NAW Durham 4 -- Teaching Christology in Cranmer

Continued from last week
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I remembered that the first year of my doctoral program I also waded through L.K.K. Dey's Intermediate Patterns of Perfection in Philo and Hebrews (1975). I didn't feel like I learned much of anything about Hebrews, but it was a baptism by fire into Philo. 

25. I've mentioned that Cranmer Hall in the 1990s was an Anglican training school in partnership with the Wesley Study Centre. I'm having trouble ironing out all the details. John Pritchard had just come as the Warden of Cranmer Hall, and a man by the name of Philip was over the Wesley Study Centre.

On faculty was Bruce Longenecker in New Testament, Robert Fyall for Old. I attended his United Reformed Church while I lived in Durham, and he performed a ceremony for Angie and me in 1998 there. The church was evangelical in the British sense.

Michael Vasey taught liturgy. He published a book called Strangers and Friends during my time there. I believe Robert Song came during my second year as an ethics professor. In 1999 he would join the main Department of Theology. A woman named Liz taught theology. I haven't been able to pull up her last name yet.

I was privileged to be in England when the Anglican Church first ordained women (1994). I don't think Liz was in the first group, but I suspect she was ordained in York in May of that year. I seem to remember us sending her off as she got on the bus to leave. I jokingly made some stupid remark about not being sure that ordination was actually in the New Testament. She said, "Maybe, but I don't want to think about it since I've waited so long for this to happen."

I feel confident that the elements of the previous paragraph are true. I'm just not entirely sure about the combination. The first woman to be a bishop in the Church of England (Libby Lane) graduated from Cranmer the spring before I arrived. [1]

26. It seems to me that, in the fall of 1993, Cranmer was lacking someone to teach theology. So it became a team effort. I was privileged to be asked to cover Christology. There is something implicit about the thinking of the leaders to ask a Biblehead to teach the theology of Christ. It seems to assume that theology is more or less what the Bible says--or should be--which is far from how theology is often approached.

I was mindful of this distinction, although I also indulged myself. I believe there is a gap between the Bible and Chalcedon. My recent reading of Jesus Wars by Philip Jenkens has overwhelmingly confirmed that, unless one has a very strong sense of Providence, the path from the Bible to Nicaea and Chalcedon will seem little more than petty humans fighting each other--often literally.

I believe I gave three lectures. The first was on the quest for the historical Jesus. The second dealt with Pauline and early New Testament Christology. I believe the third focused more on John. Philip and Fiona Richardson were students then. We have kept in contact over the years. They have faithfully served as OMS missionaries over the years.

27. I spent a fair amount of time researching for this teaching. Apart from the New Testament Survey teaching I did for Midway College, it was really my first time teaching Bible. And I was privileged to do it on a high level. Don't get me wrong. I loved teaching Bible at IWU. But this was more like teaching for Notre Dame. 

I used N. T. Wright's sense of the "third quest" for the historical Jesus to frame that lecture. The first quest ended with Albert Schweitzer. Many of the portraits of Jesus in the 1800s were some mixture of antisupernaturalist and romantic. David Strauss threw down the gauntlet of myth. Source criticism whittled Jesus down to Mark and then Wrede took that away. 

Meanwhile, Schweitzer dubbed Jesus an apocalyptic stranger, a foreigner to what we want in a Jesus. Then comes Barth and Bultmann. Stop the quest! It's the Christ of faith that is important, not the Jesus of history. The quest seems to stop for a few decades.

Then comes the New Quest, launched by Ernst Kasemann. Maybe we can know a few things about the historical Jesus. Maybe he is relevant. The criteria come into play: dissimilarity, multiple attestation, coherence. Edward Schillebeeckx writes a 700 page book on Jesus with only a handful of certain sayings from Jesus. The Jesus Seminar perhaps culminates this era with its red letter Bible -- sayings of Jesus in red that came from him, pink if quite possibly, gray if probably not, and black if certainly not.

28. N. T. Wright spoke the third quest into existence. The "Jesus the Jew" quest. He pinned its beginnings to Geza Vermes' Jesus the Jew, The Aims of Jesus by Ben Meyer, Jesus and the Constraints of History by A. E. Harvey, and E. P. Sanders' Jesus and Judaism.

What Wright said distinguished it was the attempt to show the continuity between Judaism-Jesus-and Christianity rather than the dissimilarity. Going for dissimilarity gives you a small subset of what Jesus likely said and did. Wright aimed to find "double similarity."

I was quite enamored with Wright in those days. I couldn't wait for his Jesus and the Victory of God to come out. By the time it finally came out in 1996 I had moved on. But I did find the notion of the contraints of history and E. P. Sanders' approach to Jesus quite helpful. I met Wright in Durham at a conference in 1995. More on that later.

Over the years, I have given a paper for the Historical Jesus (1999) and Q Sections (2000) at SBL. Both had to do with Jewish afterlife traditions. Tom Wright came up after the historical Jesus paper and asked me for a copy. I like to think that it helped inspire some of his thoughts for the early sections of Jesus and the Resurrection of the Son of God. I never finished the work that all that afterlife research was headed toward. More on that later.

There have been some notable points over the years. John Meier's Marginal Jesus series was spectacular, I thought. Dale Allison's Constructing Jesus was a fine volume in its approach that asked more about the kinds of things Jesus certainly said and did rather than specific things. Dunn's Jesus Remembered I also found quite helpful, building off of some of the insights of Kenneth Bailey on oral tradition. 

I managed to drive over to United Theological Seminary when Chris Keith and Anthony LeDonne blew up the quest. The conference volume was published as Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity (2012). Now there's a volume out called The Next Quest for the Historical Jesus also edited by Chris Keith with James Crossley joining in.

29. I'm sure that my next two lectures in Cranmer were thoroughly influenced by Dunn's Christology in the Making. The standard model for approaching New Testament Christology in those days focused on Christological titles. I spent a fair amount of time researching the title Son of Man. Maurice Casey's book From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God had come out in 1992.

There is currently a Waterstone's on Saddler Street that was a prize during my time in Durham. I believe it was a Dillon's back then, but it had a superb used theological section. I bought many biblical studies classics there during my time at Durham.

It's hard to remember where I took my thoughts on the Son of Man. Casey had written a book on the title in 1979. Barnabas Lindars came out with one in 1985. I have Douglas Hare's 1990 volume in my library to this day, but I don't remember being particularly impressed with it. Nor was I impressed with Casey's "I'm just a guy" conclusion.

Somewhere, I synthesized three main uses in the Gospels: 1) self-referential, 2) in relation to Jesus' sufering, and 3) in relation to a Daniel 7 apocalyptic figure. The fact that only Jesus uses the title in the Gospels seems to be strong evidence that he did in fact use the title.

So I played a little hooky from my own dissertation in order to fill in gaps in my knowledge of New Testament Christology. It probably wasn't entirely as much learning as a US doctoral seminar would have given me, but I enjoyed it very much.

[1] I should note that there is some resemblance of Bishop Libby Lane to the Liz of my memory, and Bishop Lane's first name is Elizabeth. But the only way that could have worked was if she commuted back from Blackburn to teach, which seems very unlikely.

Notes Along the Way TF7 -- Diverse Traditions in the New Testament

continued from the previous post
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1. Knowing that I was going to Durham, I began to dive more into James Dunn's writing. I will have a hard time remembering when I learned which aspects of his thinking. When he passed in 2020, I did a series walking through his writings in twelve posts. That was when I still had an office at work and at home, and all my books were readily accessible. I have been living in book purgatory since 2021.

Sadly, my copy of Unity and Diversity in the New Testament seems to be in storage, along with Christology in the Making. I started working through the first in anticipation of Durham. I must have worked through the second at least by my first year there.

Unity and Diversity was eye-opening. For obvious reasons, Asbury focused extensively on the literary text of the Bible. Inductive Bible Study at Asbury excelled at the skill of observation of the text. I would tell my students for decades that these skills could enable them to critique world class scholars because of the attention to the text it cultivated.

Scholars sometimes fall into the trap of "parallelomania." You know a parallel from some obscure piece of ancient literature and you connect it to the biblical text. But of course it doesn't matter whether you know some obscure bit of text from the Talmud if it isn't likely to have had any connection with the biblical text.

Perhaps there has been an occasion or two in the past where a scholar has known too much. For example, Philo says in Embassy to Gaius that the emperor Caligula was mistaken to think that the "form of God" could so easily be counterfeited (110). Could Paul have known this when he said that Jesus emptied himself of the "form of God" (Phil. 2:6)? [1]

Probably not. But knowing these sorts of parallels has sparked many a creative theory.

