Tag Archive - Christology

Our God and King

November 5, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 6 Comments

Philo, has some interesting things to say about that great prophet, Moses. In Life of Moses, 1.158 he writes:

[Moses, enthroned on Mt. Sinai] became god and king of the whole nation.

FYI.

Here’s the larger context, where he explains the exalted state Moses entered into:

…if the prophet was truly called the friend of God, then it follows that he would naturally partake of God himself and of all his possessions as far as he had need; (157) for God possesses everything and is in need of nothing; but the good man has nothing which is properly his own, no, not even himself, but he has a share granted to him of the treasures of God as far as he is able to partake of them. And this is natural enough; for he is a citizen of the world; on which account he is not spoken of as to be enrolled as a citizen of any particular city in the habitable world, since he very appropriately has for his inheritance not a portion of a district, but the whole world. (158) What more shall I say? Has he not also enjoyed an even greater communion with the Father and Creator of the universe, being thought unworthy of being called by the same appellation? For he also was called the god and king of the whole nation, and he is said to have entered into the darkness where God was; that is to say, into the invisible, and shapeless, and incorporeal world, the essence, which is the model of all existing things, where he beheld things invisible to mortal nature; for, having brought himself and his own life into the middle, as an excellently wrought picture, he established himself as a most beautiful and Godlike work, to be a model for all those who were inclined to imitate him.

File this under, “things Jewish people could never say about a human being because they are monotheists.” Your file by this name should be getting pretty thick with things, such as this, that Jewish people said about human beings…

Jesus and Us as God’s Children

October 25, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 26 Comments

I’m sorry to come back here again. I just can’t help myself. But I’m on my low Christology (or, as I prefer to say, “High human Christology;” or, “Adam Christology”) hobby horse again.

For those of you just tuning in, allow me to clarify: I believe in the divinity of Jesus. But I do not think that this belief was widely held by the writers of and/or played a controlling influence in many of the earliest Christian documents, including the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). The idea that Jesus was God was not universally spread and/or developed and/or accepted.

Today’s instance of muddled thinking on the way to high Christology comes from the “Abba, Father” prayer. In this prayer, known from Mark 14, Jesus addresses God as “Father” as an individual praying for deliverance. Elsewhere Jesus prays to God as “Father” as well in the Synoptic Gospels, perhaps most famously teaching his disciples so to pray.

Rounding up a summary of evidence that the historical Jesus used such address to God, a scholar says that it is hard to deny the use of such language to Jesus himself:

For he must have said or insinuated something similar to what is recorded here to give rise to the rapid conclusion that surfaced not long after his death, that he was indeed the Son of God (even if that were not yet understood with the full nuances of the Council of Nicea)… that… would include some inkling of the uniqueness of the relationship between him and the Father as ‘abba’, whom he actually so addressed.

So Jesus must have referred to God as something like “Abba, Father,” because people soon came to believe that he was the preexistent Son [sic] of God, uniquely so related.

Aside from the obvious historical problem that the only time Jesus is said to call God “abba” is in a scene in which Jesus is absolutely alone, with the disciples knocked out asleep and therefore without any human witness (so that from a “historical Jesus” perspective the phrase is dubious, at best), a more significant problem besets this argument.

Of the three times that the “Abba, Father” prayer are articulated in the NT, one is by Jesus–and the other two are said to be the cry of every believer.

Can we please, please, pretty please agree to this: if the NT says it about other believers, then it is evidence neither of Jesus’ unique relationship to God nor of his preexistence nor of his divinity?

Mark has a theology of Jesus as son of God that has almost nothing to do with Nicea, and almost everything to do with the OT depiction of Davidic Kings and of Israel more generally. Paul has a theology of sonship of God that has nothing to do with preexistence and everything to do with being raised up to rule the world on God’s behalf.

Rather than running straight to “Son of God” as a reference to high Christology, complete with knowing nods and hushed tones and apologies for it really not meaning in the NT what it means in later theology, how about we keep exploring how the conjunction (rather than disjunction) between Jesus and later believers transforms our understanding of the identity of both?

If it’s true about you and me, and also true about Jesus, then something else is going on besides a testimony to Jesus’ eternal preexistent sonship. And I think that’s worth unpacking.

We cry out, no less than Jesus, “Abba, Father.”

The Lord Becomes the Lord (Again)

October 4, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 2 Comments

Luke loves to refer to Jesus as the Lord.

Elizabeth calls Mary “the mother of my Lord,” when baby Jesus is in utero. Those petitioning Jesus for help will defer to him as “Lord.” It is “the Lord” who appoints seventy-two and sends them out on their mission.

