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6

MUTATION IN MONOTHEISM

The first Christians, apostles and disciples, were thoroughly committed to the living God, to his unity and his uniqueness.  Yet very quickly and without losing their passionate commitment to the unity of YHWH, they began to speak of and worship the resurrected, ascended, and glorified Lord Jesus Christ in such a way as to confess that he is divine as is the Father.  This belief and conviction has been called binitarianism by various New Testament scholars.  In this chapter we shall follow the attractive presentation of binitarianism by Larry W. Hurtado in his book, One God, One Lord.  Also we shall note briefly the criticism of Hurtado’s thesis by James D.G. Dunn in his fascinating book, The Parting of the Ways between Christianity and Judaism.  Then we shall suggest, giving reasons, that the consciousness (in contrast to the explicit confession) of the first Christians was not merely binitarian but truly trinitarian, without ceasing to be monotheistic.

However, we begin with the simple task of noticing the clear commitment to monotheism within the New Testament.  The tetragram, YHWH, is avoided as in Judaism but the confession of Deuteronomy 6:4, "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord," is accepted and confirmed by Jesus (Mark 12:29; Matt.

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22:37; Luke 10:26) and by his apostles (e.g., Rom. 3:30; 1 Cor. 8:4, 6; Gal. 3:20).  A careful reading of the Temptation narratives (Matt. 4:1-10; Luke 4:1-12) reveals that they take the form of a midrash on Deuteronomy 6–8, in which chapters is the clear statement of the unity and uniqueness of God.  In fact, the climax of the response of Jesus to his testing is to cite Deuteronomy 6:13, "You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve" (Matt. 4:10).  Equally striking is the answer of Jesus to the rich young man, "No one is good but God alone" (Mark 10:18).

Everywhere in the New Testament the truth of the monotheistic formula is taken for granted – "God is one – eis o theos."  In fact, God is "the only true God" (John 17:3); he is "the only God, our Savior" (Jude 25) and "the only wise God" (Rom. 16:27).  So "to the King of ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory for ever and ever.  Amen" (1 Tim. 1:17).

A major part of Hurtado’s book, One God, One Lord, is a study of divine agency in postexilic Judaism, especially the intertestamental period.  (In contrast, most of the material used in chapters 4 and 5 to illustrate the "Extension of Divine Personality" is taken from the preexilic period of Israel’s history.) It is well-known in academic circles that the texts of Judaism of the postexilic period contain many references to a variety of heavenly figures, who are presented as serving God in his rule over the world and the redemption of the elect.  These examples of divine agency may be classified under three general types, according to Hurtado.  First, divine attributes and powers (e.g., Wisdom and Logos); secondly exalted patriarchs (e.g., Moses and Enoch); and thirdly, principal angels (e.g., Michael and Yahoel).  What they have in common is that they are all pictured as being heavenly in origin or having been exalted to a heavenly position close to God. In fact, they represent God in a unique capacity and are second only to him in the created universe.

After careful study of these types of divine agency in the period immediately before, and contemporaneous with, the birth of Christianity, Hurtado presents what he calls "the Christian

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mutation."  He means that the earliest Christian devotion was a direct outgrowth from, and indeed a variety of, the ancient Jewish tradition; further, this devotion exhibited at an early stage a sudden and significant difference in character and content from the related Jewish devotion.  The place of the exalted Jesus in the religious life, devotion, and piety of the first Christians was strikingly different from the Jewish belief in and attitude toward divine agents.  The difference was both in how Jesus is named and in the relation/attitude of Christians to him.

