who can be received by and thereafter indwell the believers (Gal. 3:2; Rom. 8:9-11; cf. 2 Cor. 13:5). Sadly, the insistence by Geisler and Rhodes on an erroneous systematized theological construct has veiled them to the pure revelation contained in the Bible. Thus, in their article criticizing the reassessment of the teaching of Witness Lee and the local churches performed by the Christian Research Institute (CRI), Geisler and Rhodes say:

Nor is there any real support for saying the Son (the Second Person of the Trinity) is also the Spirit (the Third Person of the Trinity) from 2 Corinthians 3:17 (“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom”). Many expositors view this verse as saying that the Holy Spirit is “Lord” not in the sense of being Jesus but in the sense of being Yahweh (the Lord God) (cf. v. 16, which cites Exod. 34:34).

Their analysis is flawed on several points:

  1. It ignores the meaning of “Lord” in the immediate context of 2 Corinthians 3 and 4.
  2. It ignores the identification of the Lord Jesus in the New Testament with Yahweh in the Old Testament, an identification which both Geisler and Rhodes acknowledge.
  3. It completely avoids the plain language of 1 Corinthians 15:45.
  4. It summarily dismisses the many credible expositors who have strongly identified Christ and the Spirit based on these verses.

“Lord” in 2 Corinthians 3:17 in Context

Every faithful expositor of the Bible knows that words must be interpreted in their proper context. Read in context, it is clear that the “Lord” in 2 Corinthians 3:17 refers to Christ, not just to the Old Testament Yahweh. In 3:3-6 Paul tells the Corinthians that they are a letter of Christ (the Lord) ministered by him with the Spirit of the living God, which Spirit gives life. He then compares the New and Old Testament ministries, showing the superiority of the ministry of the New Testament as a ministry of righteousness and of glory (vv. 7-11). Following this he speaks of the new covenant ministers through whom the gospel of the glory of Christ shines forth (4:4) by their beholding and reflecting the glory of the Lord (3:18).

Verses 14 through 16 make it very clear that the Lord to whom the heart must turn is Christ. In 3:15 Paul says that a veil lies over the heart of the unbelieving Jews. This veil is “done away with in Christ” (v. 14) “whenever their heart turns to the Lord” (v. 16). According to the truth of the gospel, this is not when the Jews turn their heart to the Old Testament Yahweh, but, as verse 14 says, when man turns his heart to the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus, “Lord” in verse 16 refers back to “Christ” in verse 14. It is, therefore, contrary to the immediate context to say that “Lord” in verse 17 refers to someone else.2

The ensuing text makes this connection even stronger. Verse 18 says that “we all with unveiled face, beholding and reflecting like a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.” Chapter 4 continues with these same elements introduced in chapter 3—Christ, the Lord, the image of God, the veil over the hearts of unbelievers, and the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ—as follows:

  • In verse 3 the gospel is veiled to the unbelievers who have been blinded by the god of this age (v. 4a); this veil is a reference back to 3:14-15.
  • According to 4:4 Christ is the image of God; this refers back to the image into which we are being transformed in 3:18.
  • The gospel preached by the apostles was “the gospel of the glory of Christ” (4:4); this glory is the glory of the Lord in 3:18, which 4:6 identifies as “the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”
  • Finally, verse 5 contains the direct statement: “For we do not preach ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord” [emphasis added].

Thus, from the immediate context it is abundantly clear that Paul’s use of the word “Lord” in 3:17 (“Now the Lord is the Spirit”) is in reference to the Lord Jesus Christ. To say that in 2 Cor. 3:17 “the Holy Spirit is ‘Lord’ not in the sense of being Jesus but in the sense of being Yahweh” is to veil the gospel of Christ. The one to whom the heart must turn is not the Spirit in the sense of being the Old Testament Yahweh, but the incarnate, crucified, and resurrected Lord Jesus Christ. The insistence of Geisler and Rhodes that these verses cannot be interpreted as referring to Christ is sheer artifice to avoid implications that contradict their overly simplistic formulation of the Divine Trinity.

Geisler and Rhodes: The Lord Jesus is Jehovah

We agree that 2 Corinthians 3 refers back to Exodus 34 where “the Lord” Moses beheld was revealed as “Yahweh.” But claiming that 2 Corinthians 3:17 refers to Yahweh and not the Lord Jesus Christ is still an absurd proposition from another perspective. The New Testament Jesus is the incarnation of the Old Testament Yahweh, as Geisler himself admits in his Systematic Theology. In a section headed “Jesus Claimed to Be Yahweh (Jehovah),” he cites numerous passages that identify Jehovah of the Old Testament with Jesus in the New Testament. In his concluding paragraph he writes:

Perhaps the strongest claim Jesus made to be Jehovah is in John 8:58, where He says, “Before Abraham was born, I am!” This statement claims not only existence before Abraham, but equality with the “I am” of Exodus 3:14. The Jews around Him clearly understood His meaning and picked up stones to kill Him for blaspheming (cf. John 10:31-33). The same claim is also made in Mark 14:62 and John 18:5-6.3

Rhodes also strongly asserts the Jesus is Yahweh. In his book The Complete Book of Bible Answers: Answering the Tough Questions he devotes two pages to answering the question: “What biblical evidences exist to prove that Jesus is Yahweh?”4 He includes numerous Scripture citations after which he concludes, “Clearly, then, Jesus is Yahweh.”

We agree with these expositions by Geisler and Rhodes showing that Jesus was Jehovah, and therefore cannot agree that “Lord” in 2 Corinthians 3:17 refers only to the Old Testament Jehovah and not the New Testament Lord Jesus. After all, the entire context of the passage is the superiority of the New Testament ministry of the apostles to the Old Testament ministry of Moses. Why then would Paul talk about turning to the Jehovah of the Old Testament rather than the Lord Jesus of the New Testament?

The Bible says, “The Lord [Christ] is the Spirit.” Geisler and Rhodes start from the presumption that this cannot be, so they endeavor to find an explanation that fits their concept. This is exegetically unsound and elevates their attempts at theological systematization above the authority of the Bible.

Logical Fallacies in Geisler’s Argument

Norman Geisler claims to believe in applying the rigors of formal logic to the study of the Bible.5 To that end he wrote a book with Ronald Brooks entitled Come, Let Us Reason. In this book he cites several examples of logical fallacies. Given his obvious familiarity with the principles of logic and rhetoric, it is distressing to see him criticize Witness Lee’s interpretation of 2 Corinthians 3:17 by employing the very logic fallacies he castigates in his book. For example, Geisler and Rhodes say that there is no “real support for saying the Son … is also the Spirit … from 2 Corinthians 3:17” based on what “many expositors” say. This type of argumentation based on what “many say” is identified by Geisler and Brooks as argumentum ad populum, for which they give the following definition:

This is the fallacy of deciding truth by opinion polls. It says, “Accept this because it has popular appeal.” It is the kind of argument that plays to the galleries, not to the facts. It is an attempt to win by fashionable ideas, not by good arguments. These arguments have “snob appeal” because they agree with an elite or select group and demand that everybody jump on the bandwagon. Hey, it worked for Hitler!6

The same appeal to what “many expositors” say also smacks of an improper argumentum ad verecundiam (appeal to authority), which Geisler describes as follows:

“Accept this because some authority said it.” As we all know, “authorities” can be wrong, and often are. Furthermore, there are conflicting authorities. Which one should I accept? The mere appeal to authority should never be substituted for evidence or a good argument.7

It is telling that in their critique of CRI’s article Geisler and Rhodes give very little evidence for their claim that the risen Lord is not the Spirit according to 2 Corinthians 3:17. Rather, they seek to appeal to the implied authority in the expression “many expositors” to excuse themselves from having to provide any evidence of their own.

Finally, the argument of Geisler and Rhodes fits the definition of “special pleading”:

This is yet another way to make certain the opposing view doesn’t get a fair shake. Here only the evidence that supports one view is cited, and the rest is left out. This is the fallacy of saying, “Accept this because this select evidence supports it (even though other evidence is neglected).”8

For one thing, the “analysis” put forth by Geisler and Rhodes completely ignores 1 Corinthians 15:45b: “The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.” The last Adam is universally recognized as a reference to Christ, including by Geisler.9 The word translated “became” is the same word in Greek as is used in John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh.” John 1:14 speaks of the incarnation of the Son of God into humanity. First Corinthians 15:45 speaks of the glorification of Christ in resurrection (cf. John 7:39; Luke 24:26). In that resurrection Christ became a life-giving Spirit.10 Although Elliot Miller included this in his discussion of CRI’s reassessment of the teaching of Witness Lee and the local churches, Geisler and Rhodes ignore it entirely. Thus, their review of the available evidence is highly selective, and they construct their argument accordingly.

What Others Say

Geisler and Rhodes say there is not “any real support” for the idea that 2 Corinthians 3:17 refers to Christ and reference “many [unnamed] expositors” who take their view that the Lord refers to Yahweh. These two statements create a false impression that Witness Lee was alone in identifying the Lord as Christ in this verse. While the testimony of Scripture should be sufficient for us to believe that “the Lord is the Spirit” and “the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit,” there are also many significant scholars and Bible teachers who affirm the identification of Christ and the Spirit in the New Testament teaching of the apostles.  If such an affirmation is to be condemned as modalistic, then Geisler and Rhodes must similarly condemn:

  • Athanasius
  • Marius Victorinus
  • John Albert Bengel
  • Charles Hodge
  • Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown
  • Joseph Cook
  • Marvin Vincent
  • Andrew Murray
  • Hermann Gunkel
  • A. B. Simpson
  • James Denney
  • Alexander Balmain Bruce
  • David Somerville
  • John Peter Lange
  • Henry Barclay Swete
  • Adolf Deissmann
  • W. H. Griffith Thomas
  • Thomas Rees
  • Robert C. Moberly
  • Alan H. McNeile
  • Terrot R. Glover
  • R. Birch Hoyle
  • H. Wheeler Robinson
  • W. F. Lofthouse
  • R. H. Strachan
  • C. H. Dodd
  • William R. Newell
  • Lucien Cerfaux
  • William Barclay
  • Prosper Grech
  • Neill Q. Hamilton
  • Karl Barth
  • Eduard Schweizer
  • C. A. A. Scott
  • S. H. Hooke
  • Hendrikus Berkhof
  • David Hill
  • F. F. Bruce
  • G. R. Beasley-Murray
  • James D. G. Dunn
  • Walter Kasper
  • G. W. H. Lampe
  • Walter C. Wright, Jr.
  • Richard B. Gaffin, Jr.
  • Ernst Käsemann
  • Carl F. H. Henry
  • Lewis B. Smedes
  • Bruce Demarest
  • Gordon Lewis
  • Mehrdad Fatehi
  • John S. Feinberg

All of these expositors have identified Christ with the Spirit based on the verses at issue from 1 and/or 2 Corinthians. A sampling of their statements is included in “Scholars and Bible Teachers Who Affirm That the Lord Jesus Christ Is the Spirit.”

Conclusion

The contention put forth by Geisler and Rhodes that there is no real support for Witness Lee’s interpretation of 2 Corinthians 3:17 is itself insupportable. The correct interpretation of Paul’s words cannot be dictated by fiat. Witness Lee’s interpretation is supported by the immediate context of 2 Corinthians 3 and 4, by the identification of the Old Testament Jehovah with the New Testament Lord Jesus, and by the writings of many respected teachers. Geisler and Rhodes dismiss the clear meaning and import of Paul’s words in this verse and ignore 1 Corinthians 15:45 because these verses do not fit neatly into their extra-biblical theological construct. They then employ a variety of logic fallacies to support their position. The Word of God deserves better treatment.

Notes:

1This article examines one aspect of the truth concerning the Trinity which has been neglected by most theologians and by Christians generally, that is, the identification of Christ with the Spirit in 2 Corinthians 3:17, 1 Corinthians 15:45, and elsewhere in the New Testament. The reader should not presume that this represents the full teaching of Witness Lee or of the local churches concerning the relationship between the Son and the Spirit in the Divine Trinity. While we do affirm the clear word of the Bible concerning the identification of Christ with the Spirit, particularly in relation to the believers’ experience, we also affirm the eternal distinction between Them. As Witness Lee wrote:

Among the three of the Divine Trinity, there is distinction but no separation. The Father is distinct from the Son, the Son is distinct from the Spirit, and the Spirit is distinct from the Son and the Father. The three of the Godhead co-exist in Their coinherence, so They are distinct but not separate. In the Triune God there is no separation, only distinction. The Triune God exists in His coinherence. On the one hand, the three are coinhering; on the other hand, at the same time they are co-existing. Thus, They are one. They are not separate. (The History of God in His Union with Man (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1993), p. 17)

The publications of Living Stream Ministry contain many balanced presentations of the truths concerning the Triune God. Of these, the following date from the mid-1970s:

The inaugural issue of Affirmation & Critique (I:1, January 1996) was devoted to the subject of “Knowing the Triune God.” It contains several excellent articles, including:

2The understanding that “the Lord” in 2 Corinthians 3 refers to Christ is confirmed by the following sources::

William Milligan, The Resurrection of Our Lord (London: Macmillan, 1890), p. 248:
Apart from the general usage of the Apostle, it will hardly be denied that the whole context and argument of the chapter compel us to understand by the words “the Lord” the Risen Lord. It is “the glory of the Lord” in His heavenly condition that we behold, as Moses beheld the glory of God upon the mount; and, as we behold it, gazing upon it with ever increasing love and fervour, we are enabled to reflect it better, until we are transformed into the same image from glory to glory.

Peter Yoon, Our Triune God (Wheaton, IL: BridgePoint, 1996), p. 189:
In context Paul is saying that when people turn to the Lord Jesus, as Moses turned to Yahweh at Mount Sinai (Ex. 34:34), a veil of spiritual blindness is lifted from their eyes.

The sources cited in “Scholars and Bible Teachers Who Affirm That the Lord Jesus Christ Is the Spirit” further affirm the biblical revelation that Jesus Christ the Lord is the Spirit.

3Norman Geisler, Systematic Theology, vol. 2: God, Creation (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2003), p. 280. Geisler repeats essentially the same exposition in Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), pp. 129 and 731; and When Skeptics Ask (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1990, 1996), 105-106.

4Ron Rhodes, The Complete Books of Bible Answers: Answering the Tough Questions (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers, 1997), pp. 115-117.

5Actually, according to Lewis Sperry Chafer, founder of Dallas Theological Seminary, this practice is contrary to the orthodox Protestant faith. He wrote:

THE ORTHODOX PROTESTANT FAITH. Certain well-defined articles of faith concerning the Scriptures have been and are held by the orthodox Protestants:

  1. The Bible is the infallible Word of God.
  2. The Bible is the only rule of faith and practice.
  3. Human reason and knowledge should be wholly subject to the Scriptures. [emphasis added]
  4. There is no inner light or added revelation ever given beyond what is contained in the Bible…
  5. No authority relative to the forming of truth has ever been committed to the church or to men beyond that given to the New Testament writers.

Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology, Volume 1: Prolegmena, Bibliology, Theology Proper (Dallas, TX: Dallas Theological Seminary, 1947), p. 15.

The point Chafer makes—that human reason should be subject to the revelation in the Bible and not its master—is true. Human reason is limited and fallible. However, the point made in this article is that Geisler is not even faithful to the principles he himself espouses but instead uses logical fallacies to support his agenda.

6Norman Geisler and Ronald Brooks, Come: Let Us Reason: An Introduction to Logical Thinking (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1990), p. 97.

7Ibid, p. 102.

8Ibid, p. 98.

9Norman Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), p. 487.

10Some have tried to say that this Spirit is not the Holy Spirit, but it is important to note that the word “life-giving” has as one of its roots the Greek word zoe, which in the New Testament generally refers to the divine life of God (e.g., Eph. 4:18). It is this life that the Spirit gives (2 Cor. 3:6), and it is this life-giving Spirit that Christ, the last Adam, became. On page 663 of the Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, Geisler gives a thoroughly unsatisfactory explanation of this verse. He says, “Life-giving spirit does not speak of the nature of the resurrection body, but of the divine origin of the resurrection.” We agree that the term life-giving Spirit does not refer to the nature of Christ’s body in resurrection, but Geisler’s interpretation is not faithful to the text of the verse, which does not talk about the origin of the resurrection but about what Christ, as the last Adam, became.

The Error of Denying the “Son” Is the “Eternal Father” in Isaiah 9:6

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A Response to Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes’ Defense of the “Open Letter” and Critique of the Christian Research Journal’s Reassessment of the Local Churches

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Isaiah 9:6 – For a child is born to us, a son is given to us; and the government is upon His shoulder; and His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes claim that Witness Lee’s statement that “the Son is the Father” based on Isaiah 9:6 is modalistic. In their critique they attempt to explain how the name “Eternal Father” does not mean what it plainly says. When the same arguments were advanced over thirty years ago, Witness Lee thoroughly dismantled them in the booklet What a Heresy-Two Divine Fathers, Two Life-giving Spirits, and Three Gods!2 Geisler and Rhodes completely ignore the points made by Witness Lee in that booklet and simply rehash the same accusations. In examining the present critique, it is instructive to compare Witness Lee’s treatment of the words of the Bible with that of Geisler and Rhodes and to see where each approach leads.

Witness Lee starts from the conviction that the Bible means what it says. His hermeneutic is based on God’s eternal purpose and plan, that is, His economy. He saw that in God’s economy the coinherence of the Triune God is a model of the believers’ relationship with God in Christ. Geisler and Rhodes, on the other hand, start from the presumption that the words of the Bible cannot mean what they say. On that basis they:

Norman Geisler is a vocal proponent of the infallibility of the Bible. In their criticism of the Christian Research Institute’s reassessment of the teachings of Witness Lee and the local churches, Geisler and Rhodes declare, “Whatever the Bible affirms, God affirms.” They charge Fuller Theological Seminary with “deviation from orthodoxy on the doctrine of Scripture” for retaining a faculty member who did not affirm Paul’s teaching concerning head covering in 1 Corinthians 11. It is ironic, therefore, that when it comes to Isaiah 9:6, a verse that touches the very person of the Triune God, Geisler and Rhodes do not affirm what the Bible affirms, but employ the trappings of scholarship to subvert the clear meaning of the words in order to preserve their predetermined theological model.

Witness Lee’s Affirmation of Isaiah 9:6

Witness Lee, on the other hand, affirms what the Bible affirms. Concerning Isaiah 9:6 he wrote:

As for me, I would stand with what the Bible says, not with any twistings. Those who twist this verse do not believe the Bible according to the clear word. Instead, they believe the Bible in their twisting way. Whatever fits their understanding they take, but whatever does not fit their understanding they twist. If you twist the words of the Bible, you will suffer a loss, for you are changing the holy Word. You are either taking something away from the Word or adding something to it. This is very serious. Whether or not I understand what the Bible says, I believe whatever it says. When the Bible says that the Son is called the everlasting Father, I say, “Amen, the Son is the Father.” I do not care how men interpret this verse; I only care for what the Bible says.3

The first principle Witness Lee applied in reading the Bible was to receive the Word of God in simplicity as the complete divine revelation. Whatever the Bible says, he believed and taught. Second, he took care of the immediate context. The context of Isaiah 9:6 is one of the clearest prophecies in the Old Testament concerning the incarnation of Christ. Third, he examined the context of the book in which the passage is found. In the case of Isaiah 9:6 he realized that the concept of “Father” was further developed in Isaiah 63:16 and 64:8:

Furthermore, Isaiah 63:16 says, “Thou, O Lord, art our Father; our Redeemer from eternity is thy name” (Heb.). And Isaiah 64:8 says, “O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we are the work of thy hand.” The prophet Isaiah used these two verses as a further development of what he prophesied concerning Christ as the Father of eternity in Isaiah 9:6. In 64:8 Isaiah tells us that the Father of eternity in 9:6 is our Creator, and in 63:16 he tells us that the Father of eternity is our Redeemer. In the whole Bible, Christ is revealed as our Creator and especially as our Redeemer (John 1:3; Heb. 1:10; Rom. 3:24; Titus 2:14). The Father of eternity being both our Creator and our Redeemer not only confirms but also strengthens the understanding that the Redeemer, Christ, is the Father of eternity, the holy Father in the Godhead. Hence, to say that the everlasting Father, or the Father of eternity, in Isaiah 9:6 is some kind of Father, other than the Father in the Godhead, is not according to the context of the whole book of Isaiah.4

The Coinherence of the Father and the Son

Witness Lee further considered the truth concerning the incarnation of Christ that is spoken of in Isaiah 9:6 in the context of the entire divine revelation. In particular, the Gospel of John shows us a unique revelation concerning the relationship between the Son and the Father. For example, in John 1:14—”the only Begotten from the Father”—the Greek word for “from” is παρὰ (para). As Witness Lee explained in his footnote on this word, para:

…means by the side of, implying with; hence, it is, literally, from with. The Son not only is from God but also is with God. On the one hand, He is from God, and on the other hand, He is still with God (8:16b, 29; 16:32b).

In John 10:30 the Lord said, “I and the Father are one.” In John 14:9 He said, “If you have seen Me, you have seen the Father.” These verses themselves must be understood in the light of the relationship shown in the Gospel of John between the Father and the Son. Witness Lee is not alone in making this association as the following examples demonstrate:

Clement of Alexandria:

Who, then, is this infant child? He according to whose image we are made little children. By the same prophet is declared His greatness: “Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace; that He might fulfil His discipline: and of His peace there shall be no end.” O the great God! O the perfect child! The Son in the Father, and the Father in the Son.5

Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown:

The everlasting Father. This marks Him as “Wonderful,” that He is “a child,” yet the “everlasting Father” (John x. 30; xiv. 9).6

B. B. Warfield:

Here [in John’s writings] He not only with great directness declares that He and the Father are one (x. 30; cf. xvii. 11, 21, 22, 25) with a unity of interpenetration (“The Father is in me, and I in the Father,” x. 38; cf. xvi. 10, 11), so that to have seen Him was to have seen the Father (xiv. 9; cf. xv. 21); but He removes all doubt as to the essential nature of His oneness with the Father by explicitly asserting His eternity (“Before Abraham was born, I am,” Jn. Viii. 58), His co-eternity with God (“had with thee before the world was,” xvii. 5; cf. xvii. 18; vi. 62), His eternal participation in the Divine glory itself (“the glory which I had with thee,” in fellowship, community with Thee “before the world was,” xvii.5).7

The oneness the Three in the Godhead share is not just a common purpose nor is it merely a shared nature. It is a oneness of mutual indwelling. The Lord’s word in John 10:38—’the Father is in Me and I am in the Father”—is an explanation of verse 30—”I and the Father are one.” Similarly, his words to His disciples in John 14:10—”Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me?”—explain why it is that to see the Son is to see the Father in verse 9. Thus, the oneness spoken of in the Gospel of John is a oneness of coinherence.

The Coinherence of the Believers with the Triune God

This revelation of the mutual coinhering of the Son and the Father is not in the Bible for mere theological speculation about the ontology of the Trinity. It is a matter of great significance for our Christian life and living. Christ’s human living on the earth is the model of the Christian life (1 Peter 2:21). Of course, this does not mean that we can participate in His redemptive work. What it does mean is that our Christian life is not merely an attempt to live a moral life in outward imitation of Christ’s human living, but our Christian life is that He lives in us and we live in Him. In John 17:21-23 the Lord Himself prayed:

[21] That they all may be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us; that the world may believe that You have sent Me. [22] And the glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, even as We are one; [23] I in them, and You in Me, that they may be perfected into one, that the world may know that You have sent Me and have loved them even as You have loved Me.

Concerning the Lord’s prayer in John 17, Witness Lee commented:

In John 15 the fact of our being in Christ and Christ being in us is clearly revealed (vv. 4-5). But in John 17 the Lord prayed for our realization of this fact (vv. 20-21). He prayed so that we would realize that we are in Him just as He is in the Father, and He is in us just as the Father is in Him. With the Divine Trinity there is such a wonderful coinhering oneness. This coinhering oneness has been duplicated by Christ with His believers. Today Christ is in His believers, causing His believers to be in Him. This is like the Father being in the Son, causing the Son to be in the Father. The prayer of Christ in John 17 is a revelation of such a coinhering oneness.8

Understanding Isaiah 9:6 in this light opens up our realization and appreciation of God’s purpose. This purpose is the producing of the Body of Christ as the enlargement of the coinhering oneness of the Triune God. It was for this that God was incarnated in Christ. It was for this that Christ went to the cross and died to accomplish an eternal redemption. It was for this that He was resurrected from the dead so that He, with the Father and the Spirit could dwell in His believers (Eph. 4:6; Gal. 2:20; John 14:17) and they could dwell in Them (John 17:21; 1 John 4:13; 1 Cor. 12:13) for the enlargement and expression of the mutual coinherence of the divine Trinity.

A Critique of Geisler and Rhodes’ Interpretation of Isaiah 9:6

The statements in the critique by Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes of Witness Lee’s affirmation of the words of the prophecy of Christ’s incarnation in Isaiah 9:6 lead in an entirely different direction.

A Wrong Assertion That “Father” Is a “Distinctly New Testament Term”

Geisler and Rhodes say, “First, when used of the First Person of the Trinity, the term ‘Father’ is a distinctly New Testament term.” They are wrong. In 2 Samuel 7:12-14a, the prophet Nathan related to David the following word from Jehovah: “When your days are fulfilled and you sleep with your fathers, I will raise up your seed after you, which will come forth from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. It is he who will build a house for My name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his Father, and he will be My son.” This prophecy is repeated in 1 Chronicles 17:11-14; 22:10; and 28:6-7. It is what is known as a double prophecy. In type, this prophecy referred to Solomon, but the New Testament opens with the declaration that Jesus Christ is the son of David (Matt. 1:1), and it is Christ who is the real fulfillment of the prophecies concerning the seed of David (Matt. 9:27; 12:23; 15:22; 20:30-31; 21:9; 22:42, 45; Luke 1:32; Rom. 1:3; Rev. 22:16).

In a book he co-authored, Geisler states that “I will be his Father” in 2 Samuel 7:14 refers to “God as Father of David’s line.”9 Elsewhere, however, he acknowledges that this verse is a prophecy of Christ as the Son of David, as does Rhodes.10 Since Christ is the Son, then “his Father” in reference to God must mean the Father in the Godhead. Thus, Geisler and Rhodes’ statement that “Father” is not used in the Old Testament to refer to the first Person of the Trinity is indefensible.

Further, Hebrews 1:5b quotes 2 Samuel 7:14 and applies this prophetic word to Christ directly—”I will be a Father to Him, and He will be a Son to Me.” The book of Hebrews shows the superiority of Christ to all of the types in the Old Testament and as the fulfillment of those types. Verses 4 through 14 of chapter 1 show the superiority of Christ as the Son of God to the angels. Thus, Hebrews 1:6 continues by saying, “And when He brings again the Firstborn into the inhabited earth, He says, ‘And let all the angels of God worship Him.’” Christ as the Firstborn Son of God in resurrection became the Ruler of the kings of the earth (Rom. 8:29; Rev. 1:5). This was clearly prophesied in Psalm 89:26-27, which says, “He will call upon Me, saying, You are My Father / My God and the rock of My salvation. / I will also make Him the Firstborn, / The highest of the kings of the earth.” Here again is a case of a prophetic utterance in the Old Testament speaking of the Father in His relationship to the Son in the Godhead.

Geisler and Rhodes also neglect the nature of the book of Isaiah. Isaiah is particularly rich in its prophetic utterance of New Testament themes, so much so that it has been referred to as “the fifth gospel.”11 The book of Isaiah contains more prophecies concerning the Person and work of Christ that are quoted in the New Testament than any of the other books of prophecy. In the gospels the expression “that what was spoken through Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled” appears repeatedly (Matt. 4:14; 8:17; 12:17; cf., 1:22; 3:3; 13:14; 15:7). When the Lord stood up in the synagogue to proclaim the New Testament jubilee of grace, he read from Isaiah (Luke 4:17). Philip expounded the gospel to the Ethiopian eunuch from the chapter in Isaiah that the latter was reading (Acts 8:27-35).

Isaiah’s prophecies concerning the incarnation and crucifixion of Christ are particularly significant. Isaiah 7:14 says, “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin will conceive and will bear a son, and she will call his name Immanuel.” When the angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph, he quoted this verse: “Now all this has happened so that what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet might be fulfilled, saying, ‘Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son, and they shall call His name Emmanuel’ (which is translated, God with us).” Isaiah 9:6 is also a prophecy of the incarnation: “For a child is born to us, a son is given to us.” This matches the language of John 3:16a: “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.” Isaiah 53, which foretells the sufferings of Christ, is a clear prophecy of His rejection by men and His crucifixion. Isaiah’s prophecy even extends to the new heaven and new earth (Isa. 65:17). None of these was fulfilled in the Old Testament, but they are surely spoken of in a New Testament sense.

The pivotal event that is the dividing line between the Old and New Testaments is the incarnation of Christ. Isaiah 9:6 is one of the clearest prophecies concerning the incarnation in the Old Testament. Geisler agrees, saying, “Indeed, there is no clearer messianic passage on the deity of Christ than Isaiah 9:6.”12 This verse tells us that the human child born among men shall be called the mighty God. His being called the mighty God surely indicates that He is the mighty God. Isaiah 9:6 also tells us that the son given to us shall be called the eternal Father. To say, because of adherence to an extrabiblical standard of truth and logic, that this cannot mean that the Son is the Father in some sense is to reject the testimony of Scripture. It is, in fact, to set aside the Word of God for the tradition of men (Mark 7:6-9). Whether or not we understand in what sense the Son is called the Father is secondary; God’s first requirement is that we receive His revelation of Himself, that is, that we affirm what God affirms. Geisler and Rhodes rightly object when the Jehovah’s Witnesses claim that the mighty God in Isaiah 9:6 is different than the almighty God,13 yet they do the same thing in principle when they claim that the eternal Father in the very same verse is someone other than the one God and Father (Eph. 4:6).

Does “Father of Eternity” Simply Mean “Jesus Is Eternal”?

Geisler and Rhodes say, “Based on the original Hebrew, the phrase ‘eternal Father’ is better rendered into English, ‘Father of eternity.’” The structure of the Hebrew names for “Father” used in many verses in Isaiah takes the form of a compound title consisting of “Father” and a qualifier. For example, the literal translation of “Father” in Isaiah 63:16 and 64:8 (אָבִינוּ) is “Father of us,” but it is universally translated as “our Father.” In the same way, the literal “Father of eternity” in Isaiah 9:6 (אֲבִיעַד) is generally understood to be a divine title, either as “everlasting Father” or “eternal Father.” Thus, it is translated as either “eternal Father” or “everlasting Father” in the King James Version, American Standard Version, New American Standard Bible, New International Version, and English Standard Version to name five respected and commonly used English language translations.

Based on translating Isaiah 9:6 as “Father of eternity,” Geisler and Rhodes begin to speculate on what this name might mean. They first posit that it may simply mean that “Jesus is eternal” and claim that “a strong case can therefore be made that the term simply indicates the eternality of the divine Messiah.”14 In support of their conjecture, they cite “the ancient Targums-simplified paraphrases of the Old Testament.” There are several problems with their argument.

First, this interpretation is unfaithful to the language of the Hebrew Old Testament as it completely eliminates the word “Father” from the text. As previously mentioned, the title “Father” in Isaiah 9:6 is a compound word. The root word for “Father” in its compound form is אֲבִי, while the word for “eternal Father” is אֲבִיעַד. Nevertheless, Geisler and Rhodes claim that “Father” is not essential to the understanding of the text, even though it is the root of the name in the Hebrew Scripture. This is to be unfaithful to the text.

Targums

Second, the “Targums-simplified paraphrases of the Old Testament” should not be relied upon as an authoritative source, particularly in a case such as this one, where the meaning of the underlying Hebrew text of the Old Testament is clearly altered. The Targums are rabbinical paraphrases of portions of the Old Testament into Aramaic. According to Bruce Metzger, one of the leading authorities on the textual bases of the Old Testament and ancillary ancient manuscripts:

All translations of the Bible are necessarily interpretive to some extent, but the Targums differ in that they are interpretive as a matter of policy, and often to an extent that far exceeds the bounds of translation or even paraphrase.15

Ernst Würthwein, another noted Old Testament textual scholar, comments:

…in no other versions of the Bible is the interpretive element as pronounced as in the Targums. They paraphrase, they add explanatory phrases, they reinterpret the text (sometimes quite boldly) according to the theological temper of their time, they relate the text to contemporary life and political circumstances, and so on.16

In his footnote at the end of the paragraph in which the above passage appears, Würthwein states:

A particularly bold reinterpretation was necessitated in Isa. 52:12-53:12 under the influence of anti-Christian polemics.17

It is very significant that the passage Würthwein cites as “a particularly bold reinterpretation” that discounts a critical aspect of the incarnate Redeemer is in a Targum of the same book, Isaiah, as the one Geisler and Rhodes cite as support for their interpretation. Würthwein’s concern that an anti-Christian polemic informed the Targum Jonathan’s paraphrase of Isaiah is echoed by many reputable scholars.18 Even those who do not subscribe to this opinion recognize that the targumic rendition of Isaiah 52:12-53:12 is not faithful to the original Hebrew.19

A translation of the Targum of Isaiah 9:6 reads as follows:

The prophet said to the house of David “For a boy has been born to us, a son has been given to us, and he has taken the Torah upon himself to observe it. And his name has been called from before the One who gives wonderful counsel, the mighty God, everlasting: ‘the Messiah in whose days the peace will increase upon us’.”20

Roger Syrén, Docent of the Old Testament with Jewish Studies at Åbo Akademi in Finland and a member of the Steering Committee of the International Organization for Targum Study since 1995, commented that in the Targumist’s paraphrase of this verse, the expression “his name has been called from before” stands alone, that is, it is not a continuation of the description of the promised Messiah, as it is in the Hebrew text. Syrén concluded:

Thus, it seems that the Targumist has manipulated the context here, in 9,5, in order to avoid ascribing the appellation “God” to Messiah.21

Also of note is the misplaced emphasis on the Torah and the complete omission of the divine title of “Father” which is part of the Hebrew word in Isaiah 9:6. It is this omission that Geisler and Rhodes are willing to embrace rather than confess what the Bible confesses and then justify based on a paraphrase that seeks to circumvent the deity of Christ.

In removing “Father” from Isaiah 9:6, Geisler and Rhodes are practicing textual criticism based on a preconceived theological position. This is an unsound practice. Removing “Father” to accommodate their concept of the Trinity contravenes one of the main principles of textual criticism, lectio difficilior lectio potior (“the more difficult reading is the more probable reading”), which means that where there are differences in the text, it is more likely that the more difficult reading was replaced with the simpler and less controversial one as the text was copied.22 Geisler himself acknowledges this principle of textual criticism.23 This principle is generally applied to differences in the manuscripts in the original languages (Greek and Hebrew), but the principle also has applicability here. A “simplified paraphrase” simply should not be substituted for the Hebrew text, even if the meaning of the original text challenges one’s theological preconceptions. It should also be noted that some English language translations by Jewish scholars follow the Masoretic text and retain “Father” as a divine title in their translations of Isaiah 9:6.24

The dependence for support on a rabbinical paraphrase is even more striking considering the fact that the Jews misunderstood the prophecies concerning the Lord’s first coming and did not recognize in Him the fulfillment of those prophecies in the Old Testament. Whether or not we accept that the paraphrases in the Targum of Isaiah were influenced by an “anti-Christian polemic,” it is clear that the Targumists did not understand the Old Testament prophecies and are therefore not reliable interpreters of them. It is ironic indeed that in the same article Geisler and Rhodes both champion Biblical inerrancy and yet appeal to a rabbinical paraphrase to support their attempt to explain away the clear statement of inerrant Scripture.