And it is “the Lord” who turns to look at Peter after Peter has denied him for the third time (22:61).

And then… nothing.

Throughout the trial before the elders, Jesus is not referred to as “the Lord.”

Throughout the trial before Pilate, Jesus is not referred to as “Lord.”

Standing before Herod, he is simply “Jesus.”

Before the crowd, he is simply “this man.”

Led to the cross, he is Jesus. Crucified, he is mocked as the would-be Christ or would-be King of the Jews. But he is not called the Lord.

Through the taunting of the one bandit and the petition of remembrance from the other, he is derided as “the Christ” or simply called Jesus.

It is “Jesus,” not “the Lord” who gives up his spirit, and “Jesus” whom the women watch from afar.

“Jesus’” body is buried.

But on the first day of the week, when the women come to anoint the body with their aromatic spices they discover less than they came to find. And also find out that they should have been looking for more.

They find that the body of “the Lord Jesus” is missing.

The risen one is the Lord once again. And so the two who come running back from Emmaus say to the rest, “The Lord has really risen!”

And so Peter can say on the Day of Pentecost, in reference to the resurrected Jesus, “God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

The resurrection is an enthronement. It is the heavenly reinstatement of what Jesus showed forth and then set aside while on the earth.

Peter says in that same sermon in Acts 2: “Jesus was a man testified to by God through signs and wonders.” The Lord Jesus was acting on the power and authority of the Lord God. And was rejected: finally rejected by even his closest followers, he walks through the passion narrative as simply “Jesus,” as the messianic pretender.

But God witnesses to him again by the resurrection, enthroning him as the Lord once more. The missing body is not simply the body of Jesus. It is, once again, the body of the Lord.

Suffering Servant?

September 29, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 7 Comments

The idea of a suffering servant may very well have come from Isa 53. But the idea that the Messiah had to suffer doesn’t come from there.

Well, it doesn’t come from there in Mark’s gospel, anyway.

For Mark, the invitation to discover that Jesus must suffer is tied to his self-designation as the son of man.

Now, I know that there are hundreds of theories and myriad details about what this term meant in Aramaic, how the historical Jesus is likely to have used the phrase, and the like. But that is, for the most part, irrelevant for interpreting Mark.

In Mark’s gospel, the phrase “son of Man” is clearly linked to the vision of Daniel 7 (Mark 13:26; 14:62). At least in these latter parts of Mark, the connotations of “the Human One” entail Jesus playing the role of Daniel’s enthroned Son of Man.

Earlier uses of the phrase also find explanation here: the Son of Man has unique authority–authority on earth to forgive sins; authority even over the sabbath.

The son of man in Daniel is enthroned and given an eternal kingdom. The power of that rule is at work, already, in Jesus’ earthly ministry, even though he has not yet come on the clouds to the right hand of God.

But can Daniel 7 also open up the door to understanding the third type of “son of man” saying, the passion predictions?

  • The human one must suffer many things and be rejected… (Mark 8:31)
  • Why was it written that the Human One must suffer many things and be rejected…(Mark 9:12)
  • The Human One goes to his death just as it is written about him…(Mark 14:21)

Perhaps it is not coincidental that the first time we hear a passion prediction, “The human one must suffer many things and be rejected” (Mark 8:31), the passage goes on to echo Daniel 7 in its promise that anyone ashamed of this suffering Human One will find that the Human One is ashamed of him when he comes in the glory of the father with the angels.

In other words, in the story of Mark’s gospel, Jesus as the enthroned and returning Human One is inseparable from Jesus as the suffering Human One.

So what does Daniel 7, the coming of the great and glorious Human One to be enthroned at God’s right hand, have to do with suffering?

In the final interpreting of Daniel’s dream, we discover that the last beast, and the last horn of the beast, that is finally put down and destroyed at the advent of the Son of Man, had oppressed the holy ones whom the Human One represents.

As I watched, this same horn waged war against the holy ones and defeated them, until the Ancient One came… The set time arrived, and the holy ones held the kingship securely. (Daniel 7:22, CEB)

25 He will say things against the Most High
and will exhaust the holy ones
of the Most High.
He will try to change times set by law.
And for a period of time,
periods of time,
and half a period of time,
they will be delivered into his power.
26 Then the court will sit in session.
His rule will be taken away—
ruined and wiped out for all time.
27 The kingship, authority, and power
of all kingdoms under heaven
will be given to the people,
the holy ones of the Most High. (Daniel 7:25-27, CEB)

The Son of Man who is enthroned is none other than the holy ones who suffered under the oppressive hand of the final king who would be destroyed. They were, first, delivered to suffering and death, and then afterward ushered into eternal kingship and power.

Interestingly, Daniel 12 contains the only widely recognized reference to resurrection in the OT. And that passage tells the same story as Daniel 7, only using different imagery. And there, with the defeat of the great enemy comes not only the exaltation of God’s people to rule, but even the resurrection of the righteous who have been put to death.

How is it written that the Human One must suffer at the hands of people and then rise again? It is written in the visions of the Human One beheld by the prophet Daniel. To be the Human One enthroned at the right hand of God means that one has, first, suffered and died at the hands of the unjust rulers who war against the people of God.

God Inside or Out?

August 30, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 21 Comments

From New Testament scholar Morna Hooker comes this quote, from her essay in Narrative Dynamics in Paul: A Critical Assessment:

If I am puzzled by the desire to analyse the ‘grand Story’ into substories, the notion that there is a ‘story of God’ puzzles me even more! A ‘story’ concerns something within history and describes events that change and affect the characters, but God is by definition outside history, and does not change (Mal. 3:6).

My own reading of scripture would lead me to suggest that if your god is “by definition” one who is outside the history and unchanged by it, you need to either find a new religion that fits your God or else redefine your God to fit the biblical narrative.

The whole point of biblical narrative is that God has bound himself to the story–not merely as an author or observer, but as a participant. What else can it mean to call God “redeemer” or “savior” in any meaningful sense? God must act in history to be the God of the Bible. Our understanding of Mal 3:6 must be shaped by the things God actually does and claims to do and promises to do.

And, as a tip of the hat to my high Christology and dearly held Trinitarian belief, if we say that the incarnation did not change God then we have embraced the docetism that so rampantly affects contemporary Christianity.

God is part of the story. God who did not have to create, created. God who did not have to engage and act, has chosen to not only be a part of the story of the world, but to bind Godself to it, staking God’s own name on playing the climactic roles in bringing this story to completion.

God is not only the “off stage” sender who hurls the protagonist into the chaos. God is the chief Actor who participates to bring the story to its final resolution in keeping with God’s own purpose and promise.

“When I Say God…”

August 29, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 14 Comments

“When I say God, what I mean is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

This statement of Geoffrey Wainwright was a favorite among the Divinity Students at Duke when I was there–it invariably showed up in each of their sermons prepared for Trinity Sunday.

The Christian God has an identity. That identity is Father, Son, and Spirit. This is our starting point. This is who (and what) our God is.

So what happens when we turn to the Bible and read the word “God”?

When Paul said God, he meant the Father only.

Similarly, when we read Mark, for example, God is the sender, the power, the authority giver, the father.

The burden of my various threads of thought over the past couple of weeks (and months and years!) on the blog has been to clear out space to answer this question: “What does it mean to say, ‘Jesus is Lord’ before Christians were proclaiming, ‘Jesus is God’?”

Surprising Image

July 3, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 3 Comments

“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the one who is firstborn of all creation” (Col 1:15).

Of course he is. That’s the whole point of Genesis 1. There is a firstborn, or first created, son of God. It was humanity. And God created them to be overall creation, the image of God standing before the world, ruling the world on God’s behalf.

But no. There’s a surprise here. The Colossians hymn goes on:

“Because all things were created by him: both in the heavens and on the earth, the things that are visible and the things that are invisible” (Col 1:16, CEB).

We discover here that Adam was not simply the image, he was the image of the image. Whereas much of the NT operates with an Adam Christology, such that Jesus is seen as fulfilling the role God gave Adam at creation, we discover here that before Christ stood in the place of Adam, Adam stood in the place of the eternal Son. The one who is God’s original image not only rules over all creation, he created all the powers he made:

Whether they are thrones or powers, or rulers or authorities, all things were crated through him and for him. (Col 1:16)

The original image-bearer is the one who holds all things together.

But for all the “alls” and “everythings,” there is more. While we tend to see that the divinity is all, and sufficient, for the identity of God and God’s son, there is more to be had.

This ontological status was not sufficient for the Son to be head over all things. There was a second Adam to whom rule was given. And this human rule over the earth had to be joined to the divine. There is a new creation with a second Adam at its head.

He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the one who is firstborn from the dead, so that he might occupy the first place in everything. (1:18)

“So that.” First place in everything was obtained by an action here on earth–a faithful death and death-conquering resurrection. The enthronement now over all is not so much a testimony to his preexistent preeminence, but to his human fidelity to God even to the point of death on the cross. Humanity was created to play the role of the Son. And the Son came to fulfill the role that was always his.

He rules the world for God because he took those who were supposed to be like him, but were alienated, and recreated the cosmic space within which they might be one with God again:

“All the fullness of God was pleased to live in him, and he reconciled all things to himself through him–whether things on earth or in the heavens. He brought peace through the blood of his cross.” (Col 1:19-20)

The extent of the Son’s reign is the extent of his reconciling death: the whole cosmos has been reconciled to God. The original image did what the image of the image failed to do: faithful execute the rule of God, in God’s name and on God’s behalf, upon the earth for the sake of the whole cosmos.

The author is out of town. Comments are welcome, but I will not be participating in blog conversation this week. Also, previous installments on Colossians 1 can be found here and here.

Reframing Divine Identification

June 21, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 19 Comments

Yesterday I expressed some reservations about using “divine identity” as a means by which to argue that the New Testament contains early, high Christology. That is to say, telling a story in which a being participates in activities or prerogatives that God otherwise seems to reserve for Godself does not necessarily mean that you wish to communicate that the being is, in some “ontological” sense God himself.

I always struggle to express precisely what I want to affirm and what I want to deny here. You see, the problem with Richard Bauckham’s argument about divine identity Christology is not the observation that Jesus participates in the prerogatives of God. Jesus clearly does.

And the problem with his argument isn’t even that Jesus, by participating in the prerogatives of God is thereby associated with God such that he is tangible embodiment of the God of Israel. This is true as well.

The problem is in asserting that these narrative dynamics are a Jewish way of articulating a Christology as high as the later Chalcedonian fathers’.

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Here’s the point: in the biblical narrative, human beings are regularly set aside to play the role of God on God’s behalf here on earth. When God sends Moses to Pharaoh he says to Moses, “I will make you as God for Pharaoh, and Aaron will be your prophet.”

To heed the voice of Moses would be to heed the voice of God. To resist the voice of Moses would be to resist the voice of God. To fall before Moses and worship would be to fall before God and worship.

Does Jesus participate in the identity of the God of Israel, by playing the role of that God in forgiving sins, commanding nature, and purifying uncleanness?

Yes, absolutely.

And to say this much is to say that Jesus is the Christ. He is the anointed one, given the specific and epoch-shifting task of reconciling the world to God. In this sense, we might say that it is a “high” Christology: Jesus is the pinnacle of humanity, the Lord over all, and the one through whom those who bow at his feet worship the God of Israel and the one through whom the God of Israel exercises dominion over the world.

But to say this much is not yet to say that Jesus is God. And it’s not yet to say in a Jewish way what the later Chalcedonians said in their more Greek philosophical categories.

To say this much is to say that Jesus is The Man, the fulfillment of the vocation of humanity in general and Israel in particular, the Messiah and therefore the Son of God, the Lord who, precisely because he is faithfully human, lays hold of the imago Dei afresh and rules the world on God’s behalf.

What Only God Can Do?

June 20, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 13 Comments

“If Jesus isn’t God, then we are worshiping God and a human being.”

“If Jesus isn’t God, then Christians are infringing on God’s right to sovereignty over everything in order to assign Lordship to Jesus.”

These are the sorts of claims that lie behind some attempts to prove that the NT presupposes the divinity of Jesus throughout. For example, Richard Bauckham argues that the way a Jewish person would express a high Christology would not be through the language of “being,” but instead through an identity of function with the God of Israel. If Jesus does what only YHWH can do, he is being so identified with him as to say that this is God directly at work. Jesus is written into the divine identity–therefore, Jesus is (as later theologians using different categories would say) God.

In response to these sorts of claims, I have a very simple litmus test that I am in the process of applying, and would invite you to do the same:

Do other Jews say these sorts of things about other people?

As theological outworkings, such claims are fine. You can say that our worship of Jesus is an expression of what we all (myself included) confess as traditional Christians about Jesus as preexistent God-the-Son.

But as historical claims these claims should be measured, as best as we possibly can, by the criteria of early Jewish ways of speaking about God and God’s agents.

If other Jews, who did not think of themselves, their hoped-for Messiahs, their teachers as God in any sense used this same sort of language to describe other humans, then we cannot claim that use of such language by first century Jews, in their descriptions of Jesus, intends to depict him as “divine.”

The Similitudes of Enoch are a great example.

In these, a figure known variously as the Elect One, the Son of Man, and the Messiah looms large.

