Before we proceed, it is important to address a recent development. Since the initial publication of this series, Jon Moffitt has announced his departure from the “Reformed Fringe” podcast, citing the time commitment required by the project. While we are encouraged by this step, as it appears to be the fruit of heeding wise counsel from his elders and friends, it is reasonable for an observer to conclude that this is also a “saving face” maneuver, as it was not accompanied by a substantive retraction of the theological errors he promoted. Our “Open Letter” in Part 5 therefore remains a necessary part of the public record, as it addresses a public response that was, at the time, insufficient. As the theological system we have been examining continues to be promoted by Doug Van Dorn, our ongoing critique must now focus on him and the substance of the errors themselves, which were jointly articulated in the episodes under review. We now turn our attention to the very heart of the matter: the corruption of the biblical doctrine of monotheism. This article will argue that the redefinition of monotheism as mere exclusive loyalty (a form of henotheism), a view articulated on the podcast and necessary for the system Doug Van Dorn continues to promote, is a profound misreading of Scripture, the necessary linchpin for his entire speculative system, and a dangerous return to a pagan worldview that the prophets and apostles explicitly condemned.
The Central Error: Redefining Monotheism
In Their Own Words
The entire “Reformed Fringe” project rests upon a fundamental redefinition of what it means to be a monotheist. In their view, the First Commandment is not primarily a statement about the being of God, but about the loyalty of His people. This position was articulated with perfect clarity on the podcast:
The way I titled this last section is called Divine Exclusivity, loyalty, not Ontology. So the difference is this, the Bible is very clear that Israel… was to be loyal to Yahweh alone… Hey, you will have no other gods. It’s not that you will create any other gods. It’s that you will not have them. Meaning that to have is a covenant of language. You will not enter in relationships with them. You will not worship them.[1]
This is a clever but deeply flawed argument. By reducing the force of the command to a matter of covenantal loyalty, it sidesteps the more profound ontological question: do other gods, as a class of divine beings, actually exist? The system Van Dorn champions requires an affirmative answer. This position is not biblical monotheism; it is a textbook definition of henotheism, which is “the view that while there is one God who is supreme, other deities may also exist.”[2] It is the logic of the pagan pantheon, where a worshipper might choose a patron deity from among a host of real, existing divine powers. The Bible, however, makes a far more radical claim.
The Biblical Witness to Ontological Monotheism
The Witness of the Law
The foundational confession of Israel, the Shema, provides the definitive statement of biblical monotheism: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one” (Deut 6:4). The word “one” (echad) here is not merely a statement of preference, but of radical uniqueness and indivisibility. As Old Testament scholar Eugene Merrill notes, the clause can be rendered, “Yahweh (is) our God, Yahweh is one,” which stresses both God’s unique relationship to Israel and His singular being. Merrill concludes, “The ideas clearly overlap to provide an unmistakable basis for monotheistic faith. The Lord is indeed a unity, but beyond that he is the only God.”[3]All that is not Yahweh is creature.
John Calvin, commenting on this very passage, confirms that the declaration of God’s oneness is the ground for His exclusive worship. He writes that the statement that God is one “is not confined to His sole essence… but must be also understood of His power and glory.”[4] Calvin continues, “unless our minds are fixed on Him alone, religion is torn, as it were, into divers parts, and this is soon followed by a labyrinth of errors.”[5] For Calvin, the oneness is ontological, and the demand for loyalty flows from that singular reality.
The Witness of the Prophets
The prophets consistently build upon this foundation, contrasting the living, acting, speaking God of Israel with the dead, mute, and powerless idols of the nations.
Isaiah’s Polemic
The prophet Isaiah brings this ontological monotheism to its sharpest point. His argument is not that Yahweh is merely “better” than the other gods, but that Yahweh alone is God, and the others are nothing. This polemic must be understood in its historical context. Isaiah is speaking to a people in exile, surrounded by the overwhelming power and impressive cult of Babylon’s god, Marduk. It is into this context of apparent divine competition that Yahweh speaks His most radical claims.
“You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD… “that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor shall there be any after me. I, I am the LORD, and besides me there is no savior.” (Isa 43:10–11)
The language here is explicitly ontological. It is not about loyalty, but about existence. Yahweh is the only being who has ever been or ever will be God. He reinforces this with devastating finality: “I am the first and I am the last; besides me there is no god… Is there a God besides me? There is no Rock; I know not any” (Isa 44:6, 8).
