1 Cor. 8:6: The Christian Shema

“to us there is only one God, the Father (heis Theos ho pater), from whom everything comes, and for who we live. And there is one Lord, Jesus Christ (heis Kyrios ‘Iesous Christos), by whom everything exists, and by whom we ourselves are alive.” 1 Corinthians 8:6 J.B. Phillips New Testament (PHILLIPS)

24.2. 1 Cor. 8.6. This verse is widely thought to be a quotation by Paul and so very possibly the earliest statement of belief in the pre-existence of Christ … It is obvious that there are indeed pre-Pauline and pre-Christian elements in v. 6. The confession that God is one is clearly Jewish (cf. particularly Deut. 6:4; James 2:19); the confession that ‘Jesus is Lord’ is particularly beloved by Paul but was certainly characteristic of Hellenistic Christianity apart from Paul (Rom. 10.9; I Cor. 12.3; Eph. 4.5; Phil. 2.11); and the use of prepositions ‘from,’ ‘through’ and ‘to’ when speaking of God and the cosmos (‘all things’) was widespread in the ancient world and typically Stoic. But there is no real parallel to Paul’s formulation (not even 1 Tim. 2.5), and it seems to me more probable that Paul himself has put together these earlier and widespread elements in response to the situation confronting him in Corinth…

Thus he starts from the common ground of the basic monotheistic faith (‘There is one God, the Father’); first he adds ‘from whom (come) all things’, an assertion with which the Corinthians would have been familiar and with which they would no doubt have agreed; but then he also adds ‘and we to him’ or ‘from whom we exist’ (RSV). Next he appends to this the basic confession of Hellenistic or Gentile Christianity, ‘Jesus Christ is Lord’. But with this he does three striking things. First he asserts that Christ the Lord also is one; thereby he splits the Shema (Deut. 6.4), the Jewish confession of monotheism, between God the Father and Christ the Lord in a way that has no earlier parallel. Second he adds ‘through whom (came) all things’; thereby he splits the more regular Stoic formulation also between the one God (‘from him’, ‘to him’) and the one Lord (‘through him’; contrast Rom. 11.36), in a way that is best paralleled in Jewish Wisdom tradition (as we have seen). Third, he again adds a reference to himself and his readers – ‘we (exist) through him’ – using the same preposition as in the preceding phrase. (Dunn, Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation [Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids MI: Second edition, 1996], VI. The Wisdom of God, 24. Christ as Wisdom in Paul, pp. 179-180; bold emphasis mine)

(d) Perhaps we should see I Cor. 8.6 as an extension of the thought of I Cor. 1-2. As there he claims that the crucified Christ is the one who fulfils God’s plan of salvation, who embodies God’s wisdom, so here he extends the thought to assert in effect that God’s plan of salvation is continuous with his power in creation. Here the ‘folly’ to the Gentiles would be that he has united creation and salvation so closely together (breaking down the Hellenistic dualism between spirit and matter; cf. 6:12-20). And the ‘stumbling block’ to the Jews would be that the one Lordship of God (Deut. 6.4) has to be divided with a crucified Christ. Paul is not thereby abandoning his monotheism (and he seems to recognize no such tension in his affirmation of Jesus’ Lordship elsewhere – Rom. 15.6; I Cor. 15.24-8; II Cor. 1.2; 11.31; Eph. 1.3, 17; Col. 1.3; even Phil. 2.11, ‘Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father’), then presumably he must intend something (a word missing??) the same in I Cor. 1 – Christ who because he is now Lord now shares in God’s rule over creation and believers, and therefore his Lordship is the continuation and fullest expression of God’s own creative power… (Ibid. p. 182; bold emphasis mine)

“Paul’s concern in this context is explicitly monotheism. The issue of eating meat offered to idols and participation in temple banquets is an instance of the highly traditional Jewish monotheistic concern for the loyalty to the only true God in a context of pagan polytheistic worship. What Paul does is to maintain this Jewish monotheistic concern in a Christian interpretation for which loyalty to the only true God entails loyalty to the Lord Jesus Christ. He takes up from the Corinthians’ letter (at the end of verse 4) the typical Jewish monotheistic formula ‘there is no God except one’ in order to agree with it and to give, in verse 6, his own fuller monotheistic formulation, which contrasts the many gods and many lords of the Corinthians’ pagan environment (verse 5) with the one God and one Lord to whom Christians owe exclusive allegiance.

Verse 6 is a carefully formulated statement:

a   but for us [there is] one God, the Father,

b   from whom [are] all things and we for him,

c   and one Lord, Jesus Christ,

d   through whom [are] all things and we through him.

“The statement has been composed from two sources, both clearly recognizable. One is the Shema’, the classic Jewish statement of the uniqueness of God, taken from the Torah itself, recited twice daily by all observant Jews, as we noticed in chapter 1. It is now commonly recognized that Paul has here adapted the Shema’ and produced, as it were, a Christian version of it. Not so widely recognized is the full significance of this. In the first and third lines of Paul’s formula (labelled a and c above), Paul has in fact reproduced all the words of the statement about YHWH in the Shema’ (Deut. 6:4: ‘The LORD our God, the LORD, is one’), but Paul has rearranged the words in such a way as to produce an affirmation of both one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ. It should be quite clear that Paul is including the Lord Jesus Christ in the unique divine identity. He is redefining monotheism as christological monotheism. If he were understood as adding the one Lord to the one God of whom the Shema’ speaks, then, from the perspective of Jewish monotheism, he would certainly be producing not christological monotheism but out right di-theism. The addition of a unique Lord to the unique God of the Shema’ would flatly contradict the uniqueness of the latter. The only possible way to understand Paul as maintaining monotheism is to understand him to be including Jesus in the unique identity of the one God affirmed in the Shema’. But this is in any case clear from the fact that the term ‘Lord’, applied here to Jesus as the ‘one Lord’, is taken from the Shema’ itself. Paul is not adding to the one God of the Shema’ a ‘Lord’ the Shema’ does not mention. He is identifying Jesus as the ‘Lord’ whom the Shema’ affirms to be one. Thus, in Paul’s quite unprecedented reformulation of the Shema’, the unique identity of the one God consists of the one God, the Father, and the one Lord, his Messiah. Contrary to what many exegetes who have not sufficiently understood the way in which the unique identity of God was understood in Second Temple Judaism seem to suppose, by including Jesus in this unique identity Paul is certainly not repudiating Jewish monotheism, whereas were he merely associating Jesus with the unique God, he certainly would be repudiating monotheism.” (Bauckham, God Crucified-Monotheism & Christology in the New Testament [Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI/ Cambridge, U.K., 1998], pp. 37-39; bold emphasis mine)

“The description in its undivided, unmodified form is used elsewhere by Paul, specifically in Romans 11:36a: ‘from him and through him and to him [are] all things’. Here the statement simply refers to God, whereas in 1 Corinthians 8:6 Paul has divided it between God and Christ, applying to God two of the prepositions that describe God’s relationship as Creator to all things (‘from’ and ‘for’ or ‘to’) and the third of these prepositions (‘through’) to Christ. Although Paul’s formula in Romans 11:36 does not appear precisely in this form elsewhere, there are enough Jewish parallels to make it certain that Paul there simply quotes a Jewish formulation. That God is not only the agent or efficient cause of creation (‘from him are all things’) and the final cause or goal of all things (‘to him are all things’), but also the instrumental cause (‘through whom are all things’) well expresses the typical Jewish monotheistic concern that God used no one else to carry out his work of creation, but accomplished it alone, solely by means of his own Word and/or his own Wisdom. Paul’s reformulation in 1 Corinthians 8:6 includes Christ in this exclusively divine work of creation by giving to him the role of instrumental cause.” (Ibid, p. 39; bold emphasis mine)

We should also note 1 Corinthians 8:5-6, where there is another indication of the liturgical acclamation of Jesus as Kyrios, and the close association of him with God in devotional practice. Here, in explicit contrast to the worship practices of the polytheistic environment, Paul affirms a two-part exclusivistic confession of “one God [heis Theos] the Father” and “one Lord [heis Kyrios] Jesus Christ” (the latter phrase resembling the longer, sonorous wording of the acclamation in Phil. 2:11). In this astonishingly bold association of Jesus with God, Paul adapts wording from the traditional Jewish confession of God’s uniqueness, known as the Shema, from Deuteronomy 6:4, “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord” (Kyrios heis estin [LXX], translating Heb. Yahweh ‘echad). This adaptation of the Shema may be Paul’s own creative formulation here, but, as we have seen, the acclamation of Jesus as ” Lord” obviously had long been a traditional feature of Christian devotional practice in Pauline Christianity and in other Christian circles as well, in both Greek and Aramaic. (Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity [William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Grand Rapids, MI/Cambridge U.K. 2003], 2. Early Pauline Christianity, p. 114; bold emphasis mine)

