Theological Term of the Week

Taking a brief detour from the trinitarian terms.

gospel
The good news of what God, through the work of Christ Jesus, has done to save lost humanity. This good news “1) converts and transforms individuals, forming them into a new humanity, and eventually 2) will renew the whole world and all creation.”1

• From the Bible:
  

  Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures (1 Corinthians 15:1-3 ESV)
  

• From the Canons of Dort (1619), Head II, Articles 2 and 5:
  

  Since, however, we ourselves cannot give this satisfaction or deliver ourselves from God’s anger, God in his boundless mercy has given us as a guarantee his only begotten Son, who was made to be sin and a curse for us, in our place, on the cross, in order that he might give satisfaction for us.
  
  Moreover, it is the promise of the gospel that whoever believes in Christ crucified shall not perish but have eternal life. This promise, together with the command to repent and believe, ought to be announced and declared without differentiation or discrimination to all nations and people, to whom God in his good pleasure sends the gospel.

• From D. A. Carson in The Gospel Of Jesus Christ (1 Corinthians 15:1 – 19), The Spurgeon Fellowship Journal, Spring 2008:
  

  The gospel is Christological; it is Christ-centered. The gospel is not a bland theism, still less an impersonal pantheism. The gospel is irrevocably Christ-centered. The point is powerfully articulated in every major New Testament book and corpus. In Matthew’s Gospel, for instance, Christ himself is Emmanuel, God with us; he is the long-promised Davidic king who will bring in the kingdom of God. By his death and resurrection he becomes the mediatorial monarch who insists that all authority in heaven and earth is his alone. In John, Jesus alone is the way, the truth, and the life: no one comes to the Father except through him, for it is the Father’s solemn intent that all should honor the Son even as they honor the Father. In the sermons reported in Acts, there is no name but Jesus given under heaven by which we must be saved (cf. Acts 4:12). In Romans and Galatians and Ephesians, Jesus is the last Adam, the one to whom the law and the prophets bear witness, the one who by God’s own design propitiates God’s wrath and reconciles Jews and Gentiles to his heavenly Father and thus also to each other. In the great vision of Revelation 4-5, the Son alone, emerging from the very throne of God Almighty, is simultaneously the lion and the lamb, and he alone is qualified to open the seals of the scroll in the right hand of God, and thus bring about all of God’s matchless purposes for judgment and blessing. So also here: the gospel is Christological. John Stott is right: “The gospel is not preached if Christ is not preached.”
  
  Yet this Christological stance does not focus exclusively on Christ’s person; it embraces with equal fervor his death and resurrection. As a matter of first importance, Paul writes, “Christ died for our sins” (15:3). Earlier in this letter, Paul does not tell his readers, “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ”; rather, he says, “I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2). Moreover, Paul here ties Jesus’ death to his resurrection, as the rest of the chapter makes clear. This is the gospel of Christ crucified and risen again.
  
  In other words, it is not enough to make a splash of Christmas, and downplay Good Friday and Easter. When we insist that as a matter of first importance, the gospel is Christological, we are not thinking of Christ as a cypher, or simply as the God-man who comes along and helps us like a nice insurance agent: “Jesus is a nice God-man, he’s a very, very nice God-man, and when you break down, he comes along and fixes you.” The gospel is Christological in a more robust sense: Jesus is the promised Messiah who died and rose again.
  

Learn more:

1. Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry: What is the Gospel message?
2. Monergism.com (John Hendryx): What is the Gospel?
3. Tim Keller: The Gospel: Key to Change
4. D. A. Carson: What is the Gospel? (notes from this sermon with links to mp3 and transcript)

1 Quoted from Tim Keller in The Gospel: Key to Change

Do you have a a theological term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion, and linking back to your blog when I do.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms in alphabetical order.

Theological Term of the Week

modalism
The unorthodox teaching that God is only one person who has revealed himself at different times in three different modes (or manifestations, forms, roles), rather than a Trinity consisting of three distinct persons who are coexistent. Sometimes called modalistic monarchism, Sabellianism and patripassionism are types of modalism.

