None of those whom you extoll for “upholding the Deity of the Messiah!” are Jewish monotheists. And Tertullian believed that there was a time when the Son did not exist.
I can provide numerous Jewish sources that support the deity of the Messiah, Yeshua Ha-Mashiach, but since you have made this a salvation issue, despite the clear grammar in our Bible-both the Jewish Bible and Christian scriptures-you are far from truly embodying what it means to be "Jewish monotheists."
The inspired New Testament writings identify Jesus as that very one Lord through and for whom all things were created!
“Now concerning the eating of food offered to idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world and that there is no God but one (kai hoti oudeis Theos, ei me heis). For even though there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, just as there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords,’ there is actually to us one God, the Father (heis Theos, ho Pater), from whom all things are and we for him; and there is one Lord, Jesus Christ (heis Kyrios ‘Iesous Christos), through whom all things are and we through him.” 1 Corinthians 8:4-6 NWT
Therefore, a Greek speaking Jew would have understood the proclamation that Jesus is the heis Kyrios through and for whom everything exists as an affirmation that Christ is none other than the human incarnation of that very Jehovah God that the Israelites had to love with their whole being!
What this means is that the first Christians saw within the Shema of Deuteronomy 6:4 a clear testimony to the Father and the Son being the Lord God whom the Israelites were commanded to profess and worship.
In other words, within less than twenty years of our Lord’s physical and bodily resurrection and heavenly ascension, both Jewish and Gentile Christians were professing the Father as the Eloheinu (“our God”) of the Shema while also worshiping Jesus as that one and only YHVH of that very same Shema!
As the late Princeton theologian Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield put it:
“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.” (Trinity; bold emphasis mine)
AN OBJECTION REFUTED
Here I would like to address the claim made by a New Testament professor named James F. McGrath in regards to the foregoing passage from Paul.
In his book, McGrath writes:
“As far as grammatical considerations are concerned, there is a sense in which either part of Paul’s statement could be taken on its own as a paraphrase of the Shema. The combination ‘one God and . . .’ suggests that we are dealing with a paraphrase of the Shema with an additional affirmation added alongside it—otherwise we would surely have expected Paul to express himself differently. Theoretically, he could have written, ‘There is one God: the Father, from whom are all things, and the Son, through whom are all things.’ This would have emphasized the oneness of God while including Jesus clearly within that one God. Instead, Paul uses a statement about one God, which itself is sufficient to reiterate the point of the Shema, and then goes further to talk about ‘one Lord.’ When the oneness of God is coupled with another assertion of oneness in this way, we must look carefully to determine whether we are indeed dealing with a splitting of the Shema that is without parallel, or an addition of a second clause alongside the Shema, which is not in fact unparalleled in Jewish literature.
“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. However, the nature of the relationship has for too long been assumed, and is in desperate need of clarification. The first part of Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 8:6 resembles the statement of faith, probably itself a paraphrase of the Shema, found in Philo’s writings: ‘Let us, then, engrave deep in our hearts this as the first and most sacred of commandments, to acknowledge and honor one God who is above all, and let the idea that gods are many never even reach the ears of the man whose rule of life it is to seek for truth in purity and goodness.’5 The point here is that there is one God who is incomparably ‘above all.’ Such language in early Judaism rarely if ever means that no other being may be referred to as ‘god,’ but simply that all others are (to use Paul’s own phrase) merely ‘so called gods’ who are not worthy of comparison with the one true God. Similarly, Paul’s statement slightly earlier that “there is no God but one” (1 Corinthians 8:4) closely resembles the statement in the Sibylline Oracles (3.629) that ‘He alone is God and there is no other.’ Mention may also be made of Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 5.112, which refers either to one God who is common to all Hebrews, or perhaps to the affirmation ‘God is one’ as being common to all Hebrews. At any rate, it seems clear that the language of ‘one God’ was already a well-known way of summarizing this aspect of Jewish belief. Paul uses this language of ‘one God’ and adds to it a reference to “one Lord.” It is thus the addition of another element alongside this traditional affirmation of Jewish monotheistic faith that we must attempt to understand.
“The contrast Paul makes—between many gods and one God and many lords and one Lord—sounds like it is referring to figures in the heavenly and earthly realms, respectively, to divine beings and their earthly representatives or mediators. Paul had just referred to ‘so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth’ (1 Cor. 8:5), and his reference to ‘many gods’ and ‘many lords’ appears to be an expansion or clarification of what Paul had in mind in referring to both heavenly and earthly ‘so-called gods.’6 The flow of the sentence and the parallels within it become clearer when outlined as follows:
“This is what Jehovah says, your Repurchaser, Who formed you since you were in the womb: ‘I am Jehovah, who made everything. I stretched out the heavens BY MYSELF, And I spread out the earth. Who was with me?’” Isaiah 44:24 NWT
“Because of him his messenger finds the way, and by his word all things hold together.” Sirach 43:26 Revised Standard Version (RSV)
“O sovereign Lord, didst thou not speak at the beginning when thou didst form the earth — AND THAT WITHOUT HELP— and didst command the dust and it gave thee Adam, a lifeless body? Yet he was the workmanship of thy hands, and thou didst breathe into him the breath of life, and he was made alive in thy presence.” 4 Ezra 3:4-5 RSV
“then I planned these things, and they were made THROUGH ME AND NOT THROUGH ANOTHER, just as the end shall come through me and not through another.” 4 Ezra 6:6 RSV
“This name was very appropriately bestowed upon him by our first ancestors, in order to signify that He THROUGH whom all things are endowed with life and come into being, is necessarily the ruler and lord of the Universe. Set all mankind an example of magnanimity by releasing those who are held in bondage.” Letter of Aristeas 16 RSV
“The God who made the world and all the things in it, being, as he is, Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in handmade temples; nor is he served by human hands as if he needed anything, because he himself gives to all people life and breath and all things. And he made out of one man every nation of men to dwell on the entire surface of the earth, and he decreed the appointed times and the set limits of where men would dwell, so that they would seek God, if they might grope for him and really find him, although, in fact, he is not far off from each one of us. For by him we have life and move and exist, even as some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are also his children.’” Acts 17:24-28 NWT
And yet the earliest Christians described Jesus as the Agent by and for whom all creation was brought into being!
“This one was in the beginning with God. All things came into existence through him, and apart from him not even one thing came into existence. What has come into existence by means of him was life, and the life was the light of men… The true light that gives light to every sort of man was about to come into the world. He was in the world, and the world came into existence through him, but the world did not know him… So the Word became flesh and resided among us, and we had a view of his glory, a glory such as belongs to an only-begotten son from a father; and he was full of divine favor and truth.” John 1:2-4, 9-10, 14 NWT
“who delivered you out of the jurisdiction of darkness and transferred you into the kingdom of the Son of his love, in whom we have redemption, the pardon of sins,—Who is image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation, because IN HIM everything was created in the heavens and on earth, the visible and the invisible, be it thrones or lordships or governments or dominions—everything has been created THROUGH HIM and to come TO HIM, and before everything HE IS, and IN HIM everything holds together.” Colossians 1:15-17 The Bible in Living English
And attributing it to his glorious Son!
1 post published by answeringislamblog on April 17, 2021
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