This is our series of articles analyzing David Bernard's book, The Oneness of God. You are on the page that is in bold. Click on the links to go to a particular chapter:

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What God Is — And What Bernard Needs That to Mean

A Critique of Chapter 2 of David Bernard's The Oneness of God

"God is a Spirit," Jesus told the woman at the well, "and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth" (John 4:24). It's one of the most important things Jesus ever said about God's nature — and David Bernard opens Chapter 2 with it. What follows is a survey of divine attributes: God's spirituality, invisibility, omnipresence, omniscience, omnipotence, immutability, and personality. Then a lengthy treatment of Old Testament theophanies. On its face it reads like a standard survey of classical theology.

But there's an agenda underneath every paragraph. Bernard isn't surveying attributes for their own sake. Each one is marshalled to accomplish a single apologetic goal: to establish that God is so absolutely singular that the very idea of distinct persons within the divine being is incoherent. By the end of the chapter, the reader is supposed to feel that Trinitarianism not only contradicts Scripture, but contradicts the most basic things we know about what God is like.

The problem is that the arguments don't hold. Some are circular. Some are self-undermining. Several rely on evidence Bernard is careful never to bring up. What follows works through the chapter's main moves and shows where they break down.

"God Is a Spirit" — Stating What's True, Concluding What Doesn't Follow

Bernard's opening gambit is correct as far as it goes: God is Spirit, which means He is not material, not physically locatable, not made of anything we can touch or see. No Trinitarian has ever disputed this. Grudem defines God's spirituality precisely: God "exists as a being that is not made of any matter, has no parts or dimensions, is unable to be perceived by our bodily senses, and is more excellent than any other kind of existence" (Systematic Theology, p. 183). That's the same God Trinitarians are talking about.

What Bernard does with this, though, is something else. He slides from "God is Spirit" to the implied conclusion that God therefore cannot have any personal distinctions within himself — because persons would imply distinct centers of existence, which would somehow compromise divine simplicity. He never argues for that step. He just assumes it and builds on it.

Think about what that slide actually requires. Human souls are immaterial too — spirit beings in a meaningful sense. Nobody argues from that fact to the conclusion that all human souls must be one single person. Immateriality doesn't tell you how many persons can subsist in a given nature. Trinitarianism has never claimed three material bodies or three physical locations. It claims that the one immaterial God exists as three distinct personal subsistences. Bernard's argument about God being Spirit doesn't touch that claim at all, because it's aiming at a position nobody holds.

Grudem makes the point clean: the attribute of spirituality tells you about the mode of God's existence — non-material, non-corporeal — not about the internal structure of the divine life. You can't get from one to the other without an additional argument, and Bernard never provides one.

Omnipresence — A Standard He Applies Selectively

Bernard uses God's omnipresence similarly: because God isn't confined to a body or a single location, He can't have distinct persons, since persons occupy specific places. Once again, the move sounds plausible until you notice that Bernard himself blows it up three paragraphs later.

In the section on theophanies, Bernard writes: "He did assume various forms and temporary manifestations throughout the Old Testament … in Christ, God had a human body and now has a glorified, immortal human body." So God was genuinely, substantially, locally present in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. God in a human body, walking from Galilee to Jerusalem, sitting at wells, dying on a cross outside Jerusalem. If genuine bodily presence in a single location is compatible with omnipresence — as Bernard's own doctrine of the Incarnation requires — then omnipresence cannot be used to argue against personal distinctions within God. Bernard is trying to use omnipresence against Trinitarianism while his own theology already concedes the point that kills the argument.

Boyd catches this kind of thing across Oneness theology: Oneness writers must acknowledge that God acts and exists in distinctly different ways — as transcendent Father, as incarnate Son, as indwelling Spirit — while simultaneously insisting that this doesn't constitute any kind of genuine plurality in God (Oneness Pentecostals and the Trinity, p. 1661). That's the same contradiction sitting inside Bernard's omnipresence argument. He can't use omnipresence to rule out distinct persons and simultaneously affirm an Incarnation where God was genuinely and particularly present in one man in one place.

The problem isn't Bernard's use of the anthropomorphism principle. The problem is how far he stretches it. Once he establishes that some physical descriptions of God are figurative, he treats that as a license to dismiss any description of God that would imply personal distinctions. Anything inconvenient gets declared figurative; anything useful to his argument gets declared literal or actually true of God. But he never gives the reader a principled rule for deciding which is which. It's just — this is metaphor, that's real — depending on where the passage lands in relation to his thesis.

