The Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism reflect a henotheistic worldview, in which YHWH is supreme but other spiritual beings—gods, angels, demons—are real and active. Jesus and Paul operated entirely within this framework, affirming these powers while proclaiming Christ as Lord and Messiah for Christians. Their strong warnings against altering the gospel suggest that any significant doctrinal shift would have been considered spiritually fatal. After the New Testament, rabbinic Judaism suppressed henotheism, particularly the notion of multiple divine figures. In response, Christian theologians reinterpreted Jesus within a Trinitarian framework, subordinating angels and other spiritual powers to conform to this rabbinical strict monotheism. From the perspective of the earliest apostles, this represents a profound historical and theological transformation of the gospel, driven by external pressures rather than original teaching. Christians today might soberly ask: by developing Trinitarianism in response to this suppression, did later Christians align with forces that undermined the original gospel, and in doing so, did they themselves effectively destroy it?
Stephen D Green using AI for some of the wording
