Can a Jehovah's Witness Believe in the Trinity? - WATCHTOWER In Question #2 - David Bercot

Hi, I'm David Berceau, and the title of this message is, "Can a Jehovah's Witness Believe in the Trinity?" Maybe a more accurate title would be, "Can an Ex-Jehovah's Witness Believe in It?" But it's addressed really to both ex-Jehovah's Witnesses and to any questioning Jehovah's Witnesses.

The subtitle of my message is, "The Original Doctrine of the Trinity." Now, this is a follow-up to the message I shared a few weeks ago, which was entitled, "If You're Thinking of Leaving Jehovah's Witnesses, Please Listen to This First."

Now, why this is a follow-up is because one of the barriers ex-JWs face when they try to find fellowship after the Watchtower is the doctrine of the Trinity. Virtually every kind of church you're going to look into teaches a Trinity.

So it creates this huge barrier for anyone who doesn't believe in the Trinity. But I've got good news for you. The original doctrine of the Trinity is not what you think it is. In fact, it's not what most churches think it is.

What the early Christians taught about the Trinity is both understandable and totally scriptural. In other words, the Trinity, that is, the orthodox understanding of it, doesn't have to be a roadblock preventing you from moving on spiritually after leaving the Witnesses.

Now, just like my first message, as I said, I'm speaking today to ex-Witnesses and to Witnesses who are thinking about leaving the organization. Now, if you're a Jehovah's Witness who's not thinking about leaving, well, you're certainly welcome to listen to this message. In fact, I hope you will listen, but it's not going to be specifically addressed to you.

Likewise, if you've never been a Jehovah's Witness but you're curious about the Trinity, well, I invite you to listen. In fact, I know that by the end of this message, you're going to have a much more accurate understanding of the Trinity, not because of what I say, you know, my understanding of it, that's irrelevant, but because we're going to be looking at what the early Christians believed about the Trinity.

Now, the purpose of this message is not to attack anyone. Rather, it's to help anyone listening to this to understand what the body of Christ originally taught about the Trinity. And even though I'm using the word Trinity, actually, we're primarily going to be talking about the Father and the Son today. Maybe in another message, I can share about the Holy Spirit.

Now, I'm a former Jehovah's Witness myself, and when I was a Witness, I had many discussions about the Trinity with various people when I was going house to house. Well, now that I understand the historic doctrine of the Trinity, looking back, I realized that I never even one time heard an orthodox presentation of the Trinity during all of those years, during all of those discussions I had back when I was a Jehovah's Witness. I'm talking about discussions I had at people's doors when I was talking to ministers, Sunday school teachers, and other people. They were trying to explain the Trinity, but they were explaining it in an erroneous fashion.

So if you are a Jehovah's Witness or an ex-Jehovah's Witness and you've been turned off by the doctrine of the Trinity, I can almost guarantee the reason is because all you've ever heard have been erroneous explanations of it, heretical explanations of it, if you want to phrase it that way.

And I was the same way. When I left the Witnesses, I was convinced the Trinity was a false doctrine. So one of the first things I did was to research all of the major and even the very minor denominations to see if there were any that didn't teach the Trinity.

Well, and to my disappointment, I found that outside the Unitarians, every church taught the Trinity in some form or another. I realized, of course, I could just go to a liberal church since they don't care what you believe, but to me, that wasn't a real option. I wanted to go to a church that believed in the inerrancy of God's word, a church that was serious about following what the Bible teaches.

Well, during the first four years after I left the Witnesses, I was busy with college and law school, so I didn't have a lot of time to dig into the subject of the Trinity. But after I finished law school, I wanted to find some answers. So I began wondering, what did the men who were taught by the apostles, what did they believe about the Father and the Son? Had they even heard of such a word as the Trinity? I mean, after all, the word is not in the Bible.

So I purchased a set of the writings of the early Christians. They're called the Anti-Nicene Fathers. It's a 10-volume set. And these are the writings of the men who lived and wrote prior to the Council of Nicaea, which was in the year 325.

Of course, I was curious what the early Christians believed about all kinds of subjects, but the biggest one was the Trinity.

