The Biblical Case for the Trinity

Jesus comes up out of the Jordan. Matthew says that “the heavens were opened to Him,” that he “saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting upon Him,” and that a voice from heaven said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:16–17).¹ The Orthodox Church sings of this moment every January at the feast of Theophany: “When You, O Lord were baptized in the Jordan / the worship of the Trinity was made manifest.” The scene is short, but it already rules out two easy answers. Father, Son and Spirit are not one person playing three parts, because they act toward one another at the same moment. Nor are they three gods, because the scene belongs to Israel’s story of the one God keeping his promise.

No single verse contains the fourth-century vocabulary of “essence” and “persons.” The doctrine of the Trinity is the Church’s reading of the whole of Scripture, and its case is cumulative. This article sets it out step by step.

The question matters because Muslims, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Latter-day Saints, Oneness Pentecostals and many skeptics reject the Nicene doctrine, each for different reasons. Each objection is stated below in a form its holders would recognize, and answered from the texts.

In brief

Scripture gives four teachings that the Church has always tried to hold together. First, there is one God, the God of Israel, and the New Testament never abandons that confession. Second, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are personally distinct: they speak to one another, send one another, love and glorify one another. Third, the Son and the Spirit are not creatures standing outside God; the New Testament gives them the names, works and worship that belong to the one God alone. Fourth, the three do not act as a committee; every work of God comes from the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. The Nicene Creed and the Fathers summed this up as one essence, three persons. In Orthodox teaching the Father is the one source, the “monarchy,” of the Son, who is eternally begotten, and of the Spirit, who proceeds from the Father. The doctrine describes the God who saves, who adopts us as sons and daughters, and who draws us into his own life. Some proof texts are weaker than popular apologetics claims, and this article says which.

Thesis: Read as a whole, Scripture requires us to confess one God, three personally distinct persons who each belong to that one God, and one undivided divine work, and the Nicene doctrine of the Trinity is the most faithful summary of all four.

One God: the starting point

Every Christian account of God starts with Israel’s confession: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one!” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Isaiah presses the point against the idols of the nations: “I am the First and I am the Last; Besides Me there is no God” (Isaiah 44:6). The God of Israel alone made the world, rules history, and saves.²

The New Testament keeps this confession whole. Jesus quotes the Shema as “the first of all the commandments” (Mark 12:29). Paul tells the Corinthians that “there is no other God but one” (1 Corinthians 8:4). James notes that even the demons believe that God is one (James 2:19). The apostles never set out to correct Jewish monotheism. They assume it.

The surprise is how Paul states the confession. In the same passage he writes: “yet for us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we for Him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and through whom we live” (1 Corinthians 8:6). Richard Bauckham has argued that Paul is restating the Shema itself, with “God” applied to the Father and “Lord” applied to Jesus, so that Jesus is included within the one God’s identity rather than added beside it.³ Scholars debate the details of that reading, but the plain fact is striking enough: a Jewish writer, within about twenty-five years of the crucifixion, puts a crucified man inside the confession that defined Israel’s faith in one God.

What the Old Testament prepares

The Old Testament does not present a finished doctrine of the Trinity, but it supplies patterns that later make the New Testament’s language possible. God creates by his word and by his Spirit: “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, And all the host of them by the breath of His mouth” (Psalm 33:6; 32:6 in the Septuagint), and at the beginning “the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2). The “angel of the LORD” sometimes speaks as God while being distinguished from God (Exodus 3:2–6; Judges 13:15–22). God says, “Let Us make man in Our image” (Genesis 1:26). Early Christian writers such as St Irenaeus read that plural as the Father speaking to his Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit; many modern interpreters read it as a plural of majesty or as God addressing his heavenly court. Isaiah 48:16 has a speaker say “the Lord GOD and His Spirit Have sent Me,” though the Hebrew grammar and the identity of the speaker are debated.

