THE-101
The Oneness of God
A systematic study of biblical monotheism, the identity of Jesus Christ, and the historical Trinitarian controversy.
Topics: Deut. 6:4, John 14, Church history
Suggested resource: Your own “One God” (PZ-102) material as the primary text; David K. Bernard's The Oneness of God secondhand if available.
Week 1: Biblical Monotheism — One God, Not Three
Reading: Deuteronomy 6:4; Isaiah 43:10–11, 44:6, 45:5, 45:21–22; Mark 12:28–29; James 2:19; 1 Corinthians 8:4–6
Deuteronomy 6:4 was spoken by Moses to Israel on the plains of Moab, just before they crossed into Canaan — a land filled with nations who each worshipped a whole pantheon of gods. Into that world, Moses gave Israel a confession that would separate them from every neighboring culture: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD.” This is the Shema, recited by observant Jews every single day for over three thousand years, and it is the single most repeated theological claim in the entire Hebrew Bible.
Isaiah later makes this claim impossible to soften. Speaking for God directly, Isaiah writes: “Ye are my witnesses, saith the LORD, and my servant whom I have chosen: that ye may know and believe me, and understand that I am he: before me there was no God formed, neither shall there be after me” (43:10). Again: “I am the first, and I am the last; and beside me there is no God” (44:6). And again, even more directly: “I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me” (45:5), followed by “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God, and there is none else” (45:22). Four separate times in nine chapters, God rules out, in the plainest language available, the existence of any other divine person beside Himself — not just other gods, but any second person who could also rightly be called God.
Centuries later, when a scribe asked Jesus which commandment was the greatest of all, Jesus didn't reach for a new revelation — He quoted the Shema word for word: “Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord” (Mark 12:29), before adding the command to love that one God with all one's heart, soul, mind, and strength. James, writing to Jewish Christians, assumes the same starting point when he says even the demons “believe, and tremble” at the truth that God is one (James 2:19) — correct monotheism, he warns, is not by itself saving faith, but it is the non-negotiable floor every true confession must stand on. Paul confirms the same floor in 1 Corinthians 8:4–6, writing to a Gentile church surrounded by pagan idols just as Israel once was surrounded by Canaanite ones: “there is none other God but one… to us there is but one God.” The Oneness position starts exactly here, on ground every biblical writer shares: whatever Scripture goes on to say about Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, it cannot mean three distinct divine persons, because Scripture has already ruled out the existence of more than one God in any sense.
Key terms: The Shema (Deut. 6:4), Isaiah's exclusivity statements, Mark 12:29, 1 Corinthians 8:4–6
Discussion Questions
- Read Isaiah 45:5 and 45:22 slowly, out loud, back to back. What do they rule out?
- Why do you think Moses gave Israel this confession specifically as they were about to enter a land full of competing gods?
Challenge: Collect five verses, from at least three different books, that state in the plainest possible language that there is only one God, and write one sentence explaining what each one rules out.
Week 2: Jesus Christ — the Fulness of the Godhead Bodily
Reading: John 1:1–14; John 10:22–33, 14:6–11; Colossians 1:15–19, 2:9; 1 Timothy 3:16
If there is only one God, as Week 1 established beyond question, then the divinity of Jesus Christ cannot mean a second divine person standing alongside the Father — it has to mean that the one God Himself has stepped into human history. John opens his gospel by identifying Jesus as the eternal Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:1, 14). The Word is not a second God alongside God; the Word is God's own self-expression, now clothed in a human body.
Later, at the Feast of Dedication in Jerusalem, Jesus tells a hostile crowd, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30) — and the crowd immediately picks up stones, saying “because that thou, being a man, makest thyself God” (10:33). They understood exactly what He meant, even if they refused to believe it. Then, on the night before His crucifixion, in the upper room, Philip asks Jesus to “shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us.” Jesus' answer is the heart of Oneness Christology: “Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father… I am in the Father, and the Father in me” (John 14:9–10). That answer only makes sense if Jesus is the Father Himself, revealed in flesh — it would be a strange, even evasive, answer if the Father were a separate person standing somewhere else.
Paul states the same truth with technical precision twice. Writing to the Colossians, he calls Christ “the image of the invisible God” in whom “all things consist” (1:15, 17), then makes the boldest statement in the whole letter: “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (2:9). Not a fragment of God, not one person out of a group of three — all the fulness of the Godhead, in bodily form. Paul the apostle to the Gentiles, and probably Paul again in 1 Timothy, summarizes the whole mystery of the gospel in a single early Christian hymn: “God was manifest in the flesh” (1 Timothy 3:16). In the Oneness understanding, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost are not three eternally distinct persons but three ways the one God has related to humanity — Father as the eternal Spirit who is the source of all things, Son as that same God stepping into human flesh and history in the person of Jesus Christ, and Holy Ghost as that same God's ongoing activity in and through His people.
