1st–4th centuries

Biblical and liturgical roots of the doctrine of the Trinity and trinitarian exegesis

Hall begins the history of the doctrine of the Trinity with the New Testament confessions: one can confess "Jesus is Lord" only by the Holy Spirit, the Spirit reveals the Father to believers (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6), and 1 Cor 8:6 became the basis of the creeds. Baptismal rules of faith proclaimed threefoldness (Matt 28:19; Didache 7): in the creed cited by Hippolytus (c. 200), the candidate answered "I believe" at each of three immersions to questions about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. González points to the Jewish notion of Wisdom as one of the future pillars of trinitarian theology. Against the modalists, church writers relied on "passages of distinction" (Gen 19:24; Ps 109:1), and Prov 8:22–31 became, according to Pelikan, the key and later the most contested text of trinitarian exegesis.