Most Christian churches today, encompassing the vast majority of Christians, teach that God consists of a Trinity of three Persons called the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This doctrine emerged with the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, and was stated more explicitly in the Athanasian Creed a century or two later. From there it became dominant in Christianity as a whole.
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772) rejected the doctrine of a Trinity of Persons in God, saying instead that there is a Trinity of essential components in a single Person of God.
Followers of Swedenborg’s theology have historically been in a lonely position among Christians due to their rejection of the traditional Christian doctrine of the Trinity. However, in the early 1900s another movement, called Oneness Pentecostalism, arose that also rejected that doctrine.
The question naturally arises, then, whether Oneness Pentecostals agree with Swedenborg’s theology about the nature of God and the Trinity.
Here is the short answer, stated from the perspective of Swedenborg’s theology:
Swedenborg does agree with modalists, including Oneness Pentecostals, in affirming the full divinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, while denying that they are three persons.
This has led to the common error of labeling Swedenborg and Swedenborgians “modalist.”
However, Swedenborg rejects the essential, defining modalist doctrine: that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three different modes or manifestations of God to human beings.
Swedenborg, and Swedenborgians, are therefore not modalist in their doctrines and beliefs.
Now for a fuller answer.
First, we need to define God from the modalist, Oneness Pentecostal, and Swedenborgian perspectives.
The Sabellian or Modalist doctrine of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
As defined on Wikipedia, this is the Sabellian or modalist conception of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:
Sabellianism in the Eastern church or Patripassianism in the Western church (also known as modalism, modalistic monarchianism, or modal monarchism) is the nontrinitarian or anti-trinitarian belief that the Heavenly Father, Resurrected Son, and Holy Spirit are three different modes or aspects of one monadic God, as perceived by the believer, rather than three distinct persons within the Godhead—that there are no real or substantial differences among the three, such that there is no substantial identity for the Spirit or the Son.
The Oneness Pentecostal doctrine of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
As defined on Wikipedia, this is the Oneness Pentecostal conception of God as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit:
The Oneness doctrine . . . states that there is one God, a singular divine Spirit, who manifests himself in many ways, including as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (a.k.a. Holy Spirit).
The Our Beliefs page of the website of the United Pentecostal Church International, which is the largest Oneness Pentecostal denomination, expresses its basic beliefs about God in this way:
There is one God, who has revealed Himself as our Father, in His Son Jesus Christ, and as the Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ is God manifested in flesh. He is both God and man.
Emanuel Swedenborg’s doctrine of God as being Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
In True Christianity #163, Swedenborg defines the Trinity of God in this way:
- There is a divine Trinity, which is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
- These three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, are three essential components of one God. They are one the way our soul, our body, and the things we do are one.
(Note that although Swedenborg regularly uses the word “Trinity,” by traditional Christian definitions of “trinitarian” he is non-trinitarian because he rejects the idea that the Trinity consists of three persons, but states instead that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit constitute a single divine person, who is the one God.)
Swedenborg’s doctrine of God is incompatible with, and denies, modalism
Swedenborg’s theology agrees with Oneness Pentecostal doctrine in denying that there are three persons of God, denying that there was any “Son born from eternity,” and affirming that the Son (and the Holy Spirit also) came into existence with the birth of Jesus Christ.
However, Swedenborg’s theology rejects the defining characteristic of modalist doctrine, which is that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are three different modes of God, or three different ways that God manifests himself to humans.
Instead, Swedenborg’s theology states that:
- The Father is the transcendent, unknowable soul of God, of which we can have no direct knowledge or experience at all.
- The Son is the human body or visible appearance of God—and, since the Incarnation, is the sole avenue by which the Father is known to human beings.
- The Holy Spirit is the divine truth and power flowing out from God, and in effect is the manifestation of God to human beings.
Swedenborg calls this a Trinity of “essential components” (Latin essentialia) of one God.
These three are not different modes or manifestations to us of some underlying divine Spirit.
