In New Testament textual criticism, a common feature of early New Testament Greek papyri and codices alike, is the regular occurence of nomina sacra (cf. Latin designation for 'sacred names') which is a graphic emphasis of sacred names in early Christian manuscripts through primarily two orthographic and linguistic conventions: an abbreviation either through contraction or suspension, and a horizontal line drawn over the sacred name to indicate the particular term to be 'sacralized'. The system of nomina sacra was employed by the early Christian scribal tradition since the first century A.D. to mark sacralized names demonstrating the cross-physical interaction between Christian piety and ecclesiastical dynamics and the transmission of the New Testament text in the scribal tradition. The system of nomina sacrais composed of several groups of specific sacred names totaling around 15 designations that delineate the evolution of nomina sacra from the first century AD up to the fifth and sixth century. The primary group are four nomina sacra terms that are agreed to be the most primitive and normative terms regularly and consistently employed by Christian scribes in New Testament MS since the first century. These are: (ΙΗϹΟΥϹ, (Jesus) ΧΡΙϹΤΟϹ, (Christ) ΚΥΡΙΟϹ (Lord) and ΘΕΟϹ (God). Hurtado comments on these four nomina sacra, expressing, "As Schuyler Brown pointed out, these four nouns are not simply nomina sacra but rather nomina divina. That is, these terms are all key, direct designations of God and Jesus also typically regarded by early Christians as bearing divine significance." (Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins, p. 97).

The subsequent groups of the system of nomina sacra are sacralized designations that were added to the system of nomina sacra by New Testament copyists after the earliest primary group: These groups are: The Secondary Group (ϹΤΑΥΡΟϹ (Cross) and ΠΝΕΥΜΑ (Spirit)), The Tertiary Group (ϹΤΑΥΡΟΩ, (Cross) ΠΑΤΗΡ (Father), ΑΝΘΡΩΠΟϹ (Man), ΙΕΡΟΥϹΑΛΗΜ (Jerusalem), ΥΙΟϹ (Son), ΙϹΡΑΗΛ (Israel) and ΠΝΕΥΜΑΤΙΚΟϹ (Spiritual/Confessor)), and The Quarternary Group (ΔΑΥΕΙΔ (David), ϹΩΤΗΡ (Savior), ΜΗΤΗΡ (Mother) and ΟΥΡΑΝΟϹ (Heaven)) (Bokedal, But for Me, the Scriptures Are Jesus Christ: Creedal Text-Coding and the Early Scribal System of Nomina Sacra, p. 114). What we find, here, is that the nomina sacra ΠΝΕΥΜΑ i.e. Spirit is not among the core nomina divinia noted by Hurtado and the majority of New Testament scholarship. Paap (1959) confirms this in his monumental study "Nomina sacra in the Greek papyri of the first five centuries A.D: the sources and some deductions" where he states, "The evidence collected by Traube shows that contractions of πνεύμα, πατήρ, ουρανός are absent from certain manuscripts and most of the versions ... The particulars of the words concerned, however, are accounted for more naturally by the circumstance that contraction was only applied to them after similar writings θεός, κύριος, Ἰησοῦς and Χριστός [primary group] had established themselves. So the inconsistency in their written forms represents the initial situation, when their contractions were gradually making their way." A little later, he expresses, "In 3, 5 and 6 the words θεός, κύριος, πνεύμα, ’Ισραήλ and ’Ιησούς are, already in the first half of the 2nd c. A.D., regularly contracted." (p. 125)

