What if Christianity's most basic confession has been forgotten?
Before councils, creeds, and centuries of theological debate, Israel confessed a simple and uncompromising truth: "Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God, the LORD is one." Jesus affirmed it. The apostles preached from it. The earliest Christian proclamation did not begin with abstract formulas about divine persons, but with the revelation that the one God of Israel had made himself known in Jesus Christ.
With careful attention to Scripture, Second Temple Jewish thought, the Memra traditions, John's Logos, Paul's Christology, Nicaea, and the early church debates, Jordan Gardner argues that the biblical confession of one God was never meant to be redefined around multiple divine subjects. Father, Word, and Spirit are not separate centers of divine identity, but the one God revealing himself, speaking, acting, and finally dwelling bodily in Christ.