Wisdom in Proverbs 8 needs special honesty. The Fathers read this figure, who is beside God at creation, as Christ the Wisdom of God. But in the Septuagint, the Old Testament the Church received, verse 22 reads “The Lord made me the beginning of his ways for his works” (Brenton’s translation; the Greek verb is ektisen, “created”), where English versions of the Hebrew differ: “The LORD possessed me” (NKJV), “The LORD created me” (RSV), “The LORD brought me forth” (NIV). Arius and his followers used this verse to argue that the Son is a creature. St Athanasius did not change the text. He argued that proverbs speak figuratively, so that “we must inquire into the person,” and he applied “created” to the Son’s taking of a created human nature for our salvation.⁴ The episode is a useful warning: single texts can be read more than one way, and the doctrine rests on the whole pattern rather than on any one verse.

St Gregory the Theologian gave a classic Orthodox account of why the revelation came gradually: “The Old Testament proclaimed the Father openly, and the Son more obscurely. The New manifested the Son, and suggested the Deity of the Spirit.” God, he says, revealed himself “by gradual additions,” as people could bear it.⁵ The strongest Christian argument therefore runs from fulfillment backward. Once the New Testament names Jesus as the Word through whom all things were made, the earlier patterns of Word, Wisdom and Spirit come into focus.

Father, Son and Spirit are personally distinct

In John’s Gospel Jesus prays to the Father, is sent by the Father, and returns to the Father (John 17; 5:23–24; 16:28). These relations reach back before creation. Jesus prays, “And now, O Father, glorify Me together with Yourself, with the glory which I had with You before the world was” (John 17:5), and again, “You loved Me before the foundation of the world” (John 17:24). The Prologue places the Word “with God” in the beginning (John 1:1–2).

The Spirit is distinct in the same way. Jesus promises that the Father “will give you another Helper” (John 14:16), the Holy Spirit “whom the Father will send in My name” (John 14:26), and he describes “the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father” and who “will testify of Me” (John 15:26).⁶ The Father sends; the Son is sent and in turn sends the Spirit; the Spirit proceeds from the Father and bears witness to the Son. The relations are not interchangeable, and that distinction is written into the story of salvation itself.

Personal distinction does not require three bodies or three separate beings. In Scripture persons are known by address, relation, knowledge, love and will, and Father, Son and Spirit show all of these toward one another.

The Son shares the identity of the one God

Creation through the Son

John writes, “All things were made through Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made” (John 1:3). The sentence is precise: if everything that came to be came through the Word, the Word is not one of the things that came to be. Hebrews says God made the ages through the Son, who upholds all things by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:2–3). Colossians says of Christ, “by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible … All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist” (Colossians 1:16–17).

Jehovah’s Witnesses read “the firstborn over all creation” in the previous verse (the Greek is literally “firstborn of all creation”) as meaning that the Son is the first thing God made. But “firstborn” in the Old Testament can mean rank rather than birth order: God says of David, the youngest of Jesse’s sons, “I will make him My firstborn, The highest of the kings of the earth” (Psalm 89:27; 88:28 in the Septuagint). Colossians then explains the title by making Christ the creator, goal and sustainer of “all things.” The Witnesses’ own New World Translation renders verse 16 “all other things.” Its study note grants that “a literal rendering of the Greek text would be ‘all things,’” and argues that the Bible’s teaching as a whole and “the probable meaning of the Greek word” support adding “other.” The Greek text simply says ta panta, “all things”; the word “other” is supplied from the translators’ reading of verse 15.⁷

The divine name and worship

The New Testament applies to Jesus passages that speak of the LORD, the God of Israel. Isaiah’s “Prepare the way of the LORD” (Isaiah 40:3) becomes the way prepared for Jesus (Mark 1:2–3). Joel promised that “whoever calls on the name of the LORD Shall be saved” (Joel 2:32); Paul quotes the line about calling on Jesus (Romans 10:9–13). Isaiah has the one God swear, “to Me every knee shall bow” (Isaiah 45:23); Paul writes that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow … to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:10–11). Hebrews takes Psalm 102, an address to the eternal Creator, and applies its words to the Son: “You, LORD, in the beginning laid the foundation of the earth” (Hebrews 1:10; Psalm 102:25, 101:26 in the Septuagint).⁸

Worship follows. In Matthew the disciples “worshiped Him” (Matthew 14:33; 28:9, 17). Jesus is invoked in prayer (Acts 7:59; 1 Corinthians 1:2; 16:22) and forgives sins on his own authority (Mark 2:5–12). Thomas addresses the risen Jesus, “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). In Revelation, when John falls down before an angel, the angel refuses: “See that you do not do that! I am your fellow servant … Worship God!” (Revelation 19:10). Yet every creature in heaven and earth sings, “Blessing and honor and glory and power Be to Him who sits on the throne, And to the Lamb, forever and ever!” (Revelation 5:13). The Lamb receives the worship the angel refused.