Geisler’s Contradictory Statements

Third, the denial by Geisler and Rhodes that Isaiah refers to the Father in the Godhead also contradicts Geisler’s published writings concerning the divine name of Yahweh (Jehovah). Speaking of the Old Testament he says:

The Bible’s descriptions of Yahweh as Father and Jesus as Son says something of how the Son relates to the Father.25

Elsewhere Geisler states:

Marcion, a second-century heretic, represented the most dangerous movement associated with Gnosticism. According to him, the Father of Jesus is not the same as Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament. If this is true, Christianity is severed from its historic roots.26

We agree with this analysis. We also agree with Geisler when he says:

Jesus claimed to be Yahweh God. YHWH; translated in some versions Jehovah, was the special name of God revealed to Moses in Exodus 3:14, when God said, “I am who I am.” In John 8:58, Jesus declares: “Before Abraham was, I am.” This statement claims not only existence before Abraham, but equality with the “I am” of Exodus 3:14. The Jews around him clearly understood his meaning and picked up stones to kill him for blaspheming (see Mark 14:62; John 8:58; 10:31, 33; 18:5-6). Jesus also said, “I am the first and the last (Rev. 2:8).27

What is incomprehensible is how Geisler can identify Yahweh with the Father in the Old Testament and Jesus with Yahweh in the New Testament yet claim no identification between Jesus and the Father. If the Old Testament Yahweh is the Father and the New Testament Yahweh is Jesus, how is it heresy to affirm the testimony of Isaiah 9:6 that because Jesus is called the Father He must in some sense be the Father?

Geisler and Rhodes Subvert the Clear Meaning of the Words

Fourth, Geisler and Rhodes’ interpretation violates one of the chief principles of Biblical interpretation dating from the time of the Reformation. This principle, called sensus literalis, which Luther describes as follows:

Neither a conclusion nor a figure of speech should be admitted in any place of Scripture unless evident contextual circumstances or the absurdity of anything obviously mitigating against an article of faith require it. On the contrary, we must everywhere adhere to the simple, pure, and natural meaning of the words. This accords with the rules of grammar and the usage of speech (usus loquendi) which God has given to men.28

Luther says further:

The Holy Spirit is the plainest Writer and Speaker in heaven and on earth. Therefore His words can have no more than one, and that the most obvious, sense. This we call the literal or nature sense.29

By saying that Isaiah 9:6 does not mean what it clearly says, Geisler and Rhodes make the inspired words of the Bible subservient to their man-made theology.

Conclusion

By their dependence on non-biblical sources to inform their interpretation, Geisler and Rhodes have diluted the force of the clear words of Isaiah 9:6, in effect denying what it says concerning the relationship between the Father and the Son in the incarnation. It is worthwhile to consider where their considerable expenditure of effort leads. In terms of understanding the divine Trinity, it leads to the untenable state of having two divine Fathers—the eternal Father in the Godhead and Jesus as the Father of eternity. This is precisely the error Witness Lee pointed out over thirty years ago in What a Heresy-Two Divine Fathers, Two Life-giving Spirits, and Three Gods! As far as entering into the depths of the divine revelation, Geisler and Rhodes’ explanation of Isaiah 9:6 leads precisely nowhere. It makes the relationship among the three of the Godhead a matter of objective speculation rather than a model for the believers’ oneness. This is not according to the basic nature of the Bible, which is the revelation of God in His move to carry out His purpose among men. The way taken by Geisler and Rhodes ultimately leads in a different direction. The result may be a self-satisfied sense of having maintained one’s intellectual model of the Trinity intact, notwithstanding its inconsistency with the totality of the divine revelation in the Bible.

On the other hand, Witness Lee’s consideration of the pure word in the Bible regarding the Trinity led him to realize that God’s heart’s desire is to have a group of people conformed to Christ, God’s firstborn Son, and living in the mutual indwelling of God and man for the building up of the Body of Christ. His teaching similarly seeks to bring believers to such a realization of God’s purpose so that they can participate in God’s move to carry out His divine economy. The issue of Witness Lee’s teaching is to produce in God’s people a spiritual hunger to experience and participate in the mutual indwelling of God and man for the corporate expression of God in man according to God’s eternal purpose and heart’s desire.

Notes:

1This article examines one aspect of the truth concerning the Trinity which has been neglected by most theologians and by Christians generally, that is, the identification of Christ with the Father in Isaiah 9:6. The reader should not presume that this represents the full teaching of Witness Lee or of the local churches concerning the relationship between the Son and the Father in the divine Trinity. While we do affirm the clear word of the Bible concerning the identification of Christ with the Father, we also affirm the eternal distinction between Them. As Witness Lee wrote:

Among the three of the Divine Trinity, there is distinction but no separation. The Father is distinct from the Son, the Son is distinct from the Spirit, and the Spirit is distinct from the Son and the Father. The three of the Godhead co-exist in Their coinherence, so They are distinct but not separate. In the Triune God there is no separation, only distinction. The Triune God exists in His coinherence. On the one hand, the three are coinhering; on the other hand, at the same time they are co-existing. Thus, They are one. They are not separate. (The History of God in His Union with Man (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1993), p. 17)

The publications of Living Stream Ministry contain many balanced presentations of the truths concerning the Triune God. Of these, the following date from the mid-1970s and have been available on this site for many years:

The inaugural issue of Affirmation & Critique (I:1, January 1996) was devoted to the subject of “Knowing the Triune God.” It contains several excellent articles, including:

2Witness Lee, What a Heresy-Two Divine Fathers, Two Life-giving Spirits, and Three Gods! (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1977).

3Ibid., p. 17.

4Ibid., p. 13. George Rawlinson, The Pulpit Commentary: Isaiah, Vol. I (London: Funk & Wagnalls, 1910), p. 167, comments:

The Everlasting Father; rather, Everlasting or Eternal Father. But here again, there is a singularity in the idea, which makes the omission of the article unimportant; for how could there be more than one Everlasting Father, one Creator, Preserver, Protector of mankind who was absolutely eternal?

In one of the homilies that follows Rawlinson’s exposition, Rev. R. Tuck says:

He is the Son, and yet it can be said of him that he is the “Everlasting Father.” This last assertion seems to be the most astonishing of them all. “The Son is the Father.” Christ sustained this view: “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” Every man’s work is to find the Father in Christ. No man has truly seen Christ who has not found in him the Father, and learned from him the fatherhood of God.” (p. 181)

5Clement of Alexandria, “The Instructor [Pædagogus],” The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. II, edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979), p. 215.

6Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown, A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments, vol. 2 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2002), p. 594, emphasis in original.

7Benjamin B. Warfield, Biblical and Theological Studies (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1968), p. 38.

8Witness Lee, The Conclusion of the New Testament, Messages 276-294 (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 2004), p. 2957.

9Norman Geisler and R. E. MacKenzie, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals : Agreements and Differences (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1995), p. 39

10Norman L. Geisler, A Popular Survey of the Old Testament (Peabody, MA: Prince Press, 1977, 2003), p. 24. Ron Rhodes, Christ before the Manger: The Life and Times of the Preincarnate Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1992), p. 235.

11See John F. Sawyer, The Fifth Gospel: Isaiah in the History of Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

12Norman Geisler, Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1976), p. 336.

13As, for example in Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes, When Cultists Ask: A Popular Handbook on Cultic Misinterpretations (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1997), pp. 78-79.

14Geisler and Rhodes actually posit two “viable view[s]” of the meaning of eternal Father. One is that Jesus is eternal and the other is that Jesus is the giver of eternal life. However, Rhodes elsewhere has stated that there is only one possible interpretation: “Clearly, the ancient Jews considered the phrase ‘Father of eternity’ a reference to the eternality of the Messiah. There can be no doubt that this is the meaning Isaiah intended to communicate to his readers” (Ron Rhodes, Reasoning from the Scriptures with the Jehovah’s Witnesses (Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers 1993), p. 166). Apparently, there is doubt as even Geisler and Rhodes could not agree on the correct interpretation.

15Bruce Metzger, “Important Early Translations of the Bible,” Bibliotheca Sacra 150:597 (January-March 1993), p. 42.

16Ernst Würthwein, The Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to Biblica Hebraica, translated by Erroll F. Rhodes (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979) p. 76. Pierre Grelot, Les Poèmes du Serviteur (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1981), p. 222, states:

Thus, one is no longer confronted with a problem of translation, even somewhat broadly: more even than the Septuagint, the Targum is a recomposition of the text which has its own coherence.

17Würthwein, op. cit., p. 76. Harald Risenfeld, Jésus Transfiguré (Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard, 1947), pp. 85-86, says:

It is evident that there we have in essence an intentional and systematic transposition. One cannot avoid supposing that this transformation was made during the targumic translation or later with the aim of replacing, with a polemic intention, a different Messianic concept which one disapproved of, namely that of a suffering Messiah.

18E.g., J. Jeremias, “παῖς θεοῦ,” Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. V, Gerhard Friedrich, ed., translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1967), 695:

Though we have already noted an earlier tendency of the LXX to attenuate the passion texts of Is. 53 [1965], there is only one possible explanation for this violent wresting of the chapter in the Tg. [Targum], with its consistent reversal of the meaning, namely, that we have here an instance of anti-Christian polemic.

Roger Syrén, “Targum Isaiah 52:13-53:12 and Christian Interpretation,” Journal of Jewish Studies, 40:2, (Oxford: Oxford Centre for Postgraduate Hebrew Studies, Autumn 1989), pp. 205-206:

If we drew an axis with two extremes, ‘translation’ and ‘recomposition’ along which to place Tg Is. 53, the opinion of a majority of scholars would certainly tip the balance in favour of the second extreme. ‘Recomposition’ is precisely the word used by Grelot in his characterization of the chapter, and he also classifies this text (and parts of the other ‘Servant Songs’ in the Tg as an Aramaic Midrash for which the text is just a pretext for expressing a certain theological stance. Others have characterized the passage as “une transposition intentionnelle et systématique’ (H. Riesenfeld), or, with a well-found simile, “not a translation, or even a paraphrase, but a rewriting which preserved nothing of the idea and architecture of the original edifice; instead, it used only the building stones to erect something completely new’ (H. S. Nyberg).

19E.g., Jostein Ådna, “The Servant of Isaiah 53 as Triumphant and Interceding Messiah: The Reception of Isaiah 52:13—53:12 in the Targum of Isaiah with Special Attention to the Concept of the Messiah,” The Suffering Servant: Isaiah 53 in Jewish and Christian Sources, Bernd Janowski and Peter Stuhlmacher, eds. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), p. 190:

Even a superficial reading of Isaiah 52:13-53:12 in the Hebrew Bible and the Targum of Isaiah (a part of the Targum Jonathan to the Prophets) reveals considerable differences between the Hebrew and Aramaic versions.

20Roger Syrén, “The Isaiah-Targum and Christian Interpretation,” Scandanavian Journal of the Old Testament: 3:1, (Aarhus University Press, 1989), p. 57. Note: The numbering of verses varies among versions. The version cited here identifies this verse as Isaiah 9:5, which matches , for example, the Jewish TANAKH.

21Ibid., p. 60. See note 19.

22Concerning lectio difficilior see: Bruce Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (Stuttgart: United Bible Societies, 1971), pp. xxvi-xxvii; Bruce Metzger, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 209; Ernst Würthwein, The Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Biblia Hebraica, translated by Erroll F. Rhodes (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979), p. 116; Philip Comfort, Encountering the Manuscripts: An Introduction to New Testament Paleography & Textual Criticism (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 2005), pp. 293, 386; D. A. Carson, The King James Version Debate: A Plea for Realism (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1979), p. 30.

23Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), p. 552, quoting Ernst Würthwein. The Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Biblia Hebraica, translated by Erroll F. Rhodes (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1979), pp. 80-81.

24For example, the JPS TANAKH (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1985) says, “Eternal Father.” The rendering of Isaiah 9:6 in The Holy Scriptures According to the Masoretic Text (Jewish Publication Society, 1917) uses a transliteration of the Hebrew which combines all of the descriptive titles (“Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace”) into one compound name—”Pele-joez-el-gibbor-Abi-ad-sar-shalom.” Of note here is that “Abi” which is “Father” is capitalized, indicating that the translators recognized it as a divine title. A Messianic Jewish translation, the Complete Jewish Bible, translated by David H. Stern (Nashville, TN: Jewish New Testament Publications) also capitalizes “Father” as a divine title in this verse.

25Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia, op. cit., p. 732.

26Norman L. Geisler and R. E. MacKenzie, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals, op. cit., p. 82.

27Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia, op. cit., p. 731.

28Martin Luther, What Luther Says: An Anthology, Vol. 1, Ewald M. Plass, ed. (St. Louis, MO, Concordia, 1959), p. 93.

29Ibid., pp. 91-92.

Scholars and Bible Teachers Who Affirm That the Lord Is the Spirit

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A Response to Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes’ Defense of the “Open Letter” and Critique of the Christian Research Journal’s Reassessment of the Local Churches

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Affirming that the Lord is the Spirit

The inclusion of the following quotes in this document is not meant to imply that their sources agree entirely with the teachings of Witness Lee and the local churches on every point of interpretation or that we in the local churches agree entirely with them on every point of truth. All of these sources do, however, identify the Lord Jesus as the Spirit.

Athanasius — Study too the context and ‘turn to the Lord;’ now ‘the Lord is that Spirit;’ and you will see that it is the Son who is signified.
Athanasius, “Against the Arians, I, 4:11,” A Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Series 2, Vol. IV, Philip Schaff and Henry Wace, eds., (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1891), p. 312

Marius Victorinus — The Holy Spirit in some sense is Jesus Christ Himself, but a Christ hidden from sight, a Christ within, who converses with souls and teaches these things; gives understanding…
Marius Victorinus, quoted in Henry Barclay Swete, The Holy Spirit in the Ancient Church (London, Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1912), pp. 306-307

John Albert Bengel — 17. Now the Lord is the Spirit—The Lord (to whom they shall turn, ver. 16) is the Spirit (received at this conversion. Comp. Rom. viii.9-11… The turning is made to the Lord, as the Spirit. And where the Spirit of the Lord is—Where Christ is, there is the Spirit of Christ; where the Spirit of Christ is, there is Christ; Rom. viii. 9, 10.
John Albert Bengel, New Testament Word Studies (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1971), p. 288

Charles Hodge — It is plain that the Lord here means Christ. This is clear not only because the word Lord, as a general rule, in the New Testament, refers to Christ, but also because the context in this case demands that reference. In v. 14 it is said that the veil is done away in Christ, and in v. 16 that it is removed when the heart turns to the Lord, and here that the Lord is the Spirit.
Charles Hodge, An Exposition of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1859, 1980), p. 73

“The Lord is the Spirit,” that is, Christ is the Holy Spirit; they are one and the same.
Charles Hodge, An Exposition of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1859, 1980), p. 74

Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown — 17. the Lord—Christ (vv. 14, 16; ch. iv. 5). is that Spirit—is THE Spirit; viz., that Spirit spoken of in v. 6, and here resumed after the parenthesis (vv. 7-16)…
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown, A Commentary on the Old and New Testaments, vol. 3 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2002), p. 345

Joseph Cook — It is significant beyond comment that our Lord was often called “The Spirit,” and “The Spirit of God,” by the early Christian writers. “The Son is the Holy Spirit,” is a common expression. Ignatius said: “Christ is the Immaculate Spirit.” Tertullian wrote: “The Spirit of God and the Reason of God—Word of Reason and Reason and Spirit of Word—Jesus Christ our Lord, who is both the one and the other.” Cyprian and Iræneus said: “He is the Holy Spirit.”

Joseph Cook, The Boston Monday Lectures, vol. 1 (London: Richard D. Dickinson, 1881), p. 78

Marvin R. Vincent — Paul identifies Christ personally with the Spirit (2 Cor. iii. 17); and in Rom. viii. 9, 10, “Spirit of God,” “Spirit of Christ,” and “Christ” are used as convertible terms.
Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament, vol. IV (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1887, 1980), p. 243; see also vol. III, pp. 308 and 423

Andrew Murray — It was when our Lord Jesus was exalted into the life of the Spirit that He became ‘the Lord the Spirit,’ could give the New Testament Spirit, and in the Spirit come Himself to His people.
Andrew Murray, The Spirit of Christ (Fort Washington, PA: Christian Literature Crusade, 1963, 1978), p. 167; see also p. 168

Hermann Gunkel — It must seem strange that in some passages Paul simply identifies the Spirit with Christ (1 Cor. 15:45; see 6:17; 2 Cor. 3:17). According to these passages the Spirit does not come through Christ; rather, Christ himself is this Spirit.
Hermann Gunkel, The Influence of the Holy Spirit: The Popular View of the Apostolic Age and the Teaching of the Apostle Paul, translated by Roy A. Harrisville and Philip A. Quanbeck II (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1979), p. 113

A. B. Simpson — Let us bear in mind … that the Holy Spirit identifies Himself with the Lord Jesus and that the coming of the Comforter is just the coming of Jesus Himself to the heart.
A. B. Simpson, When the Comforter Comes, 2nd day (Harrisburg, PA: Christian Publishers, c1911)

James Denney — The Lord, of course, is Christ, and the Spirit is that which Paul has already spoken of in the sixth verse. It is the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life under the new covenant. He who turns to Christ receives the Spirit…. Practically, therefore, the two may be identified…. Here, so far as the practical experience of Christians goes, no distinction is made between the Spirit of Christ and Christ Himself….
James Denney, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (London: Hodder and Stroughton, 1894), pp. 133-134

Alexander Balmain Bruce — Hence it comes that the Spirit and Christ are sometimes identified, as in the sentence, “The Lord is the Spirit,” and the expression, “The Lord the Spirit.” As a matter of subjective experience the two indwellings cannot be distinguished; to consciousness they are one. The Spirit is the alter ego of the Lord.
Alexander Balmain Bruce, St. Paul’s Conception of Christianity (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1896), p. 254

David Somerville — But Paul not only identifies the Spirit of God with that of Christ, he identifies both with the very Person of Christ. “The Lord is the Spirit,” we read; and again, “we are changed into the same image by the Lord, the Spirit.” …in the thought of the apostle, “Christ,” the “Spirit of Christ,” and “the Spirit of God” are practically synonymous. At the Resurrection Christ became a Life-giving Spirit to mankind…
David Somerville, St. Paul’s Conception of Christ (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1897), pp. 117-118; see also pp. 121, 122

John Peter Lange — ‘But the Lord, to whom their heart thus turns, is the Spirit.’ Many artificial explanations have been given of this verse. Without noticing those attempts which have been in direct contradiction to the meaning of the words and the scope of the context…we find here such an identification of Christ and the Holy Spirit, that the Lord, to whom the heart turns, is in no practical respect different from the Holy Spirit received in conversion.
John Peter Lange, Commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Critical, Doctrinal and Homiletical, translated and edited by Philip Schaff, Volume 10, “The Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians” (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1960), p. 58

Henry Barclay Swete — The Spirit in its working was found to be in effect the equivalent of Jesus Christ. Thus St Paul writes, If any has not Christ’s Spirit, that man is not his (Christ’s); but if Christ is in you, the body indeed is dead…but the spirit is life…, where the possession of the Spirit of Christ is clearly regarded as tantamount to an indwelling of Christ Himself. The same line of thought seems to be followed in the words, The Lord is the Spirit, but where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all…are being transformed…as by the Lord the Spirit, where ‘the Spirit of the Lord’ and ‘the Lord the Spirit’ (i.e. Christ in the power of His glorified life) are viewed as being in practice the same.
Henry Barclay Swete, The Holy Spirit in the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1910), pp. 300-301; see also pp. 301-304

Adolf Deissmann — As Pneuma, as Spirit the living Christ is not far off, above clouds and stars, but near, present on our poor earth he dwells and rules in His own. Here again, there is no lack of suggestion in this direction in the Septuagint, and Paul himself created the significant formulæ:

The Lord is the Spirit,
The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit,
He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit.