Well, what did I find? Well, to put it succinctly, I found that both sides of the debate are wrong. The early Christians did not teach the same thing as Jehovah's Witnesses. I mean, to be sure, there's a lot of points in common, but they didn't teach what Jehovah's Witnesses teach. But neither did they teach what most churches teach about the Trinity. They didn't teach the things that I heard about the Trinity over the years when I was a Witness.

The really exciting thing is that what they taught about the Father and the Son makes perfect sense, and it's also thoroughly scriptural. In fact, there are no problem verses with what they taught. There's no verses that someone has to hide.

And when I discovered all of this, I was so excited. I mean, I wanted to jump up and down and yell, "Eureka!" I mean, this was wonderful. So this is what the Trinity is really all about. Not only that, but what the early Christians taught about the Father and the Son is one of the best attested doctrines in the early Christian writings, if not the best attested. Almost every writer discusses the subject, and they virtually all say the same thing. I mean, it doesn't matter if they were writing in Latin or in Greek or in Syriac, all the same. It doesn't matter whether they lived in Egypt or way up in France or in Rome or Greece or North Africa.

Again, they all say essentially the same thing. So we can comfortably say that this is the historic faith. I mean, few other doctrines are so well attested. And what the early Christians believed about the Father and the Son begins with the writings of Ignatius. He was a personal disciple of the apostle John, and he wrote about the year 105, I mean, just five or ten years after the apostle John had died.

Now, from there, you have various writers who touch on the subject, but one of the lengthiest discussions was by Justin Martyr, who wrote about the year 150 or 160 AD. As I've said, all the writers during the pre-Nicene period taught the same thing about the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, but there wasn't a specific term that summed up what they believed about them.

So it was Tertullian, writing about the year 200, who coined the word Trinity to describe the interrelationship of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But Tertullian didn't teach anything new about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He just coined a new word.

And the word Trinity simply means tri-unity. That is, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit all work together as a single unit. Now, other Christians liked this new word so much that it soon was adopted by everyone. So when you get into the next century, everyone is using the word, but nothing in the way of doctrine changed. It was just simply a new word. Now, Tertullian coined the word Trinity in a work entitled Against Praxias.

Praxias was the name of a false teacher who was pushing a new teaching that he called monarchianism. Now, Praxias was proclaiming, "We believe in the monarchy of God." And what did he mean by that? He meant that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit were all one and the same person. He said that God sometimes reveals himself as the Father, sometimes as the Son, sometimes as the Holy Spirit.

Now, you may be thinking to yourself, "I thought that was the doctrine of the Trinity." Well, no, that is not the doctrine of the Trinity. That is an erroneous doctrine, and it is not the historic faith. But now, if you had asked me when I was a JW, I would have thought that was what Trinitarians believe. The reason is because that was the explanation of the Trinity I heard most often when I was talking to people when I was out in service, talking to people door to door.

In fact, after I left Jehovah's Witnesses, I was so curious about the doctrine of the Trinity because it didn't make sense to me when I was a Witness, and I thought, "Well, maybe I haven't heard everything." So I knew the Presbyterian minister in the town where I lived because I delivered his newspaper. I was delivering newspapers.

And so I called him up and asked him, "Would he be willing to come over and explain to me the doctrine of the Trinity?" So he said he would be glad to do that. So he came over one evening, and he sat down. And so this was his explanation in a nutshell. He said, "Now, David, you're a Father, aren't you?" I said, "Yes." And pointing to my young son, he said, "But you have a son, don't you?"

I said, "Yes." He said, "So just like sometimes you're a Father, but you're also a son of some other Father. So sometimes you're a Father, and sometimes you're the Son. That's the way the Trinity is."

Well, I didn't say anything, but after he left, I thought, "Well, yeah, but I'm not my own Father, and I'm not my own son." That made no sense. Well, I learned later that what he was explaining to me was actually the false concept called modalism. It's the same thing as monarchianism. Today, it's usually known as modalism. So back to Tertullian. As I was saying, the modalists or monarchians of his day were arguing that they believed in the monarchy of God and that the orthodox Christians were teaching a divided kingdom. So Tertullian responded by explaining that, "No, orthodox Christians also believed in the monarchy of God, but they believed that this monarchy was governed by a Trinity.