{{strong: Devotion to Jesus of a kind Jews reserved for God appears in the earliest Christian writings, decades before any council.}} Larry Hurtado documented this in detail. Not every scholar agrees on what it shows. James D. G. Dunn concluded, with qualifications, that the first Christians did not as a rule worship Jesus in the way they worshiped God, and Bart Ehrman argues that belief in Jesus’ divinity grew from the conviction, after his death, that God had exalted him.⁹ The debate is over how to interpret this early devotion, not whether it existed.

“My Father is greater than I”

Other texts point the other way, and they cannot be deleted. Jesus says, “My Father is greater than I” (John 14:28); the Son does not know the day or hour (Mark 13:32); he obeys and prays. Many Fathers read such passages as belonging to the Son who “made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant” (Philippians 2:7) and lived a truly human life. St Gregory the Theologian offered another reading of John 14:28 that has deeply shaped Orthodox theology: because Scripture also calls the Son equal with God, “the Greater refers to origination, while the Equal belongs to the Nature.”¹⁰ The Father is greater as the source from whom the Son is eternally begotten, not as a higher kind of being.

The Sixth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople, 680–681) clarified the rest. It confessed in Christ “two natural wills and two natural operations,” divine and human, and taught that “his human will follows … as subject to his divine and omnipotent will.” Because will belongs to nature, the Father, Son and Spirit have one divine will. The Son’s obedience in Gethsemane is real, and it is the obedience of his human will. It does not make him a lesser god or a creature.

The Holy Spirit is a divine person

Images of wind, fire and water do not make the Spirit impersonal, any more than “door” and “vine” make Jesus impersonal. The narratives show the Spirit acting as a person. “The Holy Spirit said, ‘Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them’” (Acts 13:2). The Spirit teaches (John 14:26), intercedes (Romans 8:26–27), can be grieved (Ephesians 4:30), and distributes gifts “to each one individually as He wills” (1 Corinthians 12:11).

The Spirit is also not a creature standing outside God. Peter asks Ananias why he chose “to lie to the Holy Spirit,” and then says, “You have not lied to men but to God” (Acts 5:3–4). Paul says the Spirit “searches all things, yes, the deep things of God,” and that “no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God,” just as a person’s own spirit knows his thoughts (1 Corinthians 2:10–11).¹¹ The Spirit gives life (Romans 8:11), sanctifies (2 Thessalonians 2:13), and makes believers God’s temple by dwelling in them (1 Corinthians 3:16). In one passage he is both “the Spirit of God” and “the Spirit of Christ” (Romans 8:9).

One work of God

Scripture assigns creation to the Father (1 Corinthians 8:6), through the Son (John 1:3), and by the Spirit (Genesis 1:2; Psalm 104:30, 103:30 in the Septuagint). Christ’s resurrection is the Father’s act (Galatians 1:1), the Son’s own (John 10:17–18) and the Spirit’s (Romans 8:11). Salvation comes from the Father, is accomplished in the Son and is sealed by the Spirit (Ephesians 1:3–14).

These are not three contributions added together. St Gregory of Nyssa put the rule in a sentence: “every operation which extends from God to the Creation … has its origin from the Father, and proceeds through the Son, and is perfected in the Holy Spirit.” The Latin West held the same principle. St Augustine, discussing the very voice heard at the Jordan, wrote that “the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as they are indivisible, so work indivisibly.”¹² Lewis Ayres has argued that, at the end of the fourth century, there was no fundamental division between Eastern and Western Trinitarian theology on points like this one.

