Issues with Trinitarianism and its Christology — Part 3

Issues with Trinitarianism and its Christology — Part 3

Thomas Allen

    36. How could the preexisting God the Son become a man without any diminishment of his deity? How could God the Son live a fully human life while continuing to exercise his divine function?
    37. How can Christ be both finite (human) and infinite (Deity) simultaneously? How can one be both God and the Son of God simultaneously?
    38. Do today’s Trinitarians follow the early Trinitarians and believe the Trinity Doctrine and its dual-nature Christology because it is impossible?
    39. Jesus states that God is spirit. If Jesus is God, how could he be flesh — unless the heretical Docetists are correct?
    40. How can the Son be God’s equal if God has appointed the Son heir? If the Son is the heir, there must have been a time when he was not the owner. If Christ were God, he would be the owner, or under the Trinity Doctrine, part owner. Therefore, he could not be an heir.
    41. If the Son were equal to the Father, why did he derive his power from the Father? Would not he, being God and equal to the Father, already have these powers and authority?
    42. The Bible states that blaspheming the Son will be forgiven, but blaspheming the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. If the Son and the Holy Spirit are coequal persons in one God, should not the result of blaspheming one be the same as blaspheming the other? Why are these coequal persons treated unequally?
    43. Many verses of the Bible clearly and plainly call Jesus a man. Also, the Bible declares that “God is not a man” (Numbers 23:19), If God is not a man and if Jesus is a man, then how can Jesus, a man, be God, who is not a man? Likewise, if God is not “a son of man,” how can Jesus, who is called “a son of man,” be God?
    44. If Jesus Christ is God, why does he lack the attributes of God: self-existent, immortality, unchanging, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent? The Trinitarian would reply that Jesus’ human nature lacks these attributes, but his divine nature does not.
    45. In developing their Christology, the Trinitarians abandoned the Scriptures in favor of the Church Fathers. The Scriptures did not support their dual-nature doctrine. However, they could find statements in some of the writings of the Church Fathers that did.
    46. Both God the Father and God the Son have thrones in heaven. However, God the Holy Spirit does not have a throne in heaven. Why not? (Anyone who claims that the Holy Spirit does have a heavenly throne, needs to provide the Scriptural support that explicitly states that the Holy Spirit has a heavenly throne.) If the Holy Spirit does not have a heavenly throne, how can he be equal to God the Father and God the Son as the Trinity Doctrine declares?
    47. According to the Trinity Doctrine, God the Holy Spirit is omniscient. Yet, Mark 13:32 declares that only God the Father knows when the end will occur. Not knowing when the end will occur, God the Holy Spirit is not omniscient. Nor is God the Son. However, Trinitarians avoid God the Son lacking omniscience in the passage by claiming that Jesus is speaking in his human nature and not in his God nature. Yet, unless Jesus had two minds, which Trinitarians deny, how could his mind both know an event and be ignorant of it simultaneously? Further, they do not have the dual-nature out for the Holy Spirit. Lacking omniscience, which is an essential characteristic of God, God the Holy Spirit is not equal to God the Father, who is omniscient. Thus, the Trinity Doctrine of three coequal Gods collapses.
    Further, Trinitarians may not even use the Jesus-speaking-in-his-human-nature argument to avoid God the Son’s lack of omniscience without risking heresy. Cyril’s Twelve Anathemas or Twelve Chapters were accepted as orthodox at the Council of Ephesus (where Mary was formally declared the Mother of God) and the Council of Chalcedon (where Jesus was declared to have two independent natures and wills). The fourth anathema reads: “If anyone distributes between the two persons or hypostases the expressions used either in the Gospels or in the apostolic writings, whether they are used by the holy writers of Christ or by him about himself, and ascribes some to him as to a man, thought of separately from the Word from God, and others, as befitting God, to him as to the Word from God the Father, let him be anathema.” (The Word is the God the Son.) Thus, whenever Jesus spoke, he always spoke as God the Son and never as a mere human. As Mark 13:32 clearly shows, Jesus, who spoke as God the Son, was not omniscient. Not being omniscient, God the Son cannot be equal to God the Father. Thus, the Trinity Doctrine falls.
    48. If the Holy Spirit is one of the three coequal Gods of the triune God, how can he be given to people? How can such a divine person be given by another divine person unless he is under the authority of the giver? Coequals cannot be under the authority of other coequals and remain equal. Moreover, if the spirit of God is the third person of the triune God, how can he be divided and distributed?
    49. If the Holy Spirit is the third person of the triune God, why does the Bible fail to command the worship of the Holy Spirit? Being a coequal person of the triune God, should not the Holy Spirit receive the same amount of worship as the Father, who is his coequal?
    50. The description of the Holy Spirit given in the Bible suggests that he not be independent or self-existent, and, therefore, should be referred to as “it” instead of “he.” Moreover, the relation of the spirit of God is to God as the spirit of man is to man. If the spirit of man is not another person distinct from himself, and it is not, then the spirit of God is not another person distinct from Himself.
    51. Since the “breath of God” is synonymous with the “spirit of God,” is the breath of God a distinct person from God — one of the coequal Gods of the triune God? It is if the Trinity Doctrine is correct. Moreover, if the breath of God is a distinct person, then the breath of man has to be a distinct person from man. Likewise, the “spirit of God” is synonymous with the “hand” and the “finger.” Does this make the hand and finger coequal Gods of the Godhead? Or, are they and the spirit of God subordinate to the will of God?
    52. Every writer of the New Testament epistles identifies himself with God and the Lord Jesus Christ, yet none identifies himself with the Holy Spirit. Did they fail to understand the Trinity Doctrine and its importance, even its necessity, for salvation? Further, did they fail to believe in a triune God?
    53. The Greek word for “spirit” is neuter; therefore, the appropriate pronoun referring to the Holy Spirit should be “it” instead of “he.” (In Hebrew, the word for spirit is feminine.)
    54. Except for a few difficult verses that are often misunderstood, the Bible offers no incontrovertible proof or even indication that the Holy Spirit is a coequal, coeternal person with the Father and Son.
    55. God usually speaks through one or at most a few people. Almost never does he speak through councils and committees: for example, the 400 prophets of Ahab versus the one prophet of God. The unanimous majority of Ahab’s prophets were wrong, whereas the minority of one prophet was right. A majority in some council has adopted all the major creeds of Christendom.
    56. Trinitarians are notorious for changing the meaning of everyday words, e.g., person and begotten, when they apply to God. As most of the Bible is about God, how does one know what the words in the Bible really mean? Are they being used in the ordinary sense, or are they being used in a theological technical sense? Does a word mean what it means in its ordinary, everyday use, or does it mean something else? Only a trained, enlightened theologian knows. Therefore, only a trained and enlightened theologian can really understand the Bible. Unless such a theologian explains the Bible and its meaning to the laity, the laity forever remains ignorant even if he reads and studies the Bible daily. (Were the Bereans who searched the Scriptures to see if what Paul told them was true trained theologians? If not, were they wasting their time because they were searching in ignorance?)
    57. Trinitarians maintain that biblical truths are incomprehensible mysteries. Examples of such truths being mysteries are the Trinity Doctrine and the doctrine of the dual nature of Christ. Thus, Trinitarians depend on mysticism instead of the Scriptures and reason. Yet, speculation about this mysterious, unknowable God has brought forth the Trinity Doctrine. If God is incomprehensible, then how does one know that he is a triune God?
    Moreover, honest Trinitarians admit that they worship an incomprehensible Deity. Furthermore, no attempt should be made to try to understand their God.
    58. Most Trinitarians maintain that God had to die so that man could be saved; the crucifixion of a human who possessed no divine nature is not enough for salvation. Salvation depends on God dying. Besides the human egotism involved in this assertion, it also suffers from the inability of God to die and still remain God.
    59. An underlying premise of the incarnation of God is that it is necessary for the deification of man. Maximus the Confessor, Athanasius, and other Orthodox Trinitarians declared that God had to become man so that man could become God. Was not the desire to become like God the great sin of Eve and Adam? (Additionally, one of the Mormon doctrines that cause Trinitarians to consider Mormonism a heresy is the doctrine of man becoming a god.)
    60. Under the creeds related to the Trinity adopted by the ecumenical councils, salvation ceased depending on faith in Jesus or even good works. Salvation came from believing, or at least claiming to believe, in what some council said about Jesus.
    61. The notion that only an uncreated, eternal being, i.e., God Himself, can redeem mankind comes from Gnosticism and was incorporated into orthodox Christology. Where is the scriptural support for this notion? According to the Scriptures (v. Romans 5:15), redemption came from a man, Jesus Christ.
    62. If belief in the triune God of the Trinity Doctrine is necessary for salvation as many Trinitarians claim, why did Jesus never teach such a doctrine? Further, why did Jesus never even teach the doctrine of the Trinity? Nowhere does the Bible give a systematic presentation of the Trinity. Nor does it state that God is a triune God of three coequal, coeternal persons: the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Moreover, it does not claim that Jesus is 100 percent God and 100 percent man.
    63. Do Trinitarians agree with Bernard of Clairvaux that “faith in God has no merit, if human reason provides proof for it”? Is faith believing what one does not comprehend, or does faith require some kind of mental understanding?
    64. Why did Jesus teach his followers to pray only to the Father? Why did he not also teach them to pray to the Father’s coequal Gods: the Son and the Holy Spirit?
    65. Often, Trinitarians seem to stress the theoretical over the practical, a system of dogmas over the development of principles, and a series of unknown and unintelligible propositions that must be subscribed to and believed in over a revelation of truths which common minds may understand and sincere and honest hearts appreciate.

Copyright © 2019 by Thomas Coley Allen.

