Book Review: The Pre-existent Son

I have finally finished reading Simon Gathercole's new book, The Pre-existent Son: Recovering the Christologies of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. First, let me summarize Gathercole's argument in the book. It basically proceeds in the following orderly fashion:

His Argument
1. In chapter 1, he reviews the majority position of biblical scholarship that Paul's writings and Hebrews already believe in Christ's pre-existence. He extends the discussion into Jude.

2. In chapter 2, he shows how exalted and how much power and authority Jesus has in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Here he is not arguing that this authority proves Jesus' pre-existence, only that it certainly fits with a heavenly background for Jesus. It does not prove pre-existence but fits with it.

3. In chapters 3 through 7, Gathercole gives his signature argument for the book, namely, that the "I have come" statements in the synoptic gospels are best understood as statements of movement from x to y for a purpose. Further, that the only really appropriate location of x is in heaven, meaning that Jesus is saying that he has come from heaven for the purposes he sets out. The train of thought basically amounts to this:

a. Previous explanations for the "I have come" statements don't work (chapter 4).

b. The closest background parallels are when angels say they have come from heaven for some particular purpose (chapter 5).

c. Signature chapter: I have come from heaven... (chapter 6).

d. Chapter seven then suggests that if this is true, then comments about Jesus being sent would have the same connotation, even though in themselves they don't prove pre-existence.

4. The rest of the book then warms down. Chapters 8 and 9 critique the path that most scholars have taken previously to argue for pre-existence in the synoptics, namely, some identification of Christ with pre-existent wisdom.

a. In chapter 8 Gathercole dismisses most of the arguments that Matthew identifies Jesus with pre-existent wisdom. These commonly made past arguments see Matthew drawing from images in Sirach and editing Q in various ways. Simon questions these commonly made arguments.

b. In chapter 9, then, he does see a strong implication of pre-existence in Matthew 23:37: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem ... how often have I desired to gather your children..." In order for Jesus to have often tried to gather Jerusalem's children, he would have to have been around throughout Israel's history.

Simon is also sympathetic to the idea that Luke-Acts is well on its way to considering Jesus to be the logos.

5. In the final argument chapters of the book, chapters 10-13, Simon goes through the titles of "Christ," "Anatole" (rising or growth), "Lord," "Son of Man," and "Son of God," to see what light they might or might not shed on the pre-existence question.

a. In chapter 10, Simon rightly looks at a key passage, Mark 12:35-37, where Jesus asks how David can call the Christ "Lord" if in fact the Christ is David's son. He also thinks that when Luke 1:78-79 speaks of the Anatole coming from "on high," this probably means that Jesus came from heaven. Zechariah seems to use the term in a way Luke would have taken messianically.

b. In chapter 11, Gathercole is less certain that the term Lord indicates pre-existence in the synoptics. He does raise a question that has predominantly been raised in German scholarship. When the gospel writers quote conversations like Psalm 110:1 (the LORD said to my Lord) and Isaiah 40 ("Behold I am sending my messenger"), they are picturing conversations between God and Jesus. If so, they would be conversations had before Jesus came to earth and thus pre-existence conversations.

c. In chapter 12, Simon looks at the "Son of Man" title, which of course brings Daniel 7:13 into the discussion, as well as passages from 1 Enoch and 4 Ezra. As elsewhere, Simon believes that the idea of the coming of the Son of Man points to his coming from heaven. Perhaps more significantly, he points to various background literature like the Similitudes of Enoch and 4 Ezra where the Son of Man seems to pre-exist in heaven. Especially in Matthew, this might imply pre-existence.

d. Chapter 13 then finally addresses the "Son of God" title. As before, he finds the sending of the Son as the clearest indication of pre-existence, and particularly brings in the parable of the wicked tenants as an indication of this where the land owner finally sends his only son. But Gathercole does see an incredibly exalted divine identification between Christ and God in the Son title, particularly in Matthew 11:27.

6. In chapter 14 and the conclusion, Gathercole addresses contemporary theological debate, notably Karl-Josef Kuschel's Born Before All Time and Robert Jenson's Systematic Theology. He believes that contrary to the majority opinion, the pre-existence of Jesus is a significant element in the theologies of the synoptic writers.

Evaluation:
1. First, I want to commend Simon thoroughly for his command of the literature, particularly German scholarship. All NT scholars are supposed to be competent in German and French. But probably the majority just skirt by. Not Simon! His mastery of German scholarship is exemplary and runs the gamut.

2. The early argument of the book is that Paul sees Jesus as pre-existent and thus why wouldn't the later gospel writers do so? This is a good argument. I myself don't think the pre-existence of Christ plays as great a role as Simon thinks it does in Paul's writings or Hebrews. It is usually evoked in poetic contexts where the language seems somewhat figurative. But the argument is very strong that Philippians 2:6-7 imply the literal, personal pre-existence of Jesus, so Simon's argument here probably stands.

3. However, I find the "lay of the land" curious in terms of what Simon accepts as pointing to pre-existence and what doesn't. He rejects many of the arguments previously used, only to offer arguments that I find less convincing in many cases.

