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What is Oneness Pentecostalism?

The short answer

Oneness Pentecostalism, represented by bodies such as the United Pentecostal Church International, teaches that God is one person who manifests himself as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, rather than three persons in one being. Its Articles of Faith present Jesus as God manifest in flesh, in whom Father and Spirit both dwell. It also teaches baptism in Jesus' name only and, in most of its churches, speaking in tongues as necessary evidence of receiving the Spirit. Scripture shows Father, Son and Spirit present and distinct at once, and Jesus commands baptism in the one name of all three.

The fuller answer

Oneness Pentecostalism is a family of churches, and the United Pentecostal Church International, the largest of them, publishes the Articles of Faith used here. Its central claim concerns who God is. There is one God, and he is not three persons. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are titles or manifestations of the one person, who is Jesus. In their reading, Jesus is the Father in creation, the Son in redemption and the Spirit in the church, one actor in successive roles. From that root grow their other distinctives: baptism administered in the name of Jesus only, and the new birth understood as repentance, that baptism, and receiving the Spirit evidenced by tongues.

The baptism of Jesus is the scene Oneness teaching finds hardest. Jesus comes up from the water, the Spirit of God descends like a dove and rests on him, and a voice from heaven says, this is my beloved Son. Son in the water, Spirit descending, Father speaking: three, present at the same moment, in relation to one another. A manifestation account has to turn a conversation into a monologue and a descent into a costume. The church's historic reading is simpler: one God, eternally Father, Son and Holy Spirit, acting here in the open, together.

Jesus commands baptism in the name, singular, of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Oneness churches baptise in Jesus' name only, arguing that Jesus is the one name in which all three titles meet, and pointing to baptisms in Acts recorded in Jesus' name. The command itself, however, is the text to follow, spoken by the risen Lord as the church's standing instruction. It names the three together, under one name, which is the Trinity in a sentence: not three gods, and not one person wearing three titles, but one God who is three.

On the night before the cross, Jesus says he will ask the Father, and the Father will give another Helper, the Spirit, to be with his disciples forever. Another is the word a modalist reading must explain away: Jesus distinguishes himself from the Helper he promises, and both from the Father who sends him. The Spirit is also spoken of as a person who teaches, reminds, convicts and can be grieved, not as Jesus in another mode. Conversations with Oneness friends should stay on these texts, read whole, since both sides claim the same Bible and the same Jesus.

Sources

• Berean Standard Bible (BSB)
• UPCI Articles of Faith

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