Page 32 - Countering Trinitarian Arguments With Historical Reference

Septimius Tertullian ca. 160-240 AD, (C. 198, W), 3.690. “We pray at a minimum not less than three times in the day. For we are debtors to Three: [Gods] Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
Justin Martyr in Ibid also like Tertullian states his Pagan Platonic Three god belief: “We are not atheists, worshipping as we do, the Maker of this universe, ...offering up to him prayers and thanks ... And that we with reason honor Jesus Christ our teacher of these things and born for this end, .. receiving him as the son of the true God, and holding him in the second place, and the prophetic [Holy] Spirit in third rank.”
Justin's Martyr First Apology “Jesus Christ . . . we reasonably worship Him, having learned He is the Son of the true God Himself, and holding Him in the second place, and the prophetic Spirit in the third . . ."
We also quote some of Origen’s Catholic Trinitarian Commentary on John. We find a very polytheistic view of the Godhead. Multiple gods seam to exist under the great triad or top three gods in the early Gnostic Roman Catholic Theology. We also see the origin of the “distinct entities” the Father God coexisting with a Logos Son God.
“And one of the names applied to the Saviour is that which He Himself does not utter, but which John records;--the Word/Logos who was in the beginning with God, God the Word/Logos.”
“Is not a Son, or if he is a Son, let them say that God the Word/Logos is a separate being [or a separate distinct god] and has an essence of His own.”
“When we apply the mystical and allegorical method to the expression "light of the world" and the many analogous terms mentioned above, we should surely do so with this expression also.”
“There are some gods of whom God is god, as we hear in prophecy, "Thank ye the God of gods," and "The God of gods hath spoken, and called the earth." Now God, according to the Gospel, "is not the God of the dead but of the living." Those gods, then, are living of whom God is god. The Apostle, too, writing to the Corinthians, says: "As there are gods many and lords many," and so we have spoken of these gods as really existing. Now there are, besides the gods of whom God is god, certain others, who are called thrones, and others called dominions, lordships, also, and powers in addition to these. The phrase, "above every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come," leads us to believe that there are yet others (Gods) besides these which are less familiar to us;...”
“And thus the first-born [Logos] of all creation, who is the first to be with God, and to attract to Himself divinity, is a being of more exalted rank than the other gods beside Him, of whom God is the God, as it is written, "The God of gods, the Lord, hath spoken and called the earth." It was by the offices of the first-born that they became gods, for He
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