Two-Power Framework: Documented in Their Own Words

Philip Schaff documents that Constantine himself named the framework at Nicaea:

“He said to the bishops at a banquet, that he also, as a Christian emperor, was a divinely appointed bishop, a bishop over the external affairs of the church, while the internal affairs belonged to the bishops proper. He made there a distinction between two divinely authorized episcopates; one secular or imperial…the other spiritual or sacerdotal.” —Schaff, §26

Schaff also documents the pagan foundation of this arrangement:

“All the pagan emperors, from Augustus to Julian the Apostate, were at the same time supreme pontiffs (Pontifices Maximi), the heads of the state religion, emperor-popes…The Christian emperors, who, down to Gratian (about 380), even retained the name and the insignia of the Pontifex Maximus, claimed the same oversight of the Christian religion established in the empire, which their predecessors had had of the heathen.” —Schaff, §25

The Roman Catholic Church formalized this two-power doctrine in its own primary documents:

Pope Gelasius I, letter to Emperor Anastasius, 494 AD (Duo Sunt): “Two there are, august emperor, by which this world is chiefly ruled: the sacred authority of the priesthood and the royal power.”

Pope Boniface VIII, Unam Sanctam, 1302 AD: “We declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.”

Two powers. Their own sources document both—the spiritual claims supremacy over the secular, and the secular enforces what the spiritual decrees.

The Trinity Imposition: The Documented Sequence

At Nicaea in 325 AD:

• Constantine, the secular authority, convened and presided
• The bishops, the spiritual authority, deliberated and ratified homoousios
• Constantine, the secular authority, enforced

At Constantinople in 381 AD:

• Theodosius, the secular authority, issued an imperial edict criminalizing dissent—before the council met
• The council, the spiritual authority, completed and ratified the full co-equal Trinity
• Theodosius, the secular authority, enforced fifteen penal laws in fifteen years

Secular convenes. Spiritual legitimizes. Secular enforces.

Both times. Documented.

Theodosius: The Documented Facts

Schaff records:

“Theodosius the Great, the first emperor who was baptized in the Nicene faith, put an end to the Arian interregnum, proclaimed the exclusive authority of the Nicene creed, and at the same time enacted the first rigid penalties…against all Christian heresies and sects…In the course of fifteen years this emperor issued at least fifteen penal laws against heretics, by which he gradually deprived them of all right to the exercise of their religion, excluded them from all civil offices, and threatened them with fines, confiscation, banishment, and in some cases…with death.” —Schaff, Chapter III, §27

The facts in sequence:

• Theodosius was the legal heir to Satan’s throne by the documented succession from Pergamum to Rome, 133 BC
• He was the first Roman emperor baptized in the Nicene faith—personally and spiritually legitimized by the institutional church
• He convened Constantinople in 381 AD, where the Trinity that almost all Trinitarians recite in seminaries and churches today was completed
• He issued the edict criminalizing all dissent the year before the council met
• He enforced it with at least fifteen penal laws—fines, confiscation, banishment, death

The carnage against dissenters began in full force under a man the institutional church had baptized and blessed. Schaff records no objection from that same institution to the persecution that followed.

Two powers. Complete agreement.

Nicene Trinitarianism is the only major Christian doctrine about the nature of God whose final formulation was produced under imperial direction, ratified under imperial pressure, and enforced by imperial law—on pain of death. Ask yourself: what does that tell you about whether it came from God?

A doctrine that required Caesar’s sword to exist and Caesar’s law to survive is not a doctrine that came from Jesus Christ—regardless of how many sincere people have believed it.

The Biblical Data

Consider the following texts alongside the documented history in this Chapter.

Revelation 13:7: “It was given to him to make war with the saints and to overcome them. Authority over every tribe, people, language, and nation was given to him.”

Revelation 13:16–17: “He causes all, the small and the great, the rich and the poor, and the free and the slave, to be given marks on their right hands or on their foreheads; and that no one would be able to buy or to sell, unless he has that mark.”

Revelation 13:12: “The second beast…causes the earth and those who dwell in it to worship the first beast.”

Revelation 17:3–6: “I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet-colored animal…The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet…drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.”

Revelation 17:9: “The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits.”

Revelation 17:18: “The woman whom you saw is the great city which reigns over the kings of the earth.”

