One label that has been placed upon the Judeo-Christian tradition is “ethical monotheism,” but does this characterization apply equally to both branches of the biblical faith? Many Jews would hesitate to say so. What about the Christian doctrine of the Trinity? Is the God of Christians really the same as the God of Israel?
Whatever one might say about the Egyptian reformer King Akhenaton, it seems clear that true monotheism—worshiping only one God and believing in only one God—was Israel’s unique gift to the religious world.
Its foundational creed is the Shema, usually translated “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord” (Deuteronomy 6:4). The very first commandment of the Decalogue is “Thou shalt have no other gods before Me” (Exodus 20:3).
Prodded by the prophets, Israel struggled to maintain this distinctive belief, not always successfully, as the scriptural record shows. But after Israel’s return from Babylonian exile, the will to jealously guard monotheism was greatly strengthened. True, there was some move toward syncretism on the edges of Jewry (as in the Jewish military colony of Elephantine), but her solid core was now firmly rooted in the Holy One of Israel. For Judaism, only one God exists. He cannot be depicted by any graven image, and idolatry is an abomination. He demands righteousness and obedience. His name is holy. Yet he cares. He is high and lifted up, yet he is near.
Yet the monotheistic faith was neither wooden nor simplistic. Already in the Tanakh, one reads of divine agencies and hypostases. The Bible speaks of the Spirit of the Lord (Genesis 1:2; Isaiah 61:1; etc.); the Wisdom of the Lord (Proverbs 8–9, etc.), sometimes equated with the Torah but personified; the hand of the Lord; and other such divine powers.
The importance of these divine powers only increased as time went on. The Lord God was felt to be so transcendent that entities were necessary to bridge the great gulf that separated Creator and creation, but these entities were somehow only an extension of the Holy One.
An example of this thought can be seen in an ancient targum (Aramaic interpretation of the Hebrew Scriptures). 1 It is said that the Lord created heaven and earth in concert with the Wisdom of the Lord and the Spirit of the Lord, and above all through the Word (memra) of the Lord: “And the Word of the Lord created two great lights... . . . and the Word of the Lord created man in His own resemblance, in the resemblance from before the Lord created them.” Similar kinds of expression are found throughout the writings of the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria, who lived at the beginning of the Common Era.
The way had been prepared for this development in the Scriptures. In the first chapter of Genesis, creation took place through a verb: God spoke, and it was so. In Psalm 33:6, the verb becomes a noun: “By the word of the Lord, the heavens were made.” The ancient targum came close to personifying that word. It now only remains to identify the word.
The first Christians were Jews who recited the Shema every day and were firmly rooted in the faith it expressed. In fact, the New Testament refers to the Shema more than once. Yeshua called it the greatest commandment (Mark 12:29). James prefaces a demand for a faith that works with the words, “You believe that God is one? You do well...” (James 2:19). Paul insisted that “God is one,” and therefore He is the God of both Jews and Gentiles (Romans 3:29–30). All the writers of the New Testament, and probably all early Christians, were as fervently persuaded of monotheism as any other Jews.
What is remarkable is that they perceived no conflict between this faith and their trust in Yeshua as the Messiah. The first letter to Timothy puts out a formula that the writer assumes all his readers will accept: “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ [Messiah] Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all” (1 Timothy 2:5, 6). But the letter had just referred to “God our Savior” (2:3), apparently speaking of Yeshua.
As deep as textual archaeologists can dig into the New Testament, they find that the early believers of the Yeshua movement were convinced not only that the Spirit of God was an extension of His Person, but that Yeshua also stood in a unique relationship with God, whom he called his Father. Of course, Israel is also called God Avenu, and the Tanakh speaks of Israel as God’s son (e.g., Hosea 11:1). But the Christians saw Yeshua as somehow embodying in his person everything that Israel was and more. The Gospels picture Yeshua receiving baptism from John the Baptist (Mark 1:9–11 and parallels). The Spirit descended upon him, and a voice from Heaven (the Bath Qol) declared: “Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased.” Thus, in one scene, we see a divine trio: the Father speaking, the Spirit descending, and the Son as the object of this attention.
These three figures figure in early Christian formulas. Baptism was to be “in the name [note the singular noun] of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 28:19). Paul closes his second letter to the Corinthians with the benediction, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the followship of the Holy Spirit be with you all” (1 Corinthians 13:14).
Yeshua was identified as the creative divine Word of Genesis 1 and Psalm 33 (John 1:1–18), who “became flesh and tabernacled among us” (alluding to Exodus 25:8). John emphasized that he existed before his birth and that he returned to glory after his death and resurrection. All of this apparently goes back to Yeshua’s own self-understanding. His own self-designation was the Son of Man, a term taken from Daniel 7:13.
We are confronted here with a great paradox. The early Christians were able to affirm that God is one, but at the same time, they could speak of Yeshua and the Holy Spirit as God. They spoke without sensing any contradiction, perhaps precisely because they were Jews and not Greeks. Rabbinic logic is often a “both/and logic”: “The words of Beth Hillel and the words of Beth Shammai are both the words of the living God.” Besides, as we have seen, the early Christian view was not at all incompatible with the conceptions of God current in the synagogues of the time. But when the Christian message moved on to the Greek world, this mode of thinking caused great discomfort. Greeks were tied to “either/or logic.” The Gentile Christian world needed several centuries to come to terms with it. In fact, they never really solved the paradox on their own terms; they could only give it a name: the Trinity.
After Yavneh, as so often happens in contexts of doctrinal disputation, positions hardened. Jewish monotheism became more rigid and defensive, and Christians mirrored the polarization.
The Talmud reflects this trend in a fascinating vignette of the kind of debate that was going on. 2 The Minim (heretics) were appealing to the divine plurals in Genesis, such as “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26), and other plurals related to deity, such as the “thrones” in Daniel 7:9. The Rabbis found countertexts for most of the problem texts, arguing that the plural referred to the heavenly court. But the expression in Daniel 7 remained a problem. Rabbi Aqiba first theorized that one throne was for God and one for David, but upon being rebuked for that opinion, he suggested that one was for justice and one for charity, thus personifying divine attributes. He was again rebuked by Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah, who declared that one throne was for a seat and the other a footstool. Apparently, the issue was left unresolved.
Do Jews and Christians still worship the same God? Christians still affirm the Shema, approved by Yeshua himself, as well as the rest of the New Testament. But they believe that this God has revealed Himself with ultimacy by sending Yeshua. As a letter addressed to wavering Jewish Christians put it:
“In many and various ways, God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days, he has spoken to us by a Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He created the world. He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of His nature, upholding the universe by his word of power. When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has obtained is more excellent than theirs.” (Hebrews 1:1-4)
1See John Bowker, The Targums and Rabbinic Litarature: An Introduction to Jewish Interpretations of Scripture (Cambridge University Press, 1969), 98, 99.
2Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 38b.