As Karl Barth puts it, “The God who reveals Himself here can reveal Himself. The very fact of revelation tells us that it is proper to Him to distinguish Himself from Himself, i.e., to be God in Himself and in concealment, and yet at the same time to be God a second time in a very different way, namely, in manifestation” (Church Dogmatics I:1, 316).
This same God, ininite and uncontainable, becomes present in the conined quarters of Israel’s life. Hashem dwells in the Mishkan (Tabernacle) and the Beit Mikdash (Temple), speaks through Israel’s prophets, and wins battles through Israel’s judges and kings. Hashem takes form and appears to Israel, but also enters its life, dwelling and working in Israel.
Barth calls this third divine dimension “impartation,” and rightly recognizes it as being as integral to revelation as the divine concealment and the divine assumption of form: “If we have been right to emphasize in the biblical witness to revelation the three elements of unveiling, veiling and impartation . . . in this statement we have really said the same thing three times in three indissolubly different ways” (CD I:1, 332).
Jewish tradition has struggled with this paradoxical and complex biblical picture of Hashem as much as Christian tradition has struggled in its attempt to articulate the unity and distinction of the Father, Son, and Spirit. Especially within the Jewish mystical tradition, many have recognized that an “absolute monotheism” cannot be reconciled with the biblical witness to revelation or the Jewish community’s historical experience of encounter with the Living God.
Christians and Messianic Jews will continue to struggle with the doctrine of the divine Triunity. To our surprise, we have good company in those Jews who realize the limits of “absolute monotheism.”
Many Christians and Messianic Jews struggle with the traditional teaching of the Christian Church regarding the Tri-unity of God. How can God be both singular and threefold? Does this teaching not violate both commonsense and the absolute monotheism of the Torah, the Prophets, and Jewish tradition?
I do not intend to answer these questions in this short column. Instead, I would like to examine the assumption that the Torah and the Prophets teach an “absolute monotheism.”
The God spoken of in the Torah and the Prophets is ininite in knowledge, power, and presence, invisible and without form. According to Psalm 145:3, the greatness of Hashem is “unsearchable.” As Solomon consecrates the Jerusalem temple, he acknowledges that heaven itself is too small to contain the presence of the Holy One. Hashem’s only limits are those that are self-imposed or intrinsic to Hashem’s character.
Nevertheless, this same God assumes a human form and appears to Abraham, Jacob, Moses, Joshua, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and others. The people of Israel hear this God speak in human words at Sinai. They encounter Hashem not as an ininite, hidden, and unknowable power, but as a self-revealing God who speaks, acts, and feels.
Mark Kinzer
Mark Kinzer, Ph.D. is the President of Messianic Jewish Theological Institute, Chairman of the Board of Hashivenu, and the Rabbi of Congregation Zera Avraham in Ann Arbor, Michigan.