Drew
Member
This line of reasoning has already been addressed in this or another related thread.
Here is the relevant argument once more.
Consider this text from 1 Corinthians 8:
Therefore concerning the eating of (H)things sacrificed to idols, we know that there is no such thing as an idol in the world, and that there is no God but one. 5For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, 6yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through Him.
I will argue that this text demonstrates that Paul believes that Jesus shares divinity with God the Father. This argument has two essential elements: (1) that Jewish monotheism was never an inner analysis of the nature of “God” (i.e. an analysis of the possibility, or lack thereof, of multiple “persons” within “God”) but was rather a polemic against pagan gods; and (2) that Paul clearly stitches Jesus into the Shema, the most central of Jewish declarations about God.
Pre-conceptions are so difficult to shake. Many who come to the Trinity debate do so in a state of relative ignorance about what the Bible (and other historical sources) tell us about the nature of the Jewish Old Testament claim that there is only “one god”. Almost everyone, including many people who affirm the Trinity, think that this is a claim that there can be no “inner multiplicity of persons” within the Godhead. And I am not sure how Trinitarians who believe this accommodate such a position with their view that there are in fact, three persons in the Godhead.
However, this is simply not what the Jew is saying when s/he claims that there is only one God. What the Bible (and history) tells us, instead, is that this “God is one” claim is essentially a battle-cry against pagans – by declaring “our God is one”, the Jew is really saying that the gods of the pagans are worthless idols. So the declaration “our God is one” is really directed outward at the pagans their gods, it is not an inward-looking analysis of the nature of Israel’s God.
And Paul clearly has precisely this outward-looking view. In the text from 1 Corinthians, Paul quotes a number of Old Testament passages, including the famous shema of Deuteronomy 6:4 (Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!), and sets the “God is one” claim right in the middle of a critique of pagan gods. In doing so, he is doing precisely what is done in the Old Testament. When Paul asserts the “oneness” of Israel’s God, he is not talking about the inner nature of the Godhead – he is plugging into to the running Jewish polemic against pagan gods. And as will be demonstrated next, it is clear that Paul is, in fact, making the argument that, indeed, there is multiplicity in the Godhead.
Here, again, is the famous shema text which Paul alludes to in the 1 Corinthians text and which would be well known to any Jew:
Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one!
Now not what Paul does with this – he says this:
there is but one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we exist for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ
Note how in the shema the terms “Lord” and “God” are both terms used to refer to the “one”. And yet Paul has teased these two descriptors apart, applying the latter to “the Father” and the former to Jesus. Do you see what Paul is doing – he is taking the quintessential Jewish expression of the oneness of Israel’s God and he is placing Jesus right in the middle of that (along with the Father, of course). How much clearer can Paul possibly be - Jesus is to be understood as part and parcel of that which is referred to when the Jew declares “the Lord our God is one”. Therefore, we cannot read Paul as doing anything other than declaring the divinity of Jesus.
So here we have a Biblical argument – not one that appeals to external sources – that shows that Paul sees Jesus as belonging to the referent of this most Jewish of sayings: “the Lord our God is one”.