In Swedenborg’s system, the Father is the underlying divine being, and is not perceivable by us at all. We finite humans are incapable of grasping or comprehending the infinite divine being of God. Only through the Son can we have any knowledge of God. And the Holy Spirit is the knowledge and power of God as it flows out from the Son, enlightening us and giving us spiritual life.
So instead of being modes or manifestations of God to human beings, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are more in nature of parts or constituents of the divine being. (The Latin word essentialia that Swedenborg uses to characterize them is somewhat difficult to capture and convey in English.) They are certainly not different appearances of God, as modalism and Oneness Pentecostals hold.
In Swedenborg’s theology, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are entirely distinct from one another, and cannot change into or appear as one another. Together, these three distinct but fully united “components” form a single God, in one divine Person, whom Swedenborg calls “the Divine Humanity” and “the Lord God Jesus Christ.” The three together are God just as our soul, body, and actions are us. There is no other underlying divine Spirit of which they could be “modes.”
Swedenborg does state that God relates to humans in various roles, such as King, Priest, Prophet, Savior, and Redeemer. However, according to Swedenborg, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as used in the Bible are not roles, and thus are not modes of God. Instead, all of God’s roles come from the Father, and are expressed by the Son through the Holy Spirit.
It helps to understand that Swedenborg did not interpret “Father,” “Son,” and “Holy Spirit” as literal terms, like our human fathers, sons, and breaths (which is the meaning of “spirit”). Instead, he saw them more as metaphors drawn from human concepts and experiences, which the Bible uses to express deeper spiritual and divine realities about God.
For Swedenborg’s extensive presentation on the Trinity in one Person of God, see True Christianity, volume 1. (This link leads to its page on the publisher’s website, which offers free downloadable PDF and EPUB versions, in addition to print and Kindle editions for sale.)
(Note: This post is an edited version of an answer I wrote and posted on Christianity StackExchange. You can see the original question on StackExchange here, and the StackExchange version of my answer here.)
For further reading:
- Who is God? Who is Jesus Christ? What about that Holy Spirit?
- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
- If there’s One God, Why All the Different Religions?
- How does Jesus Appear to Us? Can We See God Face to Face?
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Lee Woofenden is an ordained minister, writer, editor, translator, and teacher. He enjoys taking spiritual insights from the Bible and the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg and putting them into plain English as guides for everyday life.
Spiritual Insights for Everyday Life 
Thank you Sir for the article. My only question is how then in light of Swedenborg’s explanation of the concept of trinity are we supposed to understand Paul’s statement in 1 Cor 15:24-28, especially vs 28,seeing as a literal understanding of that portion of Scripture seems to say there are TWO SEPARATE PERSONS involved.
Hi SeunAlaba,
Thanks for your question. First, here is 1 Corinthians 15:24-28:
First, notice that the text does not say “two separate persons.” It simply speaks of the Father and the Son, and their relationship to one another at various points along the way in the process of destroying all of God’s enemies and putting them under God’s feet.
Yes, it could be interpreted as two separate persons. But it can also be interpreted more metaphorically, or spiritually.
Here is a more spiritual way to look at it:
Consider the idea that in this passage, “God the Father” means God’s love, which is the core being of God, while Christ (“the Son”) is God’s word, wisdom, and truth, which is the means by which the love of God expresses its power.
If we read it this way, then the love that is at the core of God sent out God’s truth to fight against and overcome every authority and power opposed to God’s love. God’s love itself cannot do this alone. It must do it through God’s truth, which is like a sword in the hand of God. Through the sword of truth, which is Christ, and the Son, God conquered all of God’s enemies, and put them under the feet of the Father and the Son.
But when the Son–which is God’s truth–has accomplished that victory, it then subjects itself once again to the love of God, which is God the Father. So the truth of God always serves and expresses the love of God, which is the Father, and the core reality of God.
And yet, God’s love, truth, and power flowing out (which is the Holy Spirit) are simply different parts of one God, just as our human love, understanding, and actions are all part of the single person that is us.