That is, a tri-unity of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. All three of these work together in harmony as a single unit, as a single government." Tertullian explained that it works the same way with human monarchies. He wrote this. He said, "I would argue that no kingdom belongs to just one person being exclusively his own. That is not the meaning or sense of a monarchy. A monarchy can be administered through other persons who are closely connected with the ruler.

Moreover, if the ruler whose monarchy it is has a son, the kingdom does not thereby become divided. If the son is taken in as a sharer in the kingdom, it does not cease to be a monarchy."

Tertullian then goes on to explain how the very same principle applies to the Father, Jehovah, and the Son. The fact that the Father and the Son are two different persons does not destroy the fact that the rulership of the universe is still a monarchy. That is because the Father is the one who is ultimately in charge.

Does this mean that the early Christians held to the Jehovah's Witness view of Jehovah and Jesus? No, it doesn't, although many of the things the Witnesses teach about the Father and the Son are correct. Actually, the modalists and Jehovah's Witnesses would represent two different extremes as to the Father and the Son.

According to the modalists, well, there's no difference between the Father and the Son. They're one and the same person. As I said, Jehovah's Witnesses are at the other end of the spectrum, and they make the difference between the Father and the Son so great that in some aspects, Jesus is not a true Son.

He's more of a sub-deity, somewhere between the angels and the Father. According to the Witnesses, he is someone made by the Father. He has a nature similar to that of the Father, but he does not have the same nature as the Father.

Now, if I'm misstating anything Jehovah's Witnesses teach today, it's not intentional. I mean, this is how I understood things when I was a JW, but that was nearly 50 years ago. Now, the original teaching of God's people at the close of the apostolic age was in between those two extremes, between the modalists and what Jehovah's Witnesses would teach today.

Like the Witnesses, the early Christians taught that Jesus is not the Father. He and the Father are two different people. At the same time, Jesus was not made by the Father out of nothing. He was begotten. As a result, Jesus has the same nature as the Father. For example, I have two sons, and since they are true sons begotten by me, they have the same nature I do. I'm human, and they are likewise human. In that sense, we are equals. I mean, they aren't horses or cats.

They're human, just like I'm human, as I said. We are equal in nature. If we weren't, then they wouldn't be true children of mine. They would be something I adopted or made. Yet they are different persons from myself. I am not my own son, and they are not their own Father. It's the same way with the Father and the Son. They are two different persons, but they are equal in nature. Colossians 2:9, which is speaking about Jesus, says this, and I'm quoting from the New World Translation, "It is in him that all the fullness of the divine quality dwells bodily." So you notice the scripture does not say that some of the divine quality dwells in Jesus.

Rather, it says the fullness of the divine quality dwells in him. In other words, Jesus is fully divine just as is the Father. Again, this is only common sense. If he's a true son of the Father, he must be fully divine, just like his Father. In other words, he possesses all the attributes of divinity or godhood. In the same way, my sons are fully humans, just like I am. They possess all the attributes of humanity. Now, I assume you're having no trouble following me up to this point, but here is where things start getting confusing. And it's confusing because of the difference between Greek and English.

In Greek, the word for God, which is theos, is normally used to refer to the person of the Almighty, to Jehovah. And that's also the normal usage in English. But in Greek, theos can also be used as an adjective, or at least as an adjectival noun, to describe the nature of a being. In this case, we're talking about the nature of the Father and the Son.

Now, in Hebrew, the word Adam works exactly the same way. Adam, as you know, is the name of the first human. In that sense, it's a proper noun. But in Hebrew, Adam also means man or human. It's just an ordinary word. So in Hebrew, you can say that Adam was the father of Seth, but you can also say that Seth was Adam.

I know that sounds strange, but here we're using Adam in two different senses. One, as the name of a person, Adam, the man, and the second, as the nature of a different person, Seth. It works the same way with theos.

Let me explain. We can use a similar illustration in Greek. We can say that theos, God, is the Father of Jesus, but we can also say that Jesus is theos. In the first statement, we're using theos as a proper name, God. In the second statement, we're using theos to refer to the nature of Jesus.

