Each week on H20 this poster from Oz makes comment on the current week's Watchtower Study.
May I commence my postings here with this post that has appeared on H20 by not looking at a scriptural teaching (so called) but a teaching of the Watchtower nonetheless. The study is from the Xmas Issue (December 15) "Stand Complete With Firm Conviction".
It is understood among JWs that shortly after the death and martyrdom of the apostles that apostasy set into the Christian congregation. The man of lawlessness was at work even in Paul's time. The apostles served to restrain his actions, but after the death of the last apostle, John, no longer was there any restraint.
The early Church Fathers, i.e. church leaders of the second and third centuries, are not revered or even respected among JWs. For them is the ignimony of being part of apostasy.
It comes as a surprise, then, to see this week's study article lead off with mention of Tertullian as a "writer" (yes, but what else?) and let him be a witness in support of the Watchtower contention of the concern that early Christians showed to the orphans, poor, and elderly.
Don't the Witnesses teach that we are not to have anything to do with apostates, not even sharing a greeting with them? Yet here in this article we are quoting one who was not a "true Christian".
Interestingly the question on this paragraph reads: "OUTSIDERS noted what about the early Christians?"
Another inconsistency from the pens of the Writing Dept.
For those interested in what the Writing Dept have written of Tertullian in recent years, here is a sample.
Summary:
1. Tertullian the first to use the word trinitas
2. Tertullian a leading writer and church theologian
3. Tertullian and others decide on the completion of the Bible canon.
After reading them, please consider whether you might be interested in what other church fathers such as Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin, Athenagoras, and Irenaeus wrote.
Ozzie (who is amazed how Joe Ratherflawed got the place of Justin Martyr)
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*** Watchtower 1992 April 1st issue pages 28-9
Part 3-Did the Apologists Teach the Trinity Doctrine? ***
Tertullian’s Theology
Tertullian (c. 160 to 230 C.E.) was the first to use the Latin word trinitas. As noted by Henry Chadwick, Tertullian proposed that God is ‘one substance consisting in three persons.’ 25 This does not mean, however, that he had in mind three coequal and coeternal persons. However, his ideas were built upon by later writers who were working toward the Trinity doctrine.
Tertullian’s concept of Father, Son, and holy spirit was a far cry from Christendom’s Trinity, for he was a subordinationist. He viewed the Son as subordinate to the Father. In Against Hermogenes he wrote:
“We should not suppose that there is any other being than God alone who is unbegotten and uncreated. . . . How can it be that anything, except the Father, should be older, and on this account indeed nobler, than the Son of God, the only-begotten and first-begotten Word? . . . That [God] which did not require a Maker to give it existence, will be much more elevated in rank than that [the Son] which had an author to bring it into being.” 26
Also, in Against Praxeas, he shows that the Son is different from and subordinate to Almighty God by saying:
“The Father is the entire substance, but the Son is a derivation and portion of the whole, as He Himself acknowledges: ‘My Father is greater than I.’ . . . Thus the Father is distinct from the Son, being greater than the Son, inasmuch as He who begets is one, and He who is begotten is another; He, too, who sends is one, and He who is sent is another; and He, again, who makes is one, and He through whom the thing is made is another.” 27
Tertullian, in Against Hermogenes, states further that there was a time when the Son did not exist as a person, showing that he did not regard the Son as an eternal being in the same sense that God was. 28 Cardinal Newman said: “Tertullian must be considered heterodox [believing unorthodox doctrines] on the doctrine of our Lord’s eternal generation.” 29 Regarding Tertullian, Lamson declares:
“This reason, or Logos, as it was called by the Greeks, was afterwards, as Tertullian believed, converted into the Word, or Son, that is, a real being, having existed from eternity only as an attribute of the Father. Tertullian assigned to him, however, a rank subordinate to the Father . . .
“Judged according to any received explanation of the Trinity at the present day, the attempt to save Tertullian from condemnation [as a heretic] would be hopeless. He could not stand the test a moment.” 30
*** "Trinity brochure" pages 5-6 Is It Clearly a Bible Teaching? ***
The Catholic Encyclopedia also comments: “In Scripture there is as yet no single term by which the Three Divine Persons are denoted together. The word [tri'as] (of which the Latin trinitas is a translation) is first found in Theophilus of Antioch about A. D. 180. . . . Shortly afterwards it appears in its Latin form of trinitas in Tertullian.”
However, this is no proof in itself that Tertullian taught the Trinity. The Catholic work Trinitas—A Theological Encyclopedia of the Holy Trinity, for example, notes that some of Tertullian’s words were later used by others to describe the Trinity. Then it cautions: “But hasty conclusions cannot be drawn from usage, for he does not apply the words to Trinitarian theology.”
*** "Insight on the Scriptures- Vol.1 page 409
Canon ***Christian Greek Scriptures.
The writing as well as the collecting of the 27 books comprising the canon of the Christian Greek Scriptures was similar to that of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Christ “gave gifts in men,” yes, “he gave some as apostles, some as prophets, some as evangelizers, some as shepherds and teachers.” (Eph 4:8, 11-13) With God’s holy spirit on them they set forth sound doctrine for the Christian congregation and, “by way of a reminder,” repeated many things already written in the Scriptures.—2Pe 1:12, 13; 3:1; Ro 15:15.
Outside the Scriptures themselves there is evidence that, as early as 90-100 C.E., at least ten of Paul’s letters were collected together. It is certain that at an early date Christians were gathering together the inspired Christian writings.
We read that “near the close of the 1st cent., Clement bishop of Rome was acquainted with Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth. After him, the letters of both Ignatius bishop of Antioch and Polycarp bishop of Smyrna attest the dissemination of the Pauline letters by the second decade of the 2nd century.” (The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, edited by G. W. Bromiley, 1979, Vol. 1, p. 603) These were all early writers—Clement of Rome (30?-100? C.E.), Polycarp (69?-155? C.E.), and Ignatius of Antioch (late 1st and early 2nd centuries C.E.)—who wove in quotations and extracts from various books of the Christian Greek Scriptures, showing their acquaintance with such canonical writings.
Justin Martyr (died c. 165 C.E.) in his “Dialogue With Trypho, a Jew” (XLIX), used the expression “it is written” when quoting from Matthew, in the same way the Gospels themselves do when referring to the Hebrew Scriptures. The same is also true in an earlier anonymous work, “The Epistle of Barnabas” (IV). Justin Martyr in “The First Apology” (LXVI, LXVII) calls the “memoirs of the apostles” “Gospels.”—The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. I, pp. 220, 139, 185, 186.
Theophilus of Antioch (2nd century C.E.) declared: “Concerning the righteousness which the law enjoined, confirmatory utterances are found both with the prophets and in the Gospels, because they all spoke inspired by one Spirit of God.” Theophilus then uses such expressions as ‘says the Gospel’ (quoting Mt 5:28, 32, 44, 46; 6:3) and “the divine word gives us instructions” (quoting 1Ti 2:2 and Ro 13:7, 8).—The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 1962, Vol. II, pp. 114, 115, “Theophilus to Autolycus” (XII, XIII).
By the end of the second century there was no question but that the canon of the Christian Greek Scriptures was closed, and we find such ones as Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian recognizing the writings comprising the Christian Scriptures as carrying authority equal to that of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Irenaeus in appealing to the Scriptures makes no fewer than 200 quotations from Paul’s letters. Clement says he will answer his opponents by “the Scriptures which we believe are valid from their omnipotent authority,” that is, “by the law and the prophets, and besides by the blessed Gospel.”—The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. II, p. 409, “The Stromata, or Miscellanies.”
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