For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human. (1 Tim 2:5 NRSV)
Hence, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that "no idol in the world really exists," and that "there is no God but one." Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth--as in fact there are many gods and many lords[see this post showing such 'gods' have ontological existence]--yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and from whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist. (NRSV)
Some (e.g., Richard Bauckham) have argued that Paul incorporated Jesus into the so-called “divine identity”; there are overwhelming problems with this eisegesis-driven approach to this pericope, not the least is that it results in modalism. Rendering the Shema (Deut 6:4) in the way Bauckham’s thesis necessitates (and which James White and other Trinitarian apologists blindly follow) would be:
Listen, Israel, Jesus is our Father, Jesus is one.
Such is modalism, wherein the persons of the Father and the Son are numerically identical, not Trinitarianism. Bauckham is guilty of defending via eisegesis a dogma that has been imposed upon the biblical data; not sound exegesis.
Blake Ostler offered the following cogent comment on 1 Tim 2:5 in light of 1 Cor 8:4-6 which serves as another nail in the coffin of Bauckham’s eisegesis:
1 Timothy 2:5 sheds considerable light on the notion that there is “one God and one Lord,” as expressed in 1 Corinthians 8:6 and also in the Christian understanding of the Shema. This text makes it clear that the Lord is not included in the unique identity of the “one God,” the Father, but is in fact, like the Logos, the mediator between the one God and humans. This mediation is made possible by the fact that Jesus was mortal and thus able to give himself for us. In fact, 1 Timothy 2:5 demonstrates that the formula “one God, one [Lord] [mediator],” may well have been an early Christian confession of faith. There is one God; and in addition, there is one agent of God who has been honored by God and exalted as “Lord” through resurrection and who alone is the one mediator through whom God may be approached and known. In any event, that is precisely the view expressed throughout the Gospel of John. However, the mediator was also with God before the creation of the world and was the agent of creation. (Blake T. Oster, Exploring Mormon Thought, vol. 3: Of God and Gods [Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2008], 174).
