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“Paul here calls God, the Father, the origin and Jesus,the Son, the channel of all things. Who do I say Jesus is? I agree with Paul.”

Well, I’m not so sure you actually do agree with Paul, not even in this passage. For review, here’s the text, with a little more context:

1Co 8:4-6 “As concerning therefore the eating of those things that are offered in sacrifice unto idols, we know that an idol is nothing in the world, and that there is none other God but one. [5] For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) [6] But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.”

It is very clear Paul is setting up a contrast between true and false gods. Corinth was a particularly pagan place to live, with all manner of deities to choose from. Of course as you can see from the above passage, Paul didn’t regard false gods as anything.

But we also know that the church at Corinth was in a conflict over these deities. Could you buy the meat, and eat it, if it had been offered to a false god? Some said yes (it was cheaper by the pound, after such an offering), and some said no. What should a good Christian do?

So Paul reminds them, sure there are a lot of false deities around, “But to us” there is “one God,” and to us there is “one Lord.” We are monotheists. We can get past this confusion.

So riddle me this. If your theory is that the phrase “one God, the Father,” excludes all other beings as true God (remember, Paul’s contrast here is with false gods), then why does an equal rule not apply to the phrase “one Lord [KURIOS] Jesus Christ?” Does that mean that God the Father is the only true God, but that the Son is the only true Lord? Is not God also called Lord?

Luk 1:32 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest: and the Lord [KURIOS] God shall give unto him the throne of his father David:

So then we either have a contradiction in Scripture, or we have a misunderstanding, which I find to be more likely.

Consider this also. This is a contrast for the Corinthians between true and false. Whatever is on the true side is true, right? So if your rendering is correct, Jesus cannot be considered a god of any degree, for the passage says “one God,” does it not? How then is it proper to give Jesus any title of deity? Because any such title, according to you, has just been declared false.

This would mean that John 1:1 being rendered “the Word was [a] god” has just been rendered invalid by 1 Cor 8:6. Not to mention a few other passages:

Isa 45:5-8 I am the LORD, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me: [6] That they may know from the rising of the sun, and from the west, that there is none beside me. I am the LORD, and there is none else. [7] I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things. [8] Drop down, ye heavens, from above, and let the skies pour down righteousness: let the earth open, and let them bring forth salvation, and let righteousness spring up together; I the LORD have created it.

Now this passage is interesting for several reasons. “There is no God beside me” is an expression that most ordinary readers would take at face value. Though there many be many forms of authority in the world, and there many be many, many false Gods, there is only one true God. Therefore, Jesus cannot be “a god.”

But wait, you say, all that delegated authority just makes him look like God, so it’s fair to call him a god. Really? Let’s look at your delegation theory in Isaiah. Whom does the one and only true God say helped him with creation? Anyone? What does he say?

Isa 44:24 Thus saith the LORD, thy redeemer, and he that formed thee from the womb, I am the LORD that maketh all things; that stretcheth forth the heavens alone; that spreadeth abroad the earth by myself;

So here we have Jehovah (a nice English word, BTW, but almost certainly not the proper name of God) making it plain that HE is the Creator of all things. Not only does he not subcontract the job, he specifically repudiates the idea that he would do so, here:

“that stretcheth forth the heavens ALONE;

And here:

“that spreadeth abroad the earth BY MYSELF”

God doesn’t lie. He didn’t use a sub. He did it himself. He said so, and with such plainness and clarity in the OT Scriptures that the Corinthian Christians, who were well-trained in Hebrew monotheism, could not mistake Paul’s real meaning. There were false gods and false lords, but there was one true God the Father, and one true Lord Jesus Christ, and though they did have different roles in creation, they are both properly seen as the unitary Creator.

One of the best clues that this is what Paul was getting at in 1 Cor 8:6 is the parallel between his expression and the famous Shema Y’israel:

Deut 6:4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD:

The parallelism of thought is so striking some have suggested what Paul was actually offering here was a Christological monotheism. In simpler terms, he was actually asserting the full deity of Christ, not denying it.

For example, the word for “one” here, echad, is not the word that would typically be used for simple numerical oneness. It is a word that often used to describe a multiplicity of things that comprise one thing. For example:

Eze 37:19 Say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will take the stick of Joseph, which is in the hand of Ephraim, and the tribes of Israel his fellows, and will put them with him, even with the stick of Judah, and make them one stick, and they shall be one [echad] in mine hand.

So when Paul declares there is one God the Father, he is not excluding the Son from being God any more that he is excluding God the Father from being Lord. But by putting them both in the same formulaic relation as the Shema, he is in fact asserting their sameness of being, while preserving their difference of person and role.

And in the broader context, this is the only possible conclusion, because John 1:1-3 sets forth the nature of Christ as that of God, and yet likewise differentiates him as a person from the Father, and furthermore forecloses any possibility of mistaking him for a created being by declaring quite clearly that without him not even one created being was created.

BTW, I found the following link very helpful in formulating my response. You may wish to take a look at it: http://www.answering-islam.org/Shamoun/q_paul_on_one_god.htm

What is so intriguing about that site is that Islam and Arianism both use essentially the same method to attack the deity of Christ, right down to the same passages and the same arguments. This fascinates me because it exposes the common root they both have in pagan Gnosticism. Which is why I find it so ironic that the Arian groups here, that pride themselves on being anti-Christmas and anti-Easter and anti-cross, etc., have strained at those tiny little gnats, only to swallow whole the camel of pagan Gnosticism, along with their Islamic counterparts.

Peace,