Biblical Christianity and Islam: Plural Monotheism versus Monolithic Monotheism (Part 3)
Posted on June 21, 2007
Filed Under Islam & Biblical Christianity |
(Continued from last Thursday…)
When we look at what God has made, we find it brimming with things that are in relationship; a cosmos filled with a plethora of systems: parts and pieces that are relating to each other for a greater purpose.
If the “heavens declare the glory of God”, then one would naturally assume that the Creator must have some inherently relational aspects to his nature.
Do we find the same thing when we now turn to God’s Word? Let’s first examine the Old Testament.
We mentioned before that the Scripture is a progressive revelation, sometimes beginning with the faintest of hints of God’s nature. One such hint is given early on when we are struck by God’s strange language during His creative work. Out of nowhere is the use of plural pronouns for Himself: “Let US make man in OUR image, after OUR likeness.” (Gen 1:26) There have been arguments that this is just an expression of majesty, but it has no support elsewhere in the Scripture. If this were the only hint, maybe we could pass it off as a strange anomaly. However, it isn’t isolated. In Gen 3:22 we hear it again: “Behold, the man has become like one of US, knowing good and evil.” Then, a few chapters later, in Gen 11:7, “Come let US go down and confuse their language”. It is difficult not to begin to sense that there is something personally complex within this God. In this particular verse it appears He is addressing at least one other person while speaking of a plural action.
In the latter part of one of my favorite passages, God says in Isaiah 6:8, “Whom shall I send and who will go for US?” Here we have a hint of differing roles as well as plurality of persons. One person is active in sending (“Whom shall I send…”) while a plurality of persons is being represented by the agent being sent, (“…who will go for US?”).
In the midst of these hints of a pluralist nature, we are also presented with the clear notion that He is singular. In Deuteronomy 6:4 we read: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” Jesus confirms this in Mark 12:29 when He was asked which of the commandments was the greatest. Jesus begins his response with the affirmation of the singularity of God: “The most important one,” answered Jesus, “is this: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’”
Believing that all of God’s Word is true, we are, at this point confronted with an apparent contradiction: the singularity of God and yet the growing list of hints that He is somehow internally relational and pluralistic in His social nature.
But there are even more hints in the Old Testaments. The next ones are highly interesting. These are the manifestations of persons who are addressed as “God” or the “Lord” and yet they are distinguished from another person who is also called “God”. Here we have separate persons being addressed as God. How can this be?
We are slowly being introduced to the reality of plural monotheism. Though it is mysterious, it is not surprising that the infinite God is highly complex and even less surprising that a God who creates a universe filled with diversity and unity, intimacy and fellowship, harmony and relational systems, has an inherently relational make-up consisting of plurality within His unity.
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5 Responses to “Biblical Christianity and Islam: Plural Monotheism versus Monolithic Monotheism (Part 3)”
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Dr. Del Tackett is president of the Focus on the Family Institute and Senior Vice President to Focus on the Family. He is also the architect and chief spokesperson for Focus on the Family's The Truth Project--a nationwide initiative designed to bring the Christian worldview to the body of Christ.
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Hello Dr. Tackett,
My understandiong of the Shema, Deuteronomy 6:4, “Sh’ma Israel, Adonai Eloheynu, Adonai echad”, is that Elohaynu is a plural form of El, God, and that echad indicates a unity as against yachid which is a singular one. Thus rendered literally it would be, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our Gods, the Lord is a united one.” I believe a similar use of the plural form of God is found in Genesis 1:1 where “God created” and the verb, created, is singular. Grammatically incorrect, but no theological conflict with the triune nature of God.
Also supporting this concept of plurality is the use of the Hebrew word “echad” (meaning ‘a composite one’) in the verse in Deuteronomy 6:4 which Jesus quotes in the passage in Mark mentioned here. This Hebrew word “echad” is the same word that is translanted ‘one’ in Genesis 2:24 where it says, “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”
Probably because we don’t study the Hebrew, no one presumes a “monolithic” quality in the relationship of the man and wife who are “echad” through marital union, yet for some reason we feel there is room for doubt that the Lord our God is “echad” in the same sense even though those are the exact same Hebrew words used in the Scriptures. Not once in all of the Hebrew references of God as ‘one’ is a word other than “echad” used to describe that oneness and in Hebrew “echad” never refers to a single, non-composite “one” as the word ‘one’ in English does.
That’s just my 2 cents in support of your point.
Look forward to seeing you tomorrow at the conference, Dr. Tackett.
Hello. I hope that you are going to expand on your second to last paragraph, about “the manifestations of persons who are addressed as “God” or the “Lord” and yet they are distinguished from another person who is also called “God”…” I would like to hear more about this, with examples.
Thanks for a great blog.
Interesting thoughts, as always, Dr. Tackett. I love the ways that God has revealed Himself to us through all time - and how marvelously He has done so, in what incredible ways.
The Trinity will, I think, always amaze us, and it is with great expectation that I look forward to heaven when we will have a better (though always growing) understanding of that perfect intimacy.
Hello Dr. Tackett
This is my first time to your blog and I love it.
I also can think of another scripture in support of this concept of plurality in Epesians 5:32 when
Paul says, This is a great mystery; but I speak concerning Christ and the church and again reaffirms what Jesus spoke in Mark’s passage. What better way for God to express himself than throuhg love?