Kimel and Bauckham on monotheism

I thank Fr. Aiden Kimel for reminding me of Richard Bauckham’s chapter on kinds of monotheism. I read it years ago, and thought there was something that was not quite right about it. Kimel says, summarizing Bauckham,

Inclusive monotheism declares the God is the highest being within the class of deities to which he belongs. “He is unique,” Bauckham explains, “only in the sense of superlative.” His uniqueness is defined by his supremacy over all other gods and divine beings.

[Bauckham says] “it takes a ‘gradient view of reality that does not draw sharp ontological distinctions between the supreme God and other gods, or between gods and humans” (p. 109).

I would call this polytheism where one of the gods is uniquely the greatest. This is different from monotheism, and is not a kind of monotheism. We could call it, as I believe Hurtado does, “high-god polytheism.” “Monotheism” was coined in the early modern era to mean belief in exactly one GOD. A highest god need not be a GOD. A GOD is such that it is a contradiction to suppose there’s more than one – such a GOD is defined as unique.

Kimel again,

Exclusive monotheism, on the other hand, understands “the uniqueness of the one God in terms of an absolute difference in kind from all other reality” (p. 109). Bauckham calls it “transcendent uniqueness.” I commonly refer to it as God’s “radical difference.” God does not belong to a class called “Deity,” nor is he the supreme instantiation of generic divinity. Exclusive, or absolute, monotheism thus asserts a binary view of reality.

To me, this is just monotheism. God certainly belongs to a class we can call “Deity,” but that’s not a class that could contain other members. His radical difference is, for one thing, existing a se – not because of anything else. No other thing has that distinction. Reality is indeed “binary” – for the monotheist God (the one GOD) is fundamentally different from everything else.

In this, I would say, Bauckham is correct:

In my view, early Jewish literature (with few, if any, exceptions) is strongly committed to such a view by the way it constantly understands the uniqueness of the God of Israel as that of the one Creator of all things and the one sovereign Ruler of all things. Because these definitions of God’s uniqueness drive an absolute difference of kind between God and ‘all things’, they override any older gradient features of the Israelite-Jewish worldview (such as survive in some of the vocabulary used) and create an essentially binary view of reality. This does not and need not deny the existence of many heavenly beings, but simply insists that they are created by God and subject to the sovereign will of God. (p. 109)

The reason second temple Judaism is so committed is that Isaiah portrays YHWH as a unique GOD.

But then, I think, there is some trouble:

In early Judaism, the binary distinction between God and all other reality was observed and inculcated—in daily religious observance—by monolatry. In a gradient worldview (such as the pagan, inclusive monotheism of antiquity), many beings are accorded honour…

Monolatry – worship of only one being – indeed is a sort of natural accompaniment to monotheism. But they can and do come apart. A monolater may just be a polytheist devoted to some specific god for some reason. And many monotheists worship beings other than the one GOD – that is, various gods – whether they are called devas, gods, angels, asuras, or saints. They are polyolaters. It seems to me, then, than a monotheist (believer in one GOD) sometimes worships other gods too, and that polytheists who are not monotheists sometimes worship only one god. Belief and practice are different, and are separable.

Kimel continues, in my view correctly,

Hence even though Israel may originally have conceived of YHWH as one of the gods, perhaps even practicing a form of inclusive monotheism, eventually it moved into an exclusive monotheism, denying all other gods precisely as gods.

The Jews worshiped only God primarily because it was what he demanded of them, on the grounds of what he’d done for them. When they came to see him as a GOD, and not merely as a highest god, they could see better why it was appropriate to worship him alone. “Exclusive monotheism,” I think, can only mean monotheism + monolatry (of that one GOD).

Well, then in the NT era, Christians were not “exclusive monotheists” then, because they worshiped both the one GOD, (God, YHWH) and his exalted Son, the man Jesus. Why didn’t they think this was a sin of idolatry? Because that Jesus should be worshiped is implied by God’s raising him to his side. And they knew, like Paul, that it was all “to the glory of God, [that is,] the Father.” (Phil 2:11) Unlike many later Christians, they did not have a muddled view that considers the Son of God to be the God of whom he’s the Son (and also not).