Biblical Proof Text of the Trinity: All Christian Apologists welcome to join.

[BibleSteve]

You must agree that others have done the same… Catholics, protestants, JW’s, Mormons, even Moslems. And, somehow they all are different. You see now why there NEEDS to be an authority on the subject.

Frankly, it appears that most Christians rely on someone else to tell them what the Bible says…

About 95% of those who identify themselves as Christians haven’t read the entire Bible once.

They look to their pastor, priest, or ECF’s to tell them what to believe… and sadly, these “authorities” dismiss what the Bible says in favor of other “authorities”…

Read the Bible, listen to what it says… don’t give undue heed to uninspired men…

 

[cascherman]

I’m sorry but the formula of ‘read the Bible entirely and contemplatively and take from it what you will’ will not create unified beliefs among any of us much less all of us.

So again, why is your interpretation better than mine? You will say there is evidence for yours and I will say there is evidence for mine. So, how do we find the truth? Each of us are biased in one way or another, whether you mean to be or not, and may get two totally different things from the same verse. Do you not agree?

 

[cascherman]

Frankly, it appears that most Christians rely on someone else to tell them what the Bible says…

Just like the early first century Christian Jews and Gentiles relied on Paul and Peter and the other Apostles to tell them the Good News. They surely didn’t have a copy of the Bible in each home.

When Paul proclaimed the good news to his jailer, I’m sure the jailer didn’t retort… “Show me that in the Bible”. We are meant to rely on doctrine and traditions passed on from those days through the Catholic Church, and much of that is biblical interpretation.

 

[Bishopite]

Dear Bishopite,

Sadly, you are so intent on proving yourself right you are now combining scriptures and discussions that didn’t happen… This reminds me of the 1John 5:7 addition…

Anyways, you’re trying to claim this was the discussion:

You’ve combined John 10:31-36 with John 8:58

 

[mozart-250]

Also, I give far more creedence to listening to what Jesus says on the topic. He consistently said he was the “Son of God”.

Again just by way or reminder…

…just because Jesus stated he is the “Son of God” does not mean that He is “God the Son”.

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

If the text ended there then you would have a point, keep reading on,

48The Jews answered him, “Aren’t we right in saying that you are a Samaritan and demon-possessed?”
49"I am not possessed by a demon," said Jesus, “but I honor my Father and you dishonor me. 50I am not seeking glory for myself; but there is one who seeks it, and he is the judge. 51I tell you the truth, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.”

52At this the Jews exclaimed, “Now we know that you are demon-possessed! Abraham died and so did the prophets, yet you say that if anyone keeps your word, he will never taste death. 53Are you greater than our father Abraham? He died, and so did the prophets. Who do you think you are?”

54Jesus replied, “If I glorify myself, my glory means nothing. My Father, whom you claim as your God, is the one who glorifies me. 55Though you do not know him, I know him. If I said I did not, I would be a liar like you, but I do know him and keep his word. 56Your father Abraham rejoiced at the thought of seeing my day; he saw it and was glad.”

57"You are not yet fifty years old," the Jews said to him, “and you have seen Abraham!”

58"I tell you the truth," Jesus answered, “before Abraham was born, I am!” 59At this, they picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus hid himself, slipping away from the temple grounds.

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

You’re right.

We also have had the Arians, Cathars, and Unitarians.

As I said, why should I believe in some version of Christian Restoration (the Church has been in apostatsy only to be put on the right track some 1700 years after the fact or so) versus Jesus has been with His church all along. It would seem to me that Matthew 16:18 supports the latter view of Christ and His Church.

Particularly when the church claiming to be the restored church has made prophetic statements that are just …umm… false.

It turns out that Charles Russell was indirectly influnced by the Christian Connection movement, which were a group of boston unitarians. Russell was directly influnced by Seventh Day Adventists. In fact, their false argument based on Rev 3:14 comes from a commentary by Uriah Smith, who was a major player in SDA, and was a Christian Connection ordained minister.
James White, Ellen White’s hubbie was also a CC minister too.

