The letter that follows was written to a Jehovah Witness friend of mine in an effort to help him understand the Christian concept of the Blessed Trinity. This letter was the beginning of a long evangelization process. It is my hope that you find the content of this letter useful in your efforts to evangelize others.

Deacon Francis J. Valliere

April 27, 1992

Dear John,

In a recent encounter, one of many we have shared together as friends over the years, you asked me "How can you believe in the Trinity?...", the concept of a triune God, "...when Jesus Christ stated himself that...", as written in John's gospel

In retort, I ask " How is it, that after reading the ENTIRE gospel of John, you do not BELIEVE ?". The truth of Jesus Christ's deity, being true God and true man, is very evident not only in John's gospel but throughout the New Testament and pre-figured in the Old Testament. But truth, conformity to facts or reality, unfortunately can be clouded by human depravities such as pride, rationalization, complacency, and fears, to name a few among many. So to take upon oneself the Truth, one must humble himself and make all efforts to purge himself of these weaknesses,

On this basis, I begin our dialogue, and I pray that you open your heart to the Truth, for what follows is what I believe to be the truth of Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition as taught to me by the Holy Roman Catholic Church established by Jesus Christ.

If you examine the gospel of John, he writes;

I for one, would not want to risk all that has been bought and promised us by Christ Jesus, because of mistranslations or misrepresentations of any of the words of Holy Scripture, for whatever reason; so therefore, I turn to the Catholic Church whose Teaching Authority is from Jesus Christ himself and whose shepherding leads to Him. At this point I will emphasize, John, that I have no desire to hurt or insult you or injure our friendship with harsh words, but rather, if at times I choose to make rhetoric against the doctrines of your organization, it is because I find THEM, not you, offensive to my Christianity. With that said, let us continue with Sacred Scripture.

In the book of Genesis, God states in the plural

It is obvious, taking this in context with the entirety of Sacred Scripture, that God is addressing His Son and the Holy Spirit, and nothing less; for there is only ONE creator. This is supported in the Book of Isaiah, where God says,

Since there is emphatically no other God but Yahweh (Jehovah), which is implied to the contrary in "...the Word was a God." , not even a "lesser mighty God" as your organization depicts Jesus Christ to be, then there must be a unity in plurality and substance, or this passage from Genesis has no meaning. This same plurality is again pre-figured in the Book of Genesis;

Now before I go any farther, I wish to answer your original question to establish a truth; that Jesus Christ was true God and true Man. I use here apologia from one of the Patristic writings of Victor, Bishop of Vita, the "History of the Persecution", who with many other Catholic Bishops and clergy, was exiled and persecuted by the Arian-Vandal Kings (ca. A.D. 485). This apologetic writing was in defense of the Catholic faith against the Arian heresy, which also denied the triune God. "Because we profess that there are two natures in the Son, that is, true God and true Man, having body and soul, whatever the Scriptures ascribe to Him that is of sublimely excellent power we know must be attributed to His wonderful divinity; and whatever is told more humbly of Him and which is below the dignity of heavenly power we refer not to the Word of God, but to the manhood which He assumed. This then, as we remarked before, is said in regard to His divinity:

and:

But there are other sayings which are to be referred to Him according to His Humanity:

This certainly shows the two natures of Jesus Christ, His divine nature and His human nature. But I wish to continue to show you in every passage available that Jesus Christ is God. Take, for instance;

Or;

Both verses are prophesy of the coming Messiah. Both indicate Christ's divinity. Both pre-figure the plurality of divine Persons. In the Book of Proverbs, we are told by the writer,

Here the plurality of divine Persons is foreshadowed which later would be fully revealed when Jesus Christ became incarnate. Let us continue with two verses in Paul's Letter to Titus;

Now it stands that if God is our Savior and Jesus is our Savior and there is only one savior, then Jesus and Jehovah are One. In Paul's letter to the Collosians, Paul tells us,

Paul tells us, very bluntly and to the point, that in Jesus, the entirety of God dwells bodily. To reject this is to reject the obvious. In the Book of Isaiah it is written,

This and many other verses (Is 41:4; 43:11-13; 45:5; 48:12) establish that there is only one God and Savior. In the Book of Revelation, Jesus tells John,

And in. . .

