Saturday, April 25, 2009

Irenaeus and his four persons and faithful witness

The following quote from Ireaeus was taken from faithful witnesses blog concerning his hatred of all things Oneness and his personal war.


By Irenaeus
Unity of the faith of the Church throughout the whole world.

"The Church, though dispersed through our the whole world, even to the ends of the earth, has received from the apostles and their disciples this faith: She believes in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are in them; and in one Christ Jesus, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation; and in the Holy Spirit, who proclaimed through the prophets the dispensations of God, and the advents, and the birth from a virgin, and the passion, and the resurrection from the dead, and the ascension into heaven in the flesh of the beloved Christ Jesus, our Lord, and His [future] manifestation from heaven in the glory of the Father to gather all things in one, and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race, in order that to Christ Jesus, our Lord, and God, and Saviour, and King, according to the will of the invisible Father, every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth, and that every tongue should confess to Him, and that He should execute just judgment towards all"...


How convenient of faithful witness to take a single quote from Irenaeus and stop there when He thinks they are in agreement, but I have another quote from Irenaeus he may not be so quick to embrace.

Irenaeus writes:"There is One God, the Father,and one Word, and One Son,and one Spriit, and One salvation."


Notice above that if Irenaeus were teaching any kind of doctrine it was far from trinitarainism this is the reason we should give no thought to these writings concerning our salvation and what we should believe about God as we are not told to do so in scripture. it seems to me Irenaeus was very mistaken in his understanding and if Polycarp were his teacher they both lacked any understanding and would not have been taught by the Apostles. But we see faithful witness in his blogs quote historical figures and figures whom he agrees by isolating their words where he is agreement and doing so of those to whom he does not agree such as yours truly which is outright dishonesty! Note the following written by Faithful Witness


"One rather aggressive oneness apologist, Manuel Culwell, said this to me in regards to the eternality of the Son of God: "The son is the flesh God indwelt." This statement seems to be the normative understanding of the modalist mindset. Certainly the "Son" in the oneness pentecostal understanding is a "mere man," however indwelt by God. I find it highly revealing and interesting that Ignatius of Antioch hits on this point in this aptly named chapter. I can certainly see the providence of God in that Ignatius included those who preach a unitarian God in his warning to the church. This teaching according to Ignatius, was a type of the poison of heretics. Who can argue with that"?


Folks when you take one little quote and dishonestly isolate a few words in a sentence you can come up with anything. I have also said there is not a Oneness person anywhere that does not believe Jesus is God! How that is so is where Faithful Witness and I take issue, as I do not believe the scriptures teach Jesus was a "God the son" the second person of the trinity.

I imagine this must have been what the enemies of the ancient Oneness did in dishonestly misrepresenting their writings and destroying them as we have no such writings in existence today when the ancient Oneness we were in the Majority of the believers as told by Tertullian himself.

2 comments:

J. L. Watts said...

Did you see his silliness with Ignatius?

mlculwell said...

yeah I did, but it looked like you took care of that, so I did not bother.