Chapter 24

Answering the Defenders

What Dake’s defenders say, answered from his own pages

The case his defenders make

People who love the Dake Bible have a case to make for the man who wrote its notes, and it should be heard in its strongest form. Finis Jennings Dake worked at the Scriptures the way a farmer works a field, early and late, for most of his life. He called Jesus Christ God and defended Christ’s deity against those who denied it. He defended healing and the gifts of the Spirit when many churches had explained them away, and he told ordinary believers they could understand the Bible for themselves. So when a critic says Dake taught error, his defenders give a series of answers. He affirmed the Trinity. He simply took the Bible literally. Critics quote him out of context. The race notes belonged to his times, and they are gone now. The fruit proves the tree. And a man who has died and cannot answer should be left alone.

I have weighed each of those answers against Dake’s own printed pages, and each one fails there. On the doctrine of God, Dake taught that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three separate beings, each with His own body, soul, and spirit. In his teaching they are one the way people who agree with each other are one. The church calls that teaching tritheism, which means belief in three Gods, and it has always called it heresy. On that subject Dake was a false teacher. His love for the Bible was real, and so was his labor, but neither one changes what his notes say about God.

Dake himself supplied the test for a chapter like this one. At the foot of the title page of Bible Truths Unmasked, below his name and the list of his books, he printed a line from the evangelist Charles Finney.

“Before you are able to convince me of error you must first demonstrate that you understand what I say.” —Chas. G. Finney, on the title page of Dake’s Bible Truths Unmasked¹

I accept that test. To understand what Dake said, a reader has to know what he meant by his words, and Dake told us. In the fourth lesson of his course he printed definitions of “person,” “one,” and “Trinity,” and he used those definitions in every lesson after it. He also set a standard for his own teaching. In the preface to Revelation Expounded he wrote that as a young man he had promised to “never teach anything that he could not give two or three plain Scriptures to prove.”² The prophet Isaiah gave Israel the same kind of test for every teacher.

To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. Isaiah 8:20 (NKJV)³

Dake’s publisher made the same promise for his course: “Nothing is left to human reasoning alone, or proved by human authority.”⁴ So I will use the measure Dake and his publisher chose. I will read his words with his own definitions first, and then I will open the Scriptures.

“He affirmed the Trinity”

This is the defense his friends raise first, and it rests on real sentences. Dake used the word “Trinity” often, he argued against people who denied it, and he closed his lesson on the doctrine with this summary.

Earlier in the course he wrote this.

The Father is called “God” (1 Cor. 8:6); the Son is called “God” (Isa. 9:6; Heb. 1:8; John 20:28); and the Holy Spirit is called “God” (Acts 5:3-4); so all three persons of the Godhead are divine and can be spoken of individually as “God” and collectively as “one God” in the sense of unity. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Four, pp. 55–56⁶

Read by themselves, those sentences sound like an ordinary Sunday school lesson. There are three persons, each one is called God, and together they are one God. Leon Bible builds his defense of Dake on sentences like these. His biography of Dake, Finis Jennings Dake: His Life and Ministry, was published by Dake Publishing in 2006, and three of its appendices answer Dake’s critics on the doctrine of God. In the first of them he sets Dake’s definition of the Trinity beside the four points of a standard evangelical handbook, The Moody Handbook of Theology, and he reaches this verdict.

Without doubt, Dake’s view of the Trinity is compatible with the orthodox view as stated in Moody. There can be no argument here. Leon Bible, Finis Jennings Dake: His Life and Ministry, Appendix Nine, p. 395⁷

The definition Bible relies on says that “all three persons are one in unity and eternal substance, but three separate and distinct persons as to individuality”.⁸ The comparison holds only if Dake’s words mean what the Moody Handbook means by them, and Dake’s own definitions show that they do not. A few entries earlier in the same list, he defines a person as “a rational being with bodily presence, soul passions, and spirit faculties.”⁹ In ordinary English that describes a man or a woman. Later in the lesson he applies it to God.

Each member of the Divine Trinity has His own personal spirit body, His own soul with all the soul feelings of other beings, and His own personal spirit with all the spirit attributes and powers that other spirits of persons have. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Four, p. 60¹⁰

At the end of the same lesson, under the line “The Godhead consists of three separate and distinct Persons,” he states the conclusion plainly: “if one person of the three in the Godhead has a personal body, soul, and spirit, all three persons must also have separate bodies, souls, and spirits.”¹¹ In Lesson Twenty-seven he says each of the three has “His own personal body, soul, and spirit in the sense that all other persons have them.”¹² So when Dake writes “three persons,” he means three beings, each with a body, a soul, and a spirit of His own.

The word “one” works the same way. In the summary on p. 500 the three are one “as believers are supposed to be”, and his proof is Jesus’ prayer that His disciples would be one (John 17:21). Believers are one in love and purpose, but they remain many people. Dake also compared the Godhead to a household: “Any family as individuals or collectively could be called by the family name; so it is with the Godhead.”¹³ Even his “substance” turns out to be a likeness of kind. In Lesson Twenty-five he says the three persons are “the same in substance and nature” because they “all have had from eternity the same kind of spirit-bodies, soul passions, and spirit-faculties.”¹⁴ The first point in Bible’s Moody chart is “God is one in regard to essence.” That means one being. Dake’s “eternal substance” means three beings of the same kind, the way every man shares one human nature.

