Welcome everyone to Deeper Waters where we are diving into the ocean of truth. We’ve been going through the Watchtower booklet lately called “Should You Believe In The Trinity?” I won’t deny that this has been a very enjoyable part of this for me. I am looking forward to the next time Witnesses come by and I hope some of you can put this to use and if somehow you do, by all means let me know. Tonight, we’re going to look at Hippolytus. Here’s what the Watchtower says about him:
Hippolytus, who died about 235 C.E., said that God is “the one God, the first and the only One, the Maker and Lord of all,” who “had nothing co-eval [of equal age] with him . . . But he was One, alone by himself; who, willing it, called into being what had no being before,” such as the created prehuman Jesus.
Once again, note the lack of citations. I hope readers have been able to find the quotes I’ve been citing. It will be especially helpful to show a Witness where in the church fathers something is said and to note that the fathers themselves do not say what they are reported to say.
I believe the reference comes from Chapter 28 of book 10:
The first and only (one God), both Creator and Lord of all, had nothing coeval with Himself; not infinite chaos, nor measureless water, nor solid earth, nor dense air, not warm fire, nor refined spirit, nor the azure canopy of the stupendous firmament. But He was One, alone in Himself. By an exercise of His will He created things that are, which antecedently had no existence, except that He willed to make them.
What is going on however is not giving us God’s ontology. The Witnesses are assuming that to say God is by Himself is to assume that He is one person by Himself. Of course, a Trinitarian could say that in the beginning there was only God Himself and not have any problem whatsoever.
Chapter 29 begins this way:
Therefore this solitary and supreme Deity, by an exercise of reflection, brought forth the Logos first; not the word in the sense of being articulated by voice, but as a ratiocination of the universe, conceived and residing in the divine mind. Him alone He produced from existing things; for the Father Himself constituted existence, and the being born from Him was the cause of all things that are produced. The Logos was in the Father Himself, bearing the will of His progenitor, and not being unacquainted with the mind of the Father. For simultaneously with His procession from His Progenitor, inasmuch as He is this Progenitors first-born, He has, as a voice in Himself, the ideas conceived in the Father.
Of course, to be sure, let us look at what he says in the next paragraph of that chapter:
The Logos alone of this God is from God himself; wherefore also the Logos is God, being the substance of God. Now the world was made from nothing; wherefore it is not God; as also because this world admits of dissolution whenever the Creator so wishes it.
Note that Hippolytus makes a point here that what is created is not God, but he says the Logos is not created, therefore the Logos could be God, as he has said earlier. Indeed, this is the case explicitly made. The point is at least that Jesus is not included in the creation.
And in chapter 30 we find this:
For Christ is the God above all, and He has arranged to wash away sin from human beings, rendering regenerate the old man.
While we may not have as much, keep in mind that this is one book of Hippolytus. The earlier portion of his work was spent going over the heresies that were taught in his day. Let that be a lesson to us also to know our enemy.
We shall continue tomorrow.
All quotes came from one work which can be found here:
http://earlychristianwritings.com/text/hippolytus10.html
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