Theopedia

Elohim

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”

— Genesis 1:1

Definition

Elohim is the first Hebrew name given to God in the Old Testament, appearing already in Genesis 1:1 and built on the same root as El, “mighty one.” Though plural in form, it is joined throughout Scripture to singular verbs and adjectives when it names the true God, unlike its occasional true plural sense when applied to other, lesser beings.12 The name marks God out as Creator and Sustainer, in contrast to his covenant name Yahweh, which names his abiding faithfulness to his people.1

Confessional Witness

The 1689 Second London Baptist Confession has no chapter naming Elohim specifically, but its opening chapter states the same reality the name conveys: God is “one only living and true God; whose subsistence is in and of himself, infinite in being and perfection,” and “in this divine and infinite Being there are three subsistences, the Father, the Word or Son, and Holy Spirit.”34 Whether Elohim’s own grammatical plural is evidence for that plurality of persons, rather than simply an accompanying fact about it, has been argued within the Reformed tradition itself.

Biblical Basis

Genesis opens with the name in its plural form governing a singular verb: “In the beginning, God (Elohim) created (bara, singular) the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). Elsewhere Elohim reverts to an ordinary plural sense when Scripture speaks of other, false authorities rather than the true God, as when the Psalmist pictures God taking his place “in the midst of the gods (elohim)” he judges (Ps. 82:1).1 Both uses come from the same word; only the verbs, adjectives, and pronouns that accompany it, and the context, show which sense is meant.

Historical Development

The Trinitarian argument from Elohim’s plural

Elohim’s plural form, combined with occasional plural verbs and pronouns used of the one true God, including “Let us make man in our image” (Gen. 1:26), led a number of Protestant theologians to argue that the name itself gives evidence for a plurality of persons in the Godhead. Van Mastricht reports that “the majority of the Lutherans, and in addition several of the Reformed, for example, Zanchi, Martyr, and Junius, and others,” argued this way.5 John Gill made the argument at length in his own systematic theology, asking why Moses, who elsewhere had the singular names Jehovah and Eloah available to him, would open Genesis with a plural name and construct it with plural verbs and pronouns if he meant to signify only one person:

But Moses might have made use of other names of God, in his account of the creation; as his name Jehovah, by which he made himself known to him, and to the people of Israel; or Eloah, the singular of Elohim… so that it was not want of singular names of God, nor the barrenness of the Hebrew language, which obliged him to use a plural word; it was no doubt of choice, and with design.6

Calvin’s caution and Mastricht’s middle way

Other Reformed and Protestant theologians who held the Trinity just as firmly nonetheless declined to rest an argument for it on Elohim’s grammar alone. Van Mastricht names “Calvin, Mercier, Daneau, Drusius, and others who otherwise frankly professed the Trinity of persons” as holding that the argument “should not be advanced in conflict with anti-Trinitarians because it seems exposed to objections and exceptions that have too much appearance of truth, while other more evident arguments are available for this cause.”5 Mastricht himself proposed a middle position: the argument should not open a dispute with anti-Trinitarians, as Calvin warned, but need not be neglected either, and can be “subjoined” once the Trinity has already been established by clearer arguments.5

Herman Bavinck rejected reading the plural as either a grammatical “plural of majesty,” which he says “is never used in Scripture of God,” or as a reference to the Trinity, “as has been done by many.” Since the word occurs outside Israel as the name of a single god, he judges it better understood as a plural of abstraction, quantity, or intensity, expressing the fullness of God’s power rather than a plurality of persons.1

Objections and Responses

Does Elohim’s plural form, by itself, prove the doctrine of the Trinity? The Jewish interpreters, joined on this point by the Socinians, denied it, holding that Elohim “is indeed plural in form but singular in force,” a “courtly manner of speaking, by which a plural word denotes one certain monarch.”5 Mastricht answered that this explanation does not account for why the plural verbs and pronouns used with Elohim in Genesis 1:26 (“let us make man… according to our image”) would be needed at all if only one person were meant, when the singular forms of the name were readily available and used elsewhere in the Old Testament.5 Bavinck reached a different conclusion still, from the same starting observation, favoring a grammatical explanation over a doctrinal one. Reformed theologians who affirm the Trinity have therefore not agreed on what, if anything, Elohim’s plural form proves about it; the doctrine itself does not depend on the answer, since, as Mastricht held, “other more evident arguments are available for this cause.”5

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 8, “The Living, Acting God,” §”El, Elohim, El Shaddai.” ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  2. Archibald Alexander Hodge, Outlines of Theology (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1879), chap. 8, “Attributes of God,” 135. ↩

  3. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 2, “Of God, and of the Holy Trinity,” para. 1. ↩

  4. The Second London Baptist Confession of Faith (1689), chap. 2, “Of God, and of the Holy Trinity,” para. 3. ↩

  5. Petrus van Mastricht, Theoretical-Practical Theology, vol. 2, Faith in the Triune God, ed. Joel R. Beeke, trans. Todd M. Rester (Grand Rapids: Reformation Heritage Books, 2019), chap. 4, “The Names of God,” question 5, 146-47. ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4 ↩5 ↩6

  6. John Gill, A Body of Doctrinal Divinity; or, A System of Evangelical Truths, Deduced from the Sacred Scriptures, 2 vols. (London: Printed for the Author, and Sold by George Keith, 1769), book I, chap. 27, “Of a Plurality in the Godhead.” ↩