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Issues with Trinitarianism and its Christology — Part 2

Issues with Trinitarianism and its Christology — Part 2

Thomas Allen

    15. Except for the heretical subordinationists and modal trinitarians, one question that Trinitarians have never been able to answer satisfactorily, except perhaps to themselves, is how three distinct persons, each of whom is fully God, are not three Gods. That is, how can God consist of three distinct Gods without being three Gods? Most Trinitarians just assert that three Gods are one God with no real Scriptural proof. Others claim that it is all a mystery beyond human comprehension, although they offer no Scripture that explicitly states such mystery. How can the Godhead consist of three persons, each of whom is fully God, while not having three Gods? Furthermore, where do the Scriptures explicitly claim that God is three persons, three beings, three Gods, three modes, three attributes, or three somewhats, etc.?
    16. The more honest Trinitarians admit the doctrine of the Trinity is nowhere expounded in the New Testament. It cannot be found in either the Old Testament or the New Testament. Neither Paul nor any of the other apostles taught it — and would not understand today’s orthodox Trinity Doctrine. The Trinity Doctrine rests upon the authority of the Church, i.e., the Pope: The Church declares that the Trinity Doctrine is true; therefore, it is true.
    17. The Trinity Doctrine seems to have been developed — albeit, most likely, subconsciously — primarily to justify error. Christ instructed people to pray to and worship God the Father, whom Christ claimed was the only true God (John 17:3). He never instructed them to pray to or worship the Messiah; neither did Paul, Peter, nor other apostles. After the apostles died, people began praying to and worshiping Christ. Instead of correcting this error, the leaders and intellects of the Church began applying Greek philosophy to the teachings of Jesus and the apostles to justify worshiping Christ. The same can be said for other errors that became doctrines of the Catholic Church. Examples are praying to saints and Mary and declaring Mary to be the mother of God (she eventually supplanted Christ, who had become God, as the mediator between man and God). Instead of correcting errors, Church leaders and intellects sought to justify them.
    18. Platonic philosophy and Gnosticism have defined and defended the Trinity Doctrine. They provide the terms, e.g., one substance, person, and trinity, used to define the Trinity.
    19. Unlike various subordination doctrines, the orthodox Trinity Doctrine did not grow organically from the Scriptures. Moreover, many Scriptures that Trinitarians use to support their doctrine testify against it.
    20. If the Trinitarians are correct, then the God of the Old Testament cannot be the God of the New Testament. In the Old Testament, God is described as a unipersonal God. Most Trinitarians now admit that the Old Testament describes a unipersonal God and not a triune God. However, according to the Trinitarians, the New Testament describes God as a triune God. That is, three Gods, persons, or whatevers are one God. Moreover, a triune God of three Gods, three persons, or three whatevers differs significantly from a unipersonal God of one God, one person, or one whatever. Now more Trinitarians, especially Catholics, are admitting that the Scriptures do not support the Trinity Doctrine as expressed in the Athanasian Creed or other similar creeds. It relies on revelation and Church tradition.
    If the Trinitarians and Jewish rabbis are correct, then Marcion was correct when he said that the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are two different Gods. However, his explanation of the two different Gods was incorrect.
    21. Honest Trinitarians acknowledge that they worship a triune God. Thus, they are not monotheists in the sense of the Old Testament worship of a unipersonal God, whom good Jews worship. If Christians claim that the God of the Old Testament is a triune God and the Jews claim that he is a unipersonal God, then either one is wrong or God suffers from dissociative identity disorder. (If Christians assert that the Jews are wrong, then they need to explain their antisemitism.)
    22. Trinitarians claim that God became flesh so that he could experience suffering, ignorance, death, etc. like humans. Such a claim impinges on God’s omniscience. If God is omniscient, he knows how it is to suffer and die like humans. He knows how it is to be a dog or a flea without becoming one.
    Furthermore, if most theologians, both orthodox and heterodox, are correct about God being impassible, how could he experience pain, etc. like a human? Yet, many Trinitarians claim that God had to become man so that he could suffer like man.
    Moreover, how could God really die and still be eternal? If he were to die, he would cease being eternal. Or, is the pagan Greek idea of death, which most Christians believe, correct: Death is not a cessation of consciousness; it is a metamorphosis from one state of conscious being to another state of conscious being. And, the Hebrew idea of death is wrong: Death is the cessation of consciousness; this is the concept taught in the Old Testament. If death is a metamorphosis, then the Son changed state or condition. An attribute of God is that he is unchangeable. In any event, God the Son either ceased being eternal or changed state. Therefore, he ceases being equal to God the Father, who is eternal and unchangeable. Thus, the Trinity Doctrine collapses.
    According to the Hebrews, the body and soul are one. When the body dies, the soul also dies. All consciousness ceases at death.
    According to the pagan Greeks, the body and soul are two. When the body dies, the soul continues to exist in a conscious state.
    23. The triune God is not a personal God, a real being with a personality, will, and desire. He, or perhaps more correctly, it, is an essence, substance, and entity — an abstraction.
    24. If Jesus is God, why does he always pray to the Father and never to himself, who is also Deity, or to the Holy Spirit? Why does he ask the Father for what is in his own power as God the Son?
    25. If God the Father is the God of God the Son (Jesus declares that his Father is his God in John 20:17), then who is the God of God the Father? For God the Son, who has a God, to maintain his equality with God the Father, God the Father must also have a God. Likewise, God the Holy Spirit must also have a God. Who is the God of God the Holy Spirit? Moreover, if Jesus is God, how can he have a God?
    26. According to the Trinity Doctrine, the Son is eternal and is also begotten. He who is begotten cannot be eternal because he has a beginning — when he is begotten. An eternal being has no beginning or ending. Thus, the Trinity Doctrine contradicts itself with an oxymoron: the Son being begotten and eternal.
    Moreover, God is self-existing. He who is begotten, the Son, is not and cannot be self-existing. Furthermore, how can an unbegotten being, the Father, be the same kind of being as a begotten being, the Son?
    27. Unless the separationists are correct, why did Jesus cry out while he was dying on the cross? After all, according to many Trinitarians, Jesus’ God nature did not abandon his human nature while he was dying on the cross. As God the Son indwelt him, why did he need to cry out to God? God was already a part of him.
    28. To prevent God from dying on the cross, Trinitarians must have Jesus’ divine nature abandoning Jesus’ human nature by or at the time Jesus dies. The Valentinians solve the problem of God dying by having Christ, who is the divine nature, separating from Jesus, who is the human nature, just before the crucifixion. To avoid having God die, Trinitarians must adopt a Valentinian-like doctrine. However, to avoid the heresy of Valentinianism, Trinitarians seem to have the human nature of Jesus leaving the divine nature of Jesus at death. Whereas Valentinians have the divine leaving the human, Trinitarians have the human leaving the divine.
    29. Trinitarians subvert the title of the “Son of God” into “God the Son,” a title that the Scriptures never give Jesus. The two phrases mean different things. “X the son” has an entirely different meaning than “the son of X.” Isaac the son means Isaac as the son of Abraham; he is not Abraham. The son of Isaac means Jacob; he is not Isaac; nor is he Abraham. Likewise, “God the Son” has a different meaning than “the Son of God” and refers to a different person, being, entity, or whatever.
    30. When Jesus speaks, is he speaking in his divine nature as God or is he speaking in his human nature as man? Most assume that when he says something that sounds godly to them (e.g., “I and the Father are one” – John 10:30), he speaks as God. However, if he says something that sounds humanly to them (e.g., “the Father is greater than I” – John 14:28), he speaks as man. How do they know with absolute certainty which is speaking? Moreover, being ignorant of a triune God and the incarnation of God, which thus made Jesus have two natures and two wills, his audience would have always understood him speaking as a man. (Clergy often preach “context relevance” and the “way the audience at that time who received the remarks would have understood them.” Jesus’ audience at that time would have always understood him to be speaking as a man. If he intended otherwise, he was deceiving, i.e., lying to, his audience.)
    Where does the Bible expressly state that Jesus has two natures and two wills? Where does the Bible even strongly imply such?
    31. The doctrine of Jesus possessing two natures raises several questions. Did the two natures exist before the Incarnation? If they did, how did or could the Father and Son still be of one substance? If they did not, when and how was Jesus’ human nature combined with his divine nature? What prevented the divine nature from dominating? How can Jesus’ humanity be like the rest of humanity if he lacked the ability to sin like the rest of humanity? What Scriptures support the answers to these questions?
    Jesus was tempted like all other men (Hebrews 4:15). If he were God or had a divine nature, he could not have been tempted like other men. Being tempted like other men implies the ability to sin. Under the Christology of the Trinity Doctrine, Jesus could not sin. An attribute of God is his inability to sin. If Jesus consisted of two natures, divine and human, then his divine nature would have coerced the human will not to sin.
    32. An angel strengthened Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. However, if he possessed divinity in conjunction with humanity, why would he have needed such assistance? Such assistance would have been wholly unnecessary.
    33. When Christ speaks of himself, he uses the pronoun “I.” He is speaking of his whole person and not of only part of his person. According to Trinitarian Christology, Christ is one person who consists of a divine nature and a human nature. So, when he says, “My Father is greater than I” (John 14:28 ), he is speaking of himself as the whole person consisting of both divine and human natures. Therefore, by this assertion, he declares himself, both of his natures, inferior to God the Father.
    34. If Thomas calling Jesus God (John 20:28) identifies Jesus as one of the Persons of God, then God making Moses God (Exodus 7:1) should make Moses a Person of God. If not, why not? After all, God speaks much more authoritatively than Thomas.
    35. An important part of the Christology of Trinitarianism is the doctrine of the Incarnation. Not until 451 was this doctrine formerly defined when the Council of Chalcedon promulgated it. The reason that 350 years were needed to develop it was that nowhere does the Scriptures described such a doctrine — although the first chapter of John may weakly hinted at it. Moreover, the doctrine of the Incarnation resembles pagan mythology more than biblical truth. That is, the notion that God Himself descended from Heaven, took the form of a man, and dwelt among humans strongly resembles pagan mythology.

