Please can someone tell me just what the mistakes were, why it was a dishonest piece of journalism, and apart from the Tertullian quote, which Sulla highlights above?
The Trinity brochure does not simply argue that the fourth and fifth century post-Nicene Trinity is not found in the NT. It also tries to delineate the evolution of the Trinity doctrine (pp. 8-12), and it basically starts with the Nicene creed in the fourth century and then traces it through to the Athanasian creed which dates more than a century later. All of this is centuries removed from the NT. And the Society fills in the gap with characterizations of the beliefs of church fathers, which are consistently skewed to make them seem like they merely continued the kind of the theology that the Society regards as biblical. This creates the false impression that the Trinity came out of nowhere in the fourth century.
Thus Irenaeus, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, etc. are portrayed as maintaining "biblical" views and ignorant of the "Trinity", tho they each had a trinitarian (or quasi-trinitarian) theology, believed that Jesus Christ was fully God, or both God and man, united with the Holy Spirit and the Father as three persons of one substance, etc. This is hardly an insignificant omission! The Trinity broshure, for instance, represents Tertullian as saying that "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" (p. 7). In the context of a discussion of the Trinity, this suggests that Tertullian did not believe that the Father and Son were united in a Trinity....that the distinction between the Father and Son were not as between persons in a Trinity but between seperate beings. But this actually was the opposite of what he believed...he was very clear that the Father and Son were not divided by substance but that all three persons were united as one trinity
Tertullian, Adversus Praxaeas, 2, 13, 25: "All are of one (ex uno omnia), that is through unity of substance (per substantiae unitatem); while this still safeguards the mystery of the economy, which disposes the unity into a Trinity (trinitas), arranging in order the three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit....How they admit of plurality without division (numerum sine divisione) the following discussion will show... We have never given vent to the phrases 'two Gods,' or 'two Lords'; not that it is untrue that the Father is God, the Son is God, the Spirit is God; each is God... So the close series of the Father in the Son and the Son in the Paraclete makes three who cohere (tres cohaerentes), the one attached to the other. And these three are one thing, not one person, in the sense in which it is said 'I and the Father are one' in respect of unity of substance, not singularity of number".
It is true that Tertullian did not teach an ontological trinity but conceived of the Son and Holy Spirit as economically derived from the Father (and thus subordinate), but this difference is not enough to make such views irrelevant to a discussion of the development of the Trinity doctrine. Tertullian conceived of a trinity of three persons united in one substance, and thus I have no idea how the Society could cite him in support of the argument that "the Trinity was unknown throughout Biblical times and for several centuries thereafter" (p. 7). The later Athanasian and Nicean trinity doctrines of course were not yet formulated, but Tertullian's trinity was a direct forerunner of them.
As another example, consider what the brochure says about Irenaeus: "Irenaeus, who died about 200 C.E., said that the prehuman Jesus had a separate existence from God and was inferior to him. He showed that Jesus is not equal to the 'One true and only God,' who is 'supreme over all, and besides whom there is no other' ". This statement, without indicating anything to the contrary, implies that Irenaeus did not regard Jesus as God. But this is the opposite of what he wrote:
Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 3.21.1: "God became man, and it was the Lord himself who saved us".
Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 4.33.4: "How can they be saved unless he was God who wrought their salvation on earth? And how shall man pass to God unless God has passed into man (ho theos ekhorèthe eis anthropon)".
Irenaeus, Demonstratio Apostolicae Praedicationis, 47: "Therefore the Father is Lord, and the Son is Lord, and the Father is God, and the Son is God, for he who is born from God is God. And thus God is shown to be one according to the essence of his being and power, but at the same time, as the administrator of the economy of our redemption, he is both Father and Son, since the Father of all is invisible and inaccessible to creatures, it is through the Son that those who are to approach God must have access to the Father".
The 15 July 1990 Watchtower also had a feature article about Irenaeus portraying him as a defender of apostolic teachings in the face of apostasy. It states: "The writings of Irenaeus are also an invaluable index of at least some of the Scriptural views still held by professed adherents to God’s Word at the end of the second century C.E. Irenaeus repeatedly reaffirms belief in 'one God, the Father Almighty, who made the heaven, and the earth, and the seas, and all that is in them, and in one Christ Jesus, the son of God, who was made flesh for our salvation' " (p. 23). This quotation however is two-thirds of a triadic formula which a few sentences later declares Jesus to be God:
Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses 1.10.1: "Now the church, although scattered over the whole civilized world to the ends of the earth, received from the apostles and their disciples its faith in one God, the Father Almighty, who made the heaven, and the earth, and the seas, and all that is in them, and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who was made flesh for our salvation, and in the Holy Spirit, who through the prophets proclaimed the dispensations of God—the comings, the birth of a virgin, the suffering, the resurrection from the dead, and the bodily reception into the heavens of the beloved, Christ Jesus our Lord, and his coming from the heavens in the glory of the Father to restore all things, and to raise up all flesh, that is, the whole human race, so that every knee may bow, of things in heaven and on earth and under the earth, to Christ Jesus our Lord and God and Savior and King, according to the pleasure of the invisible Father, and every tongue may confess him, and that he may execute righteous judgment on all".