Of course, with the internet, it has become more and more possible for individuals with no real sense of the relationships between documents to imagine completely impossible connections. The 1978 book, When God Was a Woman, is a good example of someone who knew a lot of parallels, but wasn't trained to be able to tell the difference between similarity and dependence.

2. So, while Asbury had done a spectacular job of teaching me how to observe the "world within the text," as Ricoeur put it, there was a tendency to flatten it. In other words, my background had been heavy on the unity of the text but not so strong on its diversity.

Dunn's book was quite the opposite. By the time he was "done," it felt like the unity he saw was fairly slim. But it was good to balance out the extremes of my own background. The biggest unity was the centrality of the death and resurrection of Jesus. 

To be frank, there is something suspicious about the fact that various groups have electric fences that forbid you from drawing certain conclusions. If we are really interested in the truth, if the truth is what God thinks, then we would want to follow the evidence to its most likely conclusion most of the time.

England was a breath of fresh air in that regard. All opinions were treated with respect (sometimes I thought outlandish ones). The point was whether you could argue cogently for your positions, not what your positions were.

3. I'll talk more about Christology in a moment. What struck me was the concept of different social groups within the early church. Jewish Christianity. Hellenistic Christianity. Apocalyptic Christianity. Early Catholicism. I find these far too blunt of instruments now, but it was a fairly new concept to me then. [2]

I had never thought of there being creeds, hymns, and other traditions lurking in the New Testament. I had little sense of the tensions between the theologies of the Gospels or the other parts of the New Testament. And the sense that there were different ecclesiologies among different early Christian communities was a completely new thought. 

4. Christology in the Making was even more impactful. Basic understandings that I have of key Christological titles like "Son of God" and "Lord" flowed naturally from his thorough and "scientific" investigations of the text. Principally, he made it very clear that these titles found their locus in the resurrection of Jesus and were royal titles.

[As a side note, Dr. Wang at Asbury had first introduced the question of the timing of "Son of God" in Romans class. What did Paul mean in Romans 1:3 when he said Jesus was "declared to be the Son of God in power by the resurrection of the dead"? Wang emphasized the "in power" qualifier.]

Dunn was not unusual for the 60s and 70s to see the development of early Christology as a movement from resurrection to incarnation, from Paul to John. In 1988, Larry Hurtado would start a trend that continues to this day among many if not most scholars. Hurtado argued that a "high" Christology was present before any of the New Testament writings were written, present there in Paul.

Perhaps Dunn's most controversial claim in Christology is that the Philippian hymn did not refer to the pre-existence of Jesus. On this interpretation, Dunn has definitely proved to be in the minority, although less so when he first proposed it. He argued that the Philippian hymn of 2:6-11 was an Adamic Christology. Like Adam, Dunn argued, Jesus was in the image of God. But unlike Adam, who grasped at equality with God, Christ did not grasp. [3]

Few have gone with Dunn for this interpretation. I remember a brief conversation with Bruce Longenecker about Dunn's Christology (Bruce also studied with Dunn). He said he didn't feel the need to follow Dunn on that score anymore. 

But I found most of the book persuasive. And, indeed, I suspect there is much less pre-existence in Paul than many think. (I remember thinking his treatment of 1 Corinthians 15 was brilliant.) I always have found it refreshing when someone has been able to show me where I was unaware of the glasses I was wearing. Dunn opened my eyes to a third dimension to the Bible. 

What I'm talking about is the transition from reading the Bible from the standpoint of the story in the Bible to reading the books of the Bible in the story of history. This is basically what Hans Frei talked about in the first chapter of The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative. The pre-modern reader reads inside the text. The "modernist" reader sees the biblical texts as moments in history. 

It's the difference between thinking the Gospels must be first because they are about Jesus (who came first), to realizing that the Gospels were written after Paul's writings, probably in the order Mark, Matthew, Luke, John. It's realizing that, as far as its dating is concerned, it doesn't matter if Job pictures the patriarchal period. When a book is written has almost nothing to do with what it's written about.

This is more of learning how to read the Bible in context.

[1] Larry Hurtado explored this on his blog in 2017 before he passed.

[2] I later found John Meier and Raymond Brown's, Jerusalem and Antioch much more helpful (Paulist, 1983). They suggest four groups as I recall: Jerusalem Christianity, Pauline Christianity, Judaizers, and Libertines.

[3] N. T. Wright had what was to be a very confusing examination of the possibilities in a chapter of his The Climax of the Covenant. I was enamored with Wright in those days for a couple years. In retrospect, I would love to rewrite that chapter for him to make it clearer.

Dunn's Christology in the Making (4)

For the last three days I have been reflecting on a different book by Jimmy Dunn, who passed on Friday. Here are the books so far:

1. The Evidence for Jesus (1985)
2. Baptism in the Holy Spirit (1970)
3. Unity and Diversity in the New Testament (1977)

On the fourth day of Jimmy, his writing gave to us, Christology in the Making: An Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation, whose first edition came out in 1980.

1. Once again, Dunn somehow managed to write a book to which anyone writing on Christology would have to refer. A lot of people disagreed with key parts of it, but you had to engage it. Not that Dunn did this, but if you have a unique, perhaps controversial position, if you defend it really well, then everyone will quote you, refer to you, ask you to appear on panels, write chapters in compilations, etc.

Growing up, I might have just assumed that the disciples knew Jesus was the pre-existent divine second person of the Trinity from the start. Without thinking, I would have referred to Moses and David as Christians--the question wouldn't have occurred to me of how you could be a Christian if you'd never heard of Christ because he hasn't come yet.

If you'd have asked me at 20, I would have assumed (though I had never asked the question) that the disciples had a full knowledge of Jesus' divinity from the moment of his resurrection. There are indeed many scholars right now who would say that's not far off. We might call those scholars the "early high Christology club." That may actually be the majority of scholars right now.

2. Dunn did not take that position. Dunn was in the "late, low, and slow" Christology camp, as David Capes has described him. Dunn believed that the initial Christology of the earliest Christians was not unlike the Jewish groups that would come to be seen as heretics in the second century, groups like the Ebionites. He thus saw the worship of Jesus and the divinity of Jesus as an understanding that did not really blossom until the late first century. The Gospel of John for Dunn was thus the end of a decades long development of Christological thinking.

Here we should point out that this perspective was very common among biblical scholars of the mid-twentieth century. In that sense, Dunn might perhaps be seen as one of the old guard who lived to see the work of Larry Hurtado and Richard Bauckham win the hearts of the next generation. Who knows if the endless sinusoidal wave of scholarship will eventually swing back in the other direction.

It is an intriguing question for those of us who believe in both the full humanity and divinity of Christ. "What did Jesus know and when did he know it?" Mark 13:32 seems to indicate that Jesus did not access his omniscience when he was on earth. So when did he come to know he was the Messiah? At his baptism? Presumably he did not come out of the womb speaking fluent Aramaic. When did he realize he was the second person of the Trinity? After the crucifixion?

3. There are arguably many insights to be had from this book, many of which I have passed along to my students these last 23 years. When you consider chapters two (The Son of God) and three (The Son of Man), I have consistently taught my classes that their initial impressions of these expressions are likely to be different from those of the New Testament audiences. Son of God might suggest to us that Jesus was fully God. Son of Man might suggest to us that Jesus was fully human.

Of course we believe he was. But Dunn rightly raises the question, "What would those who first used this language about Jesus expect their hearers and readers to understand by the phrase?" (13). For example, Son of God was a royal title. If you look at Old Testament texts like Psalm 2, they were originally about human kings. This is true even of Psalm 45, which flat out called the human king "God" as it celebrated his wedding.

Dunn details the difference between Jesus' sonship in the Synoptic Gospels and John. "In the Johannine writings the divine sonship of Jesus is grounded in his pre-existence" (58). Contrast this fact with the earliest New Testament writings, where "the resurrection of Jesus was regarded as of central significance in determining his divine sonship" (35).

The model of development that Dunn concludes was not unique to him. He unfolds a scenario where the earliest Christians identified the locus of Jesus' sonship with his resurrection, with passages like Acts 13:33, Romans 1:3, and Hebrews 1:5 in view. Correlate this with Jesus' Lordship also finding its focus in the resurrection (Acts 2:25; Phil. 2:11; Rom. 5:9).

Then in Matthew he sees Jesus' divine sonship brought back to Jesus' birth. Then in Hebrews and John it is brought back to Jesus' pre-existence. In all this he considers John a later development (thus late and slow high Christology). "The style is consistent in John... and so consistently different from the Synoptics that it can hardly be other than a Johannine literary product" (30).

I might add that, whether Dunn is correct or not, the question of whether a high Christology is correct is a different question from when the church came to fully understand it. Those of us who are Nicaean Christians believe a high Christology is correct. This can be true whether the earliest Christians immediately understood so or whether it took a few decades for all the lights to come on. The biblical texts can obviously be read in terms of a high Christology whatever might have been in the bubbles above their author's heads.

4. "Son of Man" similarly takes on some different connotations when you know some of its background. The term at least at some points alludes to Daniel 7:13, where one light a "son of man" comes riding on the clouds to the earth in judgment. It can thus be a fairly exalted referent.

Now Dunn's book has a bit of evidence that early twentieth century scholar Rudolf Bultmann did not have in his early career. [1] The parts of 1 Enoch that speak of a heavenly Son of Man were not found at Qumran among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Dunn leans toward dating this part of 1 Enoch, the Similitudes, to the late first century. He thus attributes those parts of the Gospels that think of Jesus as the heavenly Son of Man to a time decades later than Jesus. Accordingly, he does not see Jesus' self-referential use of the expression "Son of Man" as an indication that Jesus believed he was pre-existent.

5. One of Dunn's most distinctive positions comes in chapter 4. I don't know of any prominent New Testament scholars who have followed him on his "last Adam" interpretation of the Philippian hymn of Philippians 2:6-11. However, he shows us how there can be different interpretations of a text whose meaning seems obvious to us. Sometimes what is obvious to us is as much a matter of our inherited "glasses" as what we are actually seeing.

Dunn takes the logic of the hymn to be, "Although Jesus was the image of God (like Adam), he did not consider equality with God something to try to grasp (unlike Adam)..." On this approach, the hymn need say nothing of Jesus' pre-existence at all. It can be read as a statement that "Jesus is the last Adam" who did not repeat Adam's failure.

This is probably not the logic of the hymn, but it is darn clever. :-)

I will say that Dunn does give what I think are some penetrating interpretations of other passages that probably do allude to Adam or allude to Adam in a way that does not imply pre-existence. Both here and later in his Romans commentary, Dunn gives a persuasive interpretation of Romans 3:23 as all humanity lacking the glory of God than was intended for Adam a la Psalm 8. And I find quite convincing that 1 Corinthians 15:47 is not about incarnation, but resurrection.

Indeed let me say that Dunn provides in this chapter what is to me convincing exegesis in every instance except Philippians 2. This suggests that we are prone to see the pre-existence of Christ in many passages because of the hindsight of the Gospel of John rather than from careful exegesis of these passages in context. Paul's Christology, one might argue, was far more oriented around the resurrection than the incarnation.

6. It is with allusions to Jesus as the wisdom of God that Dunn finally sees the pre-existence of Christ entering into early Christian thinking. At first he would see such language as somewhat metaphorical. Yes, 1 Corinthians 8:6 speaks of Christ as the one "through whom God made all things," but Dunn thought this was an identification of Jesus with "the creative power and action of God" (182). Similarly, he interpreted Colossians 1:15 and Hebrews 1 to think of Jesus as "the eschatological embodiment of the wisdom of God" (211).

Dunn thus concludes that "the earliest christology to embrace the idea of pre-existence in the NT is Wisdom christology" (209). But he did not believe Paul, Matthew, or Hebrews understood this language literally in relation to Jesus as a person. He was hardly alone at that time to think such things. Eduard Schweizer in 1959 wrote that "The idea of the pre-existence of Jesus came to Paul through Wisdom speculation" (163).

7. We thus reach chapter 7 and the background of the Logos, the Word of God. The Gospel of John gives us the clearest expression of the pre-existence of Christ in the New Testament. And we are not surprised to find that a number of pages in this chapter are devoted to Philo.

From the Joseph Beth bookmark still in this book, it's clear I read a good deal of it before I went to England. Philo appears throughout the pages of this book. No doubt my interest in Philo was significantly piqued by this book. It was here that I was introduced to someone I would conclude was quite wrong about Hebrews, L.K.K. Dey. [2]

In the end Dunn reduces the logos in Philo to metaphor: "in the end of the day the Logos seems to be nothing more for Philo than God himself in his approach to man [sic], God himself insofar as he may be known by man" (228). I think Dunn was mostly right here, although I myself would later conclude that there are a few places where this understanding of Philo may fall a little short, especially when Philo is mixing the Pythagorean with the Stoic (cf. Quest on Exod 2.68).

Another reason I suspect Dunn took me on as an advisee was that I played the C.K. Barrett card of a combination of eschatology with Platonism in Hebrews. Throughout Christology and also in Partings, he espouses a view of Hebrews as the wed-ding of these two worldviews. I did not quite end up supporting his interpretation, although perhaps I came closer to him than others.

8. In the end he concludes that it is only really with the Gospel of John that we find full personal pre-existence in the New Testament (thus slow, late, and low). "The author of John 1:1-16 was the first to take that step which no Hellenistic-Jewish author had taken before him, the first to identify the word of God as a particular person... The Fourth Evangelist was the first Christian writer to conceive clearly of the personal pre-existence of the Logos-Son and to present it as a fundamental part of his message" (249).

At the time he wrote, his scheme of development fit the Zeitgeist well, a Christology that started with the resurrection, worked back to the birth, and finally ended with pre-existence in John. In some ways, Dunn was one of the last major proponents of this perspective. In 1988 Larry Hurtado would write, One God, One Lord. Then Richard Bauckham would begin a series of studies that have coalesced in Jesus and the God of Israel.

The early high Christology club currently holds the day.

[1] Bultmann used texts from 1 Enoch, Philo, and elsewhere to synthesize a "Gnostic Redeemer myth." He saw a high Christology as early on the basis of a home-brewed synthesis of background texts. His schema, however, was not unlike the kind of hermeneutical synthesis I described in relation to dispensationalism and nineteenth century entire sanctification--it is a synthesis done from outside these texts looking in rather than exegetically from inside these background texts.

[2] I worked through Dey's monograph my first semester in Durham. Let's just say I learned a lot more about Philo from his book than I did about Hebrews.

5.4.3 The Divinity of Christ

Current chapter:
Chapter 5: Jesus the Christ
5.1 Fully Human, Fully Divine
5.2 The Theology of Jesus of Nazareth
5.3 Jesus is Lord!
5.4 The Development of Christology

5.4.1 Models of Christological Development
5.4.2 The Pre-Existence of Christ

5.4.3 The Divinity of Christ
Christians believe:

1. There is only one God.
2. God the Father is God.
3. Jesus was not the same person as God the Father.
4. Jesus was "ontologically" God.
5. Jesus was not the same person as the Holy Spirit.

1. The first three are easy to demonstrate biblically. We presented the oneness of God earlier under our consideration of the theology of God. Similarly, in the New Testament, it is clear that God the Father is the default reference in relation to the use of the word God, as the examples below demonstrate.

As Christians, we might argue that the Trinity is indicated with any reference to God in the Old Testament, but if so, this is an example progressive understanding. It seems very unlikely that any Old Testament author had any such comprehension. Finally, we will consider the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the other members of the Trinity in a later chapter.

2. It is thus the fourth claim that is most ambiguous in the New Testament. To say that Jesus is "ontologically" God is to say that Christ as a person literally existed from all eternity past as God. As the Nicene Creed states, he was "eternally begotten of the Father... true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance with the Father." This is what historic, orthodox Christians believe.

The opposite approach is to say that Jesus was "functionally" God. That is to say, he did things that are uniquely characteristic of God. This approach might say that Jesus was God's representative on earth or that in some way he was the embodiment of God on earth without actually being of one substance with God. A famous approach of this sort is an adoptionist Christology, considered a heresy early on. In this approach, Jesus becomes God's Son at some point after not having been so before.

3. Before we consider passages to address Jesus as ontologically God, we should look at those passages that clearly distinguish God the Father and Jesus as different persons. Such passages include:

• 1 Corinthians 8:6
• 1 Corinthians 12:3-6
• 1 Corinthians 15:27-28
• 2 Corinthians 13:14
• Ephesians 4:4-6
• 1 Peter 1:2
• Hebrews 2:10
• Matthew 28:18-20

1 Corinthians 15:27-28 is of particular interest, for here God (the Father) subordinates all creation to Christ and then Christ subordinates himself and the creation to God (the Father). This passage is central to debates over hierarchy within the Trinity. On the one hand, historic Christianity has rejected any subordination within the Trinity since the time of Nicaea. [2]

The historic solution to this conundrum is to see the humanity of Jesus as what is subordinated to God here. Exegetically, such an interpretation goes well beyond anything Paul indicates. It is an example of the need to believe by faith that God clarified or made the understanding of the Trinity more precise in the first few centuries of the Church. We simply would not come up with such an interpretation on the basis of the 1 Corinthians text--only through the eyes of later debates. What is clear is that the person of Jesus and the person of God are considered distinct here by Paul.

