Tag Archive - Christology

Hays v. Wright at Wheaton (part 1 of 2)

April 19, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 13 Comments

At the Wheaton Theology Conference on N. T. Wright, Richard Hays gave a critical assessment of Wright’s Jesus, as represented in Jesus and the Victory of God.

I want to respond to this lecture because it brings to the surface the passion behind my next major research project on the humanity of Jesus.

First off, I want to say where I agree with Hays. Jesus and the Victory of God is valuable as a “theology of the synoptic gospels,” and as something that gives us a historically contextualized reading of that sort of Jesus.

But our Jesus is the canonical Jesus, which means that we are not trying to look through the gospels at something that lies behind, but to understand the Jesus whom we meet in the canonical stories. I find JVG valuable as a help toward understanding these stories, not as an approximation of “the historical Jesus.”

Also, I agree with Hays that we are to read the gospels with a “resurrection hermeneutic,” because I believe that the gospels were written with a resurrection hermeneutic.

Without detracting from these base-hits, and in large part because of them, I call foul on a couple of other points. First, Hays spoke of “resurrection hermeneutics” in the same breath as “incarnational hermeneutics”. These are fundamentally different for one important reason: whereas all four gospels affirm the resurrection, only John has an incarnation. So, while reading these with a prior understanding of Jesus as resurrected Lord is a good reading of the gospels as written, reading them all as witnesses to the incarnate God is truly bringing in the theology of the church, and requires its own separate argument.

And I want to suggest that Hays has provided the strongest argument against an incarnation hermeneutic in his critique of JVG.

One place at which Hays finds JVG wanting is that it does not give due attention to the unique voices of each of the four Gospels we have in our New Testament canon. It is insufficiently attentive to the particular stories of Matthew, Mark, and Luke (Wright’s sources). But this is the very reason why an incarnation hermeneutic is inappropriate for interpreting the same books! Hays is asking for a canonical reading that flattens out the polyvalent witness, the individual voices, of the Gospels.

Resurrection hermeneutic? Sure. Because the resurrection/ascension is Jesus’ enthronement (Matthew, Luke), so when Jesus comes proclaiming the reign of God, he is enacting something that we know more fully once he is enthroned as the one who reigns at God’s right hand.

Why is it that I am so resistant to allowing the church’s tradition to transform the witness of the Synoptic Gospels? Tune in tomorrow.

Jesus’ Divine Identity: Imprimatur or Incarnation?

April 2, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 1 Comment

I’ve been enjoying the debates with the good Dr. Morales on the Christology of the Gospels (part 1, part 2). But since the first set of discussions I’ve been thinking that the question we’re debating is interesting, but perhaps only partially helpful in making progress on the question of Jesus’ identity in the gospels.

To set this up again: though standing on the common ground of the traditional Christian confession of Jesus Christ as very God, we disagree on the extent to which this facet of Jesus’ identity is visible in the Synoptic Gospels.

But our agreement extends beyond the confessional. We would both say things about Jesus in (say) Mark to the effect of, “Look, Jesus is being identified with Israel’s God here,” or, “Look, here’s Jesus doing something that we’d normally think only God can do.”

Given our largely Christan context for reading the Gospels, I imagine that it sounds like special pleading to many of my readers that I would say, “Here’s Jesus being identified with God–and yet this is no indication that he is ontologically divine.” But, as James McGrath suggested in the comments of our “Pass them by” discussion, this only means that based on our theological commitments we think that “identification with God” entails divine ontology.

What we really need to hammer out is how we can adjudicate between a human’s being identified with the work of God, the super-expansion of such a category that would happen if one human actually came and was a faithful representative where others (Adam, Israel, David) had failed, and at what point a quantitative expansion of the human vocation to represent God to the world is insufficient to account for the data and we have to start positing a qualitative difference for Jesus (i.e., what must Jesus do or say to take us to the point where we must say, “This is not something that could be said or done by a human being, however so great he may be; now we’re talking about God”).

