Ante-Nicene Fathers (Volume 3) - XXIX - Against Praxeas commenced

Required reading
Ante-Nicene Fathers (Volume 3) (Available from Amazon or free here) - Commence 'Against Praxeas' by reading Chapters I to XVIII.

My summary
Today Tertullian begins a new work against an early church heretic, Praxeas.

Tertullian explains that Praxeas taught the following heresy about the Trinity: 'especially in the case of this heresy, which supposes itself to possess the pure truth, in thinking that one cannot believe in One Only God in any other way than by saying that the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost are the very selfsame Person. As if in this way also one were not All, in that All are of One, by unity (that is) of substance; while the mystery of the dispensation is still guarded, which distributes the Unity into a Trinity, placing in their order the three Persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost: three, however, not in condition, but in degree; not in substance, but in form; not in power, but in aspect; yet of one substance, and of one condition, and of one power, inasmuch as He is one God, from whom these degrees and forms and aspects are reckoned, under the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.'

Thus Tertullian defends the doctrine of the trinity, particularly the divinity, yet separateness, of the Son and the Father.  Nevertheless, Tertullian affirms a monarchy within the Trinity. 

Thus Tertullian demonstrates from Scripture the:
(i) plurality of persons in the Godhead;
(ii) unity of the Godhead;
(iii) invisibility of the Father and visibility of the Son;
(iv) titles of God used to refer to the Son.

What grabbed me
Delving into the trinity can be dangerous, one false move and you're a heretic. 

But from my reading Tertullian stood his ground well. 

I particularly liked one of his opening statements: ' We, however, as we indeed always have done (and more especially since we have been better instructed by the Paraclete, who leads men indeed into all truth), believe that there is one only God, but under the following dispensation, or οἰκονομία , as it is called, that this one only God has also a Son, His Word, who proceeded from Himself, by whom all things were made, and without whom nothing was made. Him we believe to have been sent by the Father into the Virgin, and to have been born of her—being both Man and God, the Son of Man and the Son of God, and to have been called by the name of Jesus Christ; we believe Him to have suffered, died, and been buried, according to the Scriptures, and, after He had been raised again by the Father and taken back to heaven, to be sitting at the right hand of the Father, and that He will come to judge the quick and the dead; who sent also from heaven from the Father, according to His own promise, the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, the sanctifier of the faith of those who believe in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Ghost. That this rule of faith has come down to us from the beginning of the gospel...'

A nice affirmation of core Christian doctrines!

Next week's reading
Conclude 'Against Praxeas'.

Now it's your turn
Please post your own notes and thoughts in the comments section below.