And:

In another tantalizingly brief passage, 1 Corinthians 8:6, Jesus is explicitly identified as the one “through whom (are) all things and we through him.” That is, Jesus here is linked with God, and the repetition of the prepositional phrases using “through” (dia) makes emphatic his role as agent in creation as well as redemption. As Conzelmann stated, “His preexistence is accordingly presupposed.” Exactly. Jesus’ preexistence is logically presupposed in the reference to his agency in creation. But Paul’s brief statement of this also seems to presuppose that the idea was already known to his readers, thus requiring no elaboration from him here. We would be very grateful if Paul had elaborated the idea of Jesus’ preexistence, but this sort of passing reference to it is in fact very important for historical purposes. It indicates that the idea had already become disseminated among his churches so early that by the time he wrote his epistles he could take it for granted as known.

Scholars have sometimes asserted that the background of this idea lies in Greek philosophical traditions, noting that the prepositional phrases in 1 Corinthians 8:6 resemble language developed in Stoic pantheism.¹⁰⁷ But, though the Greek phrasing of this passage has parallels in Greek philosophical traditions, in fact the background and the logic of the statement in 1 Corinthians 8:6 and the other Pauline passages where Jesus’ preexistence is alluded to lie in Jewish tradition, especially Jewish apocalyptic notions. The idea of Jesus’ agency in creation and redemption is not driven by speculative interests, and does not respond to philosophical questions about how a transcendent deity could create the material world. Instead, the logic proceeds from profound convictions about the sovereignty of the one God reflected in Jewish apocalyptic tradition, which posit that all of history is subject to God, to whose predetermined purposes all things correspond.¹⁰⁸ Thus, in spite of the vagaries and evils of history, God’s redemptive purpose is supreme and will triumph in eschatological glory. This eschatological triumph corresponds to and fulfills God’s creation purpose, and so eschatological entities can be referred to as preexistent in various ways.¹⁰⁹

In the Pauline references we have noted here, and in other New Testament references as well (e.g., Col. 1:16-17; Heb. 1:2; John 1:1-3), it is clear that attributing preexistence to Jesus proceeds from the conviction that he is the eschatological agent of redemption. Convinced as early believers were that Jesus has been sent from God, and that final salvation is to be realized through Jesus, it was, in the logic of Jewish apocalyptic, only a small and very natural step to hold that he was also in some way “there” with and in God from before the creation of the world.¹¹⁰

In fact, in the conviction that Jesus was clothed with the very glory of God and was to be reverenced in unprecedented ways as the Kyrios, early Christians seem to have gone beyond the notions about eschatological figures found in Jewish apocalyptic texts (such as the idea that the Elect One/Son of Man was “named,” “chosen and hidden” before God “before the world was created, and for ever,” (1 Enoch 48.1-3).¹¹¹ Paul’s formulaic statement in 1 Corinthians 8:6 indicates that already at that early point in the Christian movement believers were attributing to Christ not only preexistence or foreordination, but also an active role as divine agent in creation. Scholars commonly (and cogently) suggest that this reflects an appropriation of biblical/Jewish traditions about God’s Wisdom pictured as God’s companion in creation (Prov. 8:22-31; Sir. 24:9; Wisd. of Sol. 7:22; 8:4; 9:9).¹¹² (Ibid., pp. 123-125; bold emphasis mine)

“The pagan pantheon cannot be simply dismissed as metaphysically nonexistent and therefore morally irrelevant. It signals an actual phenomenon within the surrounding culture that must be faced and dealt with, not simply sidestepped. For this reason – which Paul will deal with in more detail in ch. 10 – the allegiance of local paganism to this or that ‘god’ and ‘lord’ must be met with nothing short of the Christian version of Jewish-style, Shema-style, monotheism. It is this that Paul now states. Whatever its links with the Hellenistic-Jewish world of Philo and others, v.6 resonates thoroughly with echoes of the far more ancient and widespread formula from Deuteronomy 6:4. In the Hebrew the confession of faith begins with the words:

Shema Yisrael YHWH Eloheinu YHWH Echad

In the Septuagint this reads:

Akoue ‘Israel kurios ho theos hemon kurios heis estin.

What Paul seems to have done is as follows. He has expanded the formula, in a way quite unprecedented in any other texts known to us, so as to include a gloss on theos and another on kurios:

all hemin

heis theos ho pater

ek hou ta panta kai hemeis eis auton,

kai heis kurios ‘Iesous Christos,

di’ hou ta panta kai hemeis di’ autou.

Paul, in other words, has glossed ‘God’ with the ‘the Father’, and ‘Lord’ with ‘Jesus Christ’, adding in each case an explanatory phrase: ‘God’ is the Father ‘from whom are all things and we to him’, and the ‘Lord’ is Jesus the Messiah, ‘through whom are all things and we through him’. There can be no mistake: just as in Philippians 2 and Colossians 1, Paul has placed Jesus within an explicit statement, drawn from the Old Testament’s quarry of emphatically monotheistic texts, of the doctrine that Israel’s God is the one and only God, the creator of the world. The Shema was already, at this stage of Judaism, in widespread use as the Jewish daily prayer. Paul has redefined it christologically, producing what we can only call a sort of christological monotheism.

This fact is becoming more widely recognized in recent scholarship, though its omission from some of the older literature remains remarkable.” (Wright, The Climax of the Covenant, Christ and Law in Pauline Theology [Fortress Press, Minneapolis 1993 ISBN 0-8006-2827-6], pp. 128-129; bold emphasis mine)

“What Paul has done seems plain enough. He has kept the ‘one’ intact, but he has divided the Shema into two parts, with theos (God) now referring to the Father, and kurios (Lord) referring to Jesus Christ the Son… He insists that the identity of the one God also includes the one Lord,” (Fee, Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Commentary [Hendrickson Publishers, March 2007], pp. 90-91; bold emphasis mine)

“In the striking passage where Paul reshapes the Jewish Shema to embrace both the Father and the Son while as the same time emphasizing his inherited monotheism, Paul asserts that the ‘one Lord’ (=Yahweh) of the Shema is to be identified as the Lord Jesus Christ … In a still more profoundly theological way, by his inclusion of the preexistent Son as the agent of creation, Paul has thus included him in the divine identity at its most fundamental point, since the one God of the Jews was regularly identified vis-à-vis all other ‘gods’ as the Creator and Ruler of all things. Thus, it is one thing for Christ to be the means of redemption, but for him likewise to be the divine agent of creation is what clearly includes him within Paul’s now adjusted understanding of ‘the one God,’ … One of the reasons for naming Christ as ‘the Lord’ = Yahweh of the Shema [is] to place Christ as already present with the Israel to whom the Shema was originally given,” (Ibid., 502-504; bold emphasis mine)

Did the four NT writers who applied the title theos to Jesus regard this dramatic departure from Jewish custom a compromise or an abandonment of their hereditary monotheism? Apart from Paul’s heis theos kai pater panton in Ephesians 4:6, written subsequently to Romans 9:5, there is no explicit use of the heis theos formula by these writers after they had used theos as a christological ascription. But perhaps 1 Corinthians 8:4-6 indicates how Paul and other NT authors reformulated their monotheism to accommodate their belief in the deity of Christ.

