Author, Simon.
Published, May 6, 2009.
From Abraham Piper, at Desiring God:
Bruce Ware began his message today saying, “One of the clearest and most forthright themes in Scripture is this: There is one and only one God.”
Then he read us these verses:
Amen to that. Original article here.
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It is certainly a major theme that is reiterated by various characters and authors of the Bible.
It is not, however, self-evident in the Bible that Yahweh was the only God.
In fact, other gods get a lot of mention in reference to Yahweh’s claimed supremacy. As told in the stories of Abraham and Jacob, Yahweh was thought to have been a god of a particular region. A god who was one among many gods. The Old Testament seems to have been synthesised from works of a couple of ancient scholars, one who refered to God as ‘El’ or ‘El Shaddai’ (god of the mountain), and the other calls God Yahweh - god of armies ( a warrior god).
Anyway, I cannot make much of an argument about this here. All I’m saying is that we need to take into account what we know of the ancient Israelites’ understandings of who God was. And from the many stories retold throughout the Old Testament, it is strongly implied that they believed in the actual existence of many gods. Obviously I’ve been reading some Karen Armsrong. I don’t think she has any relevant bias on the matter. I was talking to my friend Tim the other day who has recently finished studies at RTC Geelong and who thinks from his study that this view is the way it was - that there were many gods. There were, of course, the Yahweh loyalists who put Yahweh above the rest of the gods despite popular belief of many gods of different functions (eg Baal; god of fertility)
The above verses don’t really go a long way in explaining God’s uniqueness. The two persectives of ‘one of many gods’ or our monotheistic perspective, can both claim his uniqueness - but in what way? The monothesitic version of God and his encompassing characteristics that we own today (love, peace, goodness, universality etc), may not be too far removed from other versions of ultimate reality.
Thanks Adam. It is interesting that there was a perception of multiple Gods. It makes sense because there were foreign gods, and gods besides Yaweh around the place. However, these verses contain not only authors claiming that Yaweh was the one God, but God himself. So I think that the above verses do go a long way to explaining God’s uniqueness. Either God is found to be ‘Yaweh: the mightiest and most powerful of the Gods’, or he is found to be the only God. If the Bible suggests that there is only one God, then the other gods are not gods at all, even when you take into account the ‘multiple gods’ thesis. The evidence is above; it is relatively self-evident, I think. Sure, the Israelites may have believed in many God’s at various stages, but that doesn’t have anything to say about whether there actually are any other gods.
But what I think probably doesn’t impress anyone. I think it’s true, hence the ‘Amen’.
It is true that some people in the bible seem to hold a polytheistic worldview. The OT records Israel’s constant struggle to be set apart from the world in which they live; namely, to be monotheistic. The very trouble for all of their calamities is this!
It is also true that Yahweh occasionally speaks of “other gods”. But this is not to say that they exist, except of course in the conciousness of those who worship them.
Most importantly the bible teaches that Yahweh is unique and the only God. It is nessecary for the content and the teaching of the bible to be clearly separated. With skepticism many have read the OT texts corporeally, and have forgotten that the bible is primarily revelation.
Speaking of revelation…