Some Religious Thoughts

Some ReligiousThoughts

Thomas Allen

Discussed below are the wisdom of John, “person” as used in the Trinity Doctrine, “kind” meaning “species,” and the Catholic Church as a cult.

More Wisdom of John

I used to listen to a religious radio program hosted by John, whose last name I do not recall, and who died in 2012. He was a lay clergyman. He made two observations about people who claimed that God told them to do something. First, if any of these individuals ever heard God speak to them, they would likely be overwhelmed and drop dead from the shock and awe. Second, if God really was telling these people to do the things that they claimed He told them to do, then God must be suffering from schizophrenia (informal, figurative usage). He tells one person to do X and another person to do anti-X. That is, He tells one person to do one thing and another person to do the opposite. More than one clergyman has said, “One should be skeptical of people who claim that God told them to do something.” Many clergymen note that God ceased giving revelations in the first century AD; therefore, anyone who claims that God revealed something to him should be viewed with suspicion. (For more on the wisdom of John, see “Some Random Thoughts on Religion” by Thomas Allen.)

Person

Trinitarians use the word “person” in a technical sense instead of its common, everyday sense. To them, the Godhead is three “persons” yet one “person.” That is, they used “person” to mean one entity (or God) and three entities. To say that the three persons are manifestations of one person is Modalism. To say that the three persons are independent is tritheism.

Common sense and logic dictate that three persons (such as Peter, Paul, and Mary) are three distinct individuals or entities; they are not one person or entity. However, adherents of the Trinity Doctrine call common sense and logic heretics because three persons are one person.

When a Trinitarian explains the Trinity Doctrine, he must tread carefully between Scylla and Charybdis to keep from crashing on the rock of Modalism and being swept away by the whirlpool of tritheism.

Kind

Some “creationists” claim that the term “kind” in the Bible  corresponds to what modern taxonomists refer to as “family.” It does not mean species. 

These creationists advocate the “created-kind” theory. That is, for example, God created a cat kind from which all members of the cat family, Felidae, evolved. They deny the immutability of a species, i.e., “according to its kind” or “after its kind” — like begets like.

However, the Bible uses the term “kind” to refer to what modern taxonomists define  as “species.” According to Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, number 4327, “kind” means “species.”

Is the Catholic Church a Cult?

In “Revival of Early Christian Heresies: A Comparative Study of Early Christian Heresies and Mormonism,” Christian Jeo N. Talaguit gives two attributes of a cult: (1) "[a] cult . . . harbors an authoritative leader or governing body that can demand obedience from its followers due to its claims as divinely ordained” and (2) “[a cult advocates] the continuous revelation from God and mankind.”

The Pope is the authoritative leader who can demand obedience from his followers. Also, through the Pope and ecumenical councils, God continues to reveal doctrines that are not taught in the New Testament. Thus, God revealed the doctrines of the infallibility of the Pope, Mariology, and purgatory, among others. Since Protestants reject these Catholic doctrines, they are obviously heretics.

Copyright © 2026 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Only One Race: The Human Race

Only One Race: The Human Race

Thomas Allen

The notion that only one race, i.e., the human race, exists is globalist propaganda — be it from the Catholic Church of years gone by, which many gullible or ignorant Protestants still believe, or today’s globalist elite. It meshes seamlessly into their nightmare of a one-world state with its one-world government and one-world religion. To achieve this globalist goal, humanity must be homogenized into a monochromatic, mongrel man with as little individual distinction as possible. 

Proponents of “only one race, the human race, exists,” which is also known as the “unity of man doctrine,” are, in essence, calling Martin Luther King a liar. King’s agenda was based on the existence of multiple human races. Fervently, he advocated giving Negroes special privileges. If the Negro race does not exist, it cannot receive special privileges. The existence of the Negro race with special privileges necessitated the existence of other races. (For more on King, go to https://tcallenco.weebly.com/social-issues.html.)

Adherents of “only one race, the human race, exists” assert that all the races (or people groups, as many prefer) came into being following the Tower of Babel dispersal.  Only two actions could have caused the formation of the human races: the miraculous or the natural. The miraculous requires God to create the races. Although Acts 17:26b supports the miraculous approach, they reject it. The natural requires Darwinian principles, i.e., evolution, although they reject evolution.  (See “Jeremiah on the Fixity of Race” and “Analysis of ‘How did all the different “races” arise (from Noah’s family?’” by Thomas Allen.) Curiously, these adherents deny the existence of the various human races while describing how they came to be and acknowledging that various races or people groups have recognizable features.

Most likely, adherents of “only one race, the human race, exists” reject the miraculous approach because it interferes with their unity of man doctrine. If God created the human races, then obviously, He would want them preserved. Consequently, they would have to support policies that protected them: segregation and separation. However, their unity of man doctrine requires, even demands, integration, miscegenation, and amalgamation: policies that destroy them. Thus, they promote the demise of the races that God created.

Often, proponents of “only one race, the human race, exists,” like to ask people who reject their doctrine of the unity of man, “Is there a superior race?” or similar questions. (If races do not exist, a superior race cannot exist.) They seem to expect as a response, “Yes, the White or Aryan race,” or words to that effect. They do not expect or accept any person, especially a White, to identify the superiority of another race.

For example, in general, Negroes are superior to Whites as boxers. They have the innate advantage of thicker skulls and, therefore, can better withstand blows to the head. Also, they have longer arms and can, thus, hit a White target before a White gets close enough to hit them.

Another example is that Blacks in general are superior to other races at playing basketball. The dominance of Black players in the National Basketball Association proves this superiority. Approximately 72 percent of NBA players are Black. Likewise, since this example conflicts with their doctrine of the unity of man, they also reject it.

One more example that the proponents of “only one race, the human race, exists,” reject is the superiority of Blacks over Whites in surviving and reproducing in the lower latitudes. Because their pigmented skin prevents ultraviolet light from destroying vitamin B-12, which is necessary for reproduction, Blacks are superior to Whites in surviving and reproducing in low latitudes. Nevertheless, these proponents must likewise find this example unacceptable because it also conflicts with their doctrine of the unity of man.

Adherents of “only one race, the human race, exists” are also proponents of the races-are-social-construct school. To any extent that distinguishable features of various people groups (races) exist, they are social constructs. They certainly are not biological.

As shown above, adherents of “only one race, the human race, exists” reject everything, including all facts, that contradict or interfere with their doctrine of the unity of man. 

Copyright © 2025 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Romans 9:5 and the Trinity Doctrine

Romans 9:5 and the Trinity Doctrine

Thomas Allen

Romans 9:5 is one of the strongest verses used to prove the Trinity Doctrine. A description of the Trinity Doctrine is given in the appendix. Following are six translations of this verse.

New International Version (NIV): Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of the Messiah, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen.

English Standard Version (ESV): To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.

King James Version (KJV): Whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Amen.

New American Standard Bible (NASB): whose are the fathers, and from whom is the Christ according to the flesh, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.

Revised Standard Version (RSV): to them belong the patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ. God who is over all be blessed for ever. Amen.

New American Bible (Revised Edition) (NABRE): theirs the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, is the Messiah. God who is over all be blessed forever. Amen.

Of these six, the NIV and ESV are the most Trinitarian translations; they clearly declare that Christ or the Messiah is God. Although Trinitarians read the KJV and NASB as supporting the Trinity Doctrine, they can be read as not supporting it; consequently, they are not as emphatic in their support of the Trinity Doctrine as are the NIV and ESV. The RSV and NABRE definitely do not support the Trinity Doctrine; they clearly distinguish between Christ and God. Trinitarians have translated all these versions — except for the Jews who may have been involved in these translations.

As can be seen from the verses above, punctuation is important in the meaning of the verse. Paul’s original letter did contain any punctuation, nor did any of the ancient copies. Punctuation depends on the biases and predilections of copyists and translators. Whichever translation one uses depends on what one is trying to prove.

Based on his other writings, Paul, who wrote Romans, was not a Trinitarian. Paul writes (emphasis added):

1 Corinthians 8:4: As concerning therefore the eating of those things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one [not three in one or one in three].

1 Corinthians 8:6: yet to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him.

1 Timothy 2:5: For there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus,

Ephesians 4:6: One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all.

In spite of these four verses, among other antitrinitarian verses in Paul’s letters, Trinitarians cite verses in Paul’s letters to prove the Trinity Doctrine. If Paul were a Trinitarian, as he would have been if he provided proof text for the Trinity Doctrine, he was a highly confused Trinitarian.

Strangely, in their war with the Arians, Athanasius and his allies never cited Romans 9:5 in support of their Trinity Doctrine. If this verse supported the Trinity Doctrine, surely they would have cited it. At that time, theologians understood this verse as the RSV and NABRE translate it. Nevertheless, today’s Trinitarians consider this verse to be a key verse in proving the validity of the Trinity Doctrine.

Even if the NIV and ESV are the correct translations, this verse does not support the Trinity Doctrine. It does not distinguish the Godhead as three distinct Persons, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Since no Person of the Trinity can be God over all because that would make him God over the other two, “God over all” must mean the whole Deity. Thus, if anything, this verse shows that no distinction exists in the Godhead — God is one, one Person, one Being. Instead of supporting the Trinity Doctrine, the NIV and ESV translations support a modalist explanation of the Godhead — God reveals Himself as three manifestations or roles: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.

