Patterns of Christological Categorisation. Oneness Pentecostalism and The Renewal of Jewish and Christian Monotheism Marvin C. Sanguinetti

Patterns of Christological
Categorisation. Oneness
Pentecostalism and the Renewal of
Jewish and Christian Monotheism
Marvin C. Sanguinetti
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CHRISTIANITY AND RENEWAL – INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES
Patterns of
Christological
Categorisation
Oneness Pentecostalism and
the Renewal of Jewish and
Christian Monotheism
Christianity and Renewal - Interdisciplinary Studies
Series Editors
Wolfgang Vondey
Department of Theology and Religion
University of Birmingham
Birmingham, UK
Amos Yong
School of Mission & Theology
Fuller Theological Seminary
Pasadena, California, USA
Christianity and Renewal - Interdisciplinary Studies provides a forum for
scholars from a variety of disciplinary perspectives, various global loca-
tions, and a range of Christian ecumenical and religious traditions to
explore issues at the intersection of the Pentecostal, charismatic, and other
renewal movements and related phenomena, including: the transforming
and renewing work of the Holy Spirit in Christian traditions, cultures, and
creation; the traditions, beliefs, interpretation of sacred texts, and scholar-
ship of the renewal movements; the religious life, including the spirituality,
ethics, history, and liturgical and other practices, and spirituality of the
renewal movements; the social, economic, political, transnational, and
global implications of renewal movements; methodological, analytical,
and theoretical concerns at the intersection of Christianity and renewal;
intra-Christian and interreligious comparative studies of renewal and
revitalization movements; other topics connecting to the theme of
Christianity and renewal. Authors are encouraged to examine the broad
scope of religious phenomena and their interpretation through the meth-
odological, hermeneutical, and historiographical lens of renewal in con-
temporary Christianity. Under the general topic of thoughtful reflection
on Christianity and renewal, the series includes two different kinds of
books: (1) monographs that allow for in-depth pursuit, carefully argued,
and meticulously documented research on a particular topic that explores
issues in Christianity and renewal; and (2) edited collections that allow
scholars from a variety of disciplines to interact under a broad theme
related to Christianity and renewal. In both kinds, the series encourages
discussion of traditional Pentecostal and charismatic studies, reexamina-
tion of established religious doctrine and practice, and explorations into
new fields of study related to renewal movements. Interdisciplinarity will
feature in the series both in terms of two or more disciplinary approaches
deployed in any single volume and in terms of a wide range of disciplinary
perspectives found cumulatively in the series.
For further information or to submit a proposal for consideration,
please contact Amy Invernizzi, amy.invernizzi@palgrave-usa.com.
Patterns of
Christological
Categorisation
Oneness Pentecostalism and the Renewal of Jewish
and Christian Monotheism
New Life Bible College
London, UK
ISSN 2634-5854 ISSN 2634-5862 (electronic)

Christianity and Renewal - Interdisciplinary Studies
ISBN 978-3-031-25874-9 ISBN 978-3-031-25875-6 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25875-6
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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Preface
This book is a hermeneutical inquiry into Jewish and Christian

Monotheistic-Trinitarian Categories: with special attention given to
Oneness Pentecostalism. It identifies from the literature four Trinitarian-
Monotheistic paradigms, labelled ‘patterns of categorisation’, which are
classified taxonomically along an axis of theistic models. Each category is
interpreted with Jewish Monotheism in the foreground, and the relation-
ship between Jewish Monotheism and a belief in two distinct figures—
Yahweh and Jesus, the latter called Christological Monotheism.
The study not only offers a brief history of Oneness Pentecostalism but
shows the classification of four theistic theories and how they fit into a
discernible pattern of categorisation along the taxonomic axis. It demon-
strates the correspondence between Jewish Binitarianism and Trinitarianism
in its non-monotheistic forms, as featured in the studies of Peter Hayman,
Margaret Barker, Daniel Boyarin, and Jürgen Moltmann. It explores three
interpretations for Christian Binitarianism and their relationship to tradi-
tional Jewish Monotheism as put forward by James D.G. Dunn, Larry
W. Hurtado, and Richard J. Bauckham. The concepts of person, action,
and nature are central interpretive features of each theistic category, and is
important for understanding the Classical Trinitarian and Binitarian tradi-
tions of Gregory of Nyssa, Thomas Aquinas, and interpretations for the
Gospel of John.
How Patristic theologians conceptualised the ontological relationship
between YHWH and Jesus is not only foundational for the arguments of
Dunn, Hurtado, and Bauckham, but also important for Oneness
v
vi PREFACE
Pentecostals David K. Bernard, Kulwant S. Boora, and David S. Norris.

The book shows that Oneness Pentecostalism, or a variation thereof, is a
plausible exegetical model of Monotheism. This justification depends on
the fact that the selected framework of interpretation—Christological
Monotheism— is accepted by the academy as just such a plausible frame-
work. The study attempts to give an interpretation of Oneness Pentecostal
Monotheism at the level of comparative textual analyses with Christological
Monotheism. It provides an exploratory account of the form such an
interpretation might take using a similar model to Christopher Barina
Kaiser’s ‘Lord-Jesus Identification’.
Acknowledgements
There are some key people who were instrumental in the production of
this study, and who have had significant influence on my interests in the
fields of Theology Proper, Christology, Pneumatology, Monotheism, and
more importantly, Christological Monotheism. I wish to express my sin-
cere gratitude to Dr. Neil MacDonald and Dr. Richard Burgess, who were
my research supervisors at Roehampton University. Their continuous sup-
port throughout the duration of my doctoral project, and voluntary post-
doctoral guidance, motivated the publication of this book. Their patience,
immense knowledge, and insightful guidance, served as a catalyst which
drove both my thesis to its completion, and this book. The many meet-
ings, emails shared, phone-calls, and Skype exchanges were always educa-
tionally transformative. I could not have imagined having better mentors.
At my upgrade—a required process for progress on the journey that
many PhD students take at Universities in the United Kingdom—I
remember vividly the keen interests in my work from Dr. John Moxon
(the internal examiner for my thesis and upgrade supervisor) and Professor
Fiona McHardy (assistant upgrade supervisor). Your reflections helped in
sharpening this project.
I wish to thank the members and friends from the various Oneness
Pentecostal (Apostolic) Churches (my own faith tradition) who welcomed
my many enquiries, as I sought clarification to the difficult and probing
questions relating to my research. Thank you for offering access to pri-
mary archived resources: brochures, books, pamphlets, newsletters, book-
lets, and audio recordings. I am grateful also for the assistance given by
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Library staff, and the constructive feedback received from fellow academ-
ics within Research Group in Theology, Religion and Practice at
Roehampton University, especially peer-reviewed reflections from those
within the field of Theology and Religious Studies.
I have pledged that my first book publication would be dedicated to my
parents, Eileen and Milton, who laid the intellectual groundwork for my
educational pursuits. I wish to thank especially my mother, Eileen, whose
sacrificial love helped in shaping the researcher I have become, and who
unfortunately passed away before this book was published. My dad has
also since passed. Beyond life behind the many research desks and com-
puters lie some key family members and an amazing circle of friends,
including my church family, who constantly offer kind thoughts, and
among whom I frequently test my many hypotheses. Thanks to my family
for their unflagging patience, and particularly to my eldest daughter who
often reads through numerous parts of my study and I can hear her saying,
‘dad what do you want me to read now?’
Thanks to Amy Invernizzi, Editor for Philosophy and Religion at
Palgrave Macmillan and to Eliana Rangel, Editorial Assistant, and Tikoji
Rao, Project Coordinator for the book, both with Palgrave Macmillan,
Springer Nature for your expertise, patience, and guidance over the period
leading to the publication of the book for ensuring that the process was as
smooth as possible.
To everyone who contributed, supported, and encouraged me during
my research for this project, I say thank you, and most of all, to my God
who made it all possible.
Finally, it is hoped that this inquiry into the patterns of categorisation
for Jewish and Christian Monotheism, with its bespoke reference to
Oneness Pentecostalism, will make fruitful contributions to the ongoing
conversations which drive contemporary theological discourse about who
Jesus is in relation to Yahweh, and how might this be understood within
different theological and theoretical frameworks.
Praise for Patterns of Christological Categorisation
‘Marvin Sanguinetti aptly captures the heart of Oneness Pentecostal views of God
and Jesus, and robustly articulates why he thinks it deserves a place alongside other
“orthodox” traditional perspectives. The study offers a novel approach to scholar-
ship among Oneness Pentecostals, and should impact not only academia, but dif-
ferent tiers of Christian leadership within and without the tradition.’
—Suffragan Bishop Lloyd G. Thomas, Senior Prelate for the Pentecostal Assemblies
of the World (PAW) London, UK
‘Patterns of Categorisation breaks exciting new ground by transporting Oneness

theology to the wider religious world of Jewish and Christian ideas about God.
Applying a typological method, Marvin Sanguinetti accomplishes two tasks: he
consigns the heresy label to the theological trash bin and grants methodological
credibility within the academy. Patterns methodologically transforms a trouble-
some Pentecostal outlier into a contributing ecumenical partner. This is a first in
Oneness Pentecostal studies and a must read.’
—David A. Reed, Professor Emeritus and Research Professor,
Wycliffe College, University of Toronto, Canada
‘Patterns of Christological Categorisation is an authoritative primer that offers an

arguable scholarly appeal for deconstructing the classification of Oneness
Pentecostalism as heresy. In a field where theological discourses marred by hereti-
cal jargon often create unsettling intellectual conflictual conversations, it success-
fully argued for and connected Oneness Pentecostalism with well-grounded
Christian and Jewish Trinitarian-Monotheism.
Reverend Dr. Marvin C. Sanguinetti has compiled a unique, comprehensive,
rich, and realistic hermeneutical roadmap for understanding the interpretation
framework when combining this non-Trinitarian doctrine that deserves its place
alongside other Christological perspectives. Through his comparative textual anal-
yses, Marvin intentionally opened a continual dialogical space for readers, theolo-
gians, and future generations of students.’
—Claire Princess Ayelotan, Theology & Religious Studies,
University of Roehampton, UK
Contents
1 Introductory Matters 1
1.1 The Rationale of the Book 1
1.2 Taxonomy and Patterns of Categorisation 6
1.3 Introducing the Four Theistic Categories 7
1.4 Significance of Study 9
1.5 Definitions and Key Terms: The Meaning of Identity in
Relation to Persons, Nature, and Action 10
1.6 Defining Traditional Jewish Monotheism 13
1.7 A Brief Introduction to Oneness Pentecostal History and
Thought 17
1.8 Apologetic and Ecclesial Contexts of Study 22
1.9 Outline and Structure of Book 24
2 The
First Category: Non-Monotheistic Jewish and
Christian Binitarianism-Trinitarianism 27
2.1 Peter Hayman: Monotheism and Dualistic Patterns 28
2.2 Margaret Barker: Monotheism and Ditheistic Patterns 36
2.3 Daniel Boyarin: Jewish Binitarianism 48
2.4 Jürgen Moltmann: Perichoresis and Unlike Nature 57
2.5 Summary 64
3 The
Second Category: Traditional Jewish Monotheism,
Christian Binitarianism, and Christological Monotheism 67
3.1 James D.G. Dunn: Pre-existence and Incarnation 68
3.2 Larry W. Hurtado: Christian Binitarianism 80
xi
xii Contents
3.3 Richard J. Bauckham: Divine Identity 92

3.4 Summary106
4 The
Third Category: Traditional Jewish Monotheism and
Classical Binitarian or Trinitarian Monotheism109
4.1 Unity of Action: The Father’s Action ‘in’ the Son’s Action
Within the Patristic Traditions111
4.2 Gregory of Nyssa: Numerically the Same Action and Same
Nature114
4.3 Thomas Aquinas: Numerically the Same Nature and Same
Action121
4.4 The Gospel of John: Numerically the Same Action and Same
Nature126
4.5 Summary131
5 The
Fourth Category: Traditional Jewish Monotheism,
Christological Monotheism, and Oneness Pentecostalism135
5.1 David K. Bernard: Oneness Monotheism136
5.2 Kulwant S. Boora: Oneness Monotheism159
5.3 David S. Norris: Oneness Monotheism172
5.4 Christopher Barina Kaiser: Kyriocentric Visions of Yahweh
as Jesus187
5.5 Summary194
6 A
Comparison of Exegesis Between Oneness Pentecostalism
and Christological Monotheism: John 1:1–18, John 10:30,
1 Corinthians 8:1–6, Philippians 2:5–11197
6.1 Comparative Exegesis: John 1:1–18 and John 10:30199
6.2 Comparative Exegesis: 1 Corinthians 8:1–6211
6.3 Comparative Exegesis: Philippians 2:5–11224
6.4 Summary231
7 Conclusion237
Bibliography247
Index265
List of Abbreviations
ATI American Theological Inquiry Journal

ATLA The American Theological Library Association.
ATLA Religion Database with AtlaSerials
COOLJC Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ (Apostolic Faith)
CTE Churches Together in England
CTQ Concordia Theological Quarterly
DDS Doctrine of Divine Simplicity
ECN European Council of Nations
ESV English Standard Version of The Bible
GJohn The Gospel of John
HPAC Hackney Pentecostal Apostolic Church
HTR Harvard Theological Review Journal
JAT Journal of Analytic Theology
JBS Journal of Biblical Studies
JJS Journal of Jewish Studies
JPT Journal of Pentecostal Theology
JTI Journal of Theological Interpretation
KJV King James Version of The Bible
LT Latin Trinitarianism
LXX Septuagint (Greek version of the Hebrew Bible)
MT Masoretic Texts
NT New Testament
NIV New International Version of The Bible
NTCOG New Testament Church of God
OP/OPs Oneness Pentecostals (or Oneness Apostolics)
xiii
xiv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
OT Old Testament
PAW Pentecostal Assemblies of the World Churches
PAOJ Pentecostal Assemblies of Jesus in Jamaica
RRF Restoration Revival Fellowship Churches
SDDS Strict Doctrine of Divine Simplicity
SPS Society of Pentecostal Studies
ST Social Trinitarianism
T2 Second Temple (Period or Sources)
UK United Kingdom
UPC United Pentecostal Church
UPCGB&I United Pentecostal Church of Great Britain and Ireland
YHWH/YHVH Yahweh or Tetragrammaton
CHAPTER 1
Introductory Matters
1.1 The Rationale of the Book

This study is a hermeneutical inquiry into Jewish and Christian
Monotheistic-Trinitarian Categories: with special attention given to
Oneness Pentecostalism. It identifies from the literature four Trinitarian-
Monotheistic paradigms, labelled ‘patterns of categorisation’, which are
classified taxonomically along an axis of theistic models. Traditional Jewish
Monotheism is employed as the paradigm case against which the other
theistic models are measured and interpreted in terms of how they under-
stand the relation between two figures, Yahweh and Jesus. These other
models are:
1. Jewish Ditheism or Christian Trinitarianism without Monotheism

(which I argue is tantamount to Tritheism)
2. Christological Monotheism
3. Classical Trinitarian Monotheism
4. Oneness Pentecostalism
The fact that Oneness Pentecostalism fits into this pattern of taxonomy
allows for the claim that the study will be of interest and/or benefit to (a)
Oneness Pentecostal theologians who desire to see their understanding of
the relation between Jesus and YHWH received into the broader academic
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
M. C. Sanguinetti, Patterns of Christological Categorisation,
Christianity and Renewal - Interdisciplinary Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25875-6_1
2 M. C. SANGUINETTI
arena and (b) those already in the broader academic arena who are scepti-
cal about such reception. Since neither Oneness Pentecostals nor
Christological Monotheists (nor Classical Trinitarians) pay significant
attention to the views of the other in assembling its arguments for its
respective case, the book enables critical interaction with each tradition in
a manner not previously seen. In particular, because of the implicit com-
parison with Christological Monotheism1—a hot topic at this moment—
the research brings together key christological thinkers James D.G. Dunn,
Larry W. Hurtado, and Richard J. Bauckham in conversation with Oneness
scholars David K. Bernard, Kulwant Singh Boora, and David S. Norris, for
the first time. The comparison challenges the assertion that Oneness
Pentecostals do not engage historical and textual christological argumen-
tation by examining a range of textual data. It also identifies in the process
where there might remain a lack of reference to mainstream academic
arguments of both a historical and exegetical kind. This hypothesis is
tested by analysing respective texts and arguments in the academic
literature.
In order to forestall any misunderstanding about what the project
entails it is fruitful to compare it with other similar projects. One it can be
compared with is the one outlined by Hans Frei in his Types of Christian
Theology. Speaking of a generic class of types of Christian Theology, Frei
wrote that he was writing a typology of modern western Christian
theology or theologies. This is a piece of conceptual analysis that is in
principle an exercise chiefly about rather than in theology, although in
practice the distinction will not always be clear.2
Crucially, the validity of Frei’s analysis does not depend on whether
what the theologians selected say about the object of inquiry is true or not;
rather it depends on whether his analysis—his interpretation—of them is
1
According to Crispin Fletcher-Louis, in Jesus Monotheism Volume 1—Christological
Origins: The Emerging Consensus and Beyond (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015), p. 12,
the term ‘Christological Monotheism’ was coined by N. T. Wright in his book The Climax of
the Covenant, pp. 114, 116, 129, 132, 136.
2
Hans Frei, Types of Christian Theology (New Haven: YUP, 1992), 1. My study is there-
fore, as Frei’s study was, a second-order hermeneutical one rather than a first-order enquiry,
and therefore, not a historical project per se. The categories of understanding it employs are
decidedly theological, but this does not commit the scholar to whom it applies to necessarily
employ them his or herself, or even agree with the categorisation itself. With this qualifica-
tion, I seek to argue that each of the type of Monotheism/non-Monotheism I delineate can
be understood in terms of a taxonomy or typology defined in terms of (i) non-identity of
persons and/or natures and (ii) generic/numerical identity of persons and/or natures.
1 INTRODUCTORY MATTERS 3
an accurate account of what they say about their object of enquiry. To

