Some scholarship identifies the trinity as the concept that separates Christians from Jews. It assumes that the way to Jewish-Christian dialogue is to emphasise monotheism and play down the doctrine of the trinity. James Dunn tells us that â??Christianity is only Christianity when it is monotheistic. Only so can Christians remain true to their roots, to their heritage within the religion of Israel.â?? Francis Watson counters, â??If â??monotheismâ?? here refers to a view on which Jews and Christians agree, over against classical Christian trinitarianism, these statements would have to be reversed. Christianity is only Christianity when it is trinitarian. Only so can Christians remain true to their Jewish roots and to the Jewish scriptures within their canon. A â??Christianâ?? unitarianism is not a Christian faithfulness to Jewish roots and scripture.â?? I will argue with Watson that the trinity is the doctrine that keeps Christians in relationship with Jews.
There were many Judaisms. Some of them were inherited by Judaism, some by Christianity. It was only with regard to what it called Christianity that Judaism insisted that it was one Judaism and not many. Likewise Christianity insisted it was one only with regard to what it called Judaism. Considered apart, they make two. But apart from Israel, the Church may not confess itself one. The unity of each community is the function of the indivisible work of God. Each side played up the differences, and claimed that the other party had moved away from its origin. In actuality neither side took anything away from the other, or made it impossible for the other to make proper use of the scriptures. What in the Apologistsâ?? period became Christian theology was not a fixed quantity, but competition for the resources of scripture. Patristic and conciliar theology did not arise as part of a growing away from Jewish resources, or living from its â??ownâ?? resources, but as a continual process of the rising to expression of Israelâ??s scriptures as address to the world.
New Testament scholarship that does not allow the unity of Christ and Israel would be in continuity with the idealist or modern theology that seeks an individual. This scholarship would be looking for someone it has decided does not belong to his people, or they to him, an individual subject of narrative (Jesus), or notional individual author of narrative (Paul). It would be searching the first century for the pioneer of twentieth century man. It would be looking for the psychology of Jesus, understood as an individual, whereas it should relate this distinctly human mind, will and set of opinions, to the mind and sensus communis of the whole people of Israel. The rationale of Jesusâ?? action comes, not from a psychology, but from the mandate of Israel displayed in Scripture. If biblical exegesis cannot do this, it will be merely reproducing a modern concept of mind, a psychology of interiority, that is not publicly responsible or contestable. On this basis Jesus would be the first of many men defined without relation, the object of historical critical science who must be identified by separating him from the people he gathers around him. Such a New Testament studies would be unitarian. It would remove Jesus from Israel and refuse to take with him the manyness of the hands employed by the Word of God. This would be to impose an extrinsic criterion, and create a new time, modernity, that defines itself by contrast with the time of God for Israel. It would tend to resist the claim that Jesus is the messiah whose world-rule all Israel participates in. Instead, we must say that Jesus, with his people Israel, is the oneness and indivisibility of God in his work.