Appendix: The Trinity Doctrine

The Trinitarian Athanasian Creed declares, “Thus the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God. Yet there are not three gods; there is but one God.” Thus, three distinct, co-equal, eternal persons (the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) are one God. Although the three are distinct and independent, they are the same. Accordingly, three are one and one is three. That is, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit form and are the one true God. God is one being or entity in three persons: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — each being fully God. Each individual person is God, and collectively, they are one God.

Trinitarians assert that the terms “father,” “son,” “person,” “relation,” “unity,” “sending,” and “begotten” are not to be understood literally when used of God. That is, when these terms are used of God, they are not to be understood to mean what they mean when applied to humans. Consequently, the writers of the Bible are deceiving the readers because when the Bible says that Jesus is God’s only begotten Son, he is not a real son, and he is not really begotten. Also, “the Son of God” means “God the Son.” However, “the son of Isaac,” who is Jacob, does not mean “Isaac the son,” who is the son of Abraham. Therefore, before reading the Bible, a person needs to be trained in what common everyday words like “father,” “son,” “begotten,” and “sent” really mean when used in the Bible, or else the Bible will lead him down the road to heresy. He will certainly not derive the Trinitarian Doctrine from merely reading and studying the Bible. (Before the fourth century, most Christians were heretics because they did not worship a Triune God. They believed that the Son had a beginning, i.e., he was not eternal, and that the Son was subordinate to the Father, i.e., was not equal to the Father. As a result, according to the Nicene Creed and later creeds, all these Christians were anathematized.)

Because the New Testament was written in common everyday Greek, one would and should expect that the writers used words in their common everyday meaning. Consequently, Unitarians understand the words in the New Testament referring to God and Jesus to have their common everyday meaning. Trinitarians do not; they give them special technical meanings. Perhaps, this explains why the Catholic Church objected to common people and even aristocrats who had been not trained on how to read the Bible reading the Bible. Untrained people would read words to mean what they commonly mean instead of the technical meanings that Trinitarians give them, and, thus, they risk becoming heretics.

To prove their doctrine, Trinitarians have to change the meaning of words. Also, Trinitarians prefer to follow the councils from the fourth century onward and the confessions formed during the Reformation and later, i.e., the speculative opinions of men, instead of solely or primarily relying on the Bible. Could it be that Trinitarians prefer following these councils instead of the Bible because the Bible does not support their doctrine? (Yes, they can cite passages that they claim support the Trinity Doctrine, but their support is only oblique. They also have to give words special technical meanings to support their doctrine. Other passages refute the Trinity Doctrine if one reads them as they are written without the lens of Trinitarianism.) Interestingly, some verses that Trinitarians use to prove the Trinity Doctrine, Unitarians use to disprove it. Examples of such verses are the salutations in Paul’s letters.

Trinitarians have far more text to explain away than do Unitarians. If one reads all the passages that seem to contradict the Trinity Doctrine literally (read them to mean what they say), he will be led into heresy. To protect oneself from heresy, one must read the Bible wearing the thick glasses of Trinitarianism.

Many Trinitarians believe that the Old Testament teaches Trinitarianism. Nevertheless, Jews are so stupid that they have failed to realize that they have been worshiping a Triune God for thousands of years. If true, why did not Jesus and the writers of the New Testament clearly, comprehensibly, completely, and unequivocally explain Trinitarianism to correct the erroneous beliefs of the Jews? Instead, they concealed Trinitarianism with vague references to it so that theologians would not discover it until the fourth century and then only after a heavy dose of Platonism. 

Intelligent people do not try to explain the Trinity Doctrine so that common people can understand it because people who try to explain it end up crashing on the rock of tritheism or being swept away by the whirlwind of modalism.

When it comes to the Trinity Doctrine, many (most) people are like Thomas Jefferson: They do not have enough sense to understand it. For them, the proposition of Platonic mysticism that three are one and one is three is unintelligible.

Of the Bibles listed at Bible Gateway that I have reviewed, the following five most Trinitarian translations are the Amplified Bible, New Century Version, Christian Study Bible, Common English Bible, and New English Bible. The five least Trinitarian translations are the New Revised Standard Version, King James Version, New Matthew Bible, American Standard Version, and 21ct King James.

Copyright © 2023 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Paul Becomes a Heretic

 Paul Becomes a Heretic

Thomas Allen

The following is a summary of Chapter II, “The Changes in the Eschatological Programme” of Section IV of The Formation of Christian Dogma: An Historical Study of its Problem by Martin Werner and translated by S.G.F. Brandon (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1957), pages 283–294. My comments are enclosed in brackets.

For Paul, the final resurrection would occur in two stages. The first came with the return of Christ and his reign on earth. Next, came the final victory over the angels and spiritual powers that had rebelled against God. At the end of the war came the destruction of the Angel of Death. Then, came the last and Final Resurrection.

According to Paul, only the Christians, the saved, who had died before the Second Coming of Christ were resurrected with his Second Coming. The saved living then were “changed.” At the “end,” the dead who had not been resurrected would be raised. Thus, Paul reckoned the Final Judgment occurring in two stages. First, came the judgment of Christians when Christ returned. Last, came a general Final Judgment at the end of Christ’s rule when all the other dead were resurrected. In the Final Judgment, Christians would serve with Christ as judges. 

Paul believed, or at least strongly suggested, that the heavenly Christ would return in his lifetime or shortly afterward. This return would manifest itself as a predestinated number of Christ’s followers, i.e., those in fellowship with him, taking part in the glory of God’s Kingdom in a perfect world order. This world order would be spiritual. Along with the advent of God’s Kingdom would be the final resurrection. 

As the Apostolic generation passed away without the return of Christ, the immediacy of the Second Coming began to fade. Because of this delay, the Church abandoned Paul’s doctrines of the Second Coming and the End Time.

Because of the delayed Second Coming and the rise of a new generation, the Church had no choice but to abandon Paul’s notion about the imminent return of Christ and his advice not to procreate. It also had to abandon Paul’s notion of election. (Paul held that when all the predestined elect had come to faith in Jesus in the last generation [Romans 11:25ff], then Christ would return.)

Nevertheless, the idea of an Antichrist remained popular. The Antichrist was often related to heresy, as in 1 John 2:18ff. For example, Athanasius (293?-373) accused Arius (256?-336) of being the precursor of the Antichrist.

After Paul’s death, the early Church still clung to Paul’s notion of two ages at the end of time. Thus, the Kingdom of God would fulfill the End Time by destroying the existing natural world and the creation of a new and perfect heaven and earth.

However, over time, the Church began abandoning Paul’s view of the End Time as a spiritual new world and replacing it with an End Time as a cleansing of the natural world. For example, Methodius (d.c. 311) argued that if God destroyed the present natural world, He would admit that His first creation was defective. Thus, the future burning of the world should be understood as cleansing the world, i.e., a process of renewing, and not as destroying the world.  Eventually, the Church adopted the doctrine of the future resurrection of the natural physical body.

Opposing this new doctrine of the Resurrection were the heretics, who relied heavily on the Bible in their opposition. Moreover, they argued, “that the resurrection of the physical body to immortality was intrinsically impossible” (p. 287). Because the physical body was of earthly matter, it was mortal. Further, when the physical body died, it decomposed, and its elements returned to the earth. Some of these elements became part of another body. Consequently, a specific individual could never be reassembled with the original parts. Also, between birth and death, each individual body was constantly changing and, therefore, never really remained identical with itself. [Can the omnipotence of God overcome these problems?]

The heretics’ strongest arguments came from the Scriptures. According to Psalm 1:5, “the ungodly would not generally be raised up, even for judgment” (p. 288). Likewise, Job 7:9-10 declared that the dead would not be raised.

The heretics also used the New Testament to argue against the resurrection of the physical natural body. Paul had declared that “the physical body was the seat of sin” (p. 288) and, thus, not worthy of resurrection. At the Final Resurrection, the saved would receive a supernatural body like the body of angels, and, in this way, enter into everlasting life. Restoration of the natural physical body merely meant continuing “the earthly-natural mode of existence in the eternity of the other world” (p. 288). Citing Romans 7:18, 24, 8:8, 1 Corinthians 15:44,50, and Galatians 5:7, the heretics condemned the thought of resurrecting the physical natural body.

This attack against the resurrection of the physical body pushed the Church to defend its dogma more vigorously. The resurrected body would be an exact replica of the natural physical body when it was alive. [Does this mean that if an individual died as an infant, he would forever remain an infant? Likewise, does it mean that if an individual died of old age, he would always appear to be old-age?] Some Church Fathers, such as Tertullian (160?-230?), declared “that the resurrection of Jesus had been a reconstruction of his former natural physical body” (p. 289). (This assertion conflicted with Paul’s teachings in 2 Corinthians 5:16.)

“Accordingly for Paul ‘resurrection’ meant, exclusively and fundamentally, precisely not restoration of the old, of what had been, but change into a new and supernatural form of being, because ‘resurrection’, as he saw it, appertained to those fundamental events, in which, since and by virtue of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, the passing of the old and the advent of the new aeon were fulfilled” (p. 289). Paul’s idea of the End Time was a two-stage or two-age resurrection.

However, the Church had abandoned Paul’s doctrine and had substituted a new doctrine. According to the Church’s new doctrine, the Resurrection resulted in “the exact restitution and conservation, at the End of the Days, of that which belonged to the old aeon” (p. 289).

In response to Paul’s claim that the saved would attain a spiritual body, the Catholic theologians interpreted his claim “to mean that physical with which the Holy Spirit had united itself” (p. 290). However, the heretics replied by citing 1 Corinthians 15:50, where Paul declares, “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.” 