some extent this is an obvious deduction since, if the theologians’ posi-
tions are contrary one to the other, they cannot simultaneously be true
(and all may in fact be false). Moreover—and this is arguably more impor-
tant—the categories that Frei uses in his classification of these theologians
do not have to have been explicitly employed by the theologian to which
he applies this or that individual category. It does not have to have been
part of their internal perspective. The validity of the external application as
it were does not depend on this. So, the fact we do not find in Friedrich
Schleiermacher’s own theological vocabulary even as an implicit self-
description, the category of ‘correlationism’ does not itself undermine
Frei’s essentially hermeneutical interpretation.3
These stipulations are essential for a proper understanding of the pres-
ent study. Whether what Margaret Barker or Daniel Boyarin or Jürgen
Moltmann or Larry Hurtado say about their object of enquiry is actually
true is not part of my agenda. That is another study. More crucially—and
here I expand on Frei’s point—the validity of my study does not depend
on whether Barker, Boyarin, Moltmann, or Hurtado use the categories I
apply to them in the explication of their scholarship. So, the fact that
Hurtado, for example, does not use the conceptuality of generically the
same action does not preclude its applicability to the nature of his claims
about Jesus’ actions in relation to YHWH’s. Moreover, that he would
have disputed the implication that generically the same nature necessarily
follows from generically the same action such that this (perhaps unbe-
known to him) is his reason/basis for applying the term Monotheism
3
An even more relevant comparison which has only come to my attention recently is that
which can be constructed between the present work and David Yeago’s seminal essay ‘The
New Testament and the Nicene Dogma: Toward a Recovery of Theological Exegesis’ (Pro
Ecclesia (3) 2 1994, 152–164). In this essay, Yeago argues that even though the conceptual-
ity of homoousios was not explicitly employed by the New Testament authors, it did not follow
that it was not applicable. Indeed, Yeago argued the reverse. ‘It is essential’, he said, ‘in this
context, to distinguish between judgements and the conceptual terms in which those judge-
ments are rendered’ (Ibid, 158). If we do this, ‘a strong, and in my view conclusive, case can
be made that the judgement about Jesus and God made in the Nicene Creed—the judge-
ment that they are “of one substance” or “one reality”—is indeed “the same,” in a basically
ordinary and unmysterious way, as that made in a New Testament text such as Philippians
2:6ff’ even though the conceptuality of homoousios does not appear there (Ibid, 159). Yeago
in fact takes James Dunn’s Christology in the Making to task for failing to make the necessary
distinction.
4 M. C. SANGUINETTI
(albeit Christological Monotheism) to his understanding of the theologi-

cal relation between Jesus and YHWH is again beside the point.
Again, it can hardly be denied Jürgen Moltmann was critical of the
monotheistic principle, if not Monotheism, because of what he perceived
to be its monarchical (politicising) tendencies. But Trinitarianism without
Monotheism risks the danger of Tritheism no matter the good intentions
of the author (in fact, Christian Trinitarianism without Monotheism prob-
ably is Tritheism). Such is the case I contend with Moltmann. In the case
of both Jewish Ditheism and Christian Trinitarianism without Monotheism,
whatever actions they do, they do as entirely distinct divine figures or gods.
In other words, even though it may be the case that doing the same kind
of action, for example, miraculous actions, was the reason they are both
said to be gods, it is self-evident this did not lead Barker, for example, to
infer the presence of Monotheism. Of course, Gregory of Nyssa would say
both Jewish Ditheists and Christological Monotheists were at fault! On
the one hand (ironically according to Gregory), Jewish Ditheists would
have drawn the correct conclusion about YHWH and his ‘significant
other’ (two divine figures—gods) were it based on generically the same
action; but in fact, this is not true of YHWH and Jesus because the rigor-
ous criterion of numerically identical action applies. On the other hand,
Christological Monotheists such as Larry Hurtado had erroneously
deduced that generically the same action implies Monotheism when it
does not. For all these reasons, it has become clear to me that the fact that
each scholar may reject my classification of them is not a sufficient reason
for saying that he or she cannot be categorised in this way. Nor is it war-
ranted to say that the analysis is flawed simply on the basis of one’s asser-
tion that Moltmann, for example, is a Christian Trinitarian and cannot
possibly be in conflict with Trinitarian Monotheism. The absence of the
latter is the criterion by which the evaluation is applied, and it is sufficient
even given a creative employment of perichoretic doctrine.
The characteristics of each position can be listed as follows: Jewish or
Christian Ditheism in which two distinct divine figures are identified—two
gods—perhaps on the basis of their respective actions. Christological
Monotheism in which the divine persons are identified as having generically
the same nature because they perform generically the same action (actions
that are the unique prerogative of YHWH-God), defined as one God by
the proponents of this position. Classical Trinitarianism (Trinitarian
Monotheism) where the three persons are numerically identical in nature
because they perform numerically identical action, but still defined as one
God. According to Classical Trinitarianism, Christological Monotheism is
not by its standards Monotheism. This does not mean it wasn’t how Jews
at one time conceived of their Monotheism, that is, as they conceived it, it
could in principle accommodate the christological modification even if
they in fact rejected this possibility. Wright in particular argues that the
numerical definition that shut off such accommodation (and approximates
to the fourth-century Pro-Nicene position exemplified by Gregory’s Why
We Should Not Say Three Are Three Gods) did not come into force in Jewish
Monotheism until after the Second Jewish War, circa 135 CE.4
Nevertheless, it was only reinforcing what it had always held to be true
since at least the advent of Second Temple Judaism. Oneness Pentecostalism
goes further by seeing God and Jesus as not just numerically the same
nature but numerically the same person.
The quest for understanding the nature of the relationship that exists
between God and Jesus in early Jewish Christianity involves the study of
extensive secondary literature on the subjects of Monotheism and
Christology. An appraisal of this literature noted that each subject was
often approached as distinct from the other, with only a few specialist
scholars from the German Religionsgeschichtliche Schule (the History of
Religions School) who combined both studies. This combination was
labelled as was said earlier ‘Christological Monotheism’ by one of its key
contributors, N T. Wright. Moreover, there is a ‘Christological lacuna’,
that is, an unfilled gap in the literature for Christian origins. In his study,
along with the identification of an intra-Trinitarian Pentecostal problem,
William P. Atkinson identified the absent voices of two groups who postu-
late opposing perspectives to ‘orthodoxy’. These he labelled ‘unitarian’
and ‘binitarian’ challenges and are comparable to the very ‘challenges’
that drove the incorporation of similar Trinitarian-Monotheistic theories
into this study.5
Modern christological thinkers within the academy are mainly from the
‘orthodox’ tradition, perhaps presupposing a certain creedal adherence to
historic Christian doctrines. Yet I was also aware of numerous other groups
claiming the Christian identity but whose ‘binitarian’ and ‘unitarian’ views
4
Wright, The New Testament and the People of God, 163.
5
William P. Atkinson, Trinity After Pentecost (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2013),
pp. 2–11.
6 M. C. SANGUINETTI
of God and Jesus were either opposed to or extensions from the ‘orthodox
consensus’. These are at times seen as ‘heretical’ or ‘heterodox’ outsiders
on the fringe of Christianity. A systematic inquiry into Oneness Pentecostals
themselves—from their key scholars and members, and the academic
(sometimes apologetic) literature they provide—affirms aspects of the
existing models for Christological Monotheism such as ‘divine identity’
(Richard Bauckham), ‘divine agency’ (Larry Hurtado), and ‘divine repre-
sentative’ (James Dunn). But it further expands these christological per-
spectives to include Oneness Pentecostal ontological approaches. By doing
this, it is hoped, an original contribution is made. I contend this to be
necessary because one of the assumptions built into the study is that
Oneness Pentecostal voices have been largely ignored by the academy.
This is not entirely unfounded since its proponents have not been con-
cerned to reach out and find points of contact with the academy. This
book attempts among other things to remedy this situation.
1.2 Taxonomy and Patterns of Categorisation

The patterns of categorisation for the transition or development of Judaism
into Christianity or Christianity out of Judaism can be described in terms
of a spectrum of theistic categories. To speak of ‘patterns’ is to speak of
permutations for a kind of matrix in which one sets out the possibilities of
the various Trinitarian-Monotheistic categories employed in existing theo-
ries of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity in respect of
Yahweh and Jesus. At one end of this axis is a classification that is exclu-
sively Trinitarian or tritheistic and therefore excludes Monotheism; at the
other end is a classification that is exclusively monotheistic excluding even
a residue of binitarian or Trinitarian structure. So, as we move from one
end to the other, we approximate increasingly to unitary Jewish
Monotheism or decreasingly to Trinitarian Tritheism, depending on at
which end we begin.
I argue for and present four recognisable fundamental categories con-
stituting the full pattern, and perhaps five if we include the late post-
Second Temple phenomenon of strictly unitary Jewish Monotheism.
Crucially, but not surprisingly, Oneness Pentecostalism takes its place
towards the monotheistic end of the spectrum. In this respect, it is closer
to the monotheistic end than either the Christological Monotheism
affirmed by New Testament scholars or Classical Trinitarian Monotheism
affirmed by Patristic and Mediaeval theologians.
In my representation of this spectrum or axis, my study will begin at the

Trinitarian end and proceed towards the Monotheistic end, as seen in the
four patterns described in the next section.
1.3 Introducing the Four Theistic Categories

(1) The correspondence between Jewish Binitarianism or
Trinitarianism (non-Monotheism) and Christian Binitarianism or
Trinitarianism (non-Monotheism). As we will see, while generically the
same action is not discounted, it is not essential to the development of this
sub-category. The simple reason for this is that the scholars who exemplify
this approach—Peter Hayman, Margaret Barker, and Daniel Boyarin (to
mention the three whose views I will explore in this study)—can be under-
stood as affirming a theological pattern that can be described unashamedly
as Ditheism or Tritheism; hence, Israel’s gods, Yahweh and/or Elohim
and/or Yahweh/Elohim’s consort, do not have to do the same kind of
actions.6 Though the analogy is distinctly imperfect, they are something
very roughly approximating to a very small family of divinities in the sense
of the Greek or Roman gods. Christianity was charged as Tritheism or
Polytheism for a similar such appearance, at least as regards any visual rep-
resentation. I will also look at those scholars who claim that the Binitarian
or Trinitarian structure of Christianity had non-Jewish non-monotheistic
roots in terms of Gentile-Hellenistic Polytheism inclusive of the ‘divine
Son of man’ theology.7
This analysis is extended to Jürgen Moltmann’s Trinity and the
Kingdom on the grounds that his concept of perichoresis is consistent
with ‘unlike nature’, and therefore does not thwart an accusation border-
ing on non-monotheistic Ditheism or Tritheism.
(2) The correspondence between traditional Jewish Monotheism
and Christian Binitarianism involving the minimum of mutation.
This pattern postulates generic identity of agency or action as said above:
6
In contrast as we will see, I assert that a central contention of Dunn, Hurtado, and
Bauckham is that generically the same action is the key to Christological Monotheism and
therefore in their view cannot be compatible with Ditheism (non-Monotheism).
7
Maurice Casey, From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God: The Origin and Development of New
Testament Christology (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1991), and Wilhelm
Bousset, Kyrios Christos: Geschichte des Christusglaubens von den Anfängen des Christentums
bis Irenaeus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1913) both advanced views where Christ
as a divine figure emerges out of Hellenised Gentile communities.
8 M. C. SANGUINETTI
Jesus was given or had the authority to accomplish actions that were
thought to be uniquely the remit and prerogative of Yahweh (ranging
from, e.g., the forgiving of sins to the acts of creation). This is indeed the
monotheistic dimension of the theory. But there are essentially two irre-
ducible figures—Jesus and Yahweh—doing generically the same action.
Here the central argument will be that generic identity of action is appli-
cable to the claims and arguments of James Dunn, Larry Hurtado, and
Richard Bauckham.
and Classical Binitarian or Trinitarian Monotheism. This theory
resembles category two in that its point of departure is also traditional
Jewish Monotheism. It also crucially resembles category two in that it
postulates more than one person or personal agency. But in place of gener-
ically the same action, it posits numerically the same action such that the
two or three persons possess numerically the same divine nature. The
beauty of this position is that divinity or Godness is defined in terms of this
numerically one nature, such that the three persons can be said to be one
God. In this way, claimed the Classical Trinitarian monotheists, Christianity
continued to be genuinely monotheistic. I argue that where Bauckham,
Dunn, and Hurtado espouse generically the same action, Classical
Trinitarian Monotheism, and Gregory of Nyssa in particular, affirmed
numerically the same action and on that basis affirmed numerically one
divine nature. Thomas Aquinas can be said to have completed the tradi-
tion in its fullness with his understanding of the generation of numerically
the same nature—the central mystery of the Trinity.
and Oneness Pentecostalism. Oneness Pentecostalism resembles cate-
gory three in that it espouses one nature and numerically the same action.
But the reason for that is precisely its rejection of a fundamental feature of
the central strain of doctrinal Christianity, namely that there is more than
one person ‘in God’. Instead, the reason it holds one nature and numeri-
cally the same action is because Jesus is in fact the incarnation of Yahweh,
such that there is in fact only one divine ‘person’, not two persons and one
nature, or three persons and one nature, but one person and one nature.
This is the ‘person’ of Yahweh. Where Christianity differs from Judaism is
that it makes the claim that this person Yahweh became incarnate, and
became incarnate in (through) Jesus.
The central aim of Chaps. 2–5 will be to show how the various
approaches can be understood and illuminated by a limited number of
categories—identity/non-identity, generic/numerical identity, persons,

nature, action—satisfying a distinct pattern or framework of categorisation
along a Tritheism-Monotheism or Trinitarianism-Unitarianism axis. In so
doing, I will point out that Oneness Pentecostalism has a proper place on
this axis, and thereby fills a gap in the literature (without which, I would
argue, there would exist what I called earlier a ‘Christological lacuna’).
The argument I will make is that Oneness Pentecostalism accords with
the pattern of one person, one nature, one action, entailing a thorough-
going numerical identity of persons and therefore numerical identity of
nature and actions. To reiterate, I will give attention to Oneness Pentecostal
academics David K. Bernard, Kulwant Singh Boora, and David S. Norris
because they are at the forefront of the development of Oneness Pentecostal
theology. While other works considered essential to Oneness Theology
find a place in this study, these cited scholars are more read and referenced
in the literature on a wider scale than others.8 In addition, because of its
closeness to the Oneness Pentecostal position, the work of Christopher
Barina Kaiser is included in this category and will also feature in the com-
parative exegesis of Chaps. 5 and 6. A summary for each category (maybe
sub-category) will be offered.
1.4 Significance of Study
The dominant approach to Christological Monotheism has been to focus
on the popular categories of high/low christologies, in which Jesus is pos-
ited as being either divine or human, judged on the basis of his actions or
nature. Assuming actions such as forgiving sins would place Jesus on the
vertical plane of high Christology and thereby affording him prerogatives
only assumed by Yahweh—hence he is properly God. Actions bespoke to
human beings (e.g., limited knowledge—Matthew 24:35–37, or being
tired from his journey—John 4:6) would put Jesus on the horizontal axis
of low Christology. In the case of low Christology, Jesus may be called
God but not in the ‘same sense’ as Yahweh is called God. Wilhelm Bousset
in Kyrios Christos saw Jesus as a totally human figure divinised by early
Christians, and his work serves as basis for perspectives presented by
8
In my exploration of Oneness Pentecostal literature during the research period for this
project, frequent references were made to one or more of the named scholars and their read-
ings of Christological Monotheism.
10 M. C. SANGUINETTI
modern christologists.9 Exactly how Yahweh and Jesus constitute Jewish-

Christian Monotheism is central to this book.
This book offers something unique, without radically altering the
established framework for Christological Monotheism that has gone
before (arguably). The difference in my position is that, though impor-
tant, its focus is not distinctions between high/low christologies; neither
does it infringe on Jewish Monotheism. Rather, it recontextualises
Trinitarian-Monotheistic perspectives to include the view of Oneness
Pentecostals whose works are mostly absent from the academic conversa-
tion. Where Oneness Pentecostal arguments are assessed by the academy,
such is usually offered as polemic against the apologetic arguments they
present, as opposed to serious scholarly interactions with their interpreta-
tions of Jewish-Christian Monotheism. This study is significant because it
refocuses equitable conversations that are based upon what Oneness
Pentecostals say about themselves and not simply what other Christian
traditions say about them.
One other key area of significance for this research is that it not only
identifies the four patterns of categorisation but shows how biblical texts
may be situated on the category spectrum. It demonstrates how common
biblical texts may be exegeted by those on the Trinitarian-Monotheism
axis. This hermeneutical approach is new to the field of Christological
Monotheism, and as far as I am aware, no other work has attempted this
in the very nuanced ways done here, with inclusion of the specific scholars
presented in this study. This does not amount to superiority of my study
to previous, but rather expanding the christological field of study in an
otherwise untapped area.
1.5 Definitions and Key Terms: The Meaning

of Identity in Relation to Persons, Nature,
and Action
‘Identity’ has been described by various philosophical categories and

includes ‘personal identity’, ‘contingent identity’, ‘vague identity’, ‘abso-
lute and relative identities’, ‘qualitative identity’, and ‘numerical identity’.
These all have their key advocates and dissenters who propose various
9
Larry Hurtado used Bousset’s work as springboard for his own studies. This is addressed
later. In some sense, Hurtado saw himself as continuing the christological tradition of
Bousset.
theories in defence of their distinctive, sometimes overlapping proposi-

tions. Yet it is the latter two—‘qualitative or generic identity’ and ‘numeri-
cal identity’ to which our attention is focused.10
Things with qualitative identity share properties, so things can be more or

less qualitatively identical. Poodles and Great Danes are qualitatively identi-
cal because they share the property of being a dog, and such properties as go
along with that, but two poodles will (very likely) have greater qualitative
identity.11
Numerical identity encompasses the notion that a thing is identical with

itself. There are not two things that remain resolutely two things but one
thing essentially identical with itself satisfying Leibniz’s law of the indis-
cernibility of identicals: if x and y are identical, they possess exactly and
numerically the same properties.
Numerical identity requires absolute, or total, qualitative identity, and can

only hold between a thing and itself. Its name implies the controversial view
that it is the only identity relation in accordance with which we can properly
count (or number) things: x and y are to be properly counted as one just in
case they are numerically identical.12
We can apply these concepts to persons, natures, and actions in the

context of the Trinitarian-Monotheistic axis. As will be seen in Chap. 3, it
is possible to affirm a theory of interpretation that encompasses ‘generic
identity of persons’ without reference to a generic identity of action,
implying a Christian species of Monotheism such as I will argue is evident
in the work of Dunn, Hurtado, and Bauckham (Chap. 4). In the work of
the latter what I argue we encounter is generically identical action—gener-
ically the same action. Jesus does actions that are the unique prerogative
of Yahweh-God. In the language of generic action, Jesus is described as
enacting actions uniquely ascribed to Yahweh. Eugene Boring in his com-
mentary on Mark 2:1–12 writes:
10
Harold Noonan and Ben Curtis, ‘Identity’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
(Spring 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/
spr2017/entries/identity/ [Accessed 17 October 2017].
11
Ibid.
12
Noonan and Curtis, ‘Identity’, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2017
Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/
identity/ (Accessed 24/11/17).
In this pericope Jesus forgives, heals, knows people’s hearts as only God can,
yet at the end his actions do not detract from praise to God (2.12). The
scribes rightly recognize that Jesus acts in the place of the one God (2.7).
The charge on which Jesus is ultimately condemned emerges early in the
narrative, in a claim that seems to his opponents to infringe on God’s
prerogative.13
Assuming that Mark does not have a theology of pre-existence of the

Son, it follows that the generic identity of Yahweh and Jesus relative to
action does not require the necessity of a belief in Christ as a pre-existent
figure. Generic identity may be applied to ‘persons’ (gods) and to ‘actions’
(e.g., Jesus and Yahweh both doing generically the same action of forgiv-
ing sin). Persons may therefore share the same generic identity of class
(the class of gods) without being the same god and do the same action
without it being a numerically identical action. This theory suggests that
Yahweh and Jesus are irreducibly two persons (beings) who share the same
prerogative, with Jesus enacting generic identity of agency and perform-
ing actions bespoke only to God.
Historically the distinction between generic and numeric identity was
applied to the concept of divine nature, principally in the context of the
fourth-century tradition of Trinitarian Monotheism, captured in the con-
cept of triunity rather than in the concept of trinity/Trinitarianism (which
latter is therefore consistent with Tritheism). Ontologically if two divine
beings were of generically the same nature, then it followed that they
enacted generically the same action. It is possible to understand the Nicene
affirmation of homoousios both generically and numerically.14 It may be
that in 325CE the foundational affirmation was precisely that the Son was
of the same generic being and therefore nature as the Father (the very
benchmark of Godness). But later on, in the century as the Church
approached the Council of Constantinople in 381CE, numerical unity of
nature was epistemically derived from numerically identical action.
Under the influence of the Gospel of John, the Son’s actions were said
to be numerically identical with the Father’s action such that this was
taken to imply a numerical unity of nature. So, while the tradition
13
M. Eugene Boring, ‘Markan Christology: God-Language for Jesus?’ in New Testament
Studies, 45 (1999), p. 466.
14
See Lewis Ayres, ‘On The Contours of Mystery’ in Nicaea and Its Legacy: An Approach
to Fourth-Century Trinitarian Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004),
pp. 273–300.
maintained a generic sense of the persons, it affirmed a numerical unity of

action and therefore of divine nature. Numerical identity in the context of
Classical Trinitarian Monotheism implies that God and Jesus (and the
Holy Spirit) are distinct persons but one and the same numerical identity
according to nature, enacting the same actions. There are not three natures
but one, and the same nature is the property of each of the three persons.
This is how I will apply these concepts in Chap. 4.
We know from the writings of such as Tertullian that the concept of
numerical identity was implicitly applied to the divine persons (Noetus,
Praxeas). But my argument will be that it is made explicit in the work of
Oneness Pentecostalism. If Jesus is Yahweh incarnate, then Jesus and
Yahweh are numerically the same person—one and the same person—such
that it follows that they explicitly have one and the same nature and indeed
do one and the same actions. Jesus and Yahweh are understood as the
same God visible and invisible, respectively. Not only is the divine nature
numerically one as in the classical tradition, the ‘persons’ are numerically
one too. Because of this they justifiably belong to the axis of Trinitarian
ism/Tritheism-Monotheism that I present as a grand interpretative theory
of these traditions. This is essentially the argument of Chap. 5.
1.6 Defining Traditional Jewish Monotheism

The definitions for Traditional Jewish Monotheism offered here serve as
foundation for the theistic theories put forward by Christological
Monotheists, primarily in Chap. 3. Oneness Pentecostal perspectives of
God and Jesus may be said to be a modification of these definitions and fit
perfectly within the conceptual pattern of categorisations. Fundamental to
the work of Dunn, Hurtado, and Bauckham is that the first Christians, or
at least in Dunn’s case, the Johannine community were traditional Jewish
monotheists. So, it is not surprising that central to each’s work is a refer-
ence to the definition of Jewish Monotheism they are working with. In
reference to Monotheism, Dunn says,
Jesus was God, in that he made God known, in that God made himself
known in and through him, in that he was God’s effective outreach to his
creation and his people. But he was not God in himself. Jesus is not the God
of Israel. He is not the Father. He is not Yahweh.15
15
James D.G. Dunn, Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? The New Testament Evidence
(London: SPCK, 2010), pp. 135 and 142.
Dunn’s Monotheism posits Jesus as Yahweh’s divine agent who pos-

sessed the nature of the Father and carries out functions normally assigned
to the Father only, with the purpose of revealing who the Father was.
Thus, Monotheism becomes the worship of the Father through Christ the
Son.16 In furthering his monotheistic position, Dunn says,
The prologue of John’s Gospel ends with the highest claim for the revela-
tory significance of Jesus. ‘No one has ever seen God; the only begotten
God…has made him known’ (1:18). The claim is no less than that the invis-
ible God has made himself visible through Jesus.17
On defining traditional Jewish Monotheism, Hurtado says,
We find clear evidence that devout Jews proclaimed their faith in monothe-
istic professions which emphasized the universal sovereignty and uniqueness
of the one God of Israel, and which manifested a devotional pattern involv-
ing the reservation of cultic devotion (formal/liturgical ‘worship’) for this
one God, and a refusal to offer these cultic honours to other gods or even
the divine agents of God that often figure so prominently in ancient Jewish
conceptions of the heavenly world.18
Hurtado contends ‘that already in the earliest decades we have a genu-

inely ‘binitarian’ pattern of worship that included Jesus as recipient along
with God’, and therefore define Jewish Monotheism in the categories of
cultic devotion, ‘not as a second god but as the divinely-appointed Lord
to whom believers gave cultic reverence in obedience to God’.19
Bauckham saw traditional Jewish Monotheism as culminating in a
Christology of divine identity, where it becomes integral to move the focus
beyond functional and ontic christological categories to one of under-
standing who God is, not just what divinity is.
Bauckham states, contra Hurtado,
16
Dunn, Did the First Christians Worship Jesus, pp. 147–151.
17
James D. G. Dunn, Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels (Cambridge and Grand Rapids, MI:
William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011), pp. 87–88.
18
Larry Hurtado, How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? Historical Questions About
Earliest Devotion to Jesus (Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2005), p. 133.
19
Larry W. Hurtado, One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish
Monotheism (London and New York: Continuum T&T Clark, 1998), pp. xii–xiii.
High Christology was possible within a Jewish monotheistic context, not by

applying to Jesus a Jewish category of semi-divine intermediary status, but
by identifying Jesus directly with the one God of Israel, including Jesus in
the unique identity of this one God.20
The christological commonality which holds together the positions of

Dunn, Hurtado, and Bauckham is that both Yahweh and Jesus, though
irreducibly distinct persons, share the same generic actions—along the
Monotheistic-Trinitarian axis. The three respective readings offered by
Dunn, Hurtado, and Bauckham demonstrate theoretical differences in
emphasis and perspectives for each of their theories; these differences are
later assessed in the context of Oneness Pentecostalism, with a view of
exploring whether a combined perspective from all three best represents
the Oneness monotheistic position. For these scholars, Christianity is
essentially a monotheistic religion, and contemporary christologists are
agreed that discussions relating to the person and work of Jesus Christ are
integral to understanding the type of Monotheism seen in New Testament
texts. The act of combining the New Testament figure of Jesus with Jewish
Monotheism is in itself a scholastic ingenuity.
Biblical and historic Judaism prides itself upon confession of the Shema,
‘Hear, O Israel, The LORD our God, the LORD is one’ (Deuteronomy
6:4), and the Jewish Shema only allows a Monotheism in which Yahweh
alone is to be worshipped as the only true God. Consequently, a key fea-
ture in contemporary research for Christological Monotheism directly
responds to questions of (1) whether Jesus was included in a reworking of
the Shema (1 Corinthians 8:4–6), (2) whether Jesus received the same
type of cultic adoration reserved only for Yahweh (Exodus 20:3–5), and
(3) assessing whether such devotion renders Christ equal to, alongside of,
or identical with Yahweh (John 10:30).
To answer these christological questions, an evocation of various Jewish
frameworks for Monotheism became necessary—frameworks which
include monolatry (the belief that many gods may exist but only one supe-
rior God should be worshipped), and henotheism (the belief that only one
god should be worshipped while acknowledging the existence of other
gods, with or without ascribing worship to them). Further, in order to
authenticate Christian Monotheism, scholars attempt to find continuity
20
Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the
New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity (Milton Keynes: Paternoster, 2008), p. 3.
and/or establish discontinuity with these Jewish frameworks, resulting in

contemporary challenges to what is accepted as ‘orthodox Monotheism’.
The Christian orthodox understanding for Christological Monotheism is
augmented through ongoing investigations of Jewish sources during the
Second Temple period. Modern christologists believe that these sources,
when studied alongside biblical texts, enunciate a monolatrous view of
Monotheism—the type of monolatry which accommodates a pluralistic
language applicable to God and Jesus in the New Testament without vio-
lating Yahweh’s oneness.
The language of plurality creates a congenial environment for God and
Jesus to be ontologically held together in a unique type of incorporeal
unity which does no damage to Jewish Monotheism. Contemporary chris-
tologists evoke Jewish monolatrous frameworks as standard for defining
Monotheism, and Monotheism is defined in terms of either Binitarianism
(the belief that there are two persons in the Godhead) or Trinitarianism
(the belief that three distinct persons exist within the one being of God).
Christologists James D.G. Dunn, Larry W. Hurtado, and Richard
J. Bauckham are integral to my study, and each postulate a binitarian, and
in some sense, monolatrous approach to Christological Monotheism,
while remaining confessional Trinitarians. Dunn’s thesis argues that Jesus
not only possesses the divine nature of Yahweh through the incarnation,
but that in Christ the personification of Word and Wisdom became a per-
son. According to Dunn, Jesus is not Yahweh, nor is he the God of Israel,
neither should he be worshipped in the same way as the Father. To engage
what he calls ‘Jesus-olatry’, not only diminishes true reverence for Jesus,
but falls short of the worship due to the one God and Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ.21 Moreover, for Dunn, divine personifications such as
Wisdom (Proverbs 8:22–31, Wisdom 7:22, 8:5–6, 9:1–2, 18:14–16,
Baruch 3:9–37) and Word-Logos (Psalms 56:4, 10, 119:42, 74, 81, 114)
are not viewed as distinct persons in God’s being but Hebraic metaphors,
poetry, and Jewish expressions of God’s activities.
In agreement with Dunn, Hurtado puts forward arguments in favour
of a binitarian shape for Monotheism, in which distinctions between Jesus
and Yahweh stem from already existing ontological forms of plurality
within Second Temple Judaism. However, unlike Dunn, Hurtado believes
worship was not only offered to the Father through Jesus, but that both
21
James D.G. Dunn, Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? The New Testament Evidence
(London: SPCK, 2010), pp. 147–148.
Jesus and God were reverenced in a binitarian manner without significant

alteration to Jewish Monotheism. Hurtado saw the exaltation of ‘principal
angels and agents’ (the angel of the Lord, Gabriel, Michael, Yahoel,
Melchizedek); the ‘deification of patriarchal figures’ (Enoch as Metatron,
Moses, Ezekiel); and the ‘personification of divine attributes’ (Wisdom,
Logos), as being part of a developing tradition, which he calls, ‘divine
agency’, and believes that this tradition serves as precursor for veneration
of Jesus among the earliest Christians.
Against Dunn and Hurtado, Bauckham’s presentation of Christological
Monotheism positioned Jesus as uniquely identified with the one God of
Israel, and this ‘Christology of divine identity’ goes beyond categories
seen in Second Temple Jewish literature, to advancing Jesus’ full inclusion
in the monotheistic identity of God.
Oneness Pentecostalism builds its own premises for Monotheism from
aspects of these three perspectives. It reconfigures Christological
Monotheism so that Yahweh is visually represented as one single undi-
vided God, who himself was incarnated in (as) Jesus Christ. Metaphorically,
Jesus becomes Yahweh’s clothes.
1.7 A Brief Introduction to Oneness Pentecostal

History and Thought
It is important to offer this disclaimer from the start: this is not an exhaus-
tive account of Oneness Pentecostalism, as such is way beyond the scope
and breadth of this book. I know of no single work within the literature
that offers a comprehensive study of Oneness Pentecostalism, largely
because of its diverse oral traditions and few extant primary sources from
which to recreate its history.22 Even where these are available, they tend to
focus on individual Oneness Pentecostal organisations and specific
approaches to doctrinal or political challenges. This section of the book
offers only a brief and general overview of how Oneness Pentecostalism
emerged and developed in history and thought since the 1900s. I am
bound to omit or exclude some important information in my treatment of
the sources, but such is a recommendation for more rigorous and bespoke
research in the future. Here, I modestly aim to show how Oneness
22
Wolfgang Vondey acknowledges that information on Oneness Pentecostals beyond
North America and Europe is sparse. See Pentecostalism: A Guide for the Perplexed (London:
Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2013), p. 76.
Pentecostals fit into the metanarrative of Christianity from the perspective

of its doctrines and histories. This will, nevertheless, provide important
background for discussions of Oneness Pentecostal authors and ideas in
later chapters.
The need for inclusion of this brief history into the study is justified on
the basis that in my research I found only a few concentrated works from
the academy on the history of Oneness Pentecostalism. In my informal
conversations with particularly academics, the lack of familiarity with what
Oneness Pentecostals believe (outside of apologetic engagements) was
evident. Oneness Pentecostalism is underexplored, and the limited com-
mentary in this segment of the inquiry should inspire further research.23
To begin, I offer a summary of the standard doctrinal position considered
imperative if one is to be classed as ‘Oneness Pentecostal’ or ‘Apostolic’.24
Principally, there are four (or five) areas of theology into which these stan-
dard doctrines fall: Theology Proper, Christology, Soteriology,
Pneumatology, and possibly Practical Holiness.
To be Oneness Pentecostal or Apostolic, one must affirm these state-
ments of faith: (1) that there is absolutely and indivisibly one God, Yahweh,
(2) that Jesus Christ is the full incarnation of that one God, and therefore
he is both fully human and fully divine, (3) that salvation is by grace
through faith but includes water baptism by immersion ‘in the name of the
Lord Jesus Christ’, (4) that water baptism is followed by Spirit baptism,
which is initially evidenced by speaking with (in) tongues, and (5) that
23
Roswith I. Gerloff, A Plea for British Black Theologies: The Black Church Movement in
Britain in its Transatlantic Cultural and Theological Interaction with Special Reference to the
Pentecostal Oneness (Apostolic) and Sabbatarian Movements Vol. 1 and 2 (Eugene, OR: Wipf
& Stock Publishers, 1992 and 2010), is one of the key works addressing Oneness
Pentecostalism specifically. Her work however did not engage Christological Monotheism or
the issues of Jewish and Christian Trinitarian-Monotheistic Categories as I do in this study.
Three other studies in historical theology specific to Oneness Pentecostals are by Talmadge
L. French, David A. Reed, and Thomas A. Fudge. Fudge’s work focuses on Oneness
Soteriology, and Reed’s and French’s are both historical and theological.
24
OP or OPs is abbreviation for ‘Oneness Pentecostals’, but ‘Apostolic’ is also sometimes
used by Oneness Pentecostals to speak about and name their churches. ‘Apostolic’ is used by
a wide variety of other churches but not in the same way as OPs use it for naming their
churches. I will alternate between abbreviations OP, OPs, and full phrase ‘Oneness
Pentecostal/Pentecostalism’ where I deem necessary.
those who experience Spirit baptism should live out the Christian life by
separation from the world and manifesting the fruit of the Spirit.25
Despite sharing such doctrines, how these are expressed among Oneness
Pentecostals vary between the different denominations, and there are even
intra-denominational differences among individual organisations. For
example, on the theology of Practical Holiness, women coming from the
Caribbean and British denominations of Oneness Pentecostalism tend to
wear veils during public worship (1 Corinthians 11:2–16), but generally,
their North American sisters do not. On a broader scale, women may not
hold certain offices (e.g., of ‘Bishop’) in some OP denominations, while
this is perfectly acceptable in others. Some OPs affirm a Calvinistic
approach to Soteriology and others take an Arminian view. Political non-
involvement has been predominant among early British OPs, but North
American OPs are usually active in the political sphere. What is clear is that
aside from its adherence to core doctrines, it is too simplistic to pigeon-
hole Oneness Pentecostals by denominations or practices, as the issues
involved are too historically complex.
The emergence of Oneness Pentecostalism follows the same trajectory
as the birth of the wider Pentecostal movement variously dated: Arthur
L. Clanton (1901, 1913–1915),26 Roswith I. Gerloff (1906–1916),27
Thomas A. Fudge (1913–1914),28 David A. Reed (1901 and 1913–1917),29
25
Basic OP theology covering these four (five) areas (and more) are found in works by
David Bernard, The Oneness of God Volume 1 (Hazelwood, MO: WAP, 1983) and The New
Birth: Series in Pentecostal Theology, Volume 2 (Hazelwood, MO: WAP, 1984). The key texts
used in support of these four (five) areas of theology are discussed in the section on Oneness
Pentecostalism.
26
Arthur L. Clanton, United We Stand: A History of Oneness Organisations (Hazelwood:
Pentecostal Publishing House, 1970), pp. 13–22.
27
Roswith I. Gerloff, A Plea for British Black Theologies Vol. 1, pp. 67–134.
28
Thomas A. Fudge, Christianity Without the Cross: A History of Salvation in Oneness
Pentecostalism (Parkland, FL: Universal Publishers, 2003), pp. 45–71.
29
David A Reed, In Jesus’ Name: The History and Beliefs of Oneness Pentecostals (Dorset,
UK: Deo Publishing, 2008), pp. 136–166. Amos Yong referenced the date for the origin of
the OP movement in David Reed’s work as 1913. See The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh:
Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: BakerAcademic,
2005), pp. 203–234.
Talmadge L. French (1906–1913),30 Allan Anderson (1905–1916).31

These dates situate Oneness Pentecostalism within the broader Pentecostal
tradition, and modern historians of the church lean towards the earlier
dates if one assumes a doctrinal approach, as opposed to an organisational
one. Schisms over baptismal formulas existed prior to those over the doc-
trine of the Trinity. Organisational struggles came later.32 All the sources
agreed that between 1913 and 1917 Oneness Pentecostalism as a move-
ment emerged; although doctrinally, OPs see themselves as a restorationist
group going back to beliefs and practices of the earliest church.33 On April
9, 1906, the early Pentecostal pioneers sought for revival and reappraisal
of our understanding of biblical pneumatology, specifically with its empha-
sis on the experience of glossolalia. Emerging from this was the birth of
the Charismatic Movement in the 1960s, which focused not simply on
speaking with tongues, as the Pentecostals before them, but incorporated
the entire panorama of charismatic gifts. The renewed sense of spiritual
urgency broke through the borders of denominationalism to include
Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism. The formation of Oneness
Pentecostalism is situated between these two movements—Classical
Pentecostalism and Charismatics—but its point of renewal is a Jewish-
Christian ‘theology of the name’. Oneness Pentecostal theology is a
renewal of the teaching traditions of the early apostles where ‘the name of
Jesus’ was central to their christological outlook: prayers are done in Jesus’
name, candidates are immersed in water through baptism in Jesus’ name,
and even the name of Israel’s God—Yahweh—has now reached its zenith
in the name Lord Jesus Christ.34
30
Talmadge L. French, Early Interracial Oneness Pentecostalism (Eugene, OR: Pickwick,
2014), pp. 53–112. See also Talmadge L. French, Our God Is One: The Story of Oneness
Pentecostals (Indiana: Voice & Vision, 1999), pp. 31–84 where dates suggested 1901–1916.
31
Allan Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism: Global Charismatic Christianity
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 39–62.
32
David A. Reed, ‘Oneness Pentecostalism’, Stanley M. Burgess and Gary B. McGee eds.,
Dictionary of Pentecostals and Charismatic Movements (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan
Publishing, 1988), pp. 644–651.
33
David S. Norris, I AM: A Oneness Pentecostal Theology (Hazelwood, MO: WAP Academic,
2009), pp. 3–13.
34
Although numerous works have discussed the importance of the name Jesus in Oneness
theology, I think that the study by David A. Reed, In Jesus’ Name: History and Beliefs of
Oneness Pentecostals (Dorset, UK: Deo Publishing, 2008), provides the most scholarly and
equitable analyses of a ‘Theology of Name’ as a point of renewal within Pentecostalism and,
especially, Oneness Pentecostalism.
The other distinctive thrust of Oneness Pentecostalism is the emphasis

on the undivided nature and personhood of God. God is seen as a uniper-
sonal divine Being or Self—hence the name ‘Oneness’, and this was the
view held by Second Temple Jews, despite its interests in plural divine
figures. Oneness Pentecostalism’s point of renewal, and departure from
traditional ‘orthodoxy’, is the desire to return to an unsullied biblical
Monotheism which is not infiltrated with later creedal doctrinal formula-
tions. Each christological category discussed shows how and why Oneness
Pentecostalism should be taken more seriously.
In the early 1900s, Charles F. Parham headed a Bible College in Topeka
Kansas, where he taught that ‘speaking with tongues’ was the initial sign of
receiving the Holy Spirit—a teaching which was passed on by his followers,
who later established the Apostolic Faith Churches. One of Parham’s stu-
dents, William J. Seymour, convinced by his teachings on receiving the
Holy Spirit, travelled from Houston to Los Angeles, where the purchase of
an old Methodist church at 312 Azusa Street saw the founding of the
Azusa Street Mission (1906) and a place for experimenting with this pneu-
matological phenomenon—Azusa was to become the birthplace of
Pentecostalism.35 It was from this backdrop that the Assemblies of God
(AOG) started. At a camp meeting in Arroyo Seco, California 1913,
R.E. McAlister preached a sermon on water baptism that was followed by
the ‘revelation’ received by John G. Scheppe, leading him to conclude that
water baptism was to be done using the words ‘in Jesus’ name’ and that
God was numerically one. Frank J. Ewart, G.T. Haywood, Harry Morse,
and later Glenn A. Cook, E.N. Bell, and many others were among those
who later received this enlightenment of baptism ‘in the name of the Lord
Jesus’. Three years earlier (1910) Andrew D. Urshan and ten years prior
to that (1903) Howard A. Goss were baptised ‘in Jesus’ name’ using the
shorter formula in Acts 2:38, as opposed to Matthew 28:19. The issue of
the nature of God and the Trinity and insistence upon rebaptism using the
shorter formula led to controversies within the AOG.36
35
Walter J. Hollenweger, The Pentecostals (Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers Inc.,
1988), pp. 29–46.
36
Clanton, United We Stand, pp. 13–22. The baptismal sermon by McAlister proposed a
rationale for baptising in the name of the ‘Lord Jesus Christ’ as a Christocentric name that
correlated with the Trinitarian Matthean title, ‘Father, Son, Holy Spirit’. Some Trinitarian
Pentecostals still baptise candidates using this method, although still affirming belief in the
doctrine of the Trinity.
By 1916, the escalating tension among AOG ministers regarding which

baptismal formula should be used (labelled in the literature as ‘the New
Issue’) led to the expulsion of the ‘in Jesus’ name’ faction from the ranks—
an event described by some Oneness Pentecostal historians as being
‘forced out’.37 This signals the initial impetus for the birth of Oneness
Pentecostalism. Its major organisations were to follow from this event,
and Roswith I. Gerloff, in A Plea for British Black Theologies Vol. 1, pro-
vides detailed charts of these organisations between 1906 and 1970, etc.38
Two doctrinal issues framed the apologetic and ecclesial contexts of
Oneness Pentecostalism since its birth: (1) a denial of the classical doctrine
of the Trinity, and (2) water baptism in Jesus’ name only.
1.8 Apologetic and Ecclesial Contexts of Study

The first of the key issues which divided the Assemblies of God was the insis-
tence of the baptismal formula ‘in Jesus’ name’ instead of ‘in the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit’. This ‘New Issue’ led to major divisions
within the young Pentecostal Movement and continues today. Oneness
Pentecostals are mostly seen as outsiders to the wider Pentecostal family.39 If
there are any remaining similarities between Oneness and Trinitarian
Pentecostals, it is the pneumatological experience of the Holy Spirit and the
charismatic deployment of gifts. But even here, there is doctrinal disparity as
to how these spiritual gifts should work.40 The second issue was the view that
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are names not for three divine per-
sons but one person: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were titles of the one
person.41 Of Oneness Pentecostals, Wolfgang Vondey says,
37
Hollenweger, The Pentecostals, pp. 29–32.
38
Gerloff, A Plea for British Black Theologies Vol. 1, p. 78. Vinson Synan provides a detailed
exploration of the split between OPs and AOG in The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition:
Charismatic Movements in the Twentieth Century (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge: Wm.
B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1997), pp. 82–128 especially.
39
Wolfgang Vondey, Pentecostalism: A Guide for the Perplexed, (London and New York:
Bloomsbury: 2013), pp. 76–77. E. Calvin Beisner, Jesus Only Churches (Grand Rapids, MI:
Zondervan Publishing House, 1998), pp. 7–8. David A. Reed, In Jesus’ Name: The History
and Beliefs of Oneness Pentecostals (Dorset, UK: Deo Publishing, 2008), pp. 147–166.
William P. Atkinson, Trinity After Pentecost (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2013), pp. 5–8.
40
Edith Blumhofer, The Assemblies of God: A Chapter in the Story of American Pentecostalism
Vol. 1 (Springfield, MO: Gospel Publishing House, 1989), pp. 236–238.
41
Vinson Synan, The Holiness-Pentecostal Tradition: Charismatic Movements in the
Twentieth Century (Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing,
1971), pp. 153–155.
The common denominator among these groups is the rejection of the doc-
trine of the Trinity and consequential separation from the majority of trini-
tarian Pentecostals. In turn, Oneness Pentecostals often have been
stereotyped as heretical by trinitarian Pentecostals and non-Pentecostals as
well as former Oneness Pentecostals.42
The gap between Oneness Pentecostals and ‘orthodox Christianity’ is

widened further, not only because of its rejection of the historic creeds of
Christianity, but also because of its challenge to perceived triumphalist
readings of history.43 Likewise, although Oneness Pentecostals and
Trinitarian views on Christological Monotheism have interacted apolo-
getically, only limited critical engagement exists in the literature between
both traditions on an academic level. If this is true, and it can be proven
that this is a direct result of Oneness Pentecostals not engaging academic
research in theology at a level required for modern christologists, then this
book would become a means for further explorative research and sug-
gested recommendations, and should help to integrate Oneness
Pentecostals into the academy.
It is this context of theological hostility between Oneness Pentecostals
and Trinitarians that motivated my study. I wanted to find out why both
traditions pursued research using the same or similar sources for under-
standing the Jewish foundations for Christological Monotheism, and yet
arrived at diametrically opposing views about God and Jesus. In my explo-
ration of the literature, I found out that several efforts have been made to
engage Oneness Pentecostals by Trinitarians, and in the reverse. This
resulted in numerous Symposiums including one which started in 1973
where Trinitarian academics and Oneness Pentecostal scholars attempted
to bridge this divide.44 This book follows in the tradition which began
42
Vondey, Pentecostalism: A Guide for the Perplexed, pp. 76–77.
43
The chapter on Oneness Pentecostal Monotheism (Chap. 5) offers justification for
Oneness Pentecostals’ rejection of the historic Creeds and Trinitarian readings of early
Christian history. ‘Orthodox Christianity’ is placed in speech marks because Oneness
Pentecostals challenge claims of biblical fidelity made by Trinitarians with respect to their
views about the doctrines of God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. For example, see David
K. Bernard’s Oneness and Trinity AD 100–300: The Doctrine of God in Ancient Christian
Writings (Hazelwood, MO: Word Aflame Press, 2007), pp. 1–25. Vondey points this out
also in Pentecostalism: A Guide for the Perplexed, pp. 77–79.
44
The Society of Pentecostal Studies facilitated numerous discussions between both tradi-
tions, and the results are published in the form of academic peer-reviewed journals. Ralph Del
Colle provided evidence of the initial proposal, ‘Oneness and Trinity: A Preliminary Proposal
for Dialogue with Oneness Pentecostalism’, Journal Pentecostal Theology 10 (1997): 85–110.
with the earlier Symposiums and encourages contemporary academics

from both Oneness Pentecostal and Trinitarian backgrounds to continu-
ously pursue scholarly dialogues beyond apologetic debates that simply
aim to ‘win the argument’.
Trinitarians and Oneness Pentecostals often appeal to biblical herme-
neutics as basis for assessing theological views about the nature of God.
Gordon D. Fee is a classic example of such an initiative. Fee applied exege-
sis in order to arrive at the proper meanings of biblical texts.45 Following
this process often leads to solid theological conclusions and therefore
assists in fostering scholarly interactions between Oneness Pentecostals
and Trinitarians by clarifying any theological variance. It was theological
variance that contributed to the breakdown of ecclesial relationships
between Oneness Pentecostals and Trinitarians—particularly with refer-
ence to the interpretation of biblical texts.
My observations and experiences over many years engaging both tradi-
tions are that Trinitarian and Oneness Pentecostal churches tend not to
share liturgical worship space, that is, they do not often worship together
(except at unavoidable functions such as weddings or funerals), nor do
their ministers usually share homilies in each other’s pulpits. This long-
standing separation is based also upon differences in how both traditions
view the nature of God. It is hoped that this book will improve the ecclesial
environment and further the scholarly conversations between Trinitarians
and Oneness Pentecostals regarding Christological Monotheism.
1.9 Outline and Structure of Book

The book is divided into seven chapters. Chapters 2–5 demonstrate the
development of theistic patterns within Judaism and say how these fit into
the Trinitarian-Monotheism Categories … the progression from generic
to numeric actions is the basis for discussions of whether Jewish
Monotheism should be interpreted at one end of the axis as trinitarian/
tritheistic or at the other as unitarian/monotheistic. The arguments of
Peter Hayman, Margaret Barker, Daniel Boyarin and Jürgen Moltmann
are addressed in Chap. 2. Then the probable Christian Binitarianism of
James D. G. Dunn, Larry W. Hurtado, and Richard J. Bauckham are dis-
cussed in correspondence to Jewish Monotheism in Chap. 3.
45
Gordon D. Fee, Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study (Grand Rapids,
MI: BakerAcademic, 2007).
Chapter 4 inquisitively explores the classical binitarian (trinitarian) tra-

ditions in consort with generic and/or numeric identities, focusing pri-
marily on the concepts of ‘unity of action and/or nature’ in Gregory of
Nyssa, Thomas Aquinas, and the Gospel of John. Chapter 5 brings
together the previous chapters (2–4) and demonstrates any continuity or
discontinuity with Oneness Pentecostalism—the special focus of the book.
Chapter 6 shows how similar texts are interpreted along the Monotheistic-
Trinitarian axis, but within the conceptual framework of ‘person, action
and nature’ and generic/numeric identity. Chapter 6 shows that first-
order historical methodologies, when supplemented by exegetical
approaches, lead to more holistic conclusions. Key texts used across the
Trinitarian-Monotheism spectrum are critically analysed. Chapters 2–5 are
called ‘categories’ to reflect the four main theories identified along the axis
of Jewish-Christian beliefs about God and Jesus. Following this, Chap. 7
is a final conclusion and summary of the previous chapters showing the
strengths and weaknesses of the arguments presented, offering sugges-
tions for future research, and pointing out some limitations and contribu-
tion of my own study.
The identification of the four patterns of christological categorisation
explicated in Chaps. 2–5 demonstrate various permutations and approaches
to Monotheism and serve as contextual foundations for how theologians
and exegetes should interpret certain biblical passages dealing with the
nature of God and Christ. It cannot be taken for granted that ‘Monotheism’
is a monolithic enterprise bespoke to this or that form of Christian tradi-
tion, but that its meaning is far more diverse than often acknowledged.
The same plurality of meanings for Monotheism seen in the four catego-
ries, and in particular, Christological Monotheism, is evident from read-
ings of New Testament passages. Chapter 6 (the exegetical chapter)
assimilates the four patterns of christological categorisation and shows how
and why the selected texts (John 1:1–18, John 10:30, 1 Corinthians 8:1–6,
Philippians 2:5–11) could be understood by interpreting them through
Trinitarian, Binitarian, Unitarian, and particularly, Oneness Pentecostal
lens. My combinatorial hermeneutics of blending the conclusions reached
for discussions in each of the four categories with comparative textual
analyses demonstrate why a Oneness Pentecostal perspective to these bib-
lical passages warrants inclusion in the wider academic conversation, and
why an interdependent rather than independent methodology for under-
standing Monotheism is preferred.
CHAPTER 2
The First Category: Non-Monotheistic

Jewish and Christian
Binitarianism-Trinitarianism
In this chapter, I seek to establish the correspondence between Jewish

Binitarianism and Christianity and demonstrate how the pattern of cate-
gorisation set out in the introduction manifests itself in terms of the first
category. To recapitulate, according to this theory of interpretation,
Christianity is fundamentally trinitarian, or at least essentially binitarian.
This is not in itself revolutionary, but there is a more controversial theory
attached, which is that Judaism—and indeed Israel’s religion before
Judaism—embraced ontological diversity (something akin to Ditheism or
Tritheism) at least as much as Monotheism, and this took the form of
Jewish Binitarianism akin to Ditheism. Though Israel’s religion may have
espoused Monotheism, this was not the only and perhaps not the main
story. In other words, Judaism, and indeed ancient Israel, encompassed
not just what has gone by the name of traditional Jewish Monotheism but
also various non-monotheistic (mainly) binitarian forms.
If this is so, then Christianity’s non-monotheistic features were not
such a departure from Judaism and the religion of ancient Israel as had
been thought.1 Essentially, what we have is a Judaism whose focus is on
more than one divine figure, hence the description of Ditheism may be
1
See, for example, Daniel Boyarin, ‘The Gospel of the Memra: Jewish Binitarianism and
the Gospel of John’, Harvard Theological Review, 94:3 (2001) pp.243-84.
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 27

Switzerland AG 2023
M. C. Sanguinetti, Patterns of Christological Categorisation,
Christianity and Renewal - Interdisciplinary Studies,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25875-6_2
appropriate implying a generic identity of persons—gods—but not

much more.
Primarily, Christianity can be understood as less of an innovation than
was previously alleged, because Jewish thought and practice had got there
first and had already introduced this particular ‘innovation’. Hence, at the
level of the category of ‘person’, there are extant scholarly analyses of
Christianity and Judaism that can be represented in terms of a binitarian
or ditheistic interpretation (the claim of Polytheism is surely to go too far).
We can develop this particular sub-pattern further. Given that one identi-
fying feature of Jewish Binitarianism was that it was not monotheistic but
ditheistic, it is no surprise to find Christian counterparts in which any
considerations of Monotheism are likewise absent.
Indeed, one can find examples in which Monotheism is received pejora-
tively—an indication of example, ‘fascism’ or ‘repression’, and as such is a
phenomenon whose importance is to be downgraded, if not rejected. It
might be argued that Origen is a foremost classical example of the begin-
ning of a Trinitarianism that is minimally ‘monotheistic’, and in the modern
age, one might cite Jürgen Moltmann as someone who thinks one ought to
be suspicious of Monotheism, or at the very least, that it is to be admitted
only as an augmentation to an established Trinitarianism, as an eminent
Christian symbol of diversity, in the form of a perichoresis of persons.
2.1 Peter Hayman: Monotheism

and Dualistic Patterns
In the academic world of twenty or thirty years ago it was conventional to hold
that the story of Judaism was one of a gradual, but inexorable, evolution from
a Canaanite/Israelite pagan and mythological environment into the pure
light of an unsullied Monotheism. The point at which this breakthrough to
Monotheism was achieved was a subject of debate, but most scholars seem to have
been agreed that it certainly took place. Moreover, Judaism in the post-exilic era
was thought to have carried the process to such an extreme that excessive stress on
the transcendental nature of God led Jews increasingly to perceive him as inac-
cessible to them. Israelite religion, and its successor, Judaism, was supposed to
have made a decisive break with its pagan environment and so to have pro-
duced a wholly unique religion.
2 THE FIRST CATEGORY: NON-MONOTHEISTIC JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN… 29
Peter Hayman2
The excerpt above was published in a thought-provoking paper by

Peter Hayman in the Journal of Jewish Studies entitled ‘Monotheism: A
Misused Word in Jewish Studies?’, 1991. It not only serves as contrary
antecedent to Hayman’s reading of the nature of Monotheism, but fuels
his contention,
that it is hardly ever appropriate to use the term Monotheism to describe the
Jewish idea of God, that no progress beyond the simple formulas of the
Book of Deuteronomy can be discerned in Judaism before the philosophers
of the Middle Ages, and that Judaism never escapes from the legacy of the
battles for supremacy between Yahweh, Ba'al and El from which it emerged.3
Hayman’s proposal is ‘to try and observe the pattern of Jewish beliefs
about God from the Exile to the Middle Ages to assess whether or not it
is truly monistic’. This he says will lead to the conclusion ‘that most variet-
ies of Judaism are marked by a dualistic pattern in which two divine enti-
ties are presupposed: one the supreme creator God, the other his vizier or
prime minister, or some other spiritual agency’.4 The basis of Hayman’s
disputation is that what became later known as Jewish Monotheism is a
theological-historical outworking of early Israelite dualism, for there never
has been a time where Israel’s God was unitary. The scope of Hayman’s
assessment as to whether dualism is a pattern seen in early Israelite religion
spans from the Exile to the Middle Ages and includes his assessment of
Sefer Yesira—a work which discusses Jewish cosmogony. From here he
2
Not much may be found on Dr Peter Hayman, but he was researcher at the New College,
University of Edinburgh, whose Journal Articles Monotheism—A Misused Word in Jewish
Studies and The Doctrine of Creation in Sefer Yesira: Some Text-Critical Problems, forth-
coming in the Proceeding of the Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies, Troyes,
1990. https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/projects/a-commentary-on-jewish-text-
sefer-yesira(34578d62-b558-46ae-a54a-0d9e8a2849c9).html (Accessed 18/04/18).
3
Peter Hayman, ‘Monotheism: A Misused Word in Jewish Studies?’ in Journal of Jewish
Studies (1991) 42/1, p.1. I repeat my contention that it is not my intention to evaluate
whether Hayman’s analysis is valid. Rather it is to argue that a particular pattern, correspon-
dence, or categorisation is applicable to his analysis.
This is what makes it a second-order rather than a first-order analysis. So its actual forage
into history is formally limited by this constraint (and it is really only historical in the sense
that the scholars or exegetes or interpreters are historical personages themselves).
4
Hayman, ‘Monotheism: A Misused Word in Jewish Studies’, p.2.
concludes that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is not affirmed by early

Judaism but is a by-product of medieval Christianity. Jewish scholars origi-
nally maintained that creation was out of primordial matter, particularly
referencing tohu and bohu in Genesis 1:2. The two, tohu and bohu, are not
only seen as co-existent figures with God but may even be part of God
himself: even if in Jewish mysticism, and no evidence exists for creation ex
nihilo for exilic Judaism.5
Hayman also observed that the author of Sefer Yesira presented a modi-
fied version of what might be considered traditional Jewish Monotheism:
a version in which the probability of a mystical unity may exist between the
author and God, who claimed to know God’s thoughts without an experi-
ence of revelation, thereby making him possess some sense of divinity.
Referencing Moshe Idel’s unio mystica (mystical unity), Hayman sug-
gests that Judaism ‘presuppose that humans can become divine and dis-
pose of the powers of God’ and saw this as proven by the apotheosis of
Enoch into Metatron, the ‘little Yahweh’.6
Already in Hayman, one can discern the pattern of non-monotheistic
Jewish Binitarianism (i.e., the author of Sefer Yesira as a divine-human
figure being united with God) and non-monotheistic Trinitarianism (i.e.,
a description of God as being united in creation with tohu and bohu in
Genesis 1:2). But Hayman expands the categories of Jewish Monotheism
beyond Sefer Yesira to Jewish angelology and Jewish magic. He goes on to
connect them with the Jewish belief in a ‘heavenly assembly’. ‘These are
two areas where the steadily increasing weight of evidence makes very
clear the continuity of Jewish religious belief and practice from its ancient
Canaanite sources’.7
This pattern of configuration serves as an alternative to the traditional
view of Monotheism. It is a pattern in which belief in the existence of
angels alongside God or gods is evidenced not only in Canaanite religion,
such that ‘the Hebrew Bible is quite clear on the fact that these figures
belong to the class of divine beings, members of the “host of heaven”’.8
5
Hayman, ‘Monotheism: A Misused Word in Jewish Studies’, pp.2-4.
6
Hayman, ‘Monotheism: A Misused Word in Jewish Studies’, pp.4-5. See also ‘The doc-
trine of Creation in Sefer Yesira: Some Text-Critical Problems’, in Proceedings of the Congress
of the European Association of Jewish Studies, Troyes (1990); and A. Peter Hayman, Sefer
Yesira: Edition, Translation and Text-Critical Commentary (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004).
7
8
2 THE FIRST CATEGORY: NON-MONOTHEISTIC JEWISH AND CHRISTIAN… 31
This thematic pattern of divine agency, whether of angelic or human-

divine figures, will become a central feature for explicating other subcate-
gories within my taxonomic structure.
Hayman’s proposal for Jewish dualistic patterns of Monotheism sug-
gests that
Yahweh belongs to this class of beings, but is distinguished from them by his
kingship over the heavenly host…This reflects the probable origin of Yahweh
as one member of the heavenly host, namely the national god of the Israelite
people, who became king of the gods when he was identified with El Elyon,
the head of the Canaanite pantheon.9
So, the context moves from simply metamorphisations of earthly

human figures to whom divine status is ascribed upon heavenly ascensions,
for example, figures such as Enoch into Metatron—to one of a ‘heavenly
court’ into which a non-monotheistic but binitarian formation is evident
between Yahweh and El. ‘This identification of Yahweh with El is the
essential theme of the Hebrew Bible’.10 Hayman, however, argues that the
disparity between the Septuagint (LXX) and Masoretic Text (MT) at
Deuteronomy 32:8ff is evidence for demonstrating ‘the development
from Yahweh to Elohim taking place’.11
‘The MT has removed the reference here to the gods or the angels and
substituted “the sons of Israel”’,12 in an attempt to obscure the distinc-
tions between the two figures Yahweh and El, who in later post-exilic
Jewish sources were merged into one tradition. Yahweh therefore becomes
El in Second Temple Judaism.
According to Hayman, then, we have an original distinction between
the divinities or persons of Israel’s ‘Canaanite pantheon’. At the very least
we have an ‘inclusive Monotheism’ within Israel’s religion constituted of
a number of divine beings, but principally expressed in terms of two gods,
El and Yahweh. Thus, Hayman espouses a determinately ditheistic theo-
logical pattern.
Moreover, ‘Jewish angelology reveals a pattern of religion that is any-
thing but monotheistic’, and explorations of the narrative in Exodus
4:24–26 and the Red Sea Crossing in the Book of Jubilees Chapter 48
9
10
Ibid
11
12
identify ‘three divine actors’, namely, Prince Mastema, the Angel of the
Presence, and God: all of which Hayman sees as indicative of the ‘Canaanite
background to Israelite religion’.13 Additionally, post-exilic interests in
and the proliferation of belief in angels may be the reaction to the later
redefinition of pre-exilic Monotheism by the Deuteronomists.14 The asso-
ciation of divine figures with God did not infringe upon the nature of
Jewish Monotheism within exilic and post-exilic periods, and this is signifi-
cant for understanding non-monotheistic patterns (i.e., binitarian-
trinitarian) for this inquiry. According to Hayman, then, the evidence in
the texts ‘must be telling us what most Jews believed and probably always
had believed’,15 and Monotheism is indeed a misused word deserving
greater contextual analysis.
Before showing that the scholarly responses to Hayman’s proposals for
Jewish dualistic Monotheism presuppose this interpretation of him as
essentially valid, I would like to quickly examine his views of Jewish magic
in relation to Jewish views of God. In published works by Peter Schafer,
Joseph Naveh, and Shaul Shaked, various texts were discussed which show
practitioners of Jewish magic making ‘appeal to God and his angels with-
out making any clear distinctions between them’. According to Hayman,
the lack of distinction between divine figures and God show the unsullied
beliefs of early Israelite religion prior to any deuteronomistic reforms or
redefinition of Monotheism.16 An example of the Jewish magical texts,
[By] your name I make this amulet that it may be a healing to this one, for
the threshold (of the house) … I bind the rocks of the earth, and tie down
the mysteries of heaven … I rope, tie and suppress all demons and harmful
spirits … In case I do not know the name, it has already been explained to
me at the time of the seven days of creation … you are roped, tied and sup-
pressed, all of you under the feet of this Marnaqa son of Qala. In the name
of Gabriel, the mighty hero, who kills all heroes who are victorious in battle,
and in the name of Yeho'el who shuts the mouth of all [heroes]. In the name
of Yah, Yah, Yah, Sabaoth. Amen, Amen. Selah.17
13
14
15
Ibid.
16
Hayman, ‘Monotheism: A Misused Word in Jewish Studies’, pp.10-11. See ‘Jewish
Magic Literature in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages’, Journal of Jewish Studies, 41
(1990). pp.75-91; and, Joseph Naveh and Shaul Shaked, Amulet and Magic Bowls (Jerusalem
and Leiden, 1985), pp.159-161.
17
Naveh and Shaked, Amulet and Magic Bowls (Jerusalem and Leiden, 1985), pp.159-161.
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which should have melted a heart of flint, was powerless to allay
their ill-temper.
If well-meaning counsellors could be persuaded that there are
phenomena upon which they are not all qualified to give advice, they
might perhaps forbear to send delegations of children to the White
House. This is a popular diversion, and one which is much to be
deplored. In the hour of our utmost depression, when our rights as a
free nation were denied us, and the lives of our citizens were
imperilled on land and sea, a number of children were sent to Mr.
Wilson, to ask him not to go to war. It was as though they had asked
him not to play games on Sunday, or not to put Christmas candles in
his windows. Three years later, another deputation of innocents
marched past the White House, bearing banners with severely
worded directions from their mothers as to how the President (then a
very ill man) should conduct himself. The language used was of
reprehensible rudeness. The exhortations themselves appeared to
be irrelevant. “American women demand that anarchy in the White
House be stopped!” puzzled the onlookers, who wondered what was
happening in that sad abode of pain, what women these were who
knew so much about it, and why a children’s crusade had been
organized for the control of our foreign and domestic policies.
The last query is the easiest answered. Picketing is a survival of
the childish instinct in the human heart. It represents the play-spirit
about which modern educators talk so glibly, and which we are
bidden to cherish and preserve. A society of “American Women
Pickets” (delightful phrase!) is out to enjoy itself, and its pleasures
are as simple as they are satisfying. To parade the streets, to proffer
impertinent instructions, to be stared at by passers-by, and to elude
the law which seeks to abate public nuisances—what better sport
could be asked either for little boys and girls, or for Peter Pans
valiantly refusing to mature? Mr. Harding was pursued in his day by
picketing children, and Mr. Coolidge has probably the same pleasure
awaiting him. Even the tomb at Mount Vernon has been surrounded
by malcontents, bearing banners with the inscription, “Washington,
Thou Art Truly Dead!” To which the mighty shade, who in his day had
heard too often the sound and fury of importunate counsels, and
who, because he would not hearken, had been abused, like “a Nero,
a defaulter and a pickpocket,” might well have answered from the
safety and dignity of the tomb, “Deo gratias!”
When a private citizen calls at the White House, to “frankly advise”
a modification of the peace treaty; when a private citizen writes to
the American Bar Association, to “frankly advise” this distinguished
body of men to forbear from any discussion of public affairs at their
annual meeting; when a private citizeness writes to the Secretary of
War to “frankly advise” that he should treat the slacker of to-day as
he would treat the hero of to-morrow, we begin to realize how far the
individual American is prepared to dry-nurse the Nation. Every land
has its torch-bearers, but nowhere else do they all profess to carry
the sacred fire. It is difficult to admonish Frenchmen. Their habit of
mind is unfavourable to preachment. We can hardly conceive a
delegation of little French girls sent to tell M. Millerand what their
mothers think of him. Even England shows herself at times impatient
of her monitors. “Mr. Norman Angell is very cross,” observed a British
reviewer dryly. “Europe is behaving in her old mad way without
having previously consulted him.”
“Causes are the proper subject of history,” says Mr. Brownell, “and
characteristics are the proper subject of criticism.” It may be that
much of our criticism is beside the mark, because we disregard the
weight of history. Our fresh enthusiasm for small nations is
dependent upon their docility, and upon their respect for boundary
lines which the big nations have painstakingly defined. That a
boundary which has been fought over for centuries should be more
provocative of dispute than a claim staked off in Montana does not
occur to an American who has little interest in events that antedate
the Declaration of Independence. Countries, small, weak and
incredibly old, whose sons are untaught and unfed, appear to be
eager for supplies and insensible to moral leadership. We recognize
these characteristics, and resent or deplore them according to our
dispositions; but for an explanation of the causes—which might
prove enlightening—we must go further back than Americans care to
travel.
“I seldom consult others, and am seldom attended to; and I know
no concern, either public or private, that has been mended or
bettered by my advice.” So wrote Montaigne placidly in the great
days of disputation, when men counselled the doubtful with sword
and gun, reasoning in platoons, and correcting theological errors
with the all-powerful argument of arms. Few men were then guilty of
intolerance, and fewer still understood with Montaigne and Burton
the irreclaimable obstinacy of convictions. There reigned a profound
confidence in intellectual and physical coercion. It was the opinion of
John Donne, poet and pietist, that Satan was deeply indebted to the
counsels of Saint Ignatius Loyola, which is a higher claim for the
intelligence of that great churchman than Catholics have ever
advanced. Milton, whose ardent and compelling mind could not
conceive of tolerance, failed to comprehend that Puritanism was out
of accord with the main currents of English thought and temper. He
not only assumed that his enemies were in the wrong, says Sir
Leslie Stephen, “but he often seemed to expect that they would grant
so obvious an assertion.”
This sounds modern. It even sounds American. We are so
confident that we are showing the way, we have been told so
repeatedly that what we show is the way, that we cannot understand
the reluctance of our neighbours to follow it. There is a curious game
played by educators, which consists in sending questionnaires to
some hundreds, or some thousands, of school-children, and
tabulating their replies for the enlightenment of the adult public. The
precise purport of this game has never been defined; but its
popularity impels us to envy the leisure that educators seem to
enjoy. A few years ago twelve hundred and fourteen little
Californians were asked if they made collections of any kind, and if
so, what did they collect? The answers were such as might have
been expected, with one exception. A small and innocently ironic boy
wrote that he collected “bits of advice.” His hoard was the only one
that piqued curiosity; but, as in the case of Isacke Bucke and the
quarrelsome couple of Plymouth, we were left to our own
conjectures.
The fourth “Spiritual Work of Mercy” is “To comfort the sorrowful.”
How gentle and persuasive it sounds after its somewhat contentious
predecessors; how sure its appeal; how gracious and reanimating its
principle! The sorrowful are, after all, far in excess of the doubtful;
they do not have to be assailed; their sad faces are turned toward
us, their sad hearts beat responsively to ours. The eddying drifts of
counsel are loud with disputation; but the great tides of human
emotion ebb and flow in obedience to forces that work in silence.
“The innocent moon, that nothing does but shine,

Moves all the labouring surges of the world.”
Are Americans a Timid People?
As the hare is timid—no! They have made good their fighting
record in war. They have proved themselves over and over again to
be tranquilly courageous in moments of acute peril. They have faced
“their duty and their death” as composedly as Englishmen; and
nobler comparison there is none. The sinking of the Titanic offered
but one opportunity out of many for the display of a quality which is
apt to be described in superlatives; but which is, nevertheless, an
inherent principle of manhood. The protective instinct is strong in the
native American. He does not prate about the sacredness of human
life, because he knows, consciously or unconsciously, that the most
sacred thing in life is the will to surrender it unfalteringly.
Of what then are Americans afraid, and what form does their
timidity take? Mr. Harold Stearns puts the case coarsely and strongly
when he affirms that our moral code resolves itself into fear of what
people may say. With a profound and bitter distaste for things as
they are, he bids us beware lest we confuse “the reformistic
tendencies of our national life—Pollyanna optimism, prohibition, blue
laws, clericalism, home and foreign missions, exaggerated
reverence for women, with anything a civilized man can legitimately
call moral idealism.... These manifestations are the fine flower of
timidity, and fear, and ignorance.”
Mr. Stearns is a robust writer. His antagonists, if he has any, need
never fear the sharp thrust of an understatement. He recognizes the
tyranny of opinion in the United States; but he does not do full justice
to its serio-comic aspects, to the part it plays in trivial as well as in
august affairs, to the nervousness of our regard, to the absurdities of
our subordination. There are successful newspapers and periodicals
whose editors and contributors walk a chalked path, shunning facts,
ignoring issues, avoiding the two things which spell life for all of us—
men and customs—and triumphantly presenting a non-existent world
to unobservant readers. Henry Adams said that the magazine-made
female has not a feature that would have been recognized by Adam;
but our first father’s experience, while intimate and conclusive, was
necessarily narrow. We have evolved a magazine-made universe,
unfamiliar to the eyes of the earth-dweller, and unrelated to his soul.
When this country was pronounced to be too democratic for
liberty, the epigram came as close to the truth as epigrams are ever
permitted to come. Democracies have been systematically praised
because we stand committed to democratic tenets, and have no
desire to foul our own roost. It is granted that equality, rather than
freedom, is their animating principle. It is granted also that they are
sometimes unfortunate in their representatives; that their legislative
bodies are neither intelligent nor disinterested, and that their public
service is apt to be distinguished for its incapacity. But with so much
vigour and proficiency manifested every day in private ventures, we
feel they can afford a fair share of departmental incompetence. The
tremendous reserves of will and manhood, the incredible
insufficiency of direction, which Mr. Wells remarked in democratic
England when confronted by an overwhelming crisis, were equally
apparent in the United States. It would seem as though a high
average of individual force and intelligence failed to offer material for
leadership.
The English, however, unlike Americans, refuse to survey with
unconcern the spectacle of chaotic officialdom. They are a fault-
finding people, and have expressed their dissatisfaction since the
days of King John and the Magna Carta. They were no more
encouraged to find fault than were other European commonalties
that kept silence, or spoke in whispers. The Plantagenets were a
high-handed race. The hot-tempered Tudors resented any opinions
their subjects might form. Elizabeth had no more loyal servant than
the unlucky John Stubbs, who lost his right hand for the doubtful
pleasure of writing the “Gaping Gulf.” Any other woman would have
been touched when the culprit, raising his hat with his left hand
which had been mercifully spared, cried aloud, “God save the
Queen!” Not so the great Elizabeth. Stubbs had expressed his views
upon her proposed marriage to the Duke of Anjou, and it was no
business of his to have views, much less to give them utterance;
while his intimation that, at forty-six, she was unlikely to bear children
was the most unpardonable truth he could have spoken.
The Stuarts, with the exception of the second Charles, were as
resentful of candour as were the Tudors. “I hope,” said James the
First to his Commons, “that I shall hear no more about liberty of
speech.” The Hanoverians heartily disliked British frankness
because they heartily disliked their unruly British subjects. George
the Third had all Elizabeth’s irascibility without her power to indulge
it. And Victoria was not much behind either of them—witness her
indignation at the “Greville Memoirs,” “an insult to royalty,” and her
regret that the publishers were not open to prosecution.
It was no use. Nothing could keep the Englishman from speaking
his mind. With him it was not only “What is there that a man dare not
do?” but “What is there that a man dare not say?” Many a time he
paid more for the privilege than it was worth; but he handed it down
to his sons, who took care that it was not lost through disuse. When
Sorbière visited England in 1663, he was amazed to find the
“common people” discussing public affairs in taverns and inns,
recalling the glories as well as the discomforts of Cromwell’s day,
and grumbling over the taxes. “They do not forbear saying what they
think of the king himself.” In the “Memoirs” of the publisher, John
Murray, there is an amusing letter from the Persian envoy, Mirza Abul
Hassan, dated 1824, and expressing his opinion of a government
which permitted such unrestrained liberty. Englishmen “do what they
like, say what they like, write what they like in their newspapers,”
comments the Oriental with bewildered but affectionate contempt.
“How far do you think it safe to go in defying your sovereign?” asked
Madame de Pompadour of John Wilkes, when that notorious plain-
speaker had taken refuge in Paris from his incensed king and
exasperated creditors. “That, Madame,” said the member from
Aylesbury, “is what I am trying to find out.”
In our day the indifference of the British Government to what used
to be called “treasonable utterances” has in it a galling element of
contempt. Not that the utterances are invariably contemptible. Far
from it. Blighting truths as well as extravagant senilities may still be
heard in Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square. But the orators might be
addressing their audiences in classic Greek for any token the
London bobby gives of listening or comprehending. “Words are the
daughters of earth; deeds are the sons of Heaven.” The bobby has
never heard this grandiloquent definition; but he divides them as
clearly in his own mind into hot air and disorderly conduct, and he
takes his measures accordingly.
In the United States, as in all countries which enjoy a
representative government, censure and praise run in familiar
grooves. The party which is out sees nothing but graft and incapacity
in the party which is in; and the party which is in sees nothing but
greed and animosity in the party which is out. This antagonism is
duly reflected by the press; and the job of arriving at a correct
conclusion is left to the future historian. As an instance of the fashion
in which history can be sidetracked by politics, the reader is referred
to the portraits of Andrew Jackson as drawn by Mr. Beveridge in his
“Life of John Marshall,” and by Mr. Bowers in his “Party Battles of the
Jackson Period.”
The first lesson taught us by the Great War was that we got
nowhere in political leading-strings, and that none of our accustomed
formulas covered this strange upheaval. It was like trying to make a
correct survey of land which was being daily cracked by
earthquakes. Our national timidity entrenched itself behind a wilful
disregard of facts. It was content to view the conflict as a catastrophe
for which nobody, or everybody, was to blame. Our national
intrepidity manifested itself from the outset in a sense of human
responsibility, in a bitter denial of our right to ignorance or
indifference. The timidity was not an actual fear of getting hurt; the
intrepidity was not insensitiveness to danger. What tore our Nation
asunder was the question of accepting or evading a challenge which
had—so we at first thought—only a spiritual significance.
In one of Birmingham’s most genially nonsensical stories, “The
Island Mystery,” there is an American gentleman named Donovan.
He is rich, elderly, good-tempered, brave, kind and humorous; as
blameless in his private life as King Arthur, as corrupt politically and
financially as Tweed or Fiske; a buyer of men’s souls in the market-
place, a gentle, profound and invulnerable cynic. To him a young
Irishman sets forth the value of certain things well worth the
surrender of life; but the old American smiles away such a primitive
mode of reckoning. The salient article of his creed is that nothing
should be paid for in blood that can be bought for money; and that,
as every man has his price, money, if there is enough of it, will buy
the world. He is never betrayed, however, into a callous word, being
mindful always of the phraseology of the press and platform; and the
reader is made to understand that long acquaintance with such
phraseology has brought him close to believing his own pretences.
“In the Middle West where I was raised,” he observes mildly, “we
don’t think guns and shooting the proper way of settling national
differences. We’ve advanced beyond those ideas. We’re a civilized
people, especially in the dry States, where university education is
common, and the influence of women permeates elections. We’ve
attained a nobler outlook upon life.” It reads like a humorous
illustration of Mr. Stearns’s unhumorous invectives.
Sociologists are wont to point to the American public as a
remarkable instance of the herd mind—a mind not to be utterly
despised. It makes for solidity, if not for enlightenment. It is the most
economical way of thinking; it saves trouble and it saves noise. So
acute an observer as Lord Chesterfield set store by it as unlikely to
disturb the peace of society; so practical a statesman as Sir Robert
Walpole found it the best substratum upon which to rear the fabric of
constitutional government. It is most satisfactory and most popular
when void of all sentiment save such as can be expressed by a
carnation on Mother’s Day, or by the social activities of an Old Home
Week. Strong emotions are as admittedly insubordinate as strong
convictions. “A world full of patriots,” sighs the peace-loving
Honourable Bertrand Russell, “may be a world full of strife.” This is
true. A single patriot has been known to breed strife in plenty. Who
can measure the blood poured out in the cause that Wallace led, the
“sacred” human lives sacrificed at his behest, the devastations that
marked his victories and defeats? And all that came of such
regrettable disturbances were a gallows at Smithfield, a name that
shines like a star in the murk of history, and a deathless impulse to
freedom in the hearts of a brave people.
The herd mind is essentially and inevitably a timid mind. Mr.
Sinclair Lewis has analyzed it with relentless acumen in his amazing
novel, “Babbitt.” The worthy citizen who gives his name to the story
has reached middle age without any crying need to think for himself.
His church and his newspaper have supplied his religious and
political creeds. If there are any gaps left in his mind, they are filled
up at his business club, or at his “lodge,” that kindly institution
designed to give “the swaddled American husband” a chance to
escape from home one night in the week. Church, newspaper, club
and lodge afford a supply of ready-made phrases which pass muster
for principles as well as for conversation.
Yet stirring sluggishly in Babbitt’s blood are a spirit of revolt, a
regard for justice, and a love of freedom. He does not want to join
the Good Citizens’ League, and he refuses to be coerced into
membership. He does not like the word “Vigilante,” or the thing it
represents. His own sane instinct rejects the tyranny of the
conservative rich and of the anarchical poor. He dimly respects
Seneca Doane and Professor Brockbank when he sees them
marching in the strikers’ parade. “Nothing in it for them, not a cent!”
But his distaste for the strikers themselves, for any body of men who
obstruct the pleasant ways of prosperity, remains unchanged. In the
end—and it is an end which comes quickly—he finds that the one
thing unendurable to his soul is isolation. Cut off from the thought
currents of his group, he is chilled, lonely, and beset by a vague
uneasiness. He yields, and he yields without a pang, glad to get
back into the warm familiar atmosphere of class complacency, of
smugness, of “safety first”; glad to sacrifice a wavering idealism and
a purposeless independence for the solid substance of smooth living
and conformity to his neighbours’ point of view.
The curious thing about Mr. Lewis’s analysis is that back of the
contempt he strives to awaken in our souls is a suspicion that
Babbitt’s herd mind, the mind of many thousands of Americans, is,
on the whole, a safe mind for the country. It will not raise us to any
intellectual or spiritual heights, but neither will it plunge us into ruin. It
is not making trouble for itself, or for the rest of the world. In its dull,
imperfect way it represents the static forces of society. Sudden and
violent change is hostile to its spirit. It may be trusted to create a
certain measure of commercial prosperity, to provide work for
workers, and safety for securities. It is not without regard for
education, and it delights in practical science—the science which
speeds transit, or which collects, preserves and distributes the
noises of the world. It permits artists and authors to earn their daily
bread, which is as much as artists and authors have any business to
expect, and which is a very precious privilege. In revolutionary
Russia, the intelligentsia were the first to starve, an unpleasant
reminder of possibilities.
What Mr. Lewis implies is that, outside of the herd mind he is
considering, may be found understanding and a sense of fair play.
But this is an unwarranted assumption. The intelligence of the
country—and of the world—is a limited quantity; and fair play is less
characteristic of groups than of individuals. Katharine Fullerton
Gerould, in an immensely discontented paper entitled “The Land of
the Free,” presents the reverse of Mr. Lewis’s medal. She contends
that, as a people, we have “learned fear,” and that, while England
has kept the traditions of freedom (a point on which Mr. Chesterton
vehemently disagrees with her), we are content with its rhetoric. But
she finds us terrorized by labour as well as by capital, by reformers
and theorists as well as by the unbudging conservative. Fanatics,
she says, are no longer negligible. They have learned how to control
votes by organizing ignorance and hysteria. “In company with your
most intimate friends you may lift amused eyebrows over the
Fundamentalists, over the anti-cigarette organization, over the film
censors, over the people who wish to shape our foreign policy in the
interests of Methodism, over the people who wish to cut ‘The
Merchant of Venice’ out of school editions of Shakespeare. But it is
only in company with your most intimate friends that you can do this.
If you do it in public, you are going to be persecuted. You are sure, at
the very least, to be called ‘un-American.’”
It is a bearable misfortune to be called un-American, because the
phrase still waits analysis. The only sure way to escape it is by
stepping warily—as in an egg-dance—among the complicated
interests sacred to democracies. The agile egg-dancer, aware that
there is nothing in the world so sensitive as a voter (Shelley’s
coddled plant was a hardy annual by comparison), discountenances
plain speech on any subject, as liable to awaken antagonism. There
is no telling whom it may hit, and there is no calculating the return
blows. “To covet the truth is a very distinguished passion,” observes
Santayana. It has burned in the bosom of man, but not in the
corporate bosoms of municipalities and legislative bodies. A world of
vested interests is not a world which welcomes the disruptive force
of candour.
The plain-speaker may, for example, offend the Jews; and nothing
can be more manifestly unwise than to give umbrage to a people,
thin-skinned, powerful and clannish, who hold the purse-strings of
the country. Look what happened to Sargent’s fresco in the Boston
Library, which angered the Synagogue it inadequately represented.
Or he may offend the Irish, who control wards, and councils, and
local elections; and who, being always prompt to retaliate, are best
kept in a good humour. Or he may offend either the Methodists or
the Roman Catholics, powerful factors in politics, both of them, and
capable of dealing knock-down blows. A presidential election was
once lost and won through an unpardonable affront to Catholicism;
and are we not now drinking soda-fountain beverages in obedience
to the mandates of religious bodies, of which the Methodists are the
most closely organized and aggressive?
It is well to consider these things, and the American press does
very soberly and seriously consider them. The Boston “Transcript”
ventured, it is true, to protest against the ruling of the Navy
Department which gave to Jewish seamen of the ancient faith three
days’ leave of absence, from the thirty-first of March, 1923, to the
second of April, with such “additional time” as was practicable, that
they might attend the rites of the Synagogue; while Gentile seamen
of the Christian faith enjoyed no such religious privileges. The
newspapers in general, however, discreetly avoided this issue. “Life”
pointed out with a chuckle that the people who disapproved of
President Lowell’s decision to exclude negroes from the Harvard
Freshman dormitories “rose up and slammed him”; while the people
who approved were “less vocal.” When Rear Admiral Sims said
disconcertingly: “The Kentucky is not a battleship at all. She is the
worst crime in naval construction ever perpetrated by the white
race”; even those reviewers who admitted that the Admiral knew a
battleship when he saw one, were more ready to soften his words
than to uphold them.
The negro is a man and a brother. He is also a voter, and as such
merits consideration. There is no more popular appeal throughout
the length and breadth of the North than that of fairness to the
coloured citizen. Volumes have been written about his rights; but
who save President Roosevelt ever linked responsibilities with rights,
duties with deliverance? Who, at least, save President Roosevelt
ever paused in the midst of a scathing denunciation of the crime of
lynching (a stain on the Nation’s honour and a blight on the Nation’s
rectitude) to remind the black man that his part of the contract was to
deliver up the felon to justice, that his duty to his country, his race,
and his manhood was to refuse all sanctuary to crime? A few years
ago an acute negro policeman in Philadelphia recognized and
trapped a negro criminal. For this he received his full measure of
commendation; but he also received threatening letters from other
negroes whose simple conception of a policeman’s part was the
giving of shelter and protection to offenders of his own race.
The nastiest bit of hypocrisy ever put forward by wrong-doers was
the cant of the early slave-dealers about Christianity and the
negroes’ souls. The slaves were Christianized by thousands, and
took kindly to their new creed; but their spiritual welfare was not a
controlling factor in the commerce which supplied the Southern
States with labour. That four fifths of the labourers were better off in
America than they would have been in Africa was a circumstance
equally unfit to be offered as a palliative by civilized men. The
inherent injustice of slavery lay too deep for vindication. But now that
the great wrong has been righted (and that three hundred thousand
white men laid down their lives in the righting is a fact which
deserves to be remembered), now that the American negroes are
free, Christian, educated, and privileged (like artists and authors) to
earn their daily bread, they cannot candidly regret that their remote
ancestors had not been left unmolested on the coast of Guinea.
They have their grievances; but they are the most fortunate of their
race. The debt the white men owed them has been paid. There is left
a mutual dependence on the law, a mutual obligation of self-imposed
decency of behaviour from which not even voters are exempt.
Timidity is superimposed upon certain classes of men who are
either tied up with red tape, like teachers, soldiers and sailors, or
unduly dependent upon other men, like legislators, and like clerics in
those churches which are strong enough to control the
insubordinations of the pulpit. Of all these classes, legislators are the
worst off, because their dependence is the most ignoble and
disastrous. So long as a future election is the controlling influence in
their lives, they have no alternative but to truckle to any compact
body of voters that bullies them into subjection. So long as they take
for their slogan, “We aim to please,” they must pay out their
manhood for the privilege of pleasing. In 1923 Senator Borah
charged Congress with “organized cowardice” in the matter of the
soldiers’ bonus. It was a borrowed phrase neatly refitted. The
spectacle of a body of lawmakers doubling and turning like a hare in
its efforts to satisfy the servicemen without annoying the taxpayer
struck the Senator—and others—as the kind of exaggerated
subjection which paves the way to anarchy.
Timidity was as alien to the soul of Henry Adams as it is alien to
the soul of Admiral Sims. He was not a man who skirted the hard
places on the road, or who was so busy keeping both feet on the
ground that he feared to take a step. But he was conscious of the
inquisitorial spirit which is part of the righteousness of America, and
which keeps watch and ward over all the schooling of the country.
“Education,” he wrote, “like politics, is a rough affair, and every
instructor has to shut his eyes and hold his tongue as though he
were a priest.”
The policy of shutting one’s eyes and holding one’s tongue is
highly esteemed in all professions, and in all departments of public
service. The man who can hear black called white without fussily
suggesting that perhaps it is only grey; the man who evades
responsibility, and eschews inside criticism (like the criticism of a
battleship by an admiral); the man who never tells an unpalatable
truth “at the wrong time” (the right time has yet to be discovered), is
the man whose success in life is fairly well assured. There is an
optimism which nobly anticipates the eventual triumph of great moral
laws, and there is an optimism which cheerfully tolerates
unworthiness. The first belongs to brave and lonely men; the second
is the endearing quality of men whose sagging energy and cautious
content can be trusted to make no trouble for their kind.
The plain-speaking of soldiers and sailors is reprobated and
punished, but their discretion is less conspicuously rewarded. They
are expected to be undeviatingly brave in the field and at sea; but
timorous and heedful when not engaged in fighting their country’s
enemies. They are at a disadvantage in times of peace, strait-
jacketed by rules and regulations, regarded with suspicion by
sociologists, with hostility by pacifists, with jealousy by politicians. A
grateful Republic dismisses the men who fought for her, and
cherishes her army of office-holders. When General Wood and
Admiral Sims spoke some unpleasant truths, nobody ventured to call
these truths lies; but everybody said that General Wood and Admiral
Sims were not the proper persons to speak them. As the proper
persons to speak them never would have spoken them, the country
would have been spared the discomfort of listening, and the
“common quiet,” which is mankind’s concern, would have been
undisturbed.
So far, then, is Mr. Harold Stearns right in accusing us as a nation
of timidity. So far, then, is Mrs. Gerould right in accusing us of
exaggerated prudence. That something akin to timidity has crept into
the hearts of Englishmen, who are fortified by a long tradition of
freedom and common sense, is evidenced by the title given to two
recent volumes of scholarly, and by no means revolutionary, papers,
“Outspoken Essays.” Frankness must be at a discount when it
becomes self-conscious, and constitutes a claim to regard. The early
essayists were fairly outspoken without calling anybody’s attention to
the fact. The contributors to those great and grim “Reviews” which so
long held the public ear were outspoken to the verge of brutality. A
comfortless candour was their long suit. Never before in the history
of English letters has this quality been so rare as to be formally
adopted and proclaimed.
Santayana, analyzing the essentials of independence, comes to
the discouraging conclusion that liberty of speech and liberty to elect
our lawmakers do not materially help us to live after our own minds.
This he holds to be the only positive and worthwhile form of freedom.
He aims high. Very few of us can live after our own minds, because
the tyranny of opinion is reënforced by the tyranny of circumstance.
But none of us can hope to live after our own minds unless we are
free to speak our own minds; to speak them, not only in the company
of friends (which is all Mrs. Gerould grants us), but openly in the
market-place; and not with a blast of defiance, but calmly as in the
exercise of an unquestioned prerogative. Under no other
circumstance is it possible to say anything of value or of distinction.
Under no other circumstance can we enjoy the luxury of self-respect.
There is an occasional affectation of courage and candour on the
part of those who know they are striking a popular note; but to dare
to be unpopular, “in the best and noblest sense of a good and noble
word,” is to hold fast to the principles which speeded the Mayflower
to Plymouth Rock, and Penn to the shores of the Delaware.
The Happiness of Writing an
Autobiography
Mr. Edmund Gosse, commenting on the lack of literary curiosity in
the early years of the seventeenth century, ascribes it to a growing
desire for real knowledge, to an increasing seriousness of mind. Men
read travels, history, philosophy, theology. “There were interesting
people to be met with, but there were no Boswells. Sir Aston
Cokayne mentions that he knew all the men of his time, and could
have written their lives, had it been worth his while. Instead of doing
this, the exasperating creature wrote bad epigrams and dreary tragi-
comedies.”
A century later, when literary curiosity had in some measure
revived, Sir Walter Scott, losing his temper over Richard
Cumberland’s “Memoirs,” wrote of their author in the “Quarterly
Review”: “He has pandered to the public lust for personal anecdote
by publishing his own life, and the private history of his
acquaintances.”
A better illustration of La Fontaine’s wisest fable, “The Miller, his
Son, and the Ass,” could not anywhere be found. The only way to
please everybody is to have no ass; that is, to print nothing, and
leave the world at peace. But as authorship is a trade by which men
seek to live, they must in some way get their beast to market, and be
criticized accordingly.
It is probable that the increasing vogue of biography, the amazing
output of books about men and women of meagre attainments and
flickering celebrity, sets the modern autobiographer at work.
“For now the dentist cannot die,

And leave his forceps as of old,
But round him, ere his clay be cold,
Is spun the vast biography.”
The astute dentist says very sensibly: “If there is any money to be
made out of me, why not make it myself? If there is any gossip to be
told about me, why not tell it myself? If modesty restrains me from
praising myself as highly as I should expect a biographer to praise
me, prudence dictates the ignoring of circumstances which an
indiscreet biographer might drag into the light. I am, to say the least,
as safe in my own hands as I should be in anybody else’s; and I
shall, moreover, enjoy the pleasure dearest to the heart of man, the
pleasure of talking about myself in the terms that suit me best.”
Perhaps it is this open-hearted enjoyment which communicates
itself to the reader, if he has a generous disposition, and likes to see
other people have a good time. Even the titles of certain
autobiographical works are saturated with self-appreciation. We can
see the august simper with which a great lady in the days of Charles
the Second headed her manuscript: “A True Relation of the Birth,
Breeding and Life of Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle.
Written by Herself.” Mr. Theodore Dreiser’s “A Book About Myself”
sounds like nothing but a loud human purr. The intimate wording of
“Margot Asquith, An Autobiography,” gives the key to all the cheerful
confidences that follow. Never before or since has any book been so
much relished by its author. She makes no foolish pretence of
concealing the pleasure that it gives her; but passes on with radiant
satisfaction from episode to episode, extracting from each in turn its
full and flattering significance. The volumes are as devoid of
revelations as of reticence. If at times they resemble the dance of the
seven veils, the reader is invariably reassured when the last veil has
been whisked aside, and he sees there is nothing behind it.
The happiness of writing an autobiography which is going to be
published and read is a simple and comprehensible emotion. Before
books were invented, men carved on stone something of a
vainglorious nature about themselves, and expected their subjects,
or their neighbours, to decipher it. But there is a deeper and subtler
gratification in writing an autobiography which seeks no immediate
public, and contents itself with the expression of a profound and
indulged egotism. Marie Bashkirtseff has been reproached for
making the world her father confessor; but the reproach seems
hardly justified in view of the fact that the “Journal,” although “meant
to be read,” was never thrust by its author upon readers, and was
not published until six years after her death. She was, although
barely out of girlhood, as complex as Mrs. Asquith is simple and
robust. She possessed, moreover, genuine intellectual and artistic
gifts. The immensity of her self-love and self-pity (she could be more
sorry for her own troubles than anybody who ever lived) steeped her
pages in an ignoble emotionalism. She was often unhappy; but she
revelled in her unhappiness, and summoned the Almighty to give it
his serious attention. Her overmastering interest in herself made
writing about herself a secret and passionate delight.
There must always be a different standard for the confessions
which, like Rousseau’s, are made voluntarily to the world, and the
confessions which, like Mr. Pepys’s, are disinterred by the world from
the caches where the confessants concealed them. Not content with
writing in a cipher, which must have been a deal of trouble, the great
diarist confided his most shameless passages to the additional cover
of Spanish, French, Greek and Latin, thus piquing the curiosity of a
public which likes nothing better than to penetrate secrets and rifle
tombs. He had been dead one hundred and twenty-two years before
the first part of his diary was printed. Fifty years later, it was
considerably enlarged. One hundred and ninety years after the
garrulous Secretary of the Admiralty had passed into the eternal
silences, the record of his life (of that portion of it which he deemed
worth recording) was given unreservedly to English readers. The
“Diary” is what it is because of the manner of the writing. Mr. Lang
says that of all who have gossiped about themselves, Pepys alone
tells the truth. Naturally. If one does not tell the truth in a Greek
cipher, when shall the truth be told?
The severe strictures passed by George Eliot upon
autobiographies are directed against scandal-mongering no less
than against personal outpourings. She could have had the English-
speaking world for a confidant had she consented to confide to it; but
nothing was less to her liking. She objected to “volunteered and
picked confessions,” as in their nature insincere, and also as
conveying, directly or indirectly, accusations against others. Her
natural impulse was to veil her own soul—which was often sick and
sore—from scrutiny; and, being a person of limited sympathies, she
begrudged her neighbour the privilege of exhibiting his soul, sores
and all, to the public. The struggle of human nature “to bury its
lowest faculties,” over which she cast unbroken silence, is what the
egotist wants to reveal, and the public wants to observe. When
Nietzsche says debonairly of himself, “I have had no experience of
religious difficulties, and have never known what it was to feel sinful,”
the statement, though probably untrue, creates at once an
atmosphere of flatness. It is what Walt Whitman ardently admired in
beasts—
“They do not lie awake in the dark, and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God.”
Next to the pleasure of writing lovingly about ourselves—but not