The exalted Jesus was given the devotional attention which was reserved only for God himself in the Jewish tradition.  Yet this was done in such a way that there was no competition between Jesus and God for the loyalty and devotion of the first Christians.  Hurtado comments:

We are dealing with a redefinition of Jewish monotheistic devotion by a group that has to be seen as a movement within Jewish tradition of the early first century C.E.  The binitarian shape of early Christian devotion did not result from a clumsy crossbreeding of Jewish monotheism and pagan polytheism under the influence of gentile Christians too ill-informed about the Jewish heritage to preserve its [monotheistic] character.  Rather in its crucial first stages, we have a significantly new but essentially internal development within the Jewish monotheistic tradition, a mutation within that species of religious devotion.¹

In order to demonstrate the new binitarian monotheism of primitive Christianity, Hurtado carefully examines six features of early Christian devotion – hymns, prayer, use of the name of Christ, the Lord’s Supper, confession of faith in Jesus, and prophetic pronouncements of the risen Christ.

According to Hurtado, the result of his examination of these features within the New Testament is twofold:

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diverse Jewish monotheistic tradition that was the immediate background of the first Christians, among whom these devotional practices [the six features] had their beginnings.²

It is important to recognize, says Hurtado, that the concept of divine agency, and the widespread acceptance of a chief agent position in heaven, provided the early Christians with important conceptual resources for accommodating the exalted Christ within Jewish monotheism.  However, Christian binitarianism is not a simple development from Jewish divine agency doctrine, it is a major mutation.

In attempting to explain the causes of this major mutation, Hurtado points to (1) the impact of the ministry of Jesus upon his followers; (2) the conviction that Jesus had been raised from the dead and exalted into heaven as the agent of God’s eschatological salvation; and (3) opposition to the new movement from Judaism, causing Christians to state explicitly the implications of their devotion to the exalted Jesus.  Whatever were the conditioning factors and causes, the result of them is clear – Jesus was seen not merely as a divine agent, but as One to whom a loyalty, devotion, and worship, which properly belongs to God, is due.

Hurtado does not go on to examine the whole of the New Testament and so it is not clear whether he thinks that there is a Trinitarianism in say, the Johannine corpus.  What in fact he does in his book, and does well, is to present a hypothesis to explain the amazing fact that Jewish monotheists, who were disciples of the resurrected Jesus, came to address and worship Jesus as truly divine.

His study may be judged a necessary one because of two generally held views found in recent New Testament studies.  First, it has been widely held (e.g., by Wilhelm Bousset and his disciples) that Judaism had lessened its hold on pure monotheism in the postexilic period because of its belief in divine agency – angelology, for example; and, secondly, it has been assumed that the development of doctrine concerning Jesus as divine occurred not in the original Jewish context of Christianity but within Gentile Christianity.

In facing the question as to whether there is a unitarian,

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binitarian, or trinitarian expression of Christian Faith in the books of the New Testament, we need to make certain distinctions.  First of all, there is a legitimate and necessary task of seeking to trace the actual development of both Christian devotion/worship and of Christian thinking in the early church in the light of the events of the Resurrection and the Descent of the Holy Spirit.  Hurtado’s book belongs to this sphere of academic endeavor.  Then there is the task of determining what kind of consciousness or mind-set is presupposed by the actual existence and contents of the books of the New Testament.  To determine how Christian worship and thinking developed within monotheism is one thing: to ask what is the result of the development or mutation as presupposed by the canon of the New Testament is another.

Further, what appears at an early stage in the self-consciousness of Jewish Christianity to be binitarian in terms of its explicit devotion may well have arisen from within what may be described as a basically trinitarian consciousness and knowledge (where knowledge is the Hebraic knowing a person[s] relationally rather than knowing objective facts).  There was no doubt in the mind of the first Christians that Jesus was a real Person, for they had been with him.  His Personhood was indelibly written into their memories and experience.  In contrast, by the very nature of things, the Holy Spirit, who is not incarnate but invisible Holy Spirit, could not be thought of at first as being a distinct Person or hypostasis in the same way as was the Lord Jesus.  However, the dynamic experience of the amazing and awesome Descent of the Spirit at the Feast of Pentecost, and the further evidence of his presence and activity in the early church, was the experience of One, who was God unto them as invisible, and he was known primarily through the effects of his presence.