Baptism, blessing and worship

The risen Christ commands, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). The three are named, distinguished, and placed under one “name,” and this becomes the entrance into the Church. {{very-strong: The Didache, an early church manual commonly dated to the late first or early second century, already gives the same threefold baptismal formula.}}

Some critics claim the formula was added later, citing Eusebius of Caesarea (died about 339), who sometimes quotes the verse as “Go, and make disciples of all the nations in My Name.” The evidence is against the claim. No surviving manuscript of Matthew that contains the verse lacks the formula, as the textual note in the NET Bible points out, and Eusebius himself quotes the full wording in his letter to his church at Caesarea after Nicaea, preserved by the historian Socrates.¹³ The shorter form is best explained as Eusebius abbreviating the verse for his argument.

Paul ends his letter to the Corinthians with a threefold blessing: “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (2 Corinthians 13:14; verse 13 in some editions). Prayer runs the same way: “through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father” (Ephesians 2:18). The Church’s worship is Trinitarian because the salvation it celebrates is Trinitarian. Orthodox prayers still commonly end by giving glory to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

How the Church put it into words

The Creed of Nicaea (325), expanded at Constantinople (381), gave the pattern its shortest form. In the translation used by the Orthodox Church in America, it confesses the Son as “begotten of the Father before all ages. Light of light; true God of true God; begotten, not made; of one essence with the Father,” and the Holy Spirit as “the Lord, the Giver of Life, Who proceeds from the Father; Who with the Father and the Son together is worshipped and glorified.”¹⁴ That is the Creed as the Councils wrote it and as the Orthodox Church still says it. The Latin West later added that the Spirit proceeds from the Father “and the Son” (filioque). Catholics hold that the addition expresses a true teaching; the Orthodox Church does not accept it and keeps the original text. The site’s article on the Filioque sets out both sides.

“Essence” (ousia) names what God is, and it is one. “Person” (hypostasis) names who God is as Father, Son and Spirit, and there are three. St Basil explained the distinction by comparing it to the general and the particular: “we confess one essence or substance so as not to give a variant definition of existence, but we confess a particular hypostasis, in order that our conception of Father, Son and Holy Spirit may be without confusion and clear.”

{{strong: The Greek Fathers confessed the Father as the one source, the “monarchy,” of the Son and the Spirit, and saw this as a ground of God’s unity.}} St Basil wrote that “worshipping as we do God of God, we both confess the distinction of the Persons, and at the same time abide by the Monarchy.” He added that Christians do not count God by addition, “one, two, and three.” St Gregory the Theologian called the Father “the Begetter and the Emitter” of the Son and the Spirit, and said the Church honors a “Monarchy that is not limited to one Person,” whose unity comes from “an equality of Nature and a Union of mind, and an identity of motion.” The Son and the Spirit are eternally from the Father, so neither ever began to be. This is how Orthodox theology holds together the monotheism of Israel and the full divinity of Son and Spirit.

Every formulation has limits. In modern English, “person” can suggest three separate centers of being, which the Fathers did not mean, and popular analogies fail: water as ice, liquid and steam suggests modalism, and a three-leaf clover divides God into parts. The Church has usually preferred to learn the doctrine from the story of salvation and from worship rather than from household objects. St Gregory warned that God is beyond our words and even our thoughts: “it is impossible to express Him, and yet more impossible to conceive Him.”

Objections and responses

Muslim objection: “Three” compromises God’s oneness

The Qur’an tells Christians, “do not say, ‘Three’; desist – it is better for you. Indeed, Allāh is but one God. Exalted is He above having a son” (4:171). It condemns those who say “Allāh is the third of three” (5:73), pictures Jesus asked whether he told people, “Take me and my mother as deities besides Allāh?” (5:116), and says God “neither begets nor is born” (112:3).¹⁵ For Muslims, God’s oneness (tawhid) rules out any partner or offspring, and the objection is sincere and serious.

Response: Nicene Christians also deny three gods, a god among others, and any physical begetting. “Son” names an eternal relation, not procreation, and “one essence” means one undivided God. Christians do not include Mary in the Godhead. The real disagreement is deeper: whether God’s Word and Spirit can be distinct within God’s eternal life, and whether Jesus is that Word made flesh. That turns on the identity, death and resurrection of Jesus, not on definitions. The site’s article Does the Qur’an Misunderstand the Trinity? looks at these verses in detail.

