Discuss Theology

One of finest books dealing with the early Churches understanding of the Trinity is found in Tertullian Against Praxeas (cir. AD 213). In the Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 3, Hendrickson Pub., 1999, beginning at page 597, which is labeled as “Against Praxeas; in which he defends, in all essential points, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity”, we find a clear understanding of the Trinity. The entire book is well worth the effort of reading. Over the next several days I will post several passages highlight this catholic doctrine. He ends the volume with an excellent question for none Trinitarians, “What need would there be of the gospel, which is substance of the New Covenant, laying down (as it does) that the Law and Prophets lasted until John the Baptist, if thenceforward the Father, the Son, and the Spirit are not both believed in as Three, and as making One Only God?”

“In the course of time, then, the Father forsooth was born, and the Father suffered, God Himself, the Lord Almighty, whom in their preaching they declare to be Jesus Christ. We, however, as we indeed always have done and more especially since we have been better instructed by the Paraclete, who leads men indeed into all truth), believe that there is one only God, but under the following dispensation, or oikonomia, as it is called, that this one only God has also a Son, His Word, who proceeded from Himself, by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. Him we believe to have been sent by the Father into the Virgin, and to have been born of her–being both Man and God, the Son of Man and the Son of God, and to have been called by the name of Jesus Christ; we believe Him to have suffered, died, and been buried, according to the Scriptures, and, after He had been raised again by the Father and taken back to heaven, to be sitting at the right hand of the Father, and that He will come to judge the quick and the dead; who sent also from heaven from the Father, according to His own promise, the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, the sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost. That this rule of faith has come down to us from the beginning of the gospel, even before any of the older heretics, much more before Praxeas, a pretender of yesterday, will be apparent both from the lateness of date which marks all heresies, and also from the absolutely novel character of our new-fangled Praxeas.”