28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” 32 And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. 33 And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” 34 And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.
Mark 12:28-34
Below is a copy and paste from a discord thread I started to debate the Trinity. The question is on how this passage and its quoted passage referenced, Deuteronomy 6:4, disprove the Trinity. This is a real-time argument and how I articulated it, which may be more helpful for some. This is mostly a paraphrase of parts of my last article here on the shema
Deuteronomy 6:4 is pretty much just a simple statement of monotheism. The context is that Israel was given a list of commandments on Exodus when they exited Egypt. Due to their lack of faith in God, they were forbidden from entering the promised land and spent 40 years in the wilderness. Deuteronomy is the second Exodus in the sense that it reaffirms the things stated in Exodus for the most part. It is addressed to the new generation of israelites before they now enter the promised land on how they are to live towards God. This is the shema. Moses calls special attention by saying “shema/listen” stating: “The Lord is our God, the Lord is one” or more specifically in Hebrew, “Yahweh is our God, Yahweh is one.” The very point of this passage is to tell Israel that Yahweh is their God, not any other god, and that he is one, not many. Israel’s biggest problem is worshipping false gods alongside Yahweh. They pray to Baal for rain and Yahweh for victory in war. The shema is a statement for Israel not to do this. They have numerically one God, and he is Yahweh. Essentially, do not worship another God.
This is a statement of monotheism. On the surface, there is no argument here for anything other than this. God is one. This isn’t an argument against the Trinity, it is an argument against polytheism.
Mark 12:28-34 NASB: One of the scribes came up and heard them arguing, and recognizing that He had answered them well, asked Him, “What commandment is the foremost of all?” Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘Hear, Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” And the scribe said to Him, “Well said, Teacher; You have truly stated that He is One, and there is no other besides Him; and to love Him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he had answered intelligently, He said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And then, no one dared any longer to question Him.
There is an argument against the Trinity in this passage when Jesus and the scribe quote it. There is a slight work around for some Trinitarians, but I’ll circle around to it.
When they quote the greatest commandment, the shema, they quote it in reference to someone else who is not Jesus. The problem is, if the Trinitarian says that the one monotheistic God referred to in the shema is the Trinity, Father, son, and holy spirit, and this includes Jesus as the Son, then Jesus would be included in the shema, not distinct from it. When the scribe refers back to the shema, the scribe says, “he is one, and there is none but him.” Jesus’ response to the scribe is in agreement. However, if the appropriate interpretation of the shema includes Jesus, the man could not exclude Jesus. “Him” rather than “them.” If God is multipersonal, and this includes Jesus, the scribe should have used the Greek plural version of “you,” meaning, “you, Jesus, and the other two persons of the Trinity.” He does not. He uses a singular personal pronoun, indicating that he understands this shema and commandment to love God to refer to only a singular person, and he uses a relative pronoun that excludes Jesus. Jesus agrees with him.
The scribe also quotes Deuteronomy 4:35. The God of Israel is one, and there is “none but him.” Not “them,” not a plural personal group or a tripersonal being, but a singular person. The Lord is One singular he, and there is none but him. It is very clear that Jesus and the scribe are talking about one person, the Father. The Father is the one God of Israel, and Jesus is excluded from the equation here.
Something else to keep in mind… the shema is the greatest commandment in all of Judaism. Jesus and the scribe were Jews born under the law and obligated to follow this law to the letter. If Jesus is a Jew under the law, how does he keep the shema? Does Jesus worship himself? No. Does his human nature worship his divine nature? No. Does Jesus worship a tripersonal God? No. Does Jesus ever worship the spirit? No. Jesus worships the Father as his God, and he states the Father explicitly as his God in John 20:17. If Jesus is a jew under the law and perfectly follows the law to be a perfect sacrifice, and he only worships the Father, no other persons, then not only is this the example for us, but it also means it is improper to condemn a Unitarian christian for worshipping only the Father as God. If Jesus is our example and he worships the Father as his God, we can’t say Unitarians are in error for doing the same. Further, the scribe also understood this shema to be about one person only. If the scribe believes that the one God of Israel, YHWH, is one person, the Father only, then he isn’t following the shema commandment to worship the trinitarian God if this is what the shema meant. Jesus does not bother to correct the man’s error for not following the greatest commandment of all. The scribe does not respond by bowing to Jesus in worship either.
1. Jesus interprets the shema to be about one person.
2. The scribe agrees with Jesus and speaks of the God of the shema, the one God of Israel, as a singular person.
3. They speak of this singular person as someone other than and not including Jesus.
4. If the God of Israel is a tripersonal God, Jesus did not follow the shema commandment because he only worshiped his God and Father, never 3 persons. This makes Jesus an invalid sacrifice if the Trinitarian view is to be held.
5. If the scribe understood this commandment to be about someone other than Jesus, and Jesus did not correct him, the scribe also did not follow the greatest commandment.
6. Jesus and the scribe agree with each other and understand the passage the same way.
The trinitarian responses to this are:
“Jesus said this in his human nature, and he and the scribe did not include Jesus because he’s human in this case. But Jesus is still God.”
This is not to the point. Jesus and the scribe were not excluding Jesus’ human nature, they were excluding Jesus’ person. In the hypostatic union, there’s only one person. And that one person is both human and divine. If he’s God, then there’s no reason to exclude him. They are excluding a divine person from being the one God even though this divine person is, supposedly, God.
“Singular personal pronouns do not indicate that there is only one person. Just because they say God is he does not mean that God isn’t multipersonal.”
Then, you can never use Genesis 1:26 as an argument again. Quite honestly, it is in great error to say that singular personal pronouns do not refer to a singular person. This is precisely what they do. If Jesus wished to expand on the shema and explain this, he could have done so. The scribe gives absolutely no indication that he thinks the shema is about multiple persons or that he believed one of these persons was Jesus.
“The one God of the shema refers to the Father only as head of the monarchy. The shema is speaking about the Father precisely, but Jesus is still fully divine and participates in the activities of the Father (and spirit).”
This is the way out that Trinitarians can take that I mentioned at the outset. This is the Trinity model held most commonly by contemporary authors like John Zizioulas, Beau Branson, and Joshua Sijuwade. This strong monarchy view properly states that the Father only is “God” as a hypostatic property, but the Son and Spirit are fully divine as he is. Most Trinitarians do not take this view (though it seems to me to be the earliest triadology in Christian theology). They could argue around this with this explanation.
Edit: below is the response from the Trinitarian, and then my counter response to him afterward. His response is extremely typical of what I would expect from a trinitarian, so I’m including it here.
The trinitarian said:
why would it have to be plural though? there’s only one God, even in the trinitarian view, there’s no distinction between the 3 persons on who is God and who isn’t. wouldn’t saying that there’s more than one Lord (i.e., no Lord but ‘them’) fall out of line of monotheism? couldn’t the use of a singular pronoun refer to God as one being without referring to ‘how’ he exists?
My response:
No. If trinitarians wish to say “God is what he is, Father, son, and Spirit is who he is,” and maintain a “being/person distinction,” you can’t then turn around and collapse a singular person into being synonymous with a singular being. I’m not saying that Jesus should have used plural “Gods” or plural “Lords” if he were a Trinitarian. I’m saying that he should say “God (singular) is one, and there is none but them (plural).” This would be an explicitly trinitarian statement saying that the God is one in being but plural in person. The question isn’t of how many gods there are. The question is of how many persons God is. If he’s one person, but trinitarians say that he’s three persons, we have a contradiction. Thus, the argument.