When Paul of Tarsus, the Jewish Pharisee evangelist for Yeshua, entered the synagogue in the town of Berea in Macedonia (Greece), he was greeted eagerly by the Jewish leaders. They didn't immediately throw him out once he spoke about Yeshua. Nor did they uncritically accept him and his message. Just the opposite: they listened. They were
Their openness, based on confidence in the Scriptures as the measure of revealed truth, is not as common today. Religious groups tend to have official doctrinal templates (paradigms) through which they view or hear all messages. Authority resides in these templates: the traditions of the elders, rabbis, theologians, preachers and denominations.
By that I mean, the non-Semitic, post-New Testament Church formulated, evolved, and institutionalized it. It is a speculative model or paradigm of how theologians conceive the ontological, metaphysical relationships among the persons of the Godhead. It's a paradigm that theorists believe fits the data of Scripture and adheres to principles of deductive logic.
"The whole three Persons are co-eternal and co-equal.
So that in all things, as said before, the Unity in Trinity and the Trinity in Unity is to be worshiped." [selected portions]
Church historians refer to this creed as the "Quicunque Vult" or "Whosoever will be [saved]" creed, because it contains the sober warning: "Whosoever will be saved must thus think of the Trinity."
More importantly: we who abide in Scripture should reject human dicta that our salvation depends not on our repentance or reliance on the atoning blood of the Messiah and the forgiveness of God—but on our agreement to "think" about God as a "Unity in Trinity, Trinity in Unity."
Christian theologians have added to the Gospel and redefined biblical content. They have disobeyed the command "not to exceed what is written [in Scripture]" (1 Cor 4:6) and not to "add to the word" (Deut 4:2; Rev 22:18).
In the NT itself the phrase "one God" refers to the Father alone (1 Cor 8:6, Eph 4:6, 1 Tim 2:6).
Theologians, however, say it refers to a composite God of three divine persons. The Quicunque Vult tells us to worship the Triune God. In the NT, angels, martyrs and disciples only bow before the Father and Son. And Jesus himself worshiped only his Father, never the Spirit.
But that simple, foundational belief about Yeshua and God is not technically the doctrine of the Trinity. In the eyes of historical Orthodoxy, John 3:16 is an inadequate summary of "Christian faith" and will not lead to eternal salvation.
Theologians admit that the Doctrine and its formulas are unfathomable. But their oft-used slogan "the mystery of the Trinity" wasn't coined by slow-witted Galilean fishermen or earth-bound shepherds in the hills above Bethlehem or bemused shopkeepers in ancient Jerusalem.
The slogan was coined by theologians themselves who speculated about the Godhead and literally didn't understand what they and their colleagues had conceived. Yet they were very sure everyone had to say they believe in the unfathomable doctrine.
Wait. If the professionals don't understand it, why do they demand that we fishermen, herders and shop keepers say we believe it? Does the Almighty tell us anywhere that He wants this verbal confession from us?
I prefer to approach the heavenly Throne with the same mindset that Isaiah had when he saw God: "Woe is me, for I am ruined! For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of armies" (Isa 6:5). Or when John saw the resurrected Yeshua in Heaven, he responded: "When I saw him, I fell at his feet as a dead man" (Rev 1:17).
Western, Northern-hemispheric Christian theologians have always been obsessed with understanding and explaining "God" from atop Mars Hill in Athens.
Snaith's historical perspective is pertinent to us who live in a post-Biblical era, when Christianity is less and less a biblical religion and Judaism is for many simply an evolving body of human ethics.
Ironically, some Protestant evangelical theologians in the West are among the most vocal defenders of catholic orthodoxy, which they prefer to call "historic Christian orthodoxy." (They dislike the word "catholic" so they use "historic" and "orthodox" to mean the same thing.)
Likewise, they say they affirm what the Church has "always believed everywhere," and say the creeds of the 4th and 5th centuries embody those universal Christian beliefs.
Yet this isn't true. People didn't believe in what had not yet been invented. Protestant thinkers don't validate Scripture, but the Paradigm.
Here's another example of Protestant endorsement of post-biblical theological tradition by the previously cited evangelical Anglican Michael Bird:
Jewish inquirers are told to consult rabbis (medieval or modern) for authoritative explanations of what the Tanakh means to Jews and how a Jew should think about it—not how any open-minded seeker of God's self-revelation should respond.