Now it is wholly possible – indeed probable – that while the explicit confession of the early Christians may be termed binitarian their experiential knowing of God was trinitarian – knowing the Father through the Lord Jesus and in/by the Holy Spirit.  In fact, it may be said that underlying the words of the Gospels and the New Testament letters is a basic trinitarian consciousness, and that this consciousness comes to the surface here and there in an explicit way, sometimes in a binitarian and

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sometimes trinitarian manner, depending upon the context.  The fact that it is sometimes binitarian is often simply because the active relation to God is "to the Father through Jesus Christ"; yet here, it may be suggested, the Holy Spirit is present anonymously and invisibly as the One who makes this relation possible and effective.

BINITARIANISM

We now proceed to look at the evidence adduced by Hurtado for what looks like, or is on its way toward, binitarianism.

When the first Christians met together as an assembly, they celebrated God’s presence as they sang hymns as well as exercised charismatic gifts (1 Cor. 14:26).  While the singing would certainly have included psalms, especially those which were seen as prophetic of Jesus Christ (e.g., Ps. 110), the hymns that were sung to or about Jesus were essentially new compositions.  The believers were making melody to the Lord with all their heart (Eph. 5:19).  Examples of such hymns are seen by scholars as embedded in the New Testament at such places as John 1:1-18, Colossians 1:15-20, and Philippians 2:5-11.  Fragments of hymns are seen in other places – Ephesians 2:14-16; 5:14; 1 Timothy 3:16; 1 Peter 3:18-22; and Hebrews 1:3.

An examination of all these reveals that they are devoted to the true significance and the saving work of Jesus.  "They all celebrate Christ as the supreme agent of God, whether in creation (e.g., Col. 1:15-17; Heb. 1:3; John 1:1-3), earthly obedience (Phil. 2:5-8), redemptive suffering (Rev. 5:9-10), or eschatological triumph (Phil. 2:9-11; Col. 1:20).  In short, and most important, they show that the devotional life of early Christianity involved the hymnic celebration of the risen Christ in the corporate worship setting.  This is a clear indication of the binitarian shape of early Christian devotion, most likely from the earliest years of the movement."³

Dunn is not persuaded that Hurtado is wholly right for he writes: "The earliest hymns of those cited (Phil. 2:6-11 and Col. 1:15-20) are hymns about Christ, not hymns to Christ.  The earli-

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est clear examples of worship of Christ do not appear until the hymns in the Revelation of John, one of the latest documents in the NT (e.g., Rev. 5:8-10)."⁴  So what Dunn sees is early Christian devotion to the exalted Christ on the way to full-scale Christian worship of Christ as God.

The early Christians naturally prayed to God, YHWH, whom they called "the Father."  However, from time to time, when the occasion seemed to demand it, they prayed to Jesus as "Lord."  The best known example is the prayer of the martyr Stephen as he died: "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" (Acts 7:59).  Another occasion, from the personal life of the Apostle Paul, is his beseeching "the Lord" three times concerning his "thorn in the flesh" (2 Cor. 12:8).

There are occasions when prayer is directed both to the Father and to the Lord Jesus: "Now may our God and Father himself, and our Lord Jesus, direct our way to you; and may the Lord make you increase and abound in love to one another and to all men" (1 Thes. 3:11-12).  Further, there are many places where "grace and peace" from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ are requested for the Christian congregations (e.g., Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:3).  Finally, prayer to Jesus is reflected in the Jewish Christian and Aramaic expression, maranatha (1 Cor. 16:22), which means "O Lord [our Lord] come."

"The evidence indicates," says Hurtado, "that the heavenly Christ was regularly invoked and appealed to in prayer and that this practice began among Jewish Christians in an Aramaic-speaking setting, probably the first stratum of the Christian movement."⁵  Prayer to Christ is for Hurtado an indication of binitarian devotion. Again, Dunn has reservations about claiming too much for the early stage, insisting that more typical of Paul’s understanding of prayer is prayer to God the Father through Christ (see e.g., Rom. 1:8; 7:25; 2 Cor. 1:20; Col. 3:17).