That's not exegesis. That's selective reading with theological vocabulary wrapped around it. A valid principle applied without any limiting criterion isn't a method; it's just a wrecking ball.

God Has Personality — And Bernard Can't Control What That Concedes

The section titled "God Has Individuality, Personality, and Rationality" is, unexpectedly, the chapter's most self-defeating passage. Bernard works hard here to establish that God has genuine personal attributes — will, intellect, emotions, individual identity. He draws on Genesis 1:27 to argue that because humans are emotional beings created in God's image, God must have emotions. He's right.

Here's the problem: humans are personal beings who exist as distinct persons. If the image of God in humanity gives us a basis for inferring genuine emotional and rational attributes in God — and Bernard explicitly argues it does — then the fact that human beings exist as distinct persons at minimum raises the question of whether personal distinctions are somehow foreign to the divine nature that we're made to reflect. Bernard uses the image-of-God argument to establish that God has emotions while blocking it when it comes to divine persons. You can't run the argument only in the direction you choose.

He's established something important in this section: God is not a force, not an abstraction, but a genuine personal being with will, intellect, and emotion. Every Trinitarian agrees. What he's also done, without realizing it, is concede that personal attributes are real attributes of God — not mere appearances or temporary roles. And if personal attributes are genuinely in God, you need a reason to deny that those attributes could exist in three persons. Bernard hasn't given one.

Theophanies — The Argument Built on a Studied Omission

The bulk of Chapter 2 surveys Old Testament theophanies — God appearing in burning bushes, pillars of fire, angelic form, prophetic visions, the Angel of the LORD. Bernard concludes that all of these were temporary manifestations of a single, undivided God, and that they found their permanent fulfillment in Jesus Christ.

The entire argument depends on what Bernard doesn't say.

The standard interpretation in evangelical scholarship — held by Grudem, and with roots going all the way back to Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Augustine — is that many OT theophanies, and particularly the Angel of the LORD, are appearances of the pre-incarnate Son of God. This isn't a marginal position. It's the majority reading in the broad stream of Christian interpretation, and it's the interpretation that most seriously challenges Oneness theology: if the Angel of the LORD is the pre-incarnate Son, then the OT already shows a distinct divine person who speaks in God's own name, accepts worship, is identified with YHWH, and does all this before the Incarnation. That would demolish the Oneness claim that the Son only began to exist when Mary conceived.

Bernard gives the reader three possible interpretations of the Angel of the LORD: always a direct theophany, sometimes a theophany and sometimes an ordinary angel, or always a literal angel. The pre-incarnate Son interpretation never appears. He never mentions it, never engages it, never attempts to refute it. In a book that presents itself as systematic theology, that absence is not an oversight. It's a decision.

Boyd identifies what's happening here clearly: Oneness exponents simply cannot afford to let the pre-incarnate Son interpretation stand, because it undermines the foundational claim that the Son began at the Incarnation (Oneness Pentecostals and the Trinity, pp. 407ff.). So the interpretation disappears from consideration rather than getting answered.

The Angel of the LORD — The Evidence Bernard Doesn't Resolve

Even without raising the pre-incarnate Son interpretation, Bernard's treatment of the Angel of the LORD is shaky. He acknowledges the cases where the Angel is clearly identified with YHWH: the appearance to Hagar (Genesis 16:7–13), where she calls him God; the burning bush in Exodus 3, where the Angel appears but God speaks; Gideon's encounter in Judges 6, where the text says "the LORD looked on Gideon"; Manoah and his wife in Judges 13, who believed they had seen God. Bernard says the simplest explanation is that the Angel is sometimes a theophany and sometimes not.

But look at what the texts are actually doing. In every one of those cases, the identification of the Angel with YHWH isn't incidental — it's the point. The narrative is deliberately presenting a figure who is simultaneously distinct from YHWH and identified as YHWH. That's not an ambiguity to be tidied up; it's data to be explained. Bernard's "sometimes a theophany" reading doesn't explain it. It just reclassifies it as a temporary one-off. The Trinitarian reading — that these are appearances of a distinct divine person who genuinely shares the divine identity — explains the pattern coherently across all the cases.

Bernard's anonymous source is worth noting too. He quotes "a trinitarian scholar" without naming who — textbook unattributed authority — and the scholar's statement that "God is free to make his presence known, even while humans must be protected from his immediate presence" is used as if it supports the Oneness reading. It doesn't. A Trinitarian can embrace that statement fully. The freedom of God to make his presence known in multiple ways is entirely compatible with the pre-incarnate Son interpretation. Bernard has quoted a Trinitarian as evidence against Trinitarianism and it doesn't work.

