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This chapter discusses the concept of the Trinity and the distinction between the Latin theory of the Trinity and the Eastern or Social Theory of the Trinity. An a priori argument in favor of the Social Theory is given, and objections to the Social Theory raised by Brian Leftow are answered. The concept of perichoresis is important for both understanding and defending the Social Theory. The Latin Theory and the Social Theory are two appropriate ways of talking about the mystery of the Trinity.

This chapter argues that the grammatical Thomism of Herbert McCabe and the story Barthianism of Hans Frei are as modalist or Sabellian as the full-blown story Thomism of Robert Jenson. On the one hand, if one applies the descriptive or narrative method to the Trinity and its works in salvation history, one ‘person’ will appear after another, as in modalism. On the other hand, this will not even achieve its stated aim of doing justice to the temporality of salvation history, since all three persons will be actualizations of a single, static, and immobile story. Although the narrative theological dissolution of the persons of the Trinity into a series of relationships may not be wholly grounded in texts of either Barth or Aquinas, the classical Augustinian method nonetheless undermines the historical force of the Biblical salvation history, with its descriptions of the persons of the Trinity, and therefore is not a stable basis from which to avoid modalism. This chapter proposes that the modern challenge can be met to show how the economic Trinity really exhibits the immanent, eternal Trinity by considering the historical missions of Son and Spirit, not just as the reflection or illustration of, but as the ‘expression’ of the divine Love. This approach to Trinitarian theology strengthens rather than diminishes the force of its reference to three persons, by keeping the Biblical descriptions in sight.

Monotheism is addressed in the context of the polytheisms of ancient Ugarit and early Israel. Within the Bible, monotheism is not a separate stage of religion in ancient Israel, as it is customarily regarded. It was in fact a kind of ancient rhetoric reinforcing Israel’s exclusive relationship with its deity. Monotheism is a kind of inner community discourse using the language of Yahweh’s exceptional divine status over and in all reality (“there are no other deities but me”) in order to absolutize Yahweh’s claim on Israel and to express Israel’s ultimate fidelity to Yahweh in a world where political boundaries or institutions no longer offered sufficiently intelligible lines of religious identity. In its political and social reduction in the world (first because of the rise of foreign empires in the seventh century, followed by its exile in 587–538 ), Israel elevated the terms of its understanding of its deity’s mastery of the world. Put summarily: Israel was now no nation, but the gods of other nations, including the greatest powers, were not really gods; and Yahweh was the sole force over both.

This chapter begins the discussion on Israelite monotheism by noting the deep impact on Yahweh of the god El; the formative traditions of Israel, now largely lost in the mists of time, camouflage a complex relationship between El and Yahweh. The chapter turns in particular to a seminal question in the religion of ancient Israel: who was the original chief god of Israel? Thanks to the pioneering work of B. A. Levine on El traditions in Iron Age Transjordan, it is possible to explore further old traditions about El in early Israel. Because the name of the god El appears as the divine element in the name of IsraEL, it has been supposed that El was the original god of Israel, and some evidence may point to El as the god associated with the Exodus from Egypt in some early biblical tradition. The implications for the religious origins of ancient Israel are profound, and they raise basic questions for anyone, scholar and non-scholar alike, who takes seriously the complexity of the biblical witnesses to the god of Israel. The chapter also addresses the origins of Yahweh and the problems surrounding their reconstruction.

This last chapter offers a study of the monotheistic rhetoric in what is considered the most prominent evidence of this language, namely Isaiah 40–55. The language of monotheism in this section of the Bible particularly illustrates that monotheism is hardly a religious stage at this point, but rather a rhetorical strategy designed to persuade its audience of the reality of Yahweh’s absolute power in a world where a foreign empire holds sway over Judah. The different sections of the chapter look at the polemical context of Isaiah 40–55, the outsider context (polemic), insider referentiality and Isaiah 44, and reading this text for monotheism.

In stark contrast to Ecclesiastes, Isaiah 40-55 provides a dynamic and open-ended picture of creation. This chapter examines certain passages from Second Isaiah that were evidently composed at the end of Israel’s exile in Babylon. The heavens are likened to unfurled fabric, and the ground is the locus of God’s new creation. To herald the exiles’ release, the prophet draws heavily from the example of botanical life. Creation is emergent: like plants bursting from the soil’s crust, salvation “springs forth” from the ground. Creation’s emergent newness is matched by the prophet’s emergent view of God. Drawing from the biological analogy of “symbiosis,” this chapter argues that Isaiah’s rigorously monotheistic view of God is the result of a merging of divine qualities from which God’s identity emerges as the transcendent and consummate creator.

This chapter considers three ways in which the question of Islam and pluralism has been addressed by contemporary American Muslims. The first is how the term pluralism is applied by some Muslims to past and present political realities. The second relates to ethical concerns raised by some as to whether Islam is as internally pluralistic as it is called to be. The third deals with the relationship of Islam to other religious traditions and whether Islam is theologically open, especially to Christianity. It is important for anyone interested in moving from introductory to deeper levels of discourse between Muslims and Christians to have an understanding of each of these modes of interpretation.