Latter-day Saint objection: the Father and the Son are plainly separate

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that “the members of the Godhead are three separate beings. The Father and the Son have tangible bodies of flesh and bones, and the Holy Ghost is a personage of spirit,” and that they are “one in purpose and doctrine.” Its scripture states, “The Father has a body of flesh and bones as tangible as man’s; the Son also” (Doctrine and Covenants 130:22). The same Gospel Topics page traces the restoration of this doctrine to Joseph Smith’s First Vision, in which Latter-day Saints believe he saw the Father and the Son.¹⁶

Response: Nicene Christians agree that the Father and Son are personally distinct and have always said so. The disagreement is whether distinction requires separate beings united only in purpose. The texts above, especially the one Creator of Isaiah and John 1:3, the Shema restated around Jesus in 1 Corinthians 8:6, and the single divine work, point to one God rather than a divine council. The question is discussed at length in One God or a Council of Gods?

Jehovah’s Witness objection: Jesus is “a god,” the first creation

Jehovah’s Witnesses teach that Jesus “was created by Jehovah God before everything else. For that reason, he is called ‘the firstborn of all creation.’” Their translation of John 1:1 reads, “the Word was with God, and the Word was a god.” Its study note explains that theos has the article when it refers to God Almighty, while “the absence of the article in this grammatical construction makes the·osʹ qualitative in meaning,” and it adds that early Coptic versions treat the two occurrences differently.¹⁷

Response: There is real common ground here. Nicene Christians agree that the clause is qualitative and that the Word is distinct from the Father, “with God.” Philip Harner’s well-known study argued that a predicate noun placed before the verb, as here, often expresses the nature or character of the subject. The question is which nature. A Gospel that places the Word outside everything that “was made” (John 1:3), calls him “the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father” (John 1:18), and ends with Thomas’s “My Lord and my God!” reads more naturally as saying the Word has God’s own nature than that he is a second, lesser god. Grammar alone does not settle the doctrine. See the site’s article on John 1:1 and the New World Translation.

Historical objection: later philosophy corrupted a simple gospel

Unitarians and many skeptical historians argue that Jesus preached the one God of Israel and that Greek philosophy turned him into a second god over the following centuries.

Response: The technical terms are indeed later; ousia and hypostasis gained their settled meanings only in the fourth century. But the evidence they organize is early: Paul’s letters, baptism, prayer to Jesus and the divine name applied to him. A non-Trinitarian reading has to explain why Jewish followers of Jesus, within the first generation, included him in practices and texts that belonged to the God of Israel. The Nicene Fathers argued from these texts, not from Plato.

Oneness objection: “Father,” “Son” and “Spirit” are modes of one person

The United Pentecostal Church International confesses “one God, who has revealed Himself as Father; through His Son, in redemption; and as the Holy Spirit, by emanation,” and holds that “Jesus Christ is God manifested in flesh.”¹⁸ Oneness believers rightly stress God’s unity and Jesus’ full divinity.

Response: Modes or roles cannot love one another before creation, send one another, or share glory “with” one another (John 17:5, 24). At the Jordan the Father speaks, the Son is baptized and the Spirit descends at once. The Oneness view protects unity at the cost of the relations Scripture describes. The site’s article on Oneness Pentecostalism answers the position more fully.

What we can say confidently

• The New Testament assumes Israel’s monotheism throughout and never corrects it.
• Father, Son and Holy Spirit relate to one another as persons and cannot be reduced to one person with three names.
• The New Testament gives Jesus the works, names and worship that belong to the God of Israel, and it does so in its earliest documents.
• The Spirit speaks, wills, knows, sends and gives life; he is neither a created angel nor an impersonal force.
• Threefold patterns run through baptism, blessing, prayer and descriptions of salvation, and the triune baptismal formula is attested in every surviving manuscript of Matthew that contains the verse, and in the Didache.
• The Nicene Creed, with the Father as the one source of the Son and the Spirit, preserves both the unity and the distinctions found in these patterns.