In my estimation, the Old Testament provides such a robust category for understanding human agency in general, and for interpreting the Christology of the Gospels in particular, that I find little evidence of “identification with God” to offer compelling indications that the category of “human representative of YHWH on earth” has been blown up into “YHWH physically present among us.”

To take but the most obvious example, the title “son of God” clearly identifies Jesus with God. But what sort of identification is it? The biblical co-texts that help us make sense of such a title indicate that this is a way of saying that Jesus is the Davidic King (Ps 2; 2 Sam 7), the one who fulfills primordial humanity’s vocation to rule the world on God’s behalf as God’s faithful child (Gen 1:26-28).

The idea of Jesus as “son of God” structures Mark’s narrative: at his baptism, transfiguration, and crucifixion Jesus is called “son of God” by God (first two) and a centurion (final episode). The point in each case (especially as the baptism prefigures the crucifixion) is that Jesus is son of God as he fulfills his particular Messianic vocation.

In other words: Christ = Son of God = vocation to suffer, die, and then be raised.

With an OT narrative telling us that humanity is created to be entrusted with God’s rule over the created order, and with numerous indications that God identifies himself with a people such that his name is on them–their fate is His fate and His reputation is their reputation–it seem that the default mode for reading the Gospels should be that ideal first readers would hear the stories of Jesus in this way.

Yes, he is wonderfully exhibiting the saving work of YHWH–and this means that, at last, the king has come.

So the question as we wrestle with how to read and understand the Christology of the Gospels is: how do we know when identification has moved beyond unique possession of the divine imprimatur and empowering Spirit and moved into the realm of ontological identity?

One initial answer I want to give is this: if we see other humans doing it, it is no indication that Jesus is ontologically divine. Other thoughts?

Christology of the Gospels Debate (2): Pass them By

March 31, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 20 Comments

Note: This is part two in a series of debates on the Christology of the Synoptic Gospels (part 1 here). Rodrigo Morales is starting off, I’m responding, and he is then given the opportunity of a rejoinder.

RJM:

I’m shamelessly stealing my second example from our esteemed Doktorvater Richard Hays.  Hays notices a peculiar detail in Mark’s account of Jesus’ walking on the water (Mark 6:45-52).  As Jesus comes towards the boat, Mark writes, “And he meant to pass them by” (6:48b).  What an odd description – why would Jesus pass them by?  Hays suggests that Mark uses this language to show subtly and allusively an important aspect of Jesus’ identity.

Three different passages in the Old Testament describe God in the act of “passing by” someone. In Exodus 33, when Moses asks to see God’s glory, God hides him in the cleft of a rock while “[God’s] glory passes by” (Exod 33:22).  Similarly, in 1 Kings 19 when Elijah meets the LORD on Mount Horeb, the writer notes, “The LORD passed by” (1 Kings 19:11).  Both of these stories recount theophanies, revelations of God to the prophets.  In a similar way, the walking on the water in Mark functions as a theophany, especially when one takes into account the language from Job that overlaps with the story.

In Job 9, Job gives a lengthy description of God that includes some interesting phrases: “who [God] alone stretched out the heavens, and trampled the waves of the sea” (Job 9:8).  The LXX of Job is even closer to Mark’s language of walking on the water.  Shortly thereafter, Job continues, “Lo, he passes by me, and I see him not; he moves on, but I do not perceive him.”  This language of walking on the water, passing by, and lack of understanding dovetails perfectly with Mark’s account.  Mark is presenting Jesus as the manifestation of God, and his disciples in the role of uncomprehending Job.

JRDK:

There are a couple of contextual clues for interpreting that enigmatic statement about Jesus intending to pass by the disciples. First, in 6:52, the reason the disciples don’t get it, and presumably thus the reason why Jesus was not able to pass by them, is that “they didn’t understand about the loaves, but their heart was hardened” (6:52). This means that our interpretation of the feeding narrative must inform our reading of the water-walking.

