Every serious conversation must begin here: “Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord alone” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Whatever Christians mean by Father, Son, and Spirit, if it does not safeguard the Shema, it is not the faith of Yeshua or his apostles. The New Testament does not replace Jewish monotheism; it confesses it and then narrates how the one God acts toward Israel and the nations in ways that stretch our language to its limit.

One God, Three Relations of Self-Giving

Followers of Yeshua do not worship three gods. They worship the one God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, whom Yeshua consistently calls Father. The same God speaks and acts toward us through his Word and Wisdom made flesh in the Messiah, and indwells his people by the Holy Spirit. Father, Son, and Spirit are not three competing deities but three ways the one God gives himself: the Source who loves, the Word who reveals and redeems, and the Spirit who indwells and transforms.

Correcting a Painful Caricature

Some preaching has pictured a divided Godhead: a harsh Father bent on punishment, a gentle Son shielding us, a Spirit left to tidy the mess. To Jewish ears, that sounds pagan, and rightly so. Scripture will not allow a split-personality deity. The Father and the Son are not adversaries. Yeshua does what he sees the Father doing; he is the exact imprint of God’s being; and the Spirit is the very breath of that same love in us. If we misrepresent the cross as the Father’s rage vented upon the Son, we have not yet understood either the unity of God or the depth of divine self-giving. At Golgotha, God was in Messiah reconciling the world to himself. One God acting in perfect unity: the Father sending, the Son offering, the Spirit outpoured.

How Yeshua Directs Worship

Listen to Yeshua himself: “Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:16). “Love your enemies… so that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:44–45). “Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:9–10). When he heals the broken, the crowds praise the God of Israel (Matthew 15:31). When the paralyzed man walks, they glorify God (Luke 5:25–26). The direction of worship runs to the One.

The Unity at the Heart of Israel’s Scriptures

Jewish monotheism is not arithmetic minimalism; it is covenant fidelity. The Hebrew Bible already speaks of God’s nearness in richly layered ways. God creates by his Word. God’s Spirit moves and empowers. God’s Name dwells in the sanctuary. God’s Glory fills the house. The Angel of the Lord bears God’s presence and speaks with God’s voice. Lady Wisdom stands beside God from the beginning, delighting in creation. None of this divides God. It is Israel’s way of saying: the One is living, active, and present.

The Pattern of Plurality-in-Unity

Genesis portrays God’s Spirit moving over the waters and lets us overhear a deliberation: “Let us make humankind in our image” (Genesis 1:26). Psalm 110 hears the Lord say to my lord, “Sit at my right hand” (Psalm 110:1). Daniel sees one like a human being coming with the clouds to receive everlasting dominion beside the Ancient of Days (Daniel 7:13–14). These are not proofs for a later creed, but they are the grammar in which the earliest Jewish disciples learned to speak about Yeshua without abandoning the Shema.

Voices from Second Temple Judaism

Before and around the time of Yeshua, some Jewish texts speak boldly about a messianic or heavenly figure sharing in God’s authority: a royal Son, a human-like figure enthroned beside God, even language like Son of God in certain Aramaic compositions. These sources do not settle Christian doctrine, but they do show that the idea of God’s unique rule being shared with an exalted agent was not alien to the Jewish imagination. For many first-century Jews, the question was not whether God could act so, but whether Yeshua is that one.

The New Testament’s Monotheism in One Breath

The apostle can say in one breath: “for us there is one God, the Father… and one Lord, Yeshua the Messiah” (1 Corinthians 8:4–6), not placing two gods side by side but rereading Israel’s confession around the crucified and risen King. Another writes of “one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:6), even as he speaks of the Spirit filling and uniting the community. The earliest creed is hidden in a prayer: “No one can say, Yeshua is Lord, except by the Holy Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 12:3) One God; one Lord; one Spirit; one worship.