In contrast, in Ancient Israel, true faith and loyalty to God were marked by obedience to the written scriptures that existed at the time.
By Yeshua's time, Torah scholars ("scribes") were an emerging professional class. Many of them were infuriated that he rejected their authority over the Bible and criticized them for twisting and disobeying Scripture, in favor of promoting the rabbinic traditions of exegesis and application (Matt 7:29; Luke 20:1-2).
Imagine the response if he said this to Christian leaders in the Vatican or Canterbury, Dallas or Seoul.
Eventually, you will hear an intimidating—but faux—argument: "Dear brother, so you think 2,000 years of Christian history have been wrong? And you know better than all the great spiritual leaders of the Church?"
These barbs from Christian and Jewish authorities can be persuasive. They're meant to be. Their purpose is to produce timidity, enforce unquestioning silence, and expel heretics.
But their rhetorical questions are historically anachronistic. The Trinity Paradigm is not 2,000 years old. And Unitarian, Rabbinic, anti-Yeshua, Judaism is not 4,000 years old.
So they tend to focus on finding the "Triunity of God" in the Hebrew Bible. They believe the Tanakh is the foundation document for Jews and for New Testament Messianism. (A view I also hold.)
But, like their Gentile Christian counterparts, what Messianic scholars present as proof texts turn out to be (as some admit) only "hints" of the doctrine. And when these hints are studied in context, they lose persuasive power, because a hint is not proof. And hints often become proofs when you find what you're looking for and already believe.
Usually these proof-texts include the Genesis Plurals [Note 2], the plural word Elohim (God) [Note 3], and the meaning of echad (one) in the Shema [Note 4].
Supported by these and other biblical texts, Messianic organizations have opted for orthodox Christian creedal statements. That is, their creeds or "statements of faith" contain terminology and conclusions widely accepted by Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and mainline Protestants.
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Messianics pressured to assimilate
Messianic scholars face a profound dilemma. For even though they have labored to find the doctrine of the Triune God in the Hebrew Bible, Christian Theological Tradition (CTT, my term) dismisses the idea. It says the doctrine isn't in the Tanakh.
Two Roman Catholic sources note:
"The Old Testament writings about God neither express nor imply any idea of or belief in a plurality or trinity of persons within the one Godhead." (Edmund Fortman, The Triune God, p. 9)
"The mystery of the Trinity was not revealed to the Chosen People of the OT." (New Catholic Encyclopedia, 14:306)
Some conservative Protestants agree with these Roman Catholic authorities. Note the comment by the conservative OT scholar Bruce K. Waltke.
"God did not reveal to his covenant people before the coming of Jesus Christ that the Messiah is an incarnation of the Second Person of the Trinity." (An Old Testament Theology [2007], p. 621)
Not every scholar or teacher may agree with these statements from Christian authorities. But the historical opinion of CTT that the Trinity Doctrine isn't in Hebrew Scripture cannot be deleted from history—and should not be ignored.
It should be a warning to Messianics.
The painful paradox is that Messianics are trying to prove something (a theological paradigm) that isn't there—in the scriptures of Israel, which Yeshua called the "word of God."
The late Messianic scholar Jakob Jocz once criticized the "slippery path of exegetical acrobatics" that Christian apologists have used to prove the Trinity from the Old Testament. What he said about these Christian efforts generally can be applied to Messianic apologists today:
"Some of this very dubious exegesis is still reproduced in pious tracts for the purpose of converting Jews."
(From The Messiahship of Jesus: What Jews and Jewish Christians Say,
ed. Arthur W. Kac [Moody Press, 1980], p. 191)
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A reemerging tactic among some Messianics is to prove the Trinity using kabbalistic literature, such as the medieval book Zohar and the 18th century Tanya (Likutei Amarim). The latter was composed by Rabbi Shneur Zalman (1745-1812), who founded the Chabad movement of hasidic Judaism in Lithuania.
Jews For Jesus published an article called
"Kabbalah's Best Kept Secret?" (available here in the Hazak portal). In it, the unnamed author attempts to show how the kabbalistic doctrine of the Sefirot and other mystical speculations about the Godhead foreshadow, even validate, Christianity's doctrine of the Compound Unity of the Triune God.
