You cannot read 1 Cor 8:6-7 in which Christ the Lord is inserted into the Shema and think, “Gee, this is just some human that Paul and his churches worship.” Being baptized into the singular name of the three (Matt 28) meant that early Christians already worshipped God via their baptism and confession.

The development of dogma idea doesn’t make sense when it comes to the central motifs of Trinity and Christology. The linguistic precision certainly grew, but such language flowered from the seed of revelation about who God was and who Christ is in the NT writings.

You cannot read 1 Cor 8:6-7 in which Christ the Lord is inserted into the Shema and think, “Gee, this is just some human that Paul and his churches worship.” Being baptized into the singular name of the three (Matt 28) meant that early Christians already worshipped God via their baptism and confession.

Greek Infusion?

As further questions arose, the Spirit continued to mature the church through its engagement with the world and the continuing need to define its worship.

The so-called infusing of Greek thought into a pure form of biblical Christianity is a false narrative. Yes, Greek speakers used Greek words and notions as we use English ones. I speak of gravity and the grocery store. I even think of redemption in an English way.

But that process of translation already occurs the first century as the Gospel writers translate Jesus from Aramaic into Greek—Paul writes in Greek. The linguistic choices that they made reflected their culture yet solid truth remained stable since truth is a metaphysical concept and something un-created by culture. Hence, any language or expression can, if communicated well, speak the truth.

This is why we translate the Bible or any book. It’s the truth that we aim to communicate, which admittedly sometimes is clearer through grammatical understanding of the original language of a book!

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