Hope of Israel Ministries (Ecclesia of YEHOVAH):

Praying Like the Messiah: The Shema

by Barbara Buzzard

Dr. Les Hardin is a Professor of New Testament at Johnson University, Florida. The following is a review of his presentation at the 2014 Piedmont Lectures at Dallas Christian College. His life’s work has been to discover what a serious study of the New Testament can teach us about what it means to be authentically spiritual. He says this:

“I began to notice that a lot of what passes for ‘spirituality’ in the church is nothing more than personality theory sprinkled with holy water.” [1]

Professor Hardin took a sabbatical for the express purpose of researching and writing on prayer, or as he puts it: deciphering what it means to genuinely communicate with YEHOVAH God.

What is the Most Important Verse in the Bible?

A list of eleven answers, according to denominations, comes as no surprise in its predictability. For example, Billy Graham would say the most important verse is John 3:16. But Professor Hardin asks this penetrating question: What would the Messiah answer? We don’t have to wonder because the Messiah was asked that question. His answer was this:

Deuteronomy 6:4-9: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your strength.” 

This is known as the Shema, Israel’s most formative and foundational creed, and the Messiah identified it as the most important of all. He called it the Great Commandment.

The Shema

“So why is it that the Shema has such little importance, presence, or repetition in our Christian piety throughout the centuries?” [2] Hardin notes that he has been in church since he was two weeks old, but that he doesn’t remember the Shema ever being taught, explained, emphasized or, in fact, dealt with in any way. As a result of his research and writing [3] he began to rethink this void. This was his discovery: “Jesus prayed The Shema twice a day, every day of his life.” [4] The Messiah and the disciples prayed the Shema at the time of the morning sacrifice (9 am) and at the time of the evening sacrifice (3 pm).

When questioned about the summary of the Law, the Messiah answered with what Scot McKnight has come to call the "Jesus Creed": [5] The Shema coupled with the amendment to “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). I have included the insights of several others who have focused on this subject, although it is largely ignored by mainstream theologians.

“Traditionally Christian scholars haven’t placed much emphasis on The Shema as a faith-forming prayer. In my research on prayer and on The Shema in particular, I began to notice that a discussion of The Shema is largely absent from our collective Christian discussion of prayer. The thirteen-page entry on ‘Prayer’ in the Zondervan Encyclopedia of the Bible doesn’t have a single word to say about it...Maybe it’s because the Lord’s Prayer seems to have supplanted The Shema as the formulaic creed of the Christian church. Whatever the reason, it seems that Christians don’t find The Shema -- at least as a form of prayer -- important.” [6]

And yet it was a vital part of the Messiah's life!

The Creed of the Messiah

“If this creed, and this prayer, was important to God’s people in the time of the Messiah, and important to the Messiah himself, then it’s imperative that we, as the people of God, give consideration to The Shema, not just as a creed, but as a prayer.” [7]

Professor Hardin asks what is in it to help us to pray and to worship? Implied in the Shema are the actions of learning, following and obeying in a putting-into-practice sense, i.e. if you have heard these words, you must obey them. There is an expectation of action due to listening. Listening entails/demands action.

Since salvation comes from the Israelites (John 4:22), and since the Messiah was an Israelite and was totally blessed and approved of by YEHOVAH God -- ought we not look to this Israelite as our example? After all, it was not YEHOVAH God who was an Israelite, but His first-born Son!

Hardin suggests that we consider the Shema as a creed. I couldn’t agree more; there would be safety there, because that is the Messiah’s creed. However, we would then have major collisions with the creeds which the churches have adopted since then, e.g. the Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed. Could it really be that one would have to choose between the Messiah and the church?

Creeds of the Churches

“The Athanasian Creed is a very instructive document, for it shows that when an attempt was made to state the Christian faith in terms of the metaphysic of the time, all that could be done was to set down a series of contradictions and say that you would be damned if you did not believe them...The first impression produced on the mind by hearing this doctrine of the Trinity is that it is quite incredible.” [8]

The truth is that these creeds violate the Shema. For the Messiah, the Shema was the core principle. Can that be said of the established church? How is it that if one does subscribe to the Messiah’s creed, one can be considered a heretic by the established church? How is it that we have neglected/overruled the greatest commandment of all?

