The Shema & Jewish Monotheism

What is this concept?

The Shema is the central confession of Jewish faith — the daily declaration that Israel's God is one. It has been recited morning and evening by observant Jews for thousands of years, and it forms the bedrock of everything the New Testament says about God and Jesus.

שְׁמַע יִשְׂרָאֵל יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵינוּ יְהוָה אֶחָד

"Hear, O Israel: YHWH our God, YHWH is one."

— Deuteronomy 6:4

The Christological debate turns, in large part, on what this sentence means — and whether the New Testament authors preserved it, transformed it, or expanded it to include Jesus.

Where does it come from?

The Shema originates in Deuteronomy, in Moses's final address to Israel before they enter the promised land. It is a statement of exclusive loyalty: YHWH alone is Israel's God. In its original context, it is not a philosophical statement about the internal composition of the divine being. It is a covenant declaration: among all the gods the nations worship, YHWH is Israel's one and only God.

The Hebrew word echad (one) has generated considerable debate. Some Trinitarian apologists have argued that echad implies a "compound unity" — pointing to its use in Genesis 2:24, where a man and woman become "one flesh," or Numbers 13:23, where a cluster of grapes is "one cluster." On this reading, God can be internally plural and still be echad. The word yachid (absolute, solitary one), they say, would have been used if simple numerical oneness were intended.

That said, the monotheism of the Second Temple period — the centuries between the return from Babylon and the destruction of the temple in 70 CE, the world in which the New Testament was written — was richer and more complex than modern Western assumptions tend to suppose. Israel's monotheism was strict: YHWH alone is the true God, the God above all, who alone possesses the attribute of aseity — self-existence, existing from himself without cause. This was not "flexible" monotheism, as some scholars have called it (a potentially anachronistic term). It was rigorous monotheism that nonetheless acknowledged a rich heavenly world: exalted angelic figures, a principal angel who bore the divine name, personified divine attributes such as Wisdom and the Logos, the mysterious "Son of Man" figure of Daniel 7 and 1 Enoch, and even the "two powers in heaven" tradition documented by Alan Segal.

This was not polytheism. No Second Temple Jew worshipped multiple gods. But it was a monotheism that allowed for exalted intermediary figures who could share in God's glory, sit on God's throne, and bear God's name — without threatening the oneness of God, because YHWH alone remained the uncaused source of all reality. The "two powers" tradition, the Logos of Philo, and the Wisdom of Sirach and Proverbs all operate within this framework — and none of them are proto-Trinitarian. To assume that early Christians with this conceptual framework in mind (especially Logos theorists like Justin Martyr) somehow anticipated that their theology would culminate centuries later in a Trinitarian formulation, for which they "simply lacked the words," would be to anachronistically interpret their beliefs in light of later developments. They believed what they believed. The question is whether the New Testament's treatment of Jesus fits within this existing framework or whether it requires a genuinely new category.

How does it appear in the New Testament?

The most critical text is 1 Corinthians 8:6, where Paul appears to rework the Shema itself:

"Yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist."

— 1 Corinthians 8:6

The structure maps onto the Shema. "One God" corresponds to YHWH. "One Lord" corresponds to the claim of YHWH's exclusive lordship. Paul takes the two key terms — God and Lord — and distributes them: God = the Father, Lord = Jesus Christ.

Everything depends on what Paul means by this distribution. The prepositions are crucial. The Father is the one ek ("from") whom all things come — the source, the origin. Jesus is the one dia ("through") whom all things come — the agent, the instrument. These are not interchangeable roles. Ek marks ultimate origin; dia marks mediation.

Jesus himself affirms the Shema without modification. In Mark 12:29, when asked which commandment is the greatest, he answers by quoting Deuteronomy 6:4 verbatim: "The Lord our God, the Lord is one." Notice: he calls YHWH "our God" — identifying YHWH as his God, not as himself. The scribe agrees, adding: "He is one, and there is no other besides him." Jesus commends the scribe's answer. He does not say, "Yes, and I am included in that 'one.'" He does not add, "and I am that Lord." He simply affirms it. This is not a peripheral exchange. It is Jesus's own voice, in the Gospels, explicitly preserving the Shema as a confession about the Father alone. Every Christological reading must account for this self-declaration.

