Roman Catholicism teaches that the Son comes out of the Father and the Holy Spirit comes from both;—and yet there is only one God! There is no Son apart from the Father and no Holy Spirit apart from both. Significantly, the roots of Arianism (Christ is not eternal) and the no-separate-Holy Spirit teaching both find their source in this peculiar doctrine which, we will learn in the next chapter, was vigorously opposed by several of our pioneers.
Ironically, there are those among us today who are teaching the basic concept of the Trinity error—that there is only one Being that is the eternal God! Apart from that one God, there is no eternal Christ and no Holy Spirit with a separate existence.
The term, trinitas, was first used in the second century by Tertullian; but the doctrine was not formulated until the fourth century.
Quoted below are 22 statements, from official Catholic theological works, about the Trinity. You will read about this horrible error - which our pioneers so strongly opposed:
RC: This mystery is the central doctrine of Catholic faith—“The mystery of the Trinity is the central doctrine of Catholic faith. Upon it are based all the other teachings of the Church.”—The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1914 Edition, art. “Christology.”, p. 16.
RC: The Son proceeds from the Father and the Holy Spirit proceeds out of both of Them—“The Father begets the Son, and the Son proceeds from the Father. The Father and Son breathe forth the Holy Ghost, and He proceeds from Them, as from one Source.” —“One God in Three Persons,” My Catholic Faith: A Manual of Religion, Louis Laravoire Morrow, Bishop of Krishnagar, p. 30.
RC: The Father continually copulates with Himself and brings forth the Son, and Their love in each other brings forth the Spirit—“God the Father eternally knows Himself, and continues to know Himself [copula; that is, copulates with Himself], and continues to know Himself, and thus continues to bring forth the Son in a continual birth. God the Father and God the Son continue to love each other, and their delight in each other continues to bring forth the Spirit of Love, God the Holy Ghost. In a similar way, fire has light and color. As long as there is fire, it continues to produce light. As long as there is fire with light, there is produced color.”—Ibid., p. 31.
RC: There is only one Divine Being—“There are three Persons, but only one Being.”—Ibid., p. 33.
RC: The Son is not equal to the Father—“In proof of the assertion that many of the Fathers deny the equality of the Son with the Father, passages are cited from Justin (Apol., I, xiii, xxxii), Irenaeus (Adv. haer., III, viii, n. 3), Clem. Alex. (“Strom.” VII, ii), Hippolytus (Con. Noet., n. 14), Origen (Con. Cels., VIII, xv).”—The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1914 Edition, art. “The Blessed Trinity.”
RC: The Son was created—“Expressions which contain the statement that the Son was created are found in Clement of Alexandria (Strom., V, xiv; VI, vii), Tatian (Orat., v), Tertullian (A’Adv. Prax.’ vi; ‘Adv. Hermong.’, xviii, xx), Origen (In Joan., I, n. 22).”—Ibid. [If you accept the teaching that Christ has not existed forever, you are a good Catholic. Beware of the errors you accept from teachers in our ranks.]
The illustration below is from p. 32 of an official Roman Catholic book, entitled My Catholic Faith.
"From all eternity the Father begets the Son, and the Son proceeds from the Father. From all eternity the Father and Son breathe forth the Holy Spirit, and He proceeds from Them, as from one Source.” My Catholic Faith. pg 32
Notice that their Trinity concept contains the same basic error that some within our own ranks are now promoting!
(1) The Son came out of the Father, beginning long ago; so He is not eternal.
(2) The Holy Spirit has no separate existence, but only as He keeps coming out of the others.
(3) God is one in person.
Do you want to teach—or even believe—the Catholic error which our pioneer writers so earnestly opposed?
RC: The Spirit is only Christ’s breath—“Pneuma is understood in the light of John 20:22 where Christ, appearing to the Apostles, breathed on them and conferred on them the Holy Spirit. He is the breath of Christ (John Damascene, ‘Fid. orth.’, 1, viii), breathed by Him [Christ] into us (Cyril of Alexandria, ‘Thesaurus’; cf. Petav., ‘De Trin’, V, vii).”—Ibid.