He isn't human. He isn't angel. He is God. That is theos. Okay? And this brings us to the often quoted John 1:1. Now, in most Bibles, this verse reads, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Now, in English, that sounds incredibly confusing.

In fact, it sounds like double talk. But it's almost a duplicate of what I just got through saying about theos and about Adam. Let me just explain a little bit more. Okay. So first, here in John 1:1, John is saying that the Word was with God. And here he is using theos as a proper noun, meaning the Father, Jehovah, when he says the Word was with God.

Next, John says that the Word was theos. Here, John is using theos, not as a proper name, but to refer to the nature of Jesus, who is the Word. Jesus is theos. He's not human. He's not angel, as we were just saying.

And John tried to make this clear by the way he worded John 1:1 in the Greek. As most Jehovah's Witnesses know, when John says that the Word was with God, the word God has the definite article in front of it, which in Greek is the word ha.

But when John says the Word was God, he uses no article in front of the word God. As one of the early Christian writers, Origen, points out, John does this to make it clear that the Word is not the same person as the Father. John wants to make what he's saying clear.

Rather, in his second use of the word God, the one that doesn't have the article, John is talking about the nature of the Word. The Word is divine. He has all the aspects of true divinity. As Paul said, as we just quoted, "In him, all the fullness of the divine quality dwells bodily."

So Origen goes on to explain about the Father and the Son. He says, "What belongs to the nature of deity is common to the Father and the Son." So they're both equally deity. They're both equally divine. He also says, "As to nature, the Son is not different from the Father."

And that's what I was saying about my son, my sons, I should say. They are not different in nature than me. We're both human. The Father and the Son are both divine. You could say they are both God, but you have to understand what you're meaning by that, because that can be very heretical. They're both God, that Jesus and the Father are one and the same, or it can be perfectly orthodox. You're saying they both have the same nature. And people get very twisted up. And that's why I said I'm not condemning anyone in this message, because particularly when you go from Greek to English, it is a very confusing subject. Now, very famously, the New World Translation translates John 1:1 as, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God."

Now, grammatically speaking, the Greek can be translated this way. It's not a wrong translation if we're only looking at grammar. At the same time, grammatically, John 1:1 can also be translated, "The Word was God." They're both grammatically correct. But now we're not interested in grammar. We're interested in what's correct historically and theologically. "The Word was a God" is not a correct translation. And I'm not saying that spitefully or anything, but I'm saying it because the early Christians never referred to Jesus as a God. In fact, if we're honest, Jehovah's Witnesses don't refer to Jesus as a God either, not in their normal speech. I know I never did when I was a witness. Unless I was explaining John 1:1 to someone, then I would use that expression.

But Jehovah's Witnesses don't say, "I believe in one God, Jehovah, and I also believe Jesus is a God." At least no one said that when I was a witness. Now, here is a quotation from an early Christian writer. His name was Hippolytus. He wrote about the year 225, maybe a little bit earlier. And this is what he said explaining this. He said, "The Word," talking about Jesus, "is from God himself." And the Greek word there is autotheos.

That is God of himself, the self-existent God, you might say. He continues, "For that reason, the Word is divine," or you could say the Word is God, "being of the nature of God. In contrast, the world was made from nothing. Therefore, it is not divine." And again, that's Hippolytus. And the little number there, what that means, and you'll see it all throughout the message today for the different ones I quote, that is a reference to the Anti-Nicene Fathers. It means volume 5, page 151.

And I encourage you to look up these quotes. So as I said, where that translation uses divine, Hippolytus uses the Greek word theos. As we've said, in Greek, a person could use the word theos as a descriptive noun.

So we could translate John 1:1 a third way. We've seen two different translations, but a third one that I think is perhaps a better translation in English would be this: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was divine."

I think that would clear up a lot of confusion and would be in harmony with how the early Christians understood this verse. Now, I should at the same time explain that the early Christians did not hesitate to call Jesus by the name theos or God. But when they say that, they don't mean that he is the Father. They don't mean that he is the person who normally is addressed in scripture as God. I mean, they make that crystal clear in their writings. The word God, oh, I don't know how many times it appears, thousands, I would assume, in the scriptures.

