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Oneness

In: Religion Topics

Submitted By waterguy
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Oneness?

Why are Apostolics called "Oneness" Pentecostals? Is "Oneness" a biblical concept? If the Apostolic movement defines itself as a restorationist movement patterned after the faith, life, and ministry of the Apostles in the book of Acts, why is "Oneness" widely accepted as the defining characteristic of the movement? Is there a biblical precedent?

Paul assumes that his readers in ICor. 8:4ff know that "There is no God but one." For Paul, the God who justifies is "one God" (Rm. 3:30). The early Christian confessions of faith recorded by Paul emphatically state that "There is one God" and "One Lord...and Father of all" (ITm. 2:5; Eph. 4:6). According to Jesus the Jewish confession of faith in one God is the first commandment. "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one" (Mk. 12:29). The God proclaimed by the apostles, the God revealed in Jesus Christ, is the one and only God. The apostles inherited the "shema Israel", the Jewish confession of faith in God as one quoted by Jesus from the Old Testament (Dt. 6:4ff).

Because of the faithfulness of the God of Israel in delivering and providing for His people, "all the people of the earth" were said to know "that the Lord is God, and that there is none else" (IKg. 9:60). The uniqueness of the God of Israel and the nothingness of other gods was proclaimed by Isaiah. "I am the Lord: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images" (Is. 42:8). For Israel and the writers of the Old Testament, belief in the one God was not an abstract philosophical monotheism describing the essential nature of God, "oneness", as He exists in Himself. Belief in the one God was the result of God acting in human history through revelational events, His mighty acts for the people of Israel. These acts revealed who the one true God was for Israel, in contrast to the

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