Paap argues that the nomina sacra πνεύμα became a standardized designation during the 'first half of the second century A.D. along with Ισραήλ, and the primary group of θεός, κύριος, Ἰησοῦς and Χριστός which are known to be earliest Christian nomina sacra in the early Christian scribal tradition. The issue, here, is that if we are to consider the claim that the apostles and immediate disciples of Jesus of Nazereth were Trinitarians, that is worshippers of The Father ΠΑΤΗΡ, The Son, ΥΙΟϹ and the Spirit ΠΝΕΥΜΑ as the one true God, then we would expect the scribal integration of these nomina sacra to be traceable in our earliest attestations of nomina sacra in the early scribal system of Christian nomina sacra. This presumes ΠΝΕΥΜΑ would have carried a similar reverential value in early Christian piety and devotion as the nomina divinia. However, as preluded to here, this is not what we find. Instead, Hurtado summarizes, "That is, the four earliest Christian nomina sacra collectively manifest one noteworthy expression of what I have called, a "binitarian shape" of the earliest Christian piety and devotion. (p. 106, see also Hurtado, "The Binitarian Shape of Early Christian Worship," p. 63-97)

The nomina divinia as an palpable expression of the earliest traceable forms of Christian devotion and reverance does not reflect early Trinitarian reflection, but rather mirrors dyadic patterns of piety that seems to posit a deep reverence towards God ΘΕΟϹ and Jesus ΧΡΙϹΤΟϹ, but not to the same extent of devotion as to the Spirit ΠΝΕΥΜΑ according to the earliest forms of nomina sacra and thereby Christian devotional piety. It's important to clarify that even though that the standardization of ΠΝΕΥΜΑ in the system of nomina sacra is relatively late compared to the primary group of nomina divinia, the issue more so pertains to the inconsistent application of the nomina sacra ΠΝΕΥΜΑ among scribes in the early New Testament MS and other early Christian writings noted by Paap (1959). Estes points out fairly, that even though the application of ΠΝΕΥΜΑ as nomina sacra is present in several early manuscripts, "the abbreviations for πνεῦμα do not play a large factor because they seem to have emerged slightly later and display less consistency than the four earliest forms." (Reading for the Spirit of the Text: nomina sacra and πνεῦμα Language in P46, p. 568)

This inconsistency is explored further by Estes, by dissecting the scribal habits of contracted and suspended forms of ΠΝΕΥΜΑ in 𝔓46, the earliest extant Greek papyri of the Pauline Epistles we have in our New Testament repository, and is thought to be dated from the later half of the second century towards the first half of the third century, which instantiates when the standarisation of ΠΝΕΥΜΑ in the system of nomina sacra is thought to have materialized. Estes concludes, "Thus, the evidence simply does not support the assumption that the scribe of 𝔓46 ‘signaled the Spirit’s deity by writing πνεύμα as a nomen sacrum’, and ‘distinguished the divine spirit from any other spirit … by not writing these as a nomen sacrum’ ... Once again, these observations reinforce the conclusion that the scribe’s use of nomina sacra for πνεῦμα language is idiosyncratic and inconsistent and, therefore, serves as an unreliable indicator of meaning." (p. 584).

The idiosyncratic fluctuation of πνεύμα as nomina sacra in the second and early third century is synonymous with another fact of New Testament scholarship, which is that it is widely known that the Spirit christology/pneumatology was doctrinally neglected from early first-century Christian theological disputation and discourse in the first and early second century. H. B. Swete states, "So far as regards the doctrine of the Holy Spirit this witness falls far short of the wealth of teaching which we find in St Paul and St John; neither in fulness nor in precision does it reach the standard which we might have expected from the immediate successors of the Apostolic age . . . There was as yet no formal theology of the Spirit and no effort to create it; nor was there any conscious heresy." (Swete, The Holy Spirit in the ancient church, p. 31) It's common knowledge that it's not until the end of the second century and into the third that theologies of the Spirit/Spirit christology begin to receive more doctrinal formulation, notably in the writings of Irenaeus of Lyons (Adversus haereses), Tertullian (Adversus Praxean) and Origen of Alexandria (De principiis), all of which were prompted by early heresiological movements such as Montanism, Marcionism, Gnosticism, Monarchianism and Neo-Platonism. (see Kärkkäinen, The Holy Spirit: A Guide to Christian Theology, A. I. C. Heron, The Holy Spirit, p. 64, S. M. Burgess, The Spirit and the Church: Antiquity, p. 19, 24, for more research on the confusion of the Spirit in early Christian writings such as 1 Clement and the Shepard of Hermas).