Adolf Deissmann, Paul: A Study in Social and Religious History, translated by William E. Wilson (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1912, 1972), p. 138; see also p. 140

W. H. Griffith Thomas — Then there is a close association of the Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ with the Person of Christ. No line of demarcation is drawn between Christ and the Spirit. The great passage is 2 Cor. iii. 17. ‘Now the Lord is the Spirit.’ So close is the association that [A. B.] Bruce is able to say, ‘The Spirit is the Alter Ego of the Lord.’
W. H. Griffith Thomas, The Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1986), p. 34

Christ and the Spirit are different yet the same, the same yet different.
W. H. Griffith Thomas, The Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1986), p. 144

Thomas Rees — At the centre of Paul’s thinking, where his thought is most his own, Christ and the Spirit are practically and essentially one; but at the circumference, where his thought speaks the language of his time, the two are formally distinct.
Thomas Rees, The Holy Spirit in Thought and Experience (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915), p. 101

Robert C. Moberly — This grace, this peace, no longer only in the Person of Jesus Christ; —but through the Person of Jesus Christ, to you and in you: What is this but Christ in you? And how Christ in you,—save in, and as, Spirit? Christ in you, or the Spirit of Christ in you; these are not different realities; but the one is the method of the other. It is in the person of Christ that the Eternal God is revealed in manhood, to man. It is in the Person of His Spirit that the Incarnate Christ is Personally present with the spirit of each several man. The Holy Ghost is mainly revealed to us as the Spirit of the Incarnate.
Robert C. Moberly, Atonement and Personality (London, John Murray, 1917), p. 194

He breathed on the them, and saith unto them, “Receive ye [the] Holy Ghost—(λάβετε πνεῦμα ἅγιον). This is not the action of one who, by prayer, would invoke upon them, a Spirit which is not of, or from, Himself: it is the symbolism rather of one who would transfer to them the very Spirit which animates—which may be said to be—Himself.
Robert C. Moberly, Atonement and Personality (London, John Murray, 1917), pp. 196-197

Alan H. McNeile — He is so unutterably sure that he is filled with the Spirit of the risen Lord that the language which he uses about Christ and about the Holy Spirit is sometimes hardly distinguishable. The Spirit of God and the Spirit of Christ are one and the same (Rom. viii. 9). Christ and the Holy Spirit are spoken of in parallelism (ix. i. ‘He that is joined to the Lord [i.e. Christ] is one spirit’ (I Cor. vi. 17). ‘The Spirit of His Son’ (Gal. iv. 6). His Spirit in the inner man is equated with Christ dwelling in your hearts by faith (Eph. iii. 16, 17). ‘The supply of the Spirit of Christ Jesus’ (Phil. 1. 19). And most explicitly ‘The Lord is the Spirit’ (2 Cor. iii. 17), ‘the Lord Spirit’ (v. 18). ‘The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit’ (I Cor. xv. 45).

Thus if the Holy Spirit of God is the Spirit of Christ, it is equally true to say either that the Holy Spirit or Christ is in Christians, and they in Him.
Alan H. McNeile, St. Paul: His Life, Letters, and Christian Doctrine (Cambridge: University Press, 1920), pp. 283-284

Terrot R. Glover — Elsewhere Paul says explicitly: “The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” The Spirit and the Risen Christ are for him practically indistinguishable—the source of the new life, the earnest of God’s intentions for us, the hope of glory, the origin of the graces of love, joy, peace and the rest.
Terrot R. Glover, Paul of Tarsus (London: Student Christian Movement, 1925), p. 219

R. Birch Hoyle — ‘Kyrios’ in verse 17 is the same person as the one mentioned in verse 16 and that reference points back to ‘Christ’ in verse 14; and from the context it would seem that the Lord is Christ, and in the sequel the ‘glory’ is on His face (v. 18 and iv. 6). Hence we conclude that by the phrase ‘The Lord is the Spirit’ Paul means ‘The Lord (i.e. the Risen Christ) is the Spirit’.
R. Birch Hoyle, The Holy Spirit in St. Paul (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Doran, & Company, 1928), p. 143

H. Wheeler Robinson — Faith-surrender to the deliverer, Jesus Christ (“The Lord the Spirit”, 2 Cor. iii. 17, 18), unites this inner man with One Who, like the law, is spiritual, but, unlike the law, is able to deliver where that could only condemn. In both “justification” and “sanctification”, to use the technical terms of theology, the faith-union is a spiritual union with the Lord the Spirit, the risen and ascended Christ.
H. Wheeler Robinson, The Christian Experience of the Holy Spirit (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1928), p. 230

W. F. Lofthouse — It is spoken of as the spirit of God, and the spirit of Christ; or as the spirit of life acting in Christ (Rom. viii. 2); and in one passage, the Lord—Christ—and the Spirit are identified (2 Cor. iii. 17).
W. F. Lofthouse, The Father and the Son (London: Student Christian Movement Press, 1934), p. 179

R. H. Strachan — The Lord means the Spirit identifies Jesus and the Spirit, at least in the experience of men. The Lord is the risen and exalted Jesus, upon whom God has conferred ‘the name which is above every name’ (Phil. ii. 9 ff.). Moreover, it may be contended, the Jews did not need to turn to Jahveh, but to Christ. In Rom. viii. 9-11 the life of Christ in the Christian is identified with the life of the Spirit.
R. H. Strachan, The Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1935), p. 88

C. H. Dodd — Thus the “communion of the Holy Spirit” was also “the communion of the Son of God” (1 Cor. i. 9). It was not enough to say that Christ, being exalted to the right hand of God, had “poured forth” the Spirit. The presence of the Spirit in the Church is the presence of the Lord: “the Lord is the Spirit” (2 Cor. iii. 17).
C. H. Dodd, The Apostolic Preaching and Its Developments (London: Hodder & Stoughton (1936, 1944), p. 62

William R. Newell — But the other part of the great mystery is here before us in Romans 8:10: Christ is in us. Although, as we know, He is within us by His Spirit, yet it is Christ Himself who is in us. That the Spirit can make Christ present in us, we see in the beautiful words of II Corinthians 3.17, 18: “Now the Lord is the Spirit: … We … are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.” Or, as Paul says in the solemn words of II Corinthians 13.5: “Know ye not as to your own selves, that Jesus Christ is in you?”
William R. Newell, Romans: Verse by Verse (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Classics, 1994), p. 302

Lucien Cerfaux — Because the article is there (t? p?e?µa), we think that Saint Paul meant by this word the Holy Spirit… But “when we turn to the Lord, the veil is taken away” (3:16 following Exod. 34:34). Paul takes “the Lord” to be Christ, and he adds the remark: the Lord, who is the Holy Spirit.
Lucien Cerfaux, Christ in the Theology of St. Paul, translated by Geoffrey Webb and Adrian Walker (New York: Herder and Herder, 1952, 1959), p. 293

William Barclay — In this passage Paul has set for many a theological problem. He says, “The Lord is the Spirit.” He seems to identify the Risen Lord and the Holy Spirit. We must remember that Paul was not writing theology; he was setting down experience. And it is in the experience of the Christian life that the work of the Spirit and the work of the Risen Lord are one and the same. The strength, the light, the guidance we receive come alike from the Spirit and from the Risen Lord. It does not matter how we express it as long as we experience it.
William Barclay, The Letters to the Corinthians (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1954, 1956), p. 216

Prosper Grech — Here we shall only give an exposition of the opinion which we consider the most probable interpretation of 2 Cor 3,17.

According to this opinion, the subject of the phrase in 17a is “Kyrios.” “Pneuma” is the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Blessed Trinity, while the Kyrios is identical with the Kyrios in v. 16…

V. 17 is not an independent verse; it does not start a new thought—note the de of transition—but continues that of v. 16. Were it independent, there would be reason enough to apply the Kyrios to Christ, but since it is a transition sentence, the mind of the reader does not have enough time or opportunity to switch its attention to another subject. The Kyrios of v. 17 therefore is the same Kyrios of v. 16.

Since v. 17a is a sentence of transition continuing the sense of v. 16, estin is then explicative, and v. 17 becomes an exegetical explanation of v. 16 viz., the Kyrios just mentioned in v. 16 is the Spirit. But whom does the Spirit denote?

In v. 17b it is said that this Spirit gives freedom. We now know from Rom 8 that the Spirit of freedom as opposed to the enslaving letter of the Law is the Holy Spirit. This finds confirmation in the whole context of our verse, ch. 2 and 3, where there can hardly be any doubt that St. Paul is always referring to the Holy Spirit whenever he mentions Pneuma.
Prosper Grech, “2 Corinthians 3, 17 and the Pauline Doctrine of Conversion to the Holy Spirit,” Catholic Bible Quarterly, XVII (Washington, DC: Catholic Bible Association of America, 1955), pp. 421-422

Neill Q. Hamilton — In the light of what we have seen of Paul’s thought in this regard, a ‘becoming’ predicted of Christ which results in His identification with the Spirit, can only refer to what occurred at His resurrection. In 2 Cor.3. 17 we saw that the Spirit was identical with the Lord (i.e., the resurrected exalted Christ).
Neill Q. Hamilton, The Holy Spirit and Eschatology in Paul, Scottish Journal of Theology Occasional Papers, No. 6 (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1957), p. 14

Karl Barth — …He [the Spirit] is no other than the presence and action of Jesus Christ Himself: His stretched out arm; He Himself in the power of His resurrection, i.e., in the power of His revelation as it begins in and with the power of His resurrection and continues its work from this point.
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV:2: The Doctrine of Reconciliation, G. W. Bromiley & T. F. Torrance, eds. (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958), pp. 322-323

Eduard Schweizer — In v. 6 and v. 8 the new ministry is depicted as that which is controlled by the πνεῦμα [Spirit], not the γράμμα [letter]. It is then shown that the unbelieving Jew still lives under the veil which is done away only ἐν Χριστῷ [in Christ] (v. 14). Turning to the κύριος [Lord] (==Χριστός [Christ] in v. 14 as always, à III. 1087.5ff.) takes the veil away. The statement that this κύριος [Lord] is the Spirit connects the two trains of thought. The exalted κύριος [Lord] to whom Israel must turn instead of to Moses (cf. Rom. 10:4 f.; 1 C. 10:2) is identified with the πνεῦμα [Spirit]. This shows that turning to Him means turning to the new διακονία [ministry] in the πνεῦμα [Spirit]. It is not wholly true that, while Paul ascribes the same functions to Christ and the Spirit, he does not elsewhere equate them.
Eduard Schweizer, “πνεῦμα
, πνευτικόςμα
,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, vol. VI, Gerhard Friedrich, ed., translated and edited by Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1968), p. 418

Charles A. Anderson — In all that concerns the present experience of the Christian, moral or spiritual, St Paul treats the heavenly Christ and the Holy Spirit as practically interchangeable.
Charles A. Anderson Scott, Christianity according to St Paul (Cambridge: University Press, 1961), p. 260

S. H. Hooke — We have spoken of the sporadic activity of Yahweh in the history of Israel, directing the acts and inspiring the words of the prophets; but never until the Son of Man had ascended up where he was before, and the last Adam had become a life-giving spirit, had it been possible for the Spirit to enter into and become the life of the believer, producing in him the life of Jesus, as Paul says, “That the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh’ (II Cor. iv. 11).
S. H. Hooke, “The Spirit Was Not Yet,” New Testament Studies, vol. 9, Issue 4, July 1963, p. 380

Hendrikus Berkhof — …The word “Lord” in verses 17 and 18 always means Christ. He himself is the Spirit; as the close of verse 18 repeats: “this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” Other features of this conception in Paul are found in 1 Corinthians 6:17: “he who is united to the Lord becomes one Spirit with him,” and in Romans 8:9-11, where the divine principle which dwells in the faithful alternately is called the Spirit, the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Christ, and Christ.
Hendrikus Berkhof, The Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Richmond, VA: John Knox Press, 1964), pp. 24-25; see also pp. 18, 25-27

David Hill — In this context, the word ‘Lord’ must refer to Christ, since v. 14 clearly states that ‘only in Christ is it (the veil) removed’. Verse 17 goes on to declare, ‘Now the Lord is the Spirit’, that is to say, the Lord to whom we can turn for illumination and for understanding is the Spirit, that Spirit which is experienced as life-giving, liberating power within, and which is the means by which Christ is operative in the Church.
David Hill, Greek Words and Hebrew Meanings: Studies in the Semantics of Soteriological Terms (Cambridge: University Press, 1967), p. 278; see also pp. 279, 281

New Century Bible — 17. Now the Lord is the Spirit: …Paul elsewhere distinguishes between the Lord (i.e. Christ) and the Spirit (cf. 1 C. 12.4f; 2 C. 13.14), but dynamically they are one, since it is by the Spirit that the life of the risen Lord is imparted to believers and maintained within them (cf. Rom. 8.9-11; see also note on 1 C. 15.45b).
F. F. Bruce, ed., New Century Bible (London: Oliphants, 1971), p. 193

G. R. Beasley-Murray — An interpretation that has become popular in recent times has found embodiment in the NEB rendering of this verse: “Now the Lord of whom this passage speaks is the Spirit.” This views the clause as an explanatory comment on Exodus 34:34: the Lord to whom the Scripture says that Moses turned, and to whom the Jew should turn today for illumination, is the Holy Spirit. As an explanation of the difficulty in the text the rendering above will hardly suffice, for in v. 16 the Lord to whom the Jew should turn for the removal of the veil is surely the Lord Christ, as implied in v. 14. If Paul in v. 17 is intending to identify the person of the Lord in the Exodus narrative, he must mean first of all Christ, and then he proceeds to declare that this Lord Christ is the Spirit.
G. R. Beasley-Murray, “2 Corinthians,” The Broadman Bible Commentary, vol. 11: 2 Corinthians-Philemon (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1971), p. 26

James D. G. Dunn — Paul identifies the exalted Jesus with the Spirit—not with a spiritual being or a spiritual dimension or sphere, but with the Spirit, the Holy Spirit. Immanent Christology is for Paul pneumatology; in the believer’s experience there is no distinction between Christ and Spirit.
James D. G. Dunn, “1 Corinthians 15:45 – last Adam, life-giving Spirit,” Christ and Spirit in the New Testament, Barnabas Lindars and Stephen S. Smalley, eds. (Cambridge: University Press, 1973), p. 139; see also pp. 132-133, 141; “Jesus—Flesh and Spirit: An Exposition of Romans I. 3-4,” Journal of Theological Studies, XXIV:1, April 1973, p. 67; Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation (London: SCM Press, 1980), pp. 145, 146

Walter Kasper — Thus the Spirit is the medium and the force in which Jesus Christ as the new Lord of the world is accessible to us, and where we can know him. The Spirit is the active presence of the exalted Lord in the Church, in individual believers and in the world. ‘In the Spirit’ and ‘In Christ’ are for Paul almost interchangeable expressions.
Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ (New York: Paulist Press, 1976), p. 256

G. W. H. Lampe — Jesus’ promise that the Spirit of truth will ‘be with you for ever’ is only another form of the promise, ‘I will not leave you bereft; I am coming back to you’; for the indwelling Spirit is the mode in which Jesus returns.
G. W. H. Lampe, God as Spirit (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), p. 10

Walter Clifford Wright — Again Paul appears to identify the divine pneuma and the risen Christ. It is doubtful that Paul is interested in the ontological discussion that resulted in the later Trinitarian formulation. But he does appear to be concerned that the Corinthians understand that the Christ upon whom their hope is built is the one encountered in their experience of pneuma. It is through pneuma that Christ has illuminated their hearts and minds. Christ has come to them as life-giving pneuma and continues to lead them into new stages of glory as they become more and more like him. For Paul, and for his readers, there was no difference between the risen Christ and the pneuma in experience. Christ met them as pneuma. It was the pneuma of Christ that gave them life. In short, the risen Lord is the pneuma – the pneuma is Christ.
Walter Clifford Wright, Jr. “The Use of Pneuma in the Pauline Corpus with Special Attention to the Relationship between Pneuma and the Risen Christ,” Ph.D. Dissertation, Fuller Theological Seminary, 1977, p. 246

Richard B. Gaffin, Jr. — Seen in their respective contexts, I Corinthians 15:45c and II Corinthians 3:17a are closely correlative so that it is difficult to evade the conclusion that the identification expressed in the latter dates from Jesus’ resurrection. Because at his resurrection he became life-giving Spirit, now he is the Spirit.
Richard B. Gaffin, Jr., Resurrection and Redemption: A Study in Paul’s Soteriology (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing, 1978, 1987), p. 96; see also pp. 86, 95

Ernst Käsemann — The Spirit, however, is the earthly presence of the exalted Lord…
Ernst Käsemann, Commentary on Romans (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1980), p. 241

Carl F. H. Henry — The Spirit that indwells believers is the selfsame Spirit of the glorified Lord.

Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, VI:2 (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1983), p. 400

Lewis B. Smedes — After His resurrection, says Paul, Jesus Christ, the Second Adam, “became a life-giving Spirit” (I Cor. 15:45). Whatever weight is given to the verb “became,” it is clear that it comes close to identifying the risen Jesus with the divine Spirit. In one perplexing sentence Paul says, “The Lord is the Spirit” (II Cor. 3:17). Had he said, “The Lord sends the Spirit” or “The Spirit is divine,” he would have made things simpler. But we have to deal with what he actually says.

We should notice, too, the mixing of Spirit and Christ in Romans 8. In the span of a few sentences Paul has “Spirit in us” and “Christ in us” as well as “Spirit of God” and “Spirit of Christ.” So, brushing aside all nuances of context and grammar, we can say this much without further examination: Spirit and Christ are inseparable.
Lewis B. Smedes, Union with Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970, 1983), pp. 26-27

Who is “the Lord” in the sentence [2 Cor. 3:17]? Interpreters have sometimes thought Him to be Jehovah of Exodus 34. The point would then be that the Spirit of the new covenant is really the Spirit of Jehovah, showing that there is no contradiction between the Old Testament and the New. But Paul’s whole argument is not to show the identity but the contrast between the covenants. He wants to say that Israel has been brought to a stage in history when they are now confronted specifically with the claims of Jesus, the surprising Messiah.

The Lord is Jesus. This is the core of Paul’s message here and everywhere. The Lord in verse 17 is the concrete individual Jesus who died and rose again and is now Lord of “all things.” This identifiable and concrete person is the Spirit.
Lewis B. Smedes, Union with Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970, 1983), pp. 39-40

Bruce Demarest and Gordon Lewis — Paul upholds the deity of the Holy Spirit when he states, “The Lord is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:17; cf. v. 18). Although some identify kyrios as the God of the Old Testament, it seems preferable, given the immediate context (v. 14), to hold that the apostle identifies Christ and the Spirit. That being so, “The Lord and the Spirit are ‘one’ in the same sense that Jesus said that He and the Father were one (John 10:30).
Bruce Demarest and Gordon Lewis, Integrative Theology, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1987), p. 266; the last sentence quotes R. V. G. Tasker, 2 Corinthians, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1983), p. 66

James D. G. Dunn — Most significant of all, the Spirit for Paul has been constitutively stamped with the character of Christ. Christ by his resurrection entered wholly upon the realm of the Spirit (Rom. 1:4; cf. 8:11). Indeed, Paul can say that Christ by his resurrection “became life-giving Spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45). That is to say, the exalted Christ is now experienced in, through, and as Spirit.
James D. G. Dunn, The Christ and the Spirit, vol. 2: Pneumatology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1998), p. 16; see also pp. 338, 341

Mehrdad Fatehi — Nevertheless, the dynamic identification between Christ and the Spirit includes, most probable, also an ontic or ontological aspect, to use present day theological language and conceptual distinctions, which goes beyond a merely functional identification. In other words, one should not speak merely of the Spirit playing the role of Christ, or of the Spirit only representing Christ. Rather, there is a sense in which the risen Lord himself is actually present and active through the Spirit which is hardly imaginable without there being some ontic or ontological connection between the two. Thus it seems appropriate to speak also of an ontological, though dynamic, identification between the Spirit and Christ in Paul.
Mehrdad Fatehi, The Spirit’s Relation to the Risen Lord in Paul: An Examination of Its Christological Implications (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), p. 305; see also p. 332

John S. Feinberg — There are also passages that teach that the Son and the Spirit are one. In Rom. 8:9-10 Paul speaks of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, but he says that anyone who does not have the Holy Spirit does not belong to Christ. Thus, in having Christ, one also has the Holy Spirit and vice versa. All of this suggests their unity. Moreover, consider 2 Cor 3:17. As we have already seen, this verse says that the Lord is the Spirit, and the word for Lord is kyrios, the Greek for the Hebrew yhwh. Many see kyrios here as a reference to Jesus who, of course, is often called by this name. In that case, the verse asserts unity between the Son and the Spirit.
John S. Feinberg, No One Like Him (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2001), p. 467

The Error of Denying That the Infinite God Became a Finite Man through Incarnation

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A Response to Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes’ Defense of the “Open Letter” and Critique of the Christian Research Journal’s Reassessment of the Local Churches

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In a a June 2008 letter that Norman Geisler claims1 to have sent to Ron Kangas seeking clarification2 concerning points in Kangas’s article “The Economy of God: The Triune God in His Operation”3 (hereafter, “Economy”), Geisler denied that the infinite God became a finite man through incarnation, a point that “Economy” resolutely affirmed. Geisler wrote:

Fourth, what do you mean by “twofoldness”[4] of truth. Can logical opposites both be true? You seem to say that Christ was both divine and human in one nature. For example, you affirm he is both “infinite God and a finite man.” You say that “God is infinite, and man is finite, yet in Christ the two became one.” This is not the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity which never affirms that God (the infinite) became man (the finite). Rather, it asserts that the second person of the Godhead became man. Certainly, the Father and the Spirit did not become human. Only the Son became human. That is, he (who was the second person of the Godhead from all eternity) assumed another distinctly different nature and thus was both God and man united in one person (but not in one nature).

Geisler’s analysis contains several serious errors:

  1. Ron Kangas does not imply (nor did he write) that “Christ was both divine and human in one nature,” as Geisler alleges. Geisler’s claim disregards Ron Kangas’ clearly defined use of the word mingling to describe the relationship between the two natures, the divine and the human, in the one Person, the incarnate Christ.
  2. Geisler’s assertion that “the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity … never affirms that God (the infinite) became man (the finite)” suggests that Christ is not the infinite God.
  3. When Ron Kangas writes that “God is infinite, and man is finite, yet in Christ the two became one,” Geisler interprets the statement with a definition of “became” that neither Ron Kangas nor the Bible intends.
  4. Geisler forbids any involvement of the Father and the Spirit in the incarnation of Christ and teaches, based on a law of logical non-contradiction, a Trinity in which the three Persons are not only distinct but also separate.

Further, statements on the incarnation of Christ from Geisler’s Systematic Theology contradict his arguments to Ron Kangas, thus calling into question whether or not he is clear or consistent about what he believes and teaches.

Geisler Misrepresents the Words of Ron Kangas and Disregards His Definition of “Mingling”

Geisler creates a “straw man”5 by misrepresenting Ron Kangas’ assertion that the infinite God became a finite man. Geisler states, “You seem to say that Christ was both divine and human in one nature,” yet nowhere in “Economy” did Ron Kangas state, or even imply, that Christ has only one nature. On the contrary, he refers to Christ as a “unique divine-human person, [who is] both the infinite God and a finite man” (6, emphasis added), not to an alleged divine-human nature. Further, he states, “Through incarnation our God, the Creator, the eternal One, became mingled with man, a God-man who had human blood to shed for redemption and who was able to die for us” (8), and he defines mingling as follows: “the oneness of mingling is a matter of two natures—divinity and humanity—being mingled together without the producing of a third nature” (12).6 As should be clear to any reader familiar with historical theology, Ron Kangas included the qualifier “without the producing of a third nature” to make clear that he is not teaching monophysitism, an ancient heresy that obliterated the distinction between the two natures in Christ. Despite this clear statement by Ron Kangas in his article, Geisler wrote:

Sixth, how would you distinguish your view from the heresy called monophysitism which co-mingled the two natures of Christ? How can he be both finite and not-finite (in-finite) at the same time in the same sense?

A fair reading of “Economy” makes clear that Ron Kangas affirms Christ’s two natures, the divine and the human.

Critics have wrongly assumed that we in the local churches use mingling to teach that the two natures in Christ are so united that they lose their respective distinctions and that a third nature, neither divine nor human,7 results from the combination. However, in our use of the word mingling, which is the use employed by Ron Kangas, we understand that the two natures in Christ do not lose their respective distinctions; rather, as the formula of Chalcedon (A.D. 451) affirms, the two natures in Christ exist “inconfusedly, unchangeably, indivisibly, inseparably.” It is, therefore, perfectly permissible to state, as Ron Kangas has, that the infinite God and the finite man became one because Christ is the infinite God in His divine nature and a finite man in His human nature, the two natures remaining distinct in the one Person of the God-man, Jesus Christ. No teacher of orthodox Christian theology would contest this. Sadly, Geisler has misrepresented Ron Kangas’ careful articulation of this precious and fundamental truth.

Geisler’s twisting of Ron Kangas’ words is particularly egregious. Even if Geisler was influenced by old misunderstandings concerning our use of the word mingling, he still should not be excused from promulgating a false charge that has been repudiated repeatedly in various media.8 In short, he should have done his research. It is not too much to expect that he would understand what we teach before he critiques it and to adhere to his own stated principle that “it is not possible to evaluate another viewpoint fairly without first understanding it.”9 At a minimum, we should be able to recognize our own teaching in any representation of it, but Geisler has so thoroughly distorted our teaching that we are unable to detect even a trace of it in his alleged representation.

Geisler Suggests that Christ Is Not the Infinite God

Geisler resolutely states that it was not the infinite God but only the second Person of the Trinity who became man, as his letter to Ron Kangas demonstrates:

…the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity … never affirms that God (the infinite) became man (the finite). Rather, it asserts that the second person of the Godhead became man.

In making this careless and unsettling assertion, Geisler has made another significant misstep. Here it seems that Christ, the second Person of the Trinity, is something other than God the Infinite because, in Geisler’s estimation, it was not the infinite God but only the second Person of the Trinity who became a man. But here is a strange contradiction. In his Systematic Theology he affirms that Christ was infinite in His divine nature:

Christ has two natures, and they must not be confused—what is true of one is not necessarily true of the other. For example, Christ was infinite and uncreated in His divine nature, but He was finite and created in His human nature. Likewise, as God, Christ was omnipresent, but as man He was not.10

While we agree with this passage, we are still hard-pressed to discover what Geisler believes in light of his contradictory statements to Ron Kangas. In the letter he states that the infinite God did not become a finite man. In his Systematic Theology he states that Christ was infinite in His divine nature. If Geisler believes that both propositions are true (and he must because he has made them both), then he has violated the law of logical non-contradiction that he evidently prizes. But there is more at stake here. If Christ Himself is infinite, yet the infinite God did not become a finite man, then Christ, if we are to follow Geisler’s statements to their logical conclusion, is not fully God. He is something less than fully God yet, inexplicably, He is somehow infinite. Moreover, Geisler’s statement that “the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity … never affirms that God (the infinite) became man (the finite)” strongly suggests that in his theological formula Christ is not the infinite God, despite what he says elsewhere concerning Christ being infinite in His divine nature. How are Geisler’s readers to reconcile these statements? Is Christ the infinite God or is He not? If He is infinite, then what is wrong with saying, “The infinite God became a finite man?” Is this not the story of the incarnation?

Geisler Interprets the Word “Became” with a Definition that neither Ron Kangas nor the Bible Intends

Geisler seems to take particular exception to the word “became” in Ron Kangas’ statement that “God is infinite, and man is finite, yet in Christ the two became one,” and apparently he applies a definition for “became” that neither Ron Kangas nor the Bible intends. In his Systematic Theology Geisler writes:

The Eternal did not become temporal, nor did the divine nature become human at the Incarnation any more than the human nature became divine. As a matter of fact, this is the monophysite heresy condemned at the Council of Chalcedon in A.D. 454 [sic11 ]: It is a confusion of the two natures of Christ. In the Incarnation, the divine nature did not become a human nature or vice versa. Rather, the divine person—the second person of the Trinity—became human; that is, He assumed a human nature in addition to His divine nature. Notice carefully the words of Scripture: “The Word was God…. the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:1, 14, emphasis added). It does not say that God became flesh. It is as impossible for God to become man as it is for an infinite to become a finite or an uncreated to become created. As Athanasius (c. 293-373) would say, the Incarnation was not the subtraction of Deity, but the addition of humanity. God the Son did not change His divine nature; rather, He added a distinct human nature to it.12

For Geisler, then, any thought that the infinite God became a finite man compromises the essential immutability of the Godhead by suggesting that the divine nature has metamorphosed into (i.e., “became”) a human nature. But that is not what Ron Kangas means by his use of the word “became,” as even a cursory reading of “Economy” makes clear:

At this point it would be profitable, and perhaps necessary, to restate the twofold nature of the truth regarding God in His Godhead and God in His economy, that is, the truth of the immutability of God and the process of God, both of which we must believe. God’s immutability is related to His being in His essence, and God’s process is related to His becoming in His economy. In particular, God’s process is related to the two becomings of Christ: His becoming flesh through incarnation (John 1:14) and His becoming the life-giving Spirit (the Spirit) through resurrection (7:39; 14:16-17; 1 Cor. 15:45). These two becomings, as stages of God’s process in Christ, are an economical, not essential, matter; they are changes that involve God’s economy, not God’s essence. (10)

The divine essence with the divine nature cannot change, and no change to it was effected through the incarnation or the resurrection, as Ron Kangas clearly enunciates. Nonetheless, as Ron Kangas also affirms, the Bible does state that “the Word became flesh” (John 1:14) and that “the last Adam became a life-giving Spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45), and these declarations indicate that God in Christ has passed through a process of incarnation, human living, crucifixion, and resurrection for the carrying out of His eternal plan, or economy. In that process, Christ took upon Himself a genuine human nature for the redemption of mankind (John 19:5; Heb. 2:14; 10:5), and He retains an uplifted and glorified humanity forever (Acts 7:56; 1 Tim. 2:5; Phil. 3:21; Heb. 2:7, 9). Further, in resurrection Christ’s humanity was pneumatized, that is, made spirit (1 Cor. 15:45; 2 Cor. 3:17; Phil. 1:19), and as the Spirit—the life-giving Spirit—He imparts His divine life and uplifted humanity into His chosen, redeemed, and regenerated people (John 20:22; Rom. 8:9-11).13 The process that God underwent in Christ is economical, that is, it was undertaken for the accomplishment of His divine economy, and the divine essence suffered no change but was preserved eternally in the divine process. God, therefore, remains eternally transcendent and the Godhead eternally inviolable; yet in His move for His economy, God has become what we are so that we may become what He is, as Athanasius also recognized.

Geisler’s efforts to define “became” within the context of his own theological paradigm are severely strained. He seems able only to separate the persons of the Trinity to arrive at an explanation for the incarnation (i.e., that the Son came into humanity apart from the Father and the Spirit). But by contending for his own contrived definition of “became,” it seems that Geisler’s real argument is not with Ron Kangas but with the language of the Bible in John 1:14 and 1 Corinthians 15:45 because it does not conform to his theological presuppositions. When Ron Kangas used the word “became,” he was simply quoting the Bible; when Geisler challenges the word “became,” he is objecting to the Bible’s own wording. For Geisler, the use of “became” to describe the incarnation implies that in becoming a finite man, Christ ceased to be the infinite God. Therefore, Geisler actually insists that we abandon the language of the Bible. In interpreting others’ words, he applies his own definitions to supersede both the words of the divine revelation in the Bible and the carefully explained definitions of those whom he criticizes. Christ certainly “assumed a human nature in addition to His divine nature,” as Geisler states, but the Christ who assumed that nature was conceived of the Spirit (Matt. 1:18, 20; Luke 1:35), worked by the Spirit (Matt. 12:28), and indwelt the Father and was indwelt by the Father (14:10, 20; 17:21); thus, “in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily” (Col. 2:9). To be sure, Jesus Christ is the embodiment of the infinite God—the Triune God—and is not merely one-third of God. Any insistence to the contrary bears tritheistic implications and, therefore, runs the risk of heresy. Regardless of how much the notion of God becoming man chafes against Geisler’s philosophical biases, it is the revelation of the Bible. After all, is this not the mystery of the incarnation, that is, the mystery of godliness, that God Himself became a man (1 Tim. 3:16)?

Two contemporary theologians who have expressed wonder that the infinite God could become a finite man are Wayne Grudem and Alan K. Scholes.14 Grudem writes:

At the end of this long discussion, it may be easy for us to lose sight of what is actually taught in Scripture. It is by far the most amazing miracle of the entire Bible—far more amazing than the resurrection and more amazing even than the creation of the universe. The fact that the infinite, omnipotent, eternal Son of God could become man and join himself to a human nature forever, so that infinite God became one person with finite man, will remain for eternity the most profound miracle and the most profound mystery in all the universe.15

Scholes concurs:

Now it is time to try to answer what is undoubtedly one of the most perplexing questions in all of theology. How is it possible for the infinite God to fit inside a finite human mind and body? How is it possible for the omnipresent God to walk the hills of Galilee and to be in only one place at a time? How can the omniscient and omnipotent God be “increasing in wisdom and stature” as Luke describes Jesus? In short, how is it possible for God to become a man?16

We doubt if Geisler would imply that respected theologian Wayne Grudem is heretical for stating that “infinite God became one person with finite man,” and we are certain that he would not harass Alan K. Scholes, a fellow signer of “An Open Letter to the Leadership of Living Stream Ministry and the ‘Local Churches’,” for asking (in reverent awe and not in contentious doubt) how it is “possible for God to become a man.” And yet Geisler seeks to impugn Ron Kangas for expressing the same thought.

