I understand that, but if the Father and Son and HS are in 1 God, and Jesus is talking to a crowd on the Mt. of the beatitudes, what is God doing? Is His person somehow behind the face of Jesus, whose face is forward speaking to the crowd?
You see, that is what modalism is. The Father and the Son and the HS are in 1 God and are all the same God, with different masks that are used to depict the Person who is speaking at the time.
In fact the would hoomoisia was used by the modalists to describe how their god lived. When the Nicean Fathers tried to describe the relationship of the Trinity Persons, they finally decided to use hoomoisia, and a lot of the bishops at Nicean objected vehemnently because 150 years before they condemned modalism and the hoomoisia concept as heretical, and now 150 in the future were using it to describe God again. The Trinity passed, only because Constantine had an army and would have killed every bishop if they had not come to a consensus of this important relationship between the Father and the Son and the HS, so the kingdom could move forward more united. So they gave up on true doctrine for true unity.
Modalism and Trinity are very closely associated by the word hoomoisia (could be spelling this wrong).
You can squirm around the text and give us your opinion, but if you had 10,000 people draw a picture of what Stephen saw in the heavens it would look like the picture we are talking about.
So mutilate all you want, but it does not matter, Stephen saw Jesus Christ standing on the right hand of the Father, just like the picture depicts, and of course it would be powerful and glorious.
God is a Spirit. He has no physical right hand as he has no physical body.
John 4:24
God is a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.
You do realize that this rendering is exclusive to only certain English translations, right?
Others have "God is Spirit" or another variation.
God is Spirit
God is a Spirit
either way makes no difference regarding the dismissal of the idea that God the Father had/has a flesh and bone body
There is no indefinite article in Koine Greek,
renderings into English are based on context,
and in the case we are talking about
it doesn't make a dime's worth of difference
Sorry, but the scripture clearly has Stephen seeing Jesus, and someone or some thing standing on Jesus's left side. The scripture calls that thing God.Small problem: My understanding of the text is in harmony with the rest of the biblical witness and two thousand years of Christian teaching as it is the holy and apostolic religion; seeing as Scripture is pretty explicit that the only way to see God is to behold the Incarnate Person of the Son. "If you have seen Me you have seen the Father" "No one has at any time seen God, but the only-begotten Son who is at the bosom of the Father makes Him known" "The Son is the radiance of His glory and the express image of His Hypostasis".
In ever instance where God manifests Himself before Christ it is through Theophany--as burning bush, a pillar of smoke/fire, as fire, lightning, and smoke on the mountain, as the glimmer of the Shekinah on Mt. Horeb. These Theophanies are never God-as-God, indeed as the Evangelist is clear, "No one has at any time seen God". The only way for man to see God is in the Hypostasis of the Son who has become flesh and dwelt among us. The Father makes Himself known through His Son "whom He appointed heir of all things and by whom He made all ages". Indeed, "that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
This is precisely what the Father cannot be depicted directly in icons; and is instead recognized as being present in and through the Son. So that when we depict Christ we behold also the Father, for the Father is known by His Son, and because the Lord said, "If you have seen Me you have seen the Father"--and all else as previously said.
For God, invisible and who dwells in unapproachable light, cannot be seen.
"[God] the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings, and Lord of lords, who alone is immortal, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no human being has seen, nor can see; to Him be honor and power everlasting. Amen." - 1 Timothy 6:15-16
To God all-wise, invisible, glorious, unfathomable, incomprehensible, and above all things be alone glory, praise, honor, and kingdom forever.
-CryptoLutheran
Yes, Jesus was a man, and is still in the form of a man.
But is Jesus God?
:Luk 3:22
And the Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased.
That, and its companion narratives in the other gospels which describe Jesus' baptism by John the Baptist, are the scriptures which decimate MODALISM -- the three PERSONS of the Trinity all appear independently doing something in same place at same time. Spirit descending like a dove, Father speaking, Jesus being baptized.