However, what the early scribal system of nomina sacra of πνεῦμα uniquely demonstrates is that this negligence of early Spirit pneumatology was not merely at a theological level, but manifested at the level of early Christian piety and devotion, which implicates that there was lack of early Christian devotional piety and reverence towards πνεῦμα in the first century that as a result, yielded a later and less consistent standardisation of πνεῦμα in the system of nomina sacra until the second and third century where this devotional piety shifted with an incremented theological input from early Christian theologians in pneumatology primarily as a reaction to various heresiological movements. This conclusion is problematic, as a necessary precondition of the supposition that the apostles and immediate disciples of Jesus were Trinitarian is that the Spirit's deity must have not only been taught by the apostles, but that the earliest traceable forms of Christian devotional piety and reverence mapped by the scribal system of nomina sacra must necessarily reflect similar thresholds of reverence and devotional piety to the Spirit in the first century, compared to the nomina divina, particularly God ΘΕΟϹ and Jesus ΧΡΙϹΤΟϹ, which attest primitive yet consistent nomina sacra abbreviations across our earliest New Testament Greek MS indicating consistent devotional piety and reverence to ΘΕΟϹ and ΧΡΙϹΤΟϹ during the period. The fact that this is not what New Testament textual criticism confirms for πνεῦμα, suggests that the immediate apostolic successors of Jesus of Nazareth did not express Trinitarian devotional piety, but rather a binitarian form of devotional piety that coincides with the christological priority of "Father-Son" disputation in the first century.

This is supplemented by the additional citations in the literature that capture some of these examples of early Christian devotional piety. For example, Pliny The Younger’s report to Emperor Trajan presents an eye-witness account from Christian apostates on the early worship of Bithyinan Christians around 111-112 AD, of which the account reads, "They asserted that this was the sum and substance of their fault or their error; namely, that they were in the habit of meeting before dawn on a stated day and singing alternately a hymn to Christ as to a god . . . (Epp. x, 96-7: Lightfoot's translation). Pliny's report is confirmed by the development of the system of Christian nomina sacra, since we know that one of the earliest nomina divinia that reflected profound devotional piety and reverence is Christ ΧΡΙϹΤΟϹ, and therefore, Bithyinan Christians expressing devotional piety to the sacred name ΧΡΙϹΤΟϹ in the form of antiphonal hymn singing during the first half of the second century is entirely consistent with early scribal system of nomina sacra during that same period.

This supplementary evidence, however, is entirely bereft for the Spirit ΠΑΤΗΡ, and opposed to an argument of silence, the silence of historiographical evidence of devotional and ritual piety to the Spirit in the first and second century is elucidated by what scholars suggest, namely, the late second century extension of ΠΑΤΗΡ in the scribal system of Christian nomina sacra in early New Testament MS and other Christian writings along with the general doctrinal negligence of pneumatology and Spirit christology until the heresiological controversies of the second and third century that forced more theological input from proto-orthodox theologians thereby accelerating the doctrinal formalization of Spirit theology and the role of the Spirit in pre-Ante Nicene Trinitarian models.

And even though Spirit christology in the second century writings adduced increased doctrinal elaboration, primarily from Origen of Alexandria's explicit pneumatology by defining the Spirit in his work On First Principles as a distinct hypostasis (cf. I 1.3), this ambiguity persisted into the fourth century, known to be the climax of Trinitarian theology with the Council of Nicaea in 325 A.D. Franz Dünzl states, "All in all, however, the Spirit had never been brought into the centre of the disputes – even the Nicene Creed (325) had limited itself in its third article to the formula: ‘We believe ... in the Holy Spirit.’ (A brief history of the doctrine of the Trinity in the early Church, p. 118) This tautological article of faith reflects an overlapping dissonance among early Christian writers, scribes and believers of rudimentary pneumatology regarding the role, function and nature of the Spirit that is starkly exhibited in early Christian literature. For example, The Gospel of Philip, a third-century Valentinian gnostic gospel discovered in the Nag Hammadi Library adduces the following passage about the infancy narrative and the Holy Spirit: "Some said Mary became pregnant by the Holy Spirit. They are wrong and do not know what they are saying. When did a woman ever get pregnant by a woman?" (The Gospel of Philip, Translated by Wesley W. Isenberg, 12.1-3) Here, the author of the Gospel of Philip identifies the Holy Spirit with the personified Wisdom or Sophia from ancient Old Testament wisdom traditions, that Theophilus of Antioch, a contemporary of Irenaus of Lyons understands as one of the "hands of God" along with the Logos. (Theophilus of Antioch, Ad Autolycum, Ibid., II.18., note that Theophilus of Antioch has explicitly identified the Spirit with the personified Sophia).

