MODALISM

Adelphoi,

One gentleman in our midst wrote:

"Peter Toon makes the very serious charge that,

Regrettably, when we move into the new type of Anglican prayer books - the books of alternative services (e.g. ECUSA 1979 prayer book) - we find that to these two meanings there is added at least one further meaning. This is the doctrine that GOD IS ONE PERSON who has three dominant Names/Modes/Aspects ("God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit") of expression. Anyone who knows the history of doctrine will known that this Modalism is heretical and it has been anathematized as such by the Church in days past! Yet happily, it seems, modern Episcopalians embrace it."

I am on my way to the Anglican Congress in Atlanta, but here is a quick response. I shall not be able to reply to any further correspondence for 6 or 7 days.

Please read what follows:

The Christian doctrine that there is one Godhead/Deity/Divine Nature yet Three Persons, A Trinity in Unity and a Unity in Trinity, is difficult to grasp and easy to falsify. Therefore, the Church in the 4th & 5th centuries - and since - went to great troubles to find the best way to express the Unity of God together with the Trinity of Persons (see the Dogma of the Councils of Nicea, Constantinople and Chalcedon, St Augustine's De Trinitate, the Quincunque Vult).

The same careful statement of the doctrine of the blessed, holy and undivided Trinity of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost, is found in the classic Liturgies of Rome and Constantinople [here most beautifully expressed], in the Scholastic Divinity of the middle ages and in the Protestant Confessions of Faith & Liturgies of the 16th & 17th centuries.

Truth matters and thus we must aim for the most truthful propositions. There is no place for carelessness and simplification in the statement of the Church dogma of the Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity.

One heresy that the early Fathers faced and wrote against (and composed the Quicunque Vult to oppose) was Modalism, which came in various forms. In essence it emphasised that there is One and One only Deity, the Lord God, and that he has made himself known in Three modes of being, named in the NT and by the church as Father, Son and Holy Ghost. (In other words God is One Person, with one Nature but with three ways of expression to the world.)

In order not to allow in either Modalism or Tritheism (Arianism) the Church went to great pains to state precisely the orthodox dogma so as to exclude it.

Moving into the 20th century, we find that a form of Modalism is present in several of the much read liberal theologians in the 1950s & 1960s ---e.g. Tillich & Macquarrie, who sought to make the Faith acceptable to the post World II mindset. Episcopal Seminaries in the 1950s-1970s had everyone reading Tillich and Macquarrie in systematic theology.

So when the process of liturgical revision began in earnest in the ECUSA we find that for the 1967 Order for Holy Communion, there is a new acclamation or greeting at the beginning, never before found in Anglican Liturgy or Roman Litrugy, and that this acclamation stayed throughout all the revision and occurs multiple times in various services in the 1979 ECUSA prayer book of alternative services.

This acclamation (as far as I can tell) is nowhere found in public liturgy in English or any other European language before 1967. It is "Blessed be
God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit." Note that a COLON divides the sentence into two halves and Note that there are no definite articles. Note also that the English translation of the beginning of the Roman Mass has always been "In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost."

Obviously a dominant person on the Liturgical Commission wanted the new formula and got it and it remained through to 1979 ( I suggest Massey Shepherd). If you read the explanation for it in the commentaries on the 79 book, you find that it is supposed to be a shortened form of the Greeting in the Greek Liturgy. Now this great Blessing is always translated: "Blessed be the kingdom of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, now and always, even unto ages of ages!" In the Greek there is no colon and there is the very obvious presence of the definite article.

The high probability is that in the liberal elite of the ECUSA, where Tillich and Macquarrie had much influence, Modalism was incipient and thus in adopting the acclamation, "Blessed be God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit" no one really saw that this was an innovation in terms of stating the Name and Presence of the Triune Lord.

If we examine it grammatically what it is saying is that there is a God who has three Names or Modes of Being or Attributes. After God it is not a comma but a colon! And there is no definite article before "Father" etc. In its grammatical form, standing alone, it is not the orthodox dogma of the Blessed and Holy Trinity, but Modalism.

Maybe for those, who in using it, already possessed a sound understanding of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in mind, this expression could be seen as a short-cut expression. But for those without any grounding in the classic dogma of Holy Mother Church, this expression gives them the mental picture of one Deity or God, who is one Person as it were, and who has three dominant Names or three only Names.

Now it is true that in other places of the 1979 book the right and proper doctrine of the Trinity is set forth (but not in its Catechism!). So at best the situation is confusing.

Happily there are some clergy in the ECUSA who say, "Blessed be God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit" (changing the colon to a comma and adding the definite articles) in order to seek to make the acclamation sound like genuine orthodox doctrine - I confess that I am responsible for much of this revisionism! Some modern liturgists hate me for it, and this tells one quite a lot about how important it is to them in its original form and in its modern variations -- e.g. "God: creator, redeemer and sanctifier" and variations on this theme. There is now no attempt even to pretend that it is orthodoxy. And it never was orthodox.

In the present ECUSA those who minister and want to preserve orthodoxy ought to do all that they can to ensure that the basic doctrines of the Trinity and the Person of Christ be rightly stated in acclamation, prayer, blessing and sermon. If there is doubt then go for the well tried and the classic, not for the innovation!

I have written about this matter on numerous occasions - see e.g., my book on the 7 ecumenical councils, "Yesterday, Today & Forever, Jesus Christ and the Holy Trinity in the teaching of the 7 Councils", (Appendix 2). Also in my book on the Holy Trinity, recently republished by Regent College Vancouver BC; "Our Triune God".

May we be both orthodox in doctrine in holy in living.

The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon