Is there one God or many?
Hard question · Who God is · raised by 3 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord.”
Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord:
“I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me.”
I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me:
God says, “Let us make man in our image”; the next verse says, “So God created man in his own image”.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.
“The man is become as one of us, to know good and evil.”
And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever:
“Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods?”
Who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?
There are things “called gods”, but “to us there is but one God, the Father”, and one Lord, Jesus Christ.
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.
The objection
Deuteronomy 6:4 and Isaiah 45:5 insist that there is only one God. Yet God says, “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26) and “the man is become as one of us” (3:22); Exodus 15:11 asks who is like the Lord “among the gods”; and three men visit Abraham in Genesis 18. These texts seem to assume many gods.
The answer
The Old Testament is emphatic that only one God exists: “there is no God beside me” (Isaiah 45:5). When it speaks of other ‘gods’, it means the gods the nations worshipped, which it calls idols: “all the gods of the nations are idols: but the Lord made the heavens” (Psalm 96:5). Exodus 15:11 is a song sung after the Lord had executed judgment “against all the gods of Egypt” (Exodus 12:12), and its point is that none of them is like him. Paul draws the same line: there are things “called gods”, “But to us there is but one God” (1 Corinthians 8:5–6).
Whatever the ‘us’ of Genesis 1:26 means, the very next verse returns to the singular, “So God created man in his own image”, so the writer did not think that several gods made mankind. Readers have explained the plural as God speaking with his heavenly court, as a plural of majesty, or as God taking counsel with himself; from the early church on, Christians have also seen in it a hint of the Father, Son and Spirit within the one God. The three visitors of Genesis 18 are the Lord and two angels (18:22; 19:1).
Other answers Christians give
1 John 5:7
Some lists cite 1 John 5:7 in the KJV, “there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one”. These words are missing from all but a handful of late Greek manuscripts and are widely held to be a later addition; in any case they say that the three are one.
Still open
What the plural ‘us’ in Genesis 1:26 refers to is still debated: the heavenly court, a plural of majesty or of self-deliberation, or an early hint of the Trinity. Keil and Delitzsch favoured a plural of majesty that points towards the truth behind the Trinitarian reading.
From the classic commentators
The plural "We" was regarded by the fathers and earlier theologians almost unanimously as indicative of the Trinity: modern commentators, on the contrary, regard it either as pluralis majestatis; or as an address by God to Himself … or as communicative, an address to the spirits or angels who stand around the Deity and constitute His council.Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on Genesis 1:26 (1857–78), at Bible Hub
Sources
- Keil & Delitzsch, Commentary on Genesis 1 (1857–78), at Bible Hub
- John Gill, Exposition of the Bible: 1 Corinthians 8, at Bible Hub