The Prophetic Chorus
This is not the isolated witness of one prophet. Jeremiah makes the same ontological distinction, contrasting the Creator with the created: “But the LORD is the true God; he is the living God and the everlasting King… The gods who did not make the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth and from under the heavens. It is he who made the earth by his power” (Jer 10:10–12). The minor prophets echo this chorus. Hosea declares, “you know no God but me, and besides me there is no savior” (Hos 13:4), and Zechariah prophesies of the last day, “And the LORD will be king over all the earth. On that day the LORD will be one and his name one” (Zech 14:9). The prophetic witness is unified: there is only one God.
The Witness of the Writings
The Psalms, the prayer book of Israel, are saturated with this ontological monotheism. The psalmist does not merely express a preference for Yahweh; he contrasts the one true Creator with the “worthless idols” of the nations. “For great is the LORD, and greatly to be praised; he is to be feared above all gods. For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols (elilim, literally “nothings”), but the LORD made the heavens” (Ps 96:4–5). The distinction could not be clearer: Yahweh is the Creator; the “gods” of the nations are created things, lifeless nothings.
The Witness of the Apostles
The New Testament continues this witness with perfect clarity, applying the Old Testament’s exclusive monotheistic claims directly to the person of Jesus Christ.
Paul’s Clarification
The Apostle Paul, addressing the issue of eating food sacrificed to idols, provides an inspired commentary on the nature of the “other gods.” He begins by affirming the core Christian confession: “we know that ‘an idol has no real existence,’ and that ‘there is no God but one’” (1 Cor 8:4). He then acknowledges the pagan worldview: “For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords’—” (1 Cor 8:5). But does he then conclude, as “Reformed Fringe” does, that monotheism is merely a matter of choosing the right one to worship? Absolutely not. He immediately contrasts the pagan pantheon with the ontological reality confessed by the church: “yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Cor 8:6).
The Catholic Epistles
The Catholic Epistles reinforce this same ontological monotheism. James, in a powerful rebuke of dead orthodoxy, affirms the Shema as a foundational truth that even demons are forced to acknowledge as an ontological reality: “You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!” (Jas 2:19). For James, the oneness of God is not a matter of covenant loyalty, but a terrifying fact of the cosmos. Jude concludes his epistle with a doxology to “the only God, our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Jude 25), employing the language of absolute, exclusive uniqueness that permeates the entire biblical witness.
The Linchpin of a Flawed System
This redefinition of monotheism is not an isolated exegetical error; it is the necessary linchpin that holds the entire speculative system promoted by Doug Van Dorn together. His corrupted Christology and his mythological Divine Council model cannot survive without it. If ontological monotheism is true—if there is only one being who is God and all other spiritual beings are mere creatures—then his entire project collapses. For his “Divine Council” to be a pantheon of lesser gods over whom Yahweh presides, henotheism must be the true biblical worldview. If you knock over this one domino—their redefinition of monotheism—the entire house of cards comes crashing down.
A Departure from the Faith
By redefining monotheism as henotheism, this “fringe” theology does not recover a lost biblical worldview; it regresses to the pagan worldview that the Bible was written to refute. The revolutionary claim of the prophets and apostles was not that Israel’s God was the strongest in the pantheon, but that the pantheon itself was a fiction. There is only one Creator, and all that is not the Creator is creature. To compromise on this point is to collapse this fundamental distinction and to open the door to the very idolatry the First Commandment was given to forbid. It is a departure from the faith once for all delivered to the saints.
Key Terms/Concepts
- Monotheism: The doctrine or belief that there is only one God. In its Christian and biblical form, this is an ontological claim about the exclusive existence of one divine being, not merely a call to worship one god from among many.
- Henotheism: The worship of a single, supreme god while not denying the existence or possible worship of other, lower gods. This is the functional position of the “Reformed Fringe” and stands in contrast to true monotheism.
- Ontology: The branch of metaphysics dealing with the nature of being. In theology, an “ontological” claim is a claim about what something is in its essential nature, as opposed to what it does or how it is perceived.
- The Shema: The foundational confession of Jewish and Christian monotheism, found in Deuteronomy 6:4: “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.” It is a declaration of the unique and singular being of God.
- Linchpin: A person or thing vital to an enterprise or organization. In this context, it refers to the central, indispensable doctrine upon which the entire “Reformed Fringe” theological system depends.
[1] Doug Van Dorn and Jon Moffitt, “What ‘No Other Gods’ Doesn’t Mean,” Reformed Fringe, 1 September 2025, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/reformed-fringe/id1673785890?i=1000724369041, 26:22.
[2] Donald McKim, “Henotheism,” The Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms.
[3] Eugene Merrill, The New American Commentary, vol. 4 (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1994), 163.
[4] John Calvin, Commentary on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis, trans. John King (Bellingham: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 420.
[5] John Calvin, Commentary on the First Book of Moses Called Genesis, trans. John King (Bellingham: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 421.