Does that help you to understand this passage better, from the perspective of a Trinity in a single Person of God?
Yes it does,thank you Sir
If swedenborg had encounters with physical Jesus Christ face to face…he should KNOW what the true face of Jesus looks like….let’s hear his description of Christ.
Hi Thomas,
Jesus Christ is not now physical in the usual sense. He did have an ordinary physical body during his lifetime on earth because in addition to being the Son of God, he was also the son of Mary. But he left behind in the grave the last of his merely physical self, and the last of what he had gotten from his human mother, so that when he rose from death he was fully God in human form. His body, too, was fully divine, made of divine substance, not physical matter. That is why he could pass through locked doors to greet his disciples, and vanish from the sight of the two he was walking with on the road to Emmaus.
Though Swedenborg did see Jesus in the spiritual world, and even said that he looked much as he had looked to his disciples when he was with them in the world, Swedenborg did not focus on Jesus’ physical appearance, but on his powerful and radiant divine presence. However, you may be interested in his account of one of his earliest encounters with Jesus, which he recorded at the time it happened in a personal journal that he kept during the years 1743–1744. The translation is a bit old-fashioned.
Hi Lee
Cool, thanks for sharing. Good luck in your endeavors…God Bless.
Hi Thomas,
Thanks. May God’s blessings be with you as well.
Would Arianism be heresy?
Hi WorldQuestioner,
Yes.
Modalism refers to the belief that God has modes. One idea I propose is semi-modalism, in which the Father is a person, Jesus is a mode, and the Holy Spirit is an Essentialia. Either that or the Father and Son are both persons and the Holy Spirit is an essentialia, but the latter would not be modalism. Semi-trinitarianism?
Anyway, Swedenborg teaches that they are all essentialia of God. What would the generic term be for that belief? When it’s taught by a non-Swedenborgian, would it be called essentialism? What about Essentialistic Monarchism?
Hi World Questioner,
What would be the advantages of this “semi-trinitarianism”? Why would anyone want to believe it? I’m not aware of any group that does.
To my knowledge, Swedenborg’s Trinity is not taught by non-Swedenborgians. Nicene trinitarians largely ignore Swedenborg’s view of the Trinity, considering it heretical because it doesn’t agree with their Trinity of Persons. If they do say anything about it, they usually get it wrong, labeling it “modalism” or “Arianism,” which it is not.
It is also not “Monarchism,” so there would be no warrant for labeling it that. Really it is simply one God, just as the Bible teaches that there is one God.
What about the Church of Jesus Christ (Bickertonite) calling the Father and Son “personages” and the Holy Spirit a “witness”? Is that any more Biblical than modalism?
I would most certainly NOT call modalism heresy. I’d say it’s error.
And this one? The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as witnesses of God, but only the Father and Son being personages.
Hi World Questioner,
“Personages,” “Persons,” what’s the difference? It is still dividing one God into two or three gods.
Is modalism a step in the right direction, or a step too far? Why?
Hi Word Questioner,
Modalism is a step in the right direction from trinitarianism in that it agrees with the Bible that God is one, not three. However, as the above article covers, modalism is still not correct.
I think the Trinity of Persons is basically just a crystallized version of modalism. It took modalism’s idea of the Trinity as three different expressions of God, and made each of those three expressions into a Person.
Hi World Questioner,
Another answer: Modalism was a step in the wrong direction, but the Trinity of Persons is two or three steps in the wrong direction.
Should I draft a Wikipedia article called “Essentialism”? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modalism may redirect to Sabellianism. Should I draft a Wikipedia article that would be en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism?
My text could be something like “Essentialism is a Christian doctrine that rejects the traditional doctrine of the Trinity of Persons and instead teaches that god is a trinity of essential components. Such doctrine was popularized by Swedenborg.”
