Friday Review: Bauckham's "Throne of God"

Today I want to reflect on a paper Richard Bauckham gave at a conference in St. Andrews in 1998: "The Throne of God and the Worship of Jesus." It is now a chapter in The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism: Papers from the St. Andrews Conference on the Historical Origins of the Worship of Jesus, edited by Carey Newman, James Davila, and Gladys Lewis.

Let me just say that St. Andrews knows to put on conferences. I don't know any place that does a better job--especially in the light of the location. I was actually present when Bauckham gave this paper (10 years ago next weekend), although I will confess to having a problem sticking with most papers of this sort if I don't have a paper copy in front of me. So I sadly admit that reading this chapter was like hearing it for the first time--except of course that it is quite typical of the other things on monotheism by Bauckham I have interacted with here.

Bauckham's thesis is now very clear to me:

1. YHWH was distinguished from all other supposed gods as a) in a completely different category, even if they might be spiritual forces of some kind, b) this uniqueness had to do with YHWH being the sole Ruler of all things and c) YHWH being the sole Creator of all things and thus d) YHWH alone being the object of worship by all things.

This is a summary out of my head rather than the precise wording of this chapter, but these things for Bauckham constitute the "unique identity of the one God."

2. Among "intermediary figures," we can distinguish figures like wisdom and the logos that are included within God's unique identity and other figures such as exalted patriarchs and angels who were never included within that identity.

3. The exaltation to God's right hand that the early Christians understood through Psalm 110:1, because it associated Christ with God's throne, would have immediately implied to the early Christians, says Bauckham, that Jesus was included within God's unique identity. That would thus mean that he was involved with creation and the rule of all things and could receive the worship afforded the one God.

This train of thought is logical enough, but seems to me to assume too many "musts" based on ideological constructs like "God's unique identity" (which as Bauckham acknowledges is not an expression we actually find in any of these texts).

With regard to the throne of God, the focus of this chapter, Bauckham argues that "the throne of God in the highest heaven became a key symbol of monotheism... While a few traces of other enthroned figures associated with God's rule can be found, the subordination of such figures to God's rule is almost always stressed, while the overwhelming trend of the literature is towards emptying heaven of all thrones except God's" (53).

I can go for that--except I question the word monotheism. As he makes clear in his treatment of MacDonald we mentioned earlier, the word is not a biblical word. It is an Enlightenment word. I would prefer to say that the throne of God in the highest heaven reflects the sole rulership of God over every other being and power among all things.

Let me also say that "the subordination of such figures to God's rule" also jumps out at me given comments in the NT like 1 Cor. 15:28: "When he has done this [put everything under Christ], then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all" and Philippians 2:11, "And every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." These verses clearly subordinate the rulership of Christ to that of God the Father.

As an aside, these verses are "pre-orthodox." They do not yet reflect the full Christian understanding of the persons of the Trinity and their interrelationships. My purposes here are not to deny the orthodox Christian understanding but to ask where Paul was in the flow of revelation given his Jewish/Greco Roman context. Although it is debated among Christians currently, I am quite willing to affirm by faith the orthodox understanding that there is no subordination among the persons of the Godhead. Orthodoxy has generally understood passages like 1 Corinthians 15:28 in the light of Christ's humanity rather than his divinity, a distinction of course that I suspect Paul would not yet be able to understand.

Perhaps the most interesting part of Bauckham's paper are his discussions of three possible exceptions to his claim that only God can be on the throne.

1. Wisdom on the Throne
Here Bauckham looks at 1 Enoch 84 (from the Dream Visions) and Wisdom 9. Bauckham is right to see these as completely coherent with "monotheism." These are clearly personifications of God's wisdom.

The alternative to Bauckham sees the path to protological language about Christ through the path of wisdom and word. Psalm 110:1 places Christ at God's right hand--"wisdom" is at God's right hand--Christ embodies the meaning, the logos, of creation and is the instrument of new creation--equation of Christ with God's wisdom and logos. Philippians 2 remains the strongest argument against this perspective, in my opinion.

2. Moses on the Throne
Bauckham here treats Ezekiel the Tragedian's (ca. 200BC) placement of Moses on God's throne over all things. His reading seems plausible enough to me. Exegesis of Exodus, influenced by Genesis, leads to this image. The key passage is Exodus 7:1, where God tells Moses, "I will make you god to Pharaoh." Thus the metaphor of Moses on God's throne is God making Moses god to the universe. But it is not really God's throne but an image relating to Moses in relation to the Egyptians.

This picture does not violate "monotheism" because Moses is clearly subordinated to God's rule and in fact rules for God. His placement on God's throne makes us a little uncomfortable, but it is within the parameters of God's sole rule. I like Bauckham's interpretation, but Ezekiel T still puts Moses relative to God's rule on the throne of all things.

3. Son of Man in the Parables of Enoch
By far the most interesting parallel is the Son of Man in the Parables of Enoch. The Son of Man is seated on the divine throne over all things and judges the world. "All those who dwell on the earth will fall and worship before him" (48.5). Bauckham says this is the "exception which proves the rule" (60).

But the problem is that this is Bauckham's rule. How is it not rather the "evidence that undermines his paradigm"? I don't think anyone questions that the Son of Man here is subordinated to the Ancient of Days. But apparently it was okay for such a figure to mediate God's rule.

Further, worship itself is an ambiguous concept. It was appropriate to "bow the knee" to a king, which is one of the words for worship. It is not clear to me that Bauckham or Hurtado have in any way demonstrated that Jewish thought could not accommodate "bowing the knee" to a ruler of all things who was clearly subordinated to the Ruler of all things.

Bauckham has called an exception one of the clearest parallels to the NT in Jewish literature on this topic. I'm a little puzzled that Bauckham distances Matthew 25 from these passages in the Parables. It reminds me of Simon Gathercole's distancing of Sirach and wisdom passages from Matthew. In both cases I suspect that interpreter bias is the ultimate cause rather than an inductive reading of the evidence.