How Did Trinitarian Christianity Come From Monotheistic Judaism?

As is occasionally the case, taking the broader historical view of religious development is somewhat deceptive here. From our perspective, to be sure, the nearly-polytheistic Trinity does seem an abrupt departure from the Shema of Judaism.

But the progression was not in reaction to Judaic monotheism at all, but in fact a return to it, in response to more aggresively polytheistic Christianities such as Arianism. We can most accurately understand the adoption of the Trinity as a sharply moderating turn in ecclesiastical history.

Though the Trinity first appeared as an article of faith in the Nicene Council, its origins reach back much further. The concept of three persons, or manifestations of God, certainly dates to the early First Century and the Church Father Ignatuis of Antioch, in his Letter to the Magnesians. And many Trinitarian scholars believe it may date back to original apostles.

But this was not the only possible position. Language such as Christ's own "no one is good but God" requires interpretation. And on such texts early Christians did not all agree.

So it cannot be coincidence that the two formative battles of the Christian faith, the battle for the identity and status of Christ, and the battle for canonizing the books of the New Testament, were so nearly co-temporaneous.

What is now orthodox Christianity emerged in a stew of reactions to the fact of Jesus Christ- and one of the most prevalent of these was Gnosticism, a faith that denied the humanity of Jesus as such and posited that humans bodies were mere containers of the divine, and could not be its manifestation.

One of the purposes of the Nicence council was to refute this claim, and to salvage a God of unity from diverse claims as to what Christ meant.

So we may note with interest that many of the texts cited in support of anti-Gnostic Trinitarianism come from the Gospel of John, which may well have itself been written in refutation of very early Gnostic christologies. (This would explain both its similarities to, and stark departure from, common Gnostic teachings).

Thus, though couched by neccesity in the terms of Neoplatonist language and rhetoric, by refuting radically Greek interpretations of a Hebrew prophet, the intellectual movement of the Trinity is actually, toward, and not away from, traditional Jewish monotheism.