Brett Todd
In a past article titled, “The Blessed Trinity” (November 29, 2021), which you can read in this blog, This Is Not Sunday School, I stated that the idea of three persons who make up one God is not spoken of in the Bible. You cannot find the word Trinity nor the concept of “Three in one” in the Bible. This idea is a later development of Christianity. So, it should not surprise you that early Christians did have different ideas of God or the Gods.
In early Christianity, there was much diversity to the chagrin of other Christians who thought everyone should believe the way they believed. This is true when we talk about God and the Gods. Bart Ehrman, a noted scholar of the New Testament and Early Christianity, tells us that there were early Christian groups who believed there were two Gods, others 30 Gods, and even those Christians who believed there were 365 Gods (Lost Christianities: The Battle for Scripture and the Faith We Never knew). Keep in mind that this is only a small sample of the diversity found in early Christianity. There were other Christian groups who believed other things about God or the Gods as well.
One such group of early Christians was the Marcionites who believed in two Gods. Their influential leader and Christian theologian, Marcion, believed that the Jewish God of the Old Testament, Yahweh, was actually an evil God while the God of the New Testament was a kind and loving God. I’m sure you have heard it said, though untrue, that God in the Old Testament is unloving and wrathful, while God in the New Testament is loving. Well, this is precisely what Marcion believed.
Though Marcion’s idea of a good God and a bad God is quite foreign to the teachings in New Testament, the idea of two Gods is not. Let me explain what I mean.
In the Gospel of John, we read that in the very beginning Jesus, the Word, was with God and was God. Note, it does not say these two Gods were one and the same God. This is how John 1:1 reads, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The original language of the New Testament is a little more explicit here, it reads, “In the beginning, the Word [Jesus] was “face to face” with God, and the Word [Jesus] was God.” Essentially what you have here are two persons called God, looking at each other. Again, it is important to remember that the idea of the Trinity or oneness (of essence) is not explicitly taught in the Gospel of John.
Clearly, in the Gospel of John, we have two persons called God who are working in tandem with each other in unity just as Jesus wants us to be one with him and God. You may remember the prayer of Jesus to God the Father in John, “so that they [Jesus’ followers] may be one, as we are one” (John 17:22). There is no sense in the Gospel of John that God the Father and Jesus are one and the same God.
In our next study, we will look at the Book of Enoch which is quoted and referred to in the New Testament of the Bible. What is the Book of Enoch?
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