Another dispute arose over the fate of the saved dead before the Second Coming. Paul addressed this question in 2 Corinthians 5:1-4. He did not envision this intermediate state to last long, as he expected the Second Coming to occur in his lifetime or soon afterward. However, with the long delay of the Second Coming, the Church moved away from Paul’s teaching on this issue.

This delay caused the Church to place more importance on the final destiny of the individual than on the ultimate fate of the present world. Using Jesus’ parable of the rich man and the poor Lazarus (Luke 16:19-21), the Catholic theologians developed the doctrine that the saved would enjoy some of the blessings that awaited them after the Resurrection. Thus, this new doctrine of the Church conflicted with Paul’s.

Before this change in doctrine, the Final Judgment occurred after the Resurrection. With the new doctrine, a judgment had to occur directly after the individual died. Paul had taught that the saved would be resurrected and judged with the Second Coming — this was the First Judgment. Now, the Church’s doctrine of a judgment of the individual immediately after death replaced Paul’s doctrine of the First Judgment.

Moreover, the Church’s new doctrine of the soul of the saved going to Paradise or Heaven immediately after death replaced the Hebrew concept of the soul with the pagan Greek concept. The Hebrews held that the soul was so united with the physical body that it had no conscious existence once the body died. On the other hand, the pagan Greeks held that the soul was independent of and trapped in the physical body. Once the body died, the soul was liberated and continued  conscious existence in another state.

When the new doctrines of the Church were combined, the soul of a dead believer went to Heaven where it remained until the Resurrection. When the Resurrection occurred, the soul would be united with its resurrected natural physical body.

By now, Paul was a heretic and his doctrines on the End Times and the Resurrection and the fate of the dead before these events were heresy. Although the Church never overtly declared him a heretic or his doctrines as heresy, it did so covertly by condemning as heretics those who used Paul’s doctrines in opposing the Catholic doctrines on these issues. However, the Church did destroy the truth to avoid overtly making Paul a heretic by asserting that its doctrines were consistent with Paul’s, although they were not.

Copyright © 2021 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Rebuttals to Some Unlimited Immigration Arguments

Rebuttals to Some Unlimited Immigration Arguments

Thomas Allen

Below are rebuttals to arguments that immigration helps the economy and does not destroy languages or genocide people.

Destructiveness of Uncontrolled Immigration
Ask the Tasmanians how much immigrants helped their economy. Oh, I forgot, immigrants drove the Tasmanians to extinction. One would need a seance to ask them.

Ask the Indians of Hispaniola how much immigrants helped their economy. Again, I forgot that immigrants, mostly from Africa, drove them out of existence; what was not killed off were bred out of existence.

How well are the Chinese immigrants, who are genociding the Tibetans, helping the Tibetans economically? It may help the Chinese, but it is driving the Tibetans to extinction.

Then there are the Palestinians. Jewish immigrants have taken much of the land of the Palestinians and drove most Palestinians into large-scale concentration camps into which the Israelis fire missiles. Immigration may have helped the immigrant Jews economically, but it has done little for the native Palestinians.

Immigration was a great benefit to the Roman Empire. It so utterly destroyed the Roman Empire that nearly a thousand years were needed before the economy of the area covered by the old Empire returned to where it was before immigration destroyed it.

Mexico lost Texas to Anglo-American settlers primarily because they came as colonists and not as immigrants. They were of a different culture and language than Mexico and came in such numbers that they did not have to assimilate.

Immigration and Language
Some opponents of open-borders-unrestricted immigration claim that unrestricted immigration can change, corrupt, and even obliterate the language of a country. Some supporters of unrestricted immigration claim that such a notion is nonsense.

As evidence to support their assertion that unrestricted immigration does not destroy language, they point to the French-speaking Canadians. French-speaking Canadians have preserved their language for centuries in a sea of English speakers.

The proponents overlook the North American Indians. The North American Indians drowned in a flood of unrestricted immigration from Europe. As a result, many Indian languages are now extinct. Furthermore, many tribes became extinct — having been genocided by disease, war, and miscegenation. Moreover, not only do many remaining tribes no longer speak the language of their ancestors, none know how to speak it.

The Romans offer another example that supports those who oppose unrestricted immigration. Failing to control immigration, the Romans lost their Empire. If it were not for the Catholic Church adopting Latin as its official language, Latin would have died with the Empire. It would have gone the way of Gothic, Doric, Hittite, Babylonian, Assyrian, Punic, Egyptian, Coptic, and many other dead ancient languages.

Both the opponents and proponents of unrestricted immigration can find examples to support their argument. Nevertheless, the weight of the evidence supports the opponents.

North American Indians
As discussed above, many Indian languages and even Indian tribes have perished under the weight of uncontrolled immigration. Moreover, as a result of uncontrolled immigration, some Indian tribes have deteriorated so much that they no longer use genetics to decide who is a member of the tribe. Instead, they use cultural identity: Anyone who identifies with the culture of the tribe is a member. (In this respect, they are like many Southerners, Paul Gottfried [a Northerner], and some writers of Abbeville Institute. They identify Southerners, a term that they use to cover not only Whites, but also Blacks and presumably other races, by culture instead of genetics. Thus, they err. Correctly speaking, “Southerner” is an ethnic group, i.e., a genetic and cultural group, and identifies Whites born and reared in the South and Whites who have lived in the South so long that they are indistinguishable from native Southern Whites. Moreover, Blacks in the South differ culturally from Southerners and, also, from Whites.)

Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Issues with Trinitarianism and its Christology — Part 1