Copyright © 2019 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.

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Valentinian Christology

Valentinian Christology

Thomas Allen

    As shown below, the similarities between the Gnostic Christology and Trinity of the Valentinians and the orthodox Trinitarians are striking. The Valentinians were teaching a Christology very similar to the Christology of the Trinity Doctrine expressed in the Athanasian Creed about 350 years before the proclamation of the Athanasian Creed.
    Valentinus (c.100-c.160) was a teacher in Rome, who almost became Pope. Before coming to Rome in about 140, he had studied in Egypt. About 160, he died in Cyprus. He claimed to have received his ideas from Theodas, a disciple of Paul. Valentinianism survived into the fifth century.
    Valentinus’ teachings merged Christianity with Greek and Oriental speculation. He developed a metaphysical system that incorporated Christianity with paganism and Greek philosophy, primarily Platonism. His theology fluctuated between Gnosticism, esotericism, and orthodox Christianity of his time.
    Valentinus believed that Christ’s flesh was spiritual. Although Jesus ate and drank, he did not defecate. Because Jesus’ body received heavenly substance, it only appeared to need food. (This idea of Jesus conflicts with the New Treatment: Jesus was “like his brethren in all things” [Heb. 2:17]. Like the Valentinians, the Trinitarians also have a Jesus who is incompatible with the New Testament Jesus.)
    Fundamental to the Valentinian Christology is Christ’s deity and preexistence. Furthermore, Christ is a special emanation of God and embodies all the powers of God. They believe that the fullness of the Godhead consists of three persons: Wisdom (Sophia), Truth (Aletheia), and Word (Logos). Jesus was the manifestation of these divine powers. Thus, Christ is the fullness of the Godhead. Pressense described Valentinus’ concept of the Father and the Son as follows:

The principle of all things — the Immortal, the Ineffable, He who deserves the name of Father in the absolute sense — is an unfathomable abyss. He is linked neither to space nor time; He is above all thought, and, as it were, shut up within Himself. Around Him is eternal silence. The Father is not willing to remain in solitude, for He is all love, and love can only exist where it has an object. Thus He produced by emanation the Intellect and the Truth. The Intellect is the consciousness which the Father has of Himself; it is the only Son, His living image, who alone makes known the Father, The Intellect is at the same time the Truth, because of this identity. The Intellect and the Truth produce the Word and the Life. This is the great quaternion of the absolute. The Intellect finds its perfect expression in the Word; that expression is not a mere symbol, since it is also the Life. The Word and the Life produce Man and the Church. . . . The transcendently divine blends with the essentially human. . . . The Intellect and the Truth give birth to the Christ and the Holy Spirit (Pressense, pp. 26-27, 29)

(For further description of Valentinus’ ontological metaphysical speculation, see Pressense, pages 27-33 and Hase, pages 78-80.)
    Further, Valentinus taught that the God of the Old Testament, i.e., Yahweh, was not the Supreme God.
    Valentinians divided into two schools: the Western (or Italian or later) and the Eastern (or Oriental or earlier). According to the Western School, Jesus came down from heaven with a special incorrupted human body. The virgin Mary birthed this human Jesus. Later, either at the birth or baptism of this human Jesus, the divine Christ joined the human Jesus. Thus, Jesus possessed two persons or natures: One is fully human and the other is fully divine. According to the Eastern School, Christ, who has a purely spiritual body, is born through the virgin Mary. The divine person of Jesus absorbs the human person, and, by that, makes Jesus one person. Thus, the Eastern School was partly Docetic.
    The Valentinians were ahead of the Trinitarians in recognizing Christ, the Son of God, as consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father, which is an essential element of the Trinity Doctrine. Moreover, Valentinus may have been the first to teach the doctrine of three hypostases and three persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This notion, he got from Hermes and Plato. (Hermes was a recorder of Egyptian mythology and paganism.) Unlike the Platonists, whose “hypostases” was impersonal, Valentinus’ “hypostases” was personal.
    As the Valentinus’ notion of three persons in the Godhead was between that of the Arians and the Sabellians, Trinitarians adopted his idea (indirectly via his techniques) to avoid and to condemn the Arians and Sabellians. (The Arians believed that the Son was a created being and subordinate to God. Sabellians believed that the Son, as well as the Father and Holy Spirit, was an aspect or manifestation of God.) Like the Valentinians, the Trinitarians adopted a trinity doctrine of a triune God of three distinct persons (or Gods) in one person (or God). (One motivation for adopting the Trinity Doctrine was to distinguish and separate Christianity from the absurdity of Jewish Monotheism, as Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 – c. 395), one of the greatest Trinitarian theologians of the fourth century, stated it.)
    However, the Trinity of the Trinitarians differs significantly from the Trinity of the Valentinians in one important aspect. For the Trinitarians, God the Father and God the Son are coequal. For the Valentinians, the Son is subordinate to the Father. Another important difference between the two is that according to the Trinitarians the three persons of God are male. According to the Valentinians, the Father and Son are male, and the Holy Spirit is female.
    Another essential component of the Trinity Doctrine is the eternal Son. Valentinians taught the eternal generation of the Son, i.e., the eternal Son. God the Father is the eternal Father of the eternal Son. However, they seem to mean that the Son is eternally begotten out of the Father instead of eternally being with or in the Father.
    Similar to the Christology of the Valentinians is the Christology of the Trinitarians. Trinitarians have the preexisting God the Son coming down from heaven to earth and uniting with a human body. However, according to the Trinity Doctrine, Jesus consists of two persons: a human and God. He is 100 percent God and 100 percent human. Yet, he is one person. That is, the Trinitarian Jesus is one person with two wills and two minds. Thus, the Trinitarian Jesus is not a personal man; he is human nature without personal substance. He becomes an abstraction void of personality united with God.
    According to the Valentinians, Christ, who emanates from the Intellect, the consciousness of the Father, the Supreme God, has of Himself, is the highest anointed. Jesus, who is born of Mary is the “ensouled body” that the Savior puts on. The Savior is a lesser anointed, who is also called Jesus, Christ, Word, Son, and All. Jesus was earthly with a human body into which the heavenly Savior descended, yet the Savior’s body was apparently not material. The spiritual Christ departs just before the crucifixion — thus, Deity does not die — and the human body, Jesus, suffers and dies.
    Both the Trinitarian Christ and the Valentinian Christ are similar to the Docetic Jesus. According to Docetism, Christ is not a man; God took the form of a man to Himself. According to the Trinitarians, when God the Son became man at the incarnation, he gave up none of his divine attributes by taking manhood to himself. Like the Trinitarians, the Valentinians hold that Christ is not a true or real man because God subjected all his properties to His divine personality while He preserved a complete and functional human nature. Thus, both the Trinitarians and Valentinians agree that Jesus Christ is not “a true man”; he is God united with human qualities.
    Nearly all Trinitarians maintain that only the human bodyof Christ died on the cross. God the Son, Christ’s divine nature, left the body of Christ at the crucifixion, for God cannot die. (If he died, he would no longer be immortal or eternal.) Valentinians hold the same doctrine of the crucifixion. Christ, i.e., the divine nature, left Jesus, i.e., the human nature, before Jesse died. The primary difference between the two is that for Trinitarians, the human nature left the God nature at death whereas for Valentinians, the God nature left the human nature before the human nature died.
    According to the New Testament, the Son of God died on the cross. Propitiation is by the death of the person of Jesus. However, for Valentinians and Trinitarians, the divine person did not die; only a human image or body died. Both have the divine person experiencing death without having to die.
    Nevertheless, Valentinians and Trinitarians do differ on their view of Jesus Christ. For the Valentinians, Christ is deity and Jesus is human; that is, Christ and Jesus are two distinct persons. Therefore, Jesus dies, but Christ escapes death. (This notion that Christ did not die conflicts with Paul’s teachings: Romans 14:9.)
    For the Trinitarians, Jesus and Christ are one person, although he is two distinct persons, divine and human. According to the Trinity Doctrine, Jesus has both a divine person, the Logos, and a rational human soul. Therefore, Jesus’ human nature retains a human mind and will, and he also has a divine mind and will. Nevertheless, Jesus has only one person in himself. Thus, Trinitarians have more difficulty in explaining Christ’s death without the Son of God dying than do Valentinians.
    Like the Trinitarian Jesus, the Valentinian Jesus consists of the deity and a rational human. Both have Jesus with two souls, but with only one ego, the divine person, dominating. Both believe that the divine must dominate Jesus, or else he would sin. Basically, the difference between the Valentinian and the Trinitarian doctrine of two natures of Jesus is that the Valentinians present theirs in a clear and undeniable fashion, while the Trinitarians present theirs in a hazy and incoherent way.
    Although the Valentinian Jesus had both a human mind and will and a divine mind and will, the divine controlled. Most Trinitarians maintain the same position: Jesus’ divine mind and will controlled his human mind and will. Both have the divine suppressing, at least to some degree, the humanity of Jesus. Thus, Jesus never sinned and could never sin. One significant difference between the Valentinian Jesus and the Trinitarian Jesus is that the Valentinian Jesus is two different persons: one divine, and one human. The Trinitarian Jesus is one person in spite of having two minds and two wills.
    According to the Valentinians, the human body of Jesus descended from heaven and passed through Mary. Thus, Jesus’ human body preexisted in heaven. This Valentinian doctrine, the Trinitarians reject.
    A great problem that Trinitarians have encountered over the centuries is explaining the two natures of Jesus and the crucifixion of Jesus without God dying on the cross while avoiding Gnosticism. Even today, some Trinitarians, e.g., Congdon, accuse many evangelicals of preaching a Docetic and Valentinian Christology.
    So that ordinary people can understand the Christology of the Trinitarians as expressed in the Athanasian Creed, Lord Bacon, a Trinitarian, translates it:

He believes a Virgin to be a Mother of a Son; and that very Son of hers to be her Maker. He believes him to have been shut up in a narrow room, whom heaven and earth could not contain. He believes him to have been born in time, who was and is from everlasting. He believes him to have been a weak child carried in arms, who is the Almighty; and him once to have died, who only hath life and immortality in himself (Norton 82-83).