Second, there is a near repeat of this episode in ch. 8. After feeding the 4,000 the disciples forget to take bread as they head off in a boat. When Jesus tells them to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Herod, they start wondering if it’s because they’d forgotten bread. Jesus asks if their heart has been hardened, if they, having eyes, are blind, if they, having ears, are deaf. Then he asks them to remember about how many baskets of leftover bread they had at each feeding.

I would argue that this series of failures by the disciples is tied to their lack of understanding of Jesus’ identity /vocation as Messiah. But rather than showing us by hints and allusions that Jesus is God, I see Mark showing us that Jesus is (1) the unique representative of God on earth, with power to rule the entire created order on God’s behalf, and (2) the Messiah who comes into his kingdom by suffering.

The ch. 8 rebuke is tied to the story of the healing of the blind man in two stages; this, in turn, is connected to Peter’s simultaneously correct and tragically misguided notion of Jesus as Messiah. Jesus, as Messiah, is going to have to die. As I argued last time, this is about Messianic vocation, something quite different from Jesus’ divinity (or lack thereof). The “leaven of the Pharisees and Herod” might refer to any number of wrong ways to conceptualize the kingdom of God, but “God as king of the kingdom” doesn’t seem to be one of them.

Back to Mark 6 itself, Mark invites us to read the feeding and water-walking as a description of Jesus as the shepherd of Israel (6:34–they were like sheep without a shepherd, so he began to teach them many things). If there is an extended OT allusion, I’d argue that it is to Psalm 23, where the shepherd ensures that the people do not want, makes them to lie down in green pastures (6:39) and, in the LXX, leads upon (epi) still waters. Jesus, I would argue, was going to pass them by not to reveal God but to lead them as faithful shepherd. They should have known he was such a shepherd from the loaves.

On the one hand, if the OT is determinative for the content of the NT allusion, one can say that “The Lord is my shepherd” = YHWH = Jesus. Or, as we see often in other parts of the NT, the narrative of the OT might be given new substance with the person and presence of Jesus. Not only is the LORD the shepherd of the flock, but the good king is a faithful shepherd, caring for the flock of God as God Himself would.

RJM:

I agree that the walking on the water and the feeding of the 5,000 go together, and I’m happy to connect it with Psalm 23.  Daniel’s reading of Mark’s allusion to the psalm, however, seems like a classic case of special pleading to me.  I think the interpretation “The Lord is my shepherd” = YHWH = Jesus is the most natural one, and strengthens my interpretation of the Isaiah citation at the beginning of the Gospel.  (There is another OT text that would suit Daniel’s interpretation much better and fits quite well with the reference to the people as “sheep without a shepherd” [let the reader understand], but I’m not going to give it away. :)

In my initial post for lack of space I left out an important element of the walking on the water story that I think seals an interpretation in terms of divine identity. When the disciples see Jesus coming to them on the water, they become terrified (a typical Markan theme) and think that he’s a ghost.  Jesus reassures them with the words, “ἐγώ εἰμι.”  One could translate this flatly as a simple, “It’s me.”  Given the other allusions to the theophanies of the OT, however, it seems much more likely that Mark has Jesus appropriate the divine name from Exodus 3:14, “I AM.”  The combination of walking on the water, intending to pass by the disciples, and appropriating the divine name all point in the direction of an identification on Mark’s part of Jesus with the God of Israel.

Again, this is not to deny the importance of Jesus’ humanity or his suffering – these are clearly important to Mark.  Nevertheless, I believe this reading of the walking on the water adds a further dimension to Jesus’ already mysterious identity in this cryptic gospel.

Now to you: what’s your take, o dutiful reader of the Gospels?

Christology of the Gospels Debate (1): The Way of the Lord

March 23, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 16 Comments

This is the first in what will be a series of “debates” about the Christology of the Synoptic Gospels. In short, the question is: do Matthew, Mark, and Luke depict Jesus as in some sense divine or pre-existent?

The common ground between the debaters is this: We both affirm that Jesus is the pre-existent son of God; moreover, we both agree that working out the theology of Jesus’ human action in the Gospels is a rich and under-explored enterprise.

