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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2010
The Nicene Creed and the subsequent development of Trinitarian orthodoxy have been regarded by many as essential to the apostolic faith of the churches. For example, the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed without the filioque clause was made the starting point of the World Council of Churches' Commission on Faith and Order study program entitled, “Towards the Common Expression of the Apostolic Faith Today.” Not so well known, however, is the existence of a growing movement of Pentecostal Christians globally that seeks to preserve the apostolic faith of the churches in significant measure by rejecting the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed along with the Trinitarian dogma that historically it had supported. Commonly called Oneness or Apostolic Pentecostals, they are estimated to have from 14 to over 17 million followers globally and growing rapidly in Mexico, China, and the United States.1
1 See David A. Reed, “Oneness Pentecostalism,” New International Dictionary of Pentecostal and Charismatic Movements (ed. Stanley Burgess; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2002) 940.
2 “Oneness-Trinitarian Pentecostal Final Report,” Pneuma30 (2008) 203–24.
3 Jaroslav Pelikan, Credo: Historical and Theological Guide to Creeds and Confessions of Faith in the Christian Tradition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003) 102–3. Just to clarify a point here, Pelikan is referring back to his own earlier work (Pelikan, “The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine”) at this point in Credo.
4 Marburg, 1, quoted by Pelikan, Credo, 181.
5 Walter J. Hollenweger, “From Azusa Street to the Toronto Phenomenon,” in Pentecostal Movements as an Ecumenical Challenge (ed. Jürgen Moltmann and Karl-Josef Kuschel; Concilium 3; London: SCM, 1996) 7.
6 Hollenweger, “Theology of the New World,” ExpTim87 (1976) 228.
7 Harvey Cox, Fire from Heaven: The Rise of Pentecostal Spirituality and the Reshaping of Religion in the Twentieth Century (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1994).
8 Grant Wacker, Heaven Below: Early Pentecostalism and American Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003). My point here is not that Wacker follows Hollenweger's emphasis on experience and orality or narrative (or Cox's descriptions of Pentecostal primal experience), only that Wacker shows us what it is about Pentecostalism that causes the Movement to adapt itself so effectively to a variety of contexts.
9 Donald W. Dayton, Theological Roots of Pentecostalism (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1988).
10 D. William Faupel, The Everlasting Gospel: The Significance of Eschatology in the Development of Pentecostal Thought (Sheffield, England: Sheffield, 1996).
11 See my Baptized in the Spirit: A Global Pentecostal Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2006).
12 Simon Chan, “Evidential Glossolalia and the Doctrine of Subsequence,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies2 (1999) 197.
13 Trin. 15.46.
14 See my development of this argument in Baptized in the Spirit, 19–60.
15 See Macchia, Baptized in the Spirit,46–49. See also, Amos Yong, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2005) 81–120; Peter Hocken, “Baptism in the Spirit as a Prophetic Statement: A Reflection on the New Testament and on Pentecostal Origins” (paper presented at the Society for Pentecostal Studies, Springfield, Mo., 12–14 November 1992); Tak-Ming Chung, “Understandings of Spirit Baptism,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 8 (1996) 115–28; Narciso C. Dionson, “The Doctrine of the Baptism in the Holy Spirit: From a Pentecostal Pastor's Uneasy Chair,” Asian Journal of Pentecostal Studies 2 (1999) 238–47; Larry Hart, “Spirit Baptism: A Dimensional Charismatic Perspective,” in Spirit Baptism: Five Views (ed. Chad Brand; Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2004) 105–80; Donald Gelpi, “Breath Baptism in the Synoptics,” (paper presented at the Society for Pentecostal Studies, Pasadena, Calif., 20 November 1982); D. Lyle Dabney, “ ‘He Will Baptize You in the Holy Spirit’: Recovering a Metaphor for a Pneumatological Soteriology” (paper presented at the Society for Pentecostal Studies, Tulsa, Okla., 8–10 March 2001).
16 It is important to note further that Durham did understand regeneration as an experience analogous to the holiness view of entire sanctification, namely, as eradication of the root of sin from the believer's life. This aspect of Durham's soteriology did not continue after his untimely death. Those who followed his stream of influence understood sanctification more in line with John Calvin as a lifelong progress. Durham's enduring influence, however, was due to his increased attention to Christ's sufficiency for the spiritual life and his elimination from much of the Pentecostal Movement of sanctification as a stage of initiation distinct from regeneration. See Thomas Farkas, “William H. Durham and the Sanctification Controversy in Early American Pentecostalism, 1906–1916” (Ph.D. diss., Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1993) 20–28.
17 Westminster Short Catechism, 1, 39, quoted by Pelikan, Credo, 281.
18 The Apostolic Faith, 1 (1906) 1.
19 David A. Reed, ‘In Jesus' Name': The History and Beliefs of Oneness Pentecostals (Dorset, England: Deo, 2008) 138–40.
20 I am grateful to Ralph Del Colle for insight into the significance of the baptismal formula for indicating something vital to the confession of the church. See Ralph Del Colle, “A Catholic Response,” Pneuma 30 (2008) 259. It seemed clear to me that unearthing the confessional implications of the new baptismal formula was implicitly Ewart's quest.