Now since Yahweh is the only First and Last, either Christ and God are one, or to claim otherwise, we must deny the authority of the Sacred Scriptures. Again in Revelation John writes,

Here John writes what he hears from Almighty God(Jehovah). The Alpha and Omega revealed here is Yahweh. In (Rev 1:8), John writes

Again referring to our Almighty God(Jehovah). But in (Rev 22:7, 12, 20), we see the tri-repetition of a specific phrase ". . .I am coming soon!" Who is coming soon? Jesus is coming soon!

If it is Jesus who is coming soon, then it is Jesus who says, in (Rev 22:12),

Now Jesus is stating that He is the Alpha and the Omega. Through these passages, Jesus undeniably emerges as possessing the identity of God the Almighty.

Now let us take a look at the "I AM"(in Greek "Ego Eimi") verses . One quick note; I understand that the NWT translates 'ego eimi' as "I have been"; but on the same grounds as I previously covered, I refuse to acknowledge such a bold perversion of the Greek text. Therefore, in the Book of Exodus

He said further,

Here, God reveals himself to Moses and calls Himself "I AM". This title of "I AM" is synonymous with Almighty God and is universally accepted, as such, among all christians. In the gospel of John, Jesus refers to himself as "I AM" six times, and John emphasizes one more time in (Jn 18:6). In . . .

And in

And the very well known verse;

And again in

This verse also proves that Jesus was God in and through His capability to predict the future ("The one who ate my food has raised his heel against me"). Only Jehovah knows the future as a present fact. In (Jn 18:5), in the course of Jesus' arrest Jesus said to the soldiers and guards,

and they answered,

He said to them, "I AM". When he said to them, "I AM," they turned away and fell to the ground. So he asked them again,

Jesus answered,

The soldiers and guards who came to arrest Jesus knew in their hearts, after Jesus told them "I AM", exactly who they were confronting. They knew that "I AM" was our Almighty God (Jehovah) and consequently turned away and fell to the ground. Hypothesis? maybe! if so, give a better one. So again, here is a clear indication, from Jesus Christ's own mouth, that He was coeternal, coequal, coexisting and consubstantial (homoousios) with the Father, in short, one nature in its fullest sense.

In John's gospel, Jesus tells the Jews,

They take up stones to stone him. They tell Him the reason they are going to stone Him is for His blaspheming, making Himself out to be God. He later says to them, if you don't believe me, believe in my works

Further on in the Gospel of John, Philip says to Jesus,

Jesus replies in almost disbelief,

He then states emphatically,

Again he says in amazement,

St. Athanasius explained these verses quite eloquently in his apologetic work against the Arians. He says, "The Son is in the Father, insofar as it is given us to understand, because the whole being of the Son is proper to the Father's essence, as radiance is from light, and as a stream is from a fountain. Therefore, whoever sees the Son sees what is proper to the Father; and knows thereby that the Son's being, since it is from the Father, is in the Father. The Father, moreover, is in the Son, since the Son is what is proper to the Father, as in radiance the sun, or in a word the thought, or in a stream the fountain. Whoever thus contemplates the Son, contemplates what is proper to the Father's essence, and knows that the Father is in the Son. Since the Image and the Godhead of the Father is the being of the Son, it follows that the Son is in the Father, and the Father in the Son. On this account, having already said,

He(Jesus) adds quite reasonably,

Although there are many more verses in Sacred Scripture that attest to Jesus Christ's nature, true God and true man, let us review just one more in an effort to keep the length of this letter reasonable. In the letter to the Hebrews, the author writes of Jesus,

The writer here intends on portraying Jesus Christ as Jehovah. It would be unreasonable to suppose that Jesus, being "the exact imprint of God's very being", is not of the same substance of God the Almighty and hence, the second Person of the triune Deity. But more interesting are verses (Heb 1:5 - 2:4),

It follows then that Jesus was certainly not an angel prior to His incarnation, as some would have us believe, but rather, the writer goes on,

Here, God the Almighty himself calls the Son, God. The Truth cannot be made any clearer. And the Truth is this; Jesus Christ is the Son of God, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, one in being with the Father, through Him all things were made. He is the second Person of the most Blessed Trinity. Amen!