Where we disagree is this: to what extent to the Synoptic Gospels depict, or anticipate, the theology that is more clearly articulated later to the effect that Jesus is the pre-existent son of God?

I turn it over now to my good friend, Rodrigo Morales (hereafter RJM) to kick things off.

RJM: Our blog host has had a longstanding reading of the Gospels according to which the Synoptics emphasize Jesus’ humanity with nary an intimation of Jesus having any kind of divine identity. Let me preface my disagreement with Daniel by reiterating that I find much of his reading of Jesus’ humanity insightful and theologically compelling.  I have no problem highlighting the theological significance of Jesus’ humanity – indeed, I think Christological orthodoxy compels us to do so. Nevertheless, as I’ve mentioned to Daniel on multiple occasions, what I have a bone to pick with is his absolute “Nein!” to any hints of Jesus’ divinity in the Synoptic Gospels. This disturbs me not just because of my allegiance to traditional orthodox Christology.  As I provocatively put it in a comment on one of his posts, I also believe this “Nein” is unfaithful to the texts themselves. Daniel has graciously offered me the opportunity these next couple of weeks to dialogue/debate the topic with him on the blog, and so today we offer the first of what will be a series of exchanges on the topic.

JRDK: The format will be as follows: I will give Rodrigo the first and last word in each discussion. He will offer an exegetical observation that he sees as pushing us toward affirming a divine Christology and I’ll give my response. He will then have an opportunity to reply. Either of us might jump into the comments, but I’ll try to behave by not engaging in
unseemly surrejoinders too early in the game.


Topic 1: The Way of the Lord (Isa 40:3 in Mark 1:3)

RJM: The Gospel of Mark, thought by the majority of scholars to be the earliest of the Gospels, also is the one most often interpreted as having a “low” or human Christology.  There is no doubt that Jesus’ humanity plays an important role in Mark’s Gospel. Nonetheless, occasionally the evangelist subtly hints at another dimension of Jesus’ identify.  It is fitting to begin with the prologue.

Mark begins with a mixed citation of Scripture drawn from Malachi, Exodus, and Isaiah.  Much could be said about each of these verses, but for now let’s focus on the way Mark uses the quotation from Isaiah, “Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.” In context Isaiah 40:3, one of the few verses cited by all four evangelists, speaks of preparing a highway for Israel’s God.  The way the Synoptic evangelists appropriate the verse, John the Baptist is the one who prepares the way.  But whose way does John prepare?

Perhaps more clearly in Mark than in the other Gospels, it is Jesus’ way that John prepares.
It is significant that shortly following the opening Scripture citation, the Spirit drives Jesus “into the wilderness,” the place where the prophet is to prepare the way of the Lord.  Moreover, the central section of Mark (8:22-10:45) is punctuated by references to “the way” (8:27; 9:33, 34; 10:17, 32, 46, 52).  The way of the Lord is the way of Jesus to Jerusalem and ultimately to the cross.

Mark does not come out and crassly equate Jesus with the God of Israel, but for those with ears to hear, he implies that there is more to Jesus than meets the eye (to mix metaphors).

JRDK: NT writers have a lot of freedom in their use of OT citations. In the end, it is the use to which the writer of the NT puts the OT passage that determines what the OT passage signifies in its new, Christian context. Rodrigo has described well the story of Mark—and in a way that speaks against the identification of Jesus with YHWH.

The “way of the Lord” is the way of a suffering Messiah on his way to death. This doesn’t indicate that Jesus is YHWH, but rather YHWH’s servant. YHWH is establishing his reign on the earth through a peculiar human king—a suffering and dying king. Indeed, that the way of the Lord is the way of death would seem to tell strongly against an identification with YHWH. If there is an identification between YHWH and the earthly king it is one in which the Lord represents the LORD, and possibly bears his name. Because of the freedom NT writers have in using the OT, this narrative context is more important than the original reference to YHWH in making sense of Isa 40 in Mark 1:3.

