Various quotes from them

 

Ignatius** Letter to Ephesians  Chapter XVIII.-The Glory of the Cross

For our God, Jesus Christ, was, according to the appointment¹²⁵ of God, conceived in the womb by Mary, of the seed of David, but by the Holy Ghost. He was born and baptized, that by His passion He might purify the water.

 

Mathetes Epsitle to Diognetus Chp 7

As a king sends his son, who is also a king, so sent He Him; as God³⁷ He sent Him;

 

Justin Martyr Dialouge with trypho chp 36

 

Christ is called both God and Lord of hosts.

 

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THE ante-Nicene Fathers were acknowledged to have been leading religious teachers in the early centuries after Christ's birth. What they taught is of interest.

Justin Martyr, who died about 165 C.E., called the prehuman Jesus a created angel who is "other than the God who made all things." He said that Jesus was inferior to God and "never did anything except what the Creator . . . willed him to do and say."

Irenaeus, who died about 200 C.E., said that the prehuman Jesus had a separate existence from God and was inferior to him. He showed that Jesus is not equal to the "One true and only God," who is "supreme over all, and besides whom there is no other."

Clement of Alexandria, who died about 215 C.E., called Jesus in his prehuman existence "a creature" but called God "the uncreated and imperishable and only true God." He said that the Son "is next to the only omnipotent Father" but not equal to him.

Tertullian, who died about 230 C.E., taught the supremacy of God. He 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 also said: "There was a time when the Son was not. . . . Before all things, God was alone."

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.

"There is no evidence that any sacred writer even suspected the existence of a [Trinity] within the Godhead."—The Triune God

Origen, who died about 250 C.E., said that "the Father and Son are two substances . . . two things as to their essence," and that "compared with the Father, [the Son] is a very small light."

Summing up the historical evidence, Alvan Lamson says in The Church of the First Three Centuries: "The modern popular doctrine of the Trinity . . . derives no support from the language of Justin [Martyr]: and this observation may be extended to all the ante-Nicene Fathers; that is, to all Christian writers for three centuries after the birth of Christ. It is true, they speak of the Father, Son, and . . . holy Spirit, but not as co-equal, not as one numerical essence, not as Three in One, in any sense now admitted by Trinitarians. The very reverse is the fact."

Thus, the testimony of the Bible and of history makes clear that the Trinity was unknown throughout Biblical times and for several centuries thereafter."

The quotations are deceitful.

 

Justin Dialouge with trypho

CHAP. LVI.--GOD WHO APPEARED TO MOSES IS DISTINGUISHED FROM GOD THE FATHER.

...say, that there is, and that there is said to be, another God and Lord

subject to(3) the Maker of all things; who is also called an Angel, because He announces to men whatsoever the

Maker of all things--above whom there is no other God--wishes to announce to them."

 

They used this to say as if Jesus isn't God. Also the created angel is their own Justin's mouth.

For I affirm that He has never at any time done(8) any-

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thing which He who made the world--above whom there is no other God--has not wished Him both to do and to

engage Himself with."

 

But other places in the dialouge he says christ is God.

 

"Moses, then, the blessed and faithful servant of God, declares that He who appeared to Abraham under the oak in

Mamre is God, sent with the two angels in His company to judge Sodom by Another who remains ever in the

supercelestial places, invisible to all men, holding personal intercourse with none, whom we believe to be Maker

and Father of all things; for he speaks thus: 'God appeared to him under the oak in Mature, as he sat at his tentdoor

at noontide." Justin was trying to prove someone else is God  besides God the Father not disprove christ's deity. He was saying that God appeared to Moses and Abraham but was distinct to the Father.

 

150 AD Justin Martyr "The Father of the universe has a Son, who also being the first begotten Word of God, is even God." (Justin Martyr, First Apology, ch 63)

150 AD Justin Martyr "Christ is called both God and Lord of hosts." (Dialogue with Trypho, ch, 36)

150 AD Justin Martyr "Moreover, in the diapsalm of the forty-sixth Psalm, reference is thus made to Christ: 'God went up with a shout, the Lord with the sound of a trumpet." (Dialogue with Trypho, ch 37)