Gospel Guidebook: Getting and Keeping It Right 
Modalistic Monarchianism, Trinitarianism, and the Atonement
The Greatest Commandment
The greatest commandment in the Bible was confirmed to us by Jesus in Mark 12:29. In that verse, He recited Deuteronomy 6:4-5 which says, "Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." This commandment is essentially just a reiteration of the first commandment of the 10 Commandments given in Exodus 20:2-3, which Moses rehearsed repeatedly, including in Deuteronomy 5:6-7 where he said, "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before Me." From this, we can see that greatest commandment in the Bible, according to Jesus, is the first commandment of the 10 Commandments. But what exactly is the first commandment telling us about the LORD? Is it describing who the LORD is? Or is it describing what the LORD is?
It is quite common for Trinitarians to say that the word "one" in Deuteronomy 6:4 means "compound unity." The English word "one" corresponds the Hebrew word echad. It is a cardinal number, and it can refer to a compound unity when its controlling noun is plural or a compound noun. As a couple examples, Adam and Eve were called "one flesh" in Genesis 2:4 and "all the sons of Israel" were "as one man" in Judges 20:1. In Deuteronomy 6:4, the word LORD is singular, so the controlling noun is not plural. The only possibility is that the word LORD is a compound unity. According to Trinitarians, the compound unity consists of three co-equal co-eternal god persons. They say that these god persons are "one LORD." However, for this to be even a possibility, Deuteronomy 6:4 would have to be describing what the LORD is. But the context says otherwise. The LORD is the one who brought them out of Egypt. The LORD is the one who requires absolute devotion. The pronoun "who" refers to personhood, so the most natural understanding of the verse suggests that it is referring to who the LORD is. This is problematic for the Trinity because it would mean that the LORD is referring to Himself as one person who is alone. Because He is alone (with nobody else with Him), He is able to demand all our heart, all our soul, and all our might. However, what if we were still to insist that the verse refers to what the LORD is? Is the explanation of compound unity plausible? I don't think so. If the LORD is a compound unity, then we would have a situation similar to "all the sons of Israel" where the unity consists of parts. Of course, Trinitarians won't agree with saying that the LORD consists of parts, even though every example of compound unity requires parts. I suppose this is an instance where Trinitarians would revert to saying that the nature of God is a mystery. This seems to be the standard explanation when all else fails. So, for the sake of argument, let's go with it. Let's assume that the LORD is a mysterious compound unity with no likeness to any other compound unity in the world. Where exactly does this get us? It would require us to love the compound unity with all our heart, all our soul and all our might. This means that we could never worship the actual persons of the Trinity. If we did attempt to worship the persons of the compound unity, then we would be failing to keep the commandment due to our neglect for the other persons. It would also mean that every instance of the word LORD in the Bible would have to be referring to the compound unity of the Trinity. This would mean that none of the instances of LORD refer to the Father in particular. We can see that this concept of compound unity gets us into trouble. This is what happens when we ignore the plain meaning and the immediate context of Deuteronomy 6:4. Is this really how we should be reading our Bibles?
In light of the preceding paragraph, how would a Trinitarian respond? A Trinitarian would respond by adding complexity to complexity. In particular, I suppose that a Trinitarian apologist would try to get out of the above predicament by saying that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are of the same substance and then appeal to perichoresis. According to Trinitarian scholar Gerald Bay on page 158 of his book Doctrine of God, perichoresis refers to "all three persons occupying the same divine 'space.'" In other words, the Father is wholly in the Son and wholly in the Holy Spirit, the Son is wholly in the Father and wholly in the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is wholly in the Father and wholly in the Son. While perichoresis was originally suggested in relation to the incarnation by Gregory of Nazianzus in 389 AD, this concept of interpenetration by the persons of the Trinity wasn't suggested until John of Damascus in 749 AD. To me, a lot of these late theological developments seem rather ad hoc. Whenever a theological problem arises, as the need demands, just create a new explanation. This seems to be the case with this expanded explanation of perichoresis. So, let's apply the concept of interpenetrating perichoresis to Deuteronomy 6:4. If we do this, it seems to suggest that worshiping the Father would also enable us to simultaneously worship the Son and Holy Spirit. Therefore, if we apply our understanding of perichoresis, we can worship the individual persons and still be worshiping the compound unity. Problem solved, right? Not really, because if the persons of the Trinity interpenetrate each other like this, where each is wholly indwelt by the others, then this relationship really just collapses into Modalism. It is not Modalistic Monarchianism, which requires that God be only one person and entirely simple (i.e., absolute divine simplicity), but it is a form of Modalism where each person is just a different mode of existence of the compound unity, since the compound unity would be wholly in each person. It is probably for this reason that Trinitarians scholars, such as Robert Letham, plainly admit that Nicene Trinitarianism gravitates toward Modalism. As a result, however hard we try to understand Deuteronomy 6:4 in terms of the Trinity, it just doesn't really work out well.
In addition to the above mentioned problems, if for the sake of argument we just assume perichoresis and deal with the problems that compound unity creates by appealing to divine mystery, we still have to ask ourselves a big question. If the first commandment of the 10 Commandments is the greatest of all commandments, is it really reasonable to assume that nobody properly understood the nature of God with precision enough to keep the commandment until the doctrine of the Trinity was fully formulated in the late 4th century and refined in subsequent centuries? How is this even a possibility? For, if this is the case, then for practical purposes, none of the ancient Jews and none of the early Christians properly understood the nature of God, and thus none were really able to keep the greatest commandment. If it is argued that the ancient Jews and early Christians did believe the Trinity, then I just got to ask when did they stop believing it that it was necessary to reformulate it again in the late 4th century and beyond? None of this makes sense, and it just seems unfathomable that God would have kept His ancient people in the dark regarding His nature for nearly 2000 years, despite demanding that they worship Him as one LORD. In contrast, we do know that God repeatedly warned His people to avoid idolatry and the temptation of thinking that He was accompanied by other gods. I can't help but think that Trinitarianism, rather than clarifying or "rediscovering" the nature of God, falls into that ancient sin of idolatry that God's people were always so prone to commit. This may sound harsh, but it needs to be said because the error of Trinitarianism has dire implications for the atonement, which I shall discuss shortly.
My Personal Journey
Before discussing the atonement, I think it might be helpful if I say something about my own experience with Trintarianism. When I was a Trinitarian, the one thing that troubled me the most was that my heart was always divided. Just like all Trinitarians, I confessed that God is one. I would never deny monotheism. However, it all seemed like head knowledge because practically speaking, I knew I was worshiping three different divine people. The greatest of all commandments required my wholehearted devotion, but I was always divided in my heart between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. I knew they were all God, but in my heart I had no idea what I was worshiping. Of course, I tried to console myself by saying that it didn't really matter because it is all just a mystery, but how could I keep appealing to mystery when Jesus clearly said to the Samaritan woman at the well that the Jews knew what they worshiped and that the Father required worship in spirit and truth. In contrast, Trinitarians have to appeal to mystery because they don't know what they worship. Something obviously isn't right about this situation. But just to give a more specific example of what I was dealing with, about 20 years ago I remember reading A. W. Tozer's book The Pursuit of God. In this book, Tozer said something that left a lasting impression on me. On page 40, he spoke highly of Frederick Faber's style of worship. He said, "[Faber's] love for God extended to the three Persons of the Godhead equally, yet he seemed to feel for each One a special kind of love reserved for Him alone." I remember reading this and feeling something wasn't right about Faber's "each One" style of worship. I knew Tozer was being touted as sort of a modern-day prophet, and I was quite naive at the time, so I didn't suspect anything malicious, but something still didn't seem right to me. How could I give wholehearted devotion to the one true God if my heart was divided among three different divine people? It wasn't until many years later that I came to understand that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all God, but they are not three different (or as Trinitarians like to say "distinct") divine persons. Rather, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are just different manifestations of the one divine person the LORD. This is exactly why the ancient Jews were strict monotheists who didn't fall into the temptation of creating a system of Binitarianism, Trinitarianism, or polytheism, despite the LORD manifesting Himself in various ways in the Old Testament and referring to Himself often as the Spirit of the LORD, the angel of the LORD, the word of the LORD, the arm of the LORD, and so on.