Daniel 7 — The Vision Bernard Walks Past

Bernard lists Daniel 7:2 and 7:9 in his survey of prophetic visions, noting that God appeared to Daniel as the Ancient of Days. He moves on quickly. But stopping there requires ignoring the rest of the vision, which runs like this:

"I saw in the night visions, and, behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and they brought him near before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages, should serve him: his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom that which shall not be destroyed." (Daniel 7:13–14)

Two distinct divine figures. The Ancient of Days on the throne. The Son of Man coming to him — on the clouds of heaven, which is a divine prerogative throughout the OT — and receiving universal, everlasting dominion. These are not two masks worn by the same actor. The Son of Man is coming to the Ancient of Days; he is approaching someone else. Jesus himself applies this passage to his own identity, explicitly, in front of the high priest at his trial (Matthew 26:64; Mark 14:62). He is the Son of Man coming to the Ancient of Days.

Bernard cannot account for this within a modalist framework without either treating it as God staging a kind of divine performance for Daniel's benefit — a vision with nothing real behind it — or letting the pre-incarnate Son back in through the side door. He sidesteps the question by not raising it. That's not exegesis; it's avoidance.

The Fourth Man in the Fire — Small Arguments That Reveal a Large Agenda

Nebuchadnezzar looks into the furnace and says, "the form of the fourth is like the Son of God" (Daniel 3:25). Bernard's response? The Aramaic lacks a definite article before son, so it should read "a son of the gods," reflecting Nebuchadnezzar's pagan polytheism. Nebuchadnezzar later calls the figure an "angel" (3:28), so it was probably just an angel. And in any case, the Son hadn't been born yet, so this couldn't be the Son of God as described in the New Testament.

That last sentence is the tell. Bernard dismisses the identification because his theology requires the Son to have begun at the Incarnation. He's not reading the text and drawing a conclusion; he's protecting a conclusion he already holds and reading the text accordingly.

The Aramaic article argument is weak on its own terms. Aramaic regularly conveys definiteness without a definite article — its absence doesn't change the identity of whoever is in that furnace. The NIV's "a son of the gods" is an attempt to represent Nebuchadnezzar's pagan frame of reference, not a theological verdict on the figure's nature. As for Nebuchadnezzar calling him an angel — this is a pagan king with no knowledge of Hebrew theology, interpreting a supernatural figure in the only categories available to him. Using his terminology as the definitive theological identification of the figure is a strange move. The text presents someone who preserved three men in a superheated furnace and carried a divine appearance. That's not a description of an ordinary angelic messenger.

Immutability — A Problem Bernard Creates for Himself

Bernard affirms, correctly, that God is immutable: "I am the LORD, I change not" (Malachi 3:6). But his own Oneness theology requires that God moved through sequential modes — Father in the Old Testament, Son during the Incarnation, Holy Spirit after Pentecost. Modal transitions are, by definition, changes in how God presents and expresses himself across time.

Grudem defines divine immutability carefully: "God is unchanging in his being, perfections, purposes, and promises, yet God does act and feel emotions, and he acts and feels differently in response to different situations" (Systematic Theology, p. 163). The key is that God's being doesn't change. But Oneness theology requires something different — a God who presents himself differently from one era of history to the next: as Father in the Old Testament, as Son in the Gospels, as Spirit after Pentecost. That's not the kind of ordinary change Grudem is describing. It's a fundamental shift in how God relates to the world.

Bernard's immutability doctrine and his modal theology are in tension with each other, and he doesn't address it. A truly immutable God doesn't transition from Father-mode to Son-mode to Spirit-mode. Bernard affirms both things without explaining how they hold together.

Melchizedek — Missing the Entire Point of the Passage

Bernard is cautious about Melchizedek. Maybe a theophany, maybe just a man whose genealogy wasn't recorded — either way, he's a type of Christ (Hebrews 7:1–17). That's safe enough. But in being cautious about the theophany question, Bernard misses what Hebrews 7 is actually arguing.

Hebrews 7:3 describes Melchizedek as "without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life; but made like unto the Son of God; abideth a priest continually." Boyd is direct about what this means: "The author believes that the Son of God has always existed and will always exist. Melchizedek is Jesus' prototype because, at least as far as the Old Testament describes him, he is 'without beginning of days'" (Oneness Pentecostals and the Trinity, p. 1139). That's the argument. Melchizedek's priesthood is prior to and greater than the Levitical priesthood, and this establishes that Christ's priesthood — as a priest after the order of Melchizedek — is likewise prior to and greater than Aaron's. The logic requires a Christ who existed before Aaron did. It requires a pre-existent Son.

