Three Powers in Heaven: The Trinitarian Controversies in Fourth-Century Roman Syria And the Christian-Jewish Continuum

Abstract

This dissertation pursues a re-examination of the late ancient parting between Christianity and Judaism. It argues that the progressive emergence of two distinct intellectual traditions out of a prior state of interfusion was produced by the crystallization of different discursive modes aimed at addressing a fundamental problem, shared by Jesus-believing and -disbelieving Jews: the question as to how mediation between the godhead and humankind is achieved. The first part of the dissertation tracks the appearance, reception, and history of effects of a particular theological expression in the course of the trinitarian controversies in Roman Syria, in order to illuminate a series of epistemic shifts within Christian theological thought. This study suggests that the increasing formularization, technicalization, and dogmatization of Christian manners of discussing the divine led to the development of a set of highly specialized discursive rules, which in turn brought about the formation of a distinct Christian intellectual field. In the second part of the dissertation, the re-interpretation of a passage from the Babylonian Talmud traditionally understood as disavowing binitarian beliefs leads to the hypothesis of a late ancient rabbinic rejection of the pursuit of exact knowledge about the divine realm, in favor of forms of religious discourse focused on halakhah and more directly supporting rabbinic authority. The dissertation concludes that, more than conflict over specific theological issues (such as the unicity vs. multiplicity of divine entities), it was different intellectual practices and modes of religious discourse that came to affect Jews’ and Christians’ separate self-understandings.