(I realize that there is no shortage of speculation these days when it comes to the LORD, the word of the LORD, and the Spirit of the LORD, but given fact that the ancient Jews were always prone to idolatry, it should not be surprising if we find a few ancient writings that might be interpreted to suggest that some of the ancient Jews believed there were "two [or more] powers in heaven" or that the Judaism itself derived from polytheism. I put those words in italics because scholars who are doing "cutting edge" research have a tendency to read their hypotheses into the data, and this is probably the case with Alan Segal and most definitely the case with Michael Heiser. Treading the same trodden roads doesn't sell books, it doesn't popularize colleges, and it doesn't stimulate PhD research. It is commonly known that if a scholar wants to make a name for himself, he's got to be innovative in his research and discover something nobody else has noticed before. Having said this, my point in the previous paragraph is that Judaism, in general, did not espouse any form of Binitarianism, Trinitarianism, or polytheism. And if some people want to argue that the ancient Jews did espouse such a system of belief, then the burden of proof is on them to prove it with extraordinary evidence, not speculation about texts that might mean one thing or another. Perhaps, more importantly, they also have to explain how, why, and when such a system of Binitarianism, Trinitarianism, or polytheism was abandoned, requiring it to be rediscovered and reformulated in the late 4th century and beyond. Until this happens, my observations in the preceding paragraph remain untouched.)
The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
Trinitarians say that God revealed Himself more fully in the New Testament, showing Himself to be a Trinity of three persons. But if this is true, then why did Jesus say that the Jews knew what they worshiped? If God was still revealing Himself progressively, only to be fully understood hundreds of centuries later after much debating, political posturing, and campaigning, then the Jews really wouldn't have understood what they were worshiping. But if it wasn't the nature of God that was being revealed in the New Testament, then why the sudden emphasis on the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? As noted above, in the Old Testament, there was plenty of emphasis on the LORD and His Spirit, but the Jews never attempted to explain God in terms of Binitarianism, but in the New Testament, we now have the addition of the Son. If the LORD and His Spirit were just two ways of referring to the same God person, then why should we think that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are referring to different God persons? Rather, why not just believe the plain words of Luke 1:32-35 where it says that the LORD through His Spirit impregnated Mary and became incarnated as the Son of God. "He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest...And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God" (italics added to emphasize the future tenses and causative adverb "therefore"). Notice how these verses say nothing about an alleged God the Son person becoming incarnated. Instead, just as Jesus explained repeatedly in the Gospel of John, it was the Father who was in Him. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (John 14:9). So, the most natural explanation is that "Son of God" refers to the incarnation of God, not a distinct divine person of God. And it seems clear that at least some of the Jews understood this because they sought to stone Jesus when He called Himself the Son of God. "Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he not only had broken the sabbath, but said also that God was his Father, making himself equal with God" (John 5:18), and "The Jews answered him, saying, For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God" (John 10:33). From these verses, we can basically deduce that the Father is "God as God," while the Son is "God as man." And this fulfilled the prophecies of Isaiah. "Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel" (Isaiah 7:14) and "For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace" (Isaiah 9:16). So, what we see is that the incarnation of the Mighty God, the Eternal Father, is what it means to be the Son of God. The Son of God is literally Immanuel, God with us as a true human son.