In other words, God is contained in a womb and stable but is omnipresent. He is eternal yet born in time. He is a vulnerable infant yet omnipotent. He died but is an eternal, immortal God who cannot die. This is the Christology that a good Christian believes whether he realizes it or not. Except Mary being the mother of her Maker, i.e., God, Bacon’s description of Christ fits the Christology of the Valentinians.
    The similarities between Valentinian Christology and the Trinitarian Christology are remarkable. Both hold that Christ was deity and a hypostasis [a person] of the Supreme God. Further, both have him descending from heaven and having two complete natures. While the divine nature performs the miraculous and  salvific works of the Supreme God, the human nature experiences the life of a human body capable of hunger, pain, and death.
    In developing their Christology, the Trinitarians did not copy the Valentinians. Their Christologies are similar because both used the same technique in interpreting the Holy Scriptures. Both read the Scriptures through the thick lens of Platonism. As for the differences, they primarily result from the Valentinians incorporating more paganism and Gnosticism than the Trinitarians. The notion of a God-man and even a Triad (Triune) God comes from paganism. These notions certainly did not come from the staunchly monotheistic Old Testament or the staunchly monotheistic writers of the New Testament.
    Although the teachings of the Valentinians were extremely similar to that of the Trinitarians, they are condemned as a major enemy of orthodoxy. Perhaps the similarity is a cause of the Valentinians being condemned as heretics.
    When theologians develop a doctrine and especially a dogma, they seem not only to discard Occam’s razor, but, to the contrary, they seem to adopt its inverse. (According to Occam’s razor, when two theories are competing, the simpler explanation is to be preferred as it is usually the better of the two.) Do they do so to keep the masses ignorant and depended on them and, thereby, increase their status and importance? They seem to strive to create the most complex, incomprehensible doctrines and dogmas that they can.
    Further, most theologians seem to believe that when a few passages appear to disagree or conflict with many passages in the Bible, the many should be interpreted in light of the few. The few should not be understood in light of the many. Thus, the best doctrines allow or even demand the few to govern the many. For example, 53 scriptures support the doctrine that Jesus is God, while 386 scriptures show that he is not God (Holt, p. 311).
    One of my bosses said, partially joking, that the best way to get data points to fall on the curve is to draw the curve first and then plot the data. Some doctrines of the Church seem to have been developed this way. First, the doctrine is declared, and then verses are found to support the doctrine or are forced via interpretation to support the doctrine. Better yet, is to write the doctrine so that it can void any scripture that contradicts it. An example is the doctrine of the dual nature of Jesus (Jesus is 100 percent human and 100 percent God, yet he is only one person); the doctrine itself makes everything that Jesus says that proves that he is not God irrelevant.

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

Brons, David. “The Gnostic Society Library: Valentinian Theology.” http://www.gnosis.org/library/valentinus/ValentinianJTheology.htm. Accessed December 27, 2017.
           
Cash, Billy “Origen’s Trinitarian Theology.” April 21, 2010.

Chandler, Kegan A. The God of Jesus in Light of Christian Dogma: The Recovery of New Testament Theology. McDonough, Georgia: Restoration Fellowship, 2016.

Congdon, David W. The Fire and the Rose. “American Evangelicalism Christology: The Heresies of American Evangelicalism, Part III: Christology: Part III: A Docetic Christ.” July 28, 2006. https://fireandrose.blogspot.com/2006/07/heresies-of-american- evangelicalism_28.html. Accessed December 27, 2017.

“A Correct Christology.” http://www.jesuswordsonly.com/aboutauthor/189-correct-christology.html. Accessed Dec 27, 2017

Craig, Ryann Elizabeth. “Anastasis in the Treatise on the Resurrection How Jesus’ Example Informs Valentinian Resurrection Doctrine and Christology.”

Fahy, Paul. “Early Christological Heresies.”  Understanding Ministries: 2012. http://www.understanding-ministries.com.

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

Healy, Patrick J. “Valentinus and Valentinians” https://www.catholic.com/index.php/encyclopedia/valentinus-and-valentinians. Accessed  Dec 27, 2017.

Holt, Brian. Jesus God or the Son of God: A Comparison of the Arguments. Mt. Juliet, Tennessee: Tell Way Publishing, 2002.

Neidhart, Ludwig. Biblical Trinity Doctrine and Christology. Augsburg: 2017.

Norton, Andrews. Statement of Reasons for Not Believing the Doctrines of Trinitarians, Concerning the Nature of God, and the Person Of Christ. Cambridge: Brown, Shattuck, and Company, 1833.

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

Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Coley Allen

For more religious articles

Development of the Nicene Creed – Part 3

From Justin Through Clement of Alexandria

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.]