Issues with Trinitarianism and its Christology — Part 1

Thomas Allen

    Trinitarianism and its Christology may be 100 percent correct, which would be surprising because they are manmade. The following issues and problems with Trinitarianism and its Christology are presented in no order of importance.
    1. The way that the creeds relating to the Trinity Doctrine and its Christology were developed and adopted is a disgrace to Christianity and an insult to Jesus. Their development and adoption depended mostly on speculation, intrigue, and violence and little on Christian charity, forgiveness, humility, restraint, and the Scriptures. They were long on speculation and short on Scripture. Their adoption depended much more on conniving and coercing than on reasoning and persuading. The doctrine of the faction that excelled in cunning, scheming, bribing, and wielding the sword won and became orthodox. Most of the leaders at the councils that adopted these doctrines seemed to be extremely egotistical and void of humility. More often than not, individual egos seemed to be more important than God, Christ, or the Scriptures. The winner got everything, and the losers were anathemized and were often exiled and stripped of their property. Thus, the dissidents were not allowed the dignity of maintaining their opinion. They had to agree with the majority of the council or be anathemized and, otherwise, punished.
    Especially in the Eastern Empire, Christians believed in the vendetta and carried their grudges for a century or more. When they gained enough power in a council, they would declare the theological ancestors of their theological opponents heretics, even if they had been dead for more than a century.
    Furthermore, the discussions of the various councils often concerned church politics more than Christian doctrine. Usually, the side that won the debate had imperial support and became orthodoxy. Imperial support came not only from the emperor, but also his family, courtiers, and the bureaucracy. Moreover, religious issues were often used to advance political issues. Thus, the development and adoption of the Christian creeds on the Trinity and related issues depended much more on politics, both secular and church, than on theological debate.
    When these doctrines were adopted, the behavior of Christians was like that of radical Muslims of today. Both the clergy and laity behaved like today’s college students who seek to oppress all with which they disagree; they disdained the free exchange of ideas. The councils that developed these Christian doctrines often behaved like political conventions at their worst. All sorts of corruption (bribery, threats, violence, etc.) and political influence were used to win the agreement. Slogans, symbols, stereotypes, and guilt by association were used much more frequently to advance doctrinal discourse than reasonable, intelligent, and logical debate.
    Moreover, the laity did not behave any better than their leaders in the councils. Often, they acted worse. Although the laymen were ignorant of the theology involved, they were hostile toward anyone who disagreed with them.
    Arguments for the various competing doctrines were often written so convoluted, complex, and technical that few could understand them.
    If it were not for several emperors of the Roman Empire, the Nicene Trinity may never have become the orthodox doctrine of the Catholic Church. These emperors enforced the Nicene Trinity doctrine, while suppressing competing doctrine.
    Christianity would have been a more peaceful and Christlike religion if both the “orthodox” and “heterodoxy” had followed the Scriptures instead of abandoning them in favor of speculation. In developing their doctrines, both the orthodox and heterodoxy seem to prefer speculation to the Scriptures, although both used selected Scripture to support their speculations. Moreover, to have used persuasion instead of coercion to convince opponents of the error of their doctrine would have resulted in a more peaceful, trusting, and loving society.
    If the clergy had expended the effort of living as Christ taught instead of forcing their speculations about his being on everyone else, this era would have been much more peaceful and probably would have made greater advancement in Christianity. Moreover, a united Roman Empire would most likely have lasted longer, and Islam may never have left the Arabian peninsula.
    2. Jesus’ rise to become God Himself, i.e., the eternal God the Son, who is equal to the Father, had much more to do with Christianity becoming the state religion of the Roman Empire than with anything in the Scriptures. Jesus had to lose his image as a human rebel against the Empire. Furthermore, having Jesus as God suited the autocratically ruled Empire much better than having Jesus remaining a humble man. As a result, the gospel texts that stressed Jesus’ humanity and supported his subordination to the Father, were minimized. Paul’s letters describing Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection were transformed from the political context in which these events occurred to a cosmic event.
    3. How many orthodox Trinitarians realize that the prevailing (orthodox) idea of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit for about 200 years before Constantine made Christianity the state religion was similar to the heresy of the Jehovah Witnesses: the preexisting Son was subordinate to the Father and was not eternal and the Holy Spirit was an attribute or operation of the Father instead of a person of a triune God (however, many believed that the Holy Spirit was a person, but inferior to the Father and the Son). Before then, the prevailing idea of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit was similar to the heresy of the Biblical Unitarians (not to be confused with Unitarian Universalists) and Christadelphians.
    4. In the early days of Christianity, people believed that if the state (country) practiced an incorrect form of Christianity, God would punish that state and society with wars, plagues, famines, and other disasters. If true, Orthodoxy must have been an incorrect form of Christianity because the Roman Empire collapsed under Christianity. Furthermore, Orthodox Christianity in North Africa and the Middle East fell to Islam.
    5. The Church Fathers who developed the Nicene Creed used Platonic philosophy and speculative reasoning in deriving their Creed. Scriptural support in its development was scant. Scriptural support came later when the Scriptures were interpreted to support a predetermined dogma.
    6. A majority vote in a council of bishops decided to change the unipersonal God about whom Jesus preached and to whom he prayed to a triune God of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Thus, they elevated the man Jesus to Deity (Paul, Peter, and John referred to Jesus as a man and never as God Himself). Moreover, the council was not even representative of the Church as a whole — as though a council could change God.
    7. From the late fourth century onward, anyone who disagreed with the Catholic doctrine of the Trinity (or any other Catholic doctrine) has been branded a heretic. For more than a thousand years, free religious debate ceased. Apparently, the Trinity Doctrine is so insecure that Trinitarians must suppress any questioning of their doctrine. Moreover, Trinitarians became notorious for their book burning.
    8. Ask a Trinitarian if there is only one God, and he will answer, “Yes.” Ask him if Jesus is God, and again he will answer, “Yes.” Next, ask him if the Heavenly Father is God, and he will answer, “Yes.” Finally, ask him if Jesus is the Heavenly Father, and he will answer, “No.” Thus, the Trinitarian says that there is one God, and then he says that there are two Gods. Which is correct? For there to be only one God, the answer to one of the questions must be incorrect: Jesus is not God; the Heavenly Father is not God; or Jesus is the Heavenly Father. This is the logical and reasonable conclusion. However, the Trinitarian would muster all the logic that Trinitarianism allows and declare, “Not two Gods, but three Gods who are one God” and then quote the Athanasian Creed, “So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God; and yet they are not three Gods, but one God.” Thus, he shows that the Trinity Doctrine is void of logic and reason and relies mainly on mere assertion (and for hundreds of years, on political power).
    9. For many Trinitarians, the test of a true Christian is not believing Jesus, loving him, and striving to follow his example and teachings. It is believing what some ancient councils, about which most Christians know nothing, said about his nature.
    10. Why do Protestants reject the doctrine of Mary being the Mother of God? It is such a component part of the Nicene Trinity Doctrine that for a thousand years any Trinitarian who questioned it was excommunicated and condemned as a heretic.
    11. Jesus, Paul, and John had plenty of opportunities to explain clearly this previously unknown triune God, yet they failed to do so. Why? Completely alien to their Jewish audience, who believed in a unipersonal God, was the concept of a triune God. So obscure is the support of the doctrine of the Trinity and dual nature of Christ in the New Testament that around 400 years after the crucifixion of Jesus, a good application of Greek philosophy, and the frequent use of force against dissenters were needed to discover it.
    12. Nowhere does the Bible declare that there are three equal, eternal beings, each of whom possesses all the attributes of Deity, yet they together constitute but one God. Moreover, nowhere does the Bible claim that Jesus had both a human nature and a divine nature and that these two natures made one person. As these concepts would have been completely new to the Jewish audience to whom Jesus and the apostles preached, one would think that they would have explained these new concepts in detail.
    13. The Trinity Doctrine and its Christology of Jesus having two natures are two dogmas that have been so deeply inculcated in the Christian mind that few Protestants question it — and the few who do are usually condemned as heretics. Yet, these two dogmas are based on Catholic tradition instead of the Scriptures. Whatever scriptural support is given for them it is via Catholic traditional interpretation of Scriptures. However, these supporting verses can just as easily and usually more legitimately be interpreted such that they do not support the Catholic dogma of the Trinity Doctrine and its Christology. (Another Catholic doctrine based more on tradition than on the Scriptures is that of the unity of man, i.e., all humans are descended from a common set of parents. It has been so ingrained in the minds of men that even secular humanists, atheists, and nearly all other non-Christians do not question this dogma. The disagreement between them and the traditional Catholic dogma is when the initial set of patents came into being and how they came to be. Moreover, both believe in Darwinism although many of the followers of the traditional Catholic doctrine deny it.) So much for Protestantism’s boast of freeing itself from Catholic dogma.
    14. Beyond the comprehension of mere Christians are the Trinity Doctrine and its concomitant Christology. Only an enlightened elite, the illuminated ones, can truly understand them — so asserts Gregory of Nazianzus, a principal force behind making the Holy Spirit a coequal, coeternal God along with the Father and the Son. Moreover, Gregory rejected the notion that one can come to know God by applying rational thought to the Scriptures. Apparently, a great deal of philosophical speculation is necessary to really know God. Consequently, Gregory’s claim that only the enlightened can understand the mystery of God is akin to Gnosticism, for the Gnostics maintained that only the enlightened can comprehend the mystery of God.

Copyright © 2019 by Thomas Coley Allen.

Part 2

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Paul Becomes a Heretic

Paul Becomes a Heretic

Thomas Allen

    The following is a summary of Chapter II, “The Changes in the Eschatological Programme” of Section IV of The Formation of Christian Dogma: An Historical Study of its Problem by Martin Werner and translated by S.G.F. Brandon (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1957), pages 283–294. My comments are enclosed in brackets.
    For Paul, the final resurrection would occur in two stages. The first came with the return of Christ and his reign on earth. Next, came the final victory over the angels and spirit powers that had rebelled against God. At the end of the war came the destruction of the Angel of Death. Then, came the last and Final Resurrection.
    According to Paul, only the Christians, the saved, who had died before the Second Coming of Christ were resurrected with his Second Coming. The saved living at that time were “changed.” At the “end,” the dead who had not been resurrected would be raised. Thus, Paul reckoned the Final Judgment occurring in two stages. First, came the judgment of Christians when Christ returned. Last, came a general Final Judgment at the end of Christ’s rule when all the other dead were resurrected. In the Final Judgment, Christians would serve with Christ as judges.
    Paul believed, or at least strongly suggested, that the heavenly Christ would return in his lifetime or shortly afterward. This return would manifest itself as a predestinated number of Christ’s followers, i.e., those in fellowship with him, taking part in the glory of God’s Kingdom in a perfect world order. This world order would be spiritual in nature. Along with the advent of God’s Kingdom would be the final resurrection.
    As the Apostolic generation passed away without the return of Christ, the immediacy of the Second Coming began to fade. Because of this delay, the Church abandoned Paul’s doctrines of the Second Coming and the End Time.
    As a result of the delayed Second Coming and the rise of a new generation, the Church had no choice but to abandon Paul’s notion about the imminent return of Christ and his advice not to procreate. It also had to abandon Paul’s notion of election. (Paul held that when all the predestined elect had come to faith in Jesus in the last generation (Romans 11:25ff), then Christ would return.)
    Nevertheless, the idea of an Antichrist remained popular. The Antichrist was often related to heresy, as in 1 John 2:18ff. For example, Athanasius (293?-373) accused Arius (256?-336) of being the precursor of the Antichrist.
    After Paul’s death, the early Church still clung to Paul’s notion of two ages at the end of time. Thus, the Kingdom of God would fulfill the End Time by destroying the existing natural world and the creation of a new and perfect heaven and earth.
    However, with the passage of time, the Church began abandoning Paul’s view of the End Time as a spiritual new world and replacing it with an End Time as a cleansing of the natural world. For example, Methodius (d.c. 311) argued that if God destroyed the present natural world, He would admit that His first creation was defective. Thus, the future burning of the world should be understood as cleansing the world, i.e., a process of renewing, and not as destroying the world.  Eventually, the Church adopted the doctrine of the future resurrection of the natural physical body.
    Opposing this new doctrine of the Resurrection were the heretics, who relied heavily on the Bible in their opposition. Moreover, they argued “that the resurrection of the physical body to immortality was intrinsically impossible” (p. 287). Because the physical body was of earthly matter, it was mortal. Further, when the physical body died, it decomposed, and its elements returned to the earth. Some of these elements became part of another body. Consequently, a specific individual could never be reassembled with the original parts. Also, between birth and death, each individual body was constantly changing and, therefore, never really remained identical with itself. [Can the omnipotence of God overcome these problems?]
    The heretics’ strongest arguments came from the Scriptures. According to Psalm 1:5, “the ungodly would not generally be raised up, even for judgment” (p. 288). Likewise, Job 7:9-10 declared that the dead would not be raised
    The heretics also used the New Testament to argue against the resurrection of the physical natural body. Paul had declared that “the physical body was the seat of sin” (p. 288) and, thus, not worthy of resurrection. At the Final Resurrection, the saved would receive a supernatural body like the body of angels, and, in this way, enter into everlasting life. Restoration of the natural physical body merely meant continuing “the earthly-natural mode of existence in the eternity of the other world” (p. 288). Citing Romans 7:18, 24, 8:8, 1 Corinthians 15:44,50, and Galatians 5:7, the heretics condemned the thought of resurrecting the physical natural body.
    This attack against the resurrection of the physical body pushed the Church to defend its dogma more vigorously. The resurrected body would be an exact replica of the natural physical body when it was alive. [Does this mean that if an individual died as an infant, he would forever remain an infant? Likewise, does it mean that if an individual died of old age, he would always appear to be old-age?] Some Church Fathers, such as Tertullian (160?-230?), declared “that the resurrection of Jesus had been a reconstruction of his former natural physical body” (p. 289). (This assertion conflicted with Paul’s teachings in 2 Corinthians 5:16.)
    “Accordingly for Paul ‘resurrection’ meant, exclusively and fundamentally, precisely not restoration of the old, of what had been, but change into a new and supernatural form of being, because ‘resurrection’, as he saw it, appertained to those fundamental events, in which, since and by virtue of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, the passing of the old and the advent of the new aeon were fulfilled” (p. 289). Paul’s idea of the End Time was a two-stage or two-age resurrection.
    However, the Church had abandoned Paul’s doctrine and had substituted a new doctrine. According to the Church’s new doctrine, the Resurrection resulted in “the exact restitution and conservation, at the End of the Days, of that which belonged to the old aeon” (p. 289).
    In response to Paul’s claim that the saved would attain a spiritual body, the Catholic theologians interpreted his claim “to mean that physical with which the Holy Spirit had united itself” (p. 290). However, the heretics replied by citing 1 Corinthians 15:50, where Paul declares, “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.”
    Another dispute arose over the fate of the saved dead before the Second Coming. Paul addressed this question in 2 Corinthians 5:1-4. He did not envision this intermediate state to last long, as he expected the Second Coming to occur in his lifetime or soon afterward. However, with the long delay of the Second Coming, the Church moved away from Paul’s teaching on this issue.
    This delay caused the Church to place more importance on the final destiny of the individual than on the ultimate fate of the present world. Using Jesus’ parable of the rich man and the poor Lazarus (Luke 16:19-21), the Catholic theologians developed the doctrine that the saved would enjoy some of the blessings that awaited them after the Resurrection. Thus, this new doctrine of the Church conflicted with Paul’s.
    Before this change in doctrine, the Final Judgment occurred after the Resurrection. With the new doctrine, a judgment had to occur directly after the individual died. Paul had taught that the saved would be resurrected and judged with the Second Coming — this was the First Judgment. Now, the Church’s doctrine of a judgment of the individual immediately after death replaced Paul’s doctrine of the First Judgment.
    Moreover, the Church’s new doctrine of the soul of the saved going to Paradise or Heaven immediately after death replaced the Hebrew concept of the soul with the pagan Greek concept. The Hebrews held that the soul was so united with the physical body that it had no conscious existence once the body died. On the other hand, the pagan Greeks held that the soul was independent of and trapped in the physical body. Once the body died, the soul was liberated and continued a conscious existence in another state.
    When the new doctrines of the Church were combined, the soul of a dead believer went to Heaven where it remained until the Resurrection. When the Resurrection occurred, the soul would be united with its resurrected natural physical body.
    By now, Paul was a heretic and his doctrines on the End Times and the Resurrection and the fate of the dead before these events were heresy. Although the Church never overtly declared him a heretic or his doctrines as heresy, it did so covertly by condemning as heretics those who used Paul’s doctrines in opposing the Catholic doctrines on these issues. However, the Church did destroy the truth to avoid overtly making Paul a heretic by asserting that its doctrines were consistent with Paul’s, although they were not.