Should sources for the Wikipedia article be posts on your blog, either as “References” or “External links”? What about one of the videos by OffTheLeftEye as sources. Wouldn’t those be primary sources on their views on Essentialism? Should I use one of Swedenborg’s books as a source. Would that be a good secondary source?
Hi World Questioner,
I suppose you could, but it would probably be rejected, because Swedenborg’s teaching about the Trinity is not known by the name “Essentialism.”
Someone could rename the article though, and/or provide a redirect.
Hi World Questioner,
Again, you can if you want. But there’s already a page on Swedenborg that has a basic outline of his teachings. I doubt these would be considered important and influential enough to merit their own page.
What about a section in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity?
Hi World Questioner,
Years ago I added some Swedenborg information to a Wikipedia page on a major Christian topic. It was gone within hours, or maybe even within minutes. Those pages are tightly controlled. So once again, you’re welcome to try, but I doubt it will go anywhere.
What do you think of https://jamesattebury.wordpress.com/2016/08/06/what-is-modalism/? I even posted a comment mentioning Swedenborg and linking to this blog post of yours, but as of when this comment to your post was submitted, the comment to that post is still awaiting moderation.
Like half a month ago, the author of another post edited my comment and removed the link to one of your blog posts. I might have mentioned it in another comment to a different post.
Hi World Questioner,
The article is rather confused about its subject. The author seems to both grasp and not grasp modalism at the same time. I think he’s been taught or learned from books about modalism, but doesn’t really have a living grasp of what modalism is. He also brings in irrelevant issues that seem to be there only to discredit present-day modalists, such as:
Oneness Pentecostals’ belief in speaking in tongues has nothing to do with their belief in modalism. It’s just one of their particular set of beliefs. Why even mention it in an article about modalism? It’s irrelevant to the subject.
But on the more serious issue of the author’s superficial and faulty understanding of modalism, he goes on to say:
A “nature” is not a “person.” Modalists do not think of Jesus’ human nature as one person, and his divine nature as another person. This author is only illustrating his own inability to understand the true nature of the Trinity in God. He unconsciously thinks that if he himself divides God attributes into distinct Persons, then modalists must do this also. But modalists specifically reject the idea that God is more than one Person. They do not think of God’s human nature and divine nature as distinct persons.
The author seems just to be throwing stuff at the wall, hoping something will stick. He doesn’t have a real grasp of what modalists believe because he is looking at modalism through his own trinitarian lens.
For another example, later in the article the author writes:
Here he shows is lack of understanding both of modalism and of unitarianism. Unitarians accept the divinity only of the Father. They believe that Jesus is not divine at all, but is human. This seems to be the same thing Arius believed, though it’s a little hard to know exactly what Arius taught because like the Sabellians, his teachings were suppressed by the church, and we know about them mostly from his detractors.
Modalists do not “assume unitarianism is true.” They reject unitarianism. Modalists believe that Jesus is divine, and is God. They simply believe that he is not a distinct Person of God as trinitarians do, but rather is God himself now appearing in his mode as the Son. Earlier in the article the author has quoted statements about modalism to this effect. But by the time he gets to the statement I quoted just above, he seems to have forgotten what he himself quoted earlier.
Again, the author does not seem to have a real grasp of what modalism is. He keeps conflating it with trinitarianism and unitarianism, each of which is quite distinct from modalism.
Of course, the Bible doesn’t teach trinitarianism either (by which I mean the Trinity of Persons). As usual, if you actually read the Bible verses that the author refers to, they don’t say what he claims they do. But he thinks they do, because he reads them through the lens of his own dogma of the Trinity of Persons. I won’t go through all the passages he refers to. That would take too much time. But about 2 Corinthians 5:21, please see:
What about 2 Corinthians 5:21? Didn’t God make Christ to be sin for us?
In short, this is a shallow and confused piece written by someone who doesn’t understand the subjects he is writing about. All the positions he discusses in the article are unbiblical and false, including his own. But he can’t even define and discuss them correctly. He keeps confusing one with the other.
