Seventh Sunday of Easter – Year C

“Christians affirm the Credo, Jews the Shema, Muslims the Shahada—all declaring that there is one God. But what does 'one' mean? In a scientific age, it is taken as a number. God is thought of as a solitary entity, standing apart from all others, and therefore, it is thought, against all others. If this is the meaning of monotheism, then yes, such belief is inherently a source of conflict, not peace..."

“Moses Maimonides, the twelfth-century Jewish sage, rejected the idea that God’s 'Oneness' is a category of quantity. In that sense, he wrote, “the term ‘one’ is just as inapplicable to God as the term ‘many.’” Instead of a unit, the 'Oneness' of God affirms a unity. Oneness in this sense means not the being who stands apart, radically different and superior, but the being who is present as the reconciliation of all oppositions. That God is One means, as Isaiah saw, that the God of this people is the God of all people. Monotheism in this sense is not the source of conflict, but the source of conflict resolution..."

“The Oneness of this God is not a number but a relationship with what exists. Later, the followers of Jesus would recognize the same quality in his intimacy with the one he called Father, as in 'The Father and I are one.' Jesus’ embodiment of God’s Oneness was what his followers recognized as his divinity.”