All of these passages distinguish God (the Father) from Jesus the Son. 1 Corinthians 8:6 says there is "one God" and "one Lord," the first is presumably the Father, the second is obviously Jesus. Ephesians 4:4-6 is also quite clear in distinguishing the "one Lord" from the "one God and Father of us all." Hebrews 2:10 distinguishes God (the Father) as the one "for whom and through whom everything is" from Jesus as the pioneer of our salvation.

4. There are passages that we believe by faith that God used as seeds to lead the Church to full-blown Nicaean faith. The Gospel of John was especially key in this regard. On the one hand, the New Testament authors clearly understood Jesus to be the Son of God. However, we have seen that this title was, more than anything else, a royal title and susceptible to an adoptionist interpretation.

There are two or three instances where the title Lord might be taken to identify Jesus with YHWH in the Old Testament. If the "name above every name" in Philippians 2:9 is "Lord" in 2:11, then Jesus is given the name YHWH at the point of his exaltation to God's right hand. However, again here, the giving of the name at a particular moment is susceptible to an adoptionist interpretation. [1]

A much more substantial connection between Jesus and YHWH is implied in John 8:58. Here Jesus states that "before Abraham was, I am." This verse seems to equate Jesus with YHWH at the burning bush. We have already seen that the Gospel of John is very explicit about the personal pre-existence of Jesus. John also indicates the oneness of Jesus with God the Father: "I and the Father are one" (10:30). It is not clear that John himself had the full understanding of Nicaea, but these statements emphasize the oneness of Christ with God in a way that goes back "before the worlds began" (John 17:5).

5. A passage that does not contribute to this discussion is the older version of 1 John 5:7-8, still found in the King James and New King James Versions...

6. Romans 9:5 debate...

7. Hebrews 1:8-12 calls Jesus both God and Lord...

8. Titus 2:13...

9. Revelation and the worship of the Lamb... e.g, 1:17-18; 5:8

[1] Richard Bauckham has suggested a similar understanding of "Lord" in Hebrews 1:10, connecting it to the name Jesus inherits in 1:4. However, most see the name as "Son."

[2] The issue has been revived because of the question of hierarchy within the family. However, the two issues are not necessarily connected.

Previous "chapters"
Chapter 1: What is Biblical Theology?
Chapter 2: Theology of God
Chapter 3: Creation and Consummation
Chapter 4: Sin and Atonement
Interlude: A Theology of Israel

5.3 Jesus is Lord!

Current chapter:
Chapter 5: Jesus the Christ
5.1 Fully Human, Fully Divine
5.2 The Theology of Jesus of Nazareth

5.3.1 Jesus is the Messiah
This subsection would dip a little into the background of messianic expectation among Jews. Key background texts include the Dead Sea Scrolls, which looked for both a royal and a priestly "anointed one." Another background text of interest is Psalms of Solomon 18.

How was Jesus seen by those in Israel? Peter gives a list in Mark 8. Herod thought he might be John the Baptist come back from the dead. Most probably saw him as some sort of prophetic figure. Only near the end of his ministry did Peter finally confess him as the "Christ" or "Messiah" in Aramaic. Acts 1:6 depicts them still having an expectation of Jesus restoring Israel as an independent nation, suggesting that this is what they were expecting beforehand.

So the understanding of Jesus as Davidic king likely predated his death, despite Wrede and others. I would need to engage his "messianic secret" argument.

The Last Supper tradition suggests that Jesus foresaw his impending death and that he saw it in sacrificial terms.

5.3.2 Jesus is the Son of Man
The "Son of Man" title is quite curious. It clearly goes back to Jesus, but what did he mean by it? The use of it falls into three categories: a) mere self-reference without any clear messianic overtone (e.g., Luke 9:58), b) sayings that speak of his coming suffering (Mark 8:31), c) exalted Son of Man sayings that look to a heavenly figure coming in judgment (Mark 14:61-62).

Key background texts: Daniel 7:13-14, 1 Enoch 69:27, 29

Jesus' Son of Man language mirrors the messianic secret. It seems most likely that the least theological language was the base. Bultmann once suggested that Jesus spoke of the Son of Man in the third person, meaning that the connection between the Son of Man figure and Jesus may not have been clear until after Jesus' death. Jesus could have used this ambiguity to screen those with faith--"let the one with ears to hear, hear."

5.3.3 Jesus is Lord!
The earliest post-resurrection Christology seems to have centered on Jesus' resurrection and exaltation. The disciples were not expecting Jesus' death (this is a clear inference from Mark's final chapters). Nor do they seem to have anticipated his resurrection (all the resurrection accounts seem to indicate this).

So there is a clear layer of New Testament Christology that focuses Christological titles on the exaltation of Jesus to God's right hand (cf. Dunn, Christology in the Making). Psalm 110:1 seems to have been especially generative in this regard.

• Acts 2:35 - Jesus as Messiah and Lord, "made" so after the resurrection
• Acts 13:33; Rom. 1:3; Heb. 1:5 - Jesus as Son of God, enthroned, connected to Jesus' exaltation
• Rom. 10:9; Phil. 2:6-11 - Jesus as Lord connected to Jesus' resurrection
• Heb 5:9-10 - Jesus as high priest, "perfected" after his sufferings

In short, Jesus resurrection, ascension, exaltation, and session is an enthronement as cosmic Lord, Messiah, and Son of God. Before now, he has been the heir to the throne. Now he sits enthroned as cosmic king.


Previous "chapters"
Chapter 1: What is Biblical Theology?
Chapter 2: Theology of God
Chapter 3: Creation and Consummation
Chapter 4: Sin and Atonement
Interlude: A Theology of Israel

5.1 Fully Human, Fully Divine

1. The central tenets of the Nicene Creed and Chalcedonian definition are that 1) God is three distinct persons but one substance and 2) Jesus is one person with two natures. Further, Jesus' human nature is not trivial. His temptations were real, meaning that there was a genuine tension between his human desires and his divine will.

These positions represent four centuries of Christian debate and discussion about who Jesus actually was. Along the way, the following perspectives at some point were deemed false teachings:

• Docetism/Gnosticism: Believed that Jesus only seemed to be human but did not truly take on human flesh
• Ebionites: Believed Jesus was a prophet but not divine
• Adoptionism: Belief that Jesus was "adopted" as God's Son either at his baptism or resurrection
• Modalism/Sabellianism: Belief that God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit were all one person changing "modes."
• Arianism: Believed that Jesus was the first and most exalted creation but not of one substance with God the Father
• Apollinarism: Belief that Jesus had a human body but a divine mind
• Nestorianism: presented Jesus' humanness and divinity as so distinct that Jesus almost seemed to be two persons
• Eutychianism: considered Christ's humanity as so insignificant that Jesus might just as well only have one nature (monophysitism)
• Monothelitism: A sense that Jesus only had one will, a divine will

Clearly there was a desire on the part of the early Christians to see Jesus as truly and fully human while also being truly and fully divine.

2. In addition to these dead ends in the deliberations of some four hundred years, we have to take into account the original meanings of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These are our primary sources and indeed, the true centers of a biblical theology of Jesus. To what extent were the conclusions of the early church in continuity with the perspectives of the biblical authors?

There are many points at which the message of the Bible can be true regardless of historical questions. For example, whether Daniel reflects the voice of a sixth century prophet or an anonymous voice from the second century BC, it presents truth. What that truth is may be slightly different because the context turns out to be different. But the truthfulness of the text arguably is not in question.

By contrast, the historical nature of Jesus is material to the truth of Christianity itself. Christianity does not rise or fall on the question of whether the book of Jonah is a novella of sorts or a historical story. But Christianity as we know it is simply not true if Jesus never really existed. If Bultmann were right and Christianity were only a myth of authentic existence, it would not be Christianity any more in any substantial sense.

For these reasons, the historical Jesus matters. From the standpoint of historic Christianity, it matters whether the human Jesus was the second person of the Trinity incarnate. It is not enough to give these texts a theological interpretation that fits with later Christian orthodoxy. There must be a historical foundation here that supports that orthodoxy.