Bible’s second appendix takes up the charge of tritheism directly, and the definition he chose for it settles the question against him. He quotes the theologian Henry C. Thiessen.

The doctrine of the trinity must be distinguished from both Tri–theism and Sabellianism. Tri–theism denies the unity of the essence of God and holds to three distinct Gods. The only unity that it recognizes is the unity of purpose and endeavor. God is a unity of essence as well as of purpose and endeavor. The three persons are consubstantial. Henry C. Thiessen, as quoted in Leon Bible, Finis Jennings Dake, Appendix Ten, p. 399¹⁵

Bible then argues that Dake cannot be a tritheist, because Dake says the three are one in “unity and eternal substance”. We have just seen what Dake meant by those words. A unity like the oneness of believers or of a family is a unity of purpose. A “substance” that consists of three spirit-bodies of the same kind is likeness, and it is not one essence. By the definition Bible himself printed, Dake’s Godhead is tritheism.

On the next page Bible makes his most direct argument.

Nowhere in Dake’s writings do we find him saying that there are “three gods.” It is simply not there. Leon Bible, Finis Jennings Dake, Appendix Ten, p. 400¹⁶

As far as the phrase goes, Bible is right. The words “three Gods” do not appear in Dake’s course, and they do not appear in either setting of his study Bible. But Dake did write, “It is perfectly scriptural to use the plural word ‘Gods’ when we speak of three separate persons in the Godhead,” and he pointed his students back to Lesson Four for the reason.¹⁷ His note on Deuteronomy 6:4, printed in the Bible itself, begins its second point with the words “There are more than one Jehovah and more than one God as individuals” and then calls the three “one Jehovah and one God in unity.”¹⁸ A teacher does not have to use the name of an error in order to teach it. What matters is what he says the three are, and Dake said they are three separate beings.

Bible offers one more proof that Dake was no tritheist. He quotes a sentence from Lesson Twenty-seven: “The one Elohim then is not one person, or one in number, but one in unity.”¹⁹ Bible reads “one in unity” as the church’s oneness of being. Dake’s own definition of the Hebrew word for “one” says it “is achad, to unify, collect, be united in one, one in number. It is used as one in unity many times”, and his examples are a husband and wife who “shall be one flesh” and the builders of Babel, of whom God said “the people is one”.²⁰ In Dake’s vocabulary, “one in unity” is set against “one in number”, and the unity is the kind two people or a crowd can have. The church confesses that God is one in being, so that there is one God and not three. The sentence Bible offers as a defense says that the one Elohim is not one in number.

In the charts of his first appendix, Bible sets short phrases from Dake beside the Moody Handbook and beside Easton’s Bible Dictionary. In the two appendices on the Trinity and on tritheism, he does not print Dake’s definition of a person, or any of the sentences that give each person His own body, soul, and spirit. One of his chart entries reads “The Godhead consists of three separate and distinct Persons. This fact is simply stated in Scripture . . .” and his note cites pages 64 and 65. That paragraph of Dake’s ends on p. 65 with the sentence quoted above: all three persons “must also have separate bodies, souls, and spirits.”²¹ The phrases in the charts are real quotations. Read without the definitions Dake attached to them, they look orthodox, and read with those definitions they do not.

None of this denies that Dake affirmed the deity of Christ. He did, and he argued against the Oneness teachers of his day, who said the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one person. Bible says so too, and he is right about it.²³ My charge concerns the unity of God. Dake divided the one God into three beings, and his best sentences cannot undo that, because his definitions are printed a few pages away from them.

“He simply took the Bible literally”

Dake’s rule was that Scripture is to be “taken literally when it is at all possible”.²⁴ He explained in his preface why he held it so firmly. He wrote of himself, “As a young man the author was taught many things that were contrary to the plain Scriptures themselves when taken literally.” He settled on the conviction “that God meant what He said and said what He meant”.²⁵ Anyone who has heard a promise of God explained away can see why that appealed to him. He was right that God speaks in order to be understood, and that the Bible is not a code for experts.

But a rule like this cannot decide its own cases. Jesus said, “I am the door.” The words are as plain as any in the Gospel.²⁶ No reader looks for hinges, because the rest of the passage and the rest of Scripture show that the Lord is using a picture. Someone always has to judge when a passage is a picture, and Dake’s rule hides that judgment instead of guiding it. When Scripture speaks of God’s eyes, hands, and dwelling place, Dake read the pictures as a description of a body in one place, and he built his doctrine of God on that reading. Chapter 4 follows the rule through his pages.

Some defenders add that critics prefer scholars to Scripture. The answers in this book rest on texts any reader can open, such as Deuteronomy 6:4, Psalm 139, and Isaiah 46. The creeds are quoted as the church’s summary of those texts, never as a rival to them.

“Critics quote him out of context”

Some critics do quote him that way. Sentences from Dake are passed around without a page number, sometimes without the name of the book, and any writer deserves better than that. Every quotation in these chapters gives its work and its page, so anyone can read the text around it. Where a page of the study Bible is the evidence, the page is photographed.

The useful test is to supply the context and see what it does. In Lesson Four, Dake asks whether “any number of persons” can keep their individuality and still be one, and then he asks, “Could not God exist as three separate persons with three separate bodies, souls, and spirits, and still be one in unity?” A few questions later he asks, “Do we have to believe that God is only one person in the Godhead when the Bible says there are three?”²⁷ The surrounding pages press the same point harder, and the paragraph Bible himself cites ends with three bodies. On Dake’s teaching about God, the context only adds more sentences of the same kind.

“The race notes were his times, and they are gone”

Defenders usually say this quietly, and it has two halves. The first is that segregation was the law across much of the country when Dake wrote. That is true, but his times also had Acts 17:26. The list he printed was headed “30 reasons for segregation of races: (Acts 17:26)” and that verse says God “has made from one blood every nation of men”.²⁸ Chapter 21 answers the defense that Dake was a man of his time.

The second half is that the note is gone. Beginning with the 1988 printing, the note was reworded, then rewritten, and finally replaced by a note called “Separation in Scripture,” which restates about twenty of the old reasons in new words. Nothing inside the Bible told its readers that the list had been there, what was changed, or why.²⁹ Removing the racist language was right. But Dake’s teaching about God, printed in the same notes, was never revised at all.

“The fruit proves the tree”

This defense points to real people. The 1950 advertisement for Dake’s course called it “the fruit and cream of the author’s life’s work of over 75,000 hours of Bible study and research”.³⁰ Defenders point to that labor and to the believers who say his notes helped them pray, study, and preach. Some readers first met Christ with a Dake Bible open in front of them. I do not doubt those stories, and I will not make light of them.

Scripture, though, does not let results settle a doctrine. Moses warned Israel about a teacher whose signs come true while his teaching leads away from the true God.

“If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods’—which you have not known—‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the LORD your God is testing you to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul. Deuteronomy 13:1–3 (NKJV)³¹

Jesus said something harder about people who will come to Him on the last day with a list of results.

Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’ Matthew 7:21–23 (NKJV)³²

I quote those verses against the argument, and not against Dake or his readers. If wonders done in Jesus’ name do not settle a case, then book sales and grateful letters cannot settle one either. None of this takes back what God has done for His people. If you came to Christ with a Dake Bible in your hands, you came to Christ. Much of that good came through the Scripture printed in the center columns, which was never in dispute. The question is whether the blessing proves what the notes teach about God, and Scripture says it does not.

“Leave the man alone”

This last defense is more a scruple than an argument, and it is a decent one. A man who has died cannot explain himself or correct a misreading. But Dake’s notes are still printed and still taught, and a book that keeps teaching remains open to an answer. His own sentences, quoted with his own definitions and page numbers, are the fullest hearing print can give a writer who cannot speak for himself. And Dake treated the teachers of his day the same way.

Modern writers of doctrine books about God assert that no man can understand God; that no man has ever seen God; and that God has no body with parts and passions to be seen. I quote only from prominent men who have had a wide ministry in our large denominations. We personally admire these men for their great work, but this does not lessen the fact that they are wrong on this most important subject of God. God’s Plan for Man, Lesson Four, p. 53³³

He quoted those writers, admired their work, and said they were wrong on the most important subject there is. I have said the same of him, and I have quoted him at greater length than he quoted them.

Where the defenses leave Dake

When the defenses have been heard, three findings remain, and each rests on Dake’s own pages. He taught that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three separate beings, each with a body, a soul, and a spirit, which is tritheism (Chapter 6). He taught a God who has a body of ordinary size, lives in one place, and does not know ahead of time what free creatures will do. He even wrote that there are “certain spheres in which He does not and cannot operate”.³⁴ And his Bible printed thirty reasons for segregating the races under a verse that says God made every nation from one blood. On the doctrine of God, Dake was a false teacher.

To the reader who loves Dake

Most people who defend Dake are really defending the people who taught them, and those are two different things. The teacher who handed you a Dake Bible trusted the people who handed it to him. You can love that teacher and still test the notes. Dake himself asked his readers to hold every doctrine to plain Scripture. What to do with the Bible on your shelf is the subject of Chapter 25.

You may also ask whether I could be wrong. The claims in this book are about what is printed on certain pages and what those words mean, and that kind of claim can be checked by anyone who can read. Every quotation carries its page, and the sources are listed in Appendix F. If a page does not say what I say it says, the claim should fall.

Test all things; hold fast what is good. 1 Thessalonians 5:21 (NKJV)

The Bereans were commended for testing what an apostle preached against the Scriptures.³⁵ Dake’s notes deserve the same test, and so does this book. When the test is done, it leads past the notes to the God the church has always confessed. He is one God, not three beings who agree. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit share one undivided being, so the believer who prays is met by all of God and not by one member of a council. He fills heaven and earth, He knows the end from the beginning, and nothing is too hard for Him. That God does not need a defender. He needs to be seen, and He is seen most clearly in the Scriptures that Dake told ordinary readers they could understand for themselves.