Oneness Pentecostals
have attempted to marshal evidence that “Jesus is the Father” by appealing to only
a handful of biblical texts. This attempt itself divulges the weakness of the
Oneness assertion since out of the entirety of the NT, Oneness Pentecostals can
find less than half a dozen texts which teach the foundational assertion of
their Christology. The classic text Oneness adherents point to is Isaiah 9:6. I
have written on this text at length elsewhere,[1] demonstrating that the
phrase “eternal father” (Heb. avi ab)
no more identifies the Messiah as God the Father than say, the biblical names
Abijam (“father of light”) or Abigail (“father of joy”). Rather, the appellation
“father of eternity” is intended to characterize the Son of God as having something
Oneness Pentecostals deny, namely, an eternal existence.
The second most
utilized of these “Jesus is the Father” texts is John 14:6-18. The difficulty
Oneness adherents face with this text is twofold: First, in order to understand
this passage to teach that Jesus is the Father, one would have to atomize the
text and divorce it from the balance of the NT. Take for instance the parable
of the wicked tenants in Luke 20:9-18; Matt. 21:33-46; Mark 12:1-12. In this
parable Jesus depicts himself as one who is numerically and personally distinct
both in terms of his sending and death. Second, in order to derive the notion
that “Jesus is the Father” from John 14, one would have to omit those many
portions of the chapter which explicitly depict Jesus as being personally
distinct from the Father. For example, in v. 2 Jesus states that he will go and
prepare a place for his disciples at his Father’s house, in v. 12 Jesus states
again that he is going to his Father, in v. 13 Jesus states that the Father
will be glorified in the Son, and in v. 16 Jesus states that he will ask the
Father for another helper, namely, the precious Holy Spirit. How then do orthodox
interpreters understand statements like, “Whoever has seen me has seen the
Father” (v. 9)? Historically, Christians have understood this text to indicate
the fact that Jesus is the perfect and final Revealer of God. This is why John
characterizes the Son as God the Word. So too, this is precisely the same
reason why the author of Hebrews depicts the Son as God as the perfect revelation
of God to man and the exact imprint of the Father’s nature.[2] Hence, a consistent
interpretation of John 14 indicates that Philip needed no other revelation of
the Father since Jesus is the co-equal God who makes the Father known.[3]
The other main passage utilized by Oneness adherents is 1
John 3:1-5. V. 2 states, “Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will
be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him,
because we shall see him as he is.” Similarly, v. 5 states, “You know that he
appeared in order to take away sins, and in him there is no sin.” Oneness
interpreters argue that because the immediate antecedent is God the Father (vv.
1-2), this subsequently implies that the Father (i.e., Jesus) appeared to take
away sins. However, the means by which one determines the subject of a pronoun
is are the pronoun’s antecedent or postcedent. The pronoun in 3:2 is linked topically
and contextually to the pronouns in 2:28-29:
And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have
confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming. If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone
who practices righteousness has been born of him. (italics added)
That the subject of 2:28-29
is Jesus the Son is clear since v. 18 begins a section on antichrists and those
who deny Jesus Christ and by implication, deny the Father. The verb phaneroĊ occurs nine times in this
epistle and every single time it refers to the Son.[4] Additionally, the
statement in v. 25, “And this is the
promise that he made to us—eternal life” undoubtably refers to the many places
wherein Jesus promised eternal life to those who believed in both himself and the
one who sent him.[5]
Moreover, while the Son of God is the indirect antecedent in chapter 2, and he
is the immediate postcedent in v. 8. In v. 8 phaneroĊ is again applied to the Son. Thus, a more consistent
reading recognizes that John did not imply that Jesus is the Father, but that John
assumed his readers would know better than to conflate the identity of the Father
and Son.
In conclusion, the few NT passages Oneness Pentecostals
call upon to demonstrate that “Jesus is the Father” demonstrate only a flawed
hermeneutic. The only exegetical method which affords the Oneness reading of
these texts is the one which presupposes Oneness Pentecostalism from the outset.