Where did the Christian concept of a triune God come from

Factual Questions
1

When I was attending church, and was an active Bible student, one of the things that puzzled me was where the concept of a triune God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) came from. I mean, as far as I could discern, it was nowhere in the Old Testament, yet in the Gospels it’s all over the place. Christianity started as a Jewish sect, and the first Christians (who wrote the Gospels) were all Jews. So where did they get this concept? As I was struggling with this, I wished I knew the Old Testament better, from a Jewish perspective, to solve puzzles like this.

Now that I attend a Reform Jewish synagogue (I’m still a Christian, many of you already know my story), I no longer call it the Old Testament, I call it the Tanakh. And I know that the concept of a triune G-d is alien to current day Judaism, and Jews view it as a form of polytheism.

I heard that Jesus was perhaps an Essene, or perhaps a Pharisee. Was there anything in those schools of thought that could have been a basis for the triune G-d concept?

2

A google search reveals

ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA

Christianity

The Holy Trinity

The basis for the doctrine of the the Holy Trinity
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/1/0,5716,108301+1+105945,00.html

3

I’m not sure why Astro’s link broke at the comma. Here is another try: The Holy Trinity.

A somewhat shorter answer would be:

The earliest Christians, while obviously carrying heretical beliefs from mainstream Judaism, were, initially Jewish. The idea that there was more than one God was abhorent to them. However, as they came to an understanding that Jesus was divine, they were faced with an obvious problem. Jesus spoke of his “father” and he spoke of sending “his spirit.” How could there be three gods and one God?

The solution was the development of the idea that the one God had three persons in the divinity.

4

Having seen the debates (flames) on the God versus G-d subject, I had to laugh my ass silly after seeing this. :wink:

5

Plenty of OT for the plurality of God. God is frequently referred to as Elohim. In Hebrew, adding -im to a noun makes it plural.

Now, from Genesis-

1:26 Let us create man in our own image, in the likeness of ourselves…

11:7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language on the spot so that they can no longer understand one another.

Additionally, many theologians consider that the three angel that visited Abraham and Sarah and predicted the birth of Isaac were personifications of the three Persons of the Godhead.

6

The Hebrew use of a plural “elohim” to mean God is the royal usage; kings and emperors commonly referred to themselves in plural. Similarly, “Let us make man in our own image” is interpreted to be either that same imperial “we” … or be a discussion between God and some heavenly beings (angels, etc.)

Pharoah does something similar in worrying about the Hebrew slaves, and no one suggests that he is a plural Pharoah.

I would not call two minor grammatical points “Plenty of OT for the plurality of God.” However, that argument has been used by Christian proselytizers to try to convert Jews who are ignorant of Hebrew.

The notion of a two gods – masculine and feminine – was obviously fairly early, usually representing sky and earth respectively, with fertility connotations (rain comes from sky to make earth fertile, etc.) [sarcasm] Do you suppose the Christian move to three gods was a sort of one-upsmanship?[/sarcasm]

As tomndebb says, the emergence of the notion of three-in-one was the effort to combine the notion of divinity of Jesus with the notion of monotheism.

As a side note, Jewish rabbinic thought said that one may break any commandment to save one’s life, except for three: idolatry, adultery, and murder. If the Nazi holds a gun to your head and says, “Kill that person,” one accepts martyrdom rather than commit murder. The rabbinic question at the time of forced conversions was whether Christianity would be viewed as “idolatry” on account of having three gods and lots of statuary. The initial rabbinic decision was that Christianity was indeed idolatry, and therefore Jews should accept torture and martyrdom rather than forced conversion to Christianity. Islam, on the other hand, with an insistence on a single god and absence of statues or pictures, was NOT idolatry, and one should accept forced conversion to Islam rather than death.

The Christian leadership protested strongly, of course, and the rabbinic ruling was later reversed. However, the Jewish (outside) perspective of Christianity is still somewhat dubious. [snide] If it looks, walks, talks and smells like three gods, what’s the difference if the clergy says it’s only one? [/snide]

OK, I’ll stop, other events this morning have me in a nasty mood, and I humbly crave pardon from my Christian friends.

7

I’d like to agree with CKDextHavn, but honesty and fairness obligate me to point out that we must be careful to avoid painting with too broad a brush.

Reconciling the trinity with monotheism is a complicated business, and is one of the ways in which the various Christian denominations distinguish themselves from each other. Unitarians are at one end, I’m not sure who’s at the other end, and there is a rainbow of theolgies in the middle.

8

And let’s not forget that many of the non-Jewish cultures which converted to Christianity were polytheistic, and would have been less troubled by the thorny theological issue of three persons/one deity.

As one my fellow grad students, the self-styled “Viking Lady”, was fond of saying: “The Vikings had the holy trinity of Odin, Thor and Christ.”

Sarcasm notwithstanding, the idea of the trinity is a challenging one, but it’s hardly the Christians’ own fault. Christ himself begs the question by speaking of “his father” and “the holy spirit” as separate entities; and yet at other times speaks of the deity as one. The concept of the trinity is, at root, an attempt to reconcile these two seemingly contradictory points of view,

I would imagine that the Tanakh and the Qu’ran might contain their own inherent contradictions that each faith attempts to explain. This is what theologions do.

9

Historically, however, “theology” was primarily the province of Christians. Judaism (and I believe Islam) had no “theology” per se, until forced into it by competitive market pressures (well, OK, by having to set up a theology to enable resistence to the use of theology as a weapon in the wars for conversion.)