So I find the idea that Matthew has a wisdom Christology compelling (arguments relating to Sirach, Q, the book of Wisdom, and the Similitudes of Enoch), while Simon seems to downplay this idea. I wonder if the reason is because a wisdom Christology plays fairly easily into a more figurative sense of pre-existence, while Simon is arguing for a strongly literal sense of pre-existence. So I wonder if he downplays this line of argument for this reason.

4. Simon places the bulk of his argumentation in the idea that when Jesus says "I have come," he is using an idiom whose closest background is the visitation of angels and that he implies he is coming from somewhere, with heaven as the best option.

I have several questions about this argument. First, I don't think Simon allows enough (at least in writing) for a mixture of senses for this phrase. So, Jeremias saw an Aramaic idiom behind the phrase. Others see it as Jesus coming from Nazareth or Capernaum. Perhaps these suggestions do not explain all the occurrences, but they might apply to some.

Second, I'm not sure that the statement "I have come" need imply much thought at all about where a person has come from. We would criticize those medieval theologians who asked who the ransom of Christ's death was paid to. This was overreading the metaphor of ransom language. In the same way, I believe Simon has many passages where Jesus says "I have come" because he has asked a question these statements were not meant to answer.

This relates to my fourth point below, namely, that I believe Simon has a literalistic bias that leads him to underestimate the poetic and metaphorical depth of some of this material. I find particularly bizarre that scholarship that sees pre-existence in the way certain OT texts are brought to bear on Jesus' life. To me this takes beautiful and subtle literary allusions and echoes and makes them flatly literal. A. T. Hanson, admired by Gathercole, was in my opinion an English equivalent to those German scholars who have this bizarre line of thinking. Do we really suppose that Paul thought the rock that followed Israel was literally Christ? What does that even mean?

Third, I believe one of the weaknesses of German scholarship has perennially been its tendency to insist we find the meaning of words and phrases in some background corpus--so called "parallelomania." The Kittel generation chronically committed the overload fallacy and I'm not convinced that Simon hasn't caught the disease in a weak form.

Most of the examples of angelic coming that Gathercole mentions post-date the NT. And to compare the "visits" of an angel (a few minutes?) with the visit of Jesus (thirty-three years) seems a bit of a stretch, to say the least.

Fourthly, Simon seems to take the most pertinent "I have come" statements in a strongly realistic way without even considering other possibilities. On the one hand, he claims to be addressing the question of what the synoptic writers believed. For obvious reasons, he does not want to stake any of his argument on what the historical Jesus himself might have thought or said about himself.

Yet the hidden assumption of his "I have come" argument is that even within the narratives of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the "I have come" statements are meant to be statements of physical coming in one way or another. But what if some of the times when the synoptic writers present Jesus as saying, "I have come," the authors are really not making statements of Jesus movement through space but making poetic, theological statements about who Jesus is and of their understanding of Jesus' significance?

Thus Simon assumes that Matthew means us to take "Oh Jerusalem, Jerusalem, ... how often have I wanted to gather you..." as a geo-spatial statement made by Jesus--even if a Matthean rather than historical Jesus. Simon has argued against the conclusion I lean more toward, that Matthew might mean this comment as a picture of Jesus speaking as God's wisdom for Israel. This would make sense if Simon is wrong about Matthew thinking of Jesus as God's wisdom for Israel. I personally am not convinced that Simon has the right understanding of Matthew's intention in such comments. I wonder if he has read some of these statements too narrowly.

4. On the other hand, to me, the strongest arguments for Jesus' literal pre-existence in the synoptics are not the "I have come" statements but a) the "how can the Messiah be David's son" passage, b) the Transfiguration, and c) Son of Man tradition.

a) It is hard to know what Jesus means when he asks how the Messiah can be David's Son when David calls him Lord, that is, unless this is a statement of pre-existence. Jesus could of course just be playing with their minds. But pre-existence is a strong possibility too. We won't want to take Bultmann's suggestion that Jesus really wasn't descended from David and that this was a defense of how he could be Messiah and yet be of Galilean descent.

b) The transfiguration certainly points to a heavenly identity beyond Jesus' earthly appearance. The question is whether it is looking foward to the resurrection or implying something pre-existent as well.

c) Finally, 1 Enoch and 4 Ezra both see the Son of Man as pre-existent, although there might be some debate about whether this is really a personal pre-existence. There is also the question of dating. 4 Ezra post-dates all the gospels. The section of 1 Enoch which strongly parallels Matthew, the Similitudes, are not among the fragments at Qumran and thus probably date either to the first century BC or perhaps are even contemporaneous with early Christianity.

Conclusion
I think that much in Simon's argument does not stand scrutiny, but enough does to support his basic conclusion. I do not think that the pre-existence of Christ plays a significant role in the synoptic gospels. But I think it may very well be peaking out of Mark at the transfiguration and in Jesus' question to his opponents. It seems to peak through even more strongly in Matthew, although with strongly figurative wisdom overtones. I find it personally the weakest in Luke-Acts, where I believe it is only present in material taken over from Mark.

But the conclusion is arguably right: the synoptics seem to believe that Jesus was pre-existent in some way. Assuming that Paul understood Jesus' pre-existence as personal pre-existence, then we should also take such pre-existence in the synoptics to be personal pre-existence.