Is the Shema really so important for understanding “one God… one Lord” in 1 Corinthians 8:6?

Thu, 16/05/2013 - 22:55

Richard Worden Wilson has drawn attention to a short piece by Scot McKnight on the relation between Paul’s statement about one God and one Lord in 1 Corinthians 8:6 and the Shema, the great Jewish confession that “The LORD our God (yhwh eloheinu), the LORD (yhwh) is one” (Deut 6:4). McKnight thinks that “one Lord, Jesus Christ” identifies Jesus with YHWH: ‘astoundingly, Paul sees “God” (Elohim) as the Father and he sees “Lord” (YHWH) as Jesus’.

I respectfully disagree with this interpretation. I think it is a mistake to identify the “Lord” who is Jesus in Paul’s statement with YHWH, for reasons which I will set out. But first I want to say again, for the benefit of those who want to banish me into outer darkness, that this is not an argument against the view that Jesus is presented in the New Testament as God. It is an argument for the view that this is not what is meant by the confession that Jesus is Lord. It is the argument that at the heart of the New Testament is the apocalyptic story of how the God of Israel raised his obedient Son from the dead and gave him authority to judge and rule over the nations, a narrative trajectory which I suggest found its historical fulfilment in the conversion of the empire. It is an argument for thinking that this historical ambition is much more important for understanding the New Testament than the assertion of Jesus’ divinity.

 
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What must a person believe in order to be saved?
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Christendom: fulfilment or false start?
30 Apr 2013

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I have actually been more accepting of your challenges in the Trinitarian posts than those...
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Jesus as Lord in Mark
24 Apr 2013

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What about 1 Corinthians 1:30? Nope, no imputation of righteousness here either. So where is it then?
18 Apr 2013

John Piper thinks that 1 Corinthians 1:30 “stands as a signal pointing to the righteousness of Christ that becomes ours when we are united to him by God through faith”.1 He is pleased to be able to quote Tom Wright’s “concession” to the Reformed position regarding this text:

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More on the righteousness of God and the justification of believers
16 Apr 2013

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It may help before we start, though, to...
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At random...

Brian McLaren, A New Kind of Christianity: the question about the violence of God Brian McLaren asks, thirdly, ‘Is God Violent?’ We can eliminate the effects of the Greco-Roman distortion of the biblical narrative, we can read the Bible as a library rather than as a constitution, we can bring into the focus the stories...
Hell on earth and the problems of evangelical dualism (among other things) In a comment on my Hell, the unbiblical doctrine of post Steve makes two substantial criticisms of my general approach. The first is that it is a mistake to assume a continuity of words and concepts between the Old Testament and the New...
Daniel Meeter: Why Be A Christian (If No One Goes to Hell)? Daniel Meeter has written an elegant, lucid, sensible, and humane book about hell and, as far as I am concerned, gets most of it right. The basic argument of Why Be A Christian (If No One Goes to Hell)? (Shook Foil Books, 2012) is that the...