Following the completion of the New Testament, henotheism was increasingly suppressed, first within Judaism, then within Christianity. In the early second century, rabbinic Judaism formally condemned the teaching of “Two Powers in Heaven,” a move directly aimed at countering Christian claims about Jesus’ divinity. This suppression eliminated the conceptual space for a second divine figure in the Jewish worldview and labeled such ideas heretical. As a consequence, Christians faced new pressures. If they continued to treat Jesus as a subordinate divine figure alongside the Father, Jews could accuse them of worshiping two gods. To protect monotheism while preserving Jesus’ divinity, Christian theologians gradually abandoned explicit henotheistic language, rejecting binitarian and subordinationist frameworks. The development of the Trinity between the third and fourth centuries, culminating at Nicaea and Constantinople, represented a redefinition of the gospel’s cosmic and Christological assumptions in response to these pressures. Angels, Satan, and other cosmic powers were subordinated within a philosophical monotheistic system in which Father, Son, and Spirit shared one essence. From the perspective of Paul and John, who had preached within a henotheistic framework and invoked anathema or labeled deviation antichrist, this transformation of the gospel represents a substantial alteration of the message they had fiercely protected, a corruption forced by external pressures rather than any internal innovation. In this sense, Trinitarianism can be seen as a historical outcome of the rabbinic suppression of henotheism, which effectively necessitated a reinterpretation of Jesus’ status and the structure of the spiritual cosmos to maintain doctrinal monotheism. The gospel, as originally proclaimed within a henotheistic worldview, was altered in a way that would have been judged forbidden and spiritually fatal by its earliest preachers.