comparable to it—is the pleasure of writing unlovingly about our
fellows. Next to the joy of the egotist is the joy of the detractor. I think
that the last years of Saint-Simon, those sad impoverished years
when he lived forgotten by his world, must have been tremendously
cheered by the certainty that, sooner or later, the public would read
his memoirs. Nobody knows with what patient labour, and from what
devious sources he collected his material; but we can all divine the
secret zest with which he penned his brilliant, malicious,
sympathetic, truth-telling pages. Thirty years after his death some of
these pages crept cautiously into print; but a full hundred years had
passed before the whole text was given to the world. Perhaps the
dying French gentleman anticipated no earlier resurrection for his
buried manuscript; but he knew his nation and he knew his work.
The nation and the work were bound to meet.
A somewhat similar satisfaction must have stolen into the heart of
Charles Greville when he wrote the last pages of his diary, and laid it
aside for future publication. Nineteenth-century England presented
none of the restrictions common to eighteenth-century France; and
ten years after Greville’s death the first instalment of the ever-
famous “Memoirs” exploded like a bomb in the serried ranks of
British official and fashionable life. It shook, not the security, but the
complacency of the Queen on her throne. It was an intelligent and
impartial picture of the times; and there is nothing that people like
less than to be intelligently and impartially described. Moreover, the
writer was no anonymous critic whose words came unweighted by
authority, no mere man of letters whom men of affairs could ignore.
He had lived in the heart of administrative England, and he knew
whereof he spoke.
Lord Hervey’s memoirs are not autobiographical at all: they are
historical, like the memoirs of Sully, and Jean de Joinville, and
Philippe de Comines. They are very properly entitled “Memoirs of the
Reign of George the Second,” and what their author did not know
about that interesting reign (as seen from the angle of the Court) was
not worth the knowing. Historians have made free use of his
material; and some of those to whom it has been most valuable, like
Thackeray, have harshly depreciated the chronicler. Dr. Jowett, in a
moment of cynical misgiving, said that every amusing story must of
necessity be unkind, untrue, or immoral. Hervey’s stories are not
untrue, and not often immoral; but they are unkind. What did he see
about him of which he could consistently write with kindness? His
sharpest thrusts have a careless quality which redeems them from
the charge of vindictiveness. When he says of Frederick, Prince of
Wales, “He was as false as his capacity would allow him to be,” it
sounds like an observation passed with casual unconcern upon a
natural phenomenon which had chanced to come under his notice.
Sully was a maker of history as well as a writer of history. He had
no taste and no time for self-analysis, and, like Joinville, he had the
rare good fortune to serve a master whom he sincerely loved and
admired. Comines also admired his master, but he did not love him.
Nobody has yet been put on record as loving Louis the Eleventh. All
these men wrote with candour and acumen. No pleasure which they
can have taken in compiling their memoirs can equal, or even
approach, the pleasure with which we read them. Their accuracy is
the accuracy of the observer, not of the antiquarian. “In my opinion,”
writes Comines, “you who lived in the age when these affairs were
transacted have no need to be informed of the exact hours when
everything was done.” “I now make known to my readers,” observes
Joinville composedly, “that all they shall find in this book which I have
declared I have seen and known, is true, and what they ought most
firmly to believe. As for such things as I have mentioned as hearsay,
they may understand them as they please.”
These excursions into the diversified region of the memoir lead us
away from the straight and narrow path of the autobiography. These
saunterings along the pleasant byways of history distract us from the
consideration of the human soul, as shown us by its too ecstatic
possessor. We know as much as we need to know about the souls of
Lord Hervey, and Sully, and of the Sire de Joinville, which was really
a beautiful article; but we know a great deal more about the souls of
George the Second, and Henry of Navarre, and of Saint Louis,
shining starlike through the centuries. What we gain is better worth
having than what we lose.
When we read the true autobiography, as that of Benvenuto
Cellini, we see the august men of the period assume a secondary
place, a shadowy significance. They patronize the artist or imprison
him, according to their bent. They give him purses of five hundred
ducats when they are complacent, and they banish him from their
very limited domains when he kills somebody whom they prefer to
keep alive. But not for one moment is our attention distracted from
the narrator himself to these rude arbiters of fate. He makes it plain
to us from the start that he is penning his autobiography in a spirit of
composed enjoyment, and because he deems it “incumbent upon
upright men who have performed anything noble or praiseworthy to
record with their own hand the events of their lives.” He tells us in
detail how it pleased God that he should come into the world; and he
tells us of all that he has done to make God’s action in the matter a
source of regret, as well as of satisfaction, to others. Those true
words of Frederick the Great, “On peut apprendre de bonnes choses
d’un scélérat,” are singularly applicable to this particular rascal. It is
as difficult to find standards by which to appraise his worth as it is to
find rules by which to test his accuracy. Just as it has been said of
Rousseau, that even in the very ecstasy of truth-telling he does not
tell the truth, so it may be said of Cellini, that even in the very
ecstasy of lying he does not wholly lie.
It is characteristic of a simpler age than the one we live in now that
autobiographers sang their own praises candidly and lustily. Cellini
puts graceful eulogies of himself into the mouths of his
contemporaries, which is one way, and a very good way, of getting
them said. The Duchesse de Montpensier (La Grande
Mademoiselle) goes a step further, and assures us that the Creator
is sympathetically aware of her merits and importance. “I may say
without vanity that just Heaven would not bestow such a woman as I
am upon a man who was unworthy of her.” Wilhelmina, Margravine
of Baireuth, and sister of Frederick the Great, writes with composure:
“Happily my good disposition was stronger than the bad example of
my governess”; and, as the testimony of the governess was not
taken, Wilhelmina’s carries the day.
This directness contrasts pleasantly with the more involved, and
possibly more judicious, methods employed by memoir-writers like
Richard Lovell Edgeworth, father of the immortal Maria, and by
autobiographers like Harriet Martineau. Mr. Edgeworth, recounting
his first experience of married life, says with conscious nobility: “I felt
the inconvenience of an early and hasty marriage; and though I
heartily repented of my folly, I determined to bear with fortitude and
temper the evil I had brought upon myself.”
Miss Martineau, whose voluminous work is ranked by Anna
Robeson Burr as among the great autobiographies of the world,
does not condescend to naïveté; but she never forgets, or permits
her reader to forget, what a superior person she is. When Miss Aiken
ventures to congratulate her upon her “success” in London society,
she loftily repudiates the word. Success implies endeavour, and she
(Harriet Martineau) has “nothing to strive for in any such direction.”
When she sails for the United States, it is with the avowed purpose
of “self-discipline.” She has become “too much accustomed to
luxury,” and seeks for wholesome hardships. It sounds a trifle far-
fetched. Byron—an incomparable traveller—admits that folks who go
“a-pleasuring” in the world must not ask for comfort; but even Byron
did not visit the East in order to be uncomfortable. He was not
hunting a corrective for St. James Street and Piccadilly.
There is no finer example in the world of the happiness of writing
an autobiography than that afforded us by Miss Martineau. Her book
is a real book, not an ephemeral piece of self-flattery. Her enjoyment
of it is so intense that it impedes her progress. She cannot get on
with her narrative because of the delight of lingering. Every
circumstance of an uneventful childhood invites her attention. Other
little girls cry now and then. Mothers and nurserymaids are aware of
this fact. Other little girls hate to get up in the morning. Other little
girls are occasionally impertinent to their parents. But no one else
has ever recorded these details with such serious and sympathetic
concern. A petulant word from an older sister (most of us have lived
through something of the kind) made her resolve “never to tell
anybody anything again.” This resolution was broken. She has told
everybody everything, and the telling must have given her days, and
weeks, and months of undiluted pleasure.
Miss Martineau’s life was in the main a successful one. It is natural
that she should have liked to think about it, and write about it. But
Mrs. Oliphant, a far more brilliant woman, was overburdened,
overworked, always anxious, and often very unhappy. Arthur Young
was a melancholy, disgruntled man, at odds with himself, his
surroundings, and the world. The painter, Haydon, lived through
years so harassed by poverty, so untempered by discretion, so
embittered by disappointments, that his tragic suicide was the only
thing which could have brought his manifold miseries to an end. Yet
Mrs. Oliphant took comfort in setting forth her difficulties, and in
expressing a reasonable self-pity. Arthur Young relieved his mind by
a well-worked-out system of intensive grumbling. Even Haydon
seems to have sought and found a dreary solace in the recital of his
woes. The fragment of autobiography is painful to read, but was
evidently the one poor consolation of its writer’s life.
That George Sand’s “Histoire de Ma Vie” afforded its author more
than her proper share of contentment is evidenced by its length, and
by the relish which is stamped on every page. Sir Leslie Stephen
pronounced it the best autobiography he had ever read. It seems to
have delighted him as Rousseau’s “Confessions” delighted
Emerson; which goes to prove that intellectual kinship need not
necessarily be accompanied by any similarity of taste. “If we would
really know our hearts,” says Bishop Wilson, “let us impartially
review our actions.” George Sand and Rousseau reviewed their
actions with the fondest solicitude; but were biased in their own
favour. Gibbon reviewed his actions, and such emotions as he was
aware of, with an impartiality that staggers us; but his heart, at no
time an intrusive organ, gave him little concern. Franklin, with whom
truth-telling was never an “ecstasy,” but a natural process like
breathing and eating, reviewed his actions candidly, if not altogether
impartially, and left the record without boast, or apology, or the
reticence dictated by taste, to the judgment of coming generations.
He was a busy man, engaged, like Sully, in making history on a large
scale. It pleased him, not only to write his recollections, but to
bequeath them, as he bequeathed so much else, to the young nation
that he loved. He never sought to patent his inventions. He never
sought to publish his autobiography. His large outlook embraced the
future, and America was his residuary legatee.
John Wesley kept a journal for fifty-five years. This is one of the
most amazing facts in the history of letters. He was beyond
comparison the hardest worker of his day. John Stuart Mill, who
knew too much and did too much for any one man, also wrote an
autobiography, which the reading world has been content to ignore.
But Mill’s failing health compelled him sometimes to rest. Wesley
never rested. It is estimated that for over thirty years he rode, on an
average, eight thousand miles a year. He preached in his lifetime full
thirty thousand sermons—an overwhelming and relentless figure. He
wrestled with lagging Churchmen of the Establishment no less than
with zealous Antinomians, Swedenborgians, Necessitarians,
Anabaptists and Quakers. Other records of human endeavour read
like the idling of a summer day alongside of his supernatural
activities. Yet so great is the compulsion of the born diarist to confide
to the world the history of his thoughts and deeds that Wesley found
time—or took time—to write, in a minute, cryptic short-hand, a diary
which fills seven large volumes. He not only wanted to do this; he
had to do it. The narrative, now bald and itemized, now stirring and
spirited, now poignant and terrible, was part of himself. He might
have said of it more truly than Walt Whitman said of “Leaves of
Grass,” that whoever laid hold upon the book laid hold upon a man.
To ask that the autobiographer should “know himself as a realist,
and deal with himself as an artist,” is one way of demanding
perfection. Realists are plentiful, and their ranks are freshly recruited
every year. Artists are rare, and grow always rarer in an age which
lacks the freedom, the serenity, the sense of proportion, essential to
their development. It has happened from time to time that a single
powerful and sustained emotion has forced from a reticent nature an
unreserved and illuminating disclosure. Newman’s “Apologia pro Vita
sua” was written with an avowed purpose—to make clear the
sincerity of his religious life, and to refute a charge of deceitfulness.
The stern coercion which gave it birth, and which carried it to a
triumphant close, was remote from any sense of enjoyment save
such as might be found in clarity of thought and distinction of
workmanship. The thrust of truth in this fragment of autobiography
has carried it far; but it is not by truth alone that a book lives. It is not
by simple veracity that minds “deeply moralized, discriminating and
sad” have charmed, and will always charm, the few austere thinkers
and fastidious critics whom a standardized world has spared.
The pleasure derived by ordinary readers from memoirs and
reminiscences is twofold. It is the pleasure of acquiring agreeable
information in an agreeable way, and it is, more rarely, the pleasure
of a direct and penetrating mental stimulus. “The Education of Henry
Adams” has so filtered through the intelligent public mind that
echoes of it are still to be heard in serious lectures and flippant after-
dinner speeches. We can, if we are adroit borrowers, set up
intellectual shop-keeping on Mr. Adams’s stock-in-trade. We can
deal out over our own counters his essentially marketable wares.
The simpler delight afforded us by such a charming book as
Frederick Locker’s “Confidences,” which is not confidential at all; or
by John Murray’s well-bred “Memoirs of a Publisher”; or by Lord
Broughton’s “Recollections of a Long Life,” is easy to estimate. We
could ill spare Lord Broughton’s volumes, both because he tells us
things we do not learn elsewhere, and because of his illuminating
common sense. The world of authorship has of late years so
occupied itself with Lord Byron that we wince at the sound of his
name. But if we really want to know him, we must still turn to
Broughton for the knowledge. The account of Byron’s wedding in the
“Recollections” is as unforgettable as the account of Byron’s funeral
in Moore’s diffuse and rambling “Memoirs.” It is in such narratives
that the eye-witness eclipses, and must forever eclipse, the most
acute and penetrating investigator. Biographers cannot stand as
Broughton stood at the door of Seaham, when the ill-mated couple
drove away to certain misery: “I felt as if I had buried a friend.”
Historians cannot stand as John Evelyn stood on the Strand, when
the second Charles entered London: “I beheld him and blessed
God!” Or at Gravesend, seven years later, when the Dutch fleet lay
at the mouth of the Thames: “A dreadful spectacle as ever
Englishmen saw, and a dishonour never to be wiped off!”
Ever since that most readable book, “An Apology for the Life of Mr.
Colley Cibber, Comedian,” was given to the English world, actors
and playwrights have been indefatigable autobiographers. They may
write about themselves alone, as did Macready, or about themselves
and the world, after the fashion of Frances Kemble. They may be
amusing, like Ellen Terry, or discursive, like Augustus Thomas, or
casual, like John Drew. But they fall into line, and tell us what
dramas they wrote, what companies they managed, what parts they
played, and when and where they played them, together with any
scraps of theatrical gossip they may be fortunate enough to recollect.
All, at least, except the once celebrated Mrs. Inchbald. She
recollected so much that the publisher, Phillips, offered her a
thousand pounds for her manuscript; and her confessor, a wise and
nameless Catholic priest, persuaded her to burn it unread. Yet there
are people so perversely minded as to disapprove of auricular
confession.
The golden age of the autobiographer has come, perhaps to stay.
Mr. Howells, observant and sympathetic, welcomed its dawning, and
the fullness of its promise. He was of the opinion that this form of
composition represented “the supreme Christian contribution to
literature”; and, while admitting that there were bad as well as good
specimens of the art, he stoutly maintained that one more
autobiography, however indifferent, was better than one less—a
disputable point.
The question which confronts the reading public is this: “How far
should the law of kindness, which we all profess to follow, influence
us in allowing to our fellow creatures the happiness of writing books
about themselves?” There is no use saying that it would be
impossible to stop them. Nothing in the way of inhibitions is
impossible to the United States. “There is no country,” says the
observant Santayana, “in which people live under more powerful
compulsions.”
Americans have so far been inclined to tolerate the vanity of the
autobiography, because mankind is naturally vain, and to forgive its
dullness, because life is frequently dull. Moreover, they are well
disposed towards any form of art or letters that lays claim to the
quality of truth; and it is generally conceded that a man knows
himself better than others know him. He does not know, and he
never can know, how he appears to his acquaintances. The sound of
his own voice, the light in his own eye, his accent, his mannerisms,
his laugh, the sensations, pleasurable or otherwise, which he
produces by his presence—these things, apparent to every casual
observer, are unfamiliar to him. But his naturel (a word too
expressive for translation) which others must estimate by the help of
circumstantial evidence, he can, if he be honest, know and judge.
This, at least, is the theory on which rest the lucidity of art and the
weight of conscience. Yet George Sand, who was given to self-
inspection, self-analysis and self-applause, admitted the dimness of
her inward vision. “The study of the human heart,” she wrote, “is of
such a nature, that the more we are absorbed by it, the less clearly
do we see.”
Strayed Sympathies
It is probably more instructive to entertain a sneaking
kindness for any unpopular person than to give way to perfect
raptures of moral indignation against his abstract vices.—
Robert Louis Stevenson.
It is not only more instructive—it is more enlivening. The
conventionalities of criticism (moral, not literary, criticism) pass from
mouth to mouth, and from pen to pen, until the iterations of the press
are crystallized in encyclopædias and biographical dictionaries. And
from such verdicts there is no appeal. Their laboured impartiality,
their systematic adjustments, their careful avoidance of intuition,
produce in the public mind a level sameness of misunderstanding.
Many sensible people think this a good result. Even a man who did
his own thinking, and maintained his own intellectual free-hold, like
Mr. Bagehot, knew and upheld the value of ruts. He was well aware
how far a little intelligence can be made to go, unless it aspires to
originality. Therefore he grumbled at the paradoxes which were
somewhat of a novelty in his day, but which are out-worn in ours, at
the making over of virtue into vice, and of vice into something more
inspiriting than virtue. “We have palliations of Tiberius, eulogies on
Henry the Eighth, devotional exercises to Cromwell, and fulsome
adulations of the first Napoleon.”
That was a half-century ago. To-day, Tiberius is not so much out of
favour as out of mind; Mr. Froude was the last man really interested
in the moral status of Henry the Eighth; Mr. Wells has given us his
word for it that Napoleon was a very ordinary person; and the
English people have erected a statue of Cromwell close to the
Houses of Parliament, by way of reminding him (in his appointed
place) of the survival of representative government. The twentieth
century does not lean to extravagant partialities. Its trend is to
disparagement, to searchlights, to that lavish and ironic candour
which no man’s reputation can survive.
When Mr. Lytton Strachey reversed Mr. Stevenson’s suggestion,
and chose, as subject-matter of a book, four people of whom the
world had heard little but good, who had been praised and
reverenced beyond their deserts, but for whom he cherished a secret
and cold hostility, he experimented successfully with the latent
uncharitableness of men’s minds. The brilliancy with which the four
essays were written, the keenness of each assault, the charm and
persuasiveness of the style, delighted even the uncensorious. The
business of a biographer, said the author in a very engaging preface,
is to maintain his own freedom of spirit, and lay bare events as he
understands them, “dispassionately, impartially, and without ulterior
intentions.”
It sounds fair and square; but the fact remains that Mr. Strachey
disliked Manning, despised Arnold, had little sympathy with Gordon,
and no great fancy for Florence Nightingale. It must be remembered
also that in three cases out of four he was dealing with persons of
stubborn character and compelling will, as far removed from
irreproachable excellence as from criminality. Of such, much
criticism may be offered; but the only way to keep an open outlook is
to ask, “What was their life’s job?” “How well did they do it?” Men
and women who have a pressing job on hand (Florence Nightingale
was all job) cannot afford to cultivate the minor virtues. They move
with an irresistible impulse to their goal. It is a curious fact that Mr.
Strachey is never so illuminating as when he turns his back upon
these forceful and disconcerting personages, and dallies with their
more amenable contemporaries. What he writes about Gordon we
should be glad to forget; what he writes about Sir Evelyn Baring and
Lord Hartington we hope to remember while we live.
The popularity of “Eminent Victorians” inspired a host of followers.
Critics began to look about them for other vulnerable reputations. Mr.
J. A. Strahan, stepping back from Victoria to Anne, made the happy
discovery that Addison had been systematically overpraised, and
that every side of his character was open to assault. The result of
this perspicuity is a damning denunciation of a man whom his
contemporaries liked and esteemed, and concerning whom we have
been content to take the word of those who knew him. He may have

Patterns of Christological Categorisation. Oneness Pentecostalism and The Renewal of Jewish and Christian Monotheism Marvin C. Sanguinetti

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Patterns of Christological Categorisation. Oneness Pentecostalism and The Renewal of Jewish and Christian Monotheism Marvin C. Sanguinetti

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Patterns of Christological

The Spirit of Democracy: Corruption, Disintegration,

A Prophet Has Appeared: The Rise of Islam through

The Idea of Semitic Monotheism: The Rise and Fall of a

A Prophet Has Appeared: The Rise of Islam through

Oneness: East Asian Conceptions of Virtue, Happiness,

The Hebrew Bible: A Contemporary Introduction to the

A Guide to Early Jewish Texts and Traditions in

Nostra Aetate, Non-Christian Religions, and Interfaith

ISSN 2634-5854 ISSN 2634-5862 (electronic)

This book is a hermeneutical inquiry into Jewish and Christian

Pentecostals David K. Bernard, Kulwant S. Boora, and David S. Norris.

‘Patterns of Categorisation breaks exciting new ground by transporting Oneness

‘Patterns of Christological Categorisation is an authoritative primer that offers an

3.3 Richard J. Bauckham: Divine Identity 92

ATI American Theological Inquiry Journal

1.1 The Rationale of the Book

1. Jewish Ditheism or Christian Trinitarianism without Monotheism

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

an accurate account of what they say about their object of enquiry. To

(albeit Christological Monotheism) to his understanding of the theologi-

1.2 Taxonomy and Patterns of Categorisation

In my representation of this spectrum or axis, my study will begin at the

1.3 Introducing the Four Theistic Categories

categories—identity/non-identity, generic/numerical identity, persons,

modern christologists.9 Exactly how Yahweh and Jesus constitute Jewish-­

1.5 Definitions and Key Terms: The Meaning

‘Identity’ has been described by various philosophical categories and

theories in defence of their distinctive, sometimes overlapping proposi-

Things with qualitative identity share properties, so things can be more or

Numerical identity encompasses the notion that a thing is identical with

Numerical identity requires absolute, or total, qualitative identity, and can

We can apply these concepts to persons, natures, and actions in the

Assuming that Mark does not have a theology of pre-existence of the

maintained a generic sense of the persons, it affirmed a numerical unity of

1.6 Defining Traditional Jewish Monotheism

Dunn’s Monotheism posits Jesus as Yahweh’s divine agent who pos-

On defining traditional Jewish Monotheism, Hurtado says,

Hurtado contends ‘that already in the earliest decades we have a genu-

High Christology was possible within a Jewish monotheistic context, not by

The christological commonality which holds together the positions of

and/or establish discontinuity with these Jewish frameworks, resulting in

Jesus and God were reverenced in a binitarian manner without significant

1.7 A Brief Introduction to Oneness Pentecostal

Pentecostals fit into the metanarrative of Christianity from the perspective

Talmadge L. French (1906–1913),30 Allan Anderson (1905–1916).31

The other distinctive thrust of Oneness Pentecostalism is the emphasis

By 1916, the escalating tension among AOG ministers regarding which

1.8 Apologetic and Ecclesial Contexts of Study

The gap between Oneness Pentecostals and ‘orthodox Christianity’ is

with the earlier Symposiums and encourages contemporary academics

1.9 Outline and Structure of Book

Chapter 4 inquisitively explores the classical binitarian (trinitarian) tra-

The First Category: Non-Monotheistic

In this chapter, I seek to establish the correspondence between Jewish

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 27

appropriate implying a generic identity of persons—gods—but not

2.1 Peter Hayman: Monotheism

The excerpt above was published in a thought-provoking paper by

3.3 Richard J. Bauckham: Divine Identity 92

modern christologists.9 Exactly how Yahweh and Jesus constitute Jewish-

This thematic pattern of divine agency, whether of angelic or human-