One more thing: Patripassianism is indeed an error. It was not God who suffered on the cross. It was Jesus’ human nature that came from his mother that suffered on the cross. God cannot be attacked or killed. Neither the Jewish leadership nor the Romans have any power at all over God. But Jesus’ human nature that he received from Mary can be tempted, attacked, and killed. However, that is a whole subject of its own. For a related article please see:
What Does it Mean that Jesus was “Glorified”?
Trinitarians, Unitarians, and Modalists are all in error because they do not understand the nature of the Incarnation, and they do not know the true meaning of Jesus’ glorification.
I thought you were going nto say “You won’t convince him.”
Hi Lee. I consider 1 corinthians 15 a particularly troublesome passage for all Unitarian views that divinize Christ. If Christ is to be put in subjection to the Father after the resurrection, but he just is the very person of the Father, you can’t use the common oneness Pentecostal defense of appealing to his flesh in a sort of nestorian way to justify the subordination, you have to get creative. I remember swedenborg addressing this passage, but I can’t remember where. Any ideas?
Hi Ana,
Thanks for stopping by, and for your comment and question.
Here are the relevant verses:
Swedenborg doesn’t comment on these verses. I’m not aware of any other similar verse that he does comment on, but one could have escaped me. However, I can offer you an understanding of this based on Swedenborg’s theology.
Although you speak of Christ being put in subjection to the Father, presumably under the influence of traditional Christian commentary on that passage, that’s not what the verse actually says. Rather, it says that the Son will be made subject to God the Father. The “God the Father” part isn’t explicitly stated in that verse (28), but it can be gathered from the rest of the quotation. I don’t think anyone would argue about that. The main point is that it doesn’t say that Christ will be made subject to him, but that the Son will be made subject to him.
This is striking. The whole passage has been talking about Christ (see verses 12–23), but when it gets to the part about subjection, it switches gears and says “the Son” instead of “Christ.” There must be a reason for that. (And there is!)
I suspect that the reason traditional Christians tend to talk about Christ being subject to God the Father instead of the Son being subject to God the Father, as verse 28 says, is that the Son being subject to the Father creates a problem for trinitarian theology, due to these words in the Athanasian Creed:
If, according to 1 Corinthians 15:28, the Son is subject to the Father, this flatly contradicts that statement in the Athanasian Creed.
When the Bible contradicts traditional Christian doctrine, traditional Christians have an unconscious tendency to misquote the Bible to make it fit their doctrine. For example, I sometimes hear traditional Christians say that “the Son was made flesh,” intending to quote John 1:14, when that verse actually says, “the Word was made flesh.”
The Bible is not loose or sloppy in its language. You can’t just substitute “the Son” for “the Word” in quoting John 1:14. Neither can you just substitute “Christ” for “the Son” in quoting 1 Corinthians 15:28. Each name for God has a specific meaning, and in every case is used for a specific reason.
It’s not a trivial thing that after the whole chapter has been talking about Christ and what Christ accomplished, in the climax of Paul’s argument, verse 28, he switches to “the Son.” This also is the only verse in the entire chapter that mentions the Son. That can’t be accidental.
What, exactly, Paul was thinking it’s hard to know. Overall, he seems not to have been able to fully accept the idea that Jesus was “God with us,” as Matthew 1:23 says. He seems to waver in and out of that recognition. Here is a fascinating passage from Arcana Coelestia that I just came across along these lines:
As Swedenborg explains elsewhere, when he speaks of “the Lord,” he means Jesus. “The Lord’s human” is a more abstract way of talking about the human being Jesus Christ, whom his followers and the crowd saw walking among them both before and after his resurrection.
But as Swedenborg says here, since people could not, and mostly still cannot, see a human being, Jesus, as God, the Bible spoke of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit so that even though people couldn’t think of Jesus as God himself come to earth—as he truly was—they could still think of him as divine by thinking of him as “the Son of God.” Otherwise Christianity would have died as soon as it was born, because Christianity is founded upon the “rock” of the divinity of Christ (see Matthew 16:15–18).