The LXX version of the beginning of the Shema (Deut. 6:4) reads kyrios ho theos hemon kyrios heis estin. Paul concurs with the Corinthians in this basic affirmation (oidamen … hoti oudeis theos me heis, 1 Cor. 8:4) but proceeds to restate the undifferentiated generic heis theos of the Shema> in a binitarian formulation heis theos ho pater … kai heis kyrios ‘Iesous Christos (8:6), which indicates that in Paul’s view ho pater + ‘Iesous Christos = heis theos. That is, Paul did not regard heis kyrios as an addition to the Shema> but as constituent part of a christianized Shema>. Heis theos in 8:6 is not contrasted with heis kyrios, as if they were generically distinct, but with theoi polloi (en ourano) in 8:5, just as heis kyrios is opposed to kyrioi polloi (epi ges). Apparently, then, the solution Paul proposed to the theological problem created by the Christ event was to use the expression heis theos only of the Father (cf. Eph. 4:6), never of Jesus, although theos could occasionally be used of Jesus, while the expression heis kyrios was applied exclusively to Jesus (cf. Eph. 4:5), never to the Father, although kyrios was often applied to the Father. It would seem that Paul never relinquished his inherited Jewish monotheism but reformulated it so as to include Christ, within the Godhead. In light of other monotheistic statements scattered throughout the NT, it is safe to assume that no NT writer regarded the surrender of monotheism as the corollary of belief in the essential deity of Christ. (Harris, Jesus as God – The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus [Baker Books, Grand Rapids MI 1993], Chapter XIII – Conclusions: Theos as a Christological Title, J. The Significance of the Christological Use of Theos, 2. Theos Is a Christological Title That Explicitly Affirms the Deity of Christ, 294-295; bold emphasis mine)

112. A related question demands brief treatment. To whom did the NT writers attribute the divine action described in the OT? To answer “the Lord God” (YHWH elohim = LXX kyrios ho theos) is to beg the question, for the authors of the NT wrote of OT events in the light of their Trinitarian understanding of God. A clear distinction must be drawn between what the OT text meant to its authors and readers and how it was understood by the early Christians who lived after the advent of the Messiah and the coming of the Spirit. Certainly the person who projects the Trinitarian teaching of the NT back into the OT and reads the OT through the spectacles of the dynamic or Trinitarian monotheism of the NT is thinking anachronistically. On the other hand, it does not seem illegitimate to pose a question such as this: To whom was the author of Hebrews referring when he said (1:1), “At many times and in various ways God spoke in the past to our forefathers through the prophets”? That it was not the Holy Spirit in any ultimate sense is evident from the fact that in neither the OT nor the NT is the Spirit called “God” expressis verbis. And, in spite of the fact that the LXX equivalent of YHWH, viz., kyrios, is regularly applied to Jesus in the NT so that it becomes less a title than a proper name, it is not possible that ho theos in Heb. 1:1 denotes Jesus Christ, for the same sentence (in Greek) contains “(the God who spoke…) in these last days has spoken to us in a Son (en huio).” Since the author is emphasizing the continuity of the two phases of divine speech (ho theos laleses… elalesen), this reference to a Son shows that the one who speaks in both eras and huios as his final means of speaking shows that in the author’s mind it was not the Triune God of Christian theology who spoke to the forefathers by the prophets. That is to say, for the author of Hebrews (as for all NT writers, one may suggest) “the God of our fathers,” Yahweh, was no other than “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (compare Acts 2:30 and 2:33; 3:13 and 3:18; 3:25 and 3:26; note also 5:30). Such a conclusion is entirely consistent with the regular NT usage of ho theos. It would be inappropriate for elohim or YHWH ever to refer to the Trinity in the OT when in the NT theos regularly refers to the Father alone and apparently never to the Trinity. (Ibid., p. 47; bold emphasis mine)

Paul states that Christians know that “there is no God but one” (1 Cor. 8:4 NIV). “For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth (as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’), yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live” (vv. 5–6 NIV). Verse 6 looks like a creed or confession of faith, which Paul may be quoting or which he may have composed himself (translation ours):

One God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we from him;

One Lord, Jesus Christ, and through whom are all things, and we through him.

If Judaism has a creed, it is the Shema (meaning “Hear,” the confession’s first word): “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deut. 6:4–5). The Septuagint translates the last part of verse 4, “The Lord our God is one Lord” (kyrios heis). In first-century Judaism, the affirmations of “one God” and “one Lord” were synonymous and referred to the same divine being—YHWH, the God of the patriarchs, of Moses, and of the prophets. Jesus affirmed the Shema as the first and greatest commandment (Matt. 22:36–38; Mark 12:28–34; cf. Luke 10:25–28),²² and in that regard his view was in the mainstream of ancient Judaism.

Paul and other New Testatament writers echo the Shema when they affirm that God is one, or that there is “one God” (Rom. 3:30; 1 Cor. 12:6; Eph. 4:6; Gal. 3:20; 1 Tim. 2:5; James 2:19).²³ Immediately preceding 1 Corinthians 8:6, Paul states that the person who “loves God” knows that “there is no God but one” (1 Cor. 8:3, 4). These statements clearly echo the Shema: “The Lord our God, the Lordis one. You shall love the Lord your God” (Deut. 6:4–5). The references to loving God and believing that God is one in such close conjunction eliminate any reasonable doubt that Paul is drawing here on the Shema. Given this immediate context in verses 3–4, there should be no question about whether verse 6 also alludes to the Shema. The confession “for us there is one God, the Father” (v. 6a) repeats the point already made that “there is no God but one” (v. 4).

None of this would have been surprising or controversial, were it not for what comes next: “and one Lord, Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 8:6b). In the context of an undeniable allusion to the Shema, Paul’s affirmation of “one Lord” is naturally read as also echoing the Shema—yet with the potentially shocking twist that this “one Lord” is Jesus Christ.

Unorthodox religious groups have wildly different takes on 1 Corinthians 8:6. Latter-day Saints agree that Jesus is Jehovah (the “Lord”), but they view the “one Lord” as a second deity inferior to the “one God,” and both of them as members of a larger group of many “Gods” and “Lords.” We have already explained why this interpretation is untenable (pp. 406–7).

Oneness Pentecostals also agree that Jesus is Jehovah, but they understand this to mean something almost diametrically opposite the LDS view. According to the Oneness doctrine, Jesus is God the Father manifest or revealed in human flesh. “We have a dual reference to the one God of Israel who is the creator but who has been revealed in a new way as the Lord Jesus Christ.”²⁴ Such a doctrine cannot be derived from Paul’s epistles but must be superimposed on them. Paul consistently distinguished between God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ in quite personal and relational terms, affirming that God the Father sent his Son (Rom. 8:3; Gal. 4:4). Later in this same epistle, Paul states that Christ will deliver the kingdom “to the God and Father” (1 Cor. 15:24 LEB), which clearly distinguishes Christ personally from the person called “the God and Father.”

By contrast, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Unitarians both insist that 1 Corinthians 8:6 does not mean that Jesus is Yahweh, the “one Lord” of the Shema. Jehovah’s Witnesses acknowledge that Paul teaches here that Christ existed before creation, but they regard Christ as God’s “junior partner” in creation.²⁵ Unitarian author Anthony Buzzard interprets “Lord” in this text as if it were synonymous with “Messiah” and as meaning that God exalted the man Jesus: “The amazing new thing that has happened is not that the Jewish creed has been expanded to include a second person as Deity, but that God has elevated a unique man, His Son, to the position of honor at God’s right hand.”²⁶

New Testament scholar James McGrath has offered the most sophisticated defense of a Unitarian-like reading of 1 Corinthians 8:4–6. McGrath admits that Paul is alluding to the Shema: “We are of course in no way denying that the Shema is in mind in 1 Corinthians 8, and that Jesus is being related to it.”²⁷ He argues, though, that the reference to Jesus as “one Lord” is not part of Paul’s use of the Shema but is rather an additional affirmation of Jesus as God’s mediatorial representative and ruler. He asserts that “we would surely have expected Paul to express himself differently” had he meant to identify Jesus as the one God of the Shema. For example, Paul “could have written, ‘There is one God: the Father, from whom are all things, and the Son, through whom are all things.’”²⁸ This would make McGrath’s point in English, with its convenient use of the colon, but it would have not said what McGrath is suggesting in ancient Greek, which ran words together with no spaces and rarely used any sort of punctuation. In any case, this is essentially an a priori objection, complaining that Paul would not have used the Shema in the way suggested and if he had he should have done it differently.²⁹

McGrath proposes that 1 Corinthians 8:5 distinguishes “gods” as heavenly figures from “lords” as their earthly representatives, setting up verse 6 to distinguish between the Father as God and Jesus as his representative Lord.³⁰ He presents the following outline in support of this explanation:

in heaven . . . or on earth

many gods . . . many lords

one God . . . one Lord

The main problem with this explanation is that Paul refers to the “gods” as being both in heaven and on earth: “For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth” (1 Cor. 8:5 NASB). Thus, Paul does not distinguish between “gods” in heaven and “lords” on earth, but in fact uses them as synonymous designations of deity: “For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’” (1 Cor. 8:5 NASB). Here Paul’s reference to the “so-called gods” is restated as referring to “many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords,’” thus showing that “god(s)” and “lord(s)” in this context are synonymous terms for deity.