“The Lord our God is one Lord” (Deuteronomy 6:4). Professor Hardin:

“Those of us in the Christian faith have traditionally read this as a Trinitarian statement; we believe that God is three-fold -- Father, Son and Spirit -- and this verse keeps us from believing that there are three gods…In context, though, that doesn’t make very much sense, and this is the theological controversy over which barrels of printer ink have been spilt.” [9]

(The wasted ink seems to pale by comparison to the blood of the many whose lives have been taken because they stood for YEHOVAH God being one and only one, the Father.)

Hardin is correct in questioning what sense is to be found by saying that YEHOVAH God is three-fold. Brave souls through the centuries have had the courage to question this logic. Some lived to write about it:

“It might tend to moderation and in the end agreement, if we were industrious on all occasions to represent our own doctrine [the Trinity] as wholly unintelligible.” [10]

Are we saying that the Master Logician, the One from whom all intelligence emanates, actually validates an unintelligible theory about who He is? Really?

The Constraints

If we are monotheists, certain things are required, but just as importantly, certain things are forbidden. There are constraints and prohibitions and restrictions in order to be true to the concept. One is not free to blur the lines. “The New Testament writers similarly are insistent about the absolute oneness of God, and show no tendency to describe Jesus in terms of divinity; the few apparent exceptions are either grammatically and textually uncertain or have an explanation which, as we shall see, brings them within the constraint of Jewish [Israelite] monotheism.” [11]

“The Church found itself in a dilemma as soon as it tried to harmonize the doctrine of the Deity of Jesus and the Deity of the Father with monotheism. For according to the NT witnesses, in the teaching of Jesus relative to the monotheism of the OT and Judaism, there had been no element of change whatsoever. Mark 12:29ff. recorded the confirmation by Jesus himself, without any reservation, of the supreme monotheistic confession of faith of Israelite religion in its complete form. The means by which the Church sought to demonstrate the agreement of its dogma of the Deity of both Father and Son with monotheism, remained seriously uncertain and contradictory.” [12]

Professor Hardin’s answer to this great divide is that we are to worship YEHOVAH alone. But, with respect, this leads us into a dilemma because “The New Testament writers are really quite careful at this point. Jesus is not the God of Israel. He is not the Father. He is not Yahweh.” [13]

Breaking the Shema

There is certainly no corroboration for the orthodox view of YEHOVAH God as being three-in-one in 1 Corinthians 8:4-6: “There is no God but one…For us there is but one God, the Father.” This Scripture is brilliant in its simplicity -- the one God is the Father. Paul is repeating the Shema. The difficulty comes when the latter part of the verse adds “and one lord, Jesus Christ.” With our western non-recognition that the term “lord” can go all the way from the gardener to YEHOVAH God -- we make major mistakes in our thinking. It is imperative that we know that Abigail referred to David as lord, that the gardener at the tomb was addressed as lord, that it commonly means “sir.” It was the Gentile church which failed to distinguish the significance between “lord” as applied to the Messiah and “LORD” as applied to YEHOVAH God. Without this knowledge we imagine that the Messiah is being called God, a disaster for us as we would have, at that point, two who are called God. That would constitute a breaking of the Shema. And a breaking of the Shema would be the greatest of crimes one could commit.

“For Jesus the Shema is evidently fundamentally determinative of the whole orientation of life…The implication is clear that for Jesus God alone is worthy of worship and of such devotion, because God alone is the source and definition of all goodness.” [14] When the Messiah quotes the Shema, are we to believe that he was referring to himself when he said “The Lord our God is the one and only Lord”? (Mark 12:29).

What was the Messiah’s theology?

“Jesus’ words are so clear that no complicated linguistic techniques are needed to explain them. What Jesus states with crystal clarity is that there is only one God, the One he called ‘Father,’ and asked his disciples to call upon Him in the same way…Jesus speaks of himself as the one sent by ‘the only true God.’ It should therefore, have been perfectly obvious to anyone truly listening to what Jesus said that if the Father is the one and only true God, then no one else can also be God alongside Him.” [15]

Sir Isaac Newton passionately desired to rid Christianity of its mythical doctrines, “this strange religion of ye West, the cult of three equal Gods.” He believed “the spurious doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity had been added to the creed by unscrupulous theologians in the fourth century.” [16]

The Benefits

A very interesting section of Hardin’s lecture is his discussion of the benefits of praying the Shema. Having been asked why he recited the Shema, he answered: “Because Jesus did. And I want to live like he did.” A great answer, I think, but why does it seem so foreign? Isn’t it because that core principle of the Messiah has been erased, replaced, removed from the equation? Dare I say, it might even sound un-Christian?!