This table displays the commonalities between the prophecies in Revelation and their historical application.

Placed side by side, the comparison is remarkable. Is this a coincidence? Hold that thought.

Not only did Jesus say, “Therefore by their fruits you will know them.” (Matthew 7:20)

But Jesus also said this:

“Why don’t you understand my speech? Because you can’t hear my word. You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father. He was a murderer from the beginning, and doesn’t stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks on his own; for he is a liar, and the father of lies.” (John 8:43–44)

And what of the “two powers” doctrine, did Jesus authorize that? Or otherwise?

“I heard another voice from heaven, saying, “Come out of her, my people, that you have no participation in her sins, and that you don’t receive of her plagues, for her sins have reached to the sky, and God has remembered her iniquities.” (Revelation 18:4–5)

Here is how those who stand with Theodosius’s formula align with Jesus’ own words:

• They don’t understand Jesus’ speech that God is ‘one He’ by commandment.

• They align themselves with the heir of Satan’s throne and kingdom.

• They want to do the desire of their father, which was to negate the commandments of God through human reasoning.

• They “speak on their own” because nowhere in the Bible is God called one essence, Triune, three persons, coequal, coeternal among three persons, nor is Jesus ever called a dual-natured being.

When Jesus said, “Why don’t you understand my speech? Because you can’t hear my word,” coupled with, “Therefore by their fruits you will know them” (Matthew 7:20), when you take all of these points against the formulation of the Trinity, Jesus isn’t just hinting at his disapproval. He is giving you an opportunity to prove you are listening to his warnings or disregarding his counsel. Why bother calling him Lord, if you aren’t going to obey him?

“Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ and don’t do the things which I say?” (Luke 6:46)

Return now to the ‘coincidence’ question. Are these coincidences when considered together? What would be the figure if we were to calculate the probabilities—something the Bible never does—of a godly doctrine or group of people aligning with at least twenty documented points? It would be virtually zero. And remember, it only takes breaking one commandment to be guilty of all.

“For whoever keeps the whole law, and yet stumbles in one point, he has become guilty of all.” (James 2:10).

How much more so, then, one who breaks not only the first commandment but the commandments to teach no other doctrine, not to add or take away from God’s words, not to teach for doctrines the commandments of men, not to be robbed by anyone’s philosophy, and more, especially the commandment not to go after other gods to serve “them”?

Is the Trinitarian reader or listener so enamored with the man-made doctrine of the Trinity that they are ready to defend it against these odds and moral ramifications?

Meanwhile, those of us who hear Jesus understand exactly what the ramifications of all these points against the development and doctrine of the Trinity mean.

“He who is of God hears the words of God. For this cause you don’t hear, because you are not of God.” (John 8:47)

Summary—In this chapter, I have noted or documented, if not established:

✦ That the two-power framework—one secular, one spiritual—was named by Constantine himself at Nicaea, documented by Philip Schaff, and formalized by the Roman Catholic Church in its own primary documents.

✦ That every Roman emperor from Augustus to Gratian held the title Pontifex Maximus—chief priest of the pagan Roman state religion—and that the Christian emperors claimed the same religious oversight of Christianity that their pagan predecessors had held over Roman paganism.

✦ That the Trinity imposition followed an identical two-power sequence at both Nicaea and Constantinople: secular convenes, spiritual legitimizes, secular enforces—both times.

✦ That Theodosius—the first emperor baptized in the Nicene faith, personally legitimized by the institutional church, and legal heir to Satan’s throne—was the man under whose supervision the completed Trinity was finalized and by whose authority the carnage against dissenters began in full force, with no recorded objection from the institution that blessed him.

✦ That eight specific features of the documented historical record align point for point with the biblical descriptions in Revelation 13 and 17.

✦ That Jesus’s own words in John 8:43–44 describe precisely the pattern of those who stand with Theodosius’s formula: inability to hear God’s commandment, alignment with the desires of the father of lies, and speaking on their own—using terminology nowhere found in Scripture.

✦ That the probability of a godly doctrine aligning with at least twenty documented points established across this series is virtually zero.

✦ That breaking even one commandment constitutes guilt of all, making the cumulative weight of the documented case against the Trinity not merely significant but legally total by Scripture’s own standard.

✦ That Jesus commands us to come out of that system lest we partake of her plagues.

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