I would also say that citing OT context in this case is a double-edged sword. Mark 1:2-3 is not just from Isa 40, it’s also from Mal 3:1. Malachi 3:1 in both Hebrew and Greek uses the first person pronoun: “I am sending my messenger and he will prepare the way (or have regard) before me.” And YHWH is speaking. If Mark had intended to indicate that Jesus is YHWH, it seems that he should have left the first person pronoun in place.

Alternatively, if you see Exo 23:20 as the source for the citation, then “you” does not refer to God but to God’s people Israel upon whom YHWH has set his name. The use of these other verses would seem to indicate that YHWH and Jesus are separate, and perhaps are being intentionally distinguished.

RJM: Though it’s neither here nor there, I can’t help but note the irony that the proponent of a passible God is using Jesus’ suffering as an argument against his identification with YHWH in Mark.  But now to the actual points.  At some points Mark very well may present Jesus as the LORD’s representative; however, I think there is more to it than that.  To take but one example, at the end of the story of the healing of the demoniac, Jesus instructs the man to go tell his household “how much the Lord has done for you” (Mark 5:19).  I suppose this could be a Bob Dole moment on Jesus’ part, but a more likely reading is that the Lord = the LORD.  What does the man do?  “And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis all that Jesus had done for him” (Mark 5:20). Again, Mark is subtly identifying Jesus with the LORD.  In the next exchange I’ll point to a story in which the point is made somewhat more clearly, though still only for those with ears to hear.

As for the Malachi and Exodus citations, again, I have no problem with Jesus functioning as Israel’s representative.  Because the language of the quotation is closer to that of Exodus than that of Malachi, I suspect this is part of what Mark has in mind.  Nevertheless, my argument is not that Mark’s Jesus is not human, but that he is both human and divine.  I don’t think the change in pronouns is sufficient to negate the identification of Jesus with the LORD, particularly in light of the other subtle ways Mark makes this identification.

JRDK: We now invite you, the avid reader, to jump in. I will say no more except to voice my tremendous pleasure at Rodrigo poking fun of me about the whole passiblity thing.

What’s In the Name of the Lord?

March 15, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 33 Comments

What difference does it make for our understanding of NT Christology that the κύριος (“Lord”) language from the OT, the translation of YHWH, is applied to Jesus in the New?

It is highly significant. It wraps up Jesus into the identity of YHWH. And it tells us nothing about whether the NT writers thought Jesus was “divine” in the sense of either pre-existent or sharer in the godhead in a binitarian or proto-Trinitarian sort of fashion.

To take one example: in Peter’s sermon at Pentecost in Acts 2, he both cites Joel 2 which refers to being saved by calling on the name of YHWH and also then refers to Jesus as the Lord upon whose name one must call in order to be saved. Is Luke’s point, in part, that Jesus is YHWH?

Three points argue heavily against this.

First, the sermon itself consistently and sharply distinguishes between Jesus and God. “Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him.” Jesus is a human who acts as God’s agent on the earth. This is God’s doing, bringing about the signs and wonders promised by Joel–but through a human agent.

Similarly, when speaking of the resurrection this sermon (like Paul, Hebrews, etc.) speaks of God as the agent of the man Jesus’ resurrection: “This Jesus God raised up… having received the Spirit from the Father, he has poured this out…” The sermon indicates that Jesus is a human through whom God is acting.

Second, the sermon indicates clearly that becoming Lord (κύριος) is something that happens to Jesus at his resurrection: “Let the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” The claim of the entire sermon is that Jesus’ being Lord (κύριος) is a change that takes place in Jesus, not something that was always true or is simply shown to be true at the resurrection. Again, Luke is in step with Paul here (see Romans 1:4, 1 Cor 15).

Third, the OT has several perfectly good categories for YHWH’s name being placed on people or places. The story of the biblical God is the story of a God who wraps his identity up with those who represent Him on the earth. One example is found in Daniel 9. In the prophet’s prayer for restoration from exile, this is the means by which he strives to motivate God to act: “O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God, because your city and your people are called by your name.”

God has placed his name on a people. God has placed his name on a city. This means that YHWH’s fate on the earth, YHWH’s standing before the nations, is tied to what happens to those humans and that geopolitical entity to which YHWH has chosen to bind himself.