As a third example, we have the Society's summary of what Justin Martyr taught: "Justin Martyr, who died about 165 C.E., called the prehuman Jesus a created angel who is 'other than the God who made all things.' He said that Jesus was inferior to God and 'never did anything except what the Creator . . . willed him to do and say' " (p. 7). Saying that Justin believed that Jesus was a "created angel" is another misrepresentation. He described the Son as "Angel" in role and function, rather than nature, and thus "Angel" is a "title" or something he is "called" (cf. Dialogue 34, 60-61, 76, 128, Apologia 1.62-63), and when he discusses the Son's origin, he specifically denies that Jesus was a created angel:
Justin Martyr, Dialogue 62: "I do not consider that teaching true which is asserted by what you call a heretical sect of your religion, nor can the proponents of that heresy prove that he spoke those words [i.e., 'Let us make man in our image'] to angels (aggelois) or that the human body was the result of an angel's work (aggelon poièma èn to sòma to anthròpeion). But this Offspring (gennèma), who was truly begotten of the Father (tòi onti apo tou patros problèthen), was with the Father and the Father talked with him before all creation (pro panton ton poièmaton), as the scripture through Solomon clearly showed us, saying that this Son, who is called Wisdom by Solomon, was begotten (egegennèto) both as a beginning before all his works (arkhè pro panton tòn poièmatòn), and as his Offspring (gennèma)".
Here the Son is not an "angel" like the created angels, in fact such a view is rejected as a Jewish heresy. Instead, he characterizes the Son as an "Offspring" (gennéma) who was "generated" or "begotten" (egegennéto) instead of "made" (epoièsan), and his generation was "before all creation" and "before all his works", i.e. the Son was not created. In the previous section, Justin went further into detail on what he meant by the "begetting" of the Son:
Justin Martyr, Dialogue 61: "God had begotten (gegennèke) of himself a certain rational Power as a beginning before all creatures (arkhèn pro pantòn tòn ktismatòn)....When we utter a word, it can be said that we beget the word (logon gennòmen), but not by cutting it off (ou kata apotomèn), in the sense that our power of uttering words thereby be diminished. We can observe a similar example in nature when one fire kindles another (hopoion epi puros horòmen allo ginomenon), without losing anything but remaining the same; yet the enkindled fire seems to exist of itself (to ex autou anaphthen) and to shine without lessening the brilliance of the first fire".
These are analogies of generation, and tho the word "substance" is not used, Justin suggests that the Son was begotten from the Father like a fire is enkindled from another fire without lessening it...sharing the same "fire" stuff as the source fire, and which can burn with its own brilliance and glory beside the first fire. The analogy of words being begotten by thought is similar, and Justin notes that similarly the ability to utter words is not diminished by any individual word, and words are also not "cut off" from the source through dividing it. Later, Justin does use the word "substance" to describe the begetting of the Son:
Justin Martyr, Dialogue 128: "For I stated that this power was generated from the Father (tèn dunamin tautèn gegennèsthai apo tou patros), by his power and will, but not by abscission (ou kata apotomèn), as if the substance of the Father were divided (hòs apomerizomenés tès tou patros ousias); as all other things, once they are divided and severed (merizomena kai temnomena), are not the same as they were before the division. To illustrate this point, I cited the example of fires kindled from a fire; the enkindled fires are indeed distinct from the original fire (paralèphein ta apo puros anaptomena) which, though it ignites many other fires, still remains the same undiminished fire".
The Son is begotten from the Father's "substance", generated from it like a fire lit from fire...the substance is not itself divided. This is far closer to Tertullian's notion of the Son and Holy Spirit as derived from the Father than the idea of the Son as a "creation", for the Son is clearly described as produced from the ousia of the Father. And like Tertullian, Justin also emphasized the numerical distinction of the Son from the Father. But what Justin lacked was Tertullian's concept of a persona (i.e. Person) that can maintain this distinction within one God, which makes his theology a little closer to ditheism.
