by Phillip Arnn
In late July, 1993, Watchman Fellowship learned of meetings held in Pasadena at the headquarters of the Worldwide Church of God. The meetings were reported to have been held for the purpose of announcing the church's new doctrine on the nature of God. In attendance were Regional Pastors and Directors, Evangelists, department heads, Ambassador College ministerial faculty and publication researchers and writers.
Watchman Fellowship called David Hulme, Director for Public Affairs, to ask about the church's position on the doctrine of the Trinity, specifically on the Personality of the Holy Spirit. Mr. Hulme declined to comment on the June meetings but did tell James Walker that the church's recently published booklet, God Is, was being revised.
However, on 3 August 1993, Hulme briefly outlined for Watchman Fellowship the nature of the lecture given by Dr. K.J. Stavrinides in the June meetings. Hulme stated, "What Dr. Stavrinides did was to show, with great precision of thought and theological insight, that the Holy Spirit is personal - as distinct from impersonal" (fax to James Walker). This change in language was significant.
A position paper was offered giving this statement on the Trinity, "The Worldwide Church of God has made all biblical truths an indispensable part of its teaching, including the teaching that God is one-but not the specific way in which God is one. It teaches the full divinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Even though the Worldwide Church of God considers some positions on the Trinity to be heretical (for example, all forms of Arianism). it sees the Eastern, Western, Protestant, and Modernist views of the nature of God as genuine attempts to reach a deeper understanding of God's nature" (K.J. Stavrinides, Reviews You Can Use, January-February 1991).
Although the church now viewed the Trinity doctrine as a "genuine attempt" to describe God, they did accept the doctrine. The main difference between the Worldwide Church of God's new view of God and that of traditional Christianity involved the Personality of the Holy Spirit. In a letter to Kurt Van Gorden, with a copy to Dr. Alan Gomes, dated 4 August 1992, Michael Snyder clarified the position of the church on the Holy Spirit:
"The Worldwide Church of God recently reprinted its Statement of Beliefs. As Alan Gomes suggested during our January meeting, the previous statement concerning the Holy Spirit may not have been sufficient in describing the Beliefs of the Church. Please note that the following statement has been added in all new editions; `The Church does not believe the Scriptures teach the Holy Spirit to be a person, but to be divine, eternal and co-essential with God, yet distinct from the Father and the Son.'" (Winds of Change in the Worldwide Church of God, Dr. Alan Gomes, Talbot School of Theology, Biola University). As it stood, the church's position could not be considered orthodox. While this was a major shift from the teaching of the church's founder, Herbert W. Armstrong, this doctrinal position still did not embrace the doctrine of the Trinity. The Trinity doctrine has long been considered a crucial test of orthodoxy by traditional Christianity. The Trinity doctrine holds that the Holy Spirit is not only divine, but also has all of the attributes of deity, including personality.
One year later, however, this final obstacle had been hurdled and the Worldwide Church of God now considers the Holy Spirit to be equal in all respects to the Father and Son in the one God.
Many who have been following these doctrinal developments have asked if the Worldwide Church of God actually uses the term "Trinity" in describing its new position. In a letter dated 23 September 1993 from the church's Personal Correspondence Department to an individual inquiry, David Hunsberger states:
"We are teaching a form of the Trinity, though not the exact variations of the concept that have been commonly taught. We find flaws in most trinitarian teachings that we are attempting to avoid. The word trinity originally means three and we have always believed that the one God is somehow three: Father, Son and Holy Spirit as mentioned by Jesus in Matthew 28:19. We have always baptized in the name of the Father, Son and of the Holy Spirit. Now we are clarifying our doctrine on the subject of the nature of God to show how we believe God is `one' and `three.'"
In a separate letter dated 5 November 1993, Hunsberger further explained, "Yes, the Church teaches that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are co-equal, co-eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, indivisible, of one essence, and immanent... The Apostles' and Nicean Creeds are universally accepted in Christendom and we have no objection to their statements."
From this explanation it would appear that any distinction between the WCG position and that of traditional Christianity is more a matter of semantics than substance.
Recently the leadership of the WCG has made statements that seem to abandon Armstrong's elitist and exclusivist pronouncements. David Hulme responded to a specific question on the current position of the Church in a letter to Watchman Fellowship. Hulme replied, "Our position is that any person who has the Holy Spirit is a child of God, regardless of the church he or she belongs to, and we recognize that God works where he pleases. This is different from the position once held by the Church." (letter to James Walker, 26 July 1993).
This seems to have been the public position of the WCG since at least 13 December 1990 when Michael Snyder, then Assistant Director of Public Affairs, was interview on radio station WMUZ, Detroit. Snyder said,"The current position of the Church is that we are not the exclusive body by any means."
This is an encouraging development. The idea that one organization or corporation is "the only true church" is considered a mark of cultism by traditional Christianity. Under the heading, "The Group as the Exclusive Community of the Saved," Anthony Hoekema writes: "Every cult says, `We alone are the people of God.' The cult, so to speak, takes God by the arm, insisting that His evaluation of people must agree with its own" (The Four Major Cults, p.384).
Does the Worldwide Church of God still see itself as the only true church?
A recent statement to members of the church by Joseph W. Tkach, the Pastor General of the Worldwide Church of God, raises serious questions concerning the church's position.
In a video address distributed to all WCG churches, Tkach made this declaration, "There is a rumor going around that I don't believe this is the only True Church of God. Well here you are my witnesses. I believe with all of my heart that this is the one and only true Church of God. But, we can not limit God where He wants to work." (Tkach sermon, 3 April 1993). Tkach only gives two examples of other groups where God was at work. His examples are small relatively unknown groups whose peculiar doctrines are coincidentally almost identical to the Worldwide Church of God. Both groups, one in South America and another in the Ukraine, are Sabbatarians, both keep the Old Testament feasts and both practice the observance of Old Testament food laws.
Watchman Fellowship, however, also received a letter from a WCG minister, David Register, who was asked to clarify remarks he had made in a sermon on changes in the Church's position on the "born again" doctrine. Register had said that the Worldwide Church of God did not believe that Protestants were born again.
Register responded by saying,"I believe that Mr. Hulme stated in the letter you enclosed, that any person who has the Holy Spirit is a child of God and therefore part of the Body of Christ, including all converted persons in all denominations, and that the membership of the Worldwide Church of God does not comprise the entirety of the Body of Christ. On the other side of the coin, I believe there are people in the Worldwide Church of God, as well as in all other denominations, who are not,`born from above', as evidenced by their obvious lack of commitment to Jesus Christ." (Letter to Phillip Arnn, 12 November 1993).
In light of Tkach's statement, however, one might ask: "Is it truly possible for a Protestant to receive the Holy Spirit and thus be born again without joining the WCG or a similar group in South America or the Ukraine?" "Does the Worldwide Church of God consider itself to be the only true church or does it consider Baptist, Methodist, and Lutheran churches to be true churches also?"
These questions can be more clearly answered in the future as the church continues to reevaluate its relationship to other churches. Like the church's position on the nature of God, important doctrinal changes must come in stages. It is hoped that the "only true church" doctrine will be completely replaced with more inclusive language.
© Copyright 1995 Watchman Fellowship, Inc. The material on this site shall not be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without permission from the publisher.