With this understanding of the incarnation, it is easy to see how the LORD and His Spirit (Luke 1:35) came to be referred to as the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. These distinctions are not eternal, but incarnational. The appellation of Father refers to the one LORD of Deuteronomy 6:4 functioning in His divine nature, and the appellation of Son refers to that same divine person functioning in His human nature. The incarnation enabled the one LORD of Deuteronomy 6:4 to become conscious of Himself in two modes of being. The divine and human natures are not the locus of activity between the Father and Son, but the cause of the activity. In other words, because of the two natures, the LORD became conscious of Himself in two ways, causing Him to act as the Father in His divine nature in heaven, and at the same time, as the Son with all the limitations of human nature on earth. This understanding is confirmed by the verses in Luke and Isaiah quoted above. The LORD in His divine nature became known as the Father and in His human nature became known as the Son. This is why we never see Father and Son interaction before the incarnation. It is only after the incarnation that people start to refer to the LORD intimately as Father. And since it is the same divine person existing in these two modes of being, Jesus in His divine being fulfills the prophecy of being called the Mighty God and eternal Father. Although it would be too much of a digression from our topic here, I believe this distinction between the Father and Son in the incarnation is also the reason why the Father is most often referred to as God and Jesus (the Son) as Lord in the New Testament.
This explanation should not strike Trinitarians as surprising or amazing because they have an alleged God the Son person basically doing the same thing. According to Trinitarians, God the Son was existing in His divine nature in heaven, while the incarnated God the Son existed in His human nature on earth. In both cases, what we have is a single divine person existing simultaneously in two natures, one divine and one human. The problem with the Trinitarian viewpoint is that this alleged God the Son is never described in the Bible. Jesus never mentioned God the Son. He always said that it was the Father who was in Him. Moreover, the Trinitarian viewpoint restricts the incarnation to God the Son, meaning that the distinctions between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not incarnational, but eternal. This means that the incarnation was not something that the LORD, as an alleged compound unity, experienced in His entirety. This creates all kinds of problems, and this is why the expanded explanation of perichoresis, developed in the mid 8th century, is often resorted to. But as explained above, the expanded concept of perichoresis has its own problems because, taken to its logical conclusion, it collapses into a form of Modalism that defeats the whole purpose of trying to maintain distinction of persons in the Godhead. As a result, Trinitarians are forced to accept the contradictions and inconsistencies of their doctrine and just appeal to the nature of God as an unfathomable mystery, requiring blind faith that the theologians throughout the centuries somehow just got it right. However, I suggest that Trinitarians muster up the courage to question what they have received because our understanding of the nature of God has massive implications on how we understand the atonement, which I will now discuss.
Implication for the Atonement
In Isaiah 54:5 it says, "For your husband is your Maker, Whose name is the LORD of hosts; And your Redeemer is the Holy One of Israel, Who is called the God of all the earth." It might be surprising, but the word translated "husband" here is the Hebrew word baal. Obviously, the word is used with a good meaning here, but the word often makes us think of the Canaanitish god Ba'al to whom the Israelites sacrificed their children (Psalm 106:34-39). So, what exactly does this have to do with our understanding of the nature of God and the atonement? Before answering this question, I've pointed out before here that most nominal Trinitarians are actually Modalistic Monarchians. They just don't know it, and to be honest, most of them probably wouldn't want to know it because admitting such a belief would get them stigmatized or excommunicated from their churches. When I answer the above question, I am not referring to these types of people (who according to one popular Trinitarian apologist account for 60 to 80% of all professing Trinitarians). Instead, I am referring to the scholars, theologians, apologists, preachers, and knowledgeable lay people who stubbornly believe that the one LORD of Deuteronomy 6:4 is a Trinity of god persons, force it to be the acid test of orthodoxy, and in some cases, insinuate that anybody who doesn't believe it might not be saved, despite knowing that it is not taught explicitly in the Bible, was never taught by the ancient Jews or early Christians, cannot be explained in a logical manner, was not fully formulated until the late 4th century and beyond, assumes the distinctions between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are eternal and not incarnational, utilizes eisegesis and presuppositions to interpret relevant biblical passages, was enforced by superstition and threats of heresy (sometimes leading to burnings at the stake), and requires blind faith and appeal to mystery to answer even the most basic of inquiries. What I am about to say applies to these people.
