If any doctrine can be called fundamental to Revealed Religion, it must be that of the strict, simple, unqualified Unity of God. I take this to be universally admitted, nay, insisted on. There is not a more obvious truth in the Scriptures; none more coincident with their whole tenor and drift, or with their most express and positive declarations. Rightly interpreted, rightly understood, there is not even an intimation or hint of anything else. The language of the Bible upon this point is everywhere plain and explicit. The declaration recorded in the fourth verse of the sixth chapter of Deuteronomy, then so solemnly made to the people of Israel through Moses; and afterwards in the coming in of the new and better dispensation, quoted and so emphatically affirmed by our Lord Jesus Christ in the twenty-ninth verse of the twelfth chapter of St. Mark’s Gospel—“Hear, O Israel, the Lord thy God is One Lord”—is clear and indisputable. Unitarians, therefore, not only without hesitation, but in perfect harmony with the unambiguous language of Scripture, and on the express authority of Christ himself, affirm that GOD is ONE; in the strictest meaning of the word, ONE; One Person, One Being, One intelligent, conscious Mind. There are seventeen texts in the New Testament alone, in which He is expressly called the One or Only God. In thirteen hundred passages, the word God occurs; in not one of them is there any necessary implication, but directly the contrary, of a plurality of Persons in the Godhead. In but very few of them has it ever been pretended that such a plurality is even implied.
Indeed, I know not, had the sacred writers proposed to guard against any different belief from that of the simple Unity of God, how their testimony on this point could have been more express. Besides the citation just made from one of the Gospels, St. Paul, in the eighth chapter of his first Epistle to the Corinthians, having declared that “there is none other God but One,” in the same breath adds, “to us there is One God, the Father”—to us, Christians, that One God is the Father. So in the fourth chapter of his Epistle to the Ephesians he says: “There is One God and Father of all, who is above all.” In perfect correspondence with all this, we find in the nineteenth chapter of St. Matthew’s Gospel that our Lord, when a man addressed him with the words “Good Master,” declined the epithet; saying: “Why callest thou me good? There is none Good but One, that is, God.”
Thus clearly is the fact that God is One, strictly and only One, stated in Scripture. But that this One God is the Father—in other words, that the Father, and the Father only, is this One God, is just as clear. The beloved Apostle John has recorded at length a most remarkable prayer, offered by our Lord when he was about to leave the world. If he would ever have spoken simply, unequivocally, according to his convictions, nay, his knowledge, it must have been at that solemn hour, in that most solemn act. Hear him, then, addressing the FATHER: “This is Life Eternal, that they might know THEE, the ONLY TRUE GOD—and Jesus Christ whom Thou hast sent.”1 Could any language be more explicit than this?
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Author: Frederick A. Farley
Keywords: Consubstantiality, Consubstantial, Homoiousian, Homoousian, Homoousion, Socinian, Socinianism, Servetus, Michael Servetus, Modalism, Arianism, Unitarianism, Unitarian, monotheism, monotheist, one God, One God the Father, One Jesus Christ, Logos, Word made flesh, Jesus is the Word, trinitarianism, Tri-unity, Pre-existent word, Pre-existence, Pre-existent, Jesus is God, God the Son, hypostasis, Jesus existed before Abraham, Christ existed before Abraham, Greater than Abraham, Existed before Abraham, Before Abraham, Trinity, Trinitarian, Preexistence, Jesus preexisted, Jesus pre-existed, Jesus' preexistence, Jesus' pre-existence, Christ preexisted, Christ pre-existed, Christ's preexistence, Christ's pre-existence, Jesus's preexistence, Jesus existed before he was born, Deity of Christ, Deity of Jesus, Triunity, Arian, Three in one, Three gods, Three gods one person, Johannine comma, Johanine comma, Johanine coma, Johannine coma, Comma, False doctrine, False teaching, Arius, Arias, Nicene Creed, Nicaea, Nicea, Athanasian Creed, Athanasius, Father son holy spirit, Father son holy ghost, Triune, Three persons in one God, eternal sonship, god manifest in the flesh, God incarnate, incarnation, God made flesh, God manifestation, eternal son, eternal son of God, Christology, Christologies, Binitarian, Binitarianism, First Council of Nicaea, Nicean Creed
Bible reference(s): Gen 1:26, Gen 11:7, Deu 6:4, Isaiah 9:6, Isa 6:3, Matthew 28:19, Mark 12:32, John 1:1-14, John 1:18, Joh 5:18, John 8:58, Joh 10:30, Joh 14:28, Joh 17:3, Joh 20:28, 1Co 8:4, 1Co 8:6, Phi 2:6, Eph 4:6, 1 Tim 2:5, 1 Tim 3:16, Heb 1:2, Heb 1:8-9, 1 John 5:7-8, Rev 1:8, Rev 4:8
Source: Unitarianism Defined (Boston: Walker, Wise & Co., 1935).
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