Q&A: God Is One
God Is One
Question
Sorry for the very strange question, sorry again —
We believe that God is one.
But theoretically, just for the sake of making something up, suppose there is one god who has 10 god-children, and one of them isn’t nice, and decided to create a world in which people believe that he is the one God, while he is really “just” the son of the father-god.
That’s just an example; theoretically there could be all kinds of things like that.
So how can one know / believe that God is one?
Sorry for the third time for the weirdness, but this has been bothering me for a while already.
Answer
It is indeed a strange question. In the case you described, why do you assume that the father is singular? In any case, you are starting from a single god.
I already wrote that the question whether He is one or not is not well defined. There is something or someone who created the world and gave the Torah. How many it is and what its nature is—those are not interesting questions.
Discussion on Answer
Then let them define the question properly, and we can discuss whether it has meaning and how to examine it. I don’t understand the question.
The meaning of “God is one,” and one alone and no more, is first of all to say that everything you know or imagine or think about is not God. Because there is only one God.
Are they not interesting to you, Rabbi, or by definition is there nothing to discuss about them because it’s impossible to know or investigate such a thing?
Because there are people for whom this is interesting and intriguing…