The calling "upon the name" of the Lord (Jesus) of which the Book of Acts speaks (9:14, 21; 22:16) is apparently derived from the calling "upon the name" of the LORD, Yahweh (e.g., Pss.

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99:6; 105:1; Joel 2:32).  It probably had reference to baptism.  According to Paul, believers are those who "call on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 1:2) and, further, they are washed, sanctified, and justified "in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Cor. 6:11).  In a strict monotheistic tradition, such usage is an innovation! It points clearly to binitarianism, says Hurtado.

The sacred meal described in 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 which had been in existence before Paul’s conversion is a remarkable phenomenon.  Common meals were known in Judaism – for example, in the Jewish sect at Qumran – but this is different. It is "the Lord’s Supper"!  It is a meal specifically designed for the purpose of proclaiming Jesus’ redemptive death, celebrating his victory, and communing with him as Lord.  Within monotheism, this, for Hurtado, means binitarianism!

Here the emphasis is upon the widespread use of the verb, homologeo (to confess) in the New Testament.  To confess Jesus was more than to name or refer to him.  It was to speak of him as unique in either testimony to others or in affirming one’s faith with others in the assembly of the faithful.  To be a Christian was to confess that Jesus is Lord (Rom. 10:9-13).  The devotion of the Christian congregation inspired by the Holy Spirit was also to confess Jesus as Lord (1 Cor. 12:1-3).  And the solemn duty of the whole creation at the end of the age is also to confess that Jesus, the Christ, is Lord (Phil. 2:9-11).

In contrast, while the Qumran sect referred to a heavenly figure (Michael/Melchizedec), whom they believed would be God’s agent in redemption in the eschaton, they did not "confess" him.  Confession of Jesus thus points again to binitarianism, claims Hurtado.

The words of Jesus Christ in the first-person singular are spoken by a Christian "prophet" in Revelation 1:17–3:22.  He addresses each of the seven churches saying, "I know your works."  Probably this points to a reasonably common phenomenon in the

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churches, where a prophet, "in the Spirit," would address the assembly with a message from the exalted Lord Jesus.  For Hurtado such words and such practice point clearly to a binitarian devotion.

In summary, there is much evidence, says Hurtado, which points to the giving of a unique place and devotion to the exalted Lord Jesus alongside God, the Father.  Jesus is viewed as being a Person and as also being divine.  This is seen very clearly in the statement of Paul.  "For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist" (1 Cor. 8:6).  However, as Hurtado admits, at this stage the ontological and metaphysical implications of this form of confession are not addressed.

In contrast, Dunn is hesitant to see binitarianism except in the very latest development of Christian devotion and thinking found in the books of the New Testament.  That is, only in the Gospel of John and the Book of Revelation can there be found evidence of a decisive move outside the possible categories of divine agency in Jewish monotheism to produce a new form of Christian monotheism in which the confession of the one God includes the confession of the deity of the exalted Lord Jesus Christ (and the deity of the Holy Spirit?).  All the early devotion to the exalted Jesus can be contained with the divine agency thought of postexilic Judaism, even though the latter is stretched to the limits.  For Dunn, in contrast to Hurtado, the new wine has not yet burst out of the old wineskins.

Certainly one great value of Dunn’s book is that he makes very clear that the evidence in the New Testament (within the context of contemporary Judaism) reveals a development of Christology taking place in the early church within the givenness and total acceptance of monotheism.  The belief in one and one only YHWH is always foundational to any confession of the exalted Lord Christ and the Holy Spirit.