3. Quick overview of source criticism of the Gospels

• Most scholars have concluded that Mark was the first of the four Gospels.
• Most scholars have concluded that Matthew used Mark as its primary source. Matthew must then have some other source as well, especially for a lot of Jesus' teaching.
• The idea of a source of Jesus' sayings (often called Q) remains common, although this hypothesis has lost a great deal of ground. I continue to think that Papias' description of the Gospel of Matthew sounds more like Q than the Greek Gospel of Matthew we have.
• Luke is thought to have used Mark as a source and then either a) Q as well, the traditional view, b) Matthew and Mark, the Goodacre view, or c) Matthew, Mark, and Q (my hunch).
• The reason why Goodacre has not convinced me is that Luke's versions of many sayings, as well as its distributed packaging of the sayings, seems less edited than Matthew's. 
• John is clearly a Gospel of a different color. Unlike the Synoptics it has no exorcisms, no parables, is filled with signs when Mark says Jesus will give none, doesn't mention the temptation, doesn't say the Last Supper is a Passover meal, proclaims Jesus' identity openly as opposed to keeping it a secret, doesn't talk much about the kingdom of God or the final judgment, emphasizes faith in Jesus himself while the other Gospels focus more on faith in the good news of God's kingdom, etc.
• Clement of Alexandria called John a "spiritual Gospel." It is clearly far more symbolic in its presentation of Jesus than the other Gospels.

4. Jesus' Divine Attributes
I would suggest the following negotiation of orthodoxy with the biblical texts to form a biblical theology of Jesus that is both orthodox and yet exegetically justifiable:

• Jesus "presented" as a real human being. In other words, in his early life he did not present as omniscient, omnipotent, or omnipresent. Mark 13:32 unashamedly indicates that the early Jesus did not know the day of his own return.
• The understanding of Jesus developed over time in the decades after his death. The Gospel of John reflects a more advanced understanding than we find anywhere else in the New Testament. This fact confirms that Jesus "presented" as a true human.
• Yet a kenotic approach is technically unorthodox. Jesus cannot be of one substance with the Father and cease to have any of his divine attributes. Therefore, we must conclude that Jesus had omniscience while on earth but did not use it. He was omnipotent but did not use his power.
• There is much to commend a view that Jesus relied on the Holy Spirit while on earth in order to show us both what true humanity is and what is possible for all humanity through the power of the Holy Spirit. This approach fits with very common NT language that speaks of God doing things through Jesus rather than speaking of Jesus himself doing them.

Previous "chapters"
Chapter 1: What is Biblical Theology?
Chapter 2: Theology of God
Chapter 3: Creation and Consummation
Chapter 4: Sin and Atonement
Interlude: A Theology of Israel

Wesleyan-Arminian Reflections on Christ and Salvation

Here are now the links to my reflections on the first two parts of my ongoing series on theology from a Wesleyan-Arminian perspective. These are in my "theology in bullet points" series. I'm almost ready to self-publish Part 1. Part 2 is now finished as of today. I'll start the final section next Sunday.

Part 1: God and Creation
God and Creation

Part 2: Christ and Salvation
The Doctrine of Christ (Christology)
1. Christ has been the Son of God from eternity past.
2. Jesus is "God with us," God's Word become flesh.
3. Jesus on earth was a prophet of the kingdom of God.
4. In his death, Jesus became the priest of all humanity and creation.
5. In his resurrection, Jesus became the king of all humanity and creation.

The Doctrine of Atonement 
1. God chose Christ's death as the means to reconcile the world to himself.
2. In his death, Jesus showed us the love of God.
3. In his death, Jesus satisfied the order of things.
4. In his death, Jesus took humanity's place.
5. In his death, Jesus defeated the power of death.

The Doctrine of Salvation (soteriology)
1. Jesus saves.
2. Saving us is part of God's plan.
3. God was reaching out for us long before we knew it.
4. God used Israel to prepare the way for Christ.
5. God justifies us in response to our repentance and faith.
6. God fills us with his Holy Spirit as a seal of ownership.
7. God adopts us as his children: we are born to new life.
8. The power of the Spirit breaks the power of Sin.
9. The dead in Christ will rise.
10. Christ will come again to save his people and judge the world.
11. God will restore the world and we will enjoy him forever.

Wesleyan-Arminian Reflections on Atonement

Here's now links to my reflections on atonement from a Wesleyan-Arminian perspective. These are in my "theology in bullet points" series.

Part 1: God and Creation
God and Creation

Part 2: Christ and Salvation
The Doctrine of Christ (Christology)
1. Christ has been the Son of God from eternity past.
2. Jesus is "God with us," God's Word become flesh.
3. Jesus on earth was a prophet of the kingdom of God.
4. In his death, Jesus became the priest of all humanity and creation.
5. In his resurrection, Jesus became the king of all humanity and creation.

The Doctrine of Atonement 
1. God chose Christ's death as the means to reconcile the world to himself.
2. In his death, Jesus showed us the love of God.
3. In his death, Jesus satisfied the order of things.
4. In his death, Jesus took humanity's place.
5. In his death, Jesus defeated the power of death.

Wesleyan-Arminian Reflections on Christology

As I get ready to start the posts on atonement tomorrow, I thought I would summarize where I have been so far in my "theology in bullet points" series.

Posts on God and Creation (I'm currently editing these for self-publication)

Now on to volume 2:
The Doctrine of Christ (Christology)
1. Christ has been the Son of God from eternity past.
2. Jesus is "God with us," God's Word become flesh.
3. Jesus on earth was a prophet of the kingdom of God.
4. In his death, Jesus became the priest of all humanity and creation.
5. In his resurrection, Jesus became the king of all humanity and creation.

C5. In his resurrection, Jesus became the king of all humanity and creation.

This is now the fifth post in a series on Christology, in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first set had to do with God and Creation.
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In his resurrection, Jesus became the king of all humanity and creation.

Jesus took on flesh as a prophet of the kingdom. In his death he became priest to reconcile humanity and the creation to God. In his resurrection, ascension, and exaltation to God's right hand, God has enthroned him to his proper place as king of the universe.

The Apostle's Creed says, "On the third day he rose again from the dead. He ascended into heaven and is seated on the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From there he will come to judge the living and the dead."

1. The climax of almost all the sermons of Acts is the statement that, "God raised him from the dead" (e.g., Acts 2:24). For Acts, the resurrection is the key event in the story of the restoration of all things, and Acts connects Jesus' resurrection with is immediate enthronement as king of all things.

It is interesting that Acts words the resurrection in terms of God raising Jesus, rather than Jesus simply rising himself. Paul also refers to Jesus' resurrection in this way, either in terms of God raising him (e.g., Rom. 4:24) or passively of Jesus being raised by God (e.g., Rom. 8:34). This observation points to what we have said before, namely, that in his humanity, Jesus played it by the human rules. What he did on earth is what the Spirit can do through us. And just as God raised him from the dead, so also we have the hope of being raised from the dead (e.g., 1 Cor. 6:14).

In Jesus' own day, God raising him from the dead vindicated Jesus' message and identity. It indicated that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, the promised and expected king of Israel. Many had suspected this truth while he was alive, but Jesus did not function as king while he was on earth, even if some wanted to make him king (e.g., John 6:15). Near the end of his earthly ministry, Peter privately got him to confirm that he was in fact the Messiah (Mark 8:27-30).

One of the reasons Jesus may have kept this identity somewhat secret is because it was not his purpose while he was on earth to function as king. Similarly, from a Christian perspective, the final goal of his earthly mission was his death on the cross. But death contradicted the normal expectations of a Messiah for the Jews of his day. To announce his kingship publicly would have been counterproductive to his ultimate purposes. [1]

The word Messiah, like its Greek translation, Christ, means "anointed one." More than one role in Israel involved this sort of anointing with oil, but the specific function in view here is that of anointed king. This was of course always part of God's plan. Jesus was always the heir apparent to the throne. But, properly speaking, Jesus did not function as Messiah while he was on earth.

2. The ascension is narrated in Acts 1:9-11. He leaves the earth in the sight of his disciples and goes to the highest sky where God's presence is. He "has passed through the heavens" (Heb. 4:14).

To be sure, we do not picture the universe the way that people did at the time of Christ. They pictured a series of skies, layers of heaven (the same word means both heaven and sky) as you went up from the earth. God was in the highest heaven, the highest layer of sky. We now see the earth going around the sun in just one of millions of solar systems in one of millions of galaxies.

So where did Jesus ascend to? [2] If God created the universe out of nothing, as Christians now believe, then the heaven of God's ultimate presence is not in this universe. We frankly do not know enough to say whether there is a distinct heaven within this universe to which Jesus physically ascended. The New Testament teaches that Jesus retains his body and Christianity teaches that he will retain his glorified body forever, just as we will.

It is always possible that Jesus ascension was more for the benefit of the disciples, Jesus meeting them in their ancient worldview, than a true exit into space. Perhaps, once he was clear of their sight, he disappeared into whatever other dimension "heaven" is in.

3. Jesus sat on the right hand of God. We call this seating the session of Jesus. His seating indicates that atonement is accomplished. It also indicates that his enthronement is now complete. Before his resurrection and exaltation to God's right hand, Jesus was the one destined to be king. After he sits at God's right hand, he is now acting as God's king.

A significant strand relays this sense of Jesus being exalted as Lord Messiah after his resurrection.

