Tag Archive - David

Jesus, God, and Theologial Meandering

April 15, 2011 in Barth Dogmatics Reading, Bible Thoughts with 7 Comments

I love Jesus.

I even love singing Holy, Holy, Holy on Trinity Sunday.

And sometimes you’ll even catch me reflecting seriously on Colossians, and the Son’s involvement in creation–the preexistent One, through whom all things were made. And I’ll think it’s really, really cool.

But the more I listen to theologians work out issues of Christology, the more convinced I am that the profit to be had in studying Jesus is to be found in figuring out what it means that he was human, not trying to explain how it is that he is God.

I’ve had a couple of encounters with theological Christology this week. One was in listening to the most recent Homebrewed Christianity Podcast. This was a phenomenal overview of recent guests, many of whom are working on Christology as progressive theologians. The worst thing about that podcast was that it added about 8 books to my reading list! I recommend listening to it for an orientation in contemporary Christological study, if nothing else.

But like so many studies of Christology, I was struck, perhaps a bit surprised, by the way that Jesus as God somehow sits front and center in all of their work–even as progressive theologians. Perhaps the reason it made such an impression was in part due to the vast number of things we can then say about Jesus, God, and Christianity. In a sense, the game is much more open when Jesus is God than when Jesus was a first century Jewish Galilean.

And in reading Barth on the eternal Son (ยง1.11), I again found myself slogging through material where the most compelling thing he seemed able to say was, “Well, the church said this, so even though it’s not really right, we all have to say it.”

The reason why I found the section so disheartening was that the obsession about how to articulate the son’s deity not only relegated Jesus’ humanness to the background, it also caused Barth to say some things about Jesus as redeemer that were wrong, and to misread any number of biblical passages.

When we’re convinced that the most basic thing there is to say about Jesus is that Jesus Christ is God, we render ourselves incapable of reading much of the New Testament (not to mention OT!), where this divine identity is neither argued for, nor indicated, nor assumed.

The history of Christological debate has framed the question like this: why does Jesus have to be God in order to redeem us? Or, what is the significance of Jesus’ deity for our salvation? The alternatives have been positions where Jesus’ heavenly status is not truly divine or the like.

Missing in all this is the absolutely crucial biblical notion that in order for God’s intentions for humanity, the earth, and the cosmos to be realized, all had to be done by a human entrusted by God to rule the world on God’s behalf.

The redeemer has to be Adam.

The redeemer has to be Israel.

The redeemer has to be David.

The redeemer has to be the son of man, the Human One.

Ignoring this prior necessity, we find ourselves saying foolish things such as, “To be lord, one must be none other than The Lord–the God worshiped by God’s people.” No, to be lord is to be entrusted by God to rule the world on behalf of The Lord: The Lord YHWH speaks to my lord the king saying, You are my son.”

Or, we find ourselves thinking someone is being profound, rather than abusing the text, when they say, “‘Today I have begotten you’ means an eternal generation where every day is today.” No, Psalm 2 means that the king becomes, at coronation, what he was not before–just like the human Jesus becomes at the resurrection ‘son of God’ in a sense that he was not before; i.e., as king of Israel.

In the podcast I listened to last night, one of the theologians they described was working on rearticulating what we need to say about Jesus if we want to say in the 21st century that Jesus is God. That route, it seems to me, is a better way to participate in the Nicene-Chalcedonian tradition than to say as Barth does, “Well, they used this word, nobody liked it then, we don’t know what it means now, but surely they were right in saying this!”

Barth is at his best when he is allowing the biblical narrative to infuse his theology with new life. That wasn’t what I read in his outworking of Jesus Christ (not only Christ, but Jesus!) as eternal son.

But then again, that’s my axe. How did you guys find this section?

David and God

January 10, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 10 Comments

As I set myself to better understanding how Jesus and God are related in the Synoptic Gospels, I ponder in my heart how Israel’s kings of old were spoken of in relation to God.

One of the most basic things to realize is that the king is part of the divine family–perhaps adopted there, perhaps viewed as begotten to new life, but either way the king is the son of God who represents his father to the nation. The king is begotten of God at his enthronement (Psalm 2); he is God’s son and God is his father (2 Samuel 7).

The connection between God and the king is difficult to overstate. Without the king becoming divine in any sense, he is yet the embodiment of God on earth. To rebel against the king is to rebel against God; to honor the king is to maintain YHWH’s favor (Psalm 2).

This also explains the startling language Isaiah 9 uses to describe the king: a child who is called not only wonderful counselor and prince of peace, but even “almighty God” and “everlasting father.” God’s face is known in the face of Israel’s king. Perhaps better: God’s power is known in the reign of God’s own sovereign.

God’s own faithfulness and power (Psalm 89:1-18) is supposed to be made known through the maintenance of David’s line itself as well as the power with which David’s line acts (Psalm 89:19-37). In fact, when this king is spurned, it calls into question YHWH’s own praiseworthiness (89:52). This king is not only God’s son, but rules the world as God alone can do, reigning even over the hostile forces of the sea (89:25). Who is this, that even the winds and the waves obey him? It is the son of God, the king of Israel, the Davidic king.