• From the Bible 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 Theology by Wayne Grudem, page 242:
  

  The fatal shortcoming of modalism is the fact that it must deny the personal relationships within the Trinity that appear in so many places in Scripture (or it must affirm that these were simply an illusion and not real). Thus, it must deny three separate persons at the baptism of Jesus, where the Father speaks from heaven and the Spirit descends on Jesus like a dove. And it must say that all those instances where Jesus is praying to the Father are an illusion or a charade. The idea of the Son or the Holy Spirit interceding for us before God the Father is lost. Finally, modalism ultimately loses the heart of the doctrine of the atonement—that is, the idea that God sent his Son as a substitutionary sacrifice, and that the Son bore the wrath of God in our place, and that the Father, representing the interests of the Trinity, saw the suffering of Christ and was satisfied (Isa. 53:11).
  
  Moreover, modalism denies the independence of God, for if God is only one person, then he has no ability to love and to communicate without other persons in his creation. Therefore it was necessary for God to create the world, and God would no longer be independent of creation….
  
  One present denomination within Protestantism (broadly defined), the United Pentecostal Church, is modalistic in its doctrinal position.
  

Learn more:

1. basictheology.com: Modalism
2. BELIEVE Religious Information Source: Monarchianism, Sabellianism, Patripassionism, Modalism
3. GotQuestions.org: What are Sabellianism, Modalism, and Monarchianism?
4. Believer’s Web: Oneness Pentacostalism and the Trinity by Robert M. Bowman, Jr.
5. Martin Downes: The Insufficient Explanatory Power of Modalism
6. Department of Christian Defense: Examining the Oneness Objections to the Doctrine of the Trinity

Related terms:

• adoptionism
• Arianism

Filed under Defective Theology

Do you have a a theological term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion, and linking back to your blog when I do.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms in alphabetical order.

Theological Term of the Week

economic Trinity
The Trinity as the three persons relate to each other and creation, with the different roles of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in view.

• From the Nicene Creed:
  

  I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible.

  And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds; God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God; begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father, by whom all things were made.

  Who, for us men and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the virgin Mary, and was made man; and was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate; He suffered and was buried; and the third day He rose again, according to the Scriptures; and ascended into heaven, and sits on the right hand of the Father; and He shall come again, with glory, to judge the quick and the dead; whose kingdom shall have no end.

  And I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; who proceeds from the Father and the Son; who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified; who spoke by the prophets.

• From the Belgic Confession, Article 8:
  

  The Father is the cause, origin and beginning of all things visible and invisible; the Son is the word, wisdom, and image of the Father; the Holy Ghost is the eternal power and might, proceeding from the Father and the Son.

• From Salvation Belongs to the Lord by John Frame, page 36:
  

  The economic Trinity….is the Trinity in relation to the creation. As we saw earlier, the three persons of the Trinity take on a sort of division of labor with regard to creation and redemption: the Father plans, the Son executes, the Spirit applies. In this great drama the Son voluntarily becomes subordinate to the Father. Jesus says he can do nothing of himself but what he sees the Father do (John 5:19). In John 5:30 he says, “I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.” The Father has commanded; the Son obeys. Similarly, the Holy Spirit, when Jesus and the Father send him into the world, “will not speak of his own authority, but whatever he hears, he will speak. and he will declare to you the things that are to come.” (John 16:13) See the order? The Father sends; Jesus and the Spirit are sent. The Father speaks of himself; the Son and Spirit speak the words the Father has given them to speak.
  

Learn more:

1. R. C. Sproul: What’s the Difference Between the Ontological and Economic Trinity?
2. Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry: Economic Trinity
3. Bruce Ware: Equal in Essence, Distinct in Roles: Eternal Functional Authority and Submission among the Essentially Equal Divine Persons of the Godhead (mp3)

Related terms:

• eternal generation of the Son
• ontological Trinity
• Trinity

Filed under Trinity.

Do you have a a theological term you’d like to see featured here as a Theological Term of the Week? If you email it to me, I’ll seriously consider using it, giving you credit for the suggestion, and linking back to your blog when I do.

Clicking on the Theological Term graphic at the top of this post will take you to a list of all the previous theological terms in alphabetical order.