On the Trinity

First, Pastor Tom Chantry has provided a actual transcript of T.D. Jakes words on the Trinity from The Elephant Room 2, session 4.¹

Chantry then made a follow-up post in which he shares his thoughts in the following five points.²

1. Jakes masterfully deconstructs the entire practice of theology.
2. Driscoll and MacDonald are too much in awe of Jakes’ massive numeric success to call him on this.
3. James MacDonald is angry.
4. The mega-pastors are one big lovin’ family!
5. If you aren’t defined at least somewhat by what you are against, you aren’t really defined at all.

I have also asked E. Calvin Beisner³ his thoughts on Jakes’ recent statements on the Trinity at Elephant Room 2. Beisner has written two books covering the Trinity and answered as follows.

Those words are absolutely consistent with the modalist heresy of Oneness Pentecostalism, and they remind me precisely of the kind of intentionally vague, off-topic language used by Arius and his supporters at the Council of Nicaea in A.D. 325. Jakes will be believable in saying he believes in “One God – Three Persons” when he renounces Oneness Pentecostalism and separates from the officially modalist, anti-Trinitarian United Pentecostal and other Oneness denominations, and enunciated the doctrine of the Trinity with clarity and precision and a clear repudiation of modalism. Jakes’s language above fits perfectly with Oneness Pentecostals’ belief that the only difference between Father and Son is that the Son is the Father manifested in the flesh. The crucial element of the doctrine of the Trinity is that the distinctions of Father, Son, and Spirit are revealed in Scripture to be utterly independent of anything external to God–i.e., they are internal distinctions. Jakes’s god is not the God revealed in the Bible, and his gospel is not the gospel revealed in the Bible.

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