• "Therefore, God has highly exalted him and graced him with the Name above every name... that every knee should bow and every tongue confess... that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father" (Phil. 2:9-11). [3]
• "God raised this Jesus from the dead... Therefore, having been exalted to the right hand of God... he poured out this Spirit... Therefore, let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ" (Acts 2:32-33, 36).
• "If you confess with your mouth, 'Jesus is Lord,' and have faith in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved" (Rom. 10:9).
• "Christ sat on the right hand of Majesty in the heavens, having become as much greater than the angels as the name he has inherited is greater than theirs. For to which of the angels has he ever said at any time, 'You are my Son, today I have given you birth'" (Heb. 1:3-5).
• "God has fulfilled this [promise] to us, his children [Israel], when he raised Jesus, as it is written in the second psalm, 'You are my Son, today I have given you birth'" (Acts 13:33).      

All these passages suggest that the titles "Christ," "Lord," and even "Son of God" were all originally royal titles associated with Jesus' enthronement at God's right hand immediately following his resurrection and exaltation to God's right hand. He sits and receives his throne. [4]

4. Paul at various points connects Jesus resurrection to various aspects of salvation:

• "Jesus was handed over because of our transgressions. He was raised for our justification" (Rom. 4:25).
• "God caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead" (1 Pet. 1:3).

Later articles will explore the nature of salvation. These verses allude to two aspects of our ultimate salvation. Justification is our acquittal in relation to the legal charges against us because of our wrongdoing, our "transgressions." Jesus' resurrection indicates that he has taken care of those charges with his own death. It also relates to the fact that as our lawyer he is now arguing our case at God's right hand (cf. 1 John 2:1).

Another article will later explore the fact that our own resurrection from the dead will be patterned after the resurrection of Jesus. "Just as we have born the image of the earthly man [Adam], we will also bear the image of the heavenly" (1 Cor. 15:49). The fact that God raised Jesus from the dead gives us the hope that God will also raise us one day" (e.g., 2 Cor. 4:14).

God has already, through the power of the Spirit, raised us out of our sin and into a newness of life (Rom. 6:4). At least Paul suggests that is the way it is supposed to be. We all know, as Paul did, that there are plenty of believers whose lives include sinful actions. But it is not supposed to be that way. God urges us not to "let Sin rule in our mortal bodies" (Rom. 6:12).

6. Jesus' reign has begun. The kingdom has commenced. But the kingdom is not fully implemented.

We call this an "inaugurated eschatology." The kingdom is inaugurated. Christ's rule has begun. "Christ has died. Christ has risen." But there is a third part. "Christ will come again."

When Christ returns, his kingdom will come to earth, as it is in heaven. "Of the increase of his government, there will be no end" (Isa. 9:6). He will return with his angels to judge the earth (2 Thess. 1:7) and then he will establish his reign on the earth (Rev. 20:1-6). Then he will turn the kingdom over to God the Father for all eternity (1 Cor. 15:28).

Next week: A1. God chose Christ's death as the means to reconcile the world to himself.

[1] Because Jesus did not access his omniscience while he was on earth, we have to speculate about when he really sensed his identity and destiny while he was on earth. Was it, for example, at his baptism that he realized that he was the promised king?

[2] Leaving out the question of whether these are dramatic portrayals on Luke's part rather than literal ones.

[3] My translation. I am leaving out portions of these hymn-like verses to make the train of thought clear. Many think Paul may be quoting and amplifying an existing hymn or poem. I personally wonder if the parts I have omitted are Pauline amplifications of it, along with a line that I have retained, "to the glory of God the Father."

It seems likely that the original hymn in some way connected the Name of God in the Old Testament to Jesus, namely, YHWH, which is generally translated as "Lord" in Greek. The exaltation of Jesus is thus very high indeed here indeed, far beyond his already high initial status of "being in the form of God" (Phil. 2:6).

[4] There is no reason to insist that these be literal actions, that Jesus literally sat down on some literal seat. We get the point. Jesus' kingship is now inaugurated.

C4. In his death, Jesus became the priest of all humanity and creation

This is now the fourth post in a series on Christology, in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first set had to do with God and Creation.
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In his death, Jesus became the priest of all humanity and creation.

1. So the first office of Christ that we considered was that of prophet. Now we consider his office as priest. [1]

We might argue that Jesus was priest before his death, but clearly the focal work of Jesus as priest took place on the day that he died on the cross. It was on this day that he accomplished atonement, which is to make up for some wrong done by way of an offering. Atonement has to do with making amends and thus with reconciliation between a human and God.

The means of atonement is some sort of offering or sacrifice to God. The background here are the countless animal sacrifices that were made in the ancient world to appease the gods, to make them happy and to diminish their anger. In the Old Testament, the book of Leviticus gives instructions to the priests of Israel on how to make sacrifices to God, some of which were done to give him thanks and praise rather than to appease his wrath.

2 The New Testament book of Hebrews suggests that these sacrifices were never intended to actually work (Heb. 10:1-4). Hebrews indicates that the sacrifices of Leviticus were foreshadowings of the one effectual sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.

This is a significant point because there is a tendency to overplay Hebrews 9:22, which says that there can be no forgiveness for sins without blood. Yet Hebrews clearly indicates that none of the blood of the Old Testament Law actually did take away sin. And the one blood sacrifice that did take away sin--that of Jesus--ended the need for any further blood sacrifice: "By one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy" (Heb. 10:14).

In other words, there has only been one effectual blood sacrifice in all of human history, and its consequence was to end the need for any blood sacrifice.

There are two basic ways to take this startling claim, that none of the Old Testament sacrifices actually did anything. The first is the traditional way, namely, that all those millions of animal sacrifices in the ancient world were elementary school lessons God instituted to get humanity ready to understand the death of Jesus. The problem here, of course, is that none of the people offering them actually got the point until the first century AD. In this case, the object lesson of a million sacrifices basically went to naught.

The other interpretation seems more likely. It might not deny that God fully allowed, perhaps even directed the origins of animal sacrifice. It is easy enough to argue that animal sacrifice corresponded to a deeply felt need on the part of humanity to be reconciled to God, not to mention some primal sense that such reconciliation merited sacrifices of immense proportions. Certainly God allowed the practice to arise, whether he planted the idea or not.

The question is how important this practice was to God. Was this practice essential for God or useful to God.

In the Old Testament, God used the prevalent practice of animal sacrifice to set Israel on a course toward Christ. But, of course, sacrifices had been around for thousands and thousands of years before Israel. The first approach places a strong emphasis on the need for sacrifice (even though they were completely ineffectual, according to Hebrews). The second suggests more that God used a practice that pointed toward certain truths rather than it being necessary or essential.

We may see this dynamic of "using" common religious practices in the sanctuaries of Israel. The sanctuary of Israel was not unlike the sanctuaries of other ancients. Again, it is easy enough to see how the notion of holiness would arise naturally as humanity contemplated proximity to God. It makes perfect sense that, as you came in closer and closer proximity to a god, the space would become more and more sanctified (made holy), to where only certain people would be allowed in closest proximity.

But in the second perspective, which I hold, God uses these notions in order to do away with them. "The Most High does not live in houses made by human hands" (Acts 7:48). God allows practices to arise that embody the fundamental human need for God. He uses them until Christ comes to provide true reconciliation. Then those practices of sacrifice in sanctuary by priest are no longer needed. The reality those practices embodied and foreshadowed is accomplished.

3. This is the argument of Hebrews. Christian tradition had considered Christ's death as a sacrifice from the very beginning. Indeed, it is quite possible that Jesus himself suggested this metaphor even before his death, at the Last Supper (cf. Luke 22:19-20).

When Romans 8:34 says that Christ sits at God's right hand interceding for us, it likely refers to Jesus serving as a priest for us, although Paul does not use the word priest here. But some Christian has clearly extended Christ's role beyond that of being the sacrifice to being a priest as well.

This trajectory becomes full blown in the New Testament sermon we call Hebrews. Hebrews not only considers Jesus the sacrifice. It not only considers Jesus a priest. It considers Jesus the priest who offers himself as a sacrifice. Several images of sacrificial atonement from the Old Testament are brought together to see Christ as the priest to end all priests.

The most powerful of these images is Christ as the high priest, like the earthly high priests of Leviticus who went into the Most Holy Place in the earthly sanctuary one day a year on the Day of Atonement (cf. Lev. 16). Christ is now the true priest who is the reality to which all other human priests have ever pointed. He is a "priest after the order of Melchizedek" (Heb. 7), an order of priests superior to the Levitical priests.

His death is the true, effective sacrifice, in contrast to all other sacrifices in history (cf. Heb. 10:1-4). He enters heaven itself (Heb. 9:24), the true sanctuary (Heb. 8:1-2), rather than some earthly shadow or sketch (cf. Heb. 8:5).

4. Therefore, when we say that Christ holds the office of priest, we are saying that he is the one mediator between God and humanity (cf. 1 Tim. 2:5). "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me" (John 14:6).

We will discuss the atonement of Christ in more detail in a later article. For now we want to point out that Christ is the one who offered himself as the sacrifice to end all sacrifices, the definitive means of reconciliation between God and the creation. "Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved" (Acts 4:12). Again, we will explore the nature of salvation more extensively in later articles.

No human priest is therefore necessary, although God does have ministers of reconciliation such as Paul was (cf. 2 Cor. 5:18). No human priest or pastor is necessary, but they may very well be helpful and useful. Indeed, God has appointed his Church to be a "kingdom of priests" for the world (cf. 1 Pet. 2:9; cf. Exod. 19:6).

Meanwhile, Christ sits at the right hand of God as intercessor for us (Rom. 8:34). We probably should understand the focus here to be intercession for our atonement rather than the more general intercession that the Holy Spirit does for us (cf. Rom. 8:26). Hebrews 4:14-16 captures this role of intercession for our forgiveness well:

"Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need."

In his death, Jesus became the priest of all humanity and the creation, the only effective mediator between humanity and God.

Next week: C5. In his resurrection, Jesus became the king of all humanity and creation.

[1] These offices, in my opinion, all relate to things that Jesus did and events in Jesus' mission. We most literally understand these offices as metaphors for his work, rather than his work being a function of his offices. The offices are abstractions of the events in Christ's life and mission. 

C3. Jesus on earth was a prophet of the kingdom of God.

This is now the third post in a series on Christology, in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first set had to do with God and Creation.
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Jesus on earth was a prophet of the kingdom of God.

1. It is characteristic to speak of the person of Christ, and then also of the work of Christ. The previous two articles have presented the person of Christ, namely, the fact that he was fully God and fully human. No view of Christ that does injustice either to his humanity or his divinity is appropriate.

With this article we move toward considering the "work" of Christ as we consider three "offices" or roles that Christ played and plays in relation to the world. The three "offices" of Christ relate to three titles he has. Christ is prophet. He is priest. And he is king. [1] This article discusses Christ as prophet.

On earth, Jesus was a prophet of the kingdom of God. A prophet is a messenger from God who delivers God's word to his people. It seems likely that the two primary ways in which the people of Judah and Galilee understood Jesus while he was on earth was as a prophet and as the Christ. We will look at Jesus as Christ under the office of king. While some thought of him in this way while he was on earth, it was probably not the primary way.

The primary way in which Jesus was probably understood while he was on earth was as a prophet. So when Jesus raised a young man from the dead at Nain, the immediate reaction of the mother is to say that, "A great prophet has appeared among us," and, "God has come to help his people" (Luke 7:16).

And Jesus did proclaim the coming kingdom of God, a word from God to the people of God. "Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. 'The time has come,' he said. 'The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!'" (Mark 1:14-15). Jesus was a prophet to Israel of the coming kingdom of God.

Of course, a strand of the New Testament also connects Jesus to the "prophet like Moses" in Deuteronomy 18:14-16. In Acts 3, Peter indicates that Jesus was indeed the prophet like Moses to whom God's people should listen. Jesus is not just a prophet. He is the prophet, the one who brings the definitive message from God. As such, we see this role blur into the office of priest (for the definitive message involves final atonement) and the office of king (for Moses had royal overtones).

For the earliest Christians and the New Testament authors, Jesus also fulfilled the prophecies of the Old Testament. One of the most frequently used Scripture in the New Testament is Psalm 110:1, "The LORD says to my Lord, 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.'" From passages like Acts 2:33-35, we see that the earliest Christians connected this verse to the resurrection, when Jesus is enthroned as king.

The earliest Christians saw in many other passages key truths and events in the life of Jesus. For example, Isaiah 53 gives us a classic text Christians read in relation to the meaning of Jesus' death (e.g., Acts 8:30-35). In our discussion of Jesus as priest, we will consider other ways in which Jesus may fulfill the Old Testament.

2. In the past, some have distinguished between the Christ of faith and the Jesus of history. The idea here is that the "historical Jesus," Jesus as we would have observed him if we were there on the hills of Galilee, and the Jesus portrayed in the New Testament and the Jesus in which the Church believes, may not have been exactly the same.

A comparison of the Gospels does show that there are questions to be raised about differences between the accounts, as well as the way in which the Gospel writers may have told the story in a way that brought out their special themes and emphases. In that sense, the so called "quest for the historical Jesus" is an understandable quest. Some will see the difference largely as one of perspective. Others will see the difference as much more significant.

3. In our discussion of the incarnation, we might have discussed the humanity of Jesus more extensively. We did discuss the sense that, while he was on earth, Jesus played it by the human rules. That is to say, he chose to do the miraculous and extraordinary things he did through the power of the Holy Spirit rather than by his power as the second person of the Trinity, in order to show what true humanity can do. He did not operate by his intrinsic omniscience or omnipotence while he was on earth, but lived under the power of the Holy Spirit, as we also can.

When we think of Jesus as a prophet, we are also thinking of him serving in a fully human role, a role that other humans have served in the past and that, arguably, in which humans continue to serve today. [2] In this article, we want to pursue just a little further the manner of Jesus' incarnation, the way in which he took on human flesh.

Here let us suggest that Jesus did not assume or take on "generic" humanity but he took on "particular" humanity. That is to say, Jesus did not come to earth as "everyman" but as a specific man. In a profound way, Jesus came to earth as an individual, not as a universal.

It will help to give some specific examples. Jesus did not come as a Roman or an Egyptian. He came as a Jew. Jesus did not come as a male and a female. He came as a male.

Could God have come to earth as a Chinese person? Certainly he could have. It is just that he did not prepare his coming with that culture as the background story. Israel deserves a certain honor as the people through whom he came to earth, but they are not better than any other people for this reason. In fact, you might argue that God chose a small, powerless people in order to show his own greatness (Deut. 7:7).

Similarly, Jesus did not come to earth as a man because men are better than woman. Indeed, I would argue theologically that Jesus could just as well have come to earth as a woman. But, at least from our normal understanding, he had to pick a gender in the incarnation, and given the patriarchal nature of the ancient world, it made most sense in terms of his mission for him to come as a man.

Jesus came as a Galilean, a seemingly odd choice. Galilee was not in any way central to Israel, let alone to the ancient world. Who in the world had even heard of it? In Jesus' coming to earth as a particular human, he identifies with the fact that every human being is a particular human being with unique specifics.

Jesus likely had a specific personality. His personality presumably was not right in the middle between introvert and extrovert, between the concrete and the imaginative, between the thinker and the feeler, between the open-ended personality and the one that wants closure. He did not come as the ideal personality. He came with a specific personality--probably an introvert, a concrete thinker who cared more about people than logic, and someone who in day to day life was probably more about the journey than the destination.

We can dispute one or all of these, but it nevertheless seems true that Jesus came as a specific person, not as every person. In his humanity, Jesus identified with our human particularity without endorsing Jew over Gentile, male over female, Galilean over Judean, introvert over extrovert, and so forth.

4. Jesus was a prophet of the kingdom of God. That is to say, in his earthly mission he preached that the rule of God was soon returning to the earth and that the people of God needed to prepare themselves. The rule of God would involve the restoration of God's people and the judgment of those who were unjust, oppressive, and resistant to his rule.

We see in Jesus' earthly ministry how these dynamics played out. In his healings and miracles, we see the restoration of God's people. In his exorcisms and conflicts with various leaders, we see him preparing the way for the coming judgment. In his teaching, we hear the ethics of the kingdom and how God's people are to relate to each other. In his recruiting of disciples, we see him preparing leadership and establishing citizens of the kingdom.

In his earthly life, he gave us the example to follow, the example of Christ. The slogan, "What would Jesus do?" is a model for us to live in the kingdom in so far as Jesus modeled the love of God and neighbor, the cornerstones of Christian ethics (cf. Matt. 22:34-40). We must of course be careful not to assume that Jesus, the particular man, and Jesus, the man living in a specific situation and culture, are everyman. But we can take the life of Jesus in general as an example of how to live in the time leading up to the kingdom and then in the kingdom itself.

In his death, Jesus makes the final coming of the kingdom possible, and in his resurrection, he is established as its appointed king.

Next week: In his death, Jesus became the priest of all humanity and the creation.

[1] Although the idea of this three-fold office has been around since the early days of Christianity (e.g., Eusebius in the 300s), it was given new life by John Calvin in the Reformation.

