Bauckham has been criticized for being unclear in this book, but I think he actually provides a great deal of clarity.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So long as the persons are all divine (in the black and white sense described above) and perfectly unified in their rule over the cosmos, such a Trinity qualifies as monotheistic by early Jewish standards and there is no legitimate threat of tritheism.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
His argument<\/strong>, essentially, is that Jewish monotheism allows multiple gods, so long as they’re unified. And, he thinks, the New Testament presents multiple gods, who are unified – a three-self Trinity. Thus, the three-self Trinity presented in the New Testament is monotheistic, in the relevant sense of “monotheistic.”<\/p>\nIn my view, there are some serious mistakes here<\/strong>. The Old Testament says that Yahweh<\/em> is the one God, and the New Testament assumes and asserts the identity of this God with with the one Jesus calls “Father.” It is decisively for the claim that the ultimate reality is a “He” and not an “It.” Jewish monotheism is, true, compatible with there being other “gods<\/strong>” (elohim<\/em>); and in general, all the Abrahamic monotheisms allow any number of lesser gods, deities, or divine beings.<\/p>\nSee the relevant analysis<\/strong> here, in some work of mine in progress. I warn you, though, terminology is a real problem here, and I’m not sure what the best way is to get around it!<\/p>\n
![\"one\"](\"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/one.png\")
At his blogs Ben Nasmith has been writing so very good posts weighing trinitarian vs. unitarian theologies, and in particular thinking about Richard Bauckham and Samuel Clarke.<\/p>\n