Is 1 Cor. 8:6 a modified Shema?

    A trinitarian claim that I have been encountering more and more often as of late is that 1 Corinthians 8:6, which is perhaps one of Paul’s clearest declarations of his unitarian faith, is actually meant to include Jesus in the Israelite “Shema” - and therefore declare that He is Yahweh (for example, see here for a trinitarian making this claim). However, this claim goes directly against the immediate context of this passage. Let’s take a look at why 1 Cor. 8:6 is not proof that Jesus is God, and instead is one of the clearest passages that shows that the Father alone is the one true God, Yahweh.

    Here are the two passages in question:

Hear, O Israel! Yahweh [is] our God, Yahweh [is] one. (Deut 6:4 cf. Mk. 12:29)

Yet to us [is] one God, the Father, out of whom [are] the all things, and we for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom [are] the all things, and we through him. (1 Cor. 8:6)

Trinitarians correctly note that the Greek title κυριος (“Lord”) is the translation of the Hebrew name YHWH (Yahweh) as it is used throughout the New Testament. However, their claim is that when Paul states that “there is one God, the Father... and one Lord, Jesus Christ”, he is modifying the Shema to include Jesus Christ, and is using the title “Lord” to mean Yahweh. They argue that it should be read as

Yet to us [is] one God, the Father... and one Yahweh, Jesus Christ.

However, this claim completely fails to stand up to the surrounding context. If we look at the larger context before and after Paul’s claim in 1 Cor. 8:6, we see that the interpretation of “one Lord” as “one Yahweh” completely misunderstands and ruins Paul’s argument here.

Concerning, then, the eating of the [things] offered to idols, we know that an idol [is] nothing in [the] world, and that [there is] no God except one. For even if there are [those] called gods, whether in heaven or upon earth, just as there are many gods and many lords, yet to us [is] one God, the Father, out of whom [are] the all things, and we for Him; and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom [are] the all things, and we through him. But not in all [is] this knowledge. (1 Cor. 8:4-7)

According to Paul, although the pagans acknowledge the existence of many gods and many lords, there is in reality only one true God - the Father - and one true Lord, Jesus Christ. The one God, the Father, is used as a direct parallel to the “many gods” that the pagans acknowledge, and the one Lord, Jesus Christ, is used as a direct parallel to the “many lords” that the pagans acknowledge. If, as those who take 1 Cor. 8:6 as a modified Shema argue, this is describing Jesus as Yahweh, we would have to understand this passage as saying that

Just as there are many gods and many Yahwehs, yet to us [is] one God, the Father... and one Yahweh, Jesus Christ.

Clearly, this is an absurdity. The κυριοι, or human lords, of the pagans are certainly not Yahwehs, whatever that would mean; and neither do the pagans acknowledge the existence of many “Yahwehs”, but at most one god whose name is Yahweh among many other gods.

    Furthermore, if the “God” of the Shema is understood to be the Father and the “Yahweh” of the Shema to be Jesus Christ, per the trinitarian interpretation of this verse, then we would have to understand the Shema as saying: “Jesus Christ [is] the Father, Jesus Christ [is] one”. This completely backfires on trinitarians; instead of supporting the doctrine of the Trinity, we now have a prooftext for modalism (the belief that the Father, Jesus, and the holy spirit are all one person). Otherwise, we would have to exclude the Father from being Yahweh, which is also clearly false, as Jesus repeatedly identifies His Father with the one God of Israel, Yahweh (Mk. 12:29-30; Jn. 8:54; 20:17). So then, even if 1 Cor. 8:6 is to be understood as a modified Shema (which is completely contradicted by the context), this would prove modalism, not trinitarianism.

    So then, what was Paul trying to say in 1 Corinthians 8:6? It should be rather obvious from the context: just as to the pagans, there are many gods - divine rulers - to us there is only one God or divine ruler, the Father; and just as there are many lords - human rulers - to us there is only one Lord or human ruler, Jesus Christ. The Greek word κυριος translates three separate Hebrew words: adoni (human lords), Adonai (the Lord God), and YHWH (Yahweh). Since the human lords of the pagans are adoni (certainly not Adonai or YHWH) so also our one Lord, Jesus, is an adoni [1]. This is confirmed by Psalm 110:1, which characterizes the future Messiah as an adoni, and is quoted or referenced no less than twenty-four times in the New Testament [2].

    Rather than being a trinitarian statement, 1 Cor. 8:4-6 is clearly one of the most unitarian statements made by Paul in his epistles. In it, he identifies the one God of the Shema with the Father alone, and makes it clear that there can be no other God than Him; after all, “there is no God except one”. Furthermore, he contrasts the human lords (adoni in Hebrew) of the pagans with our one Lord Jesus Christ, thus showing that Jesus is the only human who can properly be called our Lord; He is our one adoni, not Adonai. This passage provides some of the strongest evidence that Paul was a unitarian and not a trinitarian as modern Christians claim.

