What I'm Reading - The Only True God

The first Christians were Jews.  This point is often forgotten.  They did not consider themselves to be converts to a new, different religion.  It was, for them, a realization of truths already affirmed in their faith – that God was saving his people Israel, through his chosen and anointed servant, Jesus.

These Jewish Christians still believed in and worshipped only one god – the Only True God.  This is the idea that set Jews (and early Christians, not yet understood as a separate group) apart from the rest of the world in the first century – their monotheism. 

It wasn’t until much later that Christians developed the doctrine of the Trinity to more fully express their understanding of the nature of God (the Father, the Son, and the Spirit).  But the idea that Jesus could be described as the Son of God – that Jesus could be described as “the Word” who was with God in the beginning and who was, himself, God was not a new concept within that Jewish monotheism.

In his book, The Only true God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context, James McGrath succinctly describes how both Judaism and Christianity diverged from this common doctrine.

But this task isn’t as straightforward as you might think.  It would be relatively simple if there had been a uniform and monolithic understanding of what it meant to be monotheist (a term that was not used until recently). But there wasn’t.  Within Judaism during the centuries that led up to the time of Jesus and the first century after there were differing ideas of how to express this worship of only one God.  Was it appropriate to worship the one true God in temples devoted to other pagan gods?  Could one pray to the one true God using a different name? 

And what of God’s appointed agents… sometimes described as bearing God’s name, and entrusted with God’s authority and power?  Were they worshipped as God, as part of God or kept separate? 

And how did a Christian understanding of monotheism differ from a Jewish one - if it was different...?

This short book isn’t a defense or apologetic for Monotheism (either Jewish or Christian) but is rather a history of the doctrine, tracking the multiple currents within the two diverging faiths. And though it’s a short book (104 pages without endnotes (Endnotes! I hate endnotes! I always loose my place flipping back and forth to read them.))  it’s not a simple book.  McGrath holds a dialogue with both ancient and contemporary authors.  Sometimes I felt like I was watching a roundtable discussion between theologians, most of whom were unfamiliar to me.

But, that’s not to say that I haven’t come away from the book having learned nothing.  I was especially interested in the very Jewish way that McGrath approached monotheism within the gospel of John.  (So much so that I’ve already placed my order on-line for another of McGrath’s books - John's Apologetic Christology: Legitimation and Development in Johannine Christology (though I managed to find a used copy for much MUCH less than the $132 new price!)).  What does it mean –from a Jewish (Christian) viewpoint – when John says that Jesus was accused of blasphemy for making himself God when he was “a mere man” (John 10:33)?  What does it mean when Jesus utters the words “when you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am…” – using absolutely the unutterable name of the Only True God for himself?   I am intrigued by his answer and I want to read more.

The chapters on Monotheism in the letters attributed to Paul, and win the book of Revelation were also informative and engaging.  But I found myself at the book’s end, wondering why there weren’t chapters on the monotheism in the synoptic gospels, and the other epistles...  I always want to read more.