To buttress his interpretation, McGrath cites an Old Testament text as another example of a text supplementing the Shema: “For there is none like you, and there is no God besides you . . . And who is like your people Israel, the one nation on earth whom God went to redeem to be his people . . . ?” (2 Sam. 7:22–23). McGrath is sarcastic: “I doubt whether anyone has ever suggested that in this passage the people of Israel are being included in the ^Shema.”³¹ Quite so, but this is because “the one nation on earth whom God went to redeem to be his people” is obviously not even remotely synonymous with “God,” whereas “Lord” (Greek, kyrios) is the standard title used in Jewish and Christian Greek writings of the period to represent the divine name emphasized in the Shema itself!

McGrath is correct that one should not just assume that the title “Lord” always represents the divine name,³² but as a rebuttal to the argument made by numerous New Testament scholars his objection is knocking down a straw man. At least four converging factors confirm beyond reasonable doubt that “one Lord” in 1 Corinthians 8:6 alludes to the Shema. (1) In the same epistle, Paul repeatedly refers to Jesus as “Lord” using Old Testament texts about Yahweh, as we have shown (1 Cor. 1:2, 8, 31; 6:11; 10:20–22; etc.). (2) The references to “one God” in the immediate context (8:4, 6a) undeniably allude to the Shema. (3) “Lord” and “God” are both translations of divine names used in the Shema (Deut. 6:4). (4) Paul uses these two names in parallel expressions: “one God . . . one Lord.” What makes this last point especially compelling is that in the Shema, the numerical description “one” actually qualifies the noun “Lord” (Heb., YHWH): “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut. 6:4). In a sentence that admittedly echoes the Shema, the expression “one Lord” can hardly fail to be part of that echo.

“However, Paul establishes the Christological significance of the Shema‘ most pointedly in 1 Cor 8:1–6. His polemic against idolatry in this text is obviously rooted in Deut 6:4–5 and beyond. The first hint of a connection surfaces in verse 3, where Paul, who has a lot to say about God’s love for people, inserts a relatively rare reference to people loving God. On first sight, in verse 4 Paul appears to appeal to the Shema‘, but a more direct antecedent for, ‘There is no God but one,’ had come at the end of Moses’ first address, in Deut 4:35, 39, with his explicit declaration, ‘Yahweh, he is God, there is no other.’ Firmly in the tradition of Moses, Paul hereby declares the uniqueness and exclusive existence of Yahweh in contrast to the nothingness of idols, which is a very deuteronomistic theme.

“His comments in verses 5–6 reflect a thorough understanding of the Shema‘ in its original context. For the sake of argument, he declares hypothetically that even if one concedes the existence of other gods (which, in the light of verse 4, he is obviously not actually willing to do), ‘but for us (all‘ hemin) there is but one God (heis theos), the Father, from whom all things came (cf. Deut 32:6, 18) and for whom we live (cf. Deut 14:1); and there is but one Lord (heis kyrios), Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.’ Translated into its original context on the plains of Moab, this is precisely the sort of thing that Moses could have said: ‘Even if one concedes the existence of other gods (which in the light of Deut 4:35, 39 he is obviously unwilling to do), but for us there is but one God, our Father (cf. Deut 1:31; 14:1; 32:6, 18), from whom all things came (cf. Gen 1:1–2:4a) and for whom we live (cf. Exod 19:5–6); his name is Yahweh, through whom all things came (Exod 20:11; 31:17), and through whom we live (Exod 20:2; Deut 5:6).’ What is remarkable in Paul, however, is his insertion of the name ‘Jesus Christ’ after kyrios, which, on first sight, reflects Hebrew ‘Yahweh’ of the Shema‘. However, in view of his reference to ‘many gods’ and “many lords’ in verse 5, here he appears to have in mind the title ‘adonay rather than the personal name Yahweh. But the Christological effect is extraordinary. In the words of N. T. Wright,

“Paul has placed Jesus within an explicit statement of the doctrine that Israel’s God is the one and only God, the creator of the world. The Shema was already, at this stage of Judaism, in widespread use as the Jewish daily prayer. Paul has redefined it christologically, producing what we can only call a sort of Christological monotheism.

As Richard Bauckham points out, 1 Corinthians 8:6 uses every word of the Shema (excluding the introductory formula “Hear, O Israel”) in some form—assuming we include the word “Lord.”³³ That is, the words that form the confession “the Lord our God, the Lord is one” (Deut. 6:4)³⁴ all appear in the Pauline confession “to us one God . . . one Lord.” There are four key words in the confession of the Shema: “Lord” (representing the divine name Yahweh, as just explained), “God,” “one,” and “our”; these words all appear in Paul’s confession in 1 Corinthians 8:6 (with the dative of the personal pronoun hēmin, “to us,” instead of the genitive hēmōn, “our”). An echo or allusion to the Shema need not use the noun “Lord,” but if it is there—particularly qualified by the word “one”—it cannot plausibly be excluded from the echo. After all, “Lord” (YHWH) is the one word repeated in the Shema.

Bauckham is correct when he says, “If he [Paul] were understood as adding the one Lord to the one God of whom the Shema‘ speaks, then, from the perspective of Jewish monotheism, he would certainly be producing, not christological monotheism, but outright ditheism.”³⁵ For Paul to add to the Shema a confession of any mere creature as “Lord” alongside the one God, as McGrath maintains, would be in reality to affirm belief in two deities. The same problem attaches to the polemical argument of Unitarian apologists like Buzzard. In their zeal to defend monotheism, they inadvertently argue for de facto two divine beings, one of which is subordinate to the other.

21. Similarly Capes, Old Testament Yahweh Texts, 149–51.

22. The Gospels also allude to the Shema in Mark 2:7; 10:18; cf. Matthew 19:17; Luke 5:21.

23. See also Romans 16:27; 1 Timothy 1:17; 6:15–16; Jude 25.

24. Bernard, Glory of God in the Face of Jesus Christ, 124.

25. Should You Believe in the Trinity?, 14; see also Reasoning from the Scriptures, 411.

26. Buzzard, Jesus Was Not a Trinitarian, 250.

27. McGrath, Only True God, 40.

28. McGrath, Only True God, 40.

29. Likewise in James F. McGrath, “Trinitarians without Colons? Rob Bowman on 1 Corinthians 8:4–6,” Religion Prof (blog), May 25, 2010, a response to an earlier version of this critique of his interpretation of the text.

30. McGrath, Only True God, 41.

31. McGrath, Only True God, 42.

32. McGrath, “Trinitarians without Colons?”

33. Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel, 28; see further 27–30, 97–104, 210–18.

34. The Hebrew has no verb “is” expressed here, though the LXX translation does.

35. Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel, 28.

(Robert M. Bowman Jr. & J. Ed Komoszewski, The Incarnate Christ and His Critics: A Biblical Defense [Kregel Academic, Grand Rapids, MI, 2024], Part 3: The Name of Jesus: Jesus’ Divine Names, Chapter 25: “Lord” as the Divine Name of Jesus, pp. 496-500)

The idea that Paul, the earliest Christian writer, identified Jesus as Yahweh has met with stiff resistance from many scholars. An interesting example is James Dunn, who in one of his last books acknowledges that Paul “was quite happy to take references to Yahweh and refer them to the Lord Jesus,” citing the use of Joel 2:32 in Romans 10:9–13 and the use of Isaiah 45:21–23 in Philippians 2:9–11.³⁶ After giving other examples of texts identifying Jesus as God in other ways (Rom. 9:5; Col. 1:15–17, 19), Dunn comments, “It looks very much, then, that Paul was so convinced that God had acted through Christ that he did not hold back on some occasions from identifying Christ with God.”³⁷ Yet after all this, citing just one passage (1 Cor. 15:24–28), Dunn walks back his comment, saying that in this passage Paul “expressed himself more carefully,” as though Paul’s enthusiasm had gotten the better of him in all of the other passages.³⁸

We will discuss 1 Corinthians 15:24–28, perhaps the most popular passage from Paul’s epistles cited against the doctrine of the deity of Christ, in chapter 38 (pp. 741–43). For now, we would simply point out that this passage does not even use the title kyrios and certainly does not deny that Jesus is Yahweh incarnate. It is not legitimate to pit one passage in an author’s writings against numerous other passages, especially when the one does not deny what the others affirm. If anything, for example, Paul’s many references throughout 1 Corinthians to Jesus as “Lord” in ways that clearly quote from or allude to Old Testament texts about the Lord Yahweh should be given priority when seeking to interpret one passage in the epistle popularly thought to conflict with those references. See Table 16 for a list of these Pauline texts (with the references for direct quotations or citations shown in bold italics).

