What do I mean?
How is it that fiercely monotheist Jews in the first century were able to change their minds from the \”one Yahweh\” of their ancestors to a new \”three co-equal persons in one essence\” God without a single peep of controversy arising when they came to a knowledge of Jesus as Messiah?
Look at all the Christological controversies that existed in the 4th century. Christians were at each other\’s throats over the identity of God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Why is it that no controversy arose back in 33 A.D. over the introduction of this new God paradigm, both inside and outside of Christianity?
The following quote comes from
\”Little Known Facts About the Trinity\” related to this matter:
There is something very odd not happening in the New Testament. There is no trace of any first century controversy about whether or not Jesus is God or that God is “tri-personal.” The conduct of the Jews toward the disciples after Jesus’ death gives strong evidence that they knew nothing of any Trinitarian doctrine. The apostles were active in establishing a new dispensation of religion, and in the process brought on themselves the bad repute, abuse, and persecution of their countrymen. Wherever they went, they were assailed by the Jews with outrage and violence. They were accused of speaking blasphemous words against the holy place and the Law, of turning the world upside down, of designing to overthrow the religion of their fathers, and were scoffed at as followers of a messianic “king” who had died the ignominious death of a malefactor. But they were never accused of worshiping him or preaching him as God. Amidst all their enemies’ accusations, they never brought forward charges that the apostles were preaching of more than one God, or of a tri-unity of “persons” within a “Godhead.” And yet, in the eye of a Jew, such teachings would have been the most hateful things to their system. To teach that the deceiver from Nazareth, whom they had despised and slain, was the very God whom they had always honored and worshiped, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!— nothing could have so excited them against the new religion and its active promoters. Yet it never formed the ground of their external opposition.
But nowhere in the post-Gospel New Testament writings is there a whiff of any controversy about God being multi-personal or Jesus being God. One would think that something as controversial as the essence of God existing as three “persons,” had it been a doctrine that was known to the first century Church, would have raised significant controversy, especially among Jewish believers.
Ideas like the Trinity and God “becoming a man” are so foreign to Jewish thought and difficult to comprehend that one would expect a careful teacher like the Apostle Paul to address them constantly, yet nowhere in his epistles is there an example of him attempting to explain these inexplicable yet “essential mysteries” to his congregations. Nowhere does Paul discuss how the one God can be “three persons in one,” or teach how in Christ Jesus “God became a man.” And would not such lessons have required constant repetition? Why then is there not even a single chapter dedicated to clarifying, let alone a single verse declaring the Trinity in all the New Testament?
(P. Stein Kohl, pp. 55-6.)