Geisler Separates the Persons of the Trinity

While Geisler undoubtedly would balk at the suggestion that he harbors latent tritheistic inclinations, the evidence from his own writing and reasoning at least raises the question in a discerning reader. If logic is what Geisler depends on for his formulation of Trinitarian doctrine, then one must recognize that his arguments concerning the Divine Trinity and the incarnation of Christ logically lead to the conclusion that the Persons of the Trinity are indeed separate from one another and are, therefore, three separate Gods.

In the passage cited from his Systematic Theology above, Geisler makes the following nonsensical argument:

Notice carefully the words of Scripture: “The Word was God…. the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us” (John 1:1, 14, emphasis added). It does not say that God became flesh.

The absurdity of this statement, which abuses the language of the Bible, cannot be overstated. If the Word is God and the Word became flesh, then why does Geisler take issue with the assertion that God became flesh? Is Christ not fully God? He certainly is. In fact, the Scriptures confirm that He is God “manifested in the flesh” (1 Tim. 3:16) and that the blood He shed was God’s “own blood” (Acts 20:28). It seems that for Geisler the complete, infinite God is an amalgam of separate persons who each share a portion of the divine essence but who are not fully God in themselves and who do not coinhere. In the Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics he writes:

By saying God has one essence and three persons it is meant that he has one “What” and three “Whos.” The three Whos (persons) each share the same What (essence). So God is a unity of essence with a plurality of persons. Each person is different, yet they share a common nature.17

Under the influence of this definition, Geisler’s insistence that only the second Person of the Trinity, and not “God,” became flesh might make logical sense. But this is not “the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity,” which Geisler purports to defend. Rather, the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity recognizes that the three Persons coinhere, or mutually indwell one another (John 14:10-11; 17:21), and cannot be separated from one another (10:30; 14:9; Matt. 1:18, 20; 12:28; Heb. 9:14).18 Further, the divine essence is undivided and indivisible, but Geisler’s statement that the Three persons (the personal “Whos”) share the divine essence (the impersonal “What”) strongly suggests that, in his assessment, the divine essence is instead apportioned among them. However, by virtue of their coinherence, each of the Three persons possesses the divine essence with the divine nature in its entirety and is not each a separate God sharing an indefinable “What.” Each is the complete God, yet—wondrously!—there is only one God and not three Gods (Deut. 6:4; 1 Cor. 8:4).

Prior to stating that “the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity … never affirms that God (the infinite) became man (the finite)” in his letter to
, Geisler poses the question, “Can logical opposites both be true?” Geisler is insistent that the pronouncements of Scripture must be reconciled within a framework of logical uniformity to be properly understood.19 While such order may satisfy a theological bent for systematization, the divine revelation is not confined to the limitations of man-made logical systems of thought. The coinherence of the Three Persons of the Divine Trinity certainly explodes all such systems as there is not even a corresponding illustration of it in the creation. Coinherence may appear illogical since in the natural realm two entities (not to mention three!) cannot live within each other at the same time. If we apply such constraints to our understanding of God, we will conclude that it is not the infinite God who became a finite man but only one third of God (i.e., the Son) who was involved in the incarnation. This, however, is not the revelation of the Bible.

Significantly, the error that ensnares Geisler (i.e., that the Son is separate from the Father and the Spirit) is one that Ron Kangas addressed in “Economy” in order to combat tritheism, the heresy that there are three separate Gods. It is helpful to reproduce that part of the article at length here with its quotations from the ministry of Witness Lee:

The God who is uniquely one, self-existing, ever-existing, and immutable is essentially triune; He is three-one—three yet one, one yet three. From eternity to eternity the unique God, the Triune God, is the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The Father is God (1 Pet. 1:2; Eph. 1:17), the Son is God (Heb. 1:8; John 1:1; Rom. 9:5), and the Spirit is God (Acts 5:3-4). The Father is eternal (Isa. 9:6), the Son is eternal (Heb. 1:12; 7:3), and the Spirit is eternal (9:14). All three co-exist; they exist simultaneously and immutably. Among the Father, the Son, and the Spirit in the eternal Godhead, there is distinction but no separation. The Father is distinct from the Son, the Son is distinct from the Spirit, and the Spirit is distinct from the Son and the Father. However, they are not separate, and cannot be separate, because they coinhere, dwelling in one another mutually:

The relationship among the Father, the Son, and the Spirit is not only that They simultaneously coexist but also that They mutually indwell one another. The Father exists in the Son and the Spirit; the Son exists in the Father and the Spirit; and the Spirit exists in the Father and the Son. This mutual indwelling among the three of the Godhead is called coinherence… We cannot say that They are separate, because They coinhere, that is, They live within one another. In Their coexistence the three of the Godhead are distinct, but Their coinherence makes them one. They coexist in Their coinherence, so They are distinct but not separate. (Lee, Crucial[20 ] 9-10)

This is neither tritheism nor modalism. Tritheism, an error on the side of the threeness of the Triune God, is the bizarre notion that the three persons in the Godhead are three separate Gods. This is heresy. Modalism, an error on the side of the oneness of the Triune God, is the strange concept that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are merely three modes, three temporary and successive manifestations, of the one God, who is not regarded as essentially triune. This also is heresy. The revealed, biblical truth, being twofold according to the principle of the twofoldness of divine truth, embraces both the oneness and the threeness of the Triune God: God is uniquely one, yet He is three-one—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit….

At this juncture, it is necessary to point out the difference between the essential Trinity and the economical Trinity. The essential Trinity is a matter of the essence of the Triune God for His eternal existence; the economical Trinity is a matter of God’s arrangement for His operation in His move to accomplish His eternal purpose. An excellent presentation of this distinction is offered by Witness Lee:

The essential Trinity refers to the essence of the Triune God for His existence. In His essence, God is one, the one unique God (Isa. 45:18b; 1 Cor. 8:6a). In the essential Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit coexist and coinhere at the same time and in the same way with no succession. There is no first, second, or third.

Essentially, God is one, but economically He is three—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit (Matt. 28:19; 2 Cor. 13:14). In God’s plan, God’s administrative arrangement, God’s economy, the Father takes the first step, the Son takes the second step, and the Spirit takes the third step. The Father purposed (Eph. 1:4-6), the Son accomplished (vv. 7-12), and the Spirit applies what the Son accomplished according to the Father’s purpose (vv. 13:14). This is a successive procedure or a succession in God’s economy to carry out His eternal purpose. Whereas the essential Trinity refers to the essence of the Triune God for His existence, the economical Trinity refers to His plan for His move. There is the need of the existence of the Divine Trinity, and there is also the need of the plan of the Divine Trinity.

The Father accomplished the first step of His plan, His economy, by working to choose and predestinate us, but He did this in Christ the Son (Eph. 1:4-5) and with the Spirit. After this plan was made, the Son came to accomplish this plan, but He did this with the Father (John 8:29; 16:32) and by the Spirit (Luke 1:35; Matt. 1:18, 20; 12:28). Now that the Son has accomplished all that the Father has planned, the Spirit comes in the third step to apply all that He accomplished, but He does this as the Son and with the Father (John 14:26; 15:26; 1 Cor. 15:45b, 2 Cor. 3:17). In this way, while the divine economy of the Divine Trinity is being carried out, the divine existence of the Divine Trinity, His eternal coexistence and coinherence, remains intact and is not jeopardized. (Crucial 9-10)21

If Geisler takes issue with the exposition found in this long passage from the very article that he faults for advancing an unorthodox theology, then we must wonder whether he believes that the persons of the Trinity are not merely distinct but also separate, a position that is contrary to the biblical record. To say that the Three are not only distinct but also separate is the basic error of tritheism. But in fact the Three of the Trinity coinhere from eternity to eternity; thus, when Christ took upon Himself flesh and blood (Heb. 2:14)—and it is He who did so and not the Father or the Spirit—He did not do so alone. Rather, He did so by the Spirit, of whom He was conceived, and with the Father, whom He embodied. Therefore, the infinite God—the Triune God—became a finite man in Jesus Christ while yet preserving His immutable essence and eternal, infinite deity.

Conclusion

It is unfortunate, even troubling, that a man with Geisler’s recognized standing in the Christian apologetics community could so unabashedly misrepresent and then attack the writing of a teacher of the Bible. Geisler’s attack, however, actually exposes the shortcomings of his own understanding of the Triune God and the incarnation of Christ. In his misdirected zeal to find fault, he cries “heresy” where there is none and exposes his own error in the process. By insisting that the infinite God did not become a finite man in Jesus Christ and by relegating the incarnation to the entrance of one-third of God into humanity, Geisler has laid bare the shortage in his understanding of the incarnation and of the coinhering oneness of the Divine Trinity.

Notes:

1Although Geisler claims to have sent the letter, Ron Kangas has no record of its delivery. He only became aware of the letter when it was posted on the Internet as an appendix to the 2010 article by Geisler and Ron Rhodes assailing the Christian Research Institute’s positive reassessment of the teachings and practices of the local churches.

2While Geisler claims to have sought “dialogue” with Ron Kangas and a “clarification” of his views, the tone of his letter is one of contentiousness and not one of seeking genuine understanding in a spirit of Christian fellowship. In fact, his letter is sadly reminiscent of the insidious questioning of the Pharisees, who sought to entrap our Lord by seizing upon His words and using them, wrongly interpreted, to accuse Him of error (see Luke 20; for a helpful note concerning the Pharisees’ questioning of the Lord Jesus, see Luke 20:40, footnote 1, in the Holy Bible Recovery Version, published by Living Stream Ministry).

3Affirmation & Critique, April 2008 (3-14). The entire article is available at: http://www.affcrit.com/pdfs/2008/01/08_01_a1.pdf.

4For an explanation of the principle of the twofoldness of divine truth and biblical examples demonstrating its application, see “Reflections: The Twofoldness of Divine Truth,” by Ron Kangas in Affirmation & Critique. For a brief overview of how Geisler’s criticism of this principle is in error, see “A Misplaced Criticism of ‘The Twofoldness of Divine Truth’.”

In the context of this article, it is noteworthy that Ron Kangas’ mentions of the principle of twofoldness in “Economy” were not in reference to the incarnation; rather, they were in reference to 1) the oneness and threeness of the Trinity, 2) Christ having a physical body and yet being the life-giving Spirit, and 3) the essential immutability of God and the economical process that He went through to accomplish His eternal purpose. If Geisler contends that the principle of twofoldness is invalid because it violates the law of logical non-contradiction, then he must be prepared to repudiate these (and other) seemingly contradictory declarations of the Scriptures.

5Geisler offers the following definition of a straw man argument:

Another way to stack the deck against the opposition is to draw a false picture of the opposing argument. Then it is easy to say: “This should be rejected because this (exaggerated and distorted) picture of it is wrong.” The name of the fallacy comes from the idea that if you set up a straw man, he is easier to knock down than a real man. And that is exactly the way this fallacy works: set ’em up and knock ’em down. It is argument by caricature. It avoids dealing with the real issues by changing the opposition’s views. (Norman Geisler and Ronald Brooks, Come, Let Us Reason, p. 101)

Despite his recognition of a straw man argument as a logical fallacy, Geisler does not show any hesitation to employ such an argument against Ron Kangas.

6Christ is one person with two distinct natures, the divine and the human, and A&C is replete with affirmations of this cardinal truth of the Christian faith. For a particularly helpful review of the doctrine concerning the two natures in Christ and the rejection of early heresies that undermined that doctrine, see “‘Mingling’—Was There Ever a Better Word?,” A&C, July 1996, pp. 31, 62. Of the many affirmations concerning the two natures in Christ that have been offered in A&C, Ron Kangas offers the most succinct of all: “Christ has two natures: humanity and divinity” (“The Heavenly Christ in the Epistle to the Hebrews,” A&C, October 1998, p. 9).

7Historically this has been referred to by the Latin tertium quid, or “third thing.”

8The charge has been duly and thoroughly answered in sources too numerous to list here, but a few examples available in print are: “‘Mingling’—Was There Ever a Better Word?,” Affirmation & Critique I:3, July 1996, pp. 31, 62; A Confirmation of the Gospel: Concerning the Teachings of the Local Churches and Living Stream Ministry (Anaheim, CA: DCP Press, 2009), 24-29; and John Campbell, “The Ministry of Christ in the Stage of Incarnation,” Affirmation & Critique III:2, April 1998, 4-13.

9Norman Geisler and Abdul Saleeb, Answering Islam: The Crescent in Light of the Cross, (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1993, 2002), p. 13.

10Norman Geisler, Systematic Theology, Vol. 2: God, Creation (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2003), pp. 177-178.

11The Council of Chalcedon was held in A.D. 451.

12Norman Geisler, Systematic Theology, Vol. 2: God, Creation (Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2003), pp. 109-110.

13Athanasius wrote, “For He was made man that we might be made God.” (“The Incarnation of the Word” [54:3], The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Second Series, Vol. 4, ed. by Philip Schaff and Henry Wace. [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1891, 1978], 65).

14For a sampling of quotes from others, see “Scholars Who Affirm That the Infinite God Became a Finite Man.”

15Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994), 563.

16Alan K. Scholes, What Christianity Is All About: How to Know and Enjoy God (Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress, 1999), 89.

17Norman Geisler, The Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), p. 732. In his Systematic Theology Geisler elaborates further:

Like the Trinity, the Incarnation is also a great mystery. Some even claim it is a contradiction, for it affirms that in Christ God became man, and this is impossible, since God is infinite and man is finite—an infinite cannot become finite. The Eternal cannot become temporal any more than the Uncreated can become a creature. How then can we claim that the Incarnation does not violate the law of noncontradiction?

The answer to this apparent contradiction lies in the misstatement of what the Incarnation really is. It was not God becoming man, but the second person of the Godhead adding humanity; in other words, the Son of God did not stop being divine in order to become human, but rather He embraced another nature—humanity—in addition to His divinity. In the Incarnation, the infinite nature of God did not become finite; the second person of the Godhead, who retained His infinite nature, also assumed another nature (a finite one). As we put it before, in God there is one what (nature) and three whos (persons).

In the Incarnation, Who took on What, a human nature, in addition to the What He retained (His divine nature). This is not a contradiction because the infinite did not become finite, nor the Uncreated become the created, which would be a contradiction.

In the Godhead there is one What and three Whos; in Christ, the second person of the Godhead, there is one Who and two Whats. In the Incarnation, one Who in God assumed another What, so that there were two Whats (natures) in one Who (person). Again, this is an amazing mystery but not a contradiction. (Norman Geisler, Systematic Theology, Vol. 1: Introduction, Bible. Minneapolis: Bethany House, 2002, pp. 93-94.)

18These verses are discussed in more detail in “The Error of Denying the Involvement of the Father in the Son’s Work” and “The Error of Denying that the ‘Son’ Is the ‘Eternal Father’ in Isaiah 9:6” on this site.

19We affirm, as the Scriptures do, that God is a God of order and not of confusion (1 Cor. 14:33; Isa. 45:18).  We also profess that the order inherent in logical principles bears witness to the orderliness and wisdom of the Creator. However, as the Scriptures also testify, God transcends human logic and is not bound by it (cf., Isa. 55:8-9). Geisler’s confidence that God can be fully understood by logical reasoning gives one the impression that he believes himself to have deduced, and therefore mastered, the Divine. As a contrast to Geisler, Philip Schaff is helpful here:

The person of Jesus Christ in the fullness of its theanthropic life cannot be exhaustively set forth by any formulas of human logic. Even the imperfect, finite personality of man has a mysterious background, that escapes the speculative comprehension; how much more then the perfect personality of Christ, in which the tremendous antitheses of Creator and creature, Infinite and finite, immutable, eternal Being and changing, temporal becoming, are harmoniously conjoined! (Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, Vol. III: Nicene and Post-Nicene Christianity [Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1910, 1994], p. 749.)

20Witness Lee, The Crucial Points of the Major Items of the Lord’s Recovery Today (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1993).

21Ron Kangas, “The Economy of God: The Triune God in His Operation,” A&C, April 2008, pp. 5-6.

Scholars Who Affirm That the Infinite God Became a Finite Man

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A Response to Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes’ Defense of the “Open Letter” and Critique of the Christian Research Journal’s Reassessment of the Local Churches

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Hippolytus — And through the flesh He wrought divinely those things which are proper to divinity, showing Himself to have both those natures in both of which He wrought, I mean the divine and the human, according to that veritable and real and natural subsistence, (showing Himself thus) as both being in reality and as being understood to be at one and the same time infinite God and finite man, having the nature of each in perfection, with the same activity, that is to say, the same natural properties… But between God the Maker of all things and that which is made, between the infinite and the finite, between infinitude and finitude, there can be no kind of comparison, since these differ from each other not in mere comparison (or relatively), but absolutely in essence. And yet at the same time there has been effected a certain inexpressible and irrefragable union of the two into one substance, which entirely passes the understanding of anything that is made. Hippolytus, “Against Beron and Helix,” The Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. V, translated by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1851, 1981), p. 231.

Martin Chemnitz — Although the assuming nature in Christ is infinite and the assumed nature remained finite, yet because of the hypostatic union such a relationship is produced between the infinite and the finite that one hypostasis is constituted. Martin Chemnitz, The Two Natures in Christ, translated by J. A. O. Preus (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1578, 1971), p. 96.

John Owen — But this assumption of our nature into hypostatical union with the Son of God, this constitution of one and the same individual person in two natures so infinitely distinct as those of God and man — whereby the Eternal was made in time, the Infinite became finite, the Immortal mortal, yet continuing eternal, infinite, immortal — is that singular expression of divine wisdom, goodness, and power, wherein God will be admired and glorified unto all eternity. John Owen, Christologia, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/owen/christologia.vii.html.

