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How did early Christian beliefs about Jesus remain connected to monotheism?
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Christianity
Christ as Ruler, with the Apostles and Evangelists (represented by the beasts). The female figures are believed to be either Santa Pudenziana and Santa Práxedes or symbols of the Jewish and Gentile churches. Mosaic in the apse of Santa Pudenziana basilica, Rome, 401–417 ce.
Early Christians maintained a commitment to monotheism while navigating the implications of their belief in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Emerging from a Jewish context, early believers did not intend to contradict the Shema—the foundational declaration that "The Lord our God is one Lord"—but instead sought to reconcile this faith with their experience of God in a threefold figure.1
To preserve the oneness of God, early theologians explored various frameworks:
- Modalism: Some proposed that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were simply different modes or manifestations of the one God, rather than distinct persons.12
- Subordinationism: Others interpreted the divine in Christ as subordinate to the Supreme Being, attempting to safeguard the unity of God by distinguishing the essence of the Son from that of the Father.1
- Trinitarian Development: Over several centuries, the church moved toward the doctrine of the Trinity, eventually defining the Son as being of the same substance (homoousios) as the Father, thereby affirming both the distinctness of the persons and the unity of the Godhead.13