Pel - I need to respectfully ask you something, because I want to understand.
Would you say that there is no distinction between standard Oneness doctrine on the Godhead, and standard Trinitarian doctrine on the Godhead?
I don't think Trinitarians view it that way
http://www.gospeloutreach.net/optrin.html
HERESY?
We have seen that the Oneness doctrine of God is not faithful to the Biblical revelation of the Father and Son as two persons, and that the Oneness rejection of the Trinity is in error. The question now must be asked how serious an error this is, since theological errors vary in their harmfulness.
Evangelicals commonly suppose that a professed Christian movement may be judged orthodox or heretical simply on the basis of whether or not it affirms the full deity and humanity of Christ. Consequently, some Christians have concluded that the Oneness doctrine, despite its denial of the Trinity, is essentially Christian.
This is far too simplistic, however. While it is true that adherence to the two natures of Christ is critical to orthodoxy, and while most pseudo-Christian sects do deny that Jesus is both fully God and fully man, simply affirming the two natures is not enough. Indeed, it is possible to call Jesus "God" and still have "another Jesus" (
2 Corinthians 11:4), if in calling Him "God" one means something significantly different from what the Bible means.
Such is the case with the Oneness understanding of the deity of Christ. When Oneness believers say that Jesus is God, what they mean is that He is the Father. That is not what the Bible means, as we have seen. Rather, when the Bible says that Jesus is "God," it means that He exists eternally as a divine person in relationship with the Father; or, to use the Church's theological shorthand, it means that He is the second person of the triune God.
The apostle John warns us, "Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also" (
1 John 2:23). Oneness Pentecostals will not admit to denying the Son, of course; but that should come as no surprise. It is doubtful that any heretic, including those about whom John specifically warned, has ever admitted to denying the Son. Instead, heretics of all kinds have simply redefined the meaning of the term "Son" (and along with it the meaning of "Father"). Thus the Jehovah's Witnesses define "Son" as "direct creation," while the Mormons claim that Jesus is the "Son" of God by virtue of having been begotten through physical union between God and Mary. The Oneness redefinition of "Son" as the human nature of Jesus (and "Father" as His divine nature) may be less offensive than the Mormon version, and less obvious than that of the Jehovah's Witnesses, but it is a redefinition nonetheless. The fact is that the Son and the Father are two persons, co-existing eternally in relationship with one another. To deny this fact is to deny the biblical Son, and thus to have a false view of Jesus.
It turns out, then, that one's view of Christ cannot be separated from one's view of the Trinity. Deny the Trinity, and you will lose the Biblical Christ; affirm the Christ of Scripture, the Christ who was sent by the Father and who sent the Holy Spirit, and you will find that your God is the Trinity. It is, in fact, the doctrine of the Trinity that is the distinctive feature of the Christian revelation of the nature of the true God. As Calvin expressed it: "For He so proclaims Himself the sole God as to offer Himself to be contemplated clearly in three persons. Unless we grasp these, only the bare and empty name of God flits about in our brains, to the exclusion of the true God." (38) Only the Christian God is triune, and consequently, to deny the Trinity is to say that, historically, Judaism and Islam have been right about the being of God, while Christianity has been wrong. Oneness writers have said as much. (39) Therefore, while there may be individual Oneness believers who are saved [Editor's Note: If, like the Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons, a Oneness believer does not have faith in the Biblical Jesus, then how can it be considered possible that such a person is saved?], the Christian community has no choice but to regard the Oneness movement as a whole as having departed from the Christian faith.
We must conclude, then, that the Oneness teaching is a heresy, that it denies a fundamental, basic belief of biblical Christianity, and that those churches and denominations which teach this heresy are actually pseudo-Christian sects. In popular Evangelical terminology, such a heretical sect is known as a "cult," a term which simply means that the group's beliefs are in some important respect non-Christian.
In this sense, we regretfully conclude that the Oneness churches are indeed cults, and we urge Christians to reach out to Oneness believers in love and share with them the triune God revealed in the Scriptures.