ris3n's Apologetics Codex

Lexicon

G1520 - heis

Strong's: G1520 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: hace Part of speech: cardinal numeral / adjective; declines as εἷς (m.), μία (f.), ἕν (n.) NT occurrences: ~344 Hebrew equivalent: H0259 - echad (אֶחָד, "one")

Semantic range (Thayer / BDAG)

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  1. One (numerical), the cardinal number; the first counting integer.
  2. One and the same, single, emphasizing identity and unity rather than mere quantity ("they shall become one flesh," Genesis 2:24 LXX / Mark 10:8; "the two shall be one"; "you are one in Christ Jesus").
  3. A / a certain (functioning as the indefinite article in Hellenistic Greek, anticipating Modern Greek usage), Matthew 8:19; 9:18.
  4. First (in serial sense), Matthew 28:1 eis mian sabbatōn, "on the first [day] of the week."
  5. Alone, one only, exclusivist sense, used to deny the existence of a second; this is the controlling sense in monotheistic confessions.

Theological force, the unity-of-God lexeme

Heis is the Greek lexeme that does the work of confessing the oneness of God, both in Jewish-monotheistic continuity with the Hebrew Shema and in the NT's distinctive Christianizing of the Shema.

1. The Shema rendered in Greek. The LXX renders Deuteronomy 6.4, YHWH ʾeloheinu YHWH ʾechad, as Kyrios ho theos hēmōn Kyrios heis estin ("the Lord our God, the Lord is one"). The numerical-uniqueness claim is preserved verbatim in heis. Jesus quotes this in Mark 12:29 when asked the greatest commandment: "Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God, the Lord is heis." The exclusivist sense is explicit in James 2:19, "you believe that God is heis; you do well, the demons also believe and shudder."

2. The "one God" formula across the NT. Heis Theos ("one God") is a settled monotheistic predication:

  • Romans 3:30, "God is heis"
  • 1 Corinthians 8:4, "there is no God but heis"
  • Galatians 3:20, "God is heis"
  • Ephesians 4:6, "heis Theos kai patēr pantōn", one God and Father of all
  • 1 Timothy 2:5, "for there is heis Theos and heis mesitēs between God and men, the man Christ Jesus", the only NT verse to predicate heis of both God and the Mediator simultaneously

3. The Christianized Shema (1 Corinthians 8:6). Paul's most striking redeployment: all' hēmin heis Theos ho patēr… kai heis Kyrios Iēsous Christos, "yet for us there is one God, the Father… and one Lord, Jesus Christ." Paul splits the LXX Shema's Kyrios heis across two referents: the Theos and the Kyrios of the Shema are now confessed as the Father and Jesus respectively, with the unity-claim preserved by the doubled heis. Bauckham (Jesus and the God of Israel, 2008) calls this the most important christological text in Paul: it includes Jesus within the unique divine identity of the Shema rather than positing a second deity beside the one God. The same move undergirds Ephesians 4:5-6 (heis Kyrios + heis Theos) and 1 Timothy 2:5 (the heis Theos / heis mesitēs pair).

4. Trinitarian ground. Christian Trinitarian theology grounds itself in the unbroken predication of heis Theos (against tritheism) while maintaining personal distinction (against modalism). The Nicene Creed begins Πιστεύομεν εἰς ἕνα Θεόν, "we believe in one God", using heis to forestall the charge that confession of Father, Son, and Spirit fragments the divine being. The Athanasian formula "neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance" is the conceptual machinery the heis predication requires.

5. Ecclesial unity (the corporate sense). Heis also names the unity of the Church as a single body composed of many members:

  • 1 Corinthians 10:17, "we who are many are heis artos, hen sōma" (one bread, one body)
  • 1 Corinthians 12:12-13, "the body is hen and yet has many members… we were all baptized into hen sōma"
  • Galatians 3:28, "you are all heis in Christ Jesus"
  • Ephesians 4:4-6, the seven heis clauses: one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father
  • John 17:11, 21-23, Jesus's prayer "that they may be hen, even as We are hen"

Notable verses

Monotheistic confession

Christianized Shema

Marriage / two-becoming-one

Christological identity

  • John 10:30, egō kai ho patēr hen esmen, "I and the Father are hen" (neuter, a unity of essence, not personal collapse)
  • John 17:11, 21-23, Jesus prays His disciples be hen with the same unity He shares with the Father

Numerical / serial uses

Patristic / scholarly note

The Nicene fathers had to walk a precise lexical line: they confessed heis Theos against tritheism while confessing the Son as homoousios tō patri (of one substance with the Father) against subordinationist Arianism. The grammatical neuter of hen in John 10:30 (Christ and the Father are "one thing", neuter, not "one person", masculine) became a touchstone: Augustine (Tractates on John 36.9) reads the neuter as proof of essential unity without personal collapse, hen sumus not unus sumus. The Jehovah's-Witness reading that John 10:30 means only "one in purpose" runs aground on the immediate Jewish reaction in v. 31-33 ("we stone You for blasphemy, because You, being a man, make Yourself God"), the audience evidently did not hear "one in purpose."

In Jewish scholarship, the echad of Deuteronomy 6:4 has long been pointed to as compatible with internal complexity, since echad itself names compound unities (Genesis 2:24, two humans become one echad flesh; Numbers 13:23, one echad cluster of grapes). The contrast with H3173 - yachid (yachid, "only / solitary") is the standard rabbinic counter to the messianic-Christian reading; Maimonides's Thirteen Principles deliberately substitutes yachid for echad in the second principle ("God is one and there is no oneness like His"). That terminological substitution is itself an admission that echad / heis does not lexically exclude internal differentiation, which is the point Christian Trinitarianism stands on.

In contemporary apologetics, heis in 1 Corinthians 8:6 is the cornerstone text in the Cumulative Case for the Deity of Christ (Bauckham, Hurtado, Wright), and the heis Theos formulae are the reply to charges that Christianity is polytheistic.

Verses in this codex

See Obsidian's backlinks pane for every verse page linking here. Top-cited references using heis: Deuteronomy 6.4, Mark 12:29, 1 Corinthians 8.6.

See also