What remains disputed

• The interpretation of individual texts: whether Romans 9:5, Titus 2:13 and Hebrews 1:8 call Jesus “God” directly, and how much weight Genesis 1:26, Proverbs 8 and Isaiah 48:16 can bear.
• How earliest devotion to Jesus arose and what it implies, between scholars such as Bauckham and Hurtado on one side and Dunn and Ehrman on the other.
• The procession of the Holy Spirit: the Latin filioque remains a point of division between Orthodox and Catholics.
• How best to explain, philosophically, three persons in one essence. Scripture gives the relations and the boundaries, not a diagram of God’s inner life, and the Fathers insisted that God’s essence remains beyond our grasp.

Conclusion

The Trinity is sometimes treated as an exam question Christians must get right. Scripture presents something warmer. The Father sends his Son for a world he loves. The Son takes our nature, dies and rises to bring us home. The Spirit dwells in us, so that “God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!’” (Galatians 4:6). Through the Son and in the Spirit we become, in Peter’s words, “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4): adopted children who share by grace in the life of the God who is love.

That is why the Orthodox Church does not treat the Trinity only as a doctrine to defend. In the Divine Liturgy, just before the Creed, the deacon (or the priest) calls, “Let us love one another that with one mind we may confess,” and the people answer, “Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Trinity, one in essence and undivided.”¹⁹ The love Christians owe one another is meant to reflect the communion of the three persons. For readers who want to go further, What Is Nicene Christianity? and The Identity of Jesus continue the story, and the Church Fathers guide introduces the writers quoted here.

Notes

1. Matthew 3:16–17. Scripture is quoted from the New King James Version (NKJV) throughout, unless another translation is named. Psalm numbers follow the Hebrew, with the Septuagint number added. Troparion of Theophany, Tone 1, Orthodox Church in America, “Troparia and kontakia for January 6.” ↩
2. Deuteronomy 6:4 (the NKJV margin also gives “The LORD is our God, the LORD alone”); Isaiah 44:6; see also Isaiah 40:18–26; 43:10–13; 45:5–7, 21–23. ↩
3. Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008). The reading of 1 Corinthians 8:6 as a restated Shema is Bauckham’s argument; other scholars weigh it differently. ↩
4. Proverbs 8:22 in The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament, trans. Lancelot C. L. Brenton (1844); Greek text Κύριος ἔκτισέ με. Hebrew renderings from the NKJV, the Revised Standard Version and the New International Version (BibleGateway). Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies 4.20.1, trans. Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut, ANF vol. 1. Athanasius, Four Discourses Against the Arians 2.44, trans. John Henry Newman and Archibald Robertson, NPNF2 vol. 4. ↩
5. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 31 (Fifth Theological Oration) 26, trans. Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow, NPNF2 vol. 7. ↩
6. John 17:5, 24; 14:16, 26; 15:26. “Helper” translates the Greek Paraklētos. ↩
7. Colossians 1:15–17 (NKJV); Greek text from the SBL Greek New Testament (ὅτι ἐν αὐτῷ ἐκτίσθη τὰ πάντα). New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), Colossians 1:16 and its study note, jw.org. Psalm 89:27; on David as the youngest son, 1 Samuel 16:10–13. ↩
8. Isaiah 40:3 with Mark 1:2–3; Joel 2:32 (3:5 in the Septuagint) with Romans 10:13; Isaiah 45:23 with Philippians 2:10–11; Psalm 102:25–27 with Hebrews 1:10–12. On these texts see Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel. ↩
9. Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003); James D. G. Dunn, Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? The New Testament Evidence (London: SPCK; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010); Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York: HarperOne, 2014). ↩
10. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 30 (Fourth Theological Oration) 7, NPNF2 vol. 7. Third Council of Constantinople, Definition of Faith, trans. Henry Percival, NPNF2 vol. 14. ↩
11. Acts 13:2; 5:3–4; 1 Corinthians 2:10–11; 12:11. ↩
12. Gregory of Nyssa, On “Not Three Gods” (To Ablabius), trans. H. A. Wilson, NPNF2 vol. 5; Augustine, On the Trinity 1.4.7, trans. Arthur West Haddan, NPNF1 vol. 3; Lewis Ayres, Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). ↩
13. Didache 7, trans. M. B. Riddle, ANF vol. 7. NET Bible, text-critical note on Matthew 28:19. Eusebius, Demonstratio Evangelica 3.6, trans. W. J. Ferrar (1920); Socrates Scholasticus, Ecclesiastical History 1.8 (Eusebius’s letter to the church of Caesarea), trans. A. C. Zenos, NPNF2 vol. 2. ↩
14. “The Symbol of Faith,” Orthodox Church in America. Basil of Caesarea, Letter 236.6 and On the Holy Spirit 18.45, trans. Blomfield Jackson, NPNF2 vol. 8; Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 29 (Third Theological Oration) 2 and Oration 28 (Second Theological Oration) 4, NPNF2 vol. 7. ↩
15. Qur’an 4:171; 5:73; 5:116; 112:3, Saheeh International translation (quran.com). ↩
16. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “Godhead,” Gospel Topics; Doctrine and Covenants 130:22. ↩
17. Enjoy Life Forever!, lesson 15, “Who Is Jesus?” (jw.org); New World Translation, John 1:1. Philip B. Harner, “Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns: Mark 15:39 and John 1:1,” Journal of Biblical Literature 92 (1973): 75–87. ↩
18. United Pentecostal Church International, “Our Beliefs,” upci.org. ↩
19. Galatians 4:6; 2 Peter 1:4. The Divine Liturgy as quoted in Orthodox Church in America, The Orthodox Faith, vol. 2, Worship, “Love and Faith.” ↩