Henry Edward Manning — Here, then we see one great spiritual fact, one great law and mystery, that between God and man there is a person who is both Man and God; consubstantial with the Creator and the creature, the finite and the infinite; that by one consubstantial unity He is God, by the other, Man. Henry Edward Manning, Sermons, vol. 4 (London: William Pickering, 1850), p. 185.

C. H. Spurgeon — I like to think of the Holy Spirit handling such things [testifying concerning Christ]. They seem so worthy of him… Now is his mighty mind among the infinities when he has to deal with Christ, for Christ is the Infinite veiled in the finite. Why, he seems something more than infinite when he gets into the finite; and the Christ of Bethlehem is less to be understood than the Christ of the Father’s bosom. He seems, if it were possible, to have out-infinited the infinite, and the Spirit of God has themes here worthy of his vast nature. C. H. Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. 37, http://www.ccel.org/ccel/spurgeon/sermons37.xxxii.html.

Charles Hodge — …So we may say of Christ that He is finite and infinite; that He is ignorant and omniscient; that He is less than God and equal with God; that He existed from eternity and that He was born in time; that He created all things and that He was a man of sorrows. It is on this principle, that what is true of either nature is true of the person, that a multitude of passages of Scripture are to be explained. Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. II (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1979), p. 392.

Philip Schaff — The divinity of Christ, and his whole mission as Redeemer, is an article of faith, and, as such above logical or mathematical demonstration. The incarnation or the union of the infinite divinity and finite humanity in one person is indeed the mystery of mysteries. “What can be more glorious than God? What more vile than flesh? What more wonderful than God in the flesh.” Yet aside from all dogmatizing which lies outside of the province of the historian, the divinity of Christ has a self-evidencing power which forces itself irresistibly upon the reflecting mind and historical inquirer; while the denial of it makes his person an inexplicable enigma. Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. 1: Apostolic Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1910, 1991), pp. 107-108.

The person of Jesus Christ in the fullness of its theanthropic life cannot be exhaustively set forth by any formulas of human logic. Even the imperfect, finite personality of man has a mysterious background, that escapes the speculative comprehension; how much more then the perfect personality of Christ, in which the tremendous antitheses of Creator and creature, Infinite and finite, immutable, eternal Being and changing, temporal becoming, are harmoniously conjoined! Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. III: Nicene and Post-Nicene Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1910, 1994), p. 749.

A. W. Pink — Thus, the person of the God-man is unique. His birth had no precedent and His existence no analogy. He cannot be explained by referring Him to a class, nor can He be illustrated by an example. The Scriptures, while fully revealing all the elements of His person, yet never present in one formula an exhaustive definition of that person, nor a connected statement of the elements which constitute it and their mutual relationships. The “mystery” is indeed great. How is it possible that the same person should be at the same time infinite and finite, omnipotent and helpless? He altogether transcends our understanding. A. W. Pink, Gleanings in the Godhead, http://www.pbministries.org/books/pink/Gleanings_Godhead/godhead_30.htm.

Wayne GrudemThe fact that the infinite, omnipotent, eternal Son of God could become man and join himself to a human nature forever, so that infinite God became one person with finite man, will remain for eternity the most profound miracle and the most profound mystery in all the universe.” Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1994), 563.

Thomas F. Torrance — To claim that Jesus Christ is not God himself become man for us and our salvation, is equivalent to saying that God does not love us to the uttermost, that he does not love us to the extent of committing himself to becoming man and uniting himself with us in the Incarnation. Thomas F. Torrance, The Mediation of Christ (Colorado Spring, CO: Helmers & Howard, 1992, p. 59.

Thus the Incarnation constitutes the one actual source and the one controlling centre of the Christian doctrine of God, for he who became man in Christ Jesus in order to be our Saviour is identical in Being and Nature and Act with God the Father revealed in and through him. Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons (London: T&T Clark, 1996), p. 18.

The incarnation. This is the new act of the eternal God whereby God himself becomes man without ceasing to be God, the Creator becomes creature without ceasing to be Creator, the transcendent becomes contingent without ceasing to be transcendent, the eternal becomes time without ceasing to be eternal. Ibid., p. 214.

Alan K. Scholes — Now it is time to try to answer what is undoubtedly one of the most perplexing questions in all of theology. How is it possible for the infinite God to fit inside a finite human mind and body? How is it possible for the omnipresent God to walk the hills of Galilee and to be in only one place at a time? How can the omniscient and omnipotent God be “increasing in wisdom and stature” as Luke describes Jesus? In short, how is it possible for God to become a man? Alan K. Scholes, What Christianity Is All About: How to Know and Enjoy God (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 1999), p. 89.

Walter Elwell and Philip Comfort — The union of the two natures concurs in one Person, who is the eternal Son of the Father. The union, then, of the divine and the human in Christ is a personal one; more specifically, the union is the act of the divine Person who is the Son of God. Here we approach the very heart of the mystery of the Incarnation. No one can say how the infinite God could become a finite man. Naturally, however, theologians have thought a great deal about the matter; Chalcedon does not mark the end of all inquiry. Walter Elwell and Philip Comfort, Tyndale Bible Dictionary (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 2001), p. 267.

A Misplaced Criticism of “The Twofoldness of Divine Truth”

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A Response to Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes’ Defense of the “Open Letter” and Critique of the Christian Research Journal’s Reassessment of the Local Churches

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In early 2010 Norman Geisler published a letter on the Internet that he claims to have sent to Ron Kangas, editor-in-chief of the journal Affirmation & Critique (A&C).1 In the letter Geisler challenged comments that Ron Kangas made concerning the twofoldness of divine truth in an article for A&C:

Fourth, what do you mean by “twofoldness” of truth. Can logical opposites both be true?

Ron Kangas did not say that opposites can both be true. Rather, he said that the truths in the Bible often have two sides, specifically, in the context of the article Geisler criticized, that God is both one and three at the same time.2

“Twofoldness” Originating from Robert Govett

In the criticism to which Geisler’s letter is appended, Geisler and Ron Rhodes claim that Ron Kangas appealed to “[Witness] Lee’s mysterious doctrine of the ‘Twofoldness of Truth’” to defend logical contradictions concerning the nature of Christ. Their criticism is ill-informed. The teaching of the principle of the twofoldness of divine truth did not originate with Witness Lee. In the nineteenth century, the highly respected British Bible teacher Robert Govett wrote a booklet entitled The Twofoldness of Divine Truth. There Govett said that what appears to us to be a contradiction in the Word of God is often due to the truth having two sides. Of one example he wrote:

But are they not contradictory? That cannot be, for they are both parts of the Word of God, and contradictions cannot both be true. But, then, are to be received whether we can reconcile them or no.3

Ron Kangas affirmed Govett’s understanding in an article entitled, “Reflections: The Twofoldness of Divine Truth” in the spring 2010 issue of Affirmation & Critique:

For many years we have presented and upheld, as foundational to the theological enterprise, the twofoldness of divine truth—the essential biblical principle that the great truths in the Scriptures are respectively of two aspects. These aspects, or sides, although they might appear to be inconsistent, are by no means contradictory; rather, they are complementary.4

Both Govett’s original book and Ron Kangas’ article convincingly demonstrate the value of the principle of twofoldness in understanding the divine revelation in the Bible.

Geisler’s misattribution of the principle of the twofoldness of divine truth to Witness Lee is telling. Four articles on this site,5 three articles in Affirmation & Critique,6 as well as other publications by Living Stream Ministry7 all attribute this principle to Govett and his booklet. Had Geisler and Rhodes done their homework, they would have known this.

The Bible Not Being Subject to External Philosophical Principles

Geisler made a further insinuation that is noteworthy, particularly for its complete misrepresentation of the principle of the twofoldness of divine truth and for its possible overtones of ethnic bias. Geisler wrote:

Seventh, how would you distinguish your view from the Yin-Yang of Taoism where ultimate reality is beyond distinctions like true or false and opposites can both be one?

Would Geisler have asked the same question had he known that the principle he was rejecting was first articulated by a British theologian rather than Witness Lee?8 The writings of Robert Govett, Witness Lee, and Ron Kangas are based on the Bible and are replete with biblical examples. An examination of their writings quickly demonstrates that Geisler’s association of the twofoldness of divine truth with the Yin-Yang of Taoism is utterly baseless. Geisler depends on the natural mind limited by the principles of Western philosophy and logic to try to apprehend what is spiritual in nature, something which the apostle Paul told us will not work (1 Cor. 2:14, cf. 1:22-23). It is Geisler, not Robert Govett or Witness Lee or Ron Kangas, who subjects the study of the Bible to an external set of philosophical principles. Robert Govett, Witness Lee, and Ron Kangas are students of the Bible, following the tradition of the loving seekers of the Lord to receive the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit (Eph. 1:17-18; cf. Acts 26:18; 2 Cor. 4:6) to apprehend the unsearchable riches of Christ unveiled in the Holy Bible (Eph. 3:8), and their expositions on the twofoldness of divine truth reflect their commitment to the Word of God.

For an extensive and enlightening commentary on the principle of the twofoldness of divine truth, please read Ron Kangas’ article “Reflections: The Twofoldness of Divine Truth” in the spring 2010 issue of Affirmation & Critique.

Notes:

1This letter was published on the Internet along with the criticism by Geisler and Ron Rhodes of the reassessment of the teaching of Witness Lee and the local churches performed by the Christian Research Institute that is the subject of this series of books. The letter was dated June 2008. Ron Kangas has no record or recollection of having received such a letter.

2Ron Kangas, “The Economy of God: The Triune God in His Operation,” Affirmation & Critique XIII:1, April 2008, p. 5:

The revealed biblical truth, being twofold according to the principle of the twofoldness of divine truth, embraces both the oneness and the threeness of the Triune God: God is uniquely one, yet He is three-one—the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

3Robert Govett, The Twofoldness of Divine Truth (Harrisburg: Christian Publishers Inc., n.d.), pp. 7-8.

4Ron Kangas, “Reflections: The Twofoldness of Divine Truth,” Affirmation & Critique, XV:1, Spring 2010, p. 91.

5The four articles are:

6The three articles are:

7Examples include:

In Watchman Nee: A Seer of the Divine Revelation in the Present Age (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1991), p. 262, Witness Lee wrote that Govett’s booklet was translated into Chinese as part of Watchman Nee’s publication work.

8Geisler is not the first to use Witness Lee’s Chinese lineage to imply that his teaching contains elements that are foreign to the Christian faith. Certain countercult writers seem predisposed to label anything they do not understand or disagree with as cultic or Eastern mysticism. The truth is Witness Lee was raised in a Southern Baptist home and attended Christian schools. His teaching is thoroughly biblical, and he often cited his indebtedness to the many Bible teachers from the West whose writings he carefully studied.

Misrepresenting Witness Lee’s Critique of Christianity

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A Response to Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes’ Defense of the “Open Letter” and Critique of the Christian Research Journal’s Reassessment of the Local Churches

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If we are going to voice differences, therefore, we have an obligation to make a serious effort to understand the person with whom we differ. That person may have published books or articles. Then we should be acquainted with those writings. It is not appropriate for us to voice sharp differences if we have neglected to read what is available. The person with whom we differ should have evidence that we have read carefully what has been written and that we have attempted to understand its meaning.1

This statement sets forth the responsibility of polemic or apologetic writers to represent accurately and fairly the beliefs of those with whom they disagree prior to attempting to refute those beliefs. Norman Geisler expressed a similar sentiment in the preface to a book critiquing Islam that he co-authored:

It is our belief that it is not possible to evaluate another viewpoint fairly without first understanding it.2

It is patently unfair to present a differing perspective in such a way that those holding that view cannot recognize it and then to assail those whose beliefs are misrepresented.

Sadly, that is the exact method employed in “A Response to the Christian Research Journal’s Recent Defense of the ‘Local Church’ Movement” (henceforth “Response”) by Norman Geisler and Ron Rhodes. In a section of “Response” entitled “Admittedly Regrettable and Harsh Statements about Other Religious Groups,” Geisler and Rhodes make several onerous and inaccurate statements by which they misrepresent the teachings of Witness Lee. These statements were made concerning the third chapter of Witness Lee’s book The God-ordained Way to Practice the New Testament Economy (henceforth Practice). In what appears to be an effort to convince their readers that the local churches despise all Christians and utter hate speech against their brothers and sisters, Geisler and Rhodes claim, in reference to that chapter, that:

Witness Lee … engages in a slanderous attack on “all of Christianity,” “all Christians,” “today’s Christendom” “all Christianity,” and “today’s Catholic Church.” He calls organized Christianity “deformed and degraded,” containing “false teachers,” who are “in their apostasy.”

Even in this short section, there are numerous serious errors. Geisler and Rhodes:

It is evident that in “Response” Geisler and Rhodes intend to convey to their readers that Witness Lee purposely, harshly, and injuriously criticized all his fellow believers without basis and that Lee’s statements about “false teachers” and “apostasy” applied generally to those throughout evangelicalism. In the same section, they refer to Lee’s teaching as “harsh,” “lamentable,” and “inexcusable.”

Shortly after the portion quoted above with its accusation of slander, Geisler and Rhodes also accused Witness Lee of libel. In the same section, they said, “If ever there were grounds for religious libel, this would be it.” The most intrinsic, crucial matter in any accusation of slander or libel is that the statements in question must be examined in context and proven false in order for the accusation to stand. Curiously, Geisler and Rhodes did not attempt to challenge the truth of Witness Lee’s statements.

Witness Lee Rightly Rejects Modernists as Apostate False Teachers

On examination of the context of Witness Lee’s criticism of Christianity, it is difficult to fathom the visceral intensity of Geisler and Rhodes’ reaction. They complain vociferously that Witness Lee “calls organized Christianity ‘deformed and degraded,’ containing ‘false teachers,’ who are ‘in their apostasy’” as if these false teachers were genuine, Bible-believing teachers. Rather than a blanket condemnation of evangelical teachers, Witness Lee addressed a specific category of persons—those who deny some of the essential elements of the common faith. In speaking of the parables in Matthew 13 as descriptions of the outward appearance of the kingdom of God or the equivalent of Christendom, Witness Lee said:

One parable shows us that while the wheat is growing the enemy of the Lord comes and sows tares amidst the wheat (vv. 24-30). This means that the false believers, the nominal Christians, were sown into the so-called church. In degraded Christianity there are many false or nominal Christians…

In today’s Christianity there are also modernists, who do not recognize the inspiration of the holy Word and deny the Lord’s incarnation through the virgin Mary. They say that the Lord’s death was not for redemption but only a kind of martyrdom. They believe that the Lord was martyred on the cross for His teachings which were different from the Jewish traditional religion. They also deny the resurrection of Christ and all the miracles in the Bible.3

Immediately following, Witness Lee spoke of how he and his contemporaries rose up to fight against modernism when it was brought to China in the early part of the twentieth century. Concerning the modernist teachers, he referred to 2 Peter 2:1, which says:

But there arose also false prophets among the people, as also among you there will be false teachers, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them, bringing upon themselves swift destruction.

It is concerning these modernists that Witness Lee said, “The false teachers at Peter’s time, like today’s modernists in their apostasy, denied both the Lord’s person as the Master and His redemption” (emphasis added).4 Geisler and Rhodes omitted the words shown in italics above that connected “false teachers” to “in their apostasy” and lifted them from their explicit qualifiers to create a false impression. This is a misrepresentation of Witness Lee’s words. No one can deny that there are modernists in today’s Christianity, false teachers who are in apostasy and who trouble the genuine believers with their destructive heresies such as those Witness Lee listed above. It is difficult to imagine Geisler and Rhodes objecting to these statements of criticism about modernist or liberal theologians and their teachings. Geisler and Rhodes are not known as champions of modernism or of those who deny the inspiration of the Scripture, the virgin birth of the incarnate Son of God, the vicarious death of Christ on the cross for our redemption, or His resurrection for our justification. One is left to wonder why they would object to Witness Lee describing those who teach such things “false teachers” who are “in their apostasy.”

Many Christian teachers criticize the false teachers in Christianity. For example, Mike Gendron, Proclaiming the Gospel Ministries, is a Christian teacher who has many articles posted on the Ankerberg Theological Research Institute website, where many of Geisler’s articles are also posted. Gendron’s comments concerning false teachers and Christendom echo Witness Lee’s. Gendron states:

What are we to do with the false teachers within Christendom? We are to expose their false teachings and refrain from participating in their endeavors (Eph. 5:6, 11).5

The context of Gendron’s statement shows that he is speaking of the same “false teachers” as was Witness Lee, that is, those who are broadly within the system of Christianity but who deny the essentials of the faith. Yet, Gendron has not been misrepresented by Geisler and Rhodes nor has he been accused of slander and religious libel by them. Those who have written similar statements are far too numerous to mention in this article.6

Witness Lee’s use of the words “false teachers” who are “in their apostasy” in reference to today’s modernists is a legitimate application of the Bible. Geisler and Rhodes simply selected a few of Witness Lee’s words—ripped from the original sentence, severed from context—and strung them together in the most incendiary way to incite their readers to reject, perhaps even despise, Witness Lee and the local churches. This is neither fair nor truthful; rather, it is the apologetic equivalent of the anarchist’s bomb—angry, lawless, and indiscriminately damaging. Therefore, it is Geisler and Rhodes’ article, not the speaking of Witness Lee, that is laced with “harsh” and “regrettable” words.

Did Witness Lee Assail “All Christians”?

By placing the words “all Christians” in quotation marks in their accusation referenced above, Geisler and Rhodes accused Witness Lee of directly slandering all genuine believers. Such an accusation should be supported by the text in question, but it is not. An examination of the chapter shows that their charge is false. In fact, the term “all Christians” appears only once in the chapter in a passage which is far from being either slanderous or harsh. Witness Lee stated:

When we talk about Christianity in such a way, this does not mean that we do not love all Christians. We love all of our brothers and sisters in the Lord, yet we have to admit that today’s Christendom is absolutely far off from God’s eternal plan.7

A statement of love toward “all of our brothers and sisters” hardly seems to be an attack on all Christians. Yet, this is the premise Geisler and Rhodes assert. It is simply astounding that they could have read the chapter (this phrase occurs in the introductory portion of the chapter) and come to the conclusion that this mention of “all Christians” was a “slanderous attack.”