Similarly, in John 17:3, Jesus addresses the Father as "the only true God" and identifies himself as the one whom the Father "sent" — distinguishing himself from the one God, not including himself within that identity.

Why does it matter for the debate?

The Shema is the foundation on which every Christological argument stands or falls. If "one God" means one divine person — the Father — then Trinitarianism requires a redefinition of what the Shema means. If "one God" can encompass a Trinity of persons sharing one divine essence, then the Shema has been redefined — preserved in form, perhaps, but fundamentally altered in meaning.

1 Corinthians 8:6 is the test case. It is the earliest and most explicit text in which a New Testament author places Jesus alongside God in a confessional statement modelled on the Shema. How you read this verse shapes how you read everything else.

What do the different traditions say?

Trinitarian: Paul is doing something unprecedented and extraordinary in 1 Corinthians 8:6. He is including Jesus within the divine identity of the one God of the Shema. By splitting the confession into "one God, the Father" and "one Lord, Jesus Christ," Paul is not separating Jesus from God but including him within the Shema's scope. "Lord" (kyrios) is the Greek rendering of YHWH in the Septuagint — to give Jesus the title kyrios in a Shema-shaped confession is to include him in YHWH's identity. The prepositions ek and dia describe distinct roles within a shared identity, not a hierarchy of being. Richard Bauckham has argued in God Crucified that the earliest Christology was already "the highest Christology" — not a later development but the original conviction of the first Christians.

Biblical Unitarian: Paul preserves the Shema exactly as Jesus did. "One God" = the Father. Period. That is the Shema restated. Jesus is given the title "Lord" — but kyrios is used of human lords throughout the Septuagint and the New Testament; it does not automatically mean YHWH. The prepositions confirm the distinction: the Father is the source (ek), Jesus is the agent (dia). Source and agent are not the same. Paul is affirming monotheism — one God who is the Father — while giving Jesus the highest possible status as God's supreme agent and appointed Lord. Scholars like Anthony Buzzard, James Dunn, and James McGrath have argued that this reading preserves both the text's structure and its Jewish monotheistic context. Dale Tuggy ("On Bauckham's Bargain," Theology Today 70:2, 2013) argues that Bauckham's "divine identity" reading is either self-inconsistent (if "included in the divine identity" means numerical identity, then Father = Son, which Bauckham denies) or too thin to do the theological work assigned to it. If "divine identity" is not numerical identity, it becomes a label for an undefined middle category that the Shema itself does not require. Tuggy presses a simple point: Paul places the Father — not a Trinity — in the "one God" slot. The Shema, as Paul restates it, identifies the one God as a single person.

Jesus himself reinforces this reading. In Mark 12:29, when asked for the greatest commandment, he recites the Shema as "the Lord our God, the Lord is one" — identifying YHWH as his God, not as himself. The scribe agrees, Jesus commends him, and the exchange ends. As BiblicalUnitarian.com notes, Jesus had every opportunity to say "and I am included in that one" — and he did not.

Logos Christology: The Logos is the divine agent through whom the one God creates and sustains all things. Paul's use of dia for Jesus echoes the role Philo of Alexandria assigned to the Logos — the one "through whom" the world was made. The Logos is genuinely divine, emanating from God, but the Father remains the ultimate source. This is real divinity, but derived divinity — not the co-equal, co-eternal Trinity of later creeds. Justin Martyr and the Alexandrian tradition read 1 Corinthians 8:6 this way: one God as source, the divine Logos as mediator, distinct but inseparable. Daniel Boyarin has argued that this kind of "binitarianism" was a live option within Judaism itself.

Go Deeper

For rigorous engagement with the Shema, Jewish monotheism, and its implications for Christology:

• Richard Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament
• Alan Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism
• Anthony Buzzard, The Doctrine of the Trinity: Christianity's Self-Inflicted Wound
• James Dunn, Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? The New Testament Evidence
• Dale Tuggy, "On Bauckham's Bargain" in Theology Today 70:2 (2013)
• Dale Tuggy, What is the Trinity? (2017)
• BiblicalUnitarian.com — encyclopaedic resource on biblical monotheism

See how the Shema shapes the reading of specific texts:

• 1 Corinthians 8:6 — One God, one Lord
• John 17:3 — "The only true God"
• Mark 10:18 — "Why do you call me good?"