From Justin to Clement of Alexander
    Like Justin, the Fathers who followed were not Trinitarians. They did not believe in an undivided, coequal, coeternal three being God.
    Tatian (c. 120 – c. 180) was a theologian and a sophist, who taught rhetoric and philosophy. He was educated in the Greek religion and philosophy and was a disciple of Justin Martyr. Sometime after his conversion to Christianity, he founded an ascetic and heretical sect.
    Tatian described “God alone as without beginning, invisible, ineffable, the original cause of all things visible and invisible” (p. 116). He does not apply this description to the Son. His concept of the Logos was similar to Justin’s. However, Tatian did not distinctly associates the Logos with Christ. Nevertheless, he did assert “that God was born in the form of man” (p. 117n). “Tatian regarded the Son as originally and from eternity in and with God, not as a real being or person, but only as an attribute, or by virtue of his power of begetting him; in him and with him, only as all things created were; that is, not as the actual, but as the possible” (p. 116). According to Tatian, the Son had a beginning as a real substance or person; the Father produced the Son. Moreover, after his production, the Son was “a being distinct from the Father, and subordinate to him” (p. 116).
    Theophilus of Antioch (d. 183-5) was the Bishop of Antioch (c. 169 – c. 183). In regards to the Father and the Son, he taught a doctrine similar to Tatian. He described “God as Supreme, ‘the true and only God,’ ‘without beginning’ ‘invisible,’ ‘unbegotten’ and, as such, immutable” (p. 118). The Son he described “as inferior, having, as a real being or person, a beginning, ‘visible,’ ‘begotten,’ and therefore, according to his philosophy, not possessing the attribute of immutability” (p. 118).
    According to Theophilus, the Logos was with God Himself; the Logos of God was what reason was in man. This Logos was God’s helper in creation, and through the Logos as His minister, God made all things.
    Moreover, God the Father “‘cannot be confined to space, or be found in place’” (p. 118). The theophanies in the Old Testament were the Logos, that is, the Son. (However, Theophilus did not apply his concept of the Logos to Christ.)
    About the Logos, Theophilus wrote, “‘Of him, before the creation, God took counsel, he being his own reason, or wisdom. And when he willed to create what he had designed, he begot this Logos, the emitted first-born of every creature; not emptying himself of Logos (Reason), but begetting it, and always holding converse with his own Logos (Reason).’ Thus the uttered or begotten Logos or Reason of God became a real person, having a proper subsistence in himself, without diminishing, or taking from, God’s understanding, Logos or Reason” (pp. 118-119). In this way, Theophilus made a marked distinction between the internal and begotten Logos.
    Furthermore, Theophilus contended that only the true God, the Father, was to be worshiped. He believed that the Son was “begotten, or produced from the reason of the Father, a little before the creation of the world; thus becoming a distinct being subject to the will of the Father, and not entitled to equal adoration” (p. 119).
    “Theophilus was the first Christian writer who used the term ‘Trias,’ Trinity, in reference to the Deity: but it is deserving of remark, that, to adopt the modern phraseology, the three ‘distinctions,’ or three ‘somewhats,’ designated by it, are, according to him, ‘God, his Logos, and his Wisdom’” (p. 120). By Wisdom, he may have meant Spirit, though Spirit was usually considered synonymous with the Logos or Word. Yet he did not assert that the three were equal.
    Athenagoras (c. 133 – c. 190) was a Greek philosopher who converted to Christianity, after which he wrote apologies for Christians and a treatise on the Resurrection. According to Athenagoras, the Son of God “‘is the Logos (Reason) of the Father in idea and operation.’ ‘Through it all things were made.’ ‘The Son of God is the understanding and reason of the Father.’ ‘God from the beginning being eternal reason, had in himself the Logos (Reason), being always rational’” (pp. 121-122). Thus, the “attribute reason, or wisdom, was eternal, but not the Son as a personal being” (p. 122).
    Like most of the other ante-Nicene Fathers, Athenagoras maintained the supremacy of the Father, who was “‘unbegotten and eternal’ [and who] created all things by his Logos, or Reason” (p. 122). To Athenagoras, the Holy Spirit was “something flowing out from God, as rays flow from the sun, and are re-absorbed, that is, not as a person, but an influence” (p. 123). The Logos “is the eternal reason of God. . . . The Holy Spirit is the Divine Wisdom, the bond of unity between the Father and the Son” (Pressense, p. 250).
    Irenaeus (130 – 202) became the Bishop of Lyons in 177. He wrote five books against the Gnostic heretics. Unlike most Christian writers of his era, he avoided abstract metaphysics of the Platonist Fathers.
    According to Irenaeus, the Son had a second existence and was inferior to the Father. However, he did not discuss the mode of the Son’s generation because he considered it inexplicable. No one knew the Son’s generation except “‘the Father who begat and the Son who was begotten’” (p. 124). However, in his arguments against Gnosticism, he connected the Son with the terms “always” and “eternal.”
    Always, he was careful “to distinguish the Son from the ‘One true and only God,’ who is ‘supreme over all,’ and ‘besides whom there is no other’” (p. 124). The Father is above all and is the head of Christ. Further, he declared that the Church “‘has received from the Apostles and their disciples this belief in one God the Father, supreme over all . . . and in one Jesus Christ . . . and in the Holy Spirit, that through the prophets preached the dispensations.’” (p. 125). Thus, the “Father ‘sends,’ the ‘Son is sent:’ the Father ‘commands,’ the Son executes, ministering to his will. The Father grants, the Son receives, power and dominion” (p. 125). Consequently, Irenaeus did not conceive “of the Son as numerically the same Being with the Father, or as, in any sense, his equal” (p. 125).
    Like the Apostolic Fathers, Irenaeus held that Jesus Christ had one nature and that he “suffered in his whole nature” (p. 126). Jesus was the Logos of God, and the Logos became flesh and suffered. Thus, Jesus “suffered in his most exalted nature” (p. 127). (Modern Trinitarians maintain that Jesus Christ has two natures, divine and human. Whenever Jesus fails to act divinely, such as his lack of omniscience in not knowing the time of the end [Mark 8:32], Trinitarians claim that he was acting in his human nature. Also, only Jesus’ human nature died on the cross because God, being eternal, cannot die. Thus, this dual nature of Christ gives them an easy escape in ignoring or explaining away the clear teachings of the Bible that contradict their dogma.) “Like the old Fathers generally, before the time of Origen, Irenaeus did not attribute to the Saviour a rational human soul but supposed that the Logos supplied the place of it” (p. 127). He held “1. That the Son was really divine; 2. That this divine element was perfectly joined to humanity in Jesus Christ” (127n). Thus, Christ was “God, God and man” (p. 127n).
    Tertullian (c. 155 – c. 240) was a presbyter and later became a Montanist. He has been called “the father of Latin Christianity” and “the founder of Western theology.” (Montanists believed that the Spirit of truth, the Paraclete whom Jesus had promised in the Gospel of John, was manifesting himself to the world through Montanist prophets; they also taught a rigorous legalistic moralism and asceticism.)
    Tertullian maintained the supremacy of the Father. However, he believed “that the Son is entitled to be called God, on the principle, that ‘whatever is born of God is God,’ just as one born of human parents is human” (p. 129). Although he states that the Son possessed “‘unity of substance’ with God” (p. 129), Tertullian “never meant to express a numerical unity of essence, but only a specific, that is, a common nature” (p. 129). He supposed that “the Son to be in some sort divine by virtue of his birth, and of one substance with God, as he is a spirit, and God is spirit. At the same time, he regarded him as a different being from the Father, that is, numerically distinct from him” (p. 129). However, this distinction did make two Gods: “‘[T]he Son is subordinate to the Father as he comes from him as the principle, but is never separated’” (p. 130n). Still, “God and Christ are two things, two species, two forms” (p. 130). Tertullian observed, “‘The Father is different from the Son (another), as he is greater; as he who begets is different from him who is begotten; he who sends, different from him who is sent; he who does a thing, different from him by whom (as an instrument) it is done’” (p. 130). Furthermore, the Son is inferior to the Father. According to Tertullian, “‘The Father is a whole substance; the Son a derivation, and portion of the whole, as he professes, saying, “The Father is greater than I”’” (p. 131).
    Although he admits to “the pre-existence of the Son, [he] expressly denies his eternity” (p. 131). He states, “‘There was a time when the Son was not.’ . . . ‘Before all things, God was alone.’ . . . [N]othing existed without or beyond himself. ‘Yet he was not alone; for he had his own reason, which was in himself, with him. For God is rational’ a being endued with reason” (p. 131). Moreover, the Father was “‘more ancient, nobler, and more powerful than the Son’” (p. 132).
    Nevertheless, after he became a Montanist, he described the Godhead in terms approaching the modern Trinity Doctrine. He wrote, “‘All are of one, by unity of substance; while the mystery of the dispensation is still guarded which distributes the unity into a Trinity, placing in their order the three, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit; three, however . . . not in substance but in form; not in power but in appearance, for they are of one substance and one essence and one power, inasmuch as He is one God from whom these degrees and forms and aspects are reckoned under the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.’ He describes these distinctions of the Godhead as ‘persons,’ meaning by the word not our [Trinitarians] usage in the sense of personalities, but forms of manifestation” (Walker, p. 69). (Did he come to this conclusion by studying the Scriptures or was it a special revelation to a Montanist?) Ironically, while some Trinitarians claim Tertullian’s Montanist statement supports the Trinity Doctrine, others claim that Montanists were hostile to Trinitarian ideas — even Tertullian, expressed his disdain toward Trinitarians with his Monarchian explanation of the trinity.
    Tertullian also believed Christ consisted of two natures: divine and human. “We see His double state, not intermixed but conjoined in one person, Jesus, God and man” (Walker, p. 69).
    To the objections that he and the others like him were advocating two or three Gods, Tertullian replied that the number and deposition of the Trinity were not a division of the unity. His solution was a monarchy. Monarchy was “one rule or dominion, but may be administered through many officials; or the monarch may associate his son with him, all power still emanating from him. The monarchy then remains. So with the divine monarchy” (p. 134-135). The heavenly King’s use of “‘the Son and Spirit, who are second and third to him, and of a similar nature as begotten of his substance’” (p. 135) does not destroy the monarchy. Tertullian noted “that the Son does ‘nothing without the Father’s will;’ that all his ‘power was received from the Father’ who granted it.” Under Tertullian’s explanation, Christ lacks supreme divinity and numerical identity with the Father. Tertullian’s unity is that “the Son was of Divine origin, and his will always harmonized with the will of the Father, which is no unity at all in the later Athanasian [Trinitarian] sense” (p. 135).
    Hippolytus (170 – 235) was a Roman presbyter and Bishop of Pontus and an apologist for what was the considered orthodoxy. About 220, he wrote A Refutation of All Heresies.
    About the Trinity, Hippolytus believed in strict subordination. “He asserted that ‘God caused the Logos to proceed from him when he would and as he would’” (p. 238). He believed in “the superiority of the Father, and the dependent and derived nature of the Son” (p. 212). Like other ante-Nicene Fathers, he believed that God used a subordinate being or instrument in creating the world; this subordinate being was the Logos, the Son: “‘This sole and universal God first, by his cogitation, begets the Word (Logos), . . . the indwelling Reason of the universe.’ — ‘When he (the Logos) came forth from Him who begat him, being his first-begotten speech, he had in himself the ideas conceived by the Father. When, therefore, the Father commanded that the world should be, the Logos accomplished it in detail, pleasing God’” (p. 213). Thus, “God is the Original: he commands, and the Son, or Logos performs” (p. 213). Yet, the Logos “is not confounded with the world, since it exists antecedently to it, and proceeds not from nothing, but from the Father Himself, . . . but He does not possess a distinct existence from all eternity. He exists first as the creative thought, then He becomes the instrument of creation, the sovereign agent of the Divine will, to call into life contingent beings. He is thus a person, not simply an idea” (Pressense, pp. 406-407). Hippolytus conceived of the Logos to be a person, not simply an idea. The Father alone produced the Logos “not simply as an utterance or sound, but as the inner thought of the universe” (Pressense, p. 407).
    To explain away the appearance of two Gods, Hippolytus declared, “‘There are not, then, two Gods, but one God in two persons. The third economy is the grace of the Holy Spirit.’ The Father commands, the Son obeys, the Holy Spirit enlightens. The Father is over all, the Son acts by all, the Holy Spirit is in all” (Pressense, p. 408). (Later, following Hippolytus’ method of a mere assertion to reduce two Gods to one, the Trinitarians would reduce three Gods to one by merely declaring them to be one God.)
    The Fathers between Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria introduced the thought of a trinity. Also, they advanced the notion of God’s reason, the Logos, which or who later became the Son and Christ, existing from eternity with the Father. Thus, they continued the Platonization of Christianity.
    However, they still maintained the supremacy of the Fathers and the subordination of the Son and struggle with the notion of two Gods, ditheism, or three Gods, tritheism. Moreover, like most earlier Fathers, most continued to “believed that Christ did not possess a human rational soul, the Logos supplying its place” (p. 135).