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

To the contrary… I believe Jesus was the best communicator in history. However, I believe these Jews were some of the most stiff-necked, hard-headed, non-listeners in the history of mankind…

Polycarp (70-155/160). Bishop of Smyrna. Disciple of John the Apostle.

Ignatius of Antioch (died 98/117). Bishop of Antioch. He wrote much in defense of Christianity.
“In Christ Jesus our Lord, by whom and with whom be glory and power to the Father with the Holy Spirit for ever” (n. 7; PG 5.988).
** “We have also as a Physician the Lord our God Jesus the Christ the only-begotten Son and Word, before time began,** but who afterwards became also man, of Mary the virgin. For ‘the Word was made flesh.’ Being incorporeal, He was in the body; being impassible, He was in a passable body; being immortal, He was in a mortal body; being life, He became subject to corruption, that He might free our souls from death and corruption, and heal them, and might restore them to health, when they were diseased with ungodliness and wicked lusts.” (Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., The ante-Nicene Fathers, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975 rpt., Vol. 1, p. 52, Ephesians 7.)

Tertullian (160-215). African apologist and theologian. He wrote much in defense of Christianity.
"We define that there are two, the Father and the Son, and three with the Holy Spirit, and this number is made by the pattern of salvation…[which] brings about unity in trinity, interrelating the three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. They are three, not in dignity, but in degree, not in substance but in form, not in power but in kind. They are of one substance and power, because there is one God from whom these degrees, forms and kinds devolve in the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit." (Adv. Prax. 23; PL 2.156-7).

Origen (185-254). Alexandrian theologian. Defended Christianity and wrote much about Christianity.

  "If anyone would say that the Word of God or the Wisdom of God had a beginning, let him beware lest he direct his impiety rather against the unbegotten Father, since he denies that he was always Father, and that he has always begotten the Word, and that he always had wisdom in all previous times or ages or whatever can be imagined in priority...There can be no more ancient title of almighty God than that of Father, and it is through the Son that he is Father" (De Princ. 1.2.; PG 11.132).

  "For if [the Holy Spirit were not eternally as He is, and had received knowledge at some time and then became the Holy Spirit] this were the case, the Holy Spirit would never be reckoned in the unity of the Trinity, i.e., along with the unchangeable Father and His Son, unless He had always been the Holy Spirit." (Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975 rpt., Vol. 4, p. 253, de Principiis, 1.111.4)

  If, as the anti-Trinitarians maintain, the Trinity is not a biblical doctrine and was never taught until the council of Nicea in 325, then why do these quotes exist? The answer is simple: the Trinity is a biblical doctrine and it was taught before the council of Nicea in 325 A.D.

carm.org/doctrine/trinityquotes.htm

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

jmm.aaa.net.au/articles/13807.htm

“Our teacher of these things is Jesus Christ, who also was born for this purpose, and was crucified under Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judaea, in the times of Tiberius Caesar; and that we reasonably worship Him, having learned that He is the Son of the true God Himself, and holding Him in the second place, and the prophetic Spirit in the third, we will prove.”
Justin Martyr,First Apology,13A.D. 155),in ANF,I:166-167

“[T]he ever-truthful God, hast fore-ordained, hast revealed beforehand to me, and now hast fulfilled. Wherefore also I praise Thee for all things, I bless Thee, I glorify Thee, along with the everlasting and heavenly Jesus Christ, Thy beloved Son, with whom, to Thee, and the Holy Ghost, be glory both now and to all coming ages. Amen.”
Martyrdom of Polycarp 14(A.D. 157),in ANF,1:42

“For God did not stand in need of these [beings], in order to the accomplishing of what He had Himself determined with Himself beforehand should be done, as if He did not possess His own hands. **For with Him were always present the Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit, by whom and in whom, freely and spontaneously, He made all things, to whom also He speaks, saying, ‘Let Us make man after Our image and likeness;’ **He taking from Himself the substance of the creatures [formed], and the pattern of things made, and the type of all the adornments in the world.”
Irenaeus,Against Heresies,4,20:1(A.D. 180),in ANF,1:487-488