Bibliography

Primary sources

• The Holy Bible, New King James Version. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982.
• Brenton, Lancelot C. L., trans. The Septuagint Version of the Old Testament, with an English Translation. London: Samuel Bagster, 1844.
• Holmes, Michael W., ed. The Greek New Testament: SBL Edition. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature; Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010.
• The Didache. Translated by M. B. Riddle. ANF vol. 7. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1886.
• Third Council of Constantinople (680–681), Definition of Faith. In The Seven Ecumenical Councils, translated by Henry Percival. NPNF2 vol. 14. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1900.
• The NET Bible, translator’s notes. Biblical Studies Press (accessed via BibleGateway).

Orthodox and patristic sources

• Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies. Translated by Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut. ANF vol. 1. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1885.
• Athanasius of Alexandria. Four Discourses Against the Arians. Translated by John Henry Newman and Archibald Robertson. NPNF2 vol. 4. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1892.
• Basil of Caesarea. On the Holy Spirit and Letter 236. Translated by Blomfield Jackson. NPNF2 vol. 8. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1895.
• Gregory of Nazianzus. Orations 28–31 (the Theological Orations). Translated by Charles Gordon Browne and James Edward Swallow. NPNF2 vol. 7. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1894.
• Gregory of Nyssa. On “Not Three Gods”. Translated by H. A. Wilson. NPNF2 vol. 5. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1893.
• Augustine of Hippo. On the Trinity. Translated by Arthur West Haddan. NPNF1 vol. 3. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1887.
• Eusebius of Caesarea. The Proof of the Gospel (Demonstratio Evangelica). Translated by W. J. Ferrar. London: SPCK, 1920.
• Socrates Scholasticus. Ecclesiastical History. Translated by A. C. Zenos. NPNF2 vol. 2. Buffalo: Christian Literature Publishing, 1890.
• Orthodox Church in America (oca.org). “The Symbol of Faith”; “Troparia and kontakia for January 6” (Theophany); The Orthodox Faith, vol. 2, Worship, “Love and Faith.”

Other scholarship

• Ayres, Lewis. Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008.
• Dunn, James D. G. Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? The New Testament Evidence. London: SPCK; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2010.
• Ehrman, Bart D. How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee. New York: HarperOne, 2014.
• Harner, Philip B. “Qualitative Anarthrous Predicate Nouns: Mark 15:39 and John 1:1.” Journal of Biblical Literature 92 (1973): 75–87.
• Hurtado, Larry W. Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003.

Sources from the traditions discussed

• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Godhead.” Gospel Topics. churchofjesuschrist.org; Doctrine and Covenants 130.
• Jehovah’s Witnesses. New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures (Study Edition), John 1 and Colossians 1 with study notes; Enjoy Life Forever! An Interactive Bible Course, lesson 15. jw.org.
• United Pentecostal Church International. “Our Beliefs.” upci.org.
• The Qur’an. Saheeh International translation. quran.com.