It's interesting that in Irenaus of Lyon's uses the same language as Theophilus to describe the Son and the Spirit as noted by Dünzl (Against the Heresies IV, pref. 4; 20.1; V 1.3; 5.1; 6.1; 28.4 and Demonstration of the Apostolic Preaching, see p. 17). This identification is also echoed in the 3rd century Gnostic Sethian treatise, On the Origin of the World also discovered from the Nag Hammadi Library. De Conick states, "According to On the Origin of the World, the seventh heaven is a mirror creation of the eighth heaven since Pistis Sophia has instructed Sabaoth to create "likeness" of the eight heaven in the seventh. The congregation of angels are the images of the spiritual elements or angels in the eighth heaven, the virgin Holy Spirit is a reflection of Sophia, and the psychic Christ is a likeness of the aeon Jesus (104.29-106.11) (Heavenly Temple Traditions and Valentinian Worship: A Case for First-Century Christology in the Second Century, p. 320) This virgin Holy Spirit is understood in the treatise to have been enthroned along side the aeon Christ. What all of this suggests is the heterodox Sethian and Valentinian pneumatological speculation represents the earliest attestations of the personification of the Spirit which ensued in the context of Old Testament Wisdom traditions of a personified Sophia, which scholars unanimously acknowledge is the product of Neo-Platonism and Hellenistic Judaic Wisdom speculation. What we find, then, is the pneumatological elaboration of the personification and divine roles and functions of ΠΝΕΥΜΑ adduced in early Gnostic heterodox speculation rather then any sort of apostolic baseline we would expect if the claim of the apostles teaching Trinitarianism were true.

This also coheres with the fact that the equivalent for ‘spirit’ in Greek is neuter (ΠΝΕΥΜΑ) evokes more the idea of a gift than that of a personified subject (Dünzl, p. 117) and so the earliest forms of Spirit pneumatology didn't conceptualize the Spirit as a personal, active power until the Spirit was hypostasized through heterodox gnostic speculation of primarily Valentinians and the Sethians of the Spirit as pre-existent female power,Sophia. It's no surprise, then, that the 4th century Bishop of Ancyra, Marcellus of Ancyra postulated this very claim about Valentinus and his followers, “...These then teach three hypostases, just as Valentinus the [Gnostic] heresiarch first invented in the book entitled by him, On the Three Natures. For he was the first to invent three hypostases and three persons of The Father, The Son, and The Spirit, and he is discovered to have filched this from Hermes, Plato and Aristotle...” - (Paragraph 9, Verses 46-49, “Anthimi Nicomediensis Episcopi et Martyris De Sancta Ecclesia,” or (Pseudo-Anthimus), “On the Holy Church,” by Marcellus of Ancyra Text, Translation and Commentary by AHB Logan in the Journal of Theological Studies, NS, p. 95) Even though this Valentinian text is lost, the evidence currently delineated corroborates Marcellus of Ancyra's premise that the Valentinian speculation of the hypostasization of the Spirit as pre-existent virgin Sophia is the earliest traceable occurence of the 'hypostasis' of the Spirit in early Christian literature and theological speculation, and not Origen of Alexandria's exposition De Principiis written in the 3rd century.

