Page 53 - Emperor Constantine Enforcer of the Trinity Doctrine

him “as to a God,” as their Roman enemies reported (see Jesus Christ)...Historical Development. —Nevertheless, the awareness of these implications did not spring into the Christian consciousness all at once but developed over several centuries and through many controversies. Initially, both the requirements of the monotheism inherited from the Old Testament and the implications of the need to interpret biblical teaching to Greco- Roman paganism seemed to demand that the divine Christ as the Word or Logos be seen as (a separate) subordinate to the Supreme Deity...It was not until the 4th century that the distinctness of the three taught by subordination and their unity taught by modalism were brought together in a single orthodox doctrine of one essence and three persons. The Council of Nicaea in 325 stated the crucial formal for that doctrine in its confession that “the Son is of the same essence [homoousios] as the Father,” even though it said very little about the Holy Spirit.”
Origin and Evolution of Religion by E. Washburn Hopkins, Ph. D. LL.D., Professor of Theology and Church History Yale University 1924, page 338. “In general it may be said that early [Catholic] Christian theology was a mixture of [Pagan] Stoic, Gnostic, and Platonic elements incongruously welded upon the old Jewish idea of a Spirit of God or Wisdom of God working in the Son of God, interpreted as Jesus Christ. But the first [Apostolic] Christian theology was given in the words “I and my Father are one” and the plain faith of the early Church members who were not doctrinaires [Catholic Theologians or Philosophers] was just this and nothing more. Jesus is God. So proclaimed the first hymns, sung by the early Church. Such [One-God Jesus is God] hymns are attested by Pliny the Younger. So Ignatius, who has as yet no trinitarian formula, proclaimed, “One God Jesus Christ” and spoke of Deacons as “Servants of God Christ.”
Origin and Evolution of Religion By Professor E. Washburn Hopkins, Ph.D. Yale University 1924 page 339. “The (early) Church believed that “God” in the sense of an active creative power was the Holy Spirit of the Hebrews, [Gen. 1:2, Zec. 4:6, Job 33:4, John 4:24, Eph. 4:4-6]...while it also believed with the first simple Christians that Jesus Christ was God on earth.” (This agrees with Matthew 1:23, John 8:23-24, John 10:30- 33, John 14:6-9, 1 Tim. 3:16, Col. 1:15, Col. 2:9, 2 Cor. 5:19, James 2:19 and Rev. 1:8!)
Holman Bible Handbook pages 558-559, General Editor David S. Dockey, under “Titles of Christ in the Gospels.” “LORD” This was a title of honor used of Jesus, the equivalent of “Master” or “Sir.” However, we can see lurking in it something of greater significance (Matt. 8:5-13; Mark 2:23-27). In Judaism (or Hebrew) “LORD” thus *meant God. The Church later, in light of Jesus’ death and resurrection, used it to mean nothing less than that Jesus was God.”
Integrative Theology by G. R. Lewis and Bruce A. Demarest, 1996, page 107. Has this to say about the deity of Christ and how the original Church seen him. “Paul believed that the historical Jesus Christ was the pinnacle of all God’s revelations to mankind. The apostle described...{Jesus} as “the image [eichon] of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15). In Koine Greek, eichon could refer to, among other things, a portrait...Repeatedly the apostle affirms that at the Incarnation the invisible God took visible form in Jesus of
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