The Oneness of YHWH

The passage below is from  a website promoting orthadox Christianity and following is my response.  I personally liked my thinking here, the folks at Eclectic Christian not so much, so I’ve dropped it into my mental dumping ground. The point is “god” is a flexible word with lots of meanings. So while there is only one God there are many gods, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9:5.

to read the original article and the sereis its in go here

http://eclecticchristian.com/2009/01/13/reflections-on-the-deity-of-christ-only-one-god/

 The post from Eclectic Christian

“This is Part 1, of a multi-part series looking at the deity of Christ. Here are the links to the Introduction and Table of Contents.

As we begin, it is important to clarify just what we mean, and what we do not mean, when we say that Jesus is God.

We do no mean that there is more than one God.

Many have tried to portray Jesus as a god, but not the Almighty Lord God, and as a result try to make him less than God.  Yet, the scripture clearly teaches that there is but one true God.  Several of these verses are listed below.

Isaiah 43:10b (NIV) – “… Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me.”

Isaiah 45:5 (NIV) – “… I am the LORD, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God.”

Isaiah 45:21b-23 (NIV) – “… And there is no God apart from me, a righteous God and a Saviour; there is none but me.  Turn to me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.”

Isaiah 37:16 (NIV) – “O LORD Almighty, God of Israel, enthroned between the cherubim, you alone are God over all the kingdoms of the earth.  You have made heaven and earth.”

Deuteronomy 6:4 (NIV) – “Hear, O Israel:  The LORD our God, the LORD is one.”

Mark 12:28-29, 32 (NIV) – One of the teachers of the law… asked him, “of all the commandments, which is the most important?”  “The most important one, answered Jesus, “is this:  ‘Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one…”  “Well said, teacher,” the man replied.  “You are right in saying that God is one and there is no other but him.”

What does all this mean?  Since the Bible clearly states that there is only one true God, we are left with two options.  We can either believe that Jesus Christ is the LORD God, or we can believe that he is not God, or “a god” at all.  If we try to call Christ “a god”, we are then saying that there is more than one God, which, as can be seen from the above verses is definitely not biblical.”

 My response

The oneness of God in the Old Testament has had several interpretations. The word that YHWH* is called el(god) or elohim(gods) was the proper name of a common middle-eastern deity of weather. It also came to mean a divine being or sometimes a powerful one. It was typically applied to divine beings that were worshiped as opposed to beings like the cherubim who are heavenly creatures but not sacrificed to. So Baal is called an El but not necessarily the cherubim who guards the tree of life.

The primary idea that seems present in Judaism is only YHWH is to be worshiped. there are passages that seem to indicate that early Jews thought other gods also existed, like those sons of El that take human wives in Genesis. Gods in Canaanite society were all the sons of El. This is like our believing that Satan is an actual being even though some people worship him.

In the passages quoted in Isaiah above is expressed the idea that not only is YHWH the only el to be worshiped, he is the only el in existence. Isaiah doesn’t’t believe YHWH is the only heavenly being(he believes in cherubim and seraphs) but that He is the only thing that is El like or divine. I think this derives from His being the first cause. He creates everything else. so as the father is greater than the son and the grandfather greater than the father, YHWH is greater than any other heavenly being and only he truly merits being an el(god). The Egyptians had a similar idea. Their creator god, Amun, as the first cause and originator was held by some to be the only real god.

While Isaiah believes that belief in angels doesn’t’t contradict YHWH’s oneness other Jews did. The Sadducee of New Testament fame didn’t believe in angels. I think this is because they believed angels were just gods by a different name. Angels were said to move the planets and protect nations just like the old gods did. People would invoke angels for protection like Catholics invoke saints (and angels!). The Sadducee were also said to only regard the 5 books of Moses as canonical, and apparently they must of thought some parts more inspired than others since angels are found there to, but the precise nature of there beliefs are unknown to us as they are no longer with us. The rest of Judaism thought angels were o.k. so long as you used different terms to refer to YHWH than to them. so while YHWH and Gabriel are both spirit beings, only YHWH could be called an el or theos.

This reduces YHWH’s oneness to nothing more than grammar. I think a more sensible approach would be to say YHWH is the supreme being. By definition there can only be one supreme being. In the event of tie no one is supreme. But here there is no tie. Existence comes from somewhere and that somewhere is YHWH, the Supreme Being. Supreme Being is a category of one. So whether you call your spirit beings angels, ens, els, jannies, kamies, baals, spirits, elves, ashura, devies, theos, daemons, gods or what ever, none of them are God.

 

*Here for conventions sake I use the traditional Judeao-Christian term to refer to the supream being. Of course such a being would be beyond a personal name.