The Religious Thought of the Greeks, from Homer to the Triumph of Christianity

by Clifford Herschel Moore

[329] Cf. John XX, 31.

[330] John III, 3, 6; cf. V, 24.

[331] John XV, 1 ff.; IV, 7 ff.; VI, 33 ff.

[332] Theophilus, Ad Autol. 2, 15 (c. 180 a.d.), is the first among our extant Greek sources to use the word Trinity (τριάς) of the nature of God; Tertullian, Adv. Valent. 17 (c. 200), the first Latin writer to employ trinitas in the same sense.

[333] The preparatory discourse put into the mouth of Jesus in John XIV-XVI contains the Johannine doctrine. This discourse may be built up from traditional sayings of Jesus, but in its present form it bears unmistakable marks of its literary origin.

[334] John XX, 31.

[335] John V, 24; 1 John III, 14.

[336] History of Dogma, II, 170.

[337] Vid. Justin’s arguments, Apol. I, 31-53. Athenagoras, Legat. 9, limits himself to the testimonies of the prophets as to the nature of God. Cf. also Tatian, 20, at the end.

[338] Justin, Apol. II, 8 ff.; cf. I, 46. In two passages (Apol. I, 44 and 59) Justin illogically declares that the Greeks owed all their true knowledge to their borrowings from Moses. Herein he was simply following the Alexandrian Jews.