Key terms: John 1:1, 14 (the Word made flesh), John 10:30 and the crowd's reaction, John 14:9–10, Colossians 2:9 and 1 Timothy 3:16
Discussion Questions
- Why did the crowd in John 10:33 pick up stones immediately after Jesus said 'I and my Father are one' — what did they understand Him to be claiming?
- How would you explain John 14:9–10 to someone who has never heard it before?
Challenge: Write a short, respectful paragraph explaining the Oneness position on Christ to a friend from a Trinitarian background, quoting at least three of this week's verses in full.
Week 3: Baptism in Jesus' Name and the Historical Debate
Reading: Matthew 28:19; Acts 2:38, 4:10–12, 8:16, 10:48, 19:5; Colossians 3:17
Matthew 28:19 records Jesus' instruction to baptize “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.” Yet every single baptism recorded in the book of Acts that specifies actual wording uses the name of Jesus Christ instead: Peter at Pentecost (“in the name of Jesus Christ,” Acts 2:38), Philip's converts in Samaria (“in the name of the Lord Jesus,” 8:16), Cornelius's Gentile household (“in the name of the Lord,” 10:48), and the Ephesian disciples under Paul (“in the name of the Lord Jesus,” 19:5). The apostles who received the Matthew 28:19 command directly from Christ never once recited “Father, Son, and Holy Ghost” as spoken words over anyone. The Oneness reading takes this seriously rather than explaining it away: Jesus said “name,” singular, not “names,” and the apostles who heard Him say it consistently tell us, in narrative after narrative, what that one name is. Peter adds the sharpest statement of all in Acts 4:12, preaching over the healed lame man: “Neither is there salvation in any other: for there is none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.” Paul's general instruction in Colossians 3:17 — “whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus” — fits the same pattern of a single, all-sufficient name.
This is not only a modern theological debate; it has real, datable history. In April 1913, at a camp meeting in Arroyo Seco, California, a minister named R. E. McAlister preached a message pointing out that the apostles in Acts always baptized using the name of Jesus rather than reciting the triune formula of Matthew 28:19. That single observation set off what came to be called “the New Issue” within the young Pentecostal movement. Within a few years, ministers including Frank Ewart, Glenn Cook, and Garfield T. Haywood embraced both baptism in Jesus' name and the Oneness understanding of God that undergirds it, and began rebaptizing believers who had previously been baptized using the triune formula. The controversy split the Assemblies of God in 1916, and out of that division grew the network of independent Oneness Pentecostal fellowships — among Spanish-speaking believers, the Apostolic Assembly of the Faith in Christ Jesus, organized in the 1920s under men like Francisco Llorente and Marcial de la Cruz, and among English-speaking believers eventually the United Pentecostal Church, formed by a 1945 merger of two earlier Oneness organizations. You are, quite literally, studying the doctrine and the history of the movement your own church tradition came out of.
Key terms: Matthew 28:19's singular 'name', The unbroken pattern in Acts (2:38, 8:16, 10:48, 19:5), Acts 4:12, 'The New Issue' (Arroyo Seco, 1913), AAFCJ (1920s) and UPCI (1945) origins
Discussion Questions
- Why do you think every baptism recorded in Acts uses Jesus' name specifically, if Matthew 28:19 already gave a three-part formula?
- What does it mean to you personally to know the specific year, place, and people behind the 'New Issue' that shaped the church tradition you're part of?
Challenge: Write a timeline of the 1913–1945 span — from Arroyo Seco to the AAFCJ's founding to the UPCI's 1945 merger — in your own words. You'll deepen this further in Church History II this year.
Course Exam
Five questions for review or self-testing.
Q: What does Isaiah 45:5 rule out?
Reveal Answer
Any God besides the LORD — 'I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me.'
Q: What does 1 Timothy 3:16 say happened in the incarnation?
Reveal Answer
God was 'manifest in the flesh.'
Q: According to the Oneness position, what do the titles Father, Son, and Holy Ghost describe?
Reveal Answer
The one God in three different relationships to humanity, not three distinct, co-eternal persons.
Q: What baptismal formula is used in every specified baptism in Acts?
Reveal Answer
The name of Jesus Christ.
Q: What is 'the New Issue,' and when did it occur?
Reveal Answer
The 1913–1916 controversy over the baptismal formula and the nature of the Godhead that produced the modern Oneness Pentecostal movement.