Copyright © 2019 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Commentary on John 3:36

Commentary on John 3:36

Thomas Allen

    Illustrating the theological bias of translators is John 3:36. The King James version translates John 3:36 as follows:

He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.

In the American Standard Version, it is translated:

He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life; but he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.

    Most translations follow the American Standard Version and translate ho apeithōn as “disobey” or words to that effect. A minority translates it as “disbelieve” or words to that effect. These translations include:
    – the New Jerusalem Bible (refuses to believe),
    – the Anointed Standard Translation (without persuasion),
    – the St. Joseph New Catholic Edition (unbelieving),
    – the Phillips New Testament in Modern English (refuses to believe),
    – the Bible in Basic English (has not faith),
    – the New King James Version (does not believe),
    – Williams translation of the New Testament (refuses to trust),
    – the New Testament revision of the Challane-Rheims Version (is unbelieving),
    – 21st Century King James Version (believeth not),
    – BRG Bible (believeth not),
    – Common English Bible (doesn’t believe),
    – Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition (believeth not),
    – Holman Christian Standard Bible (refuses to believe),
    – Modern English Version (does not believe),
    – New International Reader's Version (does not believe),
    – New Life Version (does not put his trust),
    – New Matthew Bible (does not believe),
    – New Testament for Everyone (doesn’t believe),
    – Worldwide English (New Testament) (does not believe),
    – Wycliffe Bible (is unbelieveful to),
    – Young's Literal Translation (is not believing), and
    – God’s New Covenant (refuses to put his faith)
    Both the American Standard Version and the World English Bible have a footnote stating that “disobeys” can be translated “disbelieves.”
    Robert Wilkin states that the literal translation of ho apeithōn is “he who does not obey.” He writes, “Failure to believe in Jesus was disobeying the Father who sent him.” Thus, “he who does not believe” paraphrases the intent of the word. Supporting Wilkin is a footnote in the Revised Standard Bible, which defines “disobedience” as “unbelief.” According to Wilkin, “To gain eternal life one must obey God’s command to believe in His Son.”
    In his note on John 3:36, John Wesley remarks that disobeying Jesus is a consequence of not believing in him. Apparently, a person proves his faith via his works.
    Floyd Filson states that John 3:36 is as basics as John 3:16. That is, anyone who believes in the Son as sent of God to give life to those dead in sin receives eternal life. Then, he adds that he who refuses to believe the gospel message will not believe and obey Christ and, consequently, will not have eternal life. Thus, according to Filson salivation is by faith and proven by works, i.e., faith plus works.
    “Disobey” gives a different impression than “disbelieve.” “Disbelieve” suggests that everlasting life in the Kingdom of God, which is established when Jesus returns, depends on faith and faith alone. “Disobey” suggests that everlasting life depends on faith plus works; that is, everlasting life depends not only on faith, but it also depends on works. Such works include:
    – baptism, although there is much disagreement about the proper form of baptism (immersion, pouring, or sprinkling) and the salvific effect of infant baptism;
    – absolute obedience to the teachings of Christ, i.e., doing everything that Jesus says to do; thus, how much work is enough for salvation and how many transgressions are enough to cause a loss of salvation;
    – never sinning once one is saved (which may explain why Constantine waited until he was on his deathbed before he was baptized into the Catholic Church), especially committing a sin named in 1 Corinthians 6:9-10;
    – austerity, mortification, self-whipping, not bathing, and other similar practices that were considered virtuous and pious in times past;
    – failure adequately to recruit, i.e., proselytize;
    – perseverance to death;
    – failure to keep faith in Jesus and the Kingdom of God until death;
    – membership in the correct church, sect, or denomination (as several sects claim that one cannot be saved unless he is a member of that sect, one must be a member of all of them to guarantee salvation);
    – etc.
    As for faith, what does one have to believe in, on, or about the Son to have everlasting life? Is it believing that Jesus is;
– the giver and guarantor of eternal life (if true, does this mean that the soul is not innately immortal; if the soul is innately immoral, then believing in Jesus does not give eternal life as one already has that; however, if the soul is not immortal and the unsaved are tormented in hell forever, then in whom or what does one believe to be condemned to hell):
– God incarnated (if true, almost no one, except perhaps some gnostics, were saved before the fourth century AD);
– God according to the Trinity Doctrine, i.e., Jesus is eternal God, is equal to God the Father, and is very God and very man (if true, almost no one, was saved before the middle of the fourth century AD because almost no Christians believed Trinity Doctrine of three coequal, coeternal Gods or Persons being one God or Person, which was not formulated until 381);
– a man, human, who was uniquely begotten by God the Father in the womb of the Virgin Mary and only his Father is God (if true, only a few “Christians” have been saved since 400 AD);
– the Messiah, Christ, and the only begotten Son of God;
– sent by God the Father and that only the Father is God;
– sent by God to take away man’s sins and to give life to those dead in sin with his sacrificial death and resurrection;
– going to return to earth and establish his kingdom and that he meant what he said and did when he was here;
– etc.?
    Obviously, those who believe in salvation by faith and faith alone prefer translating ho apeithōn  as “disbelieve.” On the other hand, those who believe that salvation depends not only on faith but also on some kind or level of works prefer it translated as “disobey.”
    If for no other reason than parallelism, “disbelieve” is a better translation than “disobey.” In the second part of the sentence, “disbelieve” parallels with “believe” in the first part. “Disobey” does not.

References
Filson, Floyd V. The Gospel According to John. Editor Balmer H. Kelly. The Layman’s Bible Commentary. Volume 19. Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press, 1970.

Wesley, John. Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament. Reprint, London, England: The Epworth Press, 1948.

Wilkin, Robert N. “John.” The Grace New Testament Commentary. Editor Robert N. Wilkin. Vol.  1. Denton, Texas: Grace Evangelical Society, 2010.

