Deuteronomy 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: 1. Here religion and philosophy are in accord. The saints and the scientists alike maintain the unity of God. Authority and reason go thus far together. God must be one; cannot be other than one. 2. The revelation of God is of necessity progressive. All education is progressive, because all knowledge is conditioned by the mind of him who knows. You may take a whole ocean of water, but you can get only two pints of it into a quart cup. The water is conditioned, limited, by the cup. Thus is knowledge conditioned by the mind. 3. The highest truth which the mind can touch is truth about God. The supreme knowledge is knowledge of God. But this, like all other knowledge, is conditioned by the mind of him who knows. God changes not; but year by year in the life of a man, and age by age in the life of the race, the conception of God changes. It is like the ascent of a hill which overhangs a plain. The plain does not change, does not get wider, mile by mile, as the beholder climbs. No, the beholder changes. The higher he gets, the more he sees. 4. Thus religion grew out of belief in God as many, into belief in God as one. Some see a trace of this old change out of the polytheistic into the monotheistic idea of God in the fact that in the beginning of the Bible the Hebrew name of God is plural, while the verb which is written with it is singular. Men began to see that the gods of their imperfect creed were but personifications of the attributes of the one God. 5. It was a hard lesson to learn. It is evident in the Old Testament that faith in the unity of God won its way little by little. The best men held it, but the people in general were slow to believe it. Even in the Psalms, God is often spoken of as the greatest of the gods. 6. All religion, however imperfect and mistaken, is an endeavour after a better knowledge of God. And as men grows they are able to know more — to know more about everything, even about God. God is able to reveal Himself more and more. At first, every tree is a god. Then there is a god of the trees, and then of all the universe and of man included in it. God is known as one. 7. We have not yet learned all the truth of God. We are not universally sure, e.g., that God cares more for deeds than creeds. But we have learned that God is one; we have abandoned polytheism. 8. We believe in God the Father, and we believe in God the Son, and we believe in God the Holy, Ghost. But there is one God, and there is none other. The word "person," which the old creed-makers used to express these different ideas of God, has given rise to endless confusion. With us a person is an individual. But this word "person" comes into English out of Latin, and in Latin was a blundering translation of a wiser word in Greek. It means "distinction." There is one God in threefold distinction. The Divine nature is complex as our human nature is. And there are three ways of thinking about God, corresponding to the being of God, ways which are not only true but essential, so that if we are to think of God aright we must think of Him in all these three ways. (1) God is the source of life, the infinite, the eternal — the Father. (2) God has manifested Himself to us — so that we may know Him and love Him, and know that He loves us — in the plainest and most universally understood of all possible manifestations, in a human personality; the Word become flesh — the Son. (3) And God is ever present with us, speaking to all men everywhere, in the past and in the present, teaching, warning, inspiring — the Holy Spirit. 9. Thus the Christian doctrine, taking that old truth that "God is one," and holding to it, draws new truth out of it. It is an advance upon monotheism, as that was upon polytheism. It meets the longings of the heart. It answers the eager questions of the race. (George Hodges, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD: |
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