We now proceed to look for what may be called the expression of a trinitarian consciousness, conviction, and vision which (it is

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here being suggested) undergirded and/or accompanied the implicit or explicit binitarian confession, which Hurtado and others have noticed – either at any early or a later stage of the period in which the books of the New Testament were written.  That is, we search for evidence not only that the apostles and disciples of the exalted Lord Jesus had a trinitarian consciousness, but that they also found that to deal adequately, meaningfully, or even reasonably with the total impact of the LORD God upon them since the Day of Pentecost (Acts 2), they had to speak from time to time (out of this deep knowledge in their souls) of the Triad – of the Father, of his Son, and of his Spirit (but not necessarily in this order).  To look and search for such evidence of a trinitarian consciousness will not appear foolish or even illogical, if we recognize one simple fact.  The Holy Spirit is both invisible and anonymous and thus his elusive presence will not normally be noted, even when it is known that he is present.

No one has ever seen the Holy Spirit, but his presence is known by what he does.  As the wind blows and we know it blows through its effects, so the Holy Spirit (who is the "breath/wind" of the Father) is present and active, and we know this through his effects.  The first Christians knew the presence and effects of the Holy Spirit in a dynamic way fifty days after the Resurrection, at the Feast of Pentecost.  Acts 2 provides us with the description of the Descent of the Spirit from the Father and from the exalted Lord Jesus, of the signs and wonders caused by his appearance, and of the dramatic effect he had through the preaching of Peter upon the hearers.  All this is seen as fulfilling the promise of God made through the Prophet Joel.  In the rest of Acts, the presence and power of the same Holy Spirit is presupposed (even though he is not seen), and we hear of this Holy Spirit speaking to the apostles and evangelists (8:29, 39; 10:19; 11:12) as well as specifically guiding them (16:7; 21:4).  (We shall return to this theme in chapter 9.)

The deep sensitivity of the early church to the presence of the invisible Spirit of God may be seen in a simple statistic. In the whole of the Hebrew (Masoretic) text of the Bible (O.T.) the word ruach occurs only about 90 times as referring to the Spirit

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of God, while in the Septuagint pneuma occurs only about 100 times.  But in the letters of Paul, which are only a fraction of the size of the Hebrew Bible and the Greek Septuagint, pneuma referring to the Holy Spirit occurs about 115 times!

If we then ask what accounts for this tremendous increase in references to the Spirit of God, we find that the answer is that Paul and his converts, the early Christians, were very conscious of his presence and power in and with them – as the letters make clear.  In fact, they held that the presence of the Holy Spirit was absolutely necessary in order to place a repentant believing sinner in union with the Lord Jesus and thus with the Father.  "No one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit" (1 Cor. 12:3).  So with an explicit binitarianism went an implicit trinitarianism; for the Lord Jesus is seen not only as inseparable from his Father, but also inseparable from the Spirit of the Father.

The early Christians believed that the Holy Spirit indwelt them and their bodies were the temple of the Spirit; that their fellowship one with another and with the Father through the Son was in and by the Spirit; that the Spirit gave spiritual gifts to the church in order to build up the members in the Faith; that the Spirit sanctified their lives so that they should adorn the Gospel; that the Spirit guided them in daily living in practical ways; that the Spirit gave them joy to rejoice in tribulation and difficult circumstances; that the Spirit gave them boldness to proclaim the Gospel and confess Jesus as Lord in a hostile world; that the Spirit opened the hearts and minds of listeners to the Gospel so that they would repent and believe the Gospel; that the Spirit enabled them to worship and pray in a manner pleasing to God; and that the Spirit kept them in a dynamic relation to Jesus Christ.

However, when the first Christians worshiped the Father through the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and when they preached the Gospel of the Father concerning the Son and his Resurrection, they did not normally speak of the Holy Spirit (even though they knew that they worshiped and prayed in the Spirit and that they proclaimed the Gospel in the power of the Spirit).  As they exercised various forms of ministry, using the supernatural gifts of the Spirit given unto them, they did not usually speak of the Spirit who gave and sustained the gifts within them. Instead they

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spoke of the Lord Jesus and his Father.  Thus what has been called binitarianism is normally undergirded by a trinitarian consciousness.  And the invisible and anonymous Spirit is doing what the Father sent him to do – to glorify the Son!

