What reasons do Christians have to believe there is one God?
Upvote:3
Amongst Jews, the most important verse of the Torah is the Shema - Deuteronomy 6:4:
Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.
That is the distinctive call of the Hebrew religion, the first major monotheistic impulse. It is specific revelation, as opposed to general revelation, so one would not expect a non-biblical answer. One does not get specific revelation from observation or logic - it requires faith by definition.
It dates to the time of Moses, and is a radical departure from all that surrounded it.
Fast forward more than a milennium, and it is to these Jews that Jesus first came. Indeed, initially, Jews and Christians were hard to distinguish!. Thus, the same Jesus who said "I have not come to abolish the Law but to fulfill it" would necessarily have been telling his followers to be monotheistic.
Muslims like to claim that Christians reject monotheism via the Trinity, but that is an incorrect understanding of Christainity. (As an aside, one my way to church on Sunday, I saw a license plate that said "1 not 3". I knew the driver had to be Muslim, and sure enough, as she passed me, she was wearing an hijab. Her understanding was simply wrong.)
Upvote:5
A common argument for theism is the Cosmological argument - that there must have been a first cause for the universe. Christians believe that everything that exists is the result of God, who is uncreated and self-existent.
If the universe has a single cause then it follows its existence is the result of a single self-existent being. Could there somehow be multiple self-existent beings? Well yes, but to be a single cause for the universe those beings must be in such a great unity. This could be argued to be the case for the Christian view of God, the Trinity, who is three persons in one being.
In many (perhaps most) polytheistic religions most of the gods were actually created from the original creator god. In my mind those gods don't deserve to be called gods - call them spirits instead.
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