How Paul expounds on the Shema in 1 Corinthians 8:6 in light of progressive revelation
There are a countless amount of verses throughout the New Testament that teach Christ’s unity and equality with God, many of which can only be fully expounded upon in an academic setting. Today I am going to examine 1 Corinthians 8:6, a passage that strongly affirms Christ’s deity in a very interesting and unique way: by taking the Jewish Shema and rearticulating it in order to include Christ.
The Shema is a Jewish creedal affirmation of the Oneness and Unity of God. Jews have long regarded the recitation of this creed to be mandatory, in that traditionally observant Jews are required to repeat it in their prayers twice a day. The first and perhaps most well known verse of the Shema is found in Deuteronomy 6:4- “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one”. While Jews and Christians may have many points of contention with one another, they can at least agree on this: The Lord, sole creator of the heavens and the earth, is one.
But now let us consider the aforementioned passage in 1 Corinthians 8. It is evident from the text that the language Paul is using in verses 5-6 has its referent in the Jewish Shema. He outlines this for us in verse 5, where he states that “there are many so-called gods” and “lords”. The context of this verse makes it clear that Paul is condemning idolatry. This is significant, because it is the first parallel that we can see him drawing between the message he is going to convey in verse 6 and the Shema, as the Shema also condemns idolatry by stating that we are to love God with every ounce of our being. As GK Beale and DA Carson put it: “Paul echoes other parts of the Shema, including Deut. 6:5; 11:13, when he says, “Anyone who loves God is known by him” (8:3). It is loving God, not mere theological knowledge, that is a defining characteristic of God’s chosen people.” N.T Wright has noted why this is important: “Paul’s references to humans loving God, as opposed to vice versa, are few and far between, and in this case at least … the reason for the reference is that he wishes to allude to, or echo, the Jewish confession of monotheistic faith.” (N. T. Wright, 1992)
Carson and Beale have also pointed out that, while “gods” are often referred to in the Old Testament, they are only once referred to as lords. They elaborate on why this is significant in the following quote: “Paul’s statement that “there are many so-called gods” and indeed “many gods and many “lords” seems to affirm the OT’s recognition that pagan gods, while not really being gods in any sense comparable to the God of Israel (and thus are only so-called gods), do represent some reality. This may suggest an echo of Deut. 10:17, where, just a few chapters after the Shema, the Israelites are told “the LORD [MT: yhwh; LXX: kyrios] your God, he is God of gods and Lord of lords.” This is the only text in the Hebrew Bible where “gods” and “lords” appear in the same sentence as in 1 Cor. 8:5, and in that sentence Israel’s God is referred to as both Lord and God (as in the Shema), and his superiority over any other hypothetical claimant to that title is strongly affirmed as in 1 Cor. 8:5.” (Beale, G. K., & Carson, D. A. (2007). Commentary on the New Testament use of the Old Testament, 717–718)
Paul continues in verse 6: “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.” It is imperative that we recognize that the key words in this verse, “Lord”, “God”, and “One, are the exact same words used to affirm God’s oneness in the Shema. As Richard Bauckham has pointed out, this is not a coincidence: “Paul has in fact reproduced all the words of the statement about YHWH in the Shema . . . but has rearranged them in such a way as to produce an affirmation of both one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ… Paul is not adding to the one God of the Shema a ‘Lord’ that the Shema does not mention. He is identifying Jesus as the Lord whom the Shema affirms to be one.” (Bauckham, Richard; God Crucified, 38.)
“Lord” and “God” are therefore being used here as synonyms- both refer to the deity who the Shema declares to be one. The necessary import of this fact is that Jesus, who Paul affirms to be our "Lord", is also the very God who we are commanded to worship in the Shema.
Now, some have objected to this argument by saying that since Jesus recited the Shema (Mark 12:29), it cannot refer to him. Others have belittled this argument by deeming it with the title “the splitting of the Shema”, arguing that it is wrong for us to interpret the passage this way because its logical end is polytheism.
With regard to the first objection: why is it wrong for Jesus, a member of the Godhead, to affirm that he exists in unity with the other persons? This is a contention that has not been (and arguably cannot be) substantiated. Further, isn’t it true that when God originally gave the Shema, he was referring to himself in the third person? God said: “The Lord our God, the Lord is one...And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart.” (Deut. 6:4, 6). The fact that Jesus was referring to himself in the third person in Mark 12:29 does not mean that he was distinguishing himself from that which he was referring to. Logic such as that would lead us to believe that God, when commanding the Shema to the Israelites, was distinguishing himself from himself, since he, too, was referring to himself in the third person!
To the second objection, I obviously do not think that this argument leads to polytheism. If I did, I wouldn’t be promulgating it. To say that this passage is "splitting the Shema" is not exactly true. Paul was not splitting it, but rather altering it as a consequence of God's progressive revelation. As I previously stated, he was not altering the shema so as to include a deity that it didn’t already affirm. In altering the shema Paul does not elicit polytheism, but rather he reaffirms monotheism. As I have already outlined, the way in which he goes about this is by taking the key words from the Shema and rearranging them in order to show that Jesus Christ is God. The import of this is not that there is more than one God; instead, Paul’s it is that there is only one God, whose being consists of more than one person.
In this verse alone, Paul has both affirmed the monotheism of his ancestors, and embedded the name of Jesus Christ into the very definition of God. It is thus impossible for anyone to consistently profess belief in the New Testament, while also rejecting the teaching that Paul has so wonderfully laid out for us here. If you do not believe in the deity of Christ, you do not believe in the New Testament. It is as simple as that.