And 99% of the time, it's referring to the Father or to Jehovah. But there are a few times it does refer to Jesus, and the early Christians use it the same way. So they're calling Jesus God. It's totally biblical. I mean, Thomas said to Jesus, "My Lord and my God." Now, when Thomas said that, he didn't imagine that Jesus was the Father, but he was acknowledging the full divinity of Christ when he said that. So just like Thomas, the early Christians had no problem with calling Jesus God, but they fully understood there was a distinction between him and the Father. They didn't confuse the two.

Today, a lot of people do when they try to say the same thing. Tertullian writes this about the Father and the Son.

He says, "I will therefore not speak of gods, plural, at all, nor of lords, but I shall follow the apostle so that if the Father and the Son are alike to be spoken of, I shall call the Father God, and I will call Jesus Christ Lord. But when Christ alone is mentioned, I shall be able to call him God." For the same apostle, talking about Paul, says, "Of whom is Christ, who is overall the eternally blessed God?

For I should give the name of Son even to a sunbeam when I consider it by itself. But if I were mentioning the Son from which the ray emanates, I certainly should at once withdraw the name of Son from the mere sunbeam." Again, that's from Tertullian. And Tertullian was quoting there from Romans 9:5. And he quotes it in the way that most Bibles today render that verse. Now, I realize the New World Translation translates it differently, but the early Christians understood it the way that most Bibles do translate it today, that Paul is addressing Jesus as God in that verse. But Paul is not confounding Jesus with the Father. He's acknowledging the divinity or deity of Jesus.

Now, I want to read to you an additional quote. And this one is from an early Christian named Irenaeus. He wrote about the year 170. He lived in the country of Gaul, which is modern-day France. And this is what he said, "There is only one God, the Creator. He is above every principality, power, dominion, and virtue. He is Father. He is God. He is founder. He is maker. He is creator. He made those things by himself, that is, through his word and his wisdom. He is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Through his word, who is his Son, he is revealed and manifested to all whom he is revealed. For only those know him, that is, know the Father, to whom the Son has revealed him. But the Son, notice this, but the Son, eternally coexisting with the Father from of old, yes, from the beginning, always reveals the Father."

So you can see the clear distinction the early Christians made between the Father and the Son. I mean, they made a considerable distinction between the two. They never ran the two together. They often addressed Jesus as God, but they never confused him with the Father.

Now, you probably noticed there at the end of that quote that Irenaeus also referred to the Son as eternally coexisting with the Father. Now, when I first read that quotation, which was over 35 years ago, that made no sense to me at all. I thought to myself, "Now, wait a minute. If Jesus or the Son was begotten, if he's the Son of the Father, how can he possibly be eternally coexistent with the Father?" I mean, that didn't seem to make any sense at all. I mean, for example, my Son has not existed as long as I have existed. He's not coexistent with me. Since he was begotten, he came into existence at some point in time.

And it was years after I came into being. So surely it's the same with the Son of God, I thought. Well, the truth is, it's not the same. And let me explain. Thankfully, the early Christians explain all of this, or I would have never understood it.

I think the starting point is to realize that the analogy between the Father and the Son, between Jehovah and Jesus, the analogy between them and a human father and son breaks down at some point because Jesus and the Father are not humans. They don't have bodies like we do.

In short, we can make an analogy to human fathers and sons, but it's not a perfect analogy because the Father and Son are not flesh and blood. So the beginning of the Son has some similarities to the beginning of our children, but it has some differences as well because they are spirit beings.

And the early Christians gave two different illustrations to explain how the beginning of the Son of God is different than human beginning. Now, the first illustration that they used was that of an underground spring and a stream flowing from it. So in the picture that I have here, the underground spring has created this pool. And in your mind, you can think of that pool, that bubbling pool, as the Father. And picture that, even though, of course, a literal spring and a pool of water would not be eternal. But since we're talking here about the Father, then this spring is eternal.

Okay, but now, as you see at the top of the picture, there is a stream that runs out from that spring of water. That spring, or rather that stream of water, represents Jesus Christ. Okay, he is begotten from that underground spring.