Another way around understanding Paul as identifying Jesus as Yahweh is to argue that Jesus has the name “Yahweh” only in a sense comparable to the angel of Yahweh in the Old Testament, particularly Yahweh’s statement to the Israelites regarding the angel, “Behold, I send an angel before you. . . . Do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgression, for my name is in him” (Exod. 23:20–21). Some Unitarians appeal to this text to show that Jesus has been “given” the name Yahweh only in the sense that Jesus, like that angel, acts as Yahweh’s representative.³⁹ Similarly, J. R. Daniel Kirk argues that Jesus has God’s name in the way that Micah prophesied, that the Messiah would “shepherd his flock . . . in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God” (Mic. 5:4). According to Kirk, this means only that this messianic figure is pictured “functioning with the imprimatur of the divine name.”⁴⁰

The appeal to Exodus 23:20–21 presupposes that the “angel” there is not actually Yahweh or a visible manifestation of Yahweh, a presupposition that continues to be vigorously debated. In any case, the main difficulty for these interpretations is that the specific Old Testament texts cited in their support play no role in references to Jesus as “Lord” in Paul’s epistles or anywhere else in the New Testament. For example, although Mark 1:2 probably alludes in part to Exod. 23:20, the reference to Jesus as “Lord” in Mark 1:3 comes from Isa. 40:3, where no angelic figure is involved.⁴¹ Nor do we find anyone in the New Testament saying that the Father’s name was “in” Jesus. Instead, we find repeated confessions of faith that proclaim that “Jesus is Lord” and lines of argument that depend for their cogency on the equation of Jesus as kyrios with the one called kyrios in such texts as Joel 2:32 (Rom. 10:9–13) and Isaiah 45:23 (Phil. 2:9–11). Thus, this line of criticism in effect skirts the actual Old Testament sources of the New Testament references to Jesus as Lord in favor of cherry-picked texts that play no role in that usage.

Finally, some scholars appeal to an isolated statement in 11QMelchizedek (11Q13), the Dead Sea Scroll document we discussed when we presented a case for a strong monotheism especially in the New Testament.⁴² One translation of the relevant line states, “this is the time decreed for ‘the year of Melchiz[edek]’s favor’ (Isa. 61:2, modified)” (11QMelch 2.9).⁴³ This statement alludes to Isaiah 61:2, which speaks of “the year of Yahweh’s favor” (LEB), and according to this translation substitutes the name Melchizedek for Yahweh. On the assumption that 11QMelchizedek was not actually identifying Melchizedek as Yahweh, this text is sometimes cited as precedent for not understanding Paul or other New Testament writers to be identifying Jesus as Yahweh.⁴⁴

In response, we first note that there are several reasons to be cautious about making too much of the statement in 11QMelch 2.9. As we mentioned in our earlier discussion of this document, it is extremely tattered and incomplete, making its interpretation all the more difficult. Competent scholars have proposed almost every imaginable interpretation as to the identity of “Melchizedek” in this document—human priest or ruler, Michael the archangel or other angelic figure, or indeed Yahweh himself. These difficulties make it highly problematic to use this text as precedent for reading Paul’s references to Jesus as Lord as meaning only that he is the Lord’s representative.⁴⁵

Second, 11QMelch 2.9 may not substitute the name Melchizedek for Yahweh after all. Let’s look at the line again, this time more fully and in a different translation: “It is the time for the ‘year of grace’ of Melchizedek, and of [his] arm[ies, the nat]ion of the holy ones of God, of the rule of judgment.”⁴⁶ Notice that the text refers to the year of grace (or favor) “of Melchizedek and of his armies.” Grammatically, “Melchizedek” and “his armies” stand in the same relation to the “year of favor/grace,”⁴⁷ yet no one suggests that “his armies” also take the place of the divine name in a quotation of Isaiah 61:2. As David Capes comments, “Since ‘for/of Melchizedek’ is co-ordinated with ‘for/of his armies, the people of the holy ones of God,’ Melchizedek cannot be substituted for YHWH without also substituting his armies for him as well.” Capes (following a suggestion by Richard Bauckham) proposes reading the text “with Melchizedek and his people taken as the rightful and sole recipients of this divine favor.”⁴⁸

Finally, regardless of how 11QMelchizedek 2.9 is interpreted, it is nothing like the texts we have discussed in this and the preceding chapter. Specifically, we have not appealed to any New Testament text that quotes from or alludes to an Old Testament text but replaces the divine name with the name “Jesus.” We do not find New Testament texts saying things like “Prepare the way of Jesus” or “Whoever will call on the name of Jesus will be saved.” Conversely, we do not find statements in 11QMelchizedek like “Melchizedek is Yahweh,” whereas Paul presents the statement “Jesus is Lord” (in contexts where “Lord,” kyrios, clearly stands for the divine name YHWH) as a confessional statement epitomizing what the earliest Christians proclaimed and believed (Rom. 10:9; 1 Cor. 12:3; 2 Cor. 4:5; Phil. 2:11). Nor do the Dead Sea Scrolls contain numerous references to Melchizedek forming a pattern of identifying him with Yahweh. There simply is no justification for using this anomalous, non-Christian text produced by an idiosyncratic Jewish sect to try to explain away what Paul repeatedly says.

Indeed, there is evidence throughout Paul’s epistles that he considered Jesus Christ to be the “Lord” Yahweh. We have focused primarily on three passages (Rom. 10:9–13, cf. Joel 2:32; 1 Cor. 8:4–6, cf. Deut. 6:4; Phil. 2:9–11, cf. Isa. 45:23) and mentioned several others. Careful exegesis of these three texts shows that this interpretation is correct in each case. Beyond those three texts, however, there is the cumulative weight of so many statements in which Paul speaks about Jesus as “Lord” in this same way. Table 16 gives a list of such texts from ten of Paul’s thirteen epistles.

The basic confession of early Christianity that “Jesus is Lord” (Rom. 10:9; 1 Cor. 12:3; Phil. 2:11) turns out to entail the most astonishing and radical claim that first-century Jews might have made: that the crucified man, Jesus of Nazareth, was Jehovah.

36. Dunn, Jesus according to the New Testament, 133.

37. Dunn, Jesus according to the New Testament, 134.

38. Dunn, Jesus according to the New Testament, 134.

39. E.g., Perry, “Philippians 2:5–11—Revisited,” [21].

40. Kirk, Man Attested by God, 108.

41. See our earlier discussion of Mark 1:2–3 (pp. 473–74).

42. See p. 409.

 43. Michael O. Wise, §154, “The Coming of Melchizedek: 11Q13,” in Dead Sea Scrolls: A New Translation, trans. Wise, Abegg, and Cook, 592 (brackets and parentheses in Wise’s translation).

44. E.g., Kirk, Man Attested by God, 122, 138.

45. So also David B. Capes, “Jesus’ Unique Relationship with Yhwh in Biblical Exegesis: A Response to Recent Objections,” in Monotheism and Christology in Greco-Roman Antiquity, ed. Matthew V. Novenson, NovTSup 180 (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 93–94.

46. “11Q13 (11QMelch) 11Qmelchizedek,” in The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, ed. Florentino Garcia Martinez and Eilbert J. C. Tigchelaar (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 1207.

47. Both “Melchizedek” and “his armies” are prefixed with ל) l-), meaning “of ” or “for.” The grammatical parallel is obscured in Wise’s translation, “for ‘the year of Melchiz[edek]’s favor’ (Isa. 61:2, modified) and for [his] hos[ts]” (emphasis added); Wise, “The Coming of Melchizedek: 11Q13,” in Dead Sea Scrolls, trans. Wise, Abegg, and Cook, 592.

