Thanks Zuriel, I understand where you are coming from. Are you UPC? And do You not believe in the Trinity? Just asking-
We’re doctrinally like the UPC and ALJC, just independent. I have friends in both.
The Oneness teaching of ‘one God in three manifestations’ is usually the EXTREMELY brief definition we use to explain the Godhead, it is really not adequate, seeing that Jesus Christ is found teaching the Godhead a great deal in John. His most condensed words on the subject are probably John 4:24 (”God is a Spirit”), which he expounds on to his disciples in much greater detail in Jn 14.
While Oneness teach ‘one God’, and not a ‘three separate and distinct, co-equal, co-powerful, persons of God’, we define God this way: God the Father made his invisible attributes visible (made flesh), by begetting his Son. The Father is the source of the Holy Ghost, as the Son himself testifies. So we use the scriptural definintions when defining God, such as ‘God the Father’, the ‘Son OF God’, and the ‘Spirit OF God’ or the ‘Holy Ghost’. We don’t use the phrases ‘God the Son’ or ‘God the Holy Ghost’.
In John 14, Jesus Christ really lays it out: God the Father is IN the Son, and Son is IN the Father (since the Father is an omnipresent Spirit, that’s inescapable). And it is the Father that powers it all. The Son has his own soul, (”thou wilt not leave my soul in hell..”), but has been given absolute control of the power of God. Which is how he is able to call forth the Holy Ghost from God the Father.
John 1:1-14 are used to promote a least two separate and distinct ‘persons of God’, yet, when one compares those verses with the teaching that the Lord gives throughout John, especially chapter 14, one can see that the Son is literally in the Father, and that the Father is literally in the Son. Inseparable.
It is a subject of infinite discussion. And I’ve got to roll. Thanks for asking.
God bless