Okay, now, as you can see, they are of the same nature. The water of that underground spring is the same water that runs into the stream. And that illustrates that the Father and the Son have the same nature. It's not two different natures.

Now, imagine, as I said, that this underground spring is eternal. Now, if that underground spring is eternal, it's always been there. It's always been running. Then the stream of water, the river that comes out of it, would also be eternal, wouldn't it? If one is eternal, the other one has to be eternal because it flows from that spring. So that was the illustration that they used. And that's when, oh, a light bulb came on inside my head because I thought, "Well, it's impossible. If he's begotten from the Father, then they can't be co-eternal." I mean, he has to have come at some point in time. But I realized, "Ah, now I see how they can both be eternal.

They both be of the same nature." And yet, the Father is the begetter, that the stream of water, the river, is begotten from that spring. Okay, now, if that spring ever dried up, which we know it won't, that the Father is eternal, not just in the past, but in the future, but if it could dry up, then the spring, or rather the stream, the river, would cease to exist because the river is totally dependent for its existence on that underground spring. It's the same way with the Father and the Son.

The Father is the origin of the Trinity. He's the origin of the Son.

The Son of God would not exist if the Father didn't exist. He does not have a separate existence of his own. His existence is in the Father. He's a separate person, just like the river is a separate entity from the underground spring.

And yet, like I say, they are of the same nature, but the river is dependent on the spring. And so the Son of God is dependent for his existence on the Father. The Father is the origin of all. It's why Jesus said, "The Father is greater than I." It's also why he refers to the Father often as his God because his existence is dependent on that of the Father. Now, I never, this is, like I say, the early Christians used this all the time. I never had anyone explain the Trinity to that way to me when I was at Jehovah's Witness. I think I could have grasped that if somebody had. We're going to talk in a minute about some of the false ways that it is explained.

Now, the second illustration the early Christians used is that of the Son. I'm not talking about the Son of God, but the S-U-N Son, shown here in the picture. Now, imagine that the ball, the corpus of the Son, is the Father.

And imagine that it's eternal. I mean, we know the Son isn't, but just for the point of illustration, imagine that that's eternal. Okay, now, Jesus would be the light that emanates, the beams of light that emanate from the Son. Okay, at least in the scientific understanding of the early Christians, they are of the same substance. The light coming out is not of a different substance than the light within the Son. They're one in the same substance. And yet, they are two different entities. And so likewise, the Son is different from the Father, but his origin is in the Father. Just like with the illustration of the underground spring and the river, the beam of light would not exist if the Sun didn't exist.

If the Sun went black, if it burnt out, then all of the light emanating from it would burn out as well. And just to further illustrate the Trinity, the early Christians said the heat coming from the Sun is like the Holy Spirit. So that's how they illustrated the three.

So again, you can see the Father is the begetter. Everything is dependent on him. The Son, S-O-N Son, Jesus, has his origin in the Father. He could not exist without the Father. Now, this illustration, the one of the Son, S-U-N, is actually based on the verse in Hebrews 1:3, and the early Christians quote this verse fairly often. This is concerning the radiance from the Father. Hebrews 1:3, talking about Jesus, it says, "He is the reflection." This is from the New World Translation. "He is the reflection of God's glory and the exact representation of his very being. And he sustains all things by the word of his power." So the New World Translation uses the word reflection.

You notice it says, "He's the exact representation of his very being." Jesus is the exact representation of the Father. In fact, they are of the same nature. Now, other translations translate this, "He is the radiance of God's glory."

And that's how the early Christians normally understood this verse when they quote it. And that's why they use the illustration of the Son. The ball of the Sun represents the Father. The radiance coming out represents Jesus Christ. Hopefully, all of that is clear to you all. And like I say, if I'd ever heard that, yeah, there was nothing in there that would have bothered my convictions, at least as a Jehovah's Witness. Maybe it wasn't the official teaching, but that's not how the Trinity was ever explained to me. When I saw it in the early Christians, like I say, it was just a eureka moment. "Oh, this makes perfect sense."

And I realized there's no problem verses. The Father is greater than I. It's there. John 1:1, it fits. Pick any verse you want. It fits the illustration. It fits what they taught. Okay, now let's talk about the headship of the Father. Now, for Jehovah's Witness, this is not going to have any issue at all because they believe in the headship of the Father. But the irony is on the other side of the divide, a lot of Christians today have it all wrong about the headship of the Father. They deny that the Father is the head of Christ.