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

"And first, they taught us with one consent that God made all things out of nothing; for nothing was coeval with God: but He being His own place, and wanting nothing, and existing before the ages, willed to make man by whom He might be known; for him, therefore, He prepared the world. For he that is created is also needy; but he that is uncreated stands in need of nothing. God, then, having His own Word internal within His own bowels, begat Him, emitting Him along with His own wisdom before all things. He had this Word as a helper in the things that were created by Him, and by Him He made all things. He is called governing principle’ (arche), because He rules, and is Lord of all things fashioned by Him. He, then, being Spirit of God, and governing principle, and wisdom, and power of the highest, came down upon the prophets, and through them spoke of the creation of the world and of all other things. For the prophets were not when the world came into existence, but the wisdom of God which was in Him, and His holy Word which was always present with Him. Wherefore He speaks thus by the prophet Solomon: When He prepared the heavens I was there, and when He appointed the foundations of the earth I was by Him as one brought up with Him.’ And Moses, who lived many years before Solomon, or, rather, the Word of God by him as by an instrument, says, In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.’ "
Theophilus of Antioch,To Autolycus,II:10(c.A.D. 181),in ANF,II:97-98

“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.”**Tertullian,Against Praxeas,2(post A.D. 213),in ANF,III:598

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

"Bear always in mind that this is the rule of faith which I profess; by it I testify that the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit are inseparable from each other, and so will you know in what sense this is said. Now, observe, my assertion is that the Father is one, and the Son one, and the Spirit one, and that They are distinct from Each Other. This statement is taken in a wrong sense by every uneducated as well as every perversely disposed person, as if it predicated a diversity, in such a sense as to imply a separation among the Father, and the Son, and the Spirit. I am, moreover, obliged to say this, when (extolling the Monarchy at the expense of the Economy) they contend for the identity of the Father and Son and Spirit, that it is not by way of diversity that the Son differs from the Father, but by distribution: it is not by division that He is different, but by distinction; because the Father is not the same as the Son, since they differ one from the other in the mode of their being. For 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.’ In the Psalm His inferiority is described as being a little lower than the angels.’ 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. Happily the Lord Himself employs this expression of the person of the Paraclete, so as to signify not a division or severance, but a disposition (of mutual relations in the Godhead); for He says, I will pray the Father, and He shall send you another Comforter. … even the Spirit of truth,’ thus making the Paraclete distinct from Himself, even as we say that the Son is also distinct from the Father; so that He showed a third degree in the Paraclete, as we believe the second degree is in the Son, by reason of the order observed in the Economy. Besides, does not the very fact that they have the distinct names of Father and San amount to a declaration that they are distinct in personality? For, of course, all things will be what their names represent them to be; and what they are and ever will be, that will they be called; and the distinction indicated by the names does not at all admit of any confusion, because there is none in the things which they designate. “Yes is yes, and no is no; for what is more than these, cometh of evil.”
Tertullian,Against Praxeas,9(post A.D. 213),in ANF,III:603-604

“[T]he statements made regarding Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are to be understood as transcending all time, all ages, and all eternity. For it is the Trinity alone which exceeds the comprehension not only of temporal but even of eternal intelligence; while other things which are not included in it are to be measured by times and ages.”
Origen,First Principles,4:28(A.D. 230),in ANF,IV:377

 

[Bishopite]

Steve,

You made the point earlier in the thread that since the Jews accused Jesus of being a drunkard, satan, demonic etc. and since Jesus wasn’t any of one of those, ergo He also wasn’t God, just a son of God.

Jews: “You’re making yourself God!”
Jesus: “I’m only saying I’m the Son of God”.

My whole point with your exchange here is that of even though the Jews accused Jesus of many things being a drunk, demonic etc, He never admitted that He was a drunk, demonic etc. (because He wasn’t) but what He DID admit to was being the Son of God (which meant He was equal to God in Hebraic thought) AND that He also said He WAS GOD by saying “I AM.”

