Rebecca Stark is the author of The Good Portion: Godthe second title in The Good Portion series.

The Good Portion: God explores what Scripture teaches about God in hopes that readers will see his perfection, worth, magnificence, and beauty as they study his triune nature, infinite attributes, and wondrous works. 

                     

Friday
Feb042022

Selected Reading, February 4, 2022

 

Three short recommended reads.

Scripture Reading 

10 Passages to Read with Someone Who Is Near Death
A excellent list this is, and some of you may find it useful.

Christian History

Dorothy Carey and Her Struggle With Mental Illness
The very sad story of the wife of the famous Baptist missionary, William Carey. 

At some point during the first months of 1795, [Dorothy] began to lose her grip on reality and slip into what today would be called paranoid delusions… .

Most of her delusions and fears had to do with a persuasion that William was having affairs with other women. Any reasoning on his part didn’t help. 

Read the whole thing.

Old Testament

Theophany and Christophany
“[I]f we’re paying attention to the Old Testament, we’ll find that by the time we meet Jesus Christ in the New Testament, it’s not actually the first time we’ve met Him. We’ve already been introduced.” —Simply Put 

Thursday
Feb032022

Theological Term of the Week: Modalism

modalism 
The unorthodox teaching that “there is only one person in God who represents himself in the roles of the three persons.”1 Rather than a Trinity consisting of three distinct persons who are coexistent, there is one person who reveals himself at different times in three different modes (or forms, roles, or manifestation). Also called Sabellianism. Modalistic monarchism and patripassionism are types of modalism.

  • From scripture we see that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are distinct from one another and interact with each other: 

    And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” (Matthew 3:16-17 ESV)

  • From the Athanasian Creed:
    25. And in this Trinity none is afore or after another; none is greater or less than another.

    26. But the whole three persons are coeternal, and coequal.

    27. So that in all things, as aforesaid, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshipped.

    28. He therefore that will be saved must thus think of the Trinity.
  • From Systematic Theolog by Robert Letham, pages 97-98:
    Until the early fourth century there were two potentially deviant tendencies affecting the church’s grasp of the Trinity. The first of these was modalism, which blurred the distinctions of the three persons. In the third century, Sabellius held that the Father, the Son, and the Spirit were merely ways in which the one God revealed himself, like an actor taking on different roles. He maintained that the only God, Father in the Old Testament, had become the Son in the New and sanctified the church as Holy Spirit after Pentecost. The three were successive modes of the unipersonal God. Consequently, Christ was merely an appearance of the one God but did not have any distinct identity of his own. With modalism, God’s revelation in human history as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit did not reveal who he is eternally, and so Christ gives us no true knowledge of God. Moreover, the effect was to undermine God’s faithfulness, for we could not rely on him is what he disclosed of himself in Christ did not truly reflect who he eternally is. Indeed, for those determined to maintain the unity of God and resist anything savoring of a dual or threefold god, there was a constant danger of regarding the Son and the Spirit as identical to the Father, as appearances of the one God at different times. Tertullian countered modalism in his book Contra Praxeas, calling those who held this position “monarchians,” who insisted that God’s rule (monarchia) was one. Later, Paul of Samosata was condemned on these grounds at the Council of Antioch in 268.

Learn more:

  1. Theopedia: Modalism
  2. Simply Put: Modalism
  3. Got Questions: What is modalism?
  4. Blue Letter Bible: Does the One God Have Three Different Modes?
  5. Tabletalk Magazine: The New Adventures of Trinitarian Heresies

Related terms:

1 From The Christian Faith by Michael Horton, page 997.

Filed under Trinity


Do you have a a theological term you’d like to see featured as a Theological Term of the Week? Email your suggestion using the contact button in the navigation bar above. 

Clicking on the Theological Terms button above the header will take you to an alphabetical list of all the theological terms.

Sunday
Jan302022

Sunday's Hymn: Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing

 

 

 

Come, thou Fount of ev’ry blessing,
Tune my heart to sing thy grace;
Streams of mercy, never ceasing,
Call for songs of loudest praise,
Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above;
Praise the mount! I’m fixed upon it,
Mount of God’s unchanging love.

Here I raise my Ebenezer;
Hither by thy help I’m come;
And I hope, by thy good pleasure,
Safely to arrive at home.
Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wand’ring from the fold of God:
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed his precious blood.

O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be;
Let that grace now, like a fetter,
Bind my wand’ring heart to thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for thy courts above.

—Ro­bert Rob­in­son

 

Other hymns of worship songs for this Sunday: