Truth Unites - Engaging Dan McClellan on Monotheism in the Bible (Final Response)

Episode Date: April 3, 2025

Gavin Ortlund responds to Dan McClellan on monotheism in the Bible. Gavin's prior video: https://youtu.be/QgkKkJhTyak?si=wiJWXnWb_Pgvfj41Dan's response: https://youtu.be/LhL86fKYeAc?si=IgFTpRkS75VMBSc_Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth.Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites, Visiting Professor of Historical Theology at Phoenix Seminary, and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

Dan McClellan and I have been doing videos on the topic of monotheism in the Bible. I felt honored to get such a lengthy response, so sincerely, thanks to Dan for such thorough engagement. Here's just a few final thoughts to sort of sign off with in terms of any response videos. I'd be happy to talk with Dan, but it's too unwieldy to go on and on trying to address every point. And I really wrestle with whether to respond at all, but I thought, just for onlookers, a couple of points to flag, not in a spirit of being conclusive, but to flag for further review so that if Dan and I talk, we can return to these points, and for onlookers, they can look into this a little bit more, maybe of use. First, let's start by just getting the

big picture here. Dan's original claim is that there's no monotheism in the Bible, such that the apparent assertions of that in Deutero-Isaiah are rhetoric that the God of Israel is the only God that matters for us. Kind of like a Denver Broncos fan can speak of the Denver Broncos over the Raiders. What we have in Deuter O Isaiah is rhetoric that insists Adonai is the only God that matters to the Israelites or the Judahites. And it's just like how I think about the Denver Broncos. There are no other real NFL teams. Certainly not the Raiders, they are nothing. They are less than nothing. They're not a real team. That's the exact same kind of rhetoric that we see being used in Deuter Isaiah, where the author still refers to the other gods of the divine counsel,

to the host of heaven that is marshaled out by Adonai, and none is missing. Similarly, Dan argues that 1st Corinthians 8.6 is more likely asserting that the one God really matter. There's only one God that really matters for us, or one God we really care about. It's more likely what Paul intended is that for us, only one God really matters. We only care about one God. That is God the Father. So these are the original claims I was responding to, and I drew attention to this underlined clause in 1st Corinthians 86, from whom are all things. And basically, I'm trying to say, it doesn't say that there's only one God who matters for us. It says there's only one God from whom are all things. And to be the one God who matters versus

the one God from whom are all things are two different claims, one is a statement of personal relevance and personal allegiance. The other is a statement of unlawful. ontological exclusivity. I could say that the Broncos are the only team that matters to me, but I would never say all things come from the Broncos or something like that. And so there's other passages I was trying to point to for a similar effect. These passages don't seem to be saying there's only one God who matters for us, like Nehemiah 9-6, where the Lord creates the host of heaven and they worship him. We would never say the Broncos created the Raiders or the Raiders worship the Broncos. However, I'm not arguing against his most recent response yet. I'm recapping.

So Dan has some interesting responses to all this. First, he quotes from the hymn of praise to the Egyptian deity Amun Ray to show that this kind of rhetoric of incomparability isn't unique to the Bible. And you can find other deities in ancient literature well before the Bible, who also are held to create all the other deities. They are worshipped by all the other deities. So here, for example, are some affirmations of this with Amun Ray. He's creating the other deities, they worship him, and so forth. So it sounds like you could say, hey, look, Nehemiah 9-6 isn't all that special, right? Now, to fully work through this would take a lot of work, but I at least want to flag one thing for onlookers

in thinking about whether to respond at all. I just thought, just to put this out there for people who may not know a lot about these Egyptian deities to look into this a little more and vet this comparison between Amun-Rae and the God of the Bible, Dan's claim was that it's the exact same rhetoric. But I think there are some differences. Now, I don't have exhaustive knowledge of ancient southwest Asian literature. Okay, so maybe there's other things I'm not aware of. But at least with respect to Amun Reh, this Egyptian deity, there are differences

between how he was conceptualized and the biblical presentation of the Creator God. and the main point here is that Amun Reh is regarded as self-created. So Amun-Rae came into being. He is not eternal. From what I can tell, this is the general understanding. I know that self-creation is kind of a strange category for us. For some of us, I'll put up one example of a book that explores this idea of self-creation. If you're interested in looking into that a little bit more, I was studying this myself a little bit.

But I would argue this is very different from the God of the Bible. This is one example where we have some differences. Because we have passages in the Bible that describe the God of Israel as uncreated and eternal. For example, Psalm 90, verse 2, from everlasting to everlasting, you are God. Now, I don't think there's any, I'm not aware of any language like this for Amun Reh. Unless I'm misunderstanding, the general take on Amun Ray is he self-created, so he isn't eternal. Now, someone could argue against how I'm understanding Psalm 90 verse 2 there. Again, I'm not trying to resolve all this, trying to put out this on the table for people to work through, but eternality is a huge.

I don't think it's the only difference, but it's a huge difference between the God of the Bible and Amun Ray. So I basically would say that I think Michael Heiser's language of the biblical god as species unique is correct. Because if you have one eternal being who brings all other, all the other gods into existence, then they're again. existing in such a qualitatively different way. So putting that out there for people to think through. Now, again, much more to say about all that. Now, let me address this question of terminology. Dan is bringing up the term monotheism, and he's pointing out it has a particular history related to Henry Moore and that it has functioned as a value term. Okay, fair enough, so far as all that goes. But at the end of his video, he seems to be asserting that the only reason someone like myself

would want to use that term for the Bible is a kind of dogmatic bias. You know, we're a part of a community that has used that term, and so we want to preserve continuity with our sacred texts with respect to that term and so forth. But one thing that's worth observing is that the term monotheism has been proposed by some Egyptologists to describe some strands of ancient Egyptian religion precisely because of the elevated status of Amun Ray and some other factors as well. I'll put up one example of this for Richard Wilkinson's book, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt. There's others as well that, you know, I'm not trying to say this is right or wrong,

but you find that language. This is a point of discussion. And you can find the term monotheism cropping up also for one particular 14th century Pharaoh whose name and dates I'll put upon the screen because he's famous for abolishing the traditional Egyptian polytheism and advocating for the worship of one deity, a different deity than Amun Re. So the point is, and then the same. scholarship, you'll find discussion about whether you use the term monotheism for this or you call it monoletry or

henothism or something else. Now, my point isn't to say who's right and wrong in the terms, but it's to say that if these terms are being used for various understandings of some Egyptian religion, where the supreme deity in question is not eternal, then this terminology should not be judged as necessarily motivated by a dogmatic bias with respect to the biblical religion. That's an unfair judgment of motive. Granted, there can be a kind of bias for wanting to use that term, but we're not, I guess I'm trying to say this term monotheism has a little broader usage that's not just reducible to what's going on with Henry Moore. I think another possible motive for wanting to use the term monotheism is just conceptual

clarity, because the difference between an eternal being and temporal beings is significant. If you have one eternal being and he creates all the other beings and they're temporal, and you have this thick qualitative distinction between the eternal being and the other temporal beings, because the ultimate vision it leaves you with is everything comes from one source, or as Paul says, from whom are all things. So, you know, just as a thought experiment, you could say just conceptually for the sake of argument, suppose that the God of Israel created the first other angel or God or whatever term you use in the year one million BC.

I know that's not correct, but just for the sake of this, and suppose that he created time before that. Then you could go back to 1 million and 1 BC, and you'd have monotheism. There'd only be one God. Or you could go back to 2 million BC or 3 million BC and so on and so forth, and there would be monotheism. There's only one God that actually is anywhere in reality because he hasn't created the other ones yet. Now, I know there's all kinds of other ways you could conceptualize this. You could say that time began with the first God or other things. like this, or you could have other, I'm not trying to say this is the only way you could think of this.

My point is to try to show why the term monotheism might be a plausible vocabulary for what you're describing here. It might not be dogmatic bias. It might be conceptual clarity because you're trying to highlight this one creator god is very different from all other reality. Now, another concern that Dan raised is flattening out the development of the conception of the divine as it evolves through the Bible. And it's fair to say that, yeah, I haven't addressed that, but I would say this was a function of the ambitiousness of Dan's thesis. I'm responding to the claim that there is no monotheism anywhere in the Bible, and that it's just one God who matters for us, whether the us is Israel or Christians or whoever. And so to oppose that claim, it's not

necessary to lay out a full vision of the development of the biblical conception of the divine. it's just enough to show some passages where you have something more than only one God who matters for us. That would be sufficient for the task at hand. Now, the last thing I want to sort of flag for attention here for people to pay attention to, study, think through, is concerning passages that seem to deny the actual existence of pagan deities. This is a really interesting point to work through. I brought up from 2nd Kings 1918, how the kings of Assyria have cast their gods in to the fire, for they were not gods, but the work of men's hands, wood and stone. That's not their gods.

That's the gods of the nations. Excuse me. And it says, therefore, they were destroyed. Now, I won't play clips from Dan's video for fear, again, not trying to give a comprehensive response here. And I don't want to, whenever you show clips, I'm always worried if I show the wrong ones or if I cut them off at the wrong time or something like that. I'll just try to summarize one of the points he made, hoping I don't misrepresent him. Dan seems to be arguing that all that's being affirmed in a passage like this in 2nd Kings 19 is that the physical idols that are made of wooden stone are not real, not that the actual deity they represent is not real. So taking his final words from his treatment of this, I'll put up the timing where I get these words as well,

hoping this is a fair representation of the broader point. Quote, they were denying real deity to the idol, not to the deity it was supposed to index. So I hope this is a fair summary of at least one of the things he's saying there. If I'm misunderstanding, he can correct me. So in other words, if you take a physical statue of bail, I'll put up a statue of bail from the world history encyclopedia. This was found probably dates somewhere to like the 14th to 12th centuries, BC, somewhere in there. That's what the website where I found this says. The physical statue is not real, but bail himself. The God who's out there being represented by this physical statue is real. Okay, so the statue is not going to be walking around and doing anything, but bail himself can.

I think that's what Dan is arguing with respect to passages like Second Kings 19, Second Chronicles 32. I'll list three reasons. This will be the final part of the video where I'm not convinced by this, and I think at the very least, this needs a lot more further review and vetting. First, I just don't see that kind of distinction in the text. So putting up the passage here, it doesn't make that distinction. It doesn't say the physical idols of the gods were destroyed. It says, they cast their gods, Elohim, into the fire, for they were not gods, but the work of men's hands. The claim seems to be that the gods are the physical idols, hence they can be destroyed. Their gods were not gods, but were the work of man's hands. I'm open to being challenged.

That's how I'm reading it, just kind of looking at the grammar and the unfolding of one word after another, and what is the subject of the sentence and so forth. This seems to be a way, my dog is walking all around me right now, this seems to be a way of saying that there simply is no deity beyond the physical representation in the idol. They cast the gods into the fire for they weren't gods, but the work of men's hands, therefore they were destroyed. See, the target there is Elohim. That's what's being addressed. And then this is contrasted with the living God, as you can see underlined here in verse 16. I'll put it back up. The opposite of living is, of course, dead.

And the purpose clause I also underlined in verse 19 is that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you, oh Lord, are God alone. Now, that's a strange purpose clause if indeed there's a bunch of other deities, and he's not God alone. similarly with 2 Chronicles 3219 which didn't get a comment from Dan i assume his comments about the second king's passage would be probably how he'd think about this but again here the text doesn't say the physical statues are not gods it says the gods are the physical statues the gods of the peoples of the earth which are the work of men's hands so what is being claimed about them is these are just the work of men's hands, it doesn't seem to be merely a description of the physical idol, it seems to be a way of saying there is no deity beyond the physical idol.

So that's a comment based upon the sheer language. The second reason I'm skeptical of Dan's distinction here between the idols being not real, but the actual gods, the index as real, is that this view would make the biblical rhetoric virtually meaningless. So if you think of Psalm 115, for example, if all it's saying is that the statue of bail cannot see or act or walk around or and so forth, but bail himself can, then the rhetoric becomes pretty pathetic, you know. Of course the statue can't walk around. Ancient people knew that. That's hardly cutting rhetoric, you know. What makes the biblical claim audacious is that it's speaking about what's represented by the physical idol as well.

It looks to me like passages in Scripture condemn making physical idols precisely because the whole activity related to them is utterly futile. And to fully explore that, we need to work through these various passages like in Isaiah 42 and 44 and 45 and so forth, again, flagging that for people to think about themselves. A third reason, though, that I'm skeptical of Dan's claim, and I would disagree with it, is the biblical narrative. When it comes to First King's 18, for example, Dan brings up the use of the definite art here, the Lord, he is ha, the God. And I don't disagree with him grammatically, but I think that point

is underdetermined to tell us whether, from the standpoint of the text, Bail actually exists. To answer that, I think we have to look at what happens in the narrative. And the prophets of Bail are dancing. They have a long time to call upon his name from morning till noon, and they're cutting themselves until the blood is gushing out. Yet, despite this, what the text says twice and therefore emphasizes is no one heard them. It doesn't say that Bail didn't answer their prayers or it doesn't limit it in some other way like that. It says no one paid attention. The whole point of the narrative seems to be to emphasize no matter what the prophets of Bail do, he's not answering. And Dan wants to argue here that what is at stake is not which God exists, but which God has

the appropriate type of power for this people in this region. Okay, so taking this language, the appropriate type of power for this people in this region. As for the appropriate type of power, Bail is held to be the storm god, as Dan points out. So it's the same kind of God. So, you know, we don't have a sea god versus a storm god or something like that. These are two gods with competing types of power. They both have the appropriate type of power. And in terms of the region, remember earlier that in this same book,

the Purpose Clause of Solomon's Prayer at the dedication of the temple, is so that all the peoples of the earth may know that the Lord is God, there is no other. It does not seem to be the theology of the Book of Kings are really anywhere in the Old Testament, that Yahweh has jurisdiction over the storms in this region, but Baal has jurisdiction over the storms in this region. Rather, the God of Israel is the God of all the earth. So you find him doing miracles outside of Israel, like one chapter earlier, in Zarifath in 1st King 17, preserving Elijah and the widow and her son.

throughout Solomon's prayer, just a little earlier than that, you find this concern for the Gentiles and foreigners to come to the temple, to pray to the one true God. There's the desire for them to know and fear the one true God as well. So when you get to First Kings 18, and you see what I put in green here repeated, what seems to be explicit is there's no one listening to the prophets of bail. It's not just that you're not in his jurisdiction. There's no one paying any attention. The contest between bail and the god of israel doesn't seem like the bronchals versus the raiders where bail is the weaker deity when the when they're his prophets cry out no one hears them that's what the text says that is what is explicitly emphasized no one paid attention all right so much more to

discuss about all this i'm not giving a conclusive rebuttal there's much that dan went into i haven't addressed here much more to say trying to highlight a few issues to flag them for review as people are looking onto this conversation, hoping this is helpful in the broader quest for truth as we argue with each other. One final comment. This is not about Dan, but about what I see happening a lot in the comments and what may be helpful in these kinds of conversations, you get this a lot where people will say, Gavin is an apologist, therefore he's committed to seeing monotheism in the text. He has to read it into there because he's an apologist, so therefore he's biased. Now, I understand why people say this. This can happen. Apologetics can be very dangerous because it can make you very

dogmatic. I think a lot about C.S. Lewis's poem, The Apologist's Evening Prayer, I hope to be the kind of apologist who's willing to adjust and respond to the data. So whenever I hear comments like this, I don't immediately dismiss them and roll my eyes. I say, okay, you know, be open to this, right? And apologetics is only one thing I do. I also do scholarly publishing and teaching and presenting at academic conferences and so forth. But I do apologetics. So that's, you know, but I think what I would say is this. I think it would be more helpful in these discussions if we had less judgment of motives. It is perfectly possible to defend something, if you could hear my dog is rolling around,

perfectly possible to defend something doing apologetics while remaining open-hearted to the objections on the other side. Let me give a metaphor. Suppose you love Martin Luther King, Jr., and you're thrilled by his vision. of his activity in the civil rights movement, his vision of humanity, and so on and so forth. And so this ultimately leads you to write your doctoral dissertation on Martin Luther King, Jr., some aspect of his thought, and then to publish an academic book on it. Now, the fact that you personally are invested and you love what he is standing for doesn't mean you couldn't write a good biography. It just means you're going to have some challenges. You're going to have to keep an open

heart to consider the objections and to consider are my biases. You have to be open to your biases being corrected. But you could still do it. And it would be no good argument against you if someone who hated Martin Luther King Jr. said, oh, well, he likes Martin Luther King Jr., therefore, you know, it's just automatically assumed that he must be operating from bias. Similarly, I don't think it's fair to Christian apologists when people in the comments say, well, he's a Christian apologist, therefore we can read his heart and his motives. He must be coming out of this angle. So far as I am aware, I would basically say, I just genuinely believe Christianity is true. Now, the particular beliefs I have as a Christian sometimes do adjust a little bit,

you know, respond. You know, I change my mind on certain various things. Not necessarily, I don't recall that I've changed my mind on anything cardinal that's like in the Apostles Creed, but a lot of secondary doctrines I have. But basically, I'm a Christian because I just think it is true. And that's my sincere effort at actually being responsive to the data. You know, when I look at the fine-tuning argument and the contingency argument, I kind of say, I look at the objections, I just think these are pretty good arguments. I think the idea of God is plausible. And then when I study the life of Christ, I just think he's really compelling. And then I have various personal experiences as well that influenced me, of course. So that's my motive so far as I understand it. But I'll try to keep listening to the

counter-objections. In the meantime, the dialogue is better served if we don't kind of judge people's motives. Dan hasn't done that. His response was very respectful. I'm just speaking this to the larger dialectic and how it's experienced by different sides because hopefully you can tell from the way I'm talking in this video. I actually have tremendous desire to have positive relationship amidst differences. In the ideal world, the theist and the atheist, I know Dan's not an atheist, but these conversations are actually similar to some that happen between theists and atheists, but any kind of dialectic, any kind of disagreement, in the ideal world, the people on each side actually have compassion for each other. And they see the humanity of the other side. Of course,

that rarely happens. But that's what you might hope for. All right, hope this video is a helpful tool in the larger process. Hopefully Dan and I can talk sometime whether about this or other things, and hopefully this helps others. But I probably won't be making any more videos. In fact, I can just say I won't be making any more solo videos on this topic. But I hope this one is maybe useful for some folks. Thanks for watching, everybody.