If the Son only began at the Incarnation, the entire argument in Hebrews 7 collapses. A type points forward to a reality that already exists in God's purposes — you can't have a type that points forward to someone who didn't exist yet in any sense. Bernard discusses Melchizedek as a type while carefully avoiding the implication that makes the whole passage work.

No NT Theophanies — The Circular Finish

Bernard's final move is the claim that the New Testament records no theophanies of God outside of Jesus Christ because in Christ, God is fully expressed. The dove at the baptism is the only possible exception, and he redirects that to Chapter 7.

This argument is circular in a way that's hard to miss once you see it. There are no NT theophanies outside of Christ because Christ is all of God, because Oneness theology is true. Then, the absence of NT theophanies is offered as support for Oneness theology. He assumes the conclusion to rule out the evidence, then uses the ruled-out evidence as confirmation.

But even granting that framework for the sake of argument — the baptism of Jesus can't be dispatched to a later chapter as though it's a minor footnote. Matthew 3:16–17 is one of the most explicitly Trinitarian passages in the New Testament: the Father speaks from heaven, the Son stands in the water, the Spirit descends as a dove. Three simultaneously present, distinctly identifiable persons. Not sequential modes but three at once, each doing something different, each addressed or described separately. Grudem is direct: modalism "must deny that the three persons of the Trinity are distinct individuals" and "must deny the interpersonal relationships within the Trinity that appear frequently in Scripture," including the baptism scene (Systematic Theology, p. 241). Bernard can't draw broad conclusions about NT theophanies in Chapter 2 while sending its most important counter-example down the road to be explained later.

The Chapter's Underlying Problem

Step back and look at the chapter as a whole. What Bernard has actually established is this: God is omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent, eternal, immutable, invisible, and spiritual. Every Trinitarian in church history has affirmed every one of those attributes without hesitation. Grudem, writing after a full survey of Trinitarian theology, is explicit: "It is important to remember the doctrine of the Trinity in connection with the study of God's attributes. When we think of God as eternal, omnipresent, omnipotent, and so forth ... all of God's attributes are true of all three persons, for each is fully God" (Systematic Theology, p. 248).

The move from these attributes to "therefore no personal distinctions within God" is never argued. It's assumed, built upon, and dressed up with exegetical observations that don't actually support it. Bernard has shown what God is like. He hasn't shown that three distinct persons within one divine nature is incoherent, or unbiblical, or in tension with any of the attributes he's described. The attributes are shared by all three persons. Omnipresence doesn't rule out persons. Invisibility doesn't rule out persons. Spirituality doesn't rule out persons. None of them do, and Bernard has given no argument that they do.

What he has done is suppress the evidence — the Angel of the LORD as pre-incarnate Son, Daniel 7:13–14, the pre-existence argument in Hebrews 7, the baptism scene — that most directly challenges his position. That's not a mark of a strong case. It's a sign of one that can't afford to look everything in the eye.

Questions Worth Pondering

If you're working through Bernard's theology, these aren't trick questions — they're the kind of questions a genuine reading of Chapter 2 raises.

Bernard says God is Spirit and therefore invisible. But he also affirms that God was genuinely present in the body of Jesus — locally, physically, in real time. If bodily presence is compatible with God's nature, why does it rule out the Son being a genuinely distinct person before the Incarnation?

He says the Angel of the LORD is "sometimes" a theophany. But why doesn't he engage the interpretation — held by the majority of evangelical scholars — that the Angel is the pre-incarnate Son? Is there a response somewhere in the book, or is silence all there is?

Daniel 7:13–14 shows the Son of Man coming to the Ancient of Days. Who is the Son of Man approaching in that vision if there's only one divine person?

Bernard says God never changes. But Oneness theology has God moving from Father-mode to Son-mode to Spirit-mode across redemptive history. How is that not change?

At Jesus' baptism, the Father speaks, the Son is in the water, and the Spirit descends — simultaneously, not sequentially. How is that one person in one mode?

These aren't questions designed to score points. They're the questions Chapter 2 should have answered and didn't.

Primary sources: Gregory Boyd, Oneness Pentecostals and the Trinity (Baker, 1992); Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology (Zondervan, 1994); David Bernard, The Oneness of God (Word Aflame Press, 1983).

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Bernard's The Oneness of God - Chapter 2

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