[EDIT: After writing this in early May, I have now (mid-June) become far more sympathetic to trinitarianism. Although I will not yet go so far as to say that I affirm the full deity of Christ, as I go through my earlier posts on the Trinity and Christ’s deity, I have noticed many inconsistencies and problems with my arguments. What follows is a rebuttal of my previous claims.]

    I stand by my previous assertion that 1 Corinthians 8:6 is not a Christian re-formulation of the Jewish Shema. It would be meaningless nonsense for Paul to claim that Jesus is the “one Yahweh” over against the “many Yahwehs” (?) of the pagans. However, I now see this passage as one of the strongest arguments for Paul’s belief in the deity of Christ. Let me explain...

    In the original version of this post, I appealed to the Hebrew (which Paul, being a Jew, would have been very familiar with while writing this) as possibly stating that Jesus is an adoni (human lord) like the multiple human lords of the pagans that Paul is contrasting Him with. However, what I missed while writing this is the clear parallelism between v. 5 and v. 6, which provides evidence that Paul was calling Jesus Adonai (i.e., Lord God) rather than adoni. Consider the following:

Just as there are many elohim and many adonai, yet to us [is] one Elohim, the Father... and one adoni, Jesus Christ.

This is what I first claimed that Paul would have had in mind while writing this passage. According to my previous interpretation, Paul was contrasting the pagan human lords with the human lord of the Christians, Jesus Christ. However, in Hebrew, the plural of el (‘god’) is elohim, which is also the title of Yahweh - Elohim (lit. ‘gods’). Likewise, in Hebrew, the plural of adoni (‘lord’) is adonai, which is also the title of Yahweh - Adonai (lit. ‘lords’).

    Paul is consistent in contrasting the multiple gods (elohim) with the one God (Elohim). If Paul was merely calling Jesus a human lord, as I thought before, he would have been contrasting multiple lords (adonai) with one human lord (adoni). The parallelism is lost! But if Paul was calling Jesus the Lord God, and not merely a human lord, then he was instead contrasting multiple lords (adonai) with the one Lord (Adonai). Now, the parallelism is regained! Paul is contrasting elohim with Elohim, and adonai with Adonai (and not adonai with adoni).

Just as there are many elohim and many adonai, yet to us [is] one Elohim, the Father... and one Adonai, Jesus Christ.

Furthermore, earlier in the same context, Paul states that worshipping anyone except the one true God is simply idolatry (v. 4). Would it really make sense for Paul to then introduce someone who is not the one true God, who should nevertheless be worshipped? Not at all. But if he is introducing One Who, though not being the Father, is nevertheless the one true God (the Adonai), then consistency is restored to his logic! Worshipping any lesser god or lord is simply idolatry; only the one true God and Lord, Who is both the Father and Jesus Christ, is to be worshipped.

    So, is 1 Cor. 8:6 a re-formulated Shema? No. But neither is it a blatant statement of unitarianism, as I previously thought. Instead, Paul appears to be affirming something very similar, if not identical, to ‘orthodox’ conceptions of trinitarianism (or at least binitarianism); he is stating that the one true God (Elohim) and Lord (Adonai) is to be found in at least two persons, the Father and Jesus Christ, both of Whom should be worshipped instead of any lesser god or lord. The fact that the Father is consistently called God whereas Jesus is consistently called Lord does not show that Jesus is not God; rather, both God and Lord are titles of Yahweh. Indeed, the fact that two different titles are typically used by the Father and Jesus respectively is to be expected under trinitarianism, to avoid confusing these two separate Persons.

EDIT 2: After carefully looking at every passage that has been used to support trinitarianism, I no longer believe in the Trinity or the deity of Jesus (as of 24 December 2022). The fact is that neither of these doctrines can be found in the Bible.

With regard to 1 Corinthians 8:6 specifically, I was wrong to suggest that the Hebrew terms elohim, adon, and adonai were relevant at all; Paul was writing to a church of Greek-speaking Greeks, not Jews. So when he says that there is "one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus the Messiah," we should take it at face value — the Father just is the one God, and Jesus is our one human lord.

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[1] As Aaron Welch writes, “the very thing that allowed Paul to refer to Christ – but not the Father – as the “one Lord” in v. 6 is that Christ doesn’t have the same divine status as the Father. By virtue of not having divinity, Christ can’t be contrasted with the “many gods” of v. 5. Only the Father (who possesses divinity) is a suitable contrast to the “many gods” of v. 5. And yet Christ can be contrasted with the “many lords,” because he is the only non-divine person (i.e., the only person subordinate to the one God) who is our Lord.“

[2] Matt. 22:44, 26:64, Mk. 13:36, 14:62, 16:19, Lk. 20:42-43, 22:69, Acts 2:34-35, 5:31, 7:55-56, Rom. 8:34, 1 Cor. 15:25, Eph. 1:20, Col. 3:1, Heb. 1:3, 13, 8:1, 10:12-13, 12:2, 1 Pet. 3:22-24