A bit of heresy never hurt anyone, did it?

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Oh, it’s been a while since something properly controversial has happened so when T.D. Jakes was invited to speak at The Elephant Room, chaired by one of my heroes, the mild-mannered, softly-spoken Mark Driscoll, I thought we were onto a winner.

There was a bit of a flutter at the time, speakers pulled out, bloggers went crazy, and ultimately it all went forward as planned. And, yes, the Big Issue was discussed…for those who aren’t familiar with the situation, the Big Issue was that T.D. Jakes had previously denied the fundamental Christian doctrine of the Trinity. Instead, he believed in ‘oneness’; that God is one and only one, yet manifests himself in three ways (like H2O manifests itself in ice, water and steam). This may not seem that important but when it comes to something significant like the doctrine of propitiation, oneness just doesn’t quite cut it.

During The Elephant Room Driscoll just comes out and says (you can read a sort of transcript here):

the issue between Trinitarianism and modalism is one God three persons, or one God manifesting in three ways.

In other words: ‘Come on, Jakes, what do you actually believe?!’

The response was relatively woolly, but seemed to submit to Scripture and simply admitted that humanity is never going to quite get it right:

I stand today on one God, three Persons. You describe manifestations as modalism, I call it Pauline. “For God was manifest in the flesh.” The semantics can be this way or that way, but before the controversy started, Paul used the word manifested.

There are distinctives. Father didn’t bleed and die. The person of Jesus did that. We are baptized into the body by the Holy Spirit. That is consistent with my belief system.

I’m with you. I have been with you.

So it seems that Jakes agrees with the doctrine of the Trinity, but doesn’t see a massive issue with using slightly different words to articulate that.

I don’t have a problem with that, but I’d definitely rather he use the word ‘Person’, if only to acknowledge orthodox doctrine. As it is he seems to basically want to avoid any direct doctrinal discussion, and the only reason I can think of is that he doesn’t want to lose his following among Oneness Pentecostalists…

And it would seem that some who listened in to the debate had a massive issue with the fact that T.D. Jakes didn’t publicly repent of this heresy! Check out, for example, this post (which I like) that says it all:

But hey, if a bunch of middle-aged American pastors in the Elephant Room tell you Nicea and its delegates — and all the Christians who have suffered and died to maintain its truth over the centuries — are irrelevant, who am I to question them? To do so would surely be the height of arrogance. Ahem.

And probably the most in-depth and just overall best post of the whole lot has to be either ‘the Don’ Carson and Tim Keller’s response over here, or Thabiti’s latest version of events over here (and a testimony from someone he knows who really suffered from Jakes’ teaching here).

I think I’m still pretty confused. And surely this brings up the question: What’s more important, doctrine or unity?