The illustration of the iceberg, most of which is under the water and little of which is visible at sea level, helps to make the point concerning the trinitarian consciousness of the apostles and disciples.  In the New Testament we encounter here and there formulae or statements concerning the Father, his Son, and his Spirit.  Yet we do not have any sense that they are odd, out of place, or wrong, for they seem quite natural.  This is because they arise out of a trinitarian consciousness.  Further, as we reflect upon the general content of the books of the New Testament we form the impression that everything is from the Father through the Son and in/by the Spirit, and that all returns to the Father through the Son and in/by the Spirit.

Here are some of these threefold statements from Pauline letters.

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receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God [the Father] has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!" (Gal. 4:4-6)

For through him [the Lord Jesus Christ] we both [Jew and Gentile] have access in one Spirit to the Father (Eph. 2:18).

We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love which you have for all the saints.... Epaphras ... has made known to us your love in the Spirit (Col. 1:3-8).

We are bound to give thanks to God always for you, brethren beloved by the Lord, because God [the Father] chose you from the beginning to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth.  To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Thes. 2:13-14).

When the goodness and loving kindness of God [the Father] our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of deeds done by us in righteousness, but in virtue of his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal in the Holy Spirit, which he poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life (Titus 3:4-7).

If these are joined to others from Paul’s letters as well as those texts in the rest of the New Testament which we have not cited, they point to something more than a binitarian consciousness.

The texts point to a general trinitarian consciousness out of which there arises an implicit trinitarianism.  An explicit binitarianism and an implicit trinitarianism can therefore be seen to belong to the same Faith.  For only a dogmatic binitarianism denies a trinitarian consciousness and an implicit trinitarianism.  An experiential and practical binitarianism is wholly compatible with an experiential implicit trinitarianism, because by the latter

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the Holy Spirit is known to be present, but present as the anonymous, elusive, and invisible personal Spirit from the Father and from the exalted Christ.

At the end of his little book, Holy Spirit: A Biblical Study, the late Michael Ramsey, Archbishop of Canterbury, expressed what we have been calling an implicit trinitarianism.  He explained that the first Christians began with the monotheism of Israel, and without abandoning that monotheism, were led by the impact of Jesus upon them to worship Jesus as divine and did so as they were conscious that the divine Spirit within them enabled both their access to God the Father and their response to Jesus as the Lord.  Then he wrote:

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"Deep answering unto deep" – this is a thought to ponder as one contemplates the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ by the illumination of the Holy Spirit. "In thy light do we see light" (Ps. 36:9) is true at all levels of communion with the Father, through the Son, and in the Holy Spirit.

In later chapters we shall be looking at the Personhood (hypostasis) of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in greater detail than we have yet done.  Here, in closing this chapter, it may be useful to observe that if the words attributed to the resurrected Jesus at the end of Matthew’s Gospel were truly said by him as the resurrected Lord (and not attributed to him later by a church that had developed an implicit trinitarian doctrine), then the possession of a trinitarian consciousness in his apostles and disciples is a real probability – perhaps a necessity.

Jesus is recorded as saying: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:19).  If such a command constantly rang in their ears from the depth of the memories, then the apostles must have had some kind of a trinitarian consciousness.  Probably this was in terms of what was later called the economic Trinity: "from the Father through the exalted Christ and by the Spirit" as the movement from God to man and then "to the Father through the exalted Christ in, by and through the Holy Spirit" from man to God.  That is, they would have thought of the one, unique God, Yahweh, as somehow truly a plurality in unity and in their relation to him they spoke of coming to the Father through the Son by the Spirit (see further chapter 11).  In this sense it can be said that they spoke of the Trinity – yet not of theos as a Trinity because for them God, theos, was (with a few exceptions, as we shall see in chapter 8) always the Father.  We may also recall that the baptism of Jesus himself revealed the presence of the Three – the Father spoke, the Spirit descended, and the Son received (cf. Matt. 3:13-17).  So it was not strange that baptism should be in the Name of the Three.