Copyright © 2018 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Development of the Nicene Creed – Part 7

The Nicene Creed and Its Aftermath

Thomas Allen

[Reference Note: As this article relies primarily on First Three Centuries by Alvan Lamson, page numbers enclosed in parentheses are to Lamson’s book. References to other works are enclosed in parentheses with the work’s title or the author’s name listed in “References” at the end of this article.]

Nicene Creed and Its Aftermath
    What did the Council of Nicaea mean when it declared “that the Son was consubstantial with the Father” (p. 332)? It “intended to assert that the Son was ‘in all respects like the Father,’ and, ‘unlike all creatures made by him,’ in opposition to Arius, who maintained that he was a creature, and therefore not strictly divine” (pp. 332-333). Thus, “[i]t expressed, not numerical identity of substance, but sameness of kind. One man is of the same substance or nature with another, as they belong to the same order of beings. So the Son of God is of the same substance with the Father: he partakes, in common with him, of a divine, though not of the same individual, nature. Divine begets divine, as human begets human. The distinction between person and being was unknown to the Fathers: it is a refinement of latter times. The Father and Son had the same specific nature, yet constituted distinct subsistences, persons, beings” (p. 333). Basically, this was the doctrine of the ante-Nicene Fathers, unless by the expression “‘of a different substance,’ which some of them applied to the Son, they mean to teach something more than that he had an individual existence distinct from the Father” (p. 333).
    When it condemned Paul of Samosata, the Second Council of Antioch had used the term “consubstantial.” However, the Council rejected it, declaring “that the Son was not consubstantial with the Father” (p. 334).
    According to Athanasius, “consubstantial” as used in the Nicene Creed meant that the “ Son has ‘no similitude to creatures, nor is cognate with them’: he is the ‘true offspring of the substance of the Father.’ — ‘The substance of the Father was the beginning, the root, and fountain of the Son, who has a true likeness to Him that begat him; and is not separated from the Father, as we are, by being of a substance foreign to his’” (p. 334). Further, “[o]ne man ‘is of the same nature with another as regards substance.’ But ‘a man and a dog are of different natures: therefore what is of the same nature is consubstantial; what is of a different nature is of another substance,’ or not consubstantial” (p. 334). Thus, “Christ was by birth God, as man is by birth man. There is one species of divinity, as one species of humanity, and, as all men are of the same substance (that is, all human), so the Father and Son are of the same substance (that is, both divine)” (p 335).
    The Council of Nicaea did not change the notion of the Son being subordinate to the Father, and, therefore, the Son was not equal to the Father. The doctrine of the Son being subordinate to the Father was maintained until the time of Augustine. (Amazingly, around 400 years [Q&A] were needed for Christians to discover that the Scriptures taught that the Son was eternal and equal to the Father. Obviously, the Trinity Doctrine is not clearly taught by the Scriptures if 400 years are needed to discover it.) The Son was “begotten, dependent, and derived” (p. 336). It maintained the notion that the Father and the Son were two beings.
    After the Council of Nicaea issued its decree, orthodoxy began undergoing a real and important change. By introducing the term “consubstantial,” which was “capable of a sense very different from that originally attributed to it by the Platonists and Platonizing Fathers” (p. 336), the Council inadvertently started this change. At the time of the Nicene Creed was adopted, “consubstantial” was “understood to express only specific sameness of nature” (p. 336). Afterwards, it came “to signify individual identity” (p. 336).
    The ante-Nicene Fathers taught “the supremacy of the Father, and the real and proper inferiority of the Son, without qualification; making them, in fact, two beings” (p. 336). Moreover, “the Son was voluntarily begotten of the Father before the creation of the world, but not from eternity.” (p. 336-337). Later, the Trinitarians “asserted, not simply an equality of nature between the Father and Son, but their individual and numerical identity; though this was not originally the doctrine of Athanasius, nor of the Church till some time after the middle of the fourth century” (p. 336). Also, according to these later Trinitarians, the Son was necessarily begotten from eternity. By the time that the Athanasian Creed was formulated, Athanasius, the greatest of all the Nicene Fathers, was no longer a Trinitarian in the sense of that Creed.
    In response to the accusation that the Council of Nicaea had introduced two Gods, the orthodox Trinitarians initially replied “that they worshipped the one only and true God, who is over all, supreme; that the Son was inferior, another, different, different in essence, the minister of the Father, and in all respects subject to his will, and entitled, therefore, to only inferior homage” (p. 237). When Arians began taking advantage of these arguments, orthodoxy changed its defense. They argued that the Father and the Son “were of one individual essence, and, therefore, there was only one object of supreme worship” (p. 337),
    In response to the many passages of Scriptures that calm that the Son is inferior to the Father, “the fiction of the two natures in Jesus Christ was introduced, and then all [the older] difficulties vanished” (p. 337). Thus, the “Son, as God, was co-equal with the Father; as man, he was inferior: as God, he could send; as man, he could be: in his human nature, he could pray to himself in his divine; as man, he could assert that he was ignorant of the day of judgment, which, as God, he knew” (p. 338). (“Controversy had still to settle what had been the conditions of Christ’s human life, and in what relations his humanity stood to his divinity. This was the remarkable conclusion at which the Church arrived, that the two natures were so far united in one person, that it was proper to honour Mary as the mother of God; but that as there were still two natures, it was not necessary to affirm that God was crucified” [p. 337n]).
    The Nicene Creed only mentioned the Holy Spirit in very general terms. Was the Holy Spirit subordinate to the Father and the Son, which was the doctrine of the ante-Nicene Fathers? Was the Holy Spirit “a mode of divine operation” (p. 339)? Was it a creation of God or God Himself? Some theologians did not “‘attribute to the Spirit the name of God, because the Scripture does not expressly so call him’” (p. 339). In 381, the Council of Constantinople answered these questions by “declaring that the Holy Spirit is to be worshipped and glorified together with the Father and Son” (p. 339).
    Over time, the Nicene Creed was modified such that the Son became eternal and equal to the Father in a numerical one of essence. Along with the Holy Spirit, they became three Gods in one God — a Triune God. (Except for some terminology that only those versed in religious jargon can distinguish, what is the difference between the Trinity Doctrine and Sabellianism? One uses “person” where the other uses “manifestation.” Nevertheless, Sabellianism does a better job of maintaining monotheism than does the modern Trinity Doctrine, which relies heavily on assertions.)
    The Nicene Council left Christianity with curses from which it has yet recovered. In its attempt to avoid the Scylla of Sabellianism and the Charybdis of Arianism, it converted “‘what was before a scholastic subtlety into an article of the Catholic faith’” (p. 341). With the Nicene Creed “Emperor Constantine (the first of the Caesars who acknowledged the faith of the cross), left to the world a pernicious example of intolerance and bigotry, which subsequent times have but too faithfully imitated” (p. 352). (Well illustrating such intolerance were the religious wars of Europe beginning with the Reformation where first the Catholic Church tried to suppress the Protestant heretics, and then Protestants tried to purge their ranks of heretics, i.e., those who disagreed with their particular brand of Christianity.)
    Membership in the early Church did not require a certain belief in the nature of Christ. Hase wrote, “The only condition of admission to the Church, was a promise to live a new life, and an acknowledgment of Jesus as the Messiah. In this acknowledgment free scope was given to all those views of the nature of the Messiah, which prevailed among the people, from a simple recognition of him as the Son of David, and a man filled with the Spirit of God, to a belief in him as an angel, and an impersonation of some one of the attributes of Jehovah” (Hase, p. 41). About the early Christians, Pressense writes, “Christians were then specially anxious that religion should not be regarded as consisting in a correct opinion with regard to God. Religion was to them essentially a moral and living principle, without, however, . . . being on that account vague and uncertain. . . . The Christian faith at this time, as always, has for its great object Jesus Christ, the Son of God and the Saviour of the world” (Pressense, p. 195). How things changed. After the Council of Nicaea, one could not join the church without consent to the Nicene Creed. Over time the Creed was modified into the Trinity Doctrine. Most denominations require a belief, or at least no statement of unbelief, in the Trinity Doctrine. Most still condemn as heretics those who do not adhere to the Trinity Doctrine — even to proclaiming that they are not true Christians. Thus, the early church displayed much more religious tolerance within Christianity than the Catholic Church ever has and than most Protestant denominations until the eighteenth century or even today.

