In the first part we asserted that Jewish monotheism was the basic and fundamental belief during the Old Covenant and there could be no other God but YHWH.
Strangely, when Jesus comes on the scene, He demanded and His disciples offered Him the same kind of worship that only YHWH God should have,(1) they gave Him the exclusive titles of God,(2) became witnesses of His Name,(3) notwithstanding they were people of the covenant, Jewish monotheists that would repeat the Shema on a daily basis. In fact, the Apostle Paul goes so far as to modify the Shema and includes Jesus in the monotheistic confession of fundamental faith.(4)
How can this be explained? David S. Norris believes that “Christology, then, must be defined within its Jewish provenance…”(5) Scholar Richard Bauckham asserts that such an approach should be the hermeneutical key to the study of Jesus in Scripture.(6) If we are to approach Scripture with such an understanding, and read what the Apostles wrote about Jesus being God, then we must conclude that by “God” they meant only what a Jewish monotheist would mean, that is: “YHWH,” the only true God. Scripture makes no room for another, neither should we.
The doctrine of the incarnation, revealed in 1 Timothy 3:16, is the answer to the dilemma of how Jesus could be called God. “Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh.” Jesus is the revelation of God in human flesh.(7) YHWH of the Old Testament coming to earth to “seek and to save that which was lost,”(8) fulfilling His promise of redemption.(9) God becomes a Son in the fullness of time.(10) In the man Jesus God dwells, not the presence of a second “God,” nor another “Person”(11) of God, but the fullness of the one Godhead.(12) That is, everything that God is was revealed in Jesus Christ (13) so that whoever has the Son has the Father also,(14) for the Father was in the Son (15) reconciling the world unto Himself.(16) Therefore, the confession of Thomas upon seeing the resurrected Jesus, “My Lord and my God,”(17) is in reality a reaffirmation of the Old Testament confession of faith in YHWH (18) rightly applied to Jesus, God manifest in the flesh.
Notes:
1. John 5:23; Revelation 5:12.
2. Romans 10:13; Philippians 2:11; John 1:1; 20:28; Titus 3:5; Romans 9:5; 2 Corinthians 5:19, etc. Cf. Isaiah 9:6 where Messiah is called El Gibbor (Mighty God) the same title give to YHWH in Isaiah 10:21.
3. Acts 1:8; 9:15; 8:12; 4:12; 5:40-42.
4. “As concerning therefore the eating of those things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one. For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) but to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.” (1 Corinthians 8:4-6.) Emphasis mine.
5. David S. Norris, I AM the God WHO IS in Covenant, unpublished paper, p. 161.
6. “the understanding of Jewish monotheism… will function as the hermeneutical key to understanding the way in which the New Testament texts relate Jesus Christ to the one God of Jewish monotheism.” (Bauckham, God Crucified, p. 26.)
7. 2 Corinthians 4:4-6; John 14:9-11;
8. Matthew 1:21, “And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins.” Jesus literally means “YHWH Savior” or “YHWH is become salvation." See also Luke 19:10.
9. “Say to them that are of a fearful heart, Be strong, fear not: behold, your God will come with vengeance, even God with a recompence; he will come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing: for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert.” (Isaiah 35:4-6). Jesus applied this Scripture to Himself in Matthew 11:3-5.
10. John 1:1, 14, 18; Galatians 4:4.
11. The word “Person” as applied to God is not used by the New Testament writers in the Trinitarian sense not even once. It would be Tertullian who would invent such extra-biblical words to try to explain his nascent trinitarian belief. In Tertullian’s view, however, the members of the Trinity were not co-equal, but there’s a subordination of the Son and Holy Ghost to the Father.
12. See Colossians 2:9-10. The oneness of the Jewish God is reaffirmed in the New Testament in such passages as Romans 3:30; Galatians 3:20 and James 2:19.
13. John 12:44-45.
14. 1 John 2:23.
15. John 14:10-11.
16. 2 Corinthians 5:19.
17. John 20:28.
18. “Stir up thyself, and awake to my judgment, even unto my cause, my God and my Lord.” (Psalm 35:23) Emphasis mine.
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