Now, as we've said, Jesus is equal to the Father in nature. In other words, he has the same nature as the Father. There are not degrees of divinity. The Father and the Son are both divine. They both have all the attributes of godhood. But now, only the Father is unbegotten because being unbegotten is not an attribute of deity. It's an attribute of the Father. That is why in John 1:18, at least in some Greek manuscripts, Jesus is referred to as the only begotten God. He is God. He is true divinity, but he is begotten from the Father. The early Christians frequently refer to the Father as the unbegotten God.

Now, so like I said, they're equal in nature, just like my sons are equal in nature to me. But when my sons were living under my roof, they were not equal to me in authority. And it's the same with the Father and the Son. I mean, look at what Jesus taught about the headship of the Father.

Okay, John 8:28 and 29 says, "Then Jesus said to them, 'When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing of myself. But as my Father taught me, I speak these things. And he who sent me is with me. The Father has not left me alone, for I always do those things that please him.'" Okay, another verse, John 12:49. Jesus says, "For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me gave me a command of what I should say and what I should speak."

And this was before Jesus. A lot of people say, "Oh, well, when he was on earth, he was a man." But he said, "The Father gave me a command." He's talking about when he was still in heaven that the Father gave him commands.

Again, Matthew 20:23, Jesus said, "To sit on my right hand and on my left is not mine to give." Now, he's talking about after he returned to heaven, but it is for those for whom it is prepared by my Father.

Okay, now let's move on to Paul. What does he say about the headship of Christ, or rather the headship of the Father? 1 Corinthians 11:3. Paul says, "I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ. The head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God."

You can't get any more clearer than that. All right, now let's go to 1 Corinthians. It says, "Then comes the end when he," talking about Jesus, "delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when he puts an end to all rule and all authority and power, for he must reign till he has put all enemies under his feet." Then at that time, he's going to turn the kingdom back over to the Father, as Paul teaches. So there is a headship of the Father. The Father and Son are equal in nature, but they're not equal in authority. There's a hierarchy of order or headship between the Father and the Son and also the Holy Spirit.

And the early Christians all teach this very thing.

I'll read to you just some of the quotes from them. I could spend hours just reading quotes because they all say the same thing. Justin Martyr, writing again about the year 160, he says this, "They proclaim our madness to consist in this, that we give to a condemned man a place second to the unchangeable and eternal God, the creator of all.

For they do not discern the mystery that is herein."

Clement of Alexandria writes, "Jesus is the Lord of all, and above all else, he serves the will of the good and almighty Father." Another writer, Tertullian, "Jesus himself proclaimed that he did not do his own will, but that of the Father."

Hippolytus, "It is the Father who commands and the Son who obeys. The Father is above all. The Son is through all."

Origen, "Just as Christ is our head, likewise, God is his head."

So the Father is the head of Christ. The Father sent the Son to the earth. Jesus did not come of his own accord, although he did come to the earth willingly, but he was sent by the Father. So again, there's that headship between the Father and Son.

Now, I would challenge anyone to find any verse in the Bible that doesn't fit into the early Christian understanding of the Father and the Son. I mean, I can tell you right now there isn't one because I've looked at them all. There are no problem verses. There's no verses to hide with the understanding that they have of the Trinity. And I'm convinced that the reason why there are no problem verses is that this is the faith that was once for all handed down to the saints or to the holy ones.

So why doesn't everyone still teach this today? Well, actually, many churches still teach this about the Trinity. I mean, after I discovered what the early Christians said, I was curious, does anyone teach this today? I talked to all kinds of different ministers, and this was, for the most part, if they were Protestants, this was new to them. Most of them found it very interesting. They were very intrigued by it, but they had not heard it before. But then I visited with all kinds of church leaders, and I talked to different seminary professors and bishops in the Eastern Orthodox churches, and they said, "Well, yeah, this is exactly what we teach today about the Trinity. Yeah, this has never changed.