Conclusion
    As shown above, the Trinity Doctrine did not begin to develop until Greek philosophy was applied to Christianity. The Apostolic Fathers had no conception of the Trinity. When the Greek philosophy of Plato was applied to the Scriptures, then the Trinity Doctrine began to develop. Logos ceased to mean the spoken word and became God’s reason, a second God, the Son. Thus, the Logos-doctrine, which is the foundation on which the Trinity Doctrine is built, entered Christianity.
    Next came the thought of a trinity and the notion of the eternal existence of the Logos, the Son. This was followed by the Son having both a divine and human nature with a rational human soul. Also, the possibility of the Son’s eternal generation began to occur.
    When the Arian controversy started, orthodoxy held that the Son was pre-existing, but he had a beginning, was inferior to the Father, and a distinct being and, therefore, a different essence. When Alexander, the Bishop of Alexandria began teaching more oneness of the Father and Son, Arius accused him of Sabellianism — thus, began the Arian controversy. Although Arius thought that he was defending the doctrine of the Trinity as it existed then, Alexander and others disagreed. Arius had stripped the Trinity of its Platonic metaphysics. The Arian controversy peaked with the Council of Nicaea, which issued the Nicene Creed. Among other things, the creed declared the Father and the Son to be one substance. The Nicene Creed was as close to, if not closer to, Sabellianism, which the church had condemned, as it was the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity that existed before its adoption.
    By the Council of Nicaea in 325, the divinity of the Son was declared, and he was made eternal and the Father’s equal (as Nicene Creed was later interpreted and revised). In 381, the Council of Constantinople amended the Nicene Creed to declare the divinity of the Holy Spirit. In 431, the Council of Ephesus defined the personal unity of Christ and declared Mary the Mother of God. (This is one aspect of the Trinity Doctrine that the Protestants ignore, and where the Catholics are logically correct. If Mary is the mother of Christ Jesus, and if Christ Jesus is God, then Mary has to be the mother of God. If she is not the mother of God, then one or both premises have to be incorrect.) The Trinity Doctrine was completed in 431 by the Council of Chalcedon, which defined the two natures of Christ, divine and human. (Distinguishing the difference between the Trinitarian version of Jesus having a dual nature, human and divine, and the version of some of the old heresies is difficult.)
    With the acts of these four councils, all the ante-Nicene Fathers became de facto heretics, if not de jure, heretics, because their doctrine of the Son is more unitarian, monotheistic, than trinitarian, tritheistic. They believed that the Son had a beginning, that is, he is not eternal. Moreover, the Son was inferior to the Father. (Based on the criteria that Alford sets out in his manual on the Trinity [Alford, pp. 98-101], all the Fathers discussed above, with the possible exception of Dionysius of Rome, were unitarians, strictly speaking. Furthermore, nearly all, if not all, other ante-Nicene Fathers were also unitarians. Moreover, based on their writings, the Trinity Doctrine, and Alford’s criteria, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Peter, and Paul appear to be heretics and unitarians.)
    Without the application of Platonism to the Scriptures, it is doubtful that the Trinity Doctrine as is exists today would have ever been developed. Without the Platonist interpretation of the Scriptures, most likely orthodox Christianity would have remained monotheistic religion in the Old Testament sense instead of becoming a tritheistic religion with a Triune God. Of the Fathers discussed above, it most likely would follow the teachings of Clement of Rome, Polycarp, or Artemon. (Of the Fathers discussed above their Christology was probably the closest to the Scriptures.)

References
Alford, H.W. The Manual of the Scriptural Doctrine of the Trinity, Investigated and Defended. Dover, New Hampshire: The Trustees of the Freewill Baptist Connection, 1842.

Allen, Thomas. “Early Church Theories of Christ.” Franklinton, North Carolina: TC Allen Co., 2009.

“Amonoean” http://looklex.com/e.o/amonoean.htm. Downloaded July 6, 2009.

Arendzen, John, "Docetae," The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909. V. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05070c.htm. Downloaded July 12, 2009.

Arendzen, John. “Manichæism.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1910. IX. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09591a.htm. Downloaded July 4, 2009.

The Creed of Nicaea – Agreed at the Council in 325, http://www.earlychurchtexts.com/public/creed_of_nicaea_325.htm, Downloaded October 29, 2017.

“Docetism.” http://looklex.com/e.o/docetism.htm. Downloaded Jul. 5, 2009.

Fleming, Thomas. “A Plague on Both Their Houses.” Chronicles, Vol. 39, No. 3, March 2015, page 9.

Hase Charles. History of the Christian Church. Translators Charles E. Blumenthal and Conway P. Wing. New York: D. Appleton, 1870.

Lamson, Alvan. First Three Centuries: Or, Notices of the Lives and Opinions of Some of the Early Fathers, With Special Reference to The Doctrine of the Trinity. Reprint. and revised with notes, Ezra Abbot, editor: Boston, Mass.; 1875 reprinted with additional notes, Henry Ierson, editor: London: British and Foreign Unitarian Association,

The Lost Books of the Bible. 1820; reprint. Cleveland, Ohio: World Publishing Co., 1929; reprint, 1979, New York, New York: Crown Publishing Co.

Milner, Vincent L. Religious Denominations of the World. Philadelphia: Bradley, Garretson & Co., 1872.

“Montanism.” Encyclopædia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Montanism. Downloaded November 12, 2017.

Pressense, E. De. The Early Years of Christianity: Heresy and Christian Doctrine. Translator Anne Harwood. New York: Nelson & Phillips, n.d.

“Q&A.” Grace in Focus. November/December 2017, page 46.

Walker, Williston. A History of the Christian Church. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921.

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Part 6

Ecumenism

Ecumenism

Thomas Allen

[Editor’s note: The footnotes in the original are omitted.]

The Illuminists have used ecumenical movement as one of its tools to take over the Church. (The true Church of Christ is the greatest spiritual and temporal enemy and threat of the Illuminists.) The ecumenical movement seeks to unify all Protestant churches and ultimately all Christians. To accomplish this goal, it encourages an undenominational church. It disregards all forms of Church polity and does not care about the Church being an August body of saints. It emphasizes common religious teachings and beliefs.

The ecumenical movement was formalized in England in 1846 in the Evangelical Alliance and in the United States in 1867. Later in 1908, the Federal Council of Church of Christ, which later became the National Council of Churches of Christ, was organized as the leading proponent of the ecumenical movement in the United States. The World Council of Churches, which consists of more than 200 Protestant, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Old Catholic bodies, has become the principal instrument of ecumenicity.

Thus, Christian religion was attacked overtly and covertly. The covert attack against religion primarily took the form of ecumenicalism. All religious differences were ignored. Everything, except orthodoxy, was tolerated. Defenders of orthodoxy were ridiculed. Defenders of Biblical Christianity were slandered. Biblical revelation was meaningless; religious truths were derived from nature, not from revelation. The Bible was reduced to meaninglessness by subverting it to mean whatever one wanted it to mean. Religious unity must be achieved at all cost.

The covert attack took the form of stressing scepticism, materialism, naturalism, Pantheism, and homosexualism. Pornography was also another important overt weapon against Christianity. Anything that would lead to a moral breakdown was used.

World Council of Churches and National Council of Churches
One important actor in supplanting the religion of Jesus with the religion of Lucifer is the World Council of Churches. The World Council of Churches was founded in 1948; its founding began the modern ecumenical era. Most mainline Protestant denominations in the United States are members of the World Council of Churches. Heavily influenced by Freemasonry, it is interconnected with the World Constitutional Parliament Association and is a co-conspirator in bring about Lucifer’s New World Order. Its funding comes in part from the Rockefeller Foundation. Its goal is to unite Christianity to make bringing it into the New World Order easier. Christians should embrace Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and all other religions as equal in value to Christianity—interfaithism. With Vatican II, the Catholic Church joined the ecumenical movement and interfaithism. Ecumenism seeks to unify the Christian churches. Interfaithism seeks to unify all the religions of the world. As Communists and communist agents and sympathizers run the World Council of Churches, it is also a strong supporter of Communism. It has financed terrorists in Africa, who have slaughtered not only Blacks, but also Christian missionaries.

Closely allied with the World Council of Churches is the National Council of Churches. The purpose of the National Council of Churches is to promote Illuminism, especially Communism, among the churches in the United States. It also lobbies political leaders on behalf of communist causes. To advance Illuminism, one of its goals is to destroy the family. To achieve this goal, it has promoted feminism to destroy fatherhood and sex education to destroy the moral authority of the family. Members of the National Council of Churches have also promoted Black Nationalism and the Negro Revolution in the United States and have financially supported these movements. Like the World Council of Churches, the National Council of Churches strives to stripe the Bible of its authority—man should decide right and wrong based on the situation, i.e., moral absolutes do not exist.

In 1950, the Federal Council of Churches reorganized and merged with seven other interdenominational organizations to form the National Council of Churches. Of the 358 clergy who were voting delegates to the constituting convention of the National Council of Churches, 123 were associated with Communist projects and enterprises.[1]

[Editor’s note: The appendix in the original exposing Billy Graham is omitted.]

Endnote
1. Billy James Hargis, Communist America Must It Be? (Tulsa, Oklahoma: Christian Crusade, 1960), pp. 147-148.

References
Allen, Gary. The Rockefeller File Secret. Seal Beach, California: '76 Press, 1976.

Hargis, Billy James. Communist America Must It Be? Tulsa, Oklahoma: Christian Crusade, 1960.

Kah, Gary H. En Route to Global Occupation. Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1992.

Kah, Gary H. The New World Religion. Noblesville, Indiana: Hope International Publishing, Inc., 1998.

Mullins, Eustace. The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology of History. Staunton, Virginia: Revelation Book, 1987.

Poncins, Leon de, Vicomte. Freemasonry and the Vatican: A Struggle for Recognition. Translator Timothy Tindal-Roberston. London, England: Briton Publishing Co., 1968.

Preuss, Arthur. A Dictionary of Secret and Other Societies. St. Louis, Missouri: B. Herder Book Co., 1924.

Stormer, John A. The Death of a Nation. Florissant, Missouri: Liberty Bell Press, 1968.

Stormer, John A. None Dare Call It Treason. Florissant, Missouri: Liberty Bell Press, 1964.

Wardner, James W. Unholy Alliances: The Secret Plan and the Secret People Who Are Working to Destroy America. James W. Wardner, 1996.

Copyright © 2010 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Templars

TemplarsThomas Allen

[Editor’s note: Footnotes in original are omitted.]