So, what exactly does the Israelites' worship of Ba'al and child sacrifice have to do with the nature of God and the atonement? If you are a Modalistic Monarchian or one of those nominal Trinitarians who is a closet Monarchian as described above, it has nothing to do with it. However, if you are a staunch Trinitarian, then your belief in the Trinity has some resemblance to the Israelites' worship of Ba'al. As noted above, the word baal could be applied to the LORD, but the same word could also be used in an idolatrous sense. When the Israelites spoke of Ba'al, their words literally meant "husband" or "Lord." Similarly, the words Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all biblical words, but these words become perverted when they are applied to an alleged compound unity of co-eternal god persons who do not fit the description of the one LORD of Deuteronomy 5:6-7 and 6:4-5. However, belief in the Trinity also has serious implications for the atonement. In the Trinitarian scheme, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit consulted with each other in eternity past and decided on the pactum salutis (i.e., covenant of redemption) whereby God the Father agreed to send God the Son, and God the Son agreed to become incarnated as the man Jesus Christ and sacrifice Himself to God the Father to make atonement. So, what we have in this scheme is one god person sending another god person to be sacrificed, and the god person to be sacrificed agreeing to be sacrificed to the god person who sent him. This has dire implications, and there is a subgroup of Trinitarians who have pointed this out. This subgroup of Trinitarians tend to be militantly opposed to Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) and have lambasted the Trinitarian form of PSA as a type of "cosmic child abuse." While I wholeheartedly believe that PSA is the central aspect of the atonement, these non-PSA Trinitarians have put their finger on the pulse of a major problem. Similar to how the Israelites sacrificed their children to Ba'al, in the Trinitarian scheme, God the Son sacrifices His incarnated self to God the Father. Similar to how Ba'al demanded the sacrifice of children, in the Trinitarian scheme, God the Father demands the sacrifice of the incarnated God the Son. I can only imagine that the Israelites who sacrificed their children really believed that they had truth on their side. Similarly, staunch Trinitarians are extremely zealous about what they believe to be the truth. In either case, however, what is viewed as truth is nothing more than child sacrifice. Of course, non-PSA Trinitarians expunge themselves from this problem by denying PSA, but they have bigger problems to deal with, because without PSA and imputed righteousness, they are left to establish their own righteousness before God. It is bad enough misunderstanding the nature of God, but denying PSA and imputed righteousness is basically a rejection of God's righteousness and a denial of the Gospel.
So, how exactly does Modalistic Monarchianism escape this predicament? Isn't it true that God the Father sacrifices the Son of God in the Monarchian scheme? Yes, it is truth, but it never amounts to child sacrifice because we have to remember that "Son of God" in the Monarchian scheme refers to the incarnation of the unipersonal God. As described above, at the incarnation the one LORD of Deuteronomy 6:4 became conscious of Himself in two distinct modes of being. This means that we don't have one god person sacrificing another god person, but we have God sacrificing Himself. In Trinitarian terms, it would be as if God the Son sacrificed Himself to Himself, totally removing God the Father from the picture. This is a form of self sacrifice, which is something completely different from child sacrifice. It is this concept of self sacrifice that fits the biblical data, because we know that "Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). The Apostle Paul describes this self sacrifice of God in Romans 5:6-11. In 5:7 he says, "For one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die." By saying this, he is specifically referring to self sacrifice. In the ancient world, the greatest demonstration of love was to die in place of a good person. This hardly ever happened, but when it did happen, it was an amazing thing. However, to die for an enemy was unheard of. It is in this context that Paul says in verse 5:8, "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." In the original Greek, the word translated "his own love" is emphatic. God demonstrated His own love by sacrificing Himself for His enemies in Christ (see also 2 Corinthians 5:19 where it says "God was in Christ). In verse 5:10, Paul says, "For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life." This verse confirms for us that the God who was demonstrating "His own love" in 5:8 was God the Father, and He did this through His Son. In other words, God the Father demonstrated His own love through His incarnated self as the Son of God. This was the self sacrificing love of God, and it announces to the world the amazing love that God has for His people in that He loved them even when they were sinners and enemies of God. This is the heart and soul of the atonement.
In this article, I attempted to show that a correct understanding of the nature of God is required to properly understand the atonement. The Modalistic Monarchian view of the atonement demonstrates the amazing self-sacrificing love of God. God did all this to show His love to His people, all to the praise and wonder of His glory.