What does this mean for Jesus? It means that a major set of data in the NT that speaks to the question of Christology should be reframing how we think about what it means to be the human(s) entrusted to represent the reign of God to the earth. It means that the NT writers are inviting us to see that Jesus is the man upon whom God has placed his name and staked his identity, as he did to the kings, people, and nation of old.

It means to be called “Christian” is to bear the name of the name-bearer, and therefore to be charged to carry the mission of God, as God’s ambassador, to the ends of the earth.

The Only True God

March 8, 2010 in Book Reviews with 8 Comments

This weekend I was able to finish reading James McGrath‘s The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context.

The book explores the extent to which, if any, early Christian monotheism is a “Christological monotheism”. Did the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus cause a redefinition of “the only true God” in the time period represented by the New Testament documents?

McGrath answers no.

The exegetical forays focus on indications that Jesus was treated as God in Paul, John, and Revelation. In short, McGrath avers that early Judaism had a category of agency that explains the God-language applied to Jesus without requiring a redefinition of God himself. “The one sent is as the sender.”

In developing its argument, the book helpfully discloses many assertions about Jesus’ divinity as question-begging. “Is Jesus being depicted as God?” “Yes, because early Christians depict him doing x, y, and z and Christians treatign him as m, n, and o.” “Indeed, but the question is, does being depicted doing x, y, and z, or treating Jesus as m, n, and o truly entail a redefinition of the identity of God such that this second person is included within it?”

Too often, the idea that God does the action, or is the recipient of such devotion, is insufficiently weighed against depictions of other creatures, agents of God, being put in the same positions in other early Jewish works without compromising or transforming early Jewish monotheism.

At very least, McGrath has shown that many recent studies have failed to answer the question. And often, he has provided a more compelling reading that does better justice to the texts at hand.

One important piece of evidence that needs to be seriously weighed is the apparent absence of conflict over Christian depictions of God. That is to say, monotheism itself does not seem to be a point of dispute between Jews and Christians in the first century, which would seem to indicate that Christians are not depicting God in a way that Jews find inherently offensive.

The Gospel of John is the most likely place to go to find counter-indications to this general rule. But McGrath argues that the point of Jesus’ conflicts in John is that he is making himself to be this representative of God, not that such a representative might exist at all. McGrath is able to point to Jesus”s own clear subordination of himself to the Father.

But what of the logos who is God? Here, McGrath uses the helpful analogy of a river. For early Jews, and he argues for Christians in the first century as well, the logos formed a boundary between God and humanity in the way that a river does: touching both sides, but perhaps with the hard line between Creator and creatures falling between God and the logos, when that eventually had to be drawn, rather than between humanity and the logos. The early creeds drew the boundary on the other side of the river, such that the intermediary logos belongs within the creator himself.

In all, the book makes compelling arguments. I thought that the chapter on Revelation was the least amenable to the thesis being advanced. In general, the notion that sacrificial worship is the dividing line between God and God’s emissaries serves McGrath well, but Revelation seems to come quite close to breaking through it. On the other hand, much of what is true of the Lamb is true of the saints as well–including that people come and bow down before both. So there is more to be said here.

In all, this is a timely and important book. It provides an alternative construal of the data than one finds in Hurtato, Bauckham, Wright, etc. and can in no way be ignored in the ongoing discussions of New Testament Christology. Go get it. Or, if you’re poor, tell your library to order it for you.

Things a Human would NEVER Get to Do…

March 1, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 4 Comments

Of course, for all that humans might be involved with God’s work on earth, we know that there are some things a human would never get to do. If a person were worshiped alongside YHWH, that person would be tantamount to God. And if a person were to sit on YHWH’s heavenly throne (Bauckham) that person would be sitting depicted as YHWH himself, right?

Right!

