1. Unity of God: Mr. Van Der Donckt says: The first chapter of the Bible reveals the supreme fact that there is One Only and Living God, the Creator and moral Governor of the universe. As Moses opened the sacred Writings by proclaiming Him, so the Jew, in all subsequent generations, has continued to witness for Him, till from the household of Abraham, faith in the one only living and true God has spread through Jerusalem, Christianity and Mahometanism well-nigh over the earth.[1] Primeval revelations of God had everywhere become corrupted in the days of Moses, save among the chosen people. Therefore, the first leaf of the Mosaic record, as Jean Paul says, has more weight than all the folies of men of science and philosophers.
While all nations over the earth have developed a religious tendency which acknowledged a higher than human power in the universe, Israel is the only one which has risen to the grandeur of conceiving this power as the One Only Living God. If we are asked how it was that Abraham possessed not only the primitive conception of the Divinity, as He had revealed Himself to all mankind, but passed through the denial of all other gods, to the knowledge of the One God, we are content to answer, that it was by a special divine revelation.[2]
The record of this divine revelation is to be found in the Bible: "Hear, Israel: Our God is one Lord." "I alone am, and there is no other God besides me" (Deut. 6:4 and 32:39). "I am the first and I am the last, and after me there shall be none" (Isaiah 44:6; 43:10.) "I will not give my glory to another" (Isaiah 42: 8; 45: 5, etc., etc.)
And as Mr. Roberts admits that our conception of God must be in harmony with the New Testament, it as well as the Old witnesses continually to One True God. Suffice it to quote: "One is good, God" (Matthew 19: 17;) "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God" (Luke 10: 27); "My Father of whom you say that he is your God" (John 8: 54). Here Christ testified that the Jews believed in only one God.
"The Lord is a God of all Knowledge" (I Kings 2). ("Mormon" Catechism v. Q. 10 and 11). "Of that day and hour no one knoweth, no not the angels of heaven, but the Father alone" (Matthew 24: 36). No one knoweth who the Son is but the Father (Luke 10: 22). Therefore, no one is God but one, the Heavenly Father.
In another form: The All-knowing alone is God. The Father alone is all-knowing. Therefore the Father alone is God[3]
From these clear statements of the Divine Book it is evident that all the texts quoted by Mr. Roberts do not bear the inference he draws from them; on the contrary, they directly make against him, plainly proving the unity of God.
First, then, if God so emphatically declares, both in the Old and in the New Testament, that there is but one God, has anyone the right to contradict Him and to say that there are several or many Gods? But Mr. Roberts insists that the Bible contradicts the Bible; in other words, that God, the author of the Bible, contradicts Himself. To say such a thing is downright blasphemy.
The liability of self-contradiction is characteristic of human frailty. It is incompatible with God's infinite perfections. Therefore, I most emphatically protest that there is no real contradiction in the Bible, though here and there may exist an apparent one."
2. "The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost Are One and the Same Identical Divine Essence or Being: 'I and the Father are one.' (John 10-30.) Christ asserts His physical, not merely moral, unity with the Father.