Apostolic Faith Affirms the Trinity

Restorationism Revisited: Why the Apostolic Faith Affirms the Trinity

In several writings I have argued that any attempt to “restore” what some claim was the original apostolic faith—a faith in which only the Father is regarded as God—is inherently revisionist. Restorationism asserts that the earliest Christians recognized God solely as the Father, relegating Jesus and the Holy Spirit to subordinate or nondivine roles, and that the later tri-personal Trinitarian doctrine is merely the product of historical corruption or misinterpretation. Yet, such a view dismisses the continuous, Spirit-led witness evident in early Christian liturgy, creeds, and communal practice—all of which consistently affirm the full divinity of the Son and the Spirit alongside the Father. For readers familiar with my longer works on this topic, this synthesis—condensed into an accessible format under 1500 words—draws on insights from my article, “The Premier Case Against Unitarianism,” to demonstrate that insisting “the Father alone is God” (THE PREMIER CASE AGAINST UNITARIANISM: – RobertDryer and here Why the Bible is Trinitarian – RobertDryer) requires one to ignore the unbroken apostolic testimony that our one divine essence is fully manifested in three distinct, coequal persons. I also leverage some David Bentley Hart here, thanks to MetaChristianity hooking me up with some essays and quotes.

A Testament in Text: John 1:1 as Proto-Trinitarian Witness

Consider the opening verse of John’s Gospel:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)

This concise yet theologically loaded passage serves as an undeniable cornerstone for the tri-personal understanding of God. Its dual assertions are pivotal:

• Distinction: “the Word was with God” indicates that the Logos (Christ) is not an abstract attribute but a distinct Person who shares a close, intimate relationship with God the Father.
• Unity: “the Word was God” affirms that this very Person fully participates in the divine essence.

The analysis of this verse reveals that John’s prologue anticipates the later Nicene formulation by portraying the Son as co-eternal with the Father, without collapsing His distinct personal identity. Importantly, the emphasis on the qualitative use of θεὸς (God) underscores that the Logos fully embodies what it means to be God—an assertion that is not a gradual, emergent claim but a sustained revelation from the very beginning of the Gospel. Whether one is influenced by later Nicene sources or approaches the text with a fresh theological lens, the upshot is the same: the biblical witness is unequivocally trinitarian in some sense and that’s all the matters.

But this scriptural testimony is not an isolated case. When one reads the New Testament in its historical context, passages like 1 Corinthians 8:6—which declares “one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ,” distinguishing the Father as the source from whom all things come and the Son as the mediator through whom all things exist by leveraging the linguistic framework of the Septuagint and echoing the Shema’s affirmation of God’s unity while bestowing distinct divine roles—and the baptismal formula in Matthew 28:19, which invokes the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in a single liturgical act, collectively demonstrate that early Christians worshipped a God who is one in essence yet revealed in three distinct persons. Even if the Bible does not perfectly conform to later Nicene categories, its witness is “proto-Nicene”—the criterion is not adherence to a later systematic school but whether the text consistently presents a coherent, tri-personal vision of the divine. This subtle but critical point dismantles the restorationist claim by showing that the apostolic faith remains unbroken for trinitarians, not only in history with one continuous church always present from the Apostles, but one continuous-triadic-structure to its God from the Apostles.

The Spirit-Led Tradition: Apostolic Continuity versus Revisionist Claims

Embracing restorationism requires denying not only individual biblical texts but the entire Spirit-led process by which early Christians discerned and articulated the mystery of the tri-personal God. Jesus promises in John 16:13, “When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth.” This promise underpins the historical development of the early Church’s creedal formulations and liturgical practices. To assert that the early Church was unitarian is to reject the very process of divine guidance that led to a consistent and reliable understanding of God’s nature.