Though Swedenborgians don’t see the Acts and the Epistles as part of the inspired Word of God, since according to Swedenborg they do not have an internal sense, Swedenborg does say that the Apostles had a certain level of inspiration from the Holy Spirit. And though Swedenborg had a dim view of Paul’s character, there is only one place in Swedenborg’s writings that I’m aware of that he contradicts Paul (about man being the head of woman), and even then he does it elliptically, without actually mentioning Paul or the verse where Paul said that. Whenever Swedenborg actually quotes Paul, he always does so to provide confirmation for his (Swedenborg’s) teachings.
And Paul’s writings do support Swedenborg’s teachings, while contradicting Nicene Christian teachings in many places, as they do in 1 Corinthians 15:28.
Why would Paul say “the Son” instead of “Christ” in that one verse and statement out of the entire chapter?
I believe this was part of the Holy Spirit guiding what Paul wrote. If he had said that Christ became subject to the Father, that would have been a fallacy and a falsity. Jesus Christ is God. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all within Jesus Christ. This would be God being subject to God, which is an obvious absurdity.
What it actually says, though, is that the Son was made subject to the Father after Christ’s victory over all his enemies.
From a Swedenborgian point of view, there are two key teachings embodied in this statement and its context.
In Swedenborgian theology, the Father is the divine love, the Son is the divine wisdom, and the Holy Spirit is the divine proceeding, or the divine power flowing out.
Also in Swedenborgian theology, love is primary, wisdom is secondary, and power is tertiary, flowing from love through wisdom out into action.
The Son was made subject to the Father because divine wisdom, or divine truth, is secondary to, and serves, divine love. Wisdom is the form and structure of love. Love is the substance of wisdom. In any entity, the substance is primary, and the form is secondary—though nothing can exist without both together.
So when it says that the Son was made subject to God the Father, it means that divine truth was made to serve divine love—as it always does.
That is the first key teaching embodied in this verse. Although the verse contradicts Nicene Christian theology, it supports Swedenborgian theology.
The second key teaching is that in battles of temptation, including the Lord’s battles against the Devil—meaning against the power of evil and hell—it is divine truth that does the fighting on behalf of divine love.
Notice that Paul uses the word “Christ.” According to Swedenborg, when “Christ” is mentioned it refers to the truth side of the Lord, whereas when “Jesus” is mentioned it refers to the love side of the Lord. So when Paul says that Christ “must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet” (verse 25), it means that divine truth must take the primary position as long as the Lord’s battles against evil continue—as they did throughout his entire glorification process on earth, right up to his last temptation on the Cross.
This is what it means when Paul says that God “put everything under Christ” (verse 27). God made divine truth primary during the Lord’s lifetime on earth for the purpose of fighting against evil, because it is divine truth that does the fighting on behalf of divine love. And yet the same verse is careful to point out that God himself (meaning in this context God the Father, or divine love) is not put under Christ (divine truth). It is divine love that makes divine truth primary for a time in order to accomplish its purposes. But underneath it all, divine love is still first, and primary.
Once the Lord’s battles are complete, and all the Lord’s enemies (the entire complex of human evil and falsity) are defeated, then not Christ, but the Son becomes subject to the Father. In other words, once the divine truth has “reigned” while fighting a victorious battle against evil and falsity, divine truth once again takes its true position secondary to divine love, which is the central and primary aspect of God and of the entire universe.
This is how these verses are understood from a Swedenborgian perspective. They support Swedenborg’s theology, but contradict Nicene Christian (trinitarian) theology. They also contradict modalist theology, in which it would make no sense for the Son to be subject to the Father because both Father and Son are simply different appearances, or modes, of the underlying Godhead. One cannot be subject to the other.
In these verses Paul once again supports Swedenborg’s theology while showing other “Christian” theologies to be unbiblical and false.