[2] Certainly there will never be another prophet like Jesus. Hebrews 1:1-2 says, "In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe." However, the New Testament attests to the fact that there continue to be prophets in the New Testament age (e.g., 1 Corinthians 14).

C2. Jesus is "God with us," God's Word become flesh.

This is now the second post in a series on Christology, in my ongoing series, theology in bullet points. The first set had to do with God and Creation.
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God became a man in the person of Jesus, the Christ.

1. As we saw in the previous article, Christians believe that Jesus has existed from eternity past. He is the "eternally begotten" Son of God. He is a distinct person within the Trinity--he is not God the Father and he is not God the Holy Spirit. But there is only one God and he has the "same substance" (homoousios) as the Father and the Spirit.

So Christians believe that Jesus is fully God, 100% God.

Christians also believe that Jesus became fully human, 100% human. At Nicaea (325) and Constantinople (381), Christians had wrestled with the Trinity. Is Jesus fully God? Once that issue came to rest, Christians turned to the person of Jesus. How could he be human and God at the same time?

There were a number of suggestions made in the years between the "Council of Nicaea" in 325 and the "Council of Chalcedon" in 451. It was at the latter council that the understanding we now have was finalized. So was Jesus one person, both human and divine (the right answer) or was he almost two different people (Nestorianism). Did Jesus have two natures--one human and one divine (the right answer)--or did he pretty much just have a divine nature (Monophysitism).

One man, Apollinaris, suggested that Jesus had a human body but that his soul was divine, made up of the Logos or Word of God. Another, Eutyches, suggested that Jesus' divinity was so vast that his human nature was like a drop in the ocean. So while you might technically say he had two natures, when they got mixed together, his human nature could hardly be found. The Church ultimately rejected both of these suggestions.

2. The official position of Christianity, the position that Christians have more or less held in common since the mid-400s is found in the description of Christ that became official at the Council of Chalcedon in 451. Here is somewhat of a paraphrase of the definition they set down there:

"He is complete in his God-ness and complete in his humanity, truly God and truly man. He has a rational soul and a body. He is of one substance with the Father in relation to his God-ness and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his humanity. He is like us in every respect, except for sin... He is recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation. The distinction of his two natures are not in any way nullified by the union. Rather, the characteristics of each nature are preserved and come together to form one person and subsistence. They are not parted or separated into two persons, but they constitute one and the same Son..."

Again, the other suggestions were not heresies until the Church had come to this common agreement. Before then, we simply had well-meaning Christian leaders trying to make sense of a mysterious idea, namely, that Jesus was somehow both fully human and fully divine. The consensus that emerged was that Jesus was both. He was only one person, but he had a fully human nature and a fully divine nature. Any option that minimizes either his humanity or his divinity is off course.

3. In eternity past, God the Son was entirely divine. John 1:14 speaks of Christ taking on human flesh: "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us." [1] We call this moment of God assuming human flesh the incarnation. The Nicene Creed of 381 puts it this way: "For us humans, and for our salvation, he came down from heaven, and became incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made human." Now, for eternity future, Jesus is both fully divine and fully human.

The word for "made his dwelling" is related to the wilderness tabernacle of the Old Testament (skenoo). It gives us the picture of God's presence wandering through the wilderness with Israel. In the same way, Jesus is "God with us," Immanuel (cf. Matt. 1:23; 28:20).

4. In the New Testament, we occasionally find imagery of Jesus as the Word of God. This language of Jesus as the Logos found its background in Jewish thinking about God's Word, the instrument by which God enacts his will in the world. So God spoke, and the worlds were created.

So it is no surprise that we usually find language of Christ as the agent of creation in New Testament passages that have overtones of the Jewish Logos. Thus John 1:1, 3 say, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made..." Similarly, the "Colossian hymn" of 1:15-16 says, "The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him." [2]

Christians thus frequently speak of Christ as the agent of creation, although some do take this language more to speak of Christ as the ultimate meaning or significance of the creation.

5. The Apostles Creed says that Jesus was "born of the Virgin Mary." The Council of Chalcedon also clarified that Jesus was divine even when he was in the womb. Mary was the "Theotokos" or "God-bearer." The primary purpose of this language was not to exalt Mary but to make clear that Jesus was God even when he was in her womb.

The conception of Jesus by Mary when she was still a virgin has been a key belief of Christianity since before the great "Christological" controversies of the 300s and 400s that we mentioned above. There is technically a difference between the virginal conception and a virgin birth. Roman Catholics believe that Mary remained a virgin anatomically even during childbirth and that she remained a "perpetual virgin" for the rest of her life, never having sexual relations.

However, common Christianity only affirms that Mary was a virgin when she conceived Jesus. When we commonly refer to the virgin birth and confess it in the creeds, we are confessing our faith in the virginal conception of Jesus.

Although the Virgin Birth is a core Christian dogma, it is significant to note what it is not. Jesus was not half man and half God. Therefore, there is no obvious reason why Jesus could not have had a human father and a human mother too and still be fully God. His genes had both an X chromosome (from Mary) and a Y chromosome--which was a human chromosome the Holy Spirit must have created out of nothing. The Spirit did not have sex with Mary and contribute a divine Y chromosome!

This a significant point. The Y chromosome does not contain our sin nature, as if women with their XX genes have no sin nature. The male gene does not contain the sin gene. Therefore, there is no obvious reason why Jesus had to be born of a virgin either to be without sin or to be fully divine. All the same genetics necessary for him to be fully human had to be fully human anyway. Whether the Holy Spirit contributes the adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine--or if Joseph had--these are still fully human molecules.

Our faith in the virgin birth is thus a reflection of our faith in the common Christianity of the centuries and the historicity of this biblical story. Other than giving a sense of Jesus' greatness and the miracle of his entrance, there is no obvious truth about Jesus' nature that the virgin birth makes possible, at least from our current understanding of genetics.

4. If anything, Christians today probably minimize Jesus' humanity and overemphasize his divinity. Like Eutyches, it is common for Christians to have such a high view of Jesus' divinity that he is hardly like us at all. Yet, if diapers had existed in the first century, Jesus would have dirtied them. He had sexual urges, like the rest of us. If he had married, it would not have made him less holy.

Here is an important point and one that fits well within the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition. Is it not likely that Jesus "played by the rules of humanity" while he was on earth? That is to say, it is not likely that Jesus chose to do what he did as a human through the power of the Holy Spirit--the same Spirit who lives in believers today--rather than through his power as the second person of the Trinity?

It is a core Christian belief that Jesus never ceased to be God. We must believe that Jesus, as the divine Son of God, retained all his attributes as God. To that extent, any kenotic theory (from the Greek word for "emptying") that sees Jesus as losing his divinity when he came to earth is unorthodox.

However, it would fully fit with the biblical texts to believe that Jesus set aside in some mysterious way access to his divine powers while he was on earth. So Mark 13:32 indicates that Jesus did not know all things when he was on earth. In some mysterious way, the second person of the Trinity seems to have bracketed many of his divine powers and prerogatives when he came to earth.

So Jesus did not come out of the womb speaking Aramaic, let alone English. He learned it like anyone else. Jesus did not hover through Nazareth but learned to crawl and walk. He was probably not fully aware of his full divinity when he was a child, let alone aware of what would be declared at the Council of Chalcedon.

This is also a mystery but it is the only way to be true both to Scripture and the consensus of Christianity. The Bible does not waver on the full participation of Jesus in humanity. We can plausibly suggest that when the earthly Jesus knew more than other humans, he was relying on the Holy Spirit. When Jesus performed miracles, he was relying on the Holy Spirit.

The special case of Jesus not sinning is perhaps more complicated. Presumably, his divine nature would not have let his human nature fall prey to sin. Yet we can plausibly suggest that he was relying on the Holy Spirit to have the power not to sin, just as we can rely on the Holy Spirit not to sin. Jesus indicates that it is not part of the essence of humanity to have to sin. [3]

So Christians believe that Jesus was fully God and that he came to earth and fully assumed humanity. He became incarnate by the Holy Spirit of the Virgin Mary, and was made human. He is God's word made flesh. He is Immanuel, God with us.

Next week: Jesus on earth was a prophet of the kingdom of God.

[1] You can see where there was plenty of room within what the biblical texts say for someone like Apollinaris to argue for his position. Indeed, Christians probably stopped using language of Jesus as the Word in the late 300s because it was susceptible to interpretations that did not fit with what the Church would finally conclude.

[2] From the perspective of the original meaning, it is difficult to know the extent to which the New Testament authors were being poetic with this language. Nevertheless, we as Christians generally take this language literally today.

[3] And here we are talking about intentional sin. We are not considering mistakes to be sin. It is possible that Jesus made mistakes while he was on earth (e.g., forgetting where he left the donkey), but this is not sin.