The historical continuity of Christian belief is compelling. The early Church did not suddenly adopt a tri-personal understanding in the fourth century; rather, this understanding is evident from the syntax of John’s prologue onward and throughout the earliest creeds and communal practices. To argue that a “pure” unitarian faith once existed—and that it was later obscured by corruption—one must posit a mysterious rupture in the reliable, Spirit-led discernment that guided canon formation and creedal development. Such a claim not only runs counter to overwhelming historical evidence but also undermines the authority of the Church’s own self‐understanding as handed down through nearly two millennia.

Logical Coherence and the Necessity of the Divine Mediation

Restorationists often face a logical impasse when trying to separate the full divinity of the Son and the Spirit from the Father. Modern identity concepts like transitivity or Leibniz’s Law, when naively applied to the divine, tend to force an identity that collapses distinct persons into one singular, undifferentiated entity. However, classical theology teaches that God is infinite, noncomposite, and beyond such finite constraints. As David Bentley Hart notes,

“It would seem to be a necessity of logic that only God is capable of joining creatures to God; any inferior intermediary, especially one like the created Logos of Arius, will always be infinitely remote from God himself” (Hart, Tradition and Apocalypse, 2022).

Thus, statements like “the Father is God” and “the Son is God” are not modern identity claims in a reductive sense but predications of the divine nature on distinct persons who share one infinite essence. The orthodox view avoids the pitfalls that restorationism cannot escape without either denying the full deity of the Son and the Spirit or disregarding the clear biblical distinctions among the persons of the Godhead.

Historical and Linguistic Continuity: The Unbroken Testimony of Early Christianity

The apostolic witness, as reflected in early Christian liturgy and scripture, is a consistent affirmation of a tri-personal God. The analysis of John 1:1 not only provides a direct line to later texts—such as John 20:28, where the resurrected Christ is addressed as “ho theos”—but also embodies a form of trinitarianism that runs unbroken through the New Testament. Early translators and communities understood that the one divine essence is disclosed in three distinct ways, a realization that is evident in every part of the New Testament narrative.

By emphasizing that the early textual witness—as seen in John’s Gospel—already presents a tri-personal understanding of God, we see that restorationism must reject a well-documented and Spirit-led tradition that remains unbroken for trinitarians. Even if one argues that the Bible is not “Nicene” in the later systematic sense, it is undeniably proto-Nicene in its witness. The threshold for judging the biblical presentation is not conformity to a later school of thought but whether it consistently proclaims a tri-personal God.

Conclusion: Affirming the Apostolic Faith

Taken together, the biblical and historical evidence compellingly argues against the restorationist notion of a unitarian apostolic faith. To “restore” such a view is to disregard the linguistic nuances of texts like John 1:1, the inherent logic that only a fully divine intermediary can unite us with the Father, and the unbroken tradition of early Christian liturgy and creeds. Restorationism assumes that the canonical and creedal witness—which consistently affirms the co-equality and co-divinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—is a later corruption rather than the authentic apostolic faith. This is a circular argument that undermines both the historical continuity and divine revelation.

Instead, the evidence points to an unwavering apostolic vision: one divine essence, fully present in three distinct, co-equal persons. This vision, clearly articulated in the New Testament from the very first verse of John’s Gospel onward, is not the result of a later revision but the faithful witness of a Spirit-led Church. By affirming that the Bible, taken as a whole, is inherently trinitarian—whether described as Nicene or proto-Nicene—we uphold the continuity and authority of the apostolic faith. In doing so, we reject restorationism and affirm that the full, tri-personal nature of God is not only scripturally attested but also necessary for the logical and liturgical unity of the Christian tradition.

In sum, the tri-personal language of Scripture, as epitomized by countless scriptures like John 1:1 (as just an example in this piece but countless others used in my other pieces), forces the conclusion that early Christian faith recognized the full divinity of the Son and the Spirit alongside the Father. This stands in stark opposition to restorationist claims and reaffirms that the one true faith is, at its heart, trinitarian—a truth that has been faithfully preserved and passed down through every generation of the Church.