21 Frank Ewart, The Name and the Book (Chicago: Daniel Ryerson, 1936) 40, quoted by Reed, ‘In Jesus' Name,’140.
22 Frank Ewart, “The Unity of God,” in Meat in Due Season 1 (1916) 1.
23 Ewart, ibid., 40, quoted by Reed, ‘In Jesus' Name,’140.
24 “Final Report,” 13.207 (page 13; paragraph 207).
25 Ibid., 43.216.
26 Ibid., 41.214.
27 Ibid., 47.217.
28 David A. Reed, “An Anglican Response,” Pneuma 30 (2008) 266.
29 This is evident throughout David K. Bernard's, The Oneness View of Jesus Christ (Hazelwood, Mo.: Pentecostal, 1996).
30 David K. Bernard, The Oneness of God (Antioch, Tenn.: Word Aflame, 2003) ch. 11.
31 William Menzies, Anointed to Serve (Springfield, Mo.: Gospel, 1971) 117.
32 Reed, “ ‘In Jesus' Name,’ ” 164.
33 “Final Report,” 15.208.
34 Ibid., 17.208.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid., 20.210.
38 Ibid., 22.210–211.
39 Ibid., 23.211.
40 Ibid., 25.211.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid., 24.211.
43 Ibid., 26.212.
44 Ibid., 27.212.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid., 31.214.
48 Ibid., 32.214.
49 Ibid., 33.214.
50 Ibid.
51 Ibid., 34.214. Oneness scholars are aware that Trinitarians have rejected tritheism, but Oneness literature has historically assumed that the compromise with tritheism remains nonetheless.
52 Ibid., 37.215.
53 Ibid., 35.214.
54 Ibid.
55 Frank Ewart, “The Revelation of Jesus Christ,” in Seven Jesus Only Tracts (ed. Donald W. Dayton; New York: Garland, 1985) 5.
56 “Final Report,” 36.215.
57 Ibid., 41.216.
58 Ibid., 44.216.
59 Ibid., 45.216.
60 Ibid.
61 Ibid.
62 Ibid., 47.217.
63 Ibid.
64 Ibid.
65 Ibid., 42.216.
66 Ibid., 47.217.
67 Ibid., 48.218–19; emphasis exists in the Final Report. See A. D. Urshan, The Almighty God in the Lord Jesus Christ (1121 S. Mott Street, Los Angeles, Calif.: The author, 1919) 10, quoted by David A. Reed, “Aspects of the Origins of Oneness Pentecostalism,” in Aspects of Pentecostal-Charismatic Origins (ed. Vinson Synan; Plainfield, N. J.: Logos International, 1975) 151.
68 Wainwright raises the issue of continuity of tradition versus restorationism in commenting on the Catholic/Pentecostal conversations. See GeoffreyWainwright, “The One Hope of Your Calling? The Ecumenical and Pentecostal Movements after a Century,” Pneuma 25 (2003) 97–114. I believe that this tension is most acute when viewed in the light of the Oneness challenge.
69 See Rowan Williams, Arius: Heresy and Tradition (rev. ed.; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2001) 69. The additional question here is whether Arius intended to regard the Logos as a semi-divine figure. For a view of Arius's theology that accents his denial of Christ's deity and approximation to adoptionism, see Robert C. Gregg and Dennis E. Groh, Early Arianism: A View of Salvation (London: SCM, 1981). Rowan Williams notes, however, that this scholarship has not paid enough attention to the distinction that Arius also assumed between the Logos and other creatures. The result is that Arius was at least perceived to have described the Logos as a kind of intermediate creature positioned somewhere in between God and the creature, a kind of divinized creature. See Williams's excellent discussion of the scholarship on Arianism in ibid., 1–25.
70 Williams, Arius, 69.
71 There are Oneness Pentecostals, such as Kenneth Bass, who have recognized that the affirmation of Christ's deity at Nicea can be embraced. I am grateful to Bass for personally sharing this affirmation with me.
72 David A. Reed, “Oneness Pentecostalism: Problems and Possibilities for Pentecostal Theology,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology” 11 (1997) 73–93.
73 Marcellus of Ancyra, a fourth-century advocate of the Nicene statement, viewed the Son as only applicable to Jesus as the incarnation of the one God. From the Father came forth the divine Word and Spirit to bring about the redemption of the world but these are not eternal distinctions within God. See Jaroslav Pelikan, Emergence of the Catholic Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971) 207–8.
74 Pelikan, Emergence of the Catholic Tradition, 224.
75 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (ed. Geoffrey Bromiley and Thomas Torrance; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957) 1:355–58 and Karl Rahner, The Trinity (London: Continuum, 2001) 103–15.
76 This is a point that I tried to make at the Oneness/Trinitarian dialogue. See, for example, St. Basil's criticism of Sabellius: “For if a man calls Father, Son, and Holy Ghost one thing of many faces, and makes the hypostasis of the three one, what is this but to deny the everlasting pre-existence of the Only begotten? He denies too the Lord's sojourn among men in the incarnation, the going down into hell, the resurrection, the judgment; he denies also the proper operations of the Spirit.” Letter, 210.
77 David Reed has rightly lamented the fact that the early Pentecostals within the Assemblies of God did not have a longer period of dialogue before dividing. See Reed, “Oneness Pentecostalism.”
78 George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1984).