Religion of Israel and Judaism

There may be some reason to speak of the conception of God found in the Hebrew Scriptures as monolatry rather than as monotheism, because the existence of other gods is seldom explicitly denied and many times even acknowledged. The passionate importance given to the proclamation of Yahweh as the one god who counts for Israel and the equally passionate rejection of other gods, however, make it truer to speak of the monotheism of Israel, as in what became the Jewish affirmation of faith, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, one Lord” (Deuteronomy 6:4; New English Bible). The eminent Dutch Hebrew Bible scholar Theodorus C. Vriezen wrote: “It is striking how the whole life of the people is seen as dominated by Yahweh and by Yahweh alone. Even if one cannot speak of a strictly maintained monotheistic way of thinking, it is yet clear that faith in Yahweh is the foundation of life for the Israelite.” Monotheism is not a matter of mathematics—of opting for the number one as against other numbers—but the conscious choice of persons committing themselves to one god rather than to any other ones and putting their faith in that one god; Joshua proclaims: “But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24:15). In Israel the ethical aspect was as important as the exclusiveness of their one god; the prophets stressed the ethical elements of an essentially exclusive God. The God of Israel was a jealous god who forbade his believers to worship other gods. In this respect he differed from other gods in the ancient Middle Eastern religions who, as a rule, did not put such exclusive obligation on their adherents.

In later times—beginning in the 6th century BCE and continuing into the early centuries of the Common Era—Jewish monotheism developed in the same direction as did Christianity and also later Islam under the influence of Greek philosophy and became monotheistic in the strict sense of the word, affirming the one God for all persons everywhere.

Christianity

Among the three great monotheistic religions, Christianity has a place apart because of the trinitarian creed of this religion in its classic forms, in contradistinction to the unitarian creed of Judaism and Islam. The Christian Bible, including the New Testament, has no trinitarian statements or speculations concerning the doctrine of the Trinity—only triadic liturgical formulas invoking God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It is true that Christianity also has had its Unitarians, such as the 16th-century Italian theologian Faustus Socinus, but this religion in its three classic forms of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Protestantism acknowledges one God in three Persons: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. According to Christian theology, this acknowledgment is a recognition not of three gods but that these three persons are essentially one, or as the dogmatic formulation, coined by the early Church Father Tertullian (c. 160–after 220), has it: three Persons and one substance. This conception was not accepted without contradiction, as is proved by theological disputes of the 3rd and 4th centuries. It is evident that trinitarian speculation greatly resembles the way of thinking of pluriform monotheism. It is, of course, unlikely that there are any historical connections between these phenomena; both, however, try to solve what is more or less the same problem in more or less the same manner. The main distinction is that Christianity, as a monotheistic religion, restricts itself to three Persons, whereas primitive religions have no reason to restrict the number of possible forms of the one divine substance. Like other religions that cover a large territory and have a long history, Christianity appears in a multitude of variations: there is Christian pantheism, Deism, and even, paradoxically, Christian atheism, as exemplified in the mid-20th-century “death of God” theologies.

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Islam

No religion has interpreted monotheism in a more consequential and literal way than Islam. According to Islamic doctrine, the Christian dogma of a trinitarian god is a form of tritheism—of a three-god belief. There is no issue upon which this religion is so intransigent as the one of monotheism. The profession of faith, the first of the so-called Five Pillars of Islam (the basic requirements for the faithful Muslim), states clearly and unambiguously that “there is no God but Allah.” In accordance with this principle, the religion knows no greater sin than shirk (“partnership”), the attribution of partners to Allah; that is to say, polytheism or anything that may look like it—e.g., the notion of a divine trinity. The Qurʾān declares: “Say: He, Allah, is one. Allah, the eternal. Neither has he begotten, nor is he begotten. And no one is his equal” (112). This profession of faith in Allah as the one god is encountered in a more popular form, for example, in the stories of The Thousand and One Nights: “There is no god except Allah alone, he has no companions, to him belongs the power and he is to be praised, he gives life and death and he is mighty over all things.” In only one respect has the uncompromising monotheism of Islam shown itself to be vulnerable—i.e., in the doctrine of the Qurʾān as uncreated and coeval with Allah himself.