This king reigns forever. This king is enthroned at the right hand of God. This king is the son of God. And so when the psalmist says to the king, “Your throne, o god, is permanent… You love justice and hate evil, therefore God, your God has anointed you…” the appellation of the title “god” to the king, while startling to us, is well within the purview of Israelite royal theology.

Who is this king? The son of God who rules the world on God’s behalf; the prince who offers sacrifices, the god who sits enthroned at the right hand of the one true and living God and therefore is identified with that God, bearing that God’s name and being, for [all] intents and purposes, the representative of that God upon the earth.

This is how “divine identity christology” works in the Old Testament: the human king bears the identity of God, carrying that name with him in his acts of righteousness or evil, of victory or defeat.

Exorcising Prophet King

January 4, 2011 in Bible Thoughts with 1 Comment

When Jesus goes out to proclaim the good news in Mark’s Gospel, the power of his teaching is immediately put to the test. He is confronted by a man with an unclean spirit. The spirit knows that Jesus is God’s holy one, and fears for his life.

After Jesus expels the demon, the people remark at the power of Jesus’ teaching: even the unclean spirits obey.

I think that there are numerous points of OT resonance with this passage, perhaps something about Jesus exercising the God-given task of speaking for God that Adam abdicated in the Garden, for one thing.

But the language of “holy one of God” and the invitation so often issued in Mark to pursue the answer to the question of Jesus’ identity seems to push in a different direction.

The transition narrative of 1 Samuel tells how God’s Spirit is tied to kingship. The spirit of God had come upon Saul in prophesy and in the might needed to deliver God’s people. And, when Saul turns from God the spirit of God departs, and God sends an evil spirit to take its place.

Rembrant, Saul & David


At the same time as the Spirit departs from Saul, it is bestowed upon David. At the time, David seems to be a court musician for Saul. The songs of spirit-anointed, to-be-king David exorcise the evil spirit that torments the king whom David is destined to replace.

Jesus, it seems, fulfills the role of Davidic kingship as one who is anointed by the Spirit of God to be king over God’s people. In part, this means that as spirit-possessing king, Jesus plays the role of David as it has never been played before: Jesus is the one whose prophetic word has the power even to exorcise tormenting spirits, not merely temporarily, but even eternally.

The King of Nature

July 2, 2010 in Bible Thoughts with 3 Comments

Psalm 89 is a marvelous psalm. Simultaneously it praises God for his greatness and wonder and it sings in praise of what God does for Israel’s king. Ultimately, after singing the wonder of both, it pleads for a restoration of the kingship.

The psalm provides a host of imagery for understanding what it means to be the person anointed to rule the world on God’s behalf.

After praising God for his power in and above the heavens (vv. 5-7), the psalm moves to praise YHWH for his rule over the earth, including the raging sea and its primeval monsters (vv. 8-10). YHWH’s reign is righteous, and his people exalt his righteousness.

But the shift from YHWH to YHWH’s agent comes in vv. 17-18. The glory of YHWH is the strength of his people, he exalts their horn–because Israel’s king and shield belongs to YHWH.

The exposition of kingship begins with David’s election and anointing. And in this there is an identification between YHWH and his king. The story-bound God binds himself to the story of Israel’s king: “my hand shall be established with him; my arm also shall strengthen him.”

The story of YHWH andh is king is to be a story of victory over enemies (vv. 22-24). Because YHWH is the one who strengthens this king, it is YHWH’s name that exalts “the horn” of his anointed.

Then, things get a bit weird.

Apparently, ruling the people of the world isn’t enough. The God who “rules the raging of the sea” (v. 9) is going to set Israel’s king over this part of the world as well: “I will set his hand on the sea and his right hand on the rivers” (v. 25). To reign over the waters of the earth is either to be God or to be God’s anointed representative, the human Davidic king who does what the first people were created to do in Genesis 1: rule the world on God’s behalf.

This king will call God father and will be “the firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth”–again, a human who fulfills the creation-vocation of humanity in Genesis 1. To bear the image of God is to be the child of God (compare Gen 5:1ff) who rules the world on God’s behalf.

I know, I know, I’m so predictable. You know exactly where I’m going with this.

When we turn to the pages of the New Testament, and see Jesus doing things that make us think he’s acting like God, we need to give adequate space for the possibility that, in keeping with the OT expectations of Israel’s king, Jesus is acting like God because he is, in fact, Israel’s king, the fulfillment of God’s purposes for humanity. The point of the nature miracles such as stilling the storm have a perfectly plausible interpretive framework given to us in the OT: the Messiah will be one who rules the world on God’s behalf, and this means all the world. Jesus stilling a storm or walking on water is not an indication that he is divine, but an indication that he is the Messiah.