RC: The divine nature existed before the Gods it was in—“The transition to the Latin [later Catholic] theology of the Trinity was the work of St. Augustine. Western [Roman] theologians have never departed from the main lines which he laid down . . and it received its final and classical form from St. Thomas Aquinas . . [Augustine] views the Divine Nature as [existing] prior to the personalities.”—Ibid.
RC: The “processions” of Christ and the Holy Spirit from the original God find an analogy in thought and will being produced by the human mind—“By indicating the analogy between the two processions within the Godhead and the internal acts of thought and will in the human mind (De Trin., IX, iii, 3; X, xi, 17), he became the founder of the psychological theory of the Trinity, which, with a very few exceptions, was accepted by every subsequent Latin writer.”—Ibid.
RC: The Holy Spirit is produced by an action of the divine will—“The doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit by means of the act of the Divine will is due entirely to Augustine . . He mentions the opinion with favour in the ‘De fide et symbolo’ (A.D. 393); and the ‘De Trinitate’ (A.D. 415) develops it at length. His teaching was accepted by the West [Rome].”—Ibid.
The Roman Catholic Teaching about the Trinity 75
RC: There is only one God—“Obviously, there can be only one infinite Being, only one God. If several were to exist, none of them would really be infinite, for, to have plurality of natures at all, each should have some perfection not possessed by the others [which is a ridiculous reason]. This will be readily granted by everyone who admits the infinity of God, and there is no need to delay in developing what is perfectly clear . . If the question, for example be asked: Why may there not be several self-existing beings? The only satisfactory answer, as it seems to us, is this: Because a self-existent being as such is necessarily infinite, and there cannot be several infinities. The unity of God as the First Cause might also be inductively inferred from the unity of the universe as we know it, but as the suggestion might be made, and could not be disproved, that there may be another or even several universes of which we have no knowledge, this argument would not be absolutely conclusive.”—The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1914 Edition, art. “Nature and Attributes of God.” [You have just read typical Jesuitic thinking. Unfortunately, there are those even in our own ranks who accept the same conclusion, that there is only one Being who is the eternal God.]
RC: There is only one God; and He consists of nothingness—“God is a simple being or substance excluding every kind of composition [substance], physical or metaphysical . . Nor can accidental composition be attributed to the infinite since even this would imply a capacity for increased perfection, which the very notion of the infinite excludes.”—Ibid.
RC: Christ’s humanity and divinity are only united “hypostatically”—“His human nature and His Divine nature are in Jesus Christ united hypostatically, i.e., united in the hypostasis or the person of the Word. This dogma has found bitter opponents from the earliest times of the Church.”—The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1914 Edition, art. “Christology.”
RC: Every good Catholic must accept that the Holy Spirit comes out of the Father and the Son, and does not have a separate existence—“He [the Holy Spirit] proceeds, not by way of generation, but by way of spiration, from the Father and the Son together, as from a single principle. Such is the belief the Catholic faith demands.”—The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1914 Edition, art. “Holy Ghost.” [If you accept the teaching that the Holy Spirit is not the separate, Third Person of the Godhead, you are a good Catholic. Beware of the errors you accept from teachers in our ranks.]
RC: The Holy Spirit proceeds out of the Father and the Son—“The Son proceeds from the Father; the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father and the Son.”— Ibid.
RC: The Holy Spirit flows out of the Father through the Son—“Tertullian dwells at length on the Paraclete. The Holy Ghost, he says, proceeds from the Father through the Son (iv, viii in P.L., II, 182, 187); teaching all truth (ii in P.L. II, 179).”—Ibid.
RC: Apart from God, the Holy Spirit has no subsistence; i.e., He has no separate existence—“St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, or at least the Ekthesis tes pisteos, which is commonly attributed to him, gives us this re- markable passage (P.G., X, 933 sqq.): ‘One is God, Father of the living Word, of the subsisting Wisdom . . One the Lord, one of one, God of God, invisible of invisible . . One the Holy Ghost, having His subsistence from God . . Perfect Trinity, which in eternity, glory, and power, is neither divided, nor separated . . Unchanging and immutable Trinity.”—Ibid.
RC: The Holy Spirit is only the spirit of God and Christ—“The Holy Ghost is the Spirit of Christ. He is also the Spirit of the Father. Thus St. Augustine argues (In Joan, tr. xcix, 6, 7 in P.L., XXXV, 188) . . Just as there is only one Father, just as there is only one Lord or one Son, so there is only one Spirit, who is, consequently, the Spirit of both [of the other two].”— Ibid.
