The Birth of the Trinity Jesus, God, and Spirit in New Testament and Early Christian Interpretations of the Old Testament

How and when did Jesus and the Spirit come to be regarded as fully God? The Birth of the Trinity offers a new historical approach by exploring the way in which first- and second-century Christians read the Old Testament in order to differentiate the one God as multiple persons. The earliest Christians felt they could metaphorically 'overhear' divine conversations between Father, Son, and Spirit when reading the Old Testament. When these snatches of dialogue are connected and joined, they form a narrative about the unfolding interior divine life as understood by the nascent church. What emerges is not a static portrait of the triune God, but a developing story of divine persons enacting mutual esteem, voiced praise, collaborative strategy, and self-sacrificial love. The presence of divine dialogue in the New Testament and early Christian literature shows that, contrary to the claims of James Dunn and Bart Ehrman (among others), the earliest Christology was the highest Christology, as Jesus was identified as a divine person through Old Testament interpretation.

Matthew W. Bates is Assistant Professor of Theology at Quincy University in Quincy, Illinois, where he lives with his wife and five children. Amidst activities such as building a laser and researching airglow at Whitworth University (B.S. Physics, 1999), Bates also became intensely interested in Christian origins and theology. After working for several years as an electrical engineer, he sojourned to Regent College (M.C.S. Biblical Studies, 2004) in Vancouver, B.C. His doctoral dissertation, which focused on the Apostle Paul's use of Scripture, was written at the University of Notre Dame (Ph.D. Theology, Christianity and Judaism in Antiquity, 2010).