Hence, when we return to early scribal system of Christian nomina sacra, what I realize is that Marcellus of Ancyra's claim is actually substantiated by what we know from the evolution of Christian nomina sacra in the scribal tradition, and I will demonstrate how this is the case. Firstly, the late and inconsistent standardisation of ΠΝΕΥΜΑ in the system of nomina sacra which Paap among others confine to the early to later half of the second century demonstrates that the earliest forms of Christian devotional piety and reverence towards ΠΝΕΥΜΑ is comparatively lacking juxtaposed to the nomina divinia of the Primary Group, that is ΙΗϹΟΥϹ, ΧΡΙϹΤΟϹ, ΚΥΡΙΟϹ, ΘΕΟϹ which are regularly and consistently abbreviated across our earliest New Testament Greek papyri and codices by early Christian scribes, and that it's not until the late third century to fourth century, that we see ΠΝΕΥΜΑ achieve a comparable level of consistency to the nomina divina in the scribal system of Christian nomina sacra during that time period. This was partly due to the underdeveloped first-century pneumatology and Spirit christology that scholars widely acknowledge casted away the Spirit from the same doctrinal formalization as other emergent christological traditions that focused on the relationship between ΘΕΟϹ and ΙΗϹΟΥϹ, (hence why the earliest forms of Christian devotional piety adduce a binitarian pattern of ΘΕΟϹ and ΙΗϹΟΥϹ) and that inconsistent abbreviations of ΠΝΕΥΜΑ across early New Testament Greek papyri such as the scribe of 𝔓46 arbitrarily abbreviating ΠΝΕΥΜΑ for the divine Spirit but also other uses of ΠΝΕΥΜΑ such as the human spirit, demonstrates that the collective early Christian scribal conscience of what the Spirit really was, was heavily skewed and ambiguous.

The argument then, simply put, is that these are unacceptable conclusions if we are to take the claim that the immediate Apostles were Trinitarians, that is, worshippers of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit as the one true God. The evidence simply does not support this supposition, and to the contrary, I can further demonstrate Marcellus of Ancyra's claim that the hypostatization of the triadic formula of the Father, Son, and the Spirit originated around second-century heterodox gnostic Neo-Platonic speculation of Hellenistic Judaic traditions, namely The Old Testament Wisdom traditions of a pre-existent and personified Wisdom or Sophia and the conflation of Sophia and the Spirit among Valentinian, Sethian and other gnostic circles and the Logos speculation well-documented in the works of Philo of Alexandria, that were built upon by the early Christian Logos theologians, Justin Martyr and Tertuillian, that produced the personifying conflation between the principle of Logos and Christ, the son of God is corroborated by what we know of the development of the early scribal system of nomina sacra and Greek-Hebrew gematria, an apparent first-century scribal numerological system where Hebrew and Greek alphabets are assigned numerical values, used to interpret biblical texts and derive hidden theological meaning. Recall that along with ΠΝΕΥΜΑ, there are two other nomina sacra abbreviations that we would expect to be present among the nomina divinia had the contender's claim been true. These are: ΠΑΤΗΡ (Father) and ΥΙΟϹ (Son), which are found in the Tertiary Group of nomina sacra and therefore are dated slightly later then the standardisation of ΠΝΕΥΜΑ in the system of nomina sacra, to the later half of the second century to mid half of the third century.