One little known, but immensely important, secret society was founded in the eleventh century. It was the Priory (Order) of Sion. Godfrey de Bouillon, Duke of Lower Lorraine and leader of the First Crusade, founded this Order in 1090. It was connected with the Rosicrucians. Between 1118 and 1188, the Grand Master of the Priory of Sion was also grandmaster of the Templars; in 1188 the two orders separated. Then the Priory of Sion became mostly concerned with the Merovingians, who had laid the foundations of the Priory of Sion. Its declared objective was to restore the Merovingian dynasty to the thrones of Europe; however, World War I seemed to have thwarted this scheme.

Grand masters of the Priority of Sion have included Leonardo da Vinci (1510-1519), Robert Fludd (1595-1637), Robert Boyle (1654-1691), Sir Isaac Newton (1691-1727), Charles Radcliffe, Victor Hugo, Claude Debussy, and Jean Cocteau.[1] Today its members are among the inner circles of Freemasonry, the Round Tables, and other secret illuministic societies.

Out of the Priority of Sion came the Templars. Hugues de Payens, a Burgundian knight, Godfrey of St. Omer, Andre de Montbard, and six other knights founded the Order of the Temple in 1118. Bernard of Clairvaux was the author of the Templars’ constitution, which he modeled after the Cistercian Order. The Templars were divided into degrees. The Order had a pyramidal chain of command where subordinates were expected to obey commands of superiors without question or hesitation. Furthermore, like all other secret societies, those who controlled it possessed secrets about which ordinary members were ignorant. In 1128, the Council of Troyes approved the Templars as an official military and religious order.

Like the Assassins, the Templars were established to serve their religious faith as an independent power. Moreover, some of the Templars’ esoteric dogmas and ceremonies seemed to have come from the Assassins. The Templars and Assassins were allies in several battles—and at times to the detriment of the Christians.

Hugues de Payens, a member of the Priority of Sion, and his knights established the Templars ostensibly to protect pilgrims as they journeyed to the Holy Land. However, for some years they provided little protection to travelers; they left this task to the Hospitalers, an order established earlier for the protection of pilgrims. The Templars’ primary objective was to search for treasurer among the ruins of Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem. They apparently found ancient scrolls that contained hidden knowledge and other holy artifacts. They also found much gold. The manuscripts that they found conflicted with much of the teachings of the Catholic Church. With this new knowledge, they intimidated church officials. These discoveries brought them immense power and wealth. Later the Crusaders of Jerusalem saw the Templars as a military resource to be used to defend against Moslem incursions. Although they only owed allegiance to the pope, they offered their services to defend the Crusaders.

Because of the services provided by the Templars, Crusaders begin bequeathing their estates to the Templars. Soon the Templars had amassed enormous wealth although they had taken a vow of poverty. This wealth enabled them to become bankers. They lent money to the kings of Europe and even to Moslems. With their enormous wealth scattered throughout Europe, the Templars had become the international financiers or bankers of their era. They performed the same functions as international financiers and banks perform today.

The Templars also became analogous to a modern multinational corporation. They imported into Europe new knowledge of architecture, astronomy, mathematics, medicine, and metallurgy that they had acquired in the Middle East.

Not only had they been given castles and other buildings across Europe, they were also avid builders. The Templars were the prime movers behind building the great medieval cathedrals and were probably responsible for introducing Gothic architecture in Europe. (Missing from the cathedrals built by the Templars were depictions of the Crucifixion.) Templars were behind the formation of the medieval stonemason and other building guilds, whose members became members of the Templar Order.

The Templars began deteriorating with its fourth Grand Master. As the wealth and fame of the Templars grew, fewer desirable men began to join and rise to control the Order. Gnostic dogma eventually replaced Christian doctrine. (Some Templar authorities contend that the Templars were Gnostics from the beginning.) The Templars, especially those in the inner most circle, believed that “the true church, one that taught mysticism, reincarnation, and good works, was being suppressed by a dark power that called itself the one true faith.”[2]

The Templars answered to no one but the pope. In Europe their holdings were independent of secular authority. With the passage of time, the Templars became more independent and more isolated as the popes granted them more privileges. The Templars were exempted from tithes and church taxes. They were exempted from feudal oaths and services. Of these privileges, the most irritating one to bishops and archbishops was the authority of Templars to suspend interdicts wherever they traveled. In short, Templars owed allegiance only to the pope. They were rich and powerful, and their persons were sacred.

In Palestine, negotiations with the Saracens fell to the Templars. Thus, the Templars and Saracens became well acquainted. At times the Templars even allied with the Moslems against the Christians.

After the fall of Jerusalem to the Moslems, which was due in large part to the incompetence of Gerald de Ridfort, Grand Master of the Templars, the Templars lost what remained of their religious virtue. They eventually became politicians. As their power grew, their own independent power became more important than Christian unity.

By 1303, the Moslems had driven the Templars and the Christian Crusaders from the Holy Land. After being driven from the Holy Land, the Templars no longer functioned as guardians of the Crusaders. However, the Order still had 20,000 members and enormous wealth scattered throughout Europe.

After the Templars left the Holy Land, the pope saw them as a force to be used to keep recalcitrant princes in line. He would use them to expand and maintain his secular sovereignty. They would be soldiers of the Church at home.

In France the Templars served as the king’s banker in exchange for his protection from the envious. To escape from civil disorder, the bankrupt King Philip IV (Philip the Fair) fled to their temple in Paris. Here he witnessed their enormous wealth. Finally, King Philip’s lust for their wealth (he needed money for his wars), and perhaps his fear of their independence, came so great that in 1307 he proceeded to expropriate their wealth in France. The Templars had defied his orders and refused to pay taxes. Moreover, the Templars had denied him membership in the Order. He charged them with heresy and turned them over to the Inquisition. (The evidence seems to have supported Philip’s claim of heresy. The highest degree Templars were probably Gnostics, and many lived licentious lives.) Other kings followed Philip when in 1312 at the Synod of Vienna, the pope abolished the Order of the Templars and ordered the kings of Europe to arrest the Templars in their domains. Much of the Templar’s wealth fell to the kings of Europe although most of it was supposed to go to the Hospitalers. Poor Philip seems to have confiscated little of their vast wealth in France. Most of their wealth, which included not only money, but also artifacts and ancient writings, vanished.

Some of the surviving Templars joined the Hospitalers, the Knights of Christ, and the Teutonics Knights. Some joined other secret societies that Freemasonry or other illuministic societies later absorbed. Some Templars fled to Scotland; from them the York Rite and Scottish Rite of Freemasonry probably came. Today the Order of the Knight Templar survives in the highest degree of the York Rite Freemasonry.

Appendix. Cathari
An important religious movement associated with the Templars was the Cathari (Pure Ones), whom the Catholic Church condemned as heretics. The Cathari, who were also known as the Albigenses, arose to prominence during the twelfth century in Languedoc in southern France.

They lived a simple, religious life. Instead of meeting in elaborate buildings, they meet in the open. Their beliefs were similar to Buddhism and closely related to the Mithras and Manichaeans. Among their beliefs was reincarnation, abstention from meat except fish, and nonresistance. Jesus was the spiritual Son of God; he existed in a spiritual body and not a human body. They also taught that Jesus had married Mary Magdalene and had children by her. Mary and her children migrated to Languedoc after Jesus’ execution. Their theology was a dualistic theology. An evil god created the material world and man; a good god created and ruled the heavens. Thus, the God of the Old Testament was Satan. They were also followers of the Cabala. To the Cathari, all baptized members were spiritually equal and were priests. As itinerant preachers, they traveled in pairs. In the utmost poverty and simplicity, they lived. They refused to acknowledge the authority of the pope. The Templars have been accused of having the same religious beliefs as the Cathari. St. Bernard may have been a secret adherent of the Cathari’s beliefs.

The pope had Philip II, King of France, to declare the Cathari heretics and to exterminate them. The war against the Cathari began in 1209 and became known as the Albigensian Crusade. The crusade ended in 1229, and the Cathar heresy was finally eradicated in 1244 with the fall of Montsegur. More than 100,000 Cathari were killed during the crusade.

Endnotes
1. Boyd Rice, "The Prophet," http://www.dagobertsrevenge.com/prophet.html, Jan. 31, 2001.

2. Jim Marrs, Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids (New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000), p. 291.

References
The Cause of World Unrest. New York, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1920.

Dennis L. Cuddy, Now Is the Dawning of the New Age New World Order. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone Publishing, 2000.

Daraul, Arkon. A History of Secret Societies. New York, New York: The Citadel Press, 1961.

Frost, Thomas. The Secret Societies of the European Revolutions, 1776–1876. Two volumes. London, England: Tinsley Brothers, 1876.

Froude, James Anthony. The Spanish Story of the Armada and Other Essays. New York, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1892.

Kah, Gary H. En Route to Global Occupation. Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1992.

Kah, Gary H. The New World Religion. Noblesville, Indiana: Hope International Publishing, Inc., 1998.

MacKenzie, Norman, ed. Secret Societies. New York, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1967.

Marrs, Jim. Rule by Secrecy: The Hidden History That Connects the Trilateral Commission, the Freemasons, and the Great Pyramids. New York, New York: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000.

Monteith, Stanley. Brotherhood of Darkness. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma: Hearthstone, 2000.

Queenborough, Lady (Edith Starr Miller). Occult Theocracy. Two Volumes. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933.

Webster, Nesta H. Secret Societies and Subversive Movements. Palmdale, California: Omni Publication, 1924.

Copyright © 2009 by Thomas Allen.

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