T.D. Jakes Denies the Trinity in Wild Christmas Sermon
Famed Modalist T.D. Jakes kneecapped all his ardent defenders who have insisted over the years that the megachurch Bishop has repented of espousing Oneness Theology, with Jakes denying the Trinity and engaging in multiple christological errors during his Christmas Eve service.
T.D. Jakes, though continuing to be platformed by all manner of Christian celebrities and leaders, has gone on record as saying he doesn’t believe that Jesus is the second person of the Trinity, but rather is just a “manifestation” of God. Even now, his church website reads, “There is one God, Creator of all things, infinitely perfect, and eternally existing in three manifestations: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.”
Backround: In 2011, Jakes was invited to the Elephant Room. At this roundtable, prominent Christian pastors from different perspectives would be asked hard questions about their beliefs and practices by other well-known pastors. Prior to the event, there were questions about why Jakes should even be invited in the first place, particularly because, as Tim Challies noted, Jakes has shown a “continual reluctance to affirm a standard, time-proven creedal statement of trinitarian orthodoxy and that he has often used the language of modalism.” Phil Johnson was more direct, writing:
“A self-styled “bishop”—notorious for his love of money, who teaches a false prosperity gospel, who freely shills for every aberration on TBN, who was ordained in a Sabellian denomination, who has been confronted repeatedly about his anti-trinitarianism, who refuses to renounce modalism, who declines to embrace any standard expression of Trinitarian conviction, and who (on top of all that) is unclear on practically every doctrine germane to the gospel—such a figure should not be warmly welcomed into evangelical circles and given the platform at an evangelical conference as if we’re confident that he is a solid brother with good intentions.”
Then the big day hit. Mark Driscoll and James MacDonald played the fool by lobbing a couple of softball questions his way that didn’t go nearly enough into any needed specificity. It was pathetic and crushingly dissapointing. Jakes was not pressed but treated with kid gloves before being declared a brother. In this way, Driscoll and MacDonald were co-conspirators in the Great Evangelical Coverup that gave the prosperity-preaching heretic the respectability of orthodoxy that was trumpeted all across the evangelical landscape, from The Christian Post to Christianity Today.
To this day, everyone believes that Jakes embraced and affirmed the Trinity at the Elephant Room, yet nothing could be further from the truth. It’s revisionist history. He left the event affirming a belief and acceptance of the Trinity, which garnered the big headline, so long as he could define Trinitarian “persons” (which he said was the language he was ‘uncomfortable’ with) as “manifestations.” This is a distinction with a damning difference, because a ‘person’ is not a ‘manifestation’. Using the same methods that Mormons use, Jakes was more than happy to affirm any point of doctrine, so long as he could pour his own definitions and understanding into them. Following this, gullible Christians oblivious of his sleight of hand and stubborn recalcitrance cheered him for his newfound doctrinal fidelity, and the rest is history.
In 1998, The Potter’s House doctrinal statement read, “God-There is one God, Creator of all things, infinitely perfect, and eternally existing in three Manifestations: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
Then for a short time, also before the Elephant Room, it was changed to read: “THREE DIMENSIONS OF ONE GOD. . . . Triune in His manifestation, being both Father, Son and Holy Ghost AND that He is Sovereign and Absolute in His authority. We believe in the Father who is God Himself, Creator of the universe. (Gen. 1:1; John 1:1).”
Several years after the Elephant Room, it reverted to the 1998 statements, changing the capitalizations of ‘manifestation,’ which it has remained ever since.
A decade after the Elephant room, Jakes teaches in his sermon that the God the Father came down from heaven and manifested himself as Jesus, who then gave up his heavenly attributes and had to subject himself to travails like ‘travel’- something as God the Father he never had to do:
God wrapped himself in a meat suit. ‘Incarnation’ means “in meat.” In ‘M-E-A-T’ to ‘M-E-E-T’ you.
I came down on your level. I came where you could touch me. I came where you could see me. If I had shown myself in my original state it would have been too much for you; it would have burned the eyeballs out of your head.So I hid myself in a meat suit just so we could have a conversation. Incarnated divinity. The creator has now become subject to what he created. He gave up his omnipotence, his omniscience, and his omnipresence.
He submitted himself to prayer because he’d given up omnipotence. All-powerful, now he has to go to the garden and pray.
Omniscience, because he said ‘No man knoweth the day nor the hour which the son of man cometh. No, not the angels, nor the Son, but the Father which is in heaven.’ Means ‘I don’t know everything anymore, so I gave up my omniscience.’
He traveled, because he gave up his omnipresence. Because as Father he never had to travel; he’s just there. But Jesus had to get on a boat and travel to come where you are and said ‘let us cross over to the other side.’
It is the humility of God. The God who said ‘I count it not robbery to be equal with God. But making of myself no reputation he humbled himself.”
This thing is jammed packed to the brim with Christological errors. From Patripassionism to Modalism to the Kenotic heresy, the hypostatic union is far from his mind and clearly does not believe in the Trinity.
For Jakes though, who is an entertaining yet wretched bible teacher, that’s nothing that has ever mattered.
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