Mystical Triads and Caution

Later Jewish mystical writings speak of triadic patterns within the one divine life. Concepts such as the “Raz deShlosha” (Mystery of the Three) and the teaching that every human is created by three partners — father, mother, and God — reflect mystical and theological structures that, while distinct, resonate with the triadic patterns found in Christian doctrines like the Holy Trinity.

These Jewish concepts are not the Trinity and should not be used as proofs. Still, they remind us how often Jewish thought has wrestled with God’s oneness as a living, radiant unity rather than a bare singularity. Use these as conversation starters, not as cudgels.

Modern Jewish Scholarship

Jewish scholar, Prof. Benjamin Sommer (Jewish Theological Seminary), who openly acknowledges that the Trinity is very Jewish. Below are a few quotes from his book “The Bodies of God”:

For all the trouble that Jewish and Muslim philosophers have had with this notion, the trinity emerges as a fairly typical example of the fragmentation of a single deity into seemingly distinct manifestations that do not quite undermine that deity’s coherence. It is appropriate, then, that Christian biblical commentators connect the trinity with Genesis 18, the story of the three visitors who came to Abraham’s tent, because that passage presents a banner example of the fluidity of Yhwh’s selfhood…. Classic language of trinitarian theology, such as μια οὐσία, τρεῖς ὑπόστασις [sic] (one nature, three persons, or one substance, three manifestations), applies perfectly well to examples of Yhwh’s fluidity in the Hebrew Bible and to the fluidity traditions in Canaan and Mesopotamia…. The presence of God and of God-as-Jesus on earth is nothing more than a particular form of this old idea of multiple embodiment, and hence no more offensive to a monotheistic theology than J and E sections of the Pentateuch…. Some Jews regard Christianity’s claim to be a monotheistic religion with grave suspicion, both because of the doctrine of the trinity (how can three equal one?) and because of Christianity’s core belief that God took bodily form. What I have attempted to point out here is that biblical Israel knew very similar doctrines, and these doctrines did not disappear from Judaism after the biblical period.

(Pages 132-135)

Why Language Stumbles

If we could fully comprehend God, we would reduce him to our size. The language of “trinity” or “Father, Son, and Spirit” is not an attempt to solve God but to be faithful to how Israel’s God has made Himself known: the Father who sends, the Son who embodies and obeys, the Spirit who indwells and renews. Trinity is a signpost, not a prison. It refuses both pagan polytheism and a cold, distant monad. It says: the one God is a communion of love, and the Messiah’s cross and resurrection are the door by which that love reaches the world.

Think of one light through three windows. The light is not multiplied; it is made known. The Father is the source, the Son the radiance made visible, the Spirit the warmth entering our bones. And all of it is the one God of Israel, faithful to covenant, drawing the nations to say with Israel and because of Israel: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Test the teaching by its fruit: Does it lead to the worship of the One, to love of neighbor and enemy, to holiness of life, to the hallowing of God’s name? If so, you are seeing the unity of God at work, not its fracture.

Conclusion

As a Jew myself, I find some Christian attempts to define and explain God through formulas — like some lab experiment where we can dissect Him under a microscope — both absurd and limiting. I’m not here to argue for or against the Trinity, Unitarianism, Modalism, or any of the other 6847 theories the Western mind has devised. The truth is, I simply don’t know — and none of the theories I’ve encountered make enough sense for me to die on that hill, as if salvation depends on solving a theological equation (which honestly feels more like Greek philosophy than biblical faith).

God is beyond human categorization, and any attempt to confine Him to a theological box misses the point entirely. In fact, if we could fully comprehend what God is (not speaking of His character but His essence), would we still be in awe? Would we still worship Him if we could say, “Oh, we figured Him out”?

If you have heard Christianity presented as three gods or as a divided household in heaven, set that aside. Begin again with Yeshua’s prayers, his obedience to the Father, the Spirit’s presence, and the crowds praising the God of Israel when mercy touches them.

If you found this article thought-provoking, you’ll find much more in my best-selling book, Refuting Rabbinic Objections to Christianity & Messianic Prophecies: