Six Myths About Christianity – Part 10
Posted By Brett on April 28, 2010
Continuing my review of the November Watchtower article “Exposed: Six Myths About Christianity,” I’d like to remind my readers that the full text of the Watchtower article is in blue with my comments in black. The first two points on the history of the Trinity can be found here. I now continue with the church fathers.
.
Third, it is simply not the case that the Trinity was invented in 325 AD
Consider what the early church fathers thought about the deity of Christ:
Ignatius of Antioch (110 A.D.):
We have also as a Physician the Lord our God Jesus the Christ the only-begotten Son and Word, before time began, but who afterwards became also man, of Mary the virgin. For ‘the Word was made flesh.’ Being incorporeal, He was in the body; being impassible, He was in a passible body; being immortal, He was in a mortal body; being life, He became subject to corruption, that He might free our souls from death and corruption, and heal them, and might restore them to health, when they were diseased with ungodliness and wicked lusts.” ( The ante-nicene Fathers, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, Vol. 1, p. 52 .)
“For our God Jesus Christ, was, according to the appointment of God, conceived in the womb by Mary, of the seed of David, but by the Holy Ghost.”( Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians 4:9)
“…God Himself appearing in the form of a man, for the renewal of eternal life.”( Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians 4:13)
“Continue inseparable from Jesus Christ our God.”( Epistle of Ignatius to the Trallians 2:4)
“For even our God, Jesus Christ, now that He is in the Father”.( Epistle of Ignatius to the Romans 1:13)
Clement of Rome:
“Brethren, we ought so to think of Jesus Christ as of God : as of the judge of the living and the dead”.(2nd Epistle of Clement to the Corinthians 1:1)
Justin Martyr ( 140 A.D.):
“the word of wisdom, who is himself God begotten of the Father of all things, and word, and wisdom, and power, and the glory of the begetter, will bear evidence to me”.(Dialogue with Tropho Ch.61)
“For Christ is King, and Priest, and God and Lord…”(Dialogue With Trypho, 34)
“…He preexisted as the Son of the Creator of things, being God, and that He was born a man by the Virgin.” (Dialogue With Trypho, 48 )
“We will prove that we worship him reasonably; for we have learned that he is the Son of the true God Himself, that he holds a second place, and the Spirit of prophecy a third. For this they accuse us of madness, saying that we attribute to a crucified man a place second to the unchangeable and eternal God, the Creator of all things; but they are ignorant of the Mystery which lies therein” (First Apology 13:5-6).
Polycarp (70-160):
“Now may the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the eternal High Priest Himself, the God Jesus Christ, build you up in the faith…”( The Epistle of Polycarp to the Church at Philippi, 12)
Iranaeus (120-202):
“In order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Savior, and King…”(Irenaeus Against Heresies, 1.10.1)
180 A.D. “But he Jesus is himself in his own right, beyond all men who ever lived, God, Lord, and king eternal, and the incarnate word, proclaimed by all the prophets, the apostles …The Scriptures would not have borne witness to these things concerning Him, if, like everyone else, He were mere man.” (Against Heresies 3:19.1-2)
This is but a small sample of many more quotations on the deity of Christ from many other church fathers. The belief of Jesus as God was as wide spread as it possibly could be from the earliest of times. It is simply false to suggest anything different.
Comments