Religion is a form of risk management in human lives and in religious groups. Pascal’s Wager famously illustrates the calculation of loss and benefit in religious belief. But there are other economic models for how religion deals with uncertainty, and this chapter looks at three. First is insurance against risk, with its byproduct of “moral hazard. Second is the need to verify the reliability of religious “goods,” which economists call “credence goods.” Religions, like businesses, seek to assure consumers of reliability. Finally, consumers search for reliable information, which in religion means explanations about the gods, the afterlife, and ultimate religious consequences, such as hell. Typically, monotheistic faiths are deemed “high risk” religions because of their belief in ultimate consequences. But all religions have this feature to some extent, speaking to the human incentive to avoid risk.

In the Israelite tradition as it has come down to us, the political community was based on strict monotheism: a belief that theirs was the one and only god (Yahweh), and that he, not the king, had personally dictated their laws. There was a unique relationship between Yahweh and the people of Israel, based on the covenant he had made with them. This gave them an exclusive claim to ‘the promised land’, provided they obeyed god's law. The principal agent of Yahweh was the people, not the king. Both elders and people had political roles. The Israelites developed a strong sense of their uniqueness as a nation. After the Exile some held that a kinglike Messiah would come and establish a universal rule of justice.

This chapter explores the New Testament Gentile church, and examines the roles of Peter and Paul in the religion's transformation into its Greek‐speaking phase. Given the dual Jewish‐Gentile heritage of Christianity, the foundation was laid for the religion's intercultural world errand. The chapter considers the implications of the disciples abandoning Jerusalem and embracing centers of Greek life, thus freeing the Gospel from the constraints of a founding culture. Diverse peoples and cultures embraced Christianity, adapting it to reflect local priorities. The chapter argues that the Jewish background of Christianity, in particular, the Jewish monotheist message and its ethical system, survived into the Gentile phase, and resulted in uniting exotic and disparate religious materials into a thriving religious movement.

This chapter offers a sweeping historical overview of misotheism. The major stopping points along this compelling history of ideas are: the Book of Job, Epicurus, Ovid, St. Augustine, Thomas Paine, James Mill, Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Michael Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin, Friedrich Nietzsche, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Virginia Woolf, Storm Jameson, Naomi Goldenberg, Rosemary Ruether, Sigmund Freud, Albert Camus, William Empson, and Gore Vidal. The author documents the genealogy of God-hatred from the trial-of-God theme in the Book of Job, to Epicureanism, deism, utilitarianism, anarchism, feminism, and secular humanism.

This chapter compares the treatment of Socrates by Christian writers of the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries AD with that by pagan authors of the same period. The Christians divided between those who regarded Socrates as a forerunner of Christianity and those who saw him — in common with the pagan world as a whole — as subject to the powers of darkness. This division focused on one phenomenon in particular, Socrates' ‘divine sign’, which those favourable to him saw as a mark of divine favour, while those opposed regarded it as an evil familiar spirit. While those writers derived their contrasting views of Socrates from their religious ideology, the pagan writers were interested in him less as a figure of doctrinal significance than as a moral exemplar and source of improving and/or entertaining anecdote. While much of this material is favourable to Socrates, there are some traces of a hostility which is absent from the major Socratic writers, and which appears to derive from a tradition of hostility to philosophy in general.

The first part of this introduction discusses the scope of the study presented in the book, starting by examining the different approaches to divinity that may be taken--regarding it as distinct from human, looking at it etymologically, listing and studying individual deities, and taking a large-scale comparative approach that ventures a typology. The book attempts to combine all four of these approaches in examining the major indigenous conceptual structures that ancient Ugaritic and Israelite societies used to construct their religious reality. An outline is given of the contents of the ten chapters before going on to address various issues in discussing monotheism and polytheism, problems with the use of the term “Canaanite” (which is used widely in scholarly studies but largely avoided in this book as it is thought to be misleading), and the cautions that are needed when considering highly specific historical statements concerning what deities were and did and what ancient peoples believed and acted upon.

Reform rabbi Alfred Geiger Moses formulated and promulgated teachings he termed as “Jewish Science” to counter the growing influence of Christian Science in the American Jewish community. He used the techniques and aims of Christian Science, applied psychology, and New Thought to raise awareness of God’s presence. He also urged the incorporation of the more personal goals of health, success, and happiness into Reform’s ideological understanding of ethical monotheism.

An examination is made of the monotheistic theologies in the priestly work of Genesis 1, the wisdom of Proverbs 1–9, and the apocalyptic of Daniel 7. These are three monotheistic adaptations to the older model of the Israelite national god: respectively, a priestly model, the form of the figure of wisdom personified in female terms, and apocalyptic imagery, with its clear reminiscences of old monarchic theology. All three models involve old mythic material that spoke powerfully and was reused in new and varying circumstances. Mythic narratives and imagery were the chosen forms not only of educated classes such as the monarchy or priesthood; rather, these groups likely drew upon these materials precisely because they were well known among the educated and uneducated, rich and poor. After the treatment of these monotheistic presentations of the Israelite national deity, the author addresses the so-called demise of myth in Israel. Like the preceding chapters, this survey uses the Ugaritic mythological texts as a primary source.

Brian Leftow compares the ‘Latin’ approach to the Trinity (which takes the fact that there is one God as basic and unproblematic, and tries to explain how one God can be three divine persons) to the ‘Social’ position (which begins with three divine persons and shows how they can be one God). He examines three broad ways that Social Trinitarians use to show their versions of the Trinity to be a version of monotheism. In the end, however, he judges that none presents a doctrine of God, which is both orthodox and monotheist.