48. Capes, “Jesus’ Unique Relationship with Yhwh in Biblical Exegesis,” 95–96. (Ibid., pp. 500-504; emphasis mine)

As we have already mentioned, the earliest New Testament reference to Christ’s role in creation appears in 1 Corinthians:

For us there is one God, the Father,

from whom are all things

and for whom we live,

and one Lord, Jesus Christ,

through whom are all things

and through whom we live. (1 Cor. 8:6 NET)

Hardly anyone will dispute that the confession of “one God, the Father, from whom are all things,” which uses the standard expression ta panta (“all things”) for the universe, refers to the Father as the source of creation, the one from whom all created things originate. The tight parallel structure of the text will not allow for the second reference to “all things” that are through Jesus Christ to be anything different.

The interpretation of 1 Corinthians 8:6 is complicated somewhat by its terseness. In fact, the text here uses no verbs at all; a literal translation would run as follows:

For us one God, the Father,

from whom all things and we for him,

and one Lord, Jesus Christ,

through whom all things and we through him

This terse wording is the form of a confession, an expression of religious devotion. Anders Eriksson explains, “We find the style typical for religious confessions: relative clauses, relative pronouns for Him who is praised, a deliberate concern for brevity in the verbless clauses, appositions, and predications of the divinity.”²¹

The addition of the words “and we for him . . . and we through him” are sometimes translated “and we exist for Him . . . and we exist through Him” (e.g., NASB; see also ESV, NRSV). This translation certainly captures at least part of the idea: the affirmations “from whom [are] all things” and “through whom [are] all things” refers not just to the initial creation of the cosmos but to the existence of all created things throughout the history of the cosmos. In other words, Paul is speaking of both the initial creation event and the subsequent history of creation governed by divine providence.

Paul’s words “we for him . . . and we through him” likely go even further. The repeated plural pronoun “we” ties back to the plural pronoun “us” at the beginning of Paul’s statement, which refers specifically to Christian believers, those who confess and place their faith in the Father as God and Jesus Christ as Lord. In this context, to say that “we” are “for” the Father is to confess that as redeemed people we now live for the purpose of glorifying the Father as “one God.” Likewise, to say that “we” are “through” Jesus Christ is to confess that this purpose is realized as a result of what he has done on our behalf.²² Thus, Paul is not here assigning the work of creation exclusively to the Father any more than he is assigning the work of redemption (or the new creation) exclusively to Jesus Christ. Rather, Paul is confessing that the Father and Jesus Christ have active and complementary roles in both creation and redemption.²³

Paul uses different prepositions in reference to the roles of the Father and Jesus Christ, saying that all things are “from” (ex) the Father and “through” (di’) Jesus Christ. Some interpreters have seen in this variation evidence that the Son performed an inferior or lesser role in creation. New Testament scholar Robert M. Grant, for example, comments that in 1 Corinthians 8:6, “The supreme Father resembles the supreme Zeus, while the work of the Lord Christ is like that of the various demiurgic gods to whom cosmic functions were assigned.”²⁴ Similarly, Jehovah’s Witnesses interpret the different prepositions in 1 Corinthians 8:6 as indicating that Jesus Christ was God’s “junior partner, as it were,” in the work of creation.²⁵ If this understanding of Paul were correct, it would mean that he had abandoned the Jewish position that the Lord God is the sole Maker of all things. However, this way of reading 1 Corinthians 8:6 is mistaken.

First, as we saw earlier (pp. 496–500), Paul has taken the words of the Shema (Deut. 6:4), the classic Jewish affirmation of monotheism, and reframed it to refer to the Father and the Son. The application of the words “one Lord” to Jesus Christ echoes that foundational Jewish confession, which in the Septuagint reads, “The Lord our God is one Lord” (Deut. 6:4 NETS). This allusion demonstrates that Paul is not distinguishing two deities, the supreme deity and a lesser one. Rather, he is distinguishing within the nature or being of the one Lord God of Judaism two persons, the Father and Jesus Christ.

Second, the argument from the different prepositions (ek or ex, “from,” the Father; dia, “through,” the Son) fails to come to terms with the way ancient writers, including Paul himself, used these prepositions in reference to creation. Compare 1 Corinthians 8:6 with Paul’s confession about God in Romans (translating both literally):

Notice that the same three prepositions translated here as “from,” “through,” and “for” (ex [ek], di’ [dia], and eis) appear in both texts, each followed by the pronoun “whom” (hou) or “him” (autou), and both concern “all things” (ta panta). These two texts come from the same author and were written around the same time (1 Corinthians ca. 55/56, Romans ca. 57). Given those commonalities and the indisputable understanding that “from whom/him” and “for him” mean the same things in both texts, we should surely understand “through whom/him” to have the same meaning in both texts as well.

In order to understand Paul’s use of these prepositions, it will be helpful to discuss their use in Greco-Roman philosophy. Various schools of thought, including Aristotelianism and Platonism, made use of these Greek prepositions or their Latin equivalents to express various sorts of “causal” relations. Modern thought typically understands a cause as an event that immediately precedes and brings about another event. However, the classic definition of the Greek word aitia, usually translated “cause,” was “that because of which,” a definition given by Plato and the Stoics Zeno and Chrysippus, among others.²⁶ Within this broad definition Aristotle famously delineated four categories of causes: material, formal, efficient, and final. For example, in the case of the material cause, “that out of which a thing comes to be and which persists, is called ‘cause,’ e.g., the bronze of the statue” (Physics 2.3, 194b23–35).²⁷

In the first century AD, the Stoic philosopher Seneca—a contemporary of the apostle Paul—used the statue to illustrate these four causes. A statue’s material cause is the bronze from which it is made; the formal cause is the statue’s shape corresponding to the figure it represents; the efficient cause or “agent” is the artist (or sculptor) who made it; and the final cause is the purpose for which it was made (whether for money, fame, religious devotion, or something else). Seneca (who, as a Stoic, did not himself agree with calling all these distinctions “causes”) summarized these causes and a fifth one attributed to Plato with Latin phrases using five different prepositions: “that out of which [id ex quo], that by which [id a quo], that in which [id in quo], that in accordance with which [id ad quod], that for the sake of which [id propter quod]” (Seneca, Ep. 65.8).²⁸

The Loeb Classical Library edition translates these five phrases as follows: “the material, the agent, the make-up, the model, and the end in view.”²⁹ In the second century, the Roman emperor and Stoic author Marcus Aurelius praised the Universe or Nature: “from thee are all things, in thee are all things, to thee all things return” (ek sou panta, en soi panta, eis se panta, 4.23).³⁰ Of course, this sounds remarkably similar to Romans 11:36, though Paul was praising the personal Creator of the universe, not the Universe itself. As Gregory Sterling, in an influential essay on the subject, notes, “The emperor emphasizes the unity of the cosmos by applying different prepositional phrases to nature; he makes no move to connect the prepositional phrases with different causes. This appears to be a standard Stoic formulation.”³¹ Sterling’s thesis is that Greek “prepositional metaphysics” in Stoicism and Platonism was adapted in Hellenistic Jewish wisdom literature in the service of articulating the Jewish theistic worldview and made its way from there into the New Testament.

Because Jews and Christians had a different worldview than Greek philosophers, they used some of the prepositions with different meanings. Thus, whereas the Greeks typically used the preposition ek or ex to express the material cause (e.g., a statue was made “out of ” bronze), in Paul it identifies God as the ultimate source (Rom. 11:36; 1 Cor. 8:6). What is quite clear, however, is that Paul (and other New Testament authors) employs such “prepositional metaphysics” in regard to the universe or cosmos.

In Romans 11:36, Paul uses the preposition di’ (dia) in reference to one aspect of God’s relation to the universe of “all things.” Thomas Schreiner accurately paraphrases Paul’s statement: “God is the source of all things, the means by which all things are accomplished, and the goal of all things.”³² The middle clause expresses what scholars variously call the efficient or instrumental cause—that which directly brought about the effect. As Bauckham puts it, “God was his own instrumental cause in his work of creating and sustaining all things.”³³ Elsewhere, Paul can use dia to express God’s direct role in various works (e.g., 1 Cor. 1:1, 9; 6:14). Michael and Rachel Aubrey, linguists at Wycliffe Bible Translators, comment on 1 Corinthians 1:9, “The high frequency usage of διά [dia] in speech verb (passive) constructions allows for the grammaticalization of διά without reference to an intermediary. In this instance, there is no other potential agent for whom God could be acting as intermediary.”³⁴

In this light, we should understand the words “through whom all things” in 1 Corinthians 8:6 to mean that Jesus Christ is the agent who directly made and sustains all things. Even if we interpret the text as distinguishing the roles of the Father and the Son, the use of “prepositional metaphysics” in this text shows that it is not crediting Jesus Christ with a secondary or inferior role in these works. Rather, in 1 Corinthians 8:6 Paul assigns two of the (“causal”) functions of God (expressed in Romans 11:36) to the Father and the third to Christ. Just as 1 Corinthians 8:6 applies the Shema to both the Father as “one God” and Jesus Christ as “one Lord,” so also it applies the Hellenistic Jewish confession that all things are from, through, and for God to both the Father and Christ.³⁵

21. Anders Eriksson, Traditions as Rhetorical Proof: Pauline Argumentation in 1 Corinthians, ConBNT 29 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1998), 120 (see 120–23).