The famous Princeton theologian, B.B. Warfield, made the case for this basic trinitarian consciousness and implicit trinitarianism as strongly as it can be stated when he wrote about eighty years ago these words in his essay, "The Biblical Doctrine of the Trinity":

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The simplicity and assurance with which the New Testament writers speak of God as a Trinity have, however, a further implication.  If they betray no sense of novelty in so speaking of him, this is undoubtedly in part because it was no longer a novelty so to speak of him.  It is clear, in other words, that, as we read the New Testament, we are not witnessing the birth of a new conception of God.  What we meet with in its pages is a firmly established conception of God underlying and giving its tone to the whole fabric.  It is not in a text here and there that the New Testament bears its testimony to the doctrine of the Trinity.  The whole book is Trinitarian to the core; all its teaching is built on the assumption of the Trinity; and its allusions to the Trinity are frequent, cursory, easy, and confident.  It is with a view to the cursoriness of the allusions to it in the New Testament that it has been remarked that "the doctrine of the Trinity is not so much heard as overheard in the statement of Scripture."  It would be more exact to say that it is not so much inculcated as presupposed.  The doctrine of the Trinity does not appear in the New Testament in the making, but as already made.⁷

Warfield does not mean that the ecclesiastical dogma of the Holy Trinity is found in the New Testament.  He refers to the doctrine that our creation and salvation is of YHWH who is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Further, the Princeton theologian is deeply impressed by the remarkable fact that this experiential knowledge and implicit confession of the Holy Trinity took its place without struggle and without controversy among accepted Christian truths in the Christian fellowship.  So he wrote:

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My only comment on this claim that the confession of the Holy Trinity occurred before the writing of the New Testament actually occurred is this.  Each of the different writers of the books of the New Testament has his own (inspired) way of speaking of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and thus there is not the kind of uniformity in Scripture which occurred after the ecclesial dogma had been set forth and embraced in the liturgies and doctrines of the church.  Further, I would prefer to speak of a vision, or conviction, or a consciousness of the Trinity rather than a doctrine of the Trinity being present as the background of the existence of the New Testament.

What Warfield is right to emphasize, I believe, is that the revelation of the Holy Trinity was made in the first place not in word but in deed.  It was made in the Incarnation of the Son of the Father and in the outpouring of the Spirit of the Father.  So the revelation of the Trinity was, as he says, incidental to, and the inevitable effect of, the accomplishment of our redemption.  Thus "the doctrine of the Trinity is simply the modification wrought in the conception of the one, only God by his complete revelation of himself in the redemptive process.  It necessarily waited, therefore, upon the redemptive process for its revelation, and its revelation, as necessarily, lay complete in the redemptive process."⁹  Today we would perhaps (as those who are more conditioned by the use of the historical-critical method) want to say that the explicit statement of the implicit trinitarian consciousness took longer than Warfield assumed; and, further, that there is evidence (as Hurtado and Dunn show) of the gradual move from Jewish to Christian monotheism in the pages of the New Testament, but that this move in no way takes away from the basic trinitarian consciousness underlying the New Testament.

De Margene, Bertrand. The Christian Trinity in History. Still River, Mass.: St. Bede’s, 1982.

Dunn, James D.C. The Parting of the Ways between Christianity and Judaism, and Their Significance for the Character of Christianity. Philadelphia: Trinity, 1991.

Hurtado, Larry W. One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion

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and Ancient Jewish Monotheism. Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988.

Ramsey, Michael. Holy Spirit: A Biblical Study. London: SPCK, 1977.

Schaberg, J. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit: The Triadic Phrase in Matthew 28:19b. Chico, Calif.: Scholars, 1982.

Wainwriight, Arthur W. The Trinity in the New Testament. London: SPCK, 1975.

Warfield, B.B., "The Biblical Doctrine of the Trinity." In Biblical and Theological Studies. Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1968, 22–59.

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