That’s the point I was making, and if you think I was deliberately being dishonest, it doesn’t matter, my conscience is clear and I am not to proud to admit it if I were.

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

[qoute]
"“Next, I may reasonably turn to those who divide and cut to pieces and destroy that most sacred doctrine of the Church of God, the Divine Monarchy, making it as it were three powers and partitive subsistences and god-heads three. I am told that some among you who are catechists and teachers of the Divine Word, take the lead in this tenet, who are diametrically opposed, so to speak, to Sabellius’s opinions; for he blasphemously says that the Son is the Father, and the Father the Son, but they in some sort preach three Gods, as dividing the sacred Monad into three subsistences foreign to each other and utterly separate. For it must needs be that with the God of the Universe, the Divine Word is united, and the Holy Ghost must repose and habitate in God; thus in one as in a summit, I mean the God of the Universe, must the Divine Triad be gathered up and brought together. For it is the doctrine of the presumptuous Marcion, to sever and divide the Divine Monarchy into three origins,–a devil’s teaching, not that of Christ’s true disciples and lovers of the Saviour’s lessons, For they know well that a Triad is preached by divine Scripture, but that neither Old Testament nor New preaches three Gods. Equally must one censure those who hold the: Son to be a work, and consider that the Lord has come into being, as one of things which really came to be; whereas the divine oracles witness to a generation suitable to Him and becoming, but not to any fashioning or making. A blasphemy then is it, not ordinary, but even the highest, to say that the Lord is in any sort a handiwork. For if He came to be Son, once He was not; but He was always, if (that is) He be in the Father, as He says Himself, and if the Christ be Word and Wisdom and Power (which, as ye know, divine Scripture says), and these attributes be powers of God. If then the Son came into being, once these attributes were not; consequently there was a time, when God was without them; which is most absurd. And why say more on these points to you, men full of the Spirit and well aware of the absurdities which come to view from saying that the Son is a work? Not attending, as I consider, to this circumstance, the authors of this opinion have entirely missed the truth, in explaining, contrary to the sense of divine and prophetic Scripture in the passage, the words, ‘The Lord created me a beginning of His ways unto His works .’ For the sense of He created, as ye know, is not one, for we must understand ‘He created’ in this place, as ‘He set over the works made by Him,’ that is, mode by the Son Himself.’ And ‘He created’ here must not be taken for ‘made,’ for creating differs from making. ‘Is not He thy Father that hath bought thee? hath He not made thee and created thee?’ says Moses in his great song in Deuteronomy. And one may Say to them, O reckless men, is He a work, who is ‘the First-born of every creature, who is born from the womb before the morning star,’ who said, as Wisdom, ‘Before all the hills He begets me?’ And in many passages of the divine oracles is the Son said to have been s generated, but nowhere to have come into being; which manifestly convicts those of misconception about the Lord’s generation, who presume to call His divine and ineffable generation a making. Neither then may we divide into three Godheads the wonderful and divine Monad; nor disparage with the name of ‘work’ the dignity and exceeding majesty of the Lord; but we must believe in God the Father Almighty, and in Christ Jesus His Son, and in the Holy Ghost, and hold that to the God of the universe the Word is united. For ‘I,’ says He, 'and the Father are one; 'and, ‘I in the Father and the Father in Me.’ For thus both the Divine Triad, and the holy preaching of the Monarchy, will be preserved.”
Pope Dionysius[regn 260-268],to Dionysius of Alexandria,fragment in Athanasius’ Nicene Definition 26(A.D. 262),in NPNF2,IV:167-168

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

“Now the person in each declares the independent being and subsistence. But divinity is the property of the Father; and whenever the divinity of these three is spoken of as one, testimony is borne that the property of the Father belongs also to the Son and the Spirit: wherefore, if the divinity may be spoken of as one in three persons, the trinity is established, and the unity is not dissevered; and the oneness Which is naturally the Father’s is also acknowledged to be the Son’s and the Spirit’s.”
Gregory the Wonderworker(Thaumaturgus),Sectional Confession of Faith,8(A.D. 270),in ANF,VI:42

"For the kingdom of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is one, even as their substance is one and their dominion one. Whence also, with one and the same adoration, we worship the one Deity in three Persons, subsisting without beginning, uncreate, without end, and to which there is no successor. For neither will the Father ever cease to be the Father, nor again the Son to be the Son and King, nor the Holy Ghost to be what in substance and personality He is."
Methodius,Oration on the Palms,4(A.D. 305),in ANF,VI:396-397

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

"We believe in one God, the Father almighty,maker of all things, visible and invisible; And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God,begotten from the Father,only-begotten,that is,from the substance of the Father,God from God,light from light,true God from true God,begotten,not made,of one substance with the Father…And in the Holy Spirit."
Creed of Nicea(A.D. 325),in ECC,215-216

" Let no one therefore separate the Old from the New Testament; let no one say that the Spirit in the former is one, and in the latter another; since thus he offends against the Holy Ghost Himself, who with the Father and the Son together is honoured, and at the time of Holy Baptism is included with them in the Holy Trinity. For the Only-begotten Son of God said plainly to the Apostles, Go ye, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Our hope is in Father, and Son, and Holy Ghost. We preach not three God; let the Marcionites be silenced; but with the Holy Ghost through One Son, we preach One God. The Faith is indivisible; the worship inseparable. We neither separate the Holy Trinity, like some; nor do we as Sabellius work confusion. But we know according to godliness One Father, who sent His Son to be our Saviour we know One Son, who promised that He would send the Comforter from the Father; we know the Holy Ghost, who spake in the Prophets, and who on the day of Pentecost descended on the Apostles in the form of fiery tongues, here, in Jerusalem, in the Upper Church of the Apostles…"
Cyril of Jerusalem,Catechetical Lectures,16:4(c.A.D. 350),in NPNF2,VII:116

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

"I can see no limit to my venture of speaking concerning God in terms more precise than He Himself has used. He has assigned the Names–Father, Son and Holy Ghost,–which are our information of the Divine nature. Words cannot express or feeling embrace or reason apprehend the re suits of enquiry carried further; all is ineffable, unattainable, incomprehensible. Language is exhausted by the magnitude of the theme, the splendour of its effulgence blinds the gazing eye, the intellect cannot compass its boundless extent…When Israel hears that its God is one, and that no second god is likened, that men may deem him God, to God Who is God’s Son, the revelation means that God the Father and God the Son are One altogether, not by confusion of Person but by unity of substance. For the prophet forbids us, because God the Son is God, to liken Him to some second deity…But I cannot describe Him, Whose pleas for me I cannot describe. As in the revelation that Thy Only-begotten was born of Thee before times eternal, when we cease to struggle with ambiguities of language and difficulties of thought, the one certainty of His birth remains; so I hold fast in my consciousness the truth that Thy Holy Spirit is from Thee and through Him, although I cannot by my intellect comprehend it."
Hilary of Poiters,On the Trinity,2:5,4:42,12:56(A.D. 359),in NPNF2,IX:53,84,233

"[T]hey ought to confess that the Father is God, the Son God, and the Holy Ghost God, as they have been taught by the divine words, and by those who have understood them in their highest sense. Against those who cast it in our teeth that we are Tritheists, let it be answered that we confess one God not in number but in nature. For everything which is called one in number is not one absolutely, nor yet simple in nature; but God is universally confessed to be simple and not composite."
Basil,To the Caesareans,Epistle 8 (A.D. 360),in NPNF2,VIII:116

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

“For this Synod of Nicaea is in truth a proscription of every heresy. It also upsets those who blaspheme the Holy Spirit, and call Him a Creature. For the Fathers, after speaking of the faith in the Son, straightway added, ‘And we believe in the Holy Ghost,’ in order that by confessing perfectly and fully the faith in the Holy Trinity they might make known the exact form of the Faith of Christ, and the teaching of the Catholic Church. For it is made clear both among you and among all, and no Christian can have a doubtful mind on the point, that our faith is not in the Creature, but in one God, Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible: and in one Lord Jesus Christ His Only-begotten Son, and in one Holy Ghost; one God. known in the holy and perfect Trinity, baptized into which, and in it united to the Deity, we believe that we have also inherited the kingdom of the heavens, in Christ Jesus our Lord, hrough whom to the Father be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.”
Athanasius,To the Bishops in Africa,11(A.D. 372),in NPNF2,IV:492

“And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of Life, who proceeds from the Father, who together with the Father and the Son is worshipped and glorified.”
Epiphanius,Creed(A.D. 374),in NP,8

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

“The Substance of the Trinity is, so to say, a common Essence in that which is distinct, an incomprehensible, ineffable Substance. We hold the distinction, not the confusion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; a distinction without separation; a distinction without plurality; and thus we believe in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit as each existing from and to eternity in this divine and wonderful Mystery: not in two Fathers, nor in two Sons, nor in two Spirits. For there is one God, the Father, of Whom are all things, and we in Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by Whom are all things, and we by Him.’ There is One born of the Father, the Lord Jesus, and therefore He is the Only-begotten. There is also One Holy Spirit,’ as the same Apostle hath said. So we believe,so we read, so we hold. We know the fact of distinction, we know nothing of the hidden mysteries; we pry not into the causes, but keep the outward signs vouchsafed unto us.”
Ambrose,On the Christian Faith,8:92(A.D. 380),in NPNF2,X:274

“We believe in one God,the Father,almighty,maker of heaven and earth,of all things visible and invisible;And in one Lord Jesus Christ,the only-begotten Son of God,begotten from the Father before all ages,light from light,true God from true God,begotten not made,of one substance with the Father,through Whom all things came into existence…And in the Holy Spirit,the Lord and life-giver,Who proceeds from the Father, Who with the Father and the Son is together worshipped and together glorified…”
Creed of Constantinople(A.D. 381),in ECC,297-298

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

“For neither the centurion nor that poor woman who for twelve years was wasting away with a bloody flux, had believed in the mysteries of the Trinity, for these were revealed to the Apostles after the resurrection of Christ; so that the faith of such as believe in the mystery of the Trinity might have its due preeminence: but it was her singleness of mind and her devotion to her God that met with our Lord’s approval: ‘For she said within herself, If I do but touch his garment, I shall be made whole.’ This is the faith which our Lord said was seldom found. This is the faith which even in the case of those who believe aright is hard to find in perfection. ‘According to your faith, be it done unto you,’ says God. I do not, indeed, like the sound of those words. For if it be done unto me according to my faith, I shall perish. And yet I certainly believe in God the Father, I believe in God the Son, and I believe in God the Holy Ghost. I believe in one God; nevertheless, I would not have it done unto me according to my faith.”
Jerome,Against Luciferians,15(A.D. 382),in NPNF2,VI:327

 

[Daniel_Marsh]

"But they[ie. Catholics] worship the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, One Godhead; God the Father, God the Son and (do not be angry) God the Holy Ghost, One Nature in Three Personalities, intellectual, perfect, Self-existent, numerically separate, but not separate in Godhead."
Gregory of Nazianzen,Against the Arians and concerning himself,Oration 33:16(ante A.D. 389),in NPNF2,VII:334

“Seest thou that he implies that there is no difference in the gifts of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost? Not confounding the Persons, God forbid! but declaring the equal honor of the Essence. For that which the Spirit bestows, this he saith that God also works; this, that the Son likewise ordains and grants. Yet surely if the one were inferior to the other, or the other to it, he would not have thus set it down nor would this have been his way of consoling the person who was vexed.”
Chrysostom John,Homily on 1st Corinthians,29:4(c.A.D. 392),in NPNF1,XII:171