22. McDonough, Christ as Creator, 151–52.

23. Richard Bauckham, “Confessing the Cosmic Christ (1 Corinthians 8:6 and Colossians 1:15–20),” in Monotheism and Christology in Greco-Roman Antiquity, ed. Novenson, 143–44.

24. Robert M. Grant, Gods and the One God, LEC 1, ed. Wayne A. Meeks (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1986), 112. Greg Stafford cites this statement with approval in Jehovah’s Witnesses Defended, 2nd ed., 201.

25. Should You Believe in the Trinity?, 14.

26. R. J. Hankinson, Cause and Explanation in Ancient Greek Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press; New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 185–86, 242.

27. Aristotle, “Physics,” trans. R. P. Hardie and R. K. Gaye, in The Works of Aristotle, 2nd ed., Great Books of the Western World 7, eds. Robert Maynard Hutchens and Mortimer J. Adler (Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, 1990), 271.

28. Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, trans. Richard M. Gummere, Vol. 1, LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, 1918), 448 (lit. trans.).

29. Seneca, Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, 449.

30. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, in Plato, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, ed. Charles W. Eliot, trans. George Long, Harvard Classics 2 (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1917), 217.

31. Gregory Sterling, “Prepositional Metaphysics in Jewish Wisdom Speculation and Early Christian Liturgical Texts,” in Wisdom and Logos: Studies in Jewish Thought in Honor of David Winston, eds. David T. Runia and Gregory E. Sterling, SPhiloA 9, BJS 312 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997), 223.

32. Thomas Schreiner, Romans, BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998), 637–38.

33. Bauckham, “Confessing the Cosmic Christ,” 146.

34. Michael G. Aubrey and Rachel E. Aubrey, “Construing Agency and Cause in Passive Constructions,” in Postclassical Greek Prepositions and Conceptual Metaphor: Cognitive Semantic Analysis and Biblical Interpretation, ed. William A. Ross and Steven E. Runge, FoSub 12 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2022), 209–40, accessed at Perlego.com.

35. Bauckham, “Confessing the Cosmic Christ,” 144–46. (Ibid., Part 4: Doing What Only God Does: Jesus’ Divine Deeds, Chapter 32: The Son as Maker and Sustainer of All Things, pp. 608-612; emphasis mine)

We close by looking at our final passage, which has again been presented as if it denies the deity of Christ, when in reality it is beyond understanding outside of that truth:

Therefore concerning the eating of 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. For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet 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. (1 Corinthians 8:4-6)

Here some wish us to believe that, just like in John 17:3, Paul’s use of the phrase “one God, the Father” excludes Jesus from the realm of deity. Of course, we immediately recognize that there is a real problem here: that’s not all Paul says. If “one God, the Father” is meant to be taken exclusively, then does it not follow that “one Lord, Jesus Christ” also excludes the Father from the realm of Lordship? When we see the distinctive use of the terms “God” and “Lord,” we should realize that the Scriptures are not here introducing a competition or contest between the two. God is just as much Lord as the Lord is God. The two terms are merely being used to describe different Persons in their relationship to one another. They are not being used to say that God is more “Lord” than the Lord is “God.”

But there is something much deeper and glorious in this text that is often missed because we do not hear the words of the New Testament in their ancient context. Paul was a monotheistic Jew, a leader among his people. Each day he, and every Jew like him, repeated the Shema, the prayer that defined the Jewish people. But as an educated Jew, he was able to speak both Hebrew (Aramaic) and Greek, and hence knew the prayer in both languages. Many of his fellow Jews outside of Israel, however, would know it more proficiently in the language of the day, koine Greek. The passage comes from Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel! Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one!”

But in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, which was the Bible of the early church, the Septuagint, it reads  

‘Akoue, Israel kyrios ho theos hemon kyrios heis estin

When one reads Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 8:6 with this famous prayer in mind, it is unquestionable that the apostle is purposefully drawing from the famous Shema and, in doing so, modifying it in light of the revelation that has taken place in the Incarnation of the Son! He takes the very words of the verse and expands them. He identifies the Father as theos, and says all things are made from Him and we exist for Him. This would fit with the old form of the Shema. But then he moves right on, takes the very important term kyrios (which in the original represents the divine Name itself, Yahweh), and applies it to Jesus, and says that all things are through Him and we exist through Him! And to make sure no one misses the point, he takes the very same term used in the Shema to affirm monotheism, the important Hebrew term we looked at previously, echad, rendered in the Septuagint as heis, and applies it to both the Father and the Son (one God, one Lord). Here, the apostle expands the definitional prayer of the Old Covenant people of God in light of the New Covenant revelation of the Son, all the while protecting and maintaining the assertion of monotheism. And he does it plainly with the understanding that his audience, the believers in Corinth, already know and understand this revelation!

Surely here we see how the New Testament is not seeking to reveal something new called the Trinity, but is written with this divine truth already as the common possession of the people of God.    

In conclusion, Warfield expressed it very clearly when he wrote,

In the very act of asserting his monotheism Paul takes our Lord up into this unique Godhead. “There is no God but one,” he roundly asserts, and then illustrates and proves this assertion by remarking that the heathen may have “gods many, and lords many,” but “to us there is one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we unto him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things, and we through him” (I Cor. vii. 6). Obviously, this “one God, the Father,” and “one Lord, Jesus Christ,” are embraced together in the one God who alone is. Paul’s conception of the one God, whom alone he worships, includes, in other words, a recognition that within the unity of His being, there exists such a distinction of Persons as is given us in the “one God, the Father” and the “one Lord, Jesus Christ.”⁴⁷ (James R. White, The Forgotten Trinity: Recovering the Heart of Christian Belief [Bethany House Publishers, Grand Rapids, MI 2019], 5. Jesus Christ: God in Human Flesh, pp. 91-93; bold emphasis mine)

“On the one hand, Yahweh, the one and only God to whom the Israelites declared allegiance is hereby identified unequivocally with Jesus. What the OT has said about Yahweh may now be said about the Christ. On the other hand, in and through Jesus Christ one encounters the one and only God. Inasmuch as Paul is writing to the Corinthians, representatives of the kingdoms of the earth, in the conversion of the Gentiles one witnesses the beginning of the fulfillment of Zechariah’s prophecy as well.” (Daniel I. Block, How Many is God? An Investigation Into The Meaning Of Deuteronomy 6:4-5 [Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (JETS), 47/2 (June 2004), 193–21], pp. 210-211; bold emphasis mine)

“… The messianic kyrios refers unambiguously to Jesus. But the psalm also mentions another kyrios, the God of Israel. The figures who elsewhere in Mark are linked to kyrios are thus now each referred to as kyrios. Furthermore, these kyrioi probably share the divine throne. This seems to confirm our previous observations. There is an overlap between the figures through the word kyrios, but there is also a differentiation which here is reinforced by the presence of two figures designated kyrios. As elsewhere (e.g., 2.28; 11.9), the second, messianic kyrios also shares divine prerogatives or attributes with the first kyrios—the divine throne.

“The presence of two kyrioi on the divine throne in 12.35-37 is the more striking in the light of the fact that it follows immediately upon the citation of Deut. 6.4, the Shema (12.29), which stresses the existence of only one kyrios. The juxtaposition of these two seemingly contradictory passages, which both cite the Scriptures, requires an explanation. The Shema is obviously not, in Mark’s view, incompatible with the existence of two figures, both designated kyrios, on the divine throne. But how is the relationship to be understood?

“Marcus argues that the Shema serves to ward off ‘any misunderstanding of Ps 110.1 in the sense of bitheism’ (1993: 145)… Second, the citation of the Shema, undoubtedly implies that mono­theism is maintained by Mark; the question is how does he understand monotheism?