Now that we have established our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, as the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, and that a unity of divine nature exists between the Father and the Son, it becomes easy to show that the third Person of the Triune God, truly proceeds from the Father and the Son. In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says,

Jesus names the third person of the Blessed Trinity himself ". . .and of the Holy Spirit. . ." And again in the Gospel of John, Jesus says,

This Advocate that Jesus speaks of, in terms of He and Him, is another Person, the third Person of the Triune God. In verse 26 He says,

Here Jesus speaks of a third Person sent by the Father in Jesus' name. Jesus reiterates in chapter 15 verse 26,

Here, Jesus again points to the Advocate who will proceed from the Father and Jesus, who will testify on His behalf. In chapter 16 starting at verse 7, Jesus says,

The words from our Lord's own mouth are just too obvious to overlook. Knowing that the Father is eternal, and that there can be nothing lesser or greater in Him, for He is the Almighty; it stands to reason, if Jesus has all that the Father has, then Jesus is coequal and coeternal, one in being with the Father; and if Jesus is coeternal and coequal to the Father, and the Holy Spirit partakes in that which belongs to the Son, then that which is said to proceed from the Son, the Holy Spirit, is and must be coequal, coeternal, coexisting, and consubstantial with the Father and the Son.

In the Acts of the Apostles, Peter asks Ananias,

Peter unequivocally tells Ananias that he lied to the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the One divine God. In Acts chapter 20 verse 28, Paul writes to the Ephesians,

To mistranslate this is to ignore the truth. Paul says, care for the community that the third Person(Holy Spirit) gave you authority over and to shepherd the church of the first Person(the Father) that the first Person(the Father) obtained by the blood of the second Person(the Son). There are three distinct Persons, One divine nature, a Blessed Trinity. In the earliest extant writing of St. Epiphanius, dating ca. A.D. 374, he writes, ". . .The Holy Spirit has neither the name of Son nor the appellation of Father, but is called Holy Spirit, and is not foreign to the Father. For the Only-begotten Himself calls Him

and says of Him that

and

so that He is reckoned as not being foreign to the Father nor to the Son, but is of their same substance, of the same Godhead; He is Spirit divine, . . .of God, and He is God. For He is Spirit of God, Spirit of the Father, and Spirit of the Son, not by some kind of synthesis, like soul and body in us, but in the midst of Father and Son, of the Father and of the Son, a third by appellation."(4) To end this long discourse, I will re-quote the Gospel of Matthew 28:19. Since the Lord Jesus commands that all the nations be baptized

it is very evident that the Holy Spirit is neither a creature, created by the Father, or a power or force of God(Jehovah). Either He is of the very substance of the Father and the Son, or the Lord would have been commanding what He never did, that someone be baptized in the name of something other than God.

My dear friend. For you, it is my fervent prayer that you open your heart to the gift of grace and faith from God our Almighty Father, which leads to the One Truth; that Jesus Christ, in union with the Holy Spirit, live and reign with the Father as One God forever and ever. For my part, I have prayed long and hard that I would be made a worthy and humble instrument of His love and wisdom, for He truly is the Word of God. I have also prayed that He send me His Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, so that in and through my writing you will be touched by His Love and Wisdom. I do all this through Him, with Him, in Him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, to the glory and Honor of God our Almighty Father. As I close, I will be very honest with you, John, I have never felt so satisfied and so blessed as I do at the completion of this letter; for now more than ever, rooted deep in my heart and soul, are the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, our most awesome and everlasting and everloving Blessed Trinity.

Your Brother in Christ,