This figure sits on God’s own throne, executes the final judgment on God’s behalf, receives worship, and is the agent of humanity’s salvation.

Sovereignty. Worship. Glory.

All things that belong to God, that God does not share–are shared with the Elect One in order that, in praising this Messiah, God Himself might receive glory and honor and praise.

The criterion of “participation in the divine identity” by playing the role of God in worship and rule, is insufficient to demarcate a figure in early Jewish literature as God Himself.

Instead, it demarcates the Human One who is restoring the world through judgment and salvation and thereby bringing all glory and praise to God.

Christmas Mystery

June 15, 2011 in Barth Dogmatics Reading with 4 Comments

Barth wraps up part II of the Church Dogmatics with an exposition of the Christmas mystery: Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary.

The last two sections of §15 had me scratching my head, saying, “hmmm…”, and generally reflecting on how theological categories control our reading and create rabbit trails that never quite seem to be the rabbit holes their creators promise.

The Christian confession that Jesus the Christ is also the God-Man causes Barth to put too much into the event of the virgin birth–which, for KB, is tantamount to incarnation.

Bart says that this becoming human of the word is God’s revelation and is therefore “the prime mystery” and “our reconciliation” (§15.3; pp. 172, 173).

Barth Experiences God by Listening to Mozart on His iPod

But for all Barth’s insistence that we follow the Biblical testimony, he neglects to see that in the biblical testimony incarnation is neither “the prime mystery” of our faith nor “our reconciliation.” Incarnation is not salvific, not the act of reconciliation.

It is not Jesus’ ontology but the works that Jesus does upon the earth that reconcile God with the rebellious creature. Throughout, Barth insists that the virgin birth is but the sign pointing to the true mystery behind it of Jesus as incarnate God Man. What I think he misses is that Jesus as incarnate God man is but a sign to the true mystery of reconciliation accomplished.

What is “the mystery” in the NT? In the Gospels, the only mention of it is when the disciples are told the mystery of the Kingdom concealed in Jesus’ parables–which parables have nothing to do with Jesus as incarnate God Man. In 1 Cor it has to do with the foolishness of the cross as God’s saving wisdom and our coming participation in the resurrection. In Ephesians it primarily refers to Jews and Gentiles as one people, then also the union of male and female in marriage. In Colossians it’s “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” 1 Tim 3:16 is a holistic confession of Jesus’ life, resurrection, and subsequent proclamation.

Not even the one book that makes much ado about Jesus as God incarnate, John, indicates that the revelation of God in Christ is, itself, humanity’s reconciliation.

I find that all of the focus on Jesus as God-Man ends up detracting, in Barth’s theology thus far, from the significance of Jesus’ life as man on earth. And that can create huge problems down the line.

Here’s an example.

Barth keeps comparing the virgin birth to the resurrection, as though both are revelatory signs of Jesus as God Man.

But if the resurrection means that Jesus is God Man, the rest of us have no hope. The reason why we as humans have hope of resurrection life is because the resurrection of Jesus means that, though human, he has entered bodily into the eternal presence of God. If resurrection reveals that Jesus is actually God Man, then it simultaneously reveals that those who are not God Man have no hope of sharing in such newness of life unless, of course, God chooses to make us gods as well.

No, the resurrection, at least in so far as it is a source of Christian hope, is all about Jesus as human.

Similarly, Barth fails to see where his exegesis points when he associates Jesus as son because of the Spirit with the baptism in Mark 1 and resurrection in Romans 1. Those latter scenes indicate that to be a person to whom the Spirit has come, a person empowered by the Spirit, is to be God’s representative human upon the earth.

Saul receives the Spirit so he can be king. It passes from Saul to David so that David can rule the people in wisdom and power. And the Davidic psalm prays for the Holy Spirit not to be taken away–as it was taken away from Saul when Saul was faithless!

I know that I cause my readers angst at times due to my insistence that no all the Christology in the NT is high Christology. This is not because I don’t believe in high Christology (i.e., that Jesus is truly God incarnate). I do believe in that.

It’s because I don’t think the doctrine of Jesus as God is the presupposition or argument for most of the NT–and that it therefore has the power to make us bad readers of the NT when we bring it with us to every NT text, or when we use it to develop every Christian doctrine.

Barth in this section of CD manifests the problems I’m concerned with.

The heart of the NT is not that Jesus is God. The heart of the NT is that in the man Jesus God was reconciling the world to Himself. When we get the accent wrong, we not only create innumerable unanswerable theological conundrums for ourselves, we also misassign the place of salvation to an ontology that does not, in and of itself, reconcile.

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