Understanding biblical monotheism helps us to be clear about what we believe and are to teach. We do not believe in one God who is known by many names and who offers many paths of salvation. We do not affirm that it is enough to believe one God exists. We confess that we must trust in the God of the Bible, who is not worshiped even by the most well-meaning Muslims, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, animists, or modern Jews.
Eighteen years ago, my jaw figuratively dropped to the floor as I sat in the first Old Testament course of my academic career. I attended a secular university, so I did not expect much true biblical teaching. However, I had hope the Scriptures would be treated fairly because my professor was an Orthodox Jew. You can imagine my surprise, then, when my professor said faithful ancient Israelites did not deny the existence of other gods. They worshiped Yahweh above the rest of the gods, he said, but they believed those gods were real.
Liberal “highercritical” circles accept as dogma my professor’s view, which is henotheism. True monotheism—the belief that only one God exists—came late in Israel’s history, these critics say. Advocacy of henotheism is based largely on reading references to “other gods” in the Pentateuch as proof that Moses attributed true existence to the deities of other peoples but believed Israel was to worship Yahweh alone (for example, Ex. 20:3).
Unbelieving scholarship must focus on minutia and ignore larger contexts to “find” henotheism in Scripture. That Moses affirmed the existence of only one God is plain from the Pentateuch’s first chapter. Unlike other ancient Near Eastern creation accounts, we do not read that battles between deities brought forth the earth. Genesis 1 presents one God who “created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Yahweh, the sole actor in the narrative, formed the universe by His Word.
Given the prevalence of polytheism in the ancient Near East, the biblical authors repeatedly insist that there is but one God. Just prior to the Shema and its affirmation of monotheism, we read that “there is no other” Lord (Deut. 4:39). Only Yahweh responds in the confrontation between Elijah and the prophets of Baal, for Yahweh exists and Baal does not (1 Kings 18:20–40). Isaiah says, “Besides [Yahweh] there is no god,” and points out the folly of serving deities represented by wooden idols (Isa. 44).
The Apostles proclaimed monotheism most strongly when they encountered Greek paganism. Paul continues the Old Testament’s denial of the existence of other gods in Romans 1, explaining that polytheism arises as people suppress their knowledge of the one true God and fashion deities they can manipulate (Rom. 1:18–23). The same Apostle reminds Timothy, who ministered in a pagan context, that “there is one God” (1 Tim. 2:5). Throughout Revelation, John points out the futility of Roman religion, describing the eventual fall of any pretender to the Lord Almighty’s throne.
That the one God reveals Himself to His creation undergirds biblical monotheism.