Hardin finds that praying the Shema focuses his attention on YEHOVAH God and away from self, and he notes how selfish and how self-centered our prayers can be. Professor Dunn found this same benefit in recognizing who the Messiah is: “This allows for a fuller recognition of the other emphases in the New Testament writings -- Jesus as Jesus of Nazareth praying to God, Jesus as last Adam and eldest brother in God’s new creation family, Jesus as heavenly intercessor, or God as God of the Lord Jesus Christ.” [17]

Secondly, Hardin notes that the Greatest Commandment is communal, corporate and group-oriented. He then of necessity must label some of what we have in worship as shallow in the extreme, with worldviews that are narcissistic, individualized and custom made to suit. Hardin points out that the pronouns for humans in the Greatest Commandment are not singular but plural, and so he renders this possibility: “YHVH is OUR God. And y’all will love YHVH y’all’s God with all y’all’s heart, and all y’all’s soul and all y’all’s strength.” This certainly does make the point!

And as noted previously we should understand the importance of pronouns as when the Messiah prayed, “The LORD our God.”

While I am very grateful for Professor Hardin’s emphasis on the Shema and praying like the Messiah, his study raises an enormous question: How is it that the Messiah -- since he is thought to be God -- prays? This would create a situation in which one God is praying to another -- an impossibility!

The Messiah never abandoned the Shema. It appears that the church has abandoned it. The fact that the church has not taught it is very serious.

“Christianity presupposes and takes for granted the Jewish [Israelite] belief in God. Its distinctive spiritual dynamic is lost whenever for practical purposes the living God of religion is lost behind the abstraction of philosophical theology. And belief in the living God was the gift of Jews [Israelites] to the world.” [18]

The Problem Remains

“But the fundamental problem created by elevating Jesus to the level of deity is that a situation is created in which there are at least two persons who are both equally God; this brings trinitarianism into conflict with the monotheism of the Bible…In regard to the N.T. it is trinitarianism that is on trial; it will have to explain why it has taken the monotheistic Word of God and interpreted it in polytheistic terms, thereby utterly distorting its fundamental character.” [19]

Could it not be this distortion that is the reason for the disastrous disappearance of the Shema from our prayer lives?

The Messiah was a thorough-going, monotheistic, Shema-reciting Israelite. We have redefined the core principle inherent in the Shema. Is this valid?

-- Edited by John D. Keyser

Footnotes:

[1] “Praying Like Jesus: The Shema,” Piedmont Lectures at Dallas Christian College, Dr. Les Hardin, p. 1, https://www.dallas.edu/StudentLife/Forms/Piedmont Lecture/Praying the Shema.pdf

[2] Ibid., p. 3.

[3] The Spirituality of Jesus, Dr. Les Hardin, pp. 26-38.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Scot McKnight, The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others, pp. 5-13.

[6] “Praying Like Jesus: The Shema,” p. 3-4.

[7] Ibid., p. 4.

[8] Christian Faith and Practice, Eerdmans, 1950, pp. 78, 80.

[9] “Praying Like Jesus,” p. 6.

[10] Dr. Hey, Lectures in Divinity, 2, p. 235.

[11] A. E. Harvey, Jesus and the Constraints of History, The Bampton Lecture, 1980.

[12] Dr. Martin Werner, Formation of Christian Dogma, 1957, p. 241.

[13] James Dunn, Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? p. 142-144.

[14] Ibid., p. 142-144.

[15] Eric H.H. Chang, The Only True God: A Study of Biblical Monotheism, p. 2.

[16] Karen Armstrong, The Battle for God, p. 69.

[17] Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? p. 142-144.

[18] Dr. Rawlinson, Essays on the Trinity and the Incarnation, p. 3.

[19] The Only True God, pp. 4, 30.

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