Yeah, MJH, I agree, as soon as you mention a omnipotent, omniscient, totally good and totally just God who creates the universe… you’ve got immediate problems in inherent self-contradiction that need to be wrestled with.

10

The OP still remains somewhat unanswered. Is it what tomndebb implies, that Jesus went around talking about himself being one of the “multiple instances” of G-d, and Christians invented a theology to resolve the contradiction? Or was there something in the comtemporary strains of Judaism at the time that laid the groundwork for that?

neuroman, I’m glad you had a good laugh about my use of God/G-d. I chose those spellings on purpose. When I was talking about when I was active in Church, I used the term God. When I was talking about being involved in Synagogue, I used the term G-d. When I talked about studying the Bible as a Christian, I used the term Old Testament. When I talked about the same body of work, now that I am worshipping in a Synagogue, I use the term Tanakh.

11

There is nothing that I have ever seen in Jewish Scripture that would support a concept of the Trinity. There are passages in which God is referred to by attributes that Christians would apply to the persons of the Trinity, (creator, savior, counsellor), but I am not aware of any Jewish thought that would allow for the Trinity, itself.

There are Christian theologians who view the way that Paul refers to Jesus and God separately (and the Spirit of God not as a person) in his earliest letters (I & II Thessalonians) as an indication that even the idea that Jesus was divine evolved over time. While you won’t get a great deal of agreement for that specific conclusion among Christians, it is one indicator that the Trinity arose specifically within Christianity.

A certain amount of the earliest theology regarding Jesus and the Holy Spirit is based in several of the books of the Apocrypha (never accepted by Judaism as Scripture and not held by Protestants to be Scripture). However, the passages that are studied are far more easily seen in retrospect–and tend to focus on attributes of God, not God as multiple. It is hard to read those passages with a first century Jewish mindset and arrive at a concept of Trinity.

12

I vaguely recall that there were some subsets of the early Christian faith that did not recognize the Trinity. Not the Donatists, but… well I just can’t remember.

13

It sounds like you might be thinking of the Arian heresy, which was popular among the Germanic tribes which had converted to Christianity. I’m not an expert in the field,
but from what I’ve read the essential idea of Arianism seems to have been that true divinity had to dwell in one entity only–i.e. God–and could not be shared by Christ. They
seem to have regarded Christ as a sort of demi-god or prophet, with no miraculous power of his own, but able to
transmit God-originated miracles, much as Moses when he parted the Red Sea.

The name “Arian” does not foreshadow the Nazi’s, it comes from Arius, the name of a bishop of the 300’s who was instrumental in formulating this theory.

14

…and since so much of Church doctrine is derived from, if not wholly dependent upon, Paul’s epistles, it kind of makes one wonder if the idea of Trinity didn’t originate with Paul himself.

It also makes me wonder is Jesus is sitting somewhere, shaking his head and saying: “No, no, no – that’s not what I meant at all.”

test edit please ignore
[Edited by UncleBeer on 09-12-2000 at 05:21 PM]

15

I’ve always traced the trinity concept back to Matthew 28:19

This was the basis for the Didache instructions on baptism

Many scholars believe that this dates back to 60 C.E. This work was neither accepted as Canon by the Church or rejected.
Justin Martyr (around 100-165) had many teachings that attempted to reconcile pagan beliefs with Christian Doctrine. His teachings (or proofs) are pretty well outlined in Dialogue with Trypho, the Jew.

Many other christians in the first and second centuries followed this dogma. Tertullian was the most expansive defender. This was a full century prior to the Nicene Creed being adopted in AD 325.

It is interesting to note that both Justin Martyr and Tertullian conferted to Christianity from pagan beliefs.

16

I meant converted to christianity.

Sorry

17

A valid observation–but only if those scholars are correct who believe that the divinity of Jesus was only beginning to occur to Paul in the early 50’s. That view is very much a minority view and the arguments for it are no stronger than the arguments against it.

18

Tom:

Understood. I wasn’t espousing a particular view, just wondering aloud. In part because there do seem to be other Church doctrines which are based almost entirely on Paul, not at all on the four Gospels. However, I won’t hijack the thread by going into them here.

19

Another note on the Trinity: According to a theology teacher I had in my sophomore year (a priest, incidentally), the notion of “three persons in One God” is a mistranslation. Supposedly, the original Greek word was “prosopon”, which can mean either “mask” or “role”. Makes sense: One God, serving the three roles of Creator, Redeemer, and Inspirer. That got translated into Latin as “persona”, mask or person, and hence to other languages as “person” or whatever the word is in that language.

I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this information, though, other than noting the source.

20

There are several references in the OT regarding the “Spirit of God” falling on individuals/groups with corresponding praise, prophesy, dancing, etc. I will be glad to site when I can get at my bible :slight_smile: Also, some scholars attribute the 4th man in the firey furnace to be none other than Christ.

There is teaching in certain Christian circles that man is himself a triune entity composed of body, soul, and spirit with the last two being immortal. With the body (basic wants/needs), man interacts with the world. With the soul, man interacts with himself (thinking). With the spirit, man interacts with God (feelings/emotions) or if the spirit within is not the “Spirit of God” then possibly a void or even worse, demonic. (Again some attribute attrocities to signs of spiritual depravity or isolation from God’spirit).

Thus we have the comparison: God the immoral Father (soul); God the immortal Spirit; and God the Son who became mortal, died and is now immortal (just as some Christians believe they will recieve new immortal bodies after the second coming of Christ).

Not trying to lay a heavy rap here, just pointing out the simularity.