Tracing the numerical frequencies and text-coding of nomina sacra groups in the New Testament papyri, Bokedal concludes," Within Table 4.6 some additional textual – creedal features may be detected as well, such as the inclusion of terms constituting the early Triune pattern God, Christ, and Spirit (cf. 1 Clem. 46.6), rather than the supposedly somewhat later appearing Father, Son, and Spirit; (Bokedal, But for Me, the Scriptures Are Jesus Christ: Creedal Text-Coding and the Early Scribal System of Nomina Sacra, p. 118). Bokedal contends that among the triadic patterns of the nomina sacra illuminated by early Christian scribal gematria, the earliest traceable triune pattern of nomina sacra in New Testament Greek papyri, is the triadic formula of God, Christ and Spirit, and the subsequent orthodox triune formula of Father, Son, and Spirit among early Christian nomina sacra appears quite later. This coheres with the historical order of nomina sacra groups, as the standardisation of ΠΝΕΥΜΑ in the Secondary Group, allowed the two nomina divinia ΘΕΟϹ and ΧΡΙϹΤΟϹ to be frequently employed with ΠΝΕΥΜΑ by the middle of the second century, although the inconsistency of ΠΝΕΥΜΑ abbreviations even from New Testament Greek papyri dated to this time period demonstrates that ΠΝΕΥΜΑ was not employed as regularly as the nomina divinia until the fourth and fifth-centiry codices (p. 117). Nevertheless, the vast majority of early New Testament Greek papyri we have adduce ΠΝΕΥΜΑ as nomina sacra during the second century, and thus the proto-Triune formula of God, Christ, and Spirit appears as the earliest traceable triune formula for the one true God.

I would refer to this proto-Triune formula as the "unhypostasized Trinity" that is before the nomina sacra of ΠΝΕΥΜΑ, ΧΡΙϹΤΟϹ and ΘΕΟϹ were understood as personal, hypostasized subjects, the Father was understood in early Christian piety and devotion as the only true God that sent Christ to the world, and shared a pre-existent divine glory with Christ. This materializes as a form of binitarianism/dyadic christology, which over time includes the Spirit as a key principle in the dyadic ΘΕΟϹ-ΧΡΙϹΤΟϹ relationship, thereby yielding the earliest devotional form of the Trinity in Christian piety. It's not until the standardisation of the Tertiary Group, that this triune formula evolved to hypostasize the nomina sacra of the proto-Triune formula, which results in the later proto-ortodox triune formula of Father, Son, and Spirit in the system of nomina sacra. Commenting about this, Bokedal states, "Although one of the key designations for the first person of the Godhead, ΠΑΤΗΡ (Π̅Η̅Ρ̅), emerges as visible nomen sacrum earlier than the important Christological title ΥΙΟϲ (Υ̅ϲ), in creedal structures developing throughout the second century, the two appear together as central NS, as can be gathered from early manuscripts, such as P66 (e.g., Jn 5:20–23), which contains nine regularly employed NS." (p. 116). Interestingly, with the standardisation of the Tertiary Group around the end of the second century in the system of Christian nomina sacra, the data suggests that ΠΑΤΗΡ appears first as a nomen sacrum, and then shortly after ΥΙΟϲ becomes sacralized together with ΠΑΤΗΡ towards the end of the second century.

What this means is that the hypostatization of ΘΕΟϹ as "Father" in the system of nomina sacra is the product the heterodox gnostic speculation of 'hypostasis' Marcellus of Ancyra argues originated within the Valentinian strand of these gnostic heresiological movements, where God/ΘΕΟϹ is hypostasized as 'The Father/ΠΑΤΗΡ', then Christ/ΧΡΙϹΤΟϹ is hypostasized as the Logos and finally the Spirit/ΠΝΕΥΜΑ is hypostasized as Sophia/Wisdom, all of which is initially the product of heterodox Gnostic and Neo-platonic speculation during the second and third century, that is picked up by proto-orthodox theologians such as Origen, Justin Martyr, and Tertuillian. The evidence for this progression is absolutely clear. I've already presented early Valentinian and Sethian gnostic traditions for the Nag Hammadi Library (Gospel of Phillip and On the Origin of the World) that date around the exact period of the end of the second century to the beginning of the third century where the hypostasized triune formula of Father, Son and Spirit is approximated to have extended in the system of Christian nomina sacra. Therefore, Marcellus of Ancyra's claim that the personification of The Father, Son and Spirit occurred roughly with the heterodox gnostic (potentially Valentinian) speculation of 'hypostasis' in the late second/early third century is consistent with the extension of ΠΑΤΗΡ and ΥΙΟϲ from the Tertiary Group into the system of Christian nomina sacra during the exact same time window.