Early Church Fathers and the Trinity

ACCORDING to the trinity the Father, the Son and the holy spirit are three persons of one godhead, coequal, cosubstantial and coeternal. Those teaching it claim that the so-called church fathers also taught the trinity, and since they lived so close to the apostles themselves it must be that the apostles also believed and taught the trinity. But did these “church fathers” believe in a trinity as held by Christendom? Note the following quotations from these men as published in The Church of the First Three Centuries, by Dr. A. Lamson.

CLEMENT, who died about A.D. 100, was severely castigated by certain Catholic theologians because he termed “the Son of God a creature.” He once stated that “the most perfect, and most holy thing, and most commanding, and most regal, and by far the most beneficent nature, is that of the Son, which is next to the only omnipotent Father.” “If thou wilt be initiated [become a Christian], then shalt thou join in the dance around the uncreated and imperishable and only true God, the Word of God hymning with us.”

JUSTIN MARTYR, who died about A.D. 165, explained his belief regarding Jesus to a Jew as follows: “There is another God or Lord under the Creator of the universe, who is also called Angel, because he announces to men what the Creator of the universe . . . wishes to declare. He who is said to have appeared to Abraham, to Jacob and to Moses, and is called God, is other than the God who made all things. I say, in number, but not in will, for he never did any thing except what the Creator of the universe willed him to do and say.”

IRENAEUS, who died about A.D. 200, reasoned that “if the Son did not blush to refer the knowledge of that day to the Father [Mark 13:32], neither do we blush to reserve the solution of difficult questions to God. Our Savior used this expression that we might learn from him that the Father is over all; for ‘The Father is greater than I.’”

TERTULLIAN, who died about A.D. 230, made similar observations: “The Father is different from the Son, as he is greater; as he who begets is different from him who is begotten; he who sends, different from him who is sent; he who does a thing, different from him by whom it is done.” And again, “God produced the Son, that by him he might produce the universe. Christ does nothing except by the will of the Father, having received all power from him.” “There was a time when the Son was not.” “Before all things, God was alone, himself a world and place, and all things to himself.”

ORIGEN, who died about A.D. 253, said: “The Father and the Son are two things, as to their essence, but one in consent, concord, and identity of will.” “Compared with the Father, the Son is a very small light.” He explained John 10:30 (NW), which states, “I and the Father are one,” by referring to Acts 4:32: “And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul.” And also observed that “the Father who sent him is alone good, and greater than he who was sent.”

HIPPOLYTUS, who flourished in the first part of the third century, and who, says The Catholic Encyclopedia, “was the most important theologian and the most prolific religious writer of the Roman Church in the pre-Constantinian era,” held that “the Father is one God, the first and only One, the Maker and Lord of all. He had nothing co-eval with him. . . . But he was One, alone by himself, who, willing it, called into being what had no being before.”

LACTANTIUS, of the fourth century, wrote: “Before this glorious world arose, God, the Maker and Disposer of all, begat a holy, incorruptible, and incomprehensible Spirit, who is called his Son, and although through him, he afterwards created others—an innumerable host, whom we call angels,—yet he has thought that first-begotten alone worthy of the divine name of ‘Son.’”

Quotations by the foregoing could be multiplied and others, such as by Cyprian and Dionysius, could be given, to the same effect. And while not every statement of theirs may perfectly coincide with the light as it now shines on God’s Word, there can be no doubt about the fact that none of these believed in a trinity in which ‘God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost are coequal, cosubstantial and coeternal.’