Israel's daily confession, and the New Testament's quietest scandal
"Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might." (Deuteronomy 6:4–5)
The Shema is the confession Israel says at least twice a day, every day, from antiquity to the present. The word means "hear" — the opening verb. It is the centerpiece of every Jewish prayer service. It is bound on the doorpost in the mezuzah. It is bound on the arm and the forehead in the tefillin during weekday prayer, in literal obedience to the verse a few lines later (Deuteronomy 6:8). The Shema is the line a faithful Jew aspires to die saying — and many have.
The theological content is monotheism stated in its strongest form. There is one LORD. He alone is to be loved. Heart, soul, might — the totality of the self is the unit of obedience. Israel's exile, restoration, prophetic literature, wisdom literature, exilic and post-exilic identity all turn around this verse. Idolatry is, in the prophetic reading, the violation of the Shema. Repentance is its restoration.
The Christian reading of the Shema is where the doctrine of the Trinity becomes a working problem. Christ does not soften the Shema. When the lawyer asks for the greatest commandment, Christ answers with Deuteronomy 6:4–5 word for word (Mark 12:29–30). What he does not do is back away from the monotheistic claim. What he does instead is something stranger. The same Christ who confesses the Shema accepts worship that, in the prophetic frame, can only be given to the LORD. He forgives sins. He claims authority over the Sabbath. He commands the storm.
Paul, who knew the Shema in Hebrew and lived under it, writes 1 Corinthians 8:6 — and the verse is one of the quietest theological scandals in the New Testament. "For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist." Paul splits the Shema. The one God of Deuteronomy 6 is the Father. The one Lord of Deuteronomy 6 is Christ. The Jewish confession is held intact, and Christ is placed inside it.
This is the Christological move the Nicene Creed eventually codifies — Christ as "true God of true God," the one Lord of the Shema, the same divine identity confessed by Israel. The Council of Nicaea is not adding a fourth God or compromising the Shema. It is reading what Paul and the apostles already did: the Shema's one LORD is the Father and the Son together, with the Spirit joining the confession at Constantinople. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is the Shema worked out under the pressure of the resurrection.
The modern Jewish tradition holds the Shema, including the Christian reading of it as a violation. The editorial position is to take the disagreement seriously. The Shema is not casual ground for cross-tradition argument. It is the line on which Israel has died for two thousand years and the line on which the church has confessed Christ as God for the same two thousand years. The disagreement does not get resolved by either side claiming the other simply misread.
Related entries: Sinai (Horeb), Tablets of the Testimony, Mary (Mother of Jesus)