Clement of Alexandria
    Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215) was a philosopher before he became a Christian. He was a presbyter and became the head of the Catechetical or Theological School in Alexandria. He advanced the application of Greek philosophy, primarily that of Plato and the Stoics, to Christianity. As Philo had interpreted Judaism by philosophy into scientific dogma, so Clement interpreted Christianity. He was somewhat gnostic as he was inclined to equate knowledge of and about God to salvation. (Later, many clergymen would act the same way when they thought that salvation depended on believing the Trinity Doctrine.)
    His residence was Alexandria, where “the Jewish, the Oriental, and the Grecian culture, mingled with the old Egyptian superstitions” (p. 140). The people of these cultures were generally hostile to the religion of Jesus. Also, the home of Philo and the Platonist school were in Alexandria.
    Clement believed that the Son existed before the world. Although he gave the Son the title God, he did not ascribe to him supreme, underived divinity. Moreover, like the other early Fathers, he did not believe that the Son had a personal existence from the beginning.
    “The Fathers ascribed to the Son a sort of metaphysical or potential existence in the Father: that is, they supposed that he existed in him from all eternity as an attribute his logos, reason, or wisdom; that, before the formation of the world, this attribute acquired by a voluntary act of the Father a distinct personal subsistence, and became his instrument in the creation” (pp. 148-149). Likewise, Clement held that the Logos was the reason or wisdom of God. That is, the Logos was an attribute of the Father.
    Moreover, the Son was inferior to the Father. (For passages from Clement’s writings asserting the Son’s inferiority, see Lamson, pp. 150-151. For additional description of God the Father, the Logos, and the Son and their relationship, see Pressense, pp. 257-260.) “Clement believed God and the Son to be numerically distinct; in other words, two beings, the one supreme, the other subordinate” (p. 150). He conceived of the Son, or Logos, as the image of God as man is the image of man. Thus, his view of the Logos was like that of his predecessors. Like them, he had no concept of the eternal generation of the Son as do Trinitarians.
    To Clement, the Logos was “the source of all the intelligence and morality of the human race — the teacher of mankind everywhere” (Walker, p. 78). God was the giver of philosophy to the Greeks. He declared, “‘For this was a schoolmaster to bring the Hellenic mind, as the law the Hebrews, to Christ” (Walker, p. 78). Moreover, his “view of Christ’s life is almost Docetic” (Walker, p. 78). (Docetists believed “that Jesus Christ had appeared as a phantom form, that he had not had a real or natural body, and that his crucifixion had only been an illusion. . . . Consequently, Christ’s resurrection and ascension into heaven were denied” [“Docetism”]. Thus, “. . . Christ only ‘appeared’ or ‘seemed[’] to be a man, to have been born, to have lived and suffered” [Arendzen].)
    Clement advanced the notion that being from the Father, who is the supreme God, the Son was God. Since he was from God, his nature was divine. Also, he encouraged the use of Greek philosophy in understanding 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.

More religious articles.

Part 2    Part 4

Illuminism Religiously

Illuminism Religiously

Thomas Allen

Illuminism is the material manifestation of Lucifer’s war against Christ Jesus and the God of the Christians. Being of Lucifer, Illuminism is extremely anti-Christian. Christ and the commandments of God are seen as preventing man from achieving his fullest potential. God hinders man’s progress and perfection; He is the great oppressor. Man can obtain salvation without Jesus. The only thing standing between man and utopia (Nirvana) is Christianity.

The essence of Illuminism is achieving salvation through knowledge. According to Still, “[I]lluminism is not just the knowledge gained from reading books, or receiving oral instruction, or even the secretive knowledge gained from initiation. Illuminism also involves a vivid flash of insight or understanding, regardless of what means are used to attain it.”[1] Still continues:

There are many ways to achieve illumination. The method most important to Illuminism is the mystical inspiration invoked by the performance of occult rituals. Illumination can be achieved by dancing to exhaustion to the rhythm of native drums. It can be brought on by sexual rituals, such as those practiced in Tantric Yoga. To the Satanists, it can be brought on by ritualistic sacrifice. Throughout history, mind-altering substances such as marijuana, hashish, peyote cactus, and LSD have been used to achieve paranormal mystical experience. In fact, the Greek word for sorcery is pharmakia from whence came the word pharmaceuticals.[2]

Illuminism’s theology is revealed today in Freemasonry, Liberal Protestantism, Catholic Modernism, Judaism, the Eastern religions, and the New Age sects. All these theologies are essentially Pantheism. Naturalism is the most common expression of Pantheism in the West.

Pantheism materializes God and makes God and the Universe one. God is merely the total of all that exists. The Universe is a great inclusive unity that devours God in that unity. Thus, the Universe becomes God, and nothing separate or distinct exists from this Universe God. The Universe becomes the sole reality. It deifies unregenerated man.

Pantheism rejects God’s personality. God is reduced to the forces and laws of nature. God is an energy, the life force or god-force, that flows through all living things — thus, man becomes God or, at least, part of God. It also rejects revelation. Religious truths come from nature, not from Divine revelation. A personal God does not exist in Pantheism. Furthermore, no person ever really dies. (Reincarnation is an integral part of the doctrines of many New Age sects.) Therefore, no one will ever face God’s personal judgment. Thus, Pantheism promises man that he is not accountable to a personal God.[3]

Because this god-force flowing through all mankind unifies man into one, Pantheism naturally leads to global unity under a one-world government and one-world religion. Such a unity will lead to a New World Order where all men will be enlightened with Illuminism. Then all mankind will have mystical powers to do what had previously been impossible.

Pantheism subordinates the individual to the collective. When an individual becomes merely a component of the masses, he ceases to be “an individual rational being, distinct and complete as to his nature and thereby in possession of inalienable rights. . . . [He loses] his dignity and integrity, lacks true individuality, and becomes an unfree, helpless mode of something else.”[4] He becomes disposable and has only what the illuministic priesthood condescends to grant him. To a Pantheist, humans are no more valuable than animals or plants.[5]

It subverts God-centered religion into man-centered religion (and ultimately into Lucifer-centered religion for Lucifer deceives man into believing that he, Lucifer, is the revealer of the secret knowledge of the Universe, which Pantheism identifies with God). Man as a collective, i.e., humanity as a whole, becomes God, and the Illuminists become the priesthood.

In the modern Western World, Pantheism manifests itself most commonly as secular humanism. Kirban defines humanism as “a system of thought or action that holds that man is capable of self-fulfillment, peace on earth, and right ethical conduct without recourse to God. Humanism therefore is the religion which defies man and dethrones God.”[6] Secular humanism has five basic doctrines: the irrelevance of Deity, the supremacy of “human reason,” the inevitability of progress, science as the guide to progress, and self-sufficiency of man.[7] Naturally, it rejects salvation through Christ Jesus, a final judgment by God, and the existence of heaven and hell. Secular humanists worship the creature, mankind (humankind for the politically correct), instead of the Creator.

Thus, man, being innately good, does not need salvation. Science will provide for the needs of man including molding man into a more uniform, and therefore, easier to manage, being. Government becomes the guardian angel that will guide man ever onward and upward — hence, totalitarianism. Through human reason, man can solve all his problems and progress and advance independently of any transcendent god; consequently, God is irrelevant, if not an obstacle. The principal Mystery cults, Pantheism, Gnosticism, and Hermetism mixed together form secular humanism.[8]

Secular humanism is built upon hatred. The old Soviet Union epitomized a secular humanist society. The government of the Soviet Union administered the world’s most humanistic state. Yet it murdered more than 66 million of its own citizens. Abortion, genetic engineering, cloning, and euthanasia have grown out of secular humanism.

Like Communism, secular humanism rejects the supernatural and divine revaluation. Both promote world government. Both want to control the schools and universities and to destroy Christianity. Public schools have become the churches of the secular humanists, which is why they hate anything Christian appearing in public schools.

The ultimate goal of secular humanism is to demoralize its adherers and fill them with existential despair. When confronted with life’s spiritual realities, the honest secular humanists lose their belief in the divinity of man. Pride often prevents them from turning to the true God, the God of the Christians, whom they have spent a lifetime denouncing or ignoring. So, most turn to mysticism, some non-rational philosophy, or simply go mad with despair.[9]

The other important branch of Pantheism today is occultism. While secular humanism takes materialism to the extreme, occultism often takes spiritualism to the extreme. Occultists are the spiritual followers of Lucifer. Most believe that Lucifer is the coequal of the God of the Christians and that he is superior to God’s Christ in that if he does not eventually defeat Christ, Christ will never defeat him. Occultists see the God of the Christians as the power of evil and Lucifer as the true God and the power of good — which is what the Jewish Cabala teaches.[10] By revealing secret knowledge to man, Lucifer becomes man’s savior. Nevertheless, most occultists reject a personal devil and the idea of hell: Eternal punishment cannot exist because no personal God who passes final judgment on individuals exists. Freeing man from a personal external God (the God of the Christians) Who demands obedience to His laws and Who will judge every person according to His Son Jesus, is the objective of all New Age religions. The goal of New Age religions, like the old Eastern religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism, “is not to know God, but to be God.”[11] Thus, occultists seek salvation independent of God’s rule and authority.

Occultists seek power through hidden knowledge, which will lead to salvation. They practice manipulating the forces of nature through spiritual means, i.e., they practice magic. Magic may be divided into two branches: divining and operative. Divining magic includes aeromancy (fortune telling with wind or clouds), anthropomancy (fortune telling with entrails of human beings), astrology (fortune telling with planets), cartomancy (fortune telling with cards), hydromancy (fortune telling with liquids), oneiromancy (fortune telling with dreams), palmistry (fortune telling with marks on the palm), and pyromancy (fortune telling with fire). Operative magic includes alchemy (transmutation of base metals into precious metals), mesmerism (hypnotism), necromancy (conjuring the spirits of the dead), and theurgy (compelling a god or supernatural being to do or not do something).

A hybrid of secular humanism and occultism is spiritual humanism.[12] Man is by nature divine. He is God, an enlightened god-man and absolute sovereign. Thus, he is perfect and all-powerful. All that is needed to deify him fully is proper illumination. Then man will become a higher race of cosmic gods and will be able to manipulate the Universe to suit his will.

A chief difference between secular humanism and spiritual humanism is that secular humanism rejects the spiritual while spiritual humanism acknowledges and accepts the spiritual.[13]

Illuministic religions typically share two common features — the two assertions that Lucifer used to deceive Eve. First, no one will really die and face a final judgment of God. If the body dies, the person’s spirit and soul will return to inhabit another body — reincarnation, or his spirit and soul will migrate to some higher level of spiritual existence. Second, man has the right, power, and ability to become like God if not become God.[14]

Pantheism gives religious sanction to the collective doctrines and programs of Illuminism. All forms of Pantheism are illuministic. Consequently, Illuminists preach Pantheism and use it to advance Illuminism.

To conceal their intent to subvert Christianity into Pantheism, Illuminists nearly always cloak their theology in Christian jargon. They call their theology “Christianity” to gain an audience for their fraud. Without such deception, destroying the authority of the Christian Scriptures would be far more difficult, if not impossible. Considering the success that the Illuminists have achieved in destroying fundamental Christianity since Weishaupt introduced this tactic in the late eighteenth century, it has worked markedly well.

