Just One God

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How do we know there’s only One God?

In the history of religion, monotheism is relatively rare.

Paganism, whether ancient Egyptian or modern-day Hinduism, is always conspicuous for having a huge collection, or pantheon of gods. It was the great achievement of Mosaic Judaism to fight against this multiplication of bogus gods. The first commandment rules out all other gods: they are to be weeded out, whittled down to the one true God. The prophets declare that the gods of the nations are idols, the gods of the nations are nothing. Deuteronomy says, “Hear O Israel, the Lord Your God is One”

But how do we know? Can we know, just by reason, that there’s only one God? And, come to think of it, does it matter, practically?

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One is all you need

Sometimes atheists will try to get cute with believers, and say something like, “Well, how do you know there’s only one God? Maybe Thor exists too, or Poseidon, or Jupiter. Maybe there’s a Flying Spaghetti Monster out there. If you believe in your God, why not believe in those gods too?” Or they’ll say things like, “Listen, you believe in a lot less gods than the Hindus, we atheists just believe in one less god than you Christians.”

Of course, at the end of the day, this is all very childish.

The point isn’t how many gods you believe in or don’t believe in. The point is how do you make sense of the existence of the world, the order in the universe, and the basic fact of human morality.

Atheists can make sense of exactly none of that. None of it. Whereas those of us who believe in a Creator who designed the cosmos and human beings with an intrinsic purpose, we can make sense of all of it because all you need to make sense of all of it is just one Creator-God.

After that, there’s no point in going around postulating other gods. They’d be redundant, they wouldn’t help explain anything.

So all you need is one God. But actually, it turns out that the idea of more than one God isn’t just pointless, it’s absurd.

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There can only be One

God, as we’ve seen, is the source of all existence, which means He has the fullness of all existence. But since perfection just means a fullness of existence, then we also say that God is all-perfect. And, when you think about it, there’s no way there could even be two different all-perfect beings. After all, if they were different, there'd have to be something that made them different and the only thing that could make them different would be if one had some characteristic that the other one lacked. But remember, every characteristic God has is a perfection, that’s what we mean by calling Him all-perfect

If one of these God’s lacked a characteristic the other one had, He would be lacking a perfection, which means he  wouldn’t be perfect, so he wouldn’t be God.

Again, basic logic confirms what our faith already teaches

There is a necessary being, there has to be. God must exist. He is perfect. There is only One God, there could never be more than One.

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Why does it matter that there is only One God

Only one thing can be the most important thing in anyone’s life. That thing could be something unworthy, like alcohol, or sexual gratification, or money, or popularity. Or that thing could be something more noble, like love, or truth, or justice. But in this life, we know that all love is imperfect, as is all knowledge of truth, and all our attempts at justice. But it’s best if the most important thing in our life is the most important thing in reality.

There can only be one most important thing in our life, and there is only one most important thing in reality

That thing, that being, is the One and only All-Perfect God. He is the being who enjoys all perfections, including the perfections of love and truth and justice. He is the one and only place where all our most noble aspirations can be fulfilled.

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Adoration and Idolatry

The proper response to the Supreme God, to the One All-Perfect Being, is simple adoration. Adoration just means acting like something is the most important thing there is. Like we said before, we all adore something. We can’t help it. We all act like something is the most important thing there is. Hence the constant threat of idolatry, because the sin of idolatry is just choosing the wrong thing to adore. It’s the sin of acting like pleasure or success or money or health or politics is the most important thing there is. Those things are good. But they’re not the most good.

There’s only one most good thing. There’s only one God. There’s only one appropriate target for our adoration.

The first commandment tells us that God is the most important thing there is, and that we have to act like it.

But do we? Do people see us and think, “There goes someone who really believes that God is the most important thing there is.”

Because if not, if we don’t make the one all-Perfect God the most important thing in our life, then we’re making something else. And may God free us from our sins of idolatry.