Unless, of course, you’re the ideal king of Israel, as Solomon was to the Chronicler:

20 Then David said to the whole assembly, “Bless the LORD your God.” And all the assembly blessed the LORD, the God of their ancestors, and bowed their heads and prostrated themselves before the LORD and the king (KJV: and bowed down their heads, and worshipped the LORD, and the king.). 21 On the next day they offered sacrifices and burnt offerings to the LORD, a thousand bulls, a thousand rams, and a thousand lambs, with their libations, and sacrifices in abundance for all Israel; 22 and they ate and drank before the LORD on that day with great joy. They made David’s son Solomon king a second time; they anointed him as the LORD’s prince, and Zadok as priest. 23 Then Solomon sat on the throne of the LORD, succeeding his father David as king; he prospered, and all Israel obeyed him.  (1Ch 29:1 NRS, HT, James McGrath, The Only True God)

I know what you’re gonna say: they just bowed down according to the NRSV, they didn’t “worship” both. Yeah. In the temple. Bowed down and bowed down (ויקדו וישתחוו).

They bow before both YHWH and his king, the king takes his seat on YHWH’s throne and thereby begins to represent YHWH’s rule to the earth–and mediate the world’s worship to YHWH.

“Kiss the son,” indeed.

My point, as in all such rants, is to highlight the importance of recognizing that Jesus’ vocation to rule the world on God’s behalf is as much about Jesus’ being human as it is about Jesus’ being God. While both are true, our anthropology and christology are both impoverished if we skip too lightly past Jesus’ calling to be The Man.

Is Jesus Being Treated Like God?

February 11, 2010 in Bible Thoughts, Uncategorized with 24 Comments

As NT scholars rev up their Christological engines, one common line of discussion is whether, and to what extent, Jesus is treated like God in various passages.

In one famous essay, David Yeago argues that Paul’s use of Isa 45 in Phil 2 is a clear indication that Paul was making the same “judgment” about Jesus that the later councils would, namely, that Jesus is God. Isa 45 speaks of the God who will not share his glory with another, of Israel’s God YHWH before whom every knee will bow. Thus, to apply such a henotheistic verse to Jesus is to write Jesus into the identity of Israel’s God–by which one should mean, “Is himself truly God.”

This type of argument is fairly common, so I take this as an illustration.

It seems to me that such an argument only succeeds because it neglects one crucial piece of Old Testament data: that the Davidic kings and Israel are both similarly attached to the identity of Israel’s God without any indication that they are ontologically divine.

Is the God of Isa 45 truly unwilling to have a knee bow before anyone other than Himself? The writer of Isa 45 didn’t seem to think so:

The wealth of Egypt and the merchandise of Ethiopia,*
and the Sabeans, tall of stature,
shall come over to you and be yours,
they shall follow you;
they shall come over in chains and bow down to you.
They will make supplication to you, saying,
‘God is with you alone, and there is no other;
there is no god besides him.’

Of course, this “bowing” before Israel is not the same as the “bowing” in worship of God. But, the point still holds: God is represented on earth by a people. That people is to the nations as God is to Israel. God’s story is so bound together with the narrative of Israel that for Israel’s name to be glorified is for YHWH’s name to be glorified. For Israel’s name to be derided is for YHWH’s name to be derided.

No, YHWH will not share His glory; but, in the words of Isaiah 46, Israel is YHWH’s glory.

So what does the “identity” between Jesus and God tell us?

The first thing it tells us is that Jesus is the singular embodiment of Adam, Israel, and Davidic King. He is the human through whom the name and glory of God is known. Because this is so, our response to Jesus is our response to God, even as the ancients’ response to Israel and the Davidic kings was their response to YHWH.

A second pass at such passages as Isa 45′ use in Phil 2, one that takes into account the high christology of the later NT and early church, can then see divine identity in a way that impinges on onotology–even if that was not the theology of the NT writer himself. (Phil 2 is just an example here, the case for a high Christology there is stronger than, say, the Synoptic Gospels and Acts, though J. Dunn makes a fantastic argument in favor of Adam Christology in Phil 2.)

The point? To say, “Identified with God” is not yet to say, “Divine in his very being.” It is, first and foremost, to say, “God’s human representative on earth.”

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