RC: The Holy Ghost actually issues forth from one, not two, substances—“Proceeding both from the Father and the Son, the Holy Ghost, nevertheless, proceeds from them as from a single principle. The Holy Ghost proceeds from the two, not in so far as They are distinct, but inasmuch as Their Divine perfection is numerically one. Besides, such is the explicit teaching of ecclesiastical tradition, which is concisely put by St. Augustine (De Trin., lib. V, c. xiv, in P.L., XLII, 921) . . This doctrine was defined in the following words by the Second Ecumenical Council of Lyons (Denzinger, ‘Enchiridion’, 1908, n. 460): ‘We confess that the Holy Ghost proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son, not as from two principles, but as from one principle, not by two spirations, but by one single spiration.’ The teaching was again laid down by the Council of Florence (ibid., n. 691), and by Eugene IV in his Bull ‘Cantate Domino’ (ibid., n. 703 sq).”—Ibid.
RC: As good Catholics, you must worship only one eternal God—“Unless [people] keep this Faith whole and undefiled, without doubt, they shall perish everlastingly. And the Catholic faith is this: We worship one God in Trinity.”—A Practical Catholic Dictionary, p. 32.
RC: Whereas Christ proceeds from the mind of the Father, the Holy Spirit flows outward from His will—“It is likewise an article of [Catholic] faith that the Holy Ghost does not proceed by way of generation. We distinguish absolutely and essentially between generation and spiration. St. Thomas (I, Q. xxvii), following St. Augustine (Do Trin., IV, xxvii), finds the explanation and, as it were the epitome of, the doctrine in principle that, in God, the Son proceeds through the Intellect and the Holy Ghost through the Will.”— Ibid.
Here is a summary of what we have learned in this chapter: Although Catholic theologians talk about “three Persons” in their Trinity, they do not really teach three persons! The Son is something God keeps inventing out of His own “intellect” (“eternal generation,” it is called). The two of them exude, or float out, something called “the Holy Ghost” which isn’t really there. It is only an expression of the “will” of God.
Over the centuries, Catholic theologians gradually combined pagan concepts with a misinterpretation of Scripture—to present the world with a magnificent counterfeit of the truth: (1) A Son who is always partly there and always partly emerging out (“continuous generation”) from the Father. (2) A Holy Spirit, which has no separate existence, but is continually exhaled (“continuous spiration”) from both the Father and the Son. (3) A Father who has less existence than His nature and is only part of a mixed-up “one essence.”
It is INSIDE Roman Catholic theology that we find the seeds of the modern errors that Christ had a beginning and is not eternal, and the Holy Spirit does not really exist.
Is this what you want to believe? Error originated by Catholic priests—or the Bible/Spirit of Prophecy truth that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are distinct individuals who are fully separate, fully divine, and fully eternal?
Our Pioneers Opposed the Trinity Error
“Our opponents sometimes claim that no belief should be held dogmatically which is not explicitly stated in Scripture . . But the Protestant churches have themselves accepted such dogmas as the Trinity, for which there is no such precise authority in the Gospels.” —Life magazine, October 30, 1950.
“Q. Do you observe other necessary truths as taught by the Church, not clearly laid down in Scripture?
“A. The doctrine of the Trinity, a doctrine the knowledge of which is certainly necessary to salvation, is not explicitly and evidently laid down in Scripture, in the Protestant sense of private interpretation.”—Doctrinal Catechism, quoted in Review and Herald, August 22, 1854.
For additional understanding on this issue click on the photo below.
This ebook deals with a most solemn subject, which is deserving of our careful attention and respect. It is one which we must approach with humility and reverence; for we are here dealing with a topic of deepest sacredness—the most profound Beings in the universe: the Godhead.
For more on the RCC beliefs go to Chapter 4, pages 71-79
For more on our early pioneers beliefs go to Chapter 5, pages 79-87
Jesus said:
And I [Jesus] (one) will pray the
Father (two), and he shall give you
another Comforter [Holy Spirit] (three),
that He may abide with you for ever; John 14:16
THREE DIVINE BEINGS IN THE GODHEAD
1 John 5:7 says, “For there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one.”