The article's author cites a passage in the Zohar about the Shema:
YHVH Eloheinu YHVH echad. These three are one.... The
threefold Divine manifestations [are] three modes which yet form one unity." [Zohar, Shemoth, Raya Mehemna, 43b]
In contrast, the only place in Scripture where the Father, the Word, and the Spirit are described as "one" is found in 1 John 5:7. This trinitarian text, however, was interpolated into the Greek NT by Catholic scribes. That the author of this Kabbalah article shows no awareness that 1 John 5:7 is counterfeit is surprising.
In the end, this Zohar passage merely validates Catholic dogma, not Biblical content.
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Not mystery, but misrepresentation
Of course there is "mystery" about God. Any honest, thoughtful person would agree. God is beyond our comprehension—except where he has revealed himself, primarily in the written Word and in his Living Word, the Messiah. That's what the Word does: it reveals.
Mystery is not the issue.
A major concern is how the Christian Theological Tradition (CTT, my term) view of "God" has distorted New Testament teaching. Here are three examples of how CTT clashes with Scripture:
(1) In the NT the phrase "one God" refers to the Father of Yeshua.
For us there is one God, the Father…and one Lord, Yeshua Messiah. (1 Cor 8:6)
There is…one Lord…one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all. (Eph 4:5, 6)
There is one God and one mediator also between God and men, the man Messiah Yeshua. (1 Tim 2:5)
But in CTT "one God" refers to a theoretical compound triune Godhead of Father, Son and Spirit. The biblical phrase has been completely redefined. And that implies that Scripture means something other than what it literally says.
And that implies that only approved and trained interpreters of "Christian" doctrine can tell us what Scripture actually means.
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(2) Paul of Tarsus—an orthodox Jew, Pharisee, and apostle of Yeshua—opens his letters with blessings from "God the Father and the Lord Yeshua Messiah." And he calls the Father "the God of Yeshua" (Rom 15:6; 2 Cor 1:3; Eph 1:17). His word choices are specific and striking.
They do not depart from the track of his initial preaching:
Following his vision of Yeshua, Paul began to proclaim him in the synagogues, saying, "He is the Son of God…; …confounding the Jews…proving that this [one] is the Messiah." (Acts 9:20,22)
Peter's evangelistic message parallels Paul's:
Let all the house know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Messiah—this Yeshua…. (Acts 2:26)
[God] sent to the sons of Israel the gospel of peace through Yeshua Messiah (he is Lord of all)…. (Acts 10:36)
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(3) In heaven, God's angels and the early martyrs for Yeshua aren't worshiping the CTT paradigm of the Godhead when John overhears them singing praise before the Throne, as described in the book of Revelation. Rather, they praise God and the Lamb.
To Him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb,
be blessing and honor and glory and dominion forever
and ever. (Rev 5:13)
The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our God
and of his Messiah; and He will reign forever and ever. (Rev 11:15)
Should we conclude that these divine beings and holy martyrs did not have a fully orthodox (CTT) grasp of divine reality? If they did not, those closest to the Throne can't be trusted to give true witness.
Then whom can we trust?
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A Shift to the Biblical Paradigm
Messianic Jews and non-Jews who accept the New Covenant scriptures as God's revelation about Yeshua haMashiach need to make a biblical Paradigm Shift away from the Diaspora religions: Rabbinic Judaism and Catholic Christianity.
Cease bondage to their authority, not all ties.
If Messianics (whether Jew or non-Jew) have been raised up by God for leading this Paradigm Shift, they are in a unique position to bring reconciliation between the Jewish people and Yeshua, between Muslims and Yeshua, and between Christians and the biblical Jesus.
This could bring peace to all three groups. And that would be a sign to the non-religious world that Yeshua is who he says he is.
And that would fulfill God's will that
"Every knee should bow...
and every tongue confess that Yeshua Mashiach is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father." (Philippians 2:10-11)
• Paul Sumner
[A PDF version of this document is available HERE.]
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Pre–Notes
"Scientific revolutions occur when the established paradigms do not provide answers to the anomalies that continue to pester scientists. New theories arrive on the scene that displace older theories. The newer theories appear almost apocalyptically, breaking in and displacing older ways of conceiving the problem" (Mark Gignilliat, Brief History of Old Testament Criticism, 2012).
The coiner of the phrase "Paradigm Shift" in the field of science appears to be Thomas S. Kuhn in his The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962, 1996, 4th ed. in 2012).
Notes