These two brief sentences contain yet another important factor that seems to elude Geisler and Rhodes. That is, in the teachings of Witness Lee and the local churches, there is a definite, consistent, and crucial distinction made between the system of Christianity, which is open to criticism, and the Christians themselves, who are to be loved and received as brothers and sisters. As Lee further stated in the chapter in question, “We love all our Christian brothers and respect them, yet we cannot agree with the system they are in.”8 This important distinction was conveniently overlooked by Geisler and Rhodes.

Witness Lee did speak critically of the system of Christianity and the condition of Christendom, but not in the manner that Geisler and Rhodes would have their readers believe. Regardless of whether Geisler and Rhodes disagree with Witness Lee’s view of Christianity as a system, it remains incumbent upon them to present his teachings accurately. Only when they have fulfilled this prerequisite are they free to argue certain points if they so wish, but in doing so they must remain within the bounds of truth, proper scholarship, and decency. To conceal the fact that Lee’s criticism was directed toward the system of Christianity, not the believers, as they clearly did by including the term “all Christians” in their accusation, is inexcusable.

Witness Lee’s Appreciation of Christians in the Denominations

In “Response” Geisler and Rhodes ignored the positive statements Witness Lee made about the believers in the same chapter of Practice. The failure to point out the references to loving and respecting all Christians, as noted above, is an example of such neglect. As a further example, in speaking of his experience as a young person who was saved in China many years ago, Witness Lee states:

We [Lee’s generation of young Christians] thank the Lord for sending the western missionaries to China to bring us the gospel. They told people that Jesus is the Son of God who became a man and died on the cross for our sins. They said that if we believe in Him we would receive the forgiveness of our sins. We heard the proper preaching of Christ being our Savior. These missionaries also brought us the real name of Jesus Christ, and we treasured this. They also brought the Bible with them, providing us with one of the best Chinese translations of the Bible. We thank God for these three things: the gospel, the name of Jesus, and the Bible.9

It is clear from this statement that Witness Lee appreciated the missionaries who brought such priceless things to China. He then explained that the practice of the local churches, starting in the 1920s, was to reject the unscriptural practices that the missionaries also brought with them. He enumerated several of these unscriptural things throughout the chapter. Contrary to the accusations of Geisler and Rhodes, it is once again clear that it is not the believers or the Christian faith which are the subjects of Witness Lee’s criticism but a system with which there is disagreement because it does not adhere to the Scriptures.10 Surely Geisler and Rhodes would agree that it is right to hold to Christ, to hold to the gospel, to hold to the Bible, to love and respect all Christians, and to reject unscriptural practices. However, they ignored this and other similar statements that are crucial to understanding the teaching of Witness Lee and the stand of the local churches. By doing so, Geisler and Rhodes falsely represented a Christian teacher and misled their readers.

Witness Lee Criticized the System of Christianity, Not Christians

When Witness Lee spoke of Christianity, he spoke of the system of Christianity, not the individual believers. In his usage Christianity is a broad term that encompasses a wide variety of institutions, including many that are only nominally Christian. His use of the term Christendom was similar in meaning and scope. These distinctions are crucial to understanding Witness Lee’s teaching on this subject. Geisler and Rhodes should have pointed this out to their readers and, as a result, appropriately tempered their accusations.

Although some Christian teachers, perhaps Geisler and Rhodes among them, define Christianity as meaning either the believers or the items of the common faith, in Practice Witness Lee’s usage of Christianity meant neither of these, as was made clear in the chapter in question. A proper apologist should first endeavor to understand an author’s definition of terms and then communicate his teachings according to his definition. This Geisler and Rhodes failed to do in “Response.”

Witness Lee’s Criticism of Christianity Is Based on the Bible

Geisler and Rhodes also neglected to point out to their readers that Witness Lee’s criticism of the system of Christianity has a strong scriptural basis and that his interpretation of the Bible passages is based on the work of many respected Bible expositors throughout church history. In the third chapter of Practice, Witness Lee taught from Matthew 13 concerning the parables of the tares in the field, of the mustard seed that grew into a big tree,11 and of the woman who hid leaven in fine flour.12 His teaching in Practice concerning Babylon was based upon Revelation 17,13 and his teaching concerning hierarchy and ambition was based on the Lord’s words in Matthew 20:20-28 and 23:1-12. Witness Lee contrasted the Lord’s simple way of meeting with people in John 12 and Matthew 14 with today’s practice of gathering a crowd to listen to a speaker. These teachings, based in the Scripture, comprised much of the chapter Geisler and Rhodes addressed, yet they failed to mention Witness Lee’s scriptural basis for his words. He was not slanderously attacking Christians as Geisler and Rhodes inveigh; rather, he was teaching the Bible and applying the Bible to today’s situation. While Geisler and Rhodes may disagree with Witness Lee’s interpretations of these passages, they remain obligated to acknowledge that his criticism of the system of Christianity was based in the Bible. This Geisler and Rhodes did not do.

Deformed Christianity as Seen in the Parable of the Mustard Seed

In reference to Christianity, Witness Lee did use the words “deformed and degraded.” While these words, especially isolated as they are in “Response,” may strike some as stark; readers should pay close attention to how and why Witness Lee employed these terms. As was made crystal clear in Practice, his use of the descriptor “deformed” was based upon the parable in Matthew 13 of the mustard seed that grew against its nature into a big tree. Witness Lee said:

Another parable in Matthew 13 describes today’s Christendom as a great tree with great branches that become a lodging place for birds (vv. 31-32). This is the parable of the mustard seed. The mustard is an annual herb, which shows that the church should be like an herb to produce food. Instead it became a tree, a lodge for birds, having its nature and function changed. These birds refer to Satan’s evil spirits with the evil persons and things motivated by them (13:4, 19). They lodge in the branches of the great tree, that is, in the enterprises of Christendom.14

Today’s Christianity is deformed because it has changed its form and nature from the simple entity presented in the Scripture. It is no longer a small herb good for food but has become a great tree with many branches that often offer cover for many evil things. Today’s Christianity is a huge enterprise that bears little resemblance to the house of Simon the Leper with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus at Bethany, a pre-figure of the New Testament church (John 12:1-3). Nor does it resemble the New Testament churches as shown in Acts and the Epistles. In contrast, today’s Christianity is an organized institution with many bureaucracies—truly a great tree. Sadly, it is often from the higher branches of this tree, where the birds of the parable roost, that evil teachings and evil things descend upon the believers. Witness Lee is not alone in ascribing this parable to Christendom.15 Commenting on the mustard seed in Matthew 13, W. E. Vine says:

As the parable indicates, Christendom presents a sort of Christianity that has become conformed to the principles and ways of the world, and the world has favoured this debased Christianity.16

Witness Lee’s use of the word “deformed” has a strong scriptural basis and accurately describes the situation of modern Christianity. Granted, some may not consider this a pleasant subject. Witness Lee’s speaking is frank and forthright, but it is neither harsh nor regrettable. It is a faithful, healthy, and true word to the benefit of all believers in Christ.

A Faithful Appraisal of the Degraded System of Christianity

To say that something is degraded simply means that it has fallen below its ordinary standards or that it has negatively changed in its function and structure.17 According to Witness Lee’s teaching in Practice, the system of Christianity is degraded in its standards, function, and structure because it has developed “formalities and rituals,” “regulations and unscriptural practices,” “hierarchy” with “ambition” for position, and the “clergy-laity system.” Today’s Christianity is also full of divisions.18 It is these negative matters that kill the organic function of the members of the Body of Christ. In these passages, Witness Lee taught that to practice the negative things listed above is to take the worldly way rather than the God-ordained way in the Bible. Lewis Sperry Chafer, the founder of Dallas Theological Seminary, recognized some of these same elements as signs of corruption and degradation:

All that God commits to men seems to follow the downward course of declension. This was true of Israel … it is true likewise of the professing church. Leaven working in the pure meal symbolized the permeation power of certain forms of evil within the true Church itself. Leaven is universally the emblem of corruption working subtly. It means mere formality (cf. Matt. 23:14, 16, 23-28); unbelief (cf. Matt. 22:23-29); and worldliness… The elect company of believers is ever beset with tendencies to formality, unbelief, and worldliness.19

An honest reading of current events testifies that today’s Christianity is degraded. For example, two major denominations have voted to ordain homosexuals in their hierarchies and to approve of same-sex unions; two others narrowly turned down motions to do so. Divorce and immorality are rampant, so much so that there is little statistical difference between the believers in Christ and the world, much to the shame of all who name the name of Christ in sincerity. Christian ministries are under investigation for financial abuses, while some Christian ministers live in luxury and demand the perquisites to match their perceived status. Many strange and injurious teachings are propagated. Is this not degradation! This is not to deny that there are many sincere, seeking believers who, in their innocence and sincerity, are in this system. It is simply to recognize the general condition of the system of Christianity.

In 2003, Geisler withdrew from the Evangelical Theological Society (ETS) because he claimed that ETS had lost its doctrinal integrity, had adopted revisionist interpretations of the Bible, and operated contrary to its own history.20 Without commenting on whether Geisler’s characterization of ETS was accurate or not, it is fair to say that in his mind the standing of ETS had degraded from what it once was. In his seven reasons for his resignation, although he spoke at length of the doctrine of inerrancy of Scripture, Geisler cited no Scripture—a vivid contrast to the many scriptural passages expounded by Witness Lee in the subject chapter of Practice.

Geisler and Rhodes Distort Witness Lee’s Teaching

While Witness Lee did criticize many aspects of Christianity or Christendom, that criticism was never the focal point of his ministry. Neither is it the focus of the ministry among the local churches today. However, Geisler and Rhodes totally missed the main content and focus of Witness Lee’s teaching in the third chapter of Practice. It was their responsibility to understand Witness Lee’s statements in context, to represent those statements fairly, and then put forth their objections, if any. However, Geisler and Rhodes chose to give their readers the false impression that Witness Lee viciously and blindly attacked all Christians.

Witness Lee’s message in the chapter in question is a crucial message that needs to be heard by today’s seeking Christians. He addresses an issue of great import: how to practice the proper church life according to the God-ordained way presented in the New Testament. Witness Lee criticized the system of Christianity because major features of that system hinder or even prevent the believers from living and functioning as members of the Body of Christ according to the pattern revealed in the Bible.

As a whole Practice presents believers with a view of producing a church-life in which every member is filled with the living Spirit, equipped with the truth, and active, that is, functioning in four main areas: 1) preaching the gospel to unbelievers, 2) caring for new believers by nourishing them through personal, vital contact, 3) mutual perfecting, teaching, and care for all the believers carried out in home meetings full of prayer, the Word, and the Spirit, and 4) coming together as the church so that all believers may prophesy, not mainly by predicting the future, but by speaking forth the Word of God (1 Cor. 14:26). To this end, in the chapter in question, Witness Lee wrote:

We must believe that every believer is a living one because every believer has the living God, Christ, the Spirit of life, in him. We should afford every believer an opportunity to express his living situation as a living member of the Body of Christ. In today’s Christianity the living members are killed, and their functions are annulled.21

These few sentences express both the reason for criticism—that formality, organization, and the unscriptural trappings of today’s Christianity kill the spiritual life of the members of the Body of Christ and annul their function—and the goal of Witness Lee’s speaking—to provide an atmosphere in which all the members can become living and functioning in God’s economical move. Witness Lee closes this section with the following:

We should stand for the testimony of Jesus in this age. We need to compare what is revealed in the Bible with what is being practiced in today’s Christianity. We must stay away from the practice of the deformed and degraded Christianity and come back to the divine revelation for the Lord’s recovery… We must come back to the biblical way, the new way, the living way, that affords God the opportunity to operate among His chosen people.22

This matter is not merely theoretical. When, in the late 1980s, Witness Lee began to minister concerning the way ordained by God in the Bible, his desire was to rescue the local churches from the perils of the negative things mentioned above and to open the way for all believers to enter into a daily living as members of the Body of Christ. Since its inception among the local churches, the worth of the God-ordained way has been demonstrated many times over. Those researching the local churches, both from CRI and from Fuller Theological Seminary, have witnessed these matters firsthand and have testified of their appreciation for what they have seen. It is truly regrettable that Geisler and Rhodes have chosen to despise the testimony of their Christian brothers.

Conclusion

The opening of this article set forth the minimum requirements for a believer to critique those with whom he may disagree. It is evident that Geisler and Rhodes have failed to perform the requisite research, have failed to represent the teachings of Witness Lee and the local churches accurately, and have failed to present adequate context so that the readers could fairly discern between truth and error.

In the small section of “Response” addressed in this article, Geisler and Rhodes misled their readers about Witness Lee’s references to “false teachers” who were in “apostasy” and chose to create a false impression that Witness Lee was attacking all Christian teachers. They falsely accused Witness Lee of slanderously attacking “all Christians” when he spoke only of love and respect for his fellow believers. Geisler and Rhodes ignored these and other similar statements that are in the same chapter of Practice. They also concealed from their readers the fact that Witness Lee’s criticism of Christianity was directed at the system of Christianity, not at the believers or the faith. They neglected in its entirety the fact that Witness Lee’s criticisms were solidly based in several portions of Scripture. Geisler and Rhodes failed to provide their readers with the requisite context concerning Witness Lee’s use of the terms degraded and deformed to describe the system of Christianity. Instead, they plucked these and other words out of context and rearranged them in a misleading manner. Finally, Geisler and Rhodes ignored the thrust of Witness Lee’s ministry in the referenced chapter.

Geisler and Rhodes are both signers of the so-called open letter to the leadership of Living Stream Ministry and the local churches. In that letter, they and their fellow-signers called upon the local churches to disavow similar statements made by Witness Lee, statements they presented wrenched from context and separated from meaning as Geisler and Rhodes have done in “Response.” After reading the many points above, one can understand why there has been no rush to disavow statements by Witness Lee. On the contrary, good faith efforts have been made to answer the false accusations in a straightforward way and to invite proper, meaningful dialogue.

Notes:

1Roger R. Nicole, “Polemic Theology: How to Deal with Those Who Differ from Us,” The Founders Journal, Issue 33, Summer 1998 (http://www.founders.org/journal/fj33/article3.html). The author further details his observations concerning Cornelius Van Til and his research methods in Van Til’s long-running dispute with Karl Barth. Nicole saw Van Til’s copies of much of what Barth wrote and testified that Van Til had thoroughly researched Barth’s writings as evidenced by his handwritten notes on nearly every page. This is a stark contrast to Geisler and Rhodes, who reject the need to further research Witness Lee’s writings and demonstrate a lack of familiarity with the corpus of his work, let alone an accurate understanding of the portions of his teachings they misrepresent in “Response.”

2Norman L. Geisler and Abdul Saleeb, Answering Islam: The Crescent in Light of the Cross (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2002), p. 13.

3Witness Lee, The God-ordained Way to Practice the New Testament Economy (Anaheim, CA: Living Stream Ministry, 1987), pp. 25-26.

4Ibid., p. 26.

5Mike Gendron, “The Vatican’s Call for Unity” (Ankerberg Theological Research Institute, Nov. 2001) http://www.johnankerberg.com/Articles/_PDFArchives/roman-catholicism/RC1W1201.pdf.

6See “Biblical Critiques of Christianity – Selected Bibliography and Biographical Notes on Sources Cited.”

7Witness Lee, Practice, op. cit., p. 25.

8Ibid., p. 28.

9Ibid., pp. 27-28.

10Witness Lee is not alone in criticizing the system of Christianity. Please refer to “Biblical Critiques of Christianity – Selected Bibliography and Biographical Notes on Sources Cited.” which addresses what some other Christian teachers say about the system of Christianity and how believers should view it relative to God’s eternal purpose for the church.

11Other expositors who have understood the parable of the mustard seed in Matthew 13:31-32 in a similar way as Witness Lee include John Nelson Darby, Robert Govett, W. E. Vine, A.W. Pink, G. Campbell Morgan, G. H. Lang, J. J. Ross, Herbert Lockyer, John F. Walvoord, and Ray Stedman.

12Other expositors who have understood the parable of the woman, the leaven, and the fine flour in a similar way as Witness Lee include John Nelson Darby, Robert Govett, C. I. Scofield, W. E. Vine, G. H. Lang, A.W. Pink, G. Campbell Morgan, J. J. Ross, Lewis Sperry Chafer, Herbert Lockyer, Lehman Strauss, and John F. Walvoord.

13Among those who have shared Witness Lee’s understanding that Mystery Babylon the Great in Revelation 17 refers to Roman Catholicism are William Tyndale, John Huss, Martin Luther, John Knox, John Wesley, John Gill, Albert Barnes, John Peter Lange, John Nelson Darby, Andrew Miller, G. H. Pember, Robert Govett, Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, David Brown, Charles H. Spurgeon, Charles Hodge, H. A. Ironside, C. I. Scofield, Arno C. Gaebelein, J. J. Ross, William R. Newell, Lewis Sperry Chafer, Louis Talbot, Lehman Strauss, Merrill F. Unger, John F. Walvoord, Walter Lewis Wilson, W. A. Criswell, and Donald Grey Barnhouse.

14Witness Lee, Practice, op. cit., p. 26.

15See footnote 8.

16W. E. Vine, Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words (McLean, VA: MacDonald Publishing Company,) p 777.

17In Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/degraded.

18Witness Lee, Practice, op cit. All of these items are mentioned and expanded upon on pages 28-34 of Practice.

19Lewis Sperry Chafer, Systematic Theology, Vol. IV (Dallas, TX: Dallas Seminary Press, 11th Printing, October 1973), p. 353.

20Norman L. Geisler, “Why I Resigned from The Evangelical Theological Society,” November 20, 2003, www.normangeisler.net/etsresign.htm.

21Witness Lee, Practice, op. cit., p. 32.

22Ibid., p. 35.