Oneness Pentacostals & the Trinity

Oneness Pentecostalism (a.k.a. Jesus Only or the Apostolic Church) is ruthlessly monotheistic. To demonstrate the centrality of this issue for OP’s, one of their own advocates, Wilbur King, writes “Please don’t let Old Satan deceive you any longer with His 3 person 3 god teaching” (“Let Use Make Man in Our Image, After Our Likeness” tract).

In fact, this is such a defining issue that the very name of their movement, “Oneness,” derives its name from their theology of God. In fact, they have no problem calling the Trinity (1) an illogical and pagan idea that the early church fathers opposed, (2) an imposition of the apostate Roman Catholic Church on the purity Christian doctrine, and (3) an entirely unbiblical notion since both “Trinity” and “person” are not biblical words (neither is "oneness" or "pentecostal" though).

In the end, they openly call the Trinity a demonic lie. Only the Oneness understanding of God “upholds biblical Christianity” as they are vehement that the trinity unavoidably devolves into tri-theism (see E. Calvin Beisner, “Jesus Only” Churches, 28-30 and Robert M. Bowman Jr., “Oneness Pentecostalism and the Trinity,” 26 [article found here]).

Their understanding of the Father, Son & Spirit is as follows:

There is only one God. The Father is God. The Son is God. The Spirit is God. Therefore, the Father is the Son is the Spirit. Or, Jesus = the Father = the Spirit.

This is nothing new. Throughout church history it’s gone by the names monarchianism, modalism or sabellianism (see Harold OJ Brown, Heresies).

In other words, God is one person with one nature who is “manifested” in three different ways. God is not three distinct persons, but three aspects, titles or roles for three different manifestations of one person, or three offices filled by one person. This is akin to an actor wearing three different masks to play three different roles on stage, or one man with three different roles he plays in life (e.g. father, husband, employee).

In OP that one person of the godhead is Jesus--as seen in the picture above.

Since Jesus is supposedly the called “Father” in Isa 9:6 and is alluded to being such in John 8:19, 12:45, 14:9 they conclude that Jesus is “the Father manifested in the flesh” (David Bernard, The Oneness of God, 68 [most consider this the book about OP by an advocate of OP]).

Also, Jesus is interpreted by OP as being the Holy Spirit in 2 Cor 3:17 so that the Holy Spirit is really Jesus in spirit-form.

Finally, they argue that the Bible clearly identifies the Father and the Holy Spirit as one and the same interchangeable person (comp. Acts 5:3-4 or 2 Cor 3:16 with 6:19).

Again, it is important to know what the person believes that you're talking to before trying to give them the gospel. In later posts, we'll seek to debunk their arguments, but for now, we're simply explaining what they believe.