Matthew W. Bates

Bates explores how early Christians read the Old Testament in order to differentiate the one God as multiple persons. The earliest Christians felt they could metaphorically 'overhear' divine conversations between the Father, Son, and Spirit when reading the Old Testament. The connection of these snatches of dialogue forms a narrative about the unfolding interior divine life as understood by the nascent church. What emerges is not a static portrait of the triune God, but a developing story of divine persons enacting mutual esteem, voiced praise, collaborative strategy, and self-sacrificial love.

Jesus, God, and Spirit in New Testament and Early Christian Interpretations of the Old Testament

The Birth of the Trinity

Luke Stamps

Detailed, thorough analysis of early Christian (NT and early Patristic) readings of Old Testament dialogical texts that prophetically cast the divine persons as characters in a theodrama, which stretches from before creation through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus to his final exaltation. My only complaint is the way that Bates consistently sets his prosopological approach in opposition to typological readings. Some texts may defy a typological approach and thus may be more directly prophetic (e.g., Psalm 110), but for others a prosopological reading seems dependent upon certain typologies built into the OT narrative itself (e.g., the anointed Son of Psalm 2). The anti-type no doubt surpasses the significations involved in the type, but the relation is more organic than a direct "stepping into another character" approach allows.

The Birth of the Trinity Jesus, God, and Spirit in New Testament and Early Christian Interpretations of the Old Testament

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