“Marcus argues that Mark intends the Shema to correct Ps. 110.1 and subordinate Jesus to God so that God’s oneness is not threatened. But it is possible that it is the other way around, that the second passage corrects the first. In other words, Ps. 110.1 defines the correct understanding of the Shema and reinterprets monotheism. I submit that what Mark does by juxtaposing these two OT texts finds its closest analogy in 1 Cor. 8.6, where Paul seems to adapt the Shema so that ‘The Lord, our God, the Lord is one’ becomes ‘There is one God (the Father) and one Lord (Jesus Christ)’. The Shema is reinter­preted so that the one God and Lord now embraces two figures: God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Mark has a similar purpose with his linking of Ps. 110.1 to Deut. 6.4, but instead of splitting ‘Lord’ and ‘God’ between two persons, Mark brings in an OT text which portrays two kyrioi. Furthermore, he puts all emphasis on kyrios. This reinforces the complex view of kyrios found throughout Mark; there is one kyrios, and yet two figures, God and Jesus, share this name and title. The one title kyrios appears to guarantee the oneness of the kyrios. This, in Mark’s view, does not compromise monotheism, but certainly reinterprets monotheism so that Jesus is included on the divine side of the God–creation divide.” (Daniel Johansson, “Kyrios in the Gospel of Mark,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament [2010 33: 101, DOI: 10.1177/0142064X10380130], pp. 117-119; bold emphasis mine)

8:5-6 While there is disagreement over whether all of this verse is from Paul or whether most of it is from the Corinthians, it seems best to take it as Paul’s own confession in which he expands on the points made by the Corinthians. Verse 6 also has a creedal sound to it (and it is set off in poetic form in NA27), leading many to believe that Paul is citing (or slightly modifying) creedal material from the early church. Wright is not exaggerating when he asserts that the writing of this text ranks as “one of the greatest pioneering moments in the entire history of Christology.” We do not know whether Paul wrote this beautifully crisp and profound text or if it existed in some form before the writing of this letter. The text is so theologically profound and so perfectly fits Paul’s argument here and his theology and expression as found elsewhere in his writings that we are inclined to think that he wrote it himself. Paul does not actually qualify the Corinthians’ statements but rather is “engaging in the twofold task of building rapport and anticipating objections.” (Roy E. Ciampa & Brian S. Rosner, The First Letter to the Corinthians (The Pillar New Testament Commentary), D. A. Carson (general editor) [William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, MI 2010], pp. 380-381; italicized emphasis mine)

“Since Paul has already referred to the things worshiped by others as so-called gods in v. 5a, it seems appropriate to place gods and lords in quotation marks in v. 5b, as do the NIV, TNIV, ESV, and other interpreters. Paul affirms that there are many entities in the world referred to as gods or lords, without suggesting that they are what people suppose them to be (as made clear by v. 6). The language of Deuteronomy 6:4 (‘the LORD our God, the LORD is one’) has governed Paul’s wording and argument in these verses…” (Ibid., p. 381; bold emphasis ours)

“While the rest of the world may be enamored with a multitude of gods and lords, for us, that is, for all those who have the knowledge common to all Christians (vv. 1, 4), things are different. The key words of v. 6, ‘Lord,’ ‘God,’ and ‘one,’ are taken from Deuteronomy 6:4 (‘the LORD our God, the LORD is one’), in which Lord and God both refer to the same (one) God. Here Paul ‘has glossed “God” with “the Father,” and “Lord” with “Jesus Christ,” adding in each case an explanatory phrase: “God” is the Father, “from whom are all things and we to him,” and the “Lord” is Jesus the Messiah, “through whom are all things and we through him.”’ Paul thus simultaneously reaffirms Jewish monotheism and THE HIGHEST POSSIBLE CHRISTOLOGY IMAGINABLE. Christ finds his identity within the very definition of that one God/Lord of Israel…

“The statement of the unique lordship of Jesus Christ is central to Paul’s theology in general and to this letter in particular. The ‘christological monotheism’ affirmed here distinguishes the Christian community from both non-Christian Judaism and Gentile paganism. Jewish monotheism is affirmed against all forms of pagan polytheism or (atheism), while, against non-Christian Judaism, Christ is understood to participate in God’s identity.” (Ibid., pp. 383-384; bold and capital emphasis mine)

“It is notable that Paul’s christological modification of the Shema comes in a passage where he hopes his statement might fulfill the very same roles that the Shema did in Judaism. The Shema was important both for its theological affirmation and its sociological function. Early Judaism rallied around the one God who had redeemed them, and their allegiance to that one God is reflected in their worship of him and rejection of all other claims to deity. If the Corinthians would rally together in loyalty to God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, giving Christ the priority that they had been giving their own agendas, it would go a long way toward promoting unity within the Corinthian congregation and toward maintaining a distinct identity in contrast to the pagan environment. The deity of Christ may not be his main point, but his incorporation of Christ the Lord into the very definition of the God of Israel is consistent with the central role that Christ held in the worship and theology of the early church.” (Ibid., p. 382; bold emphasis ours)

What’s more, Paul doesn’t simply include Jesus within Yahweh’s unique divine identity. He even goes so far as to ascribe to Christ the very roles of creation and salvation which both the inspired OT writings and the Apocrypha attribute to Yahweh and his divine Wisdom:

“The roles attributed to the Father and to Christ in creation (from whom and through whom) reflect traditional biblical and Jewish affirmations of the role of God and of Wisdom (for the latter see Prov. 8:22-31; Wis. 9:4, 9; Philo, On Flight and Finding, 109). According to the prophets, Yahweh’s absolute power as creator of heaven and earth is what sets him apart from the idols (which are human creations; see, e.g., Jer. 10:3-16; Isa. 44:9-24). The description of Christ in terms normally attributed to Wisdom (Wis. 8:1-6; 9:1-2, 9; Sir. 24) suggests that just as Jesus takes the place of ‘the Lord’ in the Shema he also takes the place of ‘Wisdom’ within Hellenistic Judaism. As Wright asserts, ‘Paul has indicated that everything one might hope to gain through possessing [Wisdom] can be gained rather by possessing Christ.’” (Ibid., p. 384; bold emphasis mine)

“The relationship between the last clause of v. 6 and the first half of the verse (about God the Father) challenges interpreters. The earliest part of the verse affirmed that all things came into existence through Christ. It would be redundant to say we also came into existence through Christ since we were already included in ‘everything.’ Paul is probably highlighting Christ’s role in both creation and our participation in new creation (i.e., ‘all creation has come into being through him and our experience of the new creation was through him as well’). In this way both statements about Christ may be understood as coming logically between the two affirmations made about the Father. Thiselton, quoting Langkammer, puts it this way: ‘“Paul is the first to outline a sketch of a formal link between Protology [cosmology] and soteriology” which proclaims before the community “God the Father, the originating Ground of all and the end-goal,” alongside “the one Lord, the Mediator of the first creation and the Mediator of the reality of salvation.”’ This suggests a pervasive ‘sense of movement “from … through … to.”’ Christ is understood to be the means of accomplishing all of the Father’s intentions for his creation.

“Paul’s statement puts emphasis on the first-person plural personal pronoun throughout this verse (but for us … and we … and we). He thus stresses the unique covenantal relationship between all Christians and the God who created the universe (in contrast with the delusions of the pagan world). We know the truth of one God and one Lord. We know that all creation comes from the Father and that he is the reason and goal of our existence. We know the Lord Jesus, the agent of all creation and the one to whom our new existence is due as well. The structure of the text implies both a relationship and a contrast between us and the rest of creation. All of creation originated with the Father through the Son. We are a part of that creation, and our existence comes from the Father through the Son as well. But both this text and its context highlight a contrast between Christians and the non-Christian world. For them there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords,’ but for us there is only one God and one Lord. They are part of God’s creation, but we represent the restoration, renewal, and destiny of God’s creation, his new creation (cf. 2 Cor. 5:17), which is accomplished through Christ.” (Ibid., pp. 384-385; bold emphasis mine)

67. N. T. Wright, “Monotheism,” 130. Contra James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 182-183, the preexistence of Christ is presupposed in both his identification with the “Lord” in the Shema and his identification with the role of Wisdom which was present at the time of creation. (Ibid., p. 384)