THE-202
Advanced Christology
A graduate-level study of who Jesus Christ is: the incarnation, and a careful, historically informed answer to charges like modalism sometimes brought against the Oneness position.
Topics: Incarnation, Modalism objection, Historical theology
Suggested resource: David K. Bernard's The Oneness of God and Oneness and Trinity, A.D. 100–300, borrowed or bought used if possible; free articles from Apostolic Information Service.
Week 1: The Hypostatic Union — Fully God, Fully Man
Reading: Philippians 2:5–8; Colossians 2:9; Hebrews 2:14–17, 4:15
Historic Christian orthodoxy, across virtually every tradition including Oneness Pentecostalism, affirms that in the incarnation Jesus Christ is fully God and fully human at once, a union theologians call the “hypostatic union.” Philippians 2 describes Christ “emptying himself” (kenosis) by taking the form of a servant, not surrendering His deity but veiling its independent exercise while living a genuinely human life, including real hunger, real weariness, real temptation (Hebrews 4:15), and real death. For the Oneness position specifically, this means the one eternal God took to Himself a genuine, complete human nature in Jesus Christ, without that human nature becoming a second divine person.
Key terms: Hypostatic union, Kenosis, Full deity and full humanity
Discussion Questions
- Why does it matter theologically that Jesus experienced real temptation and weariness rather than merely appearing to?
- How would you explain kenosis to someone without using the Greek term?
Challenge: List five ways the Gospels show Jesus experiencing genuine, unglamorized human limitation, and five ways they show His deity.
Week 2: Answering Modalism and Patripassianism
Reading: Matthew 27:46; John 17:1–5; John 10:17–18
Two historical charges are commonly brought against Oneness theology: modalism, the accusation that God merely wears three different “masks” in succession, and patripassianism, the specific charge that the Father Himself suffered and died on the cross. A careful Oneness answer distinguishes God's eternal, transcendent nature, which cannot suffer or die, from the genuine human nature Christ took on in the incarnation, which did suffer and die — it is the incarnate Son, God manifest in flesh, who cried out and died, not God considered in His eternal, unbounded nature. Jesus' own prayer in John 17 and His statement in John 10:18 that He lays down His life “of myself” and takes it again by His own authority only make sense if the one praying, dying, and rising is the same one God, relating to Himself through the human nature He assumed.
Key terms: Modalism (the charge), Patripassianism (the charge), Eternal nature vs. assumed human nature
Discussion Questions
- How does distinguishing between God's eternal nature and Christ's assumed human nature answer the patripassianism charge specifically?
- Why do you think this objection persists even when Oneness theologians have addressed it repeatedly in print?
Challenge: Write a clear, one-paragraph answer to the modalism charge that you could give in a real conversation, not just a theoretical one.
Week 3: Christ in Old Testament Appearances (Theophanies)
Reading: Genesis 18:1–3, 32:24–30; Exodus 3:1–6; Joshua 5:13–15
Many Oneness and other conservative theologians identify the pre-incarnate appearances of God in the Old Testament, sometimes called theophanies, as appearances of the same one God who would later become flesh as Jesus Christ, rather than appearances of a separate “second person.” Genesis 18 opens, “And the LORD appeared unto him [Abraham] in the plains of Mamre… and, lo, three men stood by him” (18:1–2) — the text identifies the visit as the LORD Himself appearing, in visible, physical form, eating a meal Abraham prepared. At Peniel, Jacob wrestles all night with a man who blesses him, and Jacob names the place accordingly: “I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved” (32:30). At the burning bush, “the angel of the LORD appeared unto him in a flame of fire… And God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses… I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham” (Exodus 3:2, 4, 6) — “the angel of the LORD” and “God” identified as the same speaker in the same three verses. And before Jericho, Joshua meets “a man… as captain of the host of the LORD,” who tells him to remove his shoes “for the place whereon thou standest is holy” (Joshua 5:14–15) — the identical instruction God gave Moses at the bush, applied by this same figure to himself.
In each case, a visible figure speaks and acts with the full authority and identity of God Himself, receives worship or holy-ground reverence appropriate only to God, and yet appears in a form people could see, hear, and in Genesis 18's case even feed. This is consistent with a God who has always been capable of self-revelation in a form people can encounter, long before the fuller, permanent incarnation in Bethlehem — not a separate, eternally distinct second divine person, but the same one God who would ultimately take on flesh permanently in Jesus Christ.
Key terms: Genesis 18:1–2's LORD appearing as a man, Jacob's 'face to face' (32:30), Exodus 3:2, 4, 6's angel/God identification, Joshua 5:14–15's holy ground
Discussion Questions
- How does identifying Old Testament theophanies with the same God who became flesh in Christ strengthen the case for the Oneness position?
- Why does it matter that the figure at the burning bush is called both 'the angel of the LORD' and simply 'God' within the same three verses?
Challenge: Read all four theophany passages in full, write out the exact phrase in each that identifies the visible figure as God Himself, and compare them side by side.
Course Exam
Five questions for review or self-testing.
Q: What is the 'hypostatic union'?
Reveal Answer
The union of full deity and full humanity in the one person of Jesus Christ.
Q: What is 'kenosis'?
Reveal Answer
Christ 'emptying himself' by taking the form of a servant, veiling the independent exercise of His deity while living a genuine human life.
Q: How does the Oneness position answer the patripassianism charge?
Reveal Answer
By distinguishing God's eternal, transcendent nature (which cannot suffer or die) from the genuine human nature Christ assumed (which did).
Q: What is a 'theophany'?
Reveal Answer
A pre-incarnate appearance of God in the Old Testament, understood as the same God who later became flesh as Christ.
Q: What does John 10:18 say about Jesus laying down His life?
Reveal Answer
He does it 'of myself' and takes it again by His own authority.