God & Jesus

“The Lord our God is one”: Mark 12:29

A scribe asks Jesus which commandment comes first of all. Jesus does not answer with a new teaching about himself. He answers with the oldest creed of Israel. What does his answer tell us about how Jesus understood God?

1The question

When Jesus is asked for the greatest commandment, what does he say about God?

2What Christians believe

Christians fully accept the Shema. The doctrine of the Trinity does not teach three gods, but one God who exists eternally as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. When Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:4, Christians see no conflict with the Trinity, because the Trinity is itself a way of confessing that God is one.

Some Christians add that the Hebrew word for “one”, echad, can describe a unity made of more than one part, as when a man and his wife become “one flesh” (Genesis 2:24). Many also point to 1 Corinthians 8:6, where Paul restates the Shema and names both “one God, the Father” and “one Lord Jesus Christ”, as a sign that the first Christians placed Jesus within the one God of Israel.

3What the texts say

The question and the answer

And one of the scribes came, and having heard them reasoning together, and perceiving that he had answered them well, asked him, Which is the first commandment of all?
Mark 12:28 · KJVRead in context →
And Jesus answered him, The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord:
Mark 12:29 · KJVRead in context →
And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
Mark 12:30 · KJVRead in context →

The scribe agrees, and Jesus approves

And the scribe said unto him, Well, Master, thou hast said the truth: for there is one God; and there is none other but he:
Mark 12:32 · KJVRead in context →
And when Jesus saw that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God. And no man after that durst ask him any question.
Mark 12:34 · KJVRead in context →

The creed Jesus is quoting

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:
Deuteronomy 6:4 · KJVRead in context →
And thou shalt love the LORD thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.
Deuteronomy 6:5 · KJVRead in context →

The verse Christians add

But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.
1 Corinthians 8:6 · KJVRead in context →

4What scholars say

Richard Bauckham (Jesus and the God of Israel, 2008) argues that the first Christians kept strict Jewish monotheism but included Jesus within the identity of the one God, and reads 1 Corinthians 8:6 as a reworked Shema.

James D. G. Dunn (Did the First Christians Worship Jesus?, 2010) is more cautious. He concludes that the earliest Christians did not, as a rule, worship Jesus in the way they worshipped God, and that the New Testament presents Jesus mainly as the one through whom God is worshipped. James F. McGrath (The Only True God, 2009) argues along similar lines that early Christianity stayed within Jewish monotheism, with Jesus as God’s chief agent.

Scholars on all sides agree on what Mark’s scene says: the scribe restates strict oneness, “there is one God; and there is none other but he”, and Jesus says he has answered “discreetly” and is “not far from the kingdom of God”. The debate is over how later Christian teaching relates to this scene.

5The Islamic perspective

For Muslims this passage is one of the clearest in the Gospels. Asked for the first of all commandments, Jesus gives the same answer every prophet gave: God is one. The Qur’an’s short chapter on God’s oneness says the same:

Say: He is Allah, the One! Allah, the eternally Besought of all! He begetteth not nor was begotten. And there is none comparable unto Him.
Qur’an 112:1–4 · PickthallRead in context →
Say: O People of the Scripture! Come to an agreement between us and you: that we shall worship none but Allah, and that we shall ascribe no partner unto Him, and that none of us shall take others for lords beside Allah. And if they turn away, then say: Bear witness that we are they who have surrendered (unto Him).
Qur’an 3:64 · PickthallRead in context →

Qur’an 3:64 invites Jews and Christians to agree on exactly the point the scribe and Jesus agree on in Mark 12: to worship none but God. Muslims see Mark 12:29–34 as Jesus and a Jewish teacher standing on that common ground.

6Objections and responses

“The Hebrew word echad can mean a compound unity, so the Shema leaves room for the Trinity.”

Response: Echad is the ordinary Hebrew word for “one”, used for one day, one man and one place. In “one flesh” it is the flesh that is one, not the word that means several. And in Mark the scribe explains his own meaning: “there is one God; and there is none other but he” (12:32). Jesus approves that explanation without adding to it.

“Paul’s restatement in 1 Corinthians 8:6 puts Jesus inside the Shema.”

Response: The verse says “to us there is but one God, the Father”. The one God is named as the Father alone, and Jesus is named separately as “one Lord”, the title the Bible also uses for human masters and kings. Muslims read the verse as one God and his chosen messenger, which fits Jesus’s own words in John 17:3: “thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”

7Conclusion

Both sides agree that Jesus named the oneness of God as the first commandment, and that he praised a scribe who said God has no other beside him. Christians hold that the Trinity is a deeper statement of that same oneness. Muslims hold that Jesus’s answer needs no addition: God is one, and Jesus is his messenger.

Read Mark 12:28–34 slowly, and notice what Jesus says, what the scribe says, and what neither of them says.

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