Concrete Academic

There are two ways to appraise James McGrath’s The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context, a treatise on the theology proper of Judaism and primitive Christianity: its scholarship and its writing. Writing a popular work brings special challenges not faced when writing only to the academy, and McGrath struggles to write with the academic succinctness he is used to while being accessible to everyone. This is epitomized in his joke about divine agency, which he cautions, “is not referring to individuals who sold houses for God or booked gigs for God to perform at local clubs on Saturday nights.”

Awkward humor aside, McGrath explains the concept lucidly. More often, though, he gives insufficient background for his discussion. He writes helpful summaries, but he doesn’t preview his material to give the uninitiated reader a helping hand although, at about one hundred pages, he was not pressed for space. Ostensibly he does not want to bore his fellow scholars, but these sections would be easy skimmed and would not detract from the work at all.

Perhaps McGrath was picking his spots. At the beginning he does take his time trying to disabuse the reader of his modern monotheistic sensibility. He tells us that when we contrast Judaic “monotheism” with the “polytheism” of the ancient world, we’re imposing our current lexis anachronistically. His coverage of the nature of monotheism (he’s able to stay with the language after no little caveat) as seen from the relevant Jewish literature is excellent, though at times it looks as if he muddies the waters unnecessarily, only to clear them up for us later.

McGrath is not as careful discussing the terms “god” and “worship.” The modern denotations are very hard to shake, and we read those words differently than the ancients read elohim and proskunesis. No doubt he was avoiding working in the biblical languages, but it would have been helpful here, even though he does cover the breadth of usage of the words. There’s no introduction into the rabbinic material or his brief detour into textual criticism, which remains opaque in his hurried coverage. It’s this kind of oversight that makes McGrath only moderately successful at writing to the lay audience.

But that’s about as much bad as I can come up with. The book is otherwise a much needed 100-page punch to the gut. McGrath, with others, agrees that liturgical practice is an important defining factor of monotheism, but he goes a step further in specifying sacrificial worship. This is a key insight. He plays on it later on, but I wish he had drawn out the idea at this earlier point. Following the first two chapters, which focus on Judaic background, McGrath discusses monotheism in Paul’s letters, John’s Gospel, and the Book of Revelation. His treatment of those commonly-cited texts is informative and iconoclastic, a must-read on the issue of early Christian worship. Chapter six covers the “Two Powers Heresy,” though I found it unnecessary and would have preferred to see him use the space to develop his other ideas.

Good scholarship is not just about laying out the evidence and questioning preponderant opinions, but coming up with explanations. McGrath does not leave us wanting. Here’s a line of thinking that comes up in a few places scattered throughout the book. Speaking of John’s logos and its close relation to God, he says:

It was only after significant changes in world view had taken place, probably connected with the development of a clear doctrine of creation out of nothing, that it became urgent to sort out exactly where the dividing line between God and creation should be drawn. And so it was that Arius and other non-Nicenes said “between God and the Logos,” while Athanasius and the Nicenes said, “between the Logos and creation”[....] As I have noted, however, to expect John to answer a question that was only raised later is rather unfair. Yet it was this very question which led to the (re)definition of monotheism by Christians in the trinitarian terms we are familiar with today and by others in monistic terms. Prior to this, there apparently was no problem. (McGrath, 69)

I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I know it would make more of an impact than it does had the author published with a firm with wider and deeper roots than the University of Illinois Press. I’m happy to recommend it here and hope that it gets the readership it deserves.