Man’s religions can be divided into two groups. One believes that man is innately bad, i.e., a self-centered, self-serving sinner; this is the religion of true Christianity. The other believes that man is innately good; this is the essence of Illuminism and most other religions. True Christians believe that man can never perfect himself, is incapable of pleasing God by his own works, and, therefore, needs a savior; Jesus, the Son of God, is this savior. Man cannot earn salvation; salvation is from God. Illuminism and the other religions believe that with knowledge, science, and education, man can perfect himself and save himself, if he is even in need of salvation. With his own works, man can save himself without the intervention of a savior. Man can become like God, if not God, by following the proper rituals and ceremonies or the teachings and examples of a holy teacher like Confucius, Buddha, or Mohammad.

From these two basic religious views come all men’s political, social, and economic principles. Thus, Christianity is incompatible with Illuminism in all its forms, including Communism, fascism, socialism, Zionism, globalism, multiracialism, multiculturalism, Freemasonry, Judaism, Islam, and New Age religions, which is why the Illuminists must destroy Christianity.

Endnotes
1. William Still, New World Order: The Ancient Plan of Secret Societies (Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1990), pp. 36-37.

2. Ibid., p. 37.

3. Gary H. Kah, En Route to Global Occupation (Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1992), p. 69.

4. Clarence Kelly, Conspiracy Against God and Man: A Study of the Beginnings and Early History of the Great Conspiracy (Belmont, Massachusetts: Western Islands, 1974), pp. 185-186.

5. Gary H. Kah, The Demonic Roots of Globalism (Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1995), p. 136.

6. Salem Kirban, Satan’s Angles Exposed (Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania: Salem Kirban Inc., 1980), p. 107.

7. Ibid., p. 109.

8. Eustace Mullins, The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology of History (Staunton, Virginia: Revelation Book, 1987), p. 69.

9. Paul McGuire, Who Will Rule the Future?: A Resistance to the New World Order (Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House Publishers, 1991), p. 24.

10. Lady Queenborough (Edith Starr Miller), Occult Theocracy (Two Volumes. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933), p. 26.

11. James W. Wardner, Unholy Alliances: The Secret Plan and the Secret People Who Are Working to Destroy America (James W. Wardner, 1996), p. 225.

12. Randall N. Baer, Inside the New Age Nightmare, (Lafayette, Louisiana: Huntington House, Inc., 1989), pp. 84ff.

13. Ibid., p 84.

14. Kah, Demonic Roots, p. 13.

Copyright © 2010 by Thomas Coley Allen.

 More articles on history. 

New Age Religions

New Age Religions
Thomas Allen

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

Another important movement underlying the advancement of Illuminism has been the New Age religious movement that became so apparent during the last part of the twentieth century.

New Age religions are pantheistic and occult. Most of the New Age religions are built upon Hinduism, Buddhism, especially Tibetan Buddhism, and Theosophy. They include witchcraft (manipulating the forces of nature) and Satanism (the direct worship of Lucifer). New Age religions range from humanistic worship of “God within” to the pagan worship of Gaia (mother Earth, the Greek goddess of Earth). They allow the individual to pick his own religious truths and his own set of morals and ethics—thus, they discard absolute moral standards and eternal principles and adopt relativism. Instead of worshiping the Creator, the God of the Christians, New Age practitioners worship the creation. The New Age religions base their spiritual truths on personal experience and not on the established facts and truths of the Bible. (These New Age truths are revealed by one’s inter being, or his “psyche.”) The goal of the New Age religious movement is to replace Christianity and limited government with occult socialism, Luciferianism.

Common practices of various New Age sects are trances (altered states of consciousness), astral projections or space travel (out-of-body travel), past life regression (visiting past lives through hypnosis), divination (seeing future events), and spirit guides (direct interaction with spirit beings). Connected with spirit guides, who are, contrary to the belief of most New Age practitioners, demons, is automatic writing. (Messages received through automatic writing are always opposed to orthodox Christianity.) Common features of most occult religions are evolution, reincarnation, astrology, and meditation. New Age religion often involves the use of mind-altering drugs to achieve an altered state. Thus, the drug culture and occultism are companions.

Some popular new age religions are Hare Krishna, Zen Buddhism, Sufism as expressed by the Meher Baba, Transcendental Meditation, and the Divine Light Mission. Hare Krishna and the Divine Light Mission came out to Hinduism. Hare Krishna comes closer to Christianity than any other Hindu sect. Zen Buddhism came out of Buddhism. (In the United States, drugs like LSD have become an important component of Zen Buddhism.)

The Satanic practices listed in Deuteronomy 18:10-11 are popular among various New Age sects. They are making children pass through fire (offering children as human sacrifices to a god, today appearing as abortion), divination (fortune telling, soothsaying), enchantment (interpreting omens), witchcraft (practicing astrology and the like), sorcery (using occult formulas and incantations), charming (casting spells), spiritualism (consulting with spirits), wizardry (acquiring superhuman knowledge from demons), and necromancy (calling up the dead).

Included among the New Age ideas are sex, pornography, the homosexual and feminist movements, environmentalism, abortion and euthanasia, psycho-therapies, worship of Mother Earth, and, especially, embracing any god but the God of the Christians. New Age religions teach that the rights of individuals must give way to the rights of humanity (naturally, the Illuminists will define what the rights of humanity are). Like National Socialists and Hindus, New Agers often place the lives of animals above the lives of people. New Age religions are replacing secular humanism in the temples of the public schools as people become aware of the demoralizing effects of secular humanism. (To destroy Christianity, the Illuminists promote secular humanism because it leads to vast numbers of spiritually starved people, many of whom in their hunger will turn to the occult and other New Age religions where they will worship Lucifer, the God of Illuminism.)

Corporations, hospitals, universities, public schools, and even federal agencies are promoting New Age practices, if not New Age religions themselves. Diversity training, value clarification, Zen, and Transcendental Meditation are among the most popularly promoted practices.

As New Age religions can absorb all religions except Christianity, Christianity must be destroyed. To destroy Christianity, the Illuminists have worked unceasingly to erode Christian values and to create apathy in the Church. They have labored to starve spiritually the masses by secularizing society. To feed the spiritual starved, the Illuminists offer Lucifer’s New Age religions.

Among Congressmen who were the leading promoters of the New Age revolution when they were in Congress were New Gingrich (Republican, member of CFR, 33rd degree Freemason), Mark Hatfield (Republican, Freemason, and supporter of global depopulation), Arlen Specter (Republican, Freemason, and ardent supporter of one world government), and Charlie Rose (Democrat).[1]

Included among the financial supports of the New Age movements are Blue Cross-Blue Shield, Lockheed Aircraft, and Rockefeller Foundation.[2]

Sun Moon and the Unification Church
The most dangerous New Age religions are those that give the appearance of being Christian but are really counterfeits. Sun Moon’s Unification Church typifies this type of church. Sun Moon’s Unification Church is perhaps the largest new age cult religious organization. Financing this church is the Korean CIA with money from the United States CIA. Moon is an ardent anti-Communist. Not only is Moon a leader in corrupting the Christian religion with false Christian doctrine, he is also a leader in destroying the Aryan people through miscegenation. Besides promoting miscegenation, Moon rejects the divine nature of Jesus—reducing him to being merely a man who perfectly understood God’s will—and Jesus’ return to Earth—Moon, who claims to be sinless, is the Lord of the Second Coming. Jesus failed in his mission because he did not marry and procreate holy offspring. Moon claims that Jesus accomplished only partial salvation; another (presumably, Moon) is needed to complete the work of Jesus and bring complete salvation. He makes himself, not Jesus, as the object of faith. He has been accused of teaching salvation through sexual intercourse with someone whom God has blessed. While traditional Christian ordinances of baptism and communion are avoided, seances, clairvoyance, and other occult practices are accepted. Moon also claims to receive revelations from God. To his brand of “Christianity,” he has incorporated Taoism, mysticism, and spiritualism. Like all Illuminists, Moon wants to establish a global government and a one world religion; both of which will be merged into one. Moon controls the Washington Times, which backs neo-conservatives.

[Editor's note: A short section on other cults in the original is omitted.]

Scientology
In 1950, Lafayette Ronald Hubbard, a science-fiction writer, unveiled his dianetics, the essence of Scientology. Scientology has become one of the most powerful and influential religious movements. Controlling the minds of others without their consent is the objective of many of the procedures of Scientology. It uses a combination of Catholic confession and psychotherapy. Its tenets include psychoanalysis and probing one’s prenatal influences, which are the cause of one’s present problems. Scientology teaches that man, who descended from gods, is basically good. However, he has a reactive mind of compulsions and inhibitions that can be, and need to be, contacted and erased. Good and evil are a matter of opinion: Morality is relative, not absolute. To Scientology, God is irrelevant; only Scientology is relevant. God is ignored. Man is deified and can perfect himself through perfect reasoning. With his perfect reasoning, man can solve all human problems. Reincarnation is also part of the Scientology doctrine. Teaching that enlightenment is attained through a series of stages, Scientology is, in essence, a form of Gnosticism. It contains eight grades of clearness; the eighth grade is reached when all a person’s engram from prenatal influences and previous existence have been cleared. Its eight dynamics are “(1) to survive as an individual; (2) to survive through sex and family; (3) to survive as a group (school, society, town, and nation); (4) to survive as mankind; (5) to preserve animal and plant life; (6) to preserve the physical universe, including matter, energy, space and time; (7) to preserve spiritual existence; and (8) to preserve immortal existence.”[3] Scientology is a mixture of “‘Hindu Veda and Dharma, Taoism, Old Testament wisdom, Buddhist principles of brotherly love and compassion, the early Greeks, Lucretius, Spinosa, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Spencer and Freud.’”[4] The works of Alfred Korzybski (author of General Semantics), Grinker (American psychiatrists), Speigel (American psychiatrists), William Sargant (English psychiatrists), Aleister Crowley (the twentieth century’s greatest practitioner of black magic) are also incorporated. Scientology is essentially a mixture of science fiction and magic. Although Hubbard disdained Christianity and called Christ a “hypnotic implant,” he, nevertheless, dressed Scientology in Christian garb and claimed it to be a nondenominational church. It offers no one a way to salvation.