It's what we've always taught." I spoke with a bishop in the Coptic church. He said the same thing. "Yep, this is what we teach today." So the problem has only been in the West. Of course, since we're Western Christians, it affects us, but the Eastern church always held to essentially the original teaching. As I asked before, how did everything change? Why doesn't everyone still believe this today? Well, the reason everything changed is because of Arias. Now, as a JW or an ex-JW, of course, you've heard of Arias. As JWs, we held him up as a hero of the faith.

And I have no doubt that Arias was well-meaning, but he was the cause of the original teaching about the Father and the Son being lost. It wasn't because he was trying to corrupt the faith, but it's because he thought he knew more than everyone who lived before him. Now, we talked about the heresy or error of modalism, the teaching that the Father and the Son are one and the same person.

Well, some people were still teaching that. I don't mean the church wasn't teaching that, but there were heretics still teaching that in the early 4th century when Arias lived. And he overreacted to their errors by going to the opposite extreme.

And so to counter modalism, he began teaching that the Son is not equal to the Father, either in nature or in headship. He started teaching too that the Son was created out of nothing. He also taught that the Son is not co-eternal with the Father. Rather, there was a time when the Son did not exist.

Now, from what I've shown you, this was not the historic faith. No one had ever taught this before. Now, Arias was right to oppose modalism, but he way overreacted. And like I say, he imagined that, "Oh, I understand everything better than everyone before me. And if everyone will just adopt my view, well, that'll put an end to modalism. We won't ever hear it again."

Well, instead, what it did was cause a huge uproar in the church. And it unleashed a controversy that eventually, ironically, it's made it easier for modalism to survive. As I mentioned, when you ask the average person to explain the Trinity, they give you a modalistic explanation. So Arias actually helped that unwittingly.

As I said, he created this huge controversy. It started in the local church there in Alexandria where he lived, but it eventually spread throughout the whole church worldwide. And it led to the convening of the Council of Nicaea.

So if you don't like the Council of Nicaea, blame it on Arias. I mean, without him, it would have never been convened. He is the one who started everything by trying to create a new doctrine to offset the wrong teaching of modalism. Now, the main opponent of Arias, both before the Nicene Council and during the Council, was not Athanasius, as most people think. Rather, it was the bishop or overseer of Alexandria, a man named Alexander. And this is what Alexander wrote about the Father and the Son. And I'm reading these quotes to you to help you to see that everyone was still holding to the original teaching right up to the Council of Nicaea.

He said, "Concerning God, we believe in this manner, even as the apostolic church believes, in one Father unbegotten who has the cause of his being from no one, who is unchangeable and immutable. He is always the same and can have no increase or diminution.

He gave the law to us, the prophets and the gospels. He is the Lord of the patriarchs, apostles, and all the saints. And we believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God. He is not begotten of things that are not, but of him who is the Father. We must say that to the Father alone belongs the property of being unbegotten. For the Savior himself said, 'My Father is greater than I.'" So like I say, the main opponent of Arias was holding to the apostolic faith. He was teaching the same thing that we've been talking about today.

So these people who called Arias on the carpet were not the bad guys. They were holding to the apostolic faith. So why is the Trinity taught so differently today? I mean, at that Council of Nicaea, Arias was condemned.

Well, it's because the controversy that Arias started, it continued on long after the Council of Nicaea. Unfortunately, Nicaea did not bring an end to it. And before long, Christians began to overreact to Arianism, just as he had overreacted to modalism. They began to deny that the Father was the eternal head of Christ, something that the scriptures clearly teach. I mean, we quoted just two verses. I could have easily quoted 10 or 12 without any trouble at all. So people started saying, because the Arians would point to the headship of the Father, they started denying it and saying, "Well, it was only on earth when the Father was the head of Christ. He wasn't the head of him before the incarnation."

But see, that's not the historic faith. They were now changing the historic faith in reaction to Arias, in fact, long after Arias was even dead. But the ultimate overreaction to Arianism was that of Augustine. Around the year 428, he wrote a work on the Trinity.

And Augustine so overreacted to Arianism, because it was still strong in his day, that he not only denied that the Father is the eternal head of Christ, but he essentially denied that the Father was superior in any way to the Son.