The sibling of humanity
Stephen Curkpatrick

In the media and even among Christians, reference is often made to the “three monotheisms” as if they are the same thing. Yet to cite three monotheisms is as informative as referring to three people as “three torsos.” Three people, like three tenors, are torsos but certainly much more as distinctive faces, personalities and voices.

Monotheism suggests something imperious, such as a monarch, and timeless, like a monolith. The LORD in Israel is not monolithic, although the LORD in faithfulness is described as a rock. Identified as I will be what I will be, the LORD is personal in ardent love, engaging humanity in a particular story of self-disclosure.

The LORD is sovereign in freedom and intentional in calling to life, distinction or holiness and fidelity, while also yet to be known in days that are coming. Disclosure of the LORD in Israel occurs in the intimacy of relationship as new intensities of love amid infidelity and renewed imperatives to responsibility. If monotheism is a torso, it is not yet the vocative story of the LORD in Israel.

For Christians, the character of God is wholly disclosed in Jesus Christ as the explicit Word of God, known in humanity in intimacy through the Holy Spirit, the source of life within creation. What is everywhere present in the New Testament has always been a paradox. Where this paradox is reduced to a torso as a religious category labelled “monotheism” or in the modern era, deism or unitarianism, biblical testimony recalls the personal character of God in disclosure and communion in the intimacy of love.

Monotheism can imply transcendent distinction from all that is, including time, to the point of being unknown. In early Christian theology, this inclination was referred to as monarchianism. As a religious term, monotheism distinguishes belief in God from polytheism and pantheism, yet as transcendence to the extent of being unknowable, the monarchical also hovers behind these as an ultimate principle, such as Brahma or the Stoic Logos.

v

Monotheism does not alleviate the challenges concerning monism. The perennial human longing for a single cohering principle or the ultimate oneness of all things (monism) can be read in two directions. Either oneness is eternally everything, including nature, matter and human life (pantheism) or eternal oneness is real while time and contingency are not, which is idealism.

The belief that reality must be one is variously affirmed in Greek philosophical enlightenment, whether Plato’s monism with the Good beyond the shadows of being or Aristotle’s changeless and divine light within that gives rational light to the flux of life, or yet the One as ineffable source of beauty (Plotinus), which like Plato’s Good beyond being, is beyond human assimilation. Greek monism was welcomed as enlightenment in a polytheistic context of jealous and unpredictable gods. Monism or the oneness of all things is therefore desired but where or what is it precisely?

In wonder of the universe, humans easily give the cosmos divine status. If matter is one and eternal (pantheism), divine will and human virtue are discerned by reflection on natural order. Pantheism’s relativity of all things is a hair’s breadth from atheism.

If nature is perceived to speak erratically, an ideal nevertheless remains untouched by change. Religious idealism reads oracles of divine order, either beyond phenomena or within the human psyche, yet these oracles are a product of human projection. Idealism is a hair’s breadth from atheism in which humans themselves attribute meaning to an Ideal or First Principle that is distinct from time, change and therefore the contingencies of human life.

If existence is not merely an illusion, as it can be in idealism, monism requires either monotheism and a creation or pantheism. In monotheism, the universe is created by a supreme deity. In pantheism, the universe is a divine manifestation.

Several inherent difficulties within monism are also applicable to monotheism. First, how can the infinite One give other existence without ceasing to be the One that is everything? Second, how can other existence apart from the One occur in any proximity without being overwhelmed by the One? Third, how can monism as a singular ideal give any notion of relational, self-giving narrative in giving time and existence to a distinct other?

In classical monotheism, creation exists in distinction from its Creator and is therefore not overwhelmed. Creation has an independent existence. Ironically, in monotheism, an absence of any articulation of self-disclosing outgoingness within God as personal as the possibility of intimacy with creation becomes a prospect for atheism. The universe as apparently self-sufficient is adequate evidence for its own existence. Mono-theism is a recognised source of modern a-theism.

Alternatively, if God is not distinctly other but confused with creation, as in pantheism, the possibility of distinctive human freedom and ethical responsibility is destroyed, for in nature, all values are relative. Violence and death are as necessary as life and growth. With a lack of distinction from all phenomena, God ceases to be God, for God identified with natural phenomena merges with the latter’s seamless and eternal status. For this reason, monotheism seeks to allay the potential ethical horrors of pantheism.

In affirming the eternal distinction of God from anything else, mono-theism ultimately gives a mono-personal perspective of reality. Monotheism’s assertion of eternal oneness is also an assertion of eternal aloneness. A monotheist can only wager on the personal character of God, for a God who is without communion and eternally unknown in intimacy by another, could only be unknown. How then could a monotheist know whether God, in unspeakable transcendence, is not ultimate demand instead of love? If demand, to what degree is it finally met? These are perennial dilemmas for monotheism.

v

In Christian testimony, God is dynamic triune communion cohering in love (perichõrẽsis) and therefore relational in giving creation freedom to be other, while also being creation’s possibility for communion in love. This possibility is implicit in Israel’s story as the living LORD who by disclosure through Word, Glory and Spirit is also hidden and always yet to be known. This is explicit in the future of God becoming present in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, and given intimately in grace and truth through the Holy Spirit.

God is love. This is made explicit in Jesus Christ as the fulfilment of a personal story that is everywhere focused on a vocative call that awaits a response. By sustaining a paradox—the oneness of God who is disclosed most explicitly in Jesus Christ and continually in the Holy Spirit—Christian theology affirms apostolic witness to the truly new in the midst of creation. This testimony affirms continuity with the LORD’s initiative in calling, disclosure of holiness and patient loving-kindness in Israel.

Israel’s testimony and Christian faith exceed the term “monotheism” as a religious category that distinguishes from either pantheism or polytheism—as if too, “monotheism” is a religious asset belonging to particular cultures. Christian advocacy for a supposedly higher unifying religious principle under the rubric of “three sibling monotheisms” misses the central point of Christian witness. Jesus Christ is the sibling of all humanity not particular cultural heritages.

As a torso, monotheism is not yet the story of a living God who approaches all humanity to be known as “You” in unique encounter. This encounter occurs definitively in Christ and in intimacy through the Spirit, who is not an impersonal appendage of monotheism but holy in testimony to triune communion that is declared by the advent of God coming among us in Jesus Christ.