Continued from Chapter 11i
(Deuteronomy 6:4)
The Nicene Creed
It is a fundamental belief of most Christians that God consists of three beings in one: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. This belief, called the Trinity, is diametrically opposed to the Jewish belief in the absolute oneness of God.
It is also the antithesis of the teaching of the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings concerning the oneness of God. The Christian interpretation of the nature of God as a triune being found its official expression in the Nicene Creed, which became the foundation for both Catholic and Orthodox Christian and later Protestant beliefs on the subject of the Trinity. In the year 325, the Council of Nicaea was convened at the insistence of the still pagan emperor Constantine, who sought to secure through this body an authoritative declaration of Christian belief that would meet with his approval. His goal was to end the violent dissension in the Christian church concerning the nature of God. The Council condemned some of the theories discussing God’s nature then current, including that of Arius, which asserted that the Son was created by the Father. By his political power, Constantine, a treacherous and unbaptized pagan, gave Christianity its doctrine concerning the nature of the deity it worshipped. This is the man who declared as indisputable law the Nicene Creed.
The Nicene Creed asserts, in essence, that God is one, but within that One are three, equally sharing in His being and substance. The three sharing this godhead are designated a triune unity. The overall Christian church, after many lengthy, often violent, disputes, included the doctrine in its fundamental teachings with variations among the many church divisions. But this teaching, the result of theological and doctrinal speculation, is not even a pale reflection of what is taught in the Jewish Bible. In their effort to shore up this teaching, trinitarian Christians distort the meaning of the Hebrew word ’echad (“one”) as applied to the absolute unity of God.
Y-H-V-H is One (Deuteronomy 6:4)
The word ’echad, “one,” is used in the Jewish Scriptures in either a compound or absolute sense. In this study of the word we want to know in what sense is it used in the Shem‘a, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One” (Deuteronomy 6:4). It is true that in such verses as Genesis 1:5: “And there was evening and there was morning, one day,” and Genesis 2:24: “Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife, and they hall be one flesh,” the term ’echad, “one,” refers to a compound united one. That is, day and night constitute one day of twenty-four hours and a man and woman can constitute one couple. However, ’echad often also means an absolute one. This is illustrated by such verses as 2 Samuel 13:30: “Absalom has slain all the king’s sons, and there is not one of them left”; 2 Samuel 17:12: “And of all the men that are with him we will not leave so much as one”; Exodus 9:7: “There did not die of the cattle of Israel even one”; 2 Samuel 17:22: “There lacked not one of them that was not gone over the Jordan”; Ecclesiastes 4:8: There is one [that is alone], and he has not a second; yea, he has neither son nor brother.” Context determines if “one” is compound or absolute. Clearly, the word “one” used in these verses means an absolute one and is synonymous with the word yachid, “the only one,” “alone.” Ecclesiastes 4:8 makes this abundantly clear. Two parallel modifying clauses are added to emphasize that “one” is used to speak of a human who is singularly alone within the family structure.
In speaking of God, no such modifying clauses are necessary, since the biblical record recognizes no divisions or persons in the ontological being of God. The Bible, with even greater refinement implicitly teaches that ’echad in Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One,” is used as a single, absolute, unqualified one. The preponderance of implicit scriptural evidence is that “the Lord is one” is not a mere numerical designation, but an ontological statement as well. Thus, there will come a day when “the Lord [Y-H-V-H] shall be King over all the earth; in that day shall the Lord [Y-H-V-H] be one, and His name one” (Zechariah 14:9).
What does it mean that “the Lord” will someday be “one,” isn’t “the Lord” one now?
Sometime in the future, the whole world will recognize this fact, but those indoctrinated with trinitarianism, in particular, will come to realize the ontological oneness of Y-H-V-H. Presently, they admit to Y-H-V-H being God but say that that “one” is in the form of a triune being. However, “in that day” they will come to realize that “Y-H-V-H is one” not just in that He is the only true and unique God, which they already admit, but that He is one in His very essence of being. They will discard the trinitarian doctrine and no longer think of Y-H-V-H as one part of or a combination of “God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.” Furthermore, “in that day shall His name be one” in that He will not be called “Krishna,” “Allah,” or the “Great Spirit,” but the whole world will come to realize that just as He is ontologically one and there is no other god beside Him so is His Name one - Y-H-V-H.
They will declare as did Naaman, a non-Israelite, “Behold, now I know that there is no God in the whole world, except in Israel…. Your servant will never again offer a burnt-offering or a peace-offering to other gods, only to Y-H-V-H” (2 Kings 5:15-17). As applied to God, the word ’echad has three connotations. First, there is no God other than Y-H-V-H (read as HaShem [“the Name”] or ’Ado-nai [“my Lord,” “Lord of all”] in Hebrew and rendered as “the Lord” or “Jehovah” in many English translations). Second, though we perceive God in many roles — kind, angry, merciful, wise, judging, etc. — these different manifestations are neither contradictory nor an indication of division of His ontological essence. Any action or state of being that we might ascribe to God refers to something that God created in order to interact with his creation — not to God Himself. Third, when we speak of the oneness of God, it is not like the oneness of anything in His creation. While matter can be broken down into sub-atomic particles God’s unique oneness cannot be subdivided. God declares: “I am the first, and I am the last, and beside me there is no God. And who is like me?” (Isaiah 44:6-7).
There is no mention here of a triune god unless one wants to claim that “I am the first” is God the Father, “I am the last” is the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit and “besides Me is no God” designates the Son, Jesus, as “no God” (cf. the claim of Hebrews 8:1 that Jesus sits at the right hand of Majesty, i.e., God.). God says in no uncertain terms that “I am the Lord that makes all things, that stretches the heavens, alone; that spreads abroad the earth by Myself ” (Isaiah 44:24). “By Myself,” following the qere (the marginal reading), mei’iti, “from Me,” “from Myself,” “without help.” Following the ketiv (the written consonantal text), mi iti, “who [was] with Me?” There is no being beside God equal to Him, outside of Him or as part of His essence. God Himself, not part of the wholeness of God, brought about the creation. Only through trinitarian gymnastics do Christians reconcile this verse with Paul’s exaggeration, “For in him [Jesus] all things were created … all things have been created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16).
Continued