THE NAMES OF GOD

NAMES OF GOD IN THE BIBLE: A DISPENSATIONAL APPROACH : PROF. M. M. NINAN
Genesis 1:26: “Let us make mankind as our image, according to our likeness…”.
The use of plural pronouns here (us, our) has puzzled many readers of the Bible as it seems to imply
that there is more than one God involved in the creative process. This is an embarrassment for strict
monotheists. Sankaracharya of Kalady Kerala was one such Advaitist who therefore had to say that
the whole creation is just a thought within the Godhead and has no real existence.
All creation emerges from the creator God. Hence we should assume that all these plurality in
creation potentially existed within Him. This is what is expressed in the Elohim plurality. God is not
homogenized point of origin but an infinite potential point which contains the whole creation and more.
Christians distinguishes two such inhomogenity - One Trinity which is co-substantial to the origin and
others part but not fully reflecting all the properties.
Once creation has started if this Trinity had already created realms of existence which includes beings,
then by the time man was created, there had been many beings who were part of God’s body. Then
all the Sons of God are co-creators with God. When God says let us make man in our image, this
image includes God the Trinity as well as the other Sons of God. This is referred to in the book of
Job 38:7
For many Christians, it is an implicit affirmation of the Trinitarian nature of God; Father, Son and
Spirit as One. Though the doctrine of the Trinity is not made nearly so clear in the Old Testament as
it is in the New, the use of first person plural pronouns here in Genesis 1:26 is taken by many to be
strong evidence that the doctrine is also taught, albeit somewhat less directly, in the Old Testament as
well as in the New.
Some explains it as a honor indication of a singular one rather than of multiplicity just as in ancient
days kings used the words we and us instead of I and me - the majestic plural. This is supported by
the fact the it receives a singular verb all the time.
However the use of plurals of majesty came about in more modern times in the history. Richard
Toporoski, a classics scholar, asserts that plurals of majesty first appeared in the reign of Diocletian
(CE 284–305). Indeed, Gesenius states in his book Hebrew Grammar the following:
“The Jewish grammarians call such plurals … plur. virium or virtutum; later grammarians call
them plur. excellentiae, magnitudinis, or plur. maiestaticus. This last name may have been suggested
by the we used by kings when speaking of themselves (compare 1 Maccabees 10:19 and 11:31); and
the plural used by God in Genesis 1:26 and 11:7; Isaiah 6:8 has been incorrectly explained in this
way). It is, however, either communicative (including the attendant angels: so at all events in Isaiah
6:8 and Genesis 3:22), or according to others, an indication of the fullness of power and might implied.
It is best explained as a plural of self-deliberation. The use of the plural as a form of respectful address
is quite foreign to Hebrew.”
Mark S. Smith has cited the use of plural as possible evidence to suggest an evolution in the formation
of early Jewish conceptions of monotheism, wherein references to "the gods" (plural) in earlier
accounts of verbal tradition became either interpreted as multiple aspects of a single monotheistic
God at the time of writing, or subsumed under a form of monolatry, wherein the god(s) of a certain city
would be accepted after the fact as a reference to the God of Israel and the plural deliberately
dropped.
27