A while back, when I first discovered that booklet, Should You Believe in the Trinity? I was almost disturbed from my own position by their misrepresentation of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. I was quickly relieved when, among a plethora of materials refuting it, I discovered this article, "Historical Dishonesty and the Watchtower Society," which exposed the Watchtower's falsified treatment of Ignatius, the Bishop of Antioch and his writings on the deity of Christ.
I would encourage my reader to check out the link.
I've been studying the Apostolic Fathers in my Trinity class. Ignatius died about 107 A.D., scarcely a decade after the Apostle John. He was a disciple of John and his church, and dealt with the same theological challenges against the deity of Christ from incipient Gnostics that arose after the fall of Jerusalem.
It is not surprising, then, that the Watchtower would misrepresent the position of this important contemporary of the Apostles. Seven times throughout his letters, he calls the Savior, "Jesus Christ, our God," or "Our God, Jesus Christ." He ascribes the divine attributes to the Son, calling Him the One "who is beyond time the Eternal the Invisible who became visible for our sake, the Impalpable, the Impassible who suffered for our sake" (Polyc. 3:2). On the Incarnation, he calls the Son "generate and ingenerate, God in man... son of Mary and Son of God... Jesus Christ our Lord" (Eph. 7:2), reflecting generally accepted Christian teaching today in which Christ is 'fully human, fully Divine'. And he emphasized that Christ "from eternity was with the Father and at last appeared to us," (Magn. 6:1).
The Apostolic Fathers had not yet developed a systematic theology. The reason is that, in their time, there was no need for one, as the church had a general consensus on what it believed. It was not until later that Trinitarian thought became more articulate, in order to defend it against the heresies of the generation following that of the eyewitnesses to Christ's glory.

No comments:
Post a Comment