A more plausible proposal would be
that a Greek-speaking Jew would see an allusion in Paul’s words to the
Shema in, for example, ‘God’, ‘us/our’ and ‘one’ (it is important to note that
the Shema is not providing the phrase ‘one God’ to Paul), but it is not obvious
that Yhwh is to be identified with Jesus Christ. Rather, the descriptive aspect
of ‘our God’ and ‘one’ is picked up by ‘to us . . . . one God’, which therefore
in turn identifies ‘the Father’ as Yhwh rather than Jesus Christ. Further, the
counting aspects of Paul’s conjoined statements, ‘one . . .and one’, rather militates
against the interpretation that Christ is being placed within the
identity of the one God of Israel. The Shema has a single occurrence of ‘one’ whereas
1 Cor 8:6 has two occurrences. . . . We might agree that Phil 2:10 places Jesus
within the same eschatological situation as Yahweh in Isa 45:23,
but placement within a situation is not the same as inclusion within the
divine identity . . . . The case for the christological monotheist is based
around the claim that kyrios is picking up ‘Yhwh’ from Deut 6:4 and
using this name for Christ, thus identifying Jesus with Yhwh in some sense. The
first counterargument to this claim is that even if Paul is picking up ‘Yhwh’
from Deuteronomy, bearing the name ‘Yhwh’ doesn’t imply the
identification of Jesus with Yhwh. This is shown in two ways: first, the name
that is above every name was given (the unanswered question for a
christological monotheist is why this name was ‘given’ to Christ. Did the Son
not have it at the time of the exodus?) to Christ by God (Phil 2:9); and
secondly, the name was also given to the Angel of the Lord who led Israel
through the wilderness (“My name is in him”, Exod 23:21).
The Angel of the Lord is a type of
Christ leading his people through the wilderness. In the same way that he bore
the name, so too Christ bears the name. Hence, any basis there might be in the
possession of this name for identifying Jesus with Yhwh would also apply to the
Angel of the Lord. Yet the Angel of the Lord is distinguished from Yhwh in the
same way that Paul distinguishes ‘one . . . and one’ in 1 Cor 8:6.
However, before we reach this
conclusion, we should ask, as a second counter-argument, whether kyrios
in 1 or 8:6 is actually picking up ‘Yhwh’ from Deut 6:4 in the first place.
‘Yhwh’ is a proper name, but kyrios in 1 Cor 8:6 is not being used here
as a proxy for this proper name precisely because it is modified by ‘one’. The ‘one’
is in a semantic contract with the ‘many’ of v. 5, which in turn has the plural
of kyrios. This in turn brings that plural into a semantic contract with
the singular of v. 6. Thus, because the plural is functioning as a descriptive
title, so too kyrios in v. 6 is functioning as a title and not as a
proxy for the name ‘Yhwh’. Accordingly, we can observe a symmetry between the
two clauses: just as ‘God’ is not a proper name in ‘one God’ so too ‘Lord’ is
not serving as a proxy for a proper name in ‘one Lord’.
In a contiguous reproduction of a
Yhwh text, kyrios without an article is a fairly clear proxy replacement
for the name and it carries some functionality of that name. In freer
quotations and allusions of/to Yhwh texts, kyrios may be used with an
article as an exegetical replacement for ‘Yhwh’, but where the reference is to
Christ, the use of the article makes it unlikely that kyrios is being
used as a proxy for the name ‘Yhwh’, and this is because kyrios is being
modified by the article.
Given that kyrios is generally
used to describe or address lords, masters, owners, deities, rulers, persons of
rank, as well as the God of Israel, we need to know which use of kyrios
we have in 1 or 8:6. If kyrios is being used descriptively of
Jesus Christ, then it is not representing the name ‘Yhwh’. Indeed, we might
well argue that Jesus ‘Jesus’ means ‘Yhwh saves’ or ‘Yah is salvation’, it is
the name ‘Jesus’ which picks up ‘Yhwh’ from Deut 6:4, but this obviously is
just a general pick-up of ‘Yhwh’ common to many Hebraic names.
If the first clause, ‘there is one
God, the Father’, is monotheistic, what type of clause is ‘there is one Lord,
Jesus Christ’? (at least one commentator tries ‘monokurism’). It is possible to
have a god and a lord within a scriptural faith? Is this conjoining of the
Father and the Son so innovative that it redefines Scriptural Monotheism and
Jewish Monotheism? Is the associative partnership implicit in ‘of whom are all
things’ (the Father) and ‘by whom are all things’ (the Son) actually (or still)
monotheistic? (Andrew Perry, Before He Was Born: Combating Arguments for the
Pre-existence of Christ [7th ed. [4th revision]; Staffordshire, U.K.:
Willow Publications, 2022], 373-76, emphasis in original)
In a footnote to the above, we read the following interaction with
a leading Trinitarian commentator:
G. D. Fee, 1 Corinthians (NICNT;
Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 375, claims “Although Paul does not here call Christ
God, the formula is to constructed that only the most obdurate would deny its
Trinitarian implications . . . the designation ‘Lord’ which in the OT belongs
to the one God, is the proper designation of the divine Son.” This illustrates
typical theological linguistics: we should rather insist that ‘Yhwh’ is a name
given to the Son (Phil 2:9-11) and has no implication as regards the Trinity or
divinity. (Ibid., 376 n. 2)