Blavatsky and Theosophy
An important ancestor of the New Age religions is Theosophy. Theosophy is closely related to Freemasonry theologically.

Theosophy combines Eastern philosophical religious teachings with Western. Beginning with the essence of God, it arrives at the spiritual nature of the Universe. It claims knowledge of God’s person through direct knowledge, physical processes, and philosophical speculation. It uses speculative mysticism to explain how sin in this world can coexist with an omnipotent, holy God. Theosophists believe that God is impersonal and that man can perfect himself. “Man is god in the making.” Man faces no final judgment. “Hell” is a state of purgatory where souls of the dead stay until they are reincarnated. Thus, reincarnation is one of its tenets. Jesus becomes merely a pious religious leader who was martyred. Theosophy holds that God has revealed himself to the world long before Jesus arrived. The ancient myths and legends of the Egyptians, Greeks, Indians, and other people are variations of the same revelation. Likewise, the Christian Scriptures are merely a variation of this revelation. Theosophy is a form of Pantheism. Types of theosophists include Neoplatonists, Gnostics, and Cabalists.

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky is the mother of modern-day Theosophy and the modern-day New Age movement. Her Theosophy borrowed heavily from the Jewish Cabala, especially the anti-Christian aspects of the Cabala, for she fervently hated Christianity. She viewed Lucifer (Satan) “as the real creator and benefactor, the Father of Spiritual mankind.” Lucifer, not Jesus, is man’s savior. Satan, a heavenly spirit who deceives mankind, as orthodox Christianity conceives him, does not exist in Theosophy; instead Satan is glorified for his pride, independence, and rebelliousness. Secretly directing evolution of mankind is an elite group called “Great Masters,” “Adepts,” and “Great White Brotherhood.” Blavatsky typically referred to this group as “Ascended Masters of Wisdom.” They are highly evolved souls who, after many reincarnations, have left the earthly sphere for the spiritual realm. Building upon a base of Hinduism and Buddhism, Theosophy synthesized philosophy, religion, and science.

Blavatsky claimed that she had spent many years traveling through Tibet where she had been initiated into the Mysteries of the occult and through India. When some of her followers in India were arrested for homosexual acts, she left for the United States. Rene Guenon claims that she came to the United States from Paris and that she was probably never in Tibet. Her teachers were Paulos Metamon (a magician and conjuror), Mazzini (who initiated her into the Carbonari in 1856), and Victor Michel (a Freemason, mesmerist, and spiritualist). Serapis Bey and Tuiti Bey, who were Cabalists and members of the Egyptian Brothers, were probably her masters in Paris. She and Albert Pike were socially close. Blavatsky knowingly and willingly rejected God of the Christians, the father of Christ Jesus, and accepted Lucifer as her god.

Regardless who sent her, she arrived in the United States in 1872 and founded her Theosophical Society in 1875 with the aid of William Q. Judge and Henry S. Olcott. Olcott became the first president. Other members included Dr. Seth Pancoast, Thomas Edison, and, briefly, Albert Pike. Pancoast and George Felt were vice-presidents. Felt was a professor of mathematics and Egyptology and a member of the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, which later expelled him.

Annie Besant, who had become a disciple of Blavatsky in 1889, gained control of the Theosophical Society following Blavatsky’s death in 1891, and in 1907 she became president. Besant was a member of the National Secular Society and a preacher of free thought. She advocated socialism and was a founder of the Fabian Society. She founded the English branch of the Theosophical Society and later the Indian branch. She was also vice-president and great teacher of the Supreme Council of the International Order of Co-Masonry.

Blavatsky was primarily interested in the occult sciences. She cared little about politics and schemes of material welfare. She claimed that socialism and Communism were both “disguised conspiracies of brutal force and selfishness against honest labor.”[5] Besant, however, was more political minded and organized the Society on a political basis to advocate socialism and world government.

Blavatsky thought that the teachings of Gautama Buddha were a perfection of Hinduism and wanted to rehabilitate Buddhism. Besant thought that the doctrines of the Brahmans were the purer faith. Yet Besant did not introduce Brahmanism or Buddhism into her lodges in Europe; she introduced her own occult system.

The objectives of the Theosophical Society are “The World Religion, The World University, and the World Government (by the Restoration of the Mysteries, i.e., by the recognition of their place as the World Government as they were recognized in ancient days, the place they have ever continued to occupy. . .).”[6] Theologically, the Theosophical Society is Gnostic and anti-Christian. Out of the teachings and philosophy of the Theosophical Society came the New Age movement of the twentieth century.

Arcane School and World Union
Freemasonry is behind the New Age movement in general and the Theosophical Society, which is basically a front for Freemasonry’s religious doctrines, in particular. Related to the Theosophical Society are the Lucis Trust, the Arcane Schools, the Triangles, and World Goodwill (which merged with the World Union in 1961). The Lucis Trust promotes the belief in the Hierarchy, also known as Ascended Masters, Masters of Wisdom, and the Elder Brothers. These Hierarchs are extremely wise men, who through successive reincarnations have become gods. Lucis Trust also promotes the United Nations, one world government with a socialist world economy. (It runs the only religious chapel at the United Nations’ headquarters—thus, affirming the Satanic nature of the United Nations.) Lucis Trust and its allied organizations serve as an intermediary between Freemasonry and allied secret societies and the public. Its goal is to condition the masses to accept the spiritual principles of Illuminism and its New World Order.

The Arcane Schools train people for high-level work in the New Age movement. The Triangles are meditation groups of three people. World Goodwill distributed literature promoting theosophy. After its merger with World Union, it distributed literature promoting world government.

Alice Ann Bailey, a Theosophist, established the Lucis Trust, World Goodwill, Triangles, Arcane School, and New Group of World Servers. Bailey was anti-Jewish and anti-Christian. Her many books were written through her by her spirit guide. In building the infrastructure and articulating the strategy of the modern New Age movement, she is probably the most important person.

World Union is leading the way toward world government through the World Constitution Parliament Association (WCPA). Philip Isely was the principal organizer of the World Constitution Parliament Association, which was founded in 1959. The objective of this association is to create a framework for establishing a one-world government. To promote global governance, it uses environmentalism, i.e., creating fear and hysteria that mankind is irrecoverably destroying the environment and the only way to prevent this ravishing of the environment is to establish an all-powerful centralized world government. Claiming to represent the people of Earth (have you ever voted for any member of this association to represent you?), it has drafted a constitution for its world government and is lobbying countries to ratify it.

By urging the United Nations to establish itself quickly as a world government with absolute power over the countries and peoples of the world, the World Constitution Parliament Association serves to apply pressure from below in “the name of the people.” Thus, it gives the Illuminists an excuse for establishing a global dictatorship—the people are forcing them to do it.

Psychotherapy
For the less spiritually inclined, the Illuminists offer psychotherapy as a substitute for religion. Like many other New Age religions, it treats man as though he is an autonomous being, who is the center of the Universe and the measure of all things. Psychotherapy, which includes psychology and psychiatry, is closely related to Hinduism. It offers fulfillment without God and explains human behavior without moral absolutes. If a person feels guilt about homosexual practices, the psychotherapist strives to convince the patient that homosexuality is normal, and thus, he should experience no guilt. So, if a person feels a desire, that desire must be satisfied without regards to any moral principle—or else insanity will result.

Psychotherapy has become an important weapon in advancing Illuminism. It teaches moral relativism, and anyone who believes in moral absolutes is obviously mentally ill if not insane. Thus, psychotherapy justifies the socialist concept of redistribution of material wealth. Furthermore, the National Association for Mental Health claims that the “principles of mental heath cannot be successfully furthered in any society unless there is progressive acceptance of the concept of world citizenship.”[7] The typical psychotherapist believes that anyone who opposes Illuminism or any of its programs needs therapy and is well on his way to becoming mentally ill if he is not already mentally ill. (Dr. G. Brock Chisholm and his associates define mental illness as a “sense of loyalty to a particular nation, a sense of loyalty to a moral code, strict adherence to concepts of right and wrong, opposition to foreign aid or communism.”[8] Psychotherapy is used to silence people who oppose Illuminism by proclaiming them mentally ill—often without any examination. (Fortunately, not all psychologists and psychiatrists are followers of Chisholm’s doctrines.)

Endnotes
1. James W. Wardner, Unholy Alliances: The Secret Plan and the Secret People Who Are Working to Destroy America (James W. Wardner, 1996), pp. 203-204.

2. Ibid., p. 212.

3. William J. Petersen, Those Curious New Cults in the 80s (New Canaan, Connecticut: Keats Publishing, Inc., 1982), p. 223.

4. Ibid., p. 223.

5. Nesta H. Webster, Secret Societies and Subversive Movements (Palmdale, California: Omni Publication, 1924), pp. 304-305.

6. Lady Queenborough, (Edith Starr Miller). Occult Theocracy (Two Volumes. Hawthorne, California: The Christian Book Club of America, 1933), p. 533.

7. John A. Stormer, None Dare Call It Treason. (Florissant, Missouri: Liberty Bell Press, 1964), p. 257.

8. Ibid., p. 159.

Copyright © 2010 by Thomas Coley Allen.


[Editor’s note: The list of references in the original are omitted.]

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