It is really clear on a whole range of issues. It’s also really clear on God and really clear on Jesus, and it differentiates between them consistently. It really clearly refers to God as one person, for example, and it really clearly refers to Jesus as a man approved of God, a man through whom God worked.
How would a single clear verse unequivocally distinguishing between the Holy Spirit and the Father prove that the Holy Spirit is a person? I myself distinguish between the Holy Spirit and the Father. I likewise distinguish between my arm and myself; my arm is not me, and I am not my arm. That doesn’t prove my arm is a person.
That sort of reinterpretation seems amazingly confected to explain away this rather clear verse.
25 “I have spoken these things while staying with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and will cause you to remember everything I said to you.
The Father will send the Holy Spirit in Jesus name. This sounds just strangely Trinitarian. Anyways, in Jesus name the Father will send the Holy Spirit. So they’re different persons. That’s the obvious plain meaning of the text. Your interpretation also quite mangles the text – if I simply substitute ‘Spirit of the Father’ (your understanding of the Spirit) with ‘Holy Spirit’ in this text, it would say “The Spirit of the Father, whom the Father will send in my name” – your interpretation will require the Father to send Himself. LOL. I think the plain meaning of the text wins out. I don’t see how you can consider the Spirit and Father the same persons in light of this unequivocally clear verse. Christadelphianism is, let’s be honest, simply one of the tens of thousands of sects of Christianity to pop up in the 18-20th centuries that is highly geographically concentrated in specific areas that has its own list of orthodoxies like all the others and claims to go back to the original disciples. This is why I don’t identify with any sect. The New Testament doesn’t say “Catholic” or “Protestant” or “Mormon” or “Jehovah’s Witness” or “Christadelphian”, it just says “Christian”.
Which claims? Let me know which of these claims (of mine), Hurtado disagrees with.
I could talk about all 9 of them you post, but that would be a flat out waste of my time since it’s obvious what I’m talking about. You think the New Testament never identifies Jesus as God. Hurtado does. So he doesn’t agree with you.
That is because it is the relationship of Jesus with the Father is the only good evidence that Jesus is the Messiah, the Second Person of the Trinity. God is Relational
Yep, different persons.
Yep, one person. Yep, Jesus was human. Yes, God worked through Jesus. But there’s more to the story
As I pointed out, it doesn’t simply differentiate them as different persons. It differentiates them as “Jesus” and “God”.
So you believe God is only one person? And why did the apostles not preach the rest of the story?
Jesus says that he’s the Alpha and Omega.
He says that all authority on heaven and earth has been given to him.
[Has God abdicated his throne?]
Jesus has the power to forgive sins even if he’s not the one being sinned against.
Jesus said “And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.”
From the Revelation we read:
"Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and on the sea, and all that is in them, saying: To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be praise and honor and glory and power, for ever and ever! "
From 1 Corinthians:
“For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea, 2 and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, 3 and all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they were all drinking from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.”
Wowzer! Christ was around back then? Who knew?
God the father is one person. As for the rest of the story, we look to the Bible.
Yes. Has been given to him. That is the standard language of agency and representation, as Hurtado points out.
No it doesn’t say Christ was around back then. Paul is saying the rock that they drank from is symbolic of Christ.
Ok, but the Bible says God is one person. The Bible refers to God as “He”, not “they”. The Bible doesn’t differentiate between “God” and “God the Father”. The Bible says God is the Father.
The Holy Spirit: not so much to do with Jesus, right?
Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit
After the baptism of Jesus, the Holy Spirit descends upon him in the form of a dove and God speaks to him.
John says that Jesus will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with Fire
And sure enough, on the Day of Pentecost the holy Spirit descended upon the Apostles and what appeared to be tongues of flame appeared above their heads. Foreign pilgrims heard them speak in their own languages, undoing the confusion of tongues at the tower of Babel.
The Holy Spirit intercedes in our prayers, because we don’t know how to pray as we ought.
The Holy Spirit gives gifts (1 Corinthians 12) and not as a package deal, either.
The rock was Christ.
Because he had set aside his power (the self-kenosis of Jesus, where he empties himself)
I find it difficult to follow the reasoning put forward for the notion that Jesus is not God. It seems to me that the most that can be gleaned from some odd comments is that three human persons cannot constitute the Trinity. If this is the point of all this, we can reply that human beings are not God.
The details on the Trinity are found in Patristic writings, and I am not aware of any mainstream denomination that argues with this - and these are all based on apostolic teachings and the Bible.
The essence of God is identical in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This one-ness is profound and requires us to comprehend this as the revelation of God - this One God, who has provided us with His Grace and forgiveness in Christ and works in Christians through the Holy Spirit. This is so central to the Faith, that anyone who disagrees cannot be a Christian.
Hmm… I will assume you missed my earlier response. Here it is again:
How would a single clear verse unequivocally distinguishing between the Holy Spirit and the Father prove that the Holy Spirit is a person? I myself distinguish between the Holy Spirit and the Father. I likewise distinguish between my arm and myself; my arm is not me, and I am not my arm. That doesn’t prove my arm is a person.
That sort of reinterpretation seems amazingly confected to explain away this rather clear verse.
25 “I have spoken these things while staying with you. 26 But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and will cause you to remember everything I said to you.
The Father will send the Holy Spirit in Jesus name. This sounds just strangely Trinitarian. Anyways, in Jesus name the Father will send the Holy Spirit. So they’re different persons. That’s the obvious plain meaning of the text. Your interpretation also quite mangles the text – if I simply substitute ‘Spirit of the Father’ (your understanding of the Spirit) with ‘Holy Spirit’ in this text, it would say “The Spirit of the Father, whom the Father will send in my name” – your interpretation will require the Father to send Himself. LOL. I think the plain meaning of the text wins out. I don’t see how you can consider the Spirit and Father the same persons in light of this unequivocally clear verse. Christadelphianism is, let’s be honest, simply one of the tens of thousands of sects of Christianity to pop up in the 18-20th centuries that is highly geographically concentrated in specific areas that has its own list of orthodoxies like all the others and claims to go back to the original disciples. This is why I don’t identify with any sect. The New Testament doesn’t say “Catholic” or “Protestant” or “Mormon” or “Jehovah’s Witness” or “Christadelphian”, it just says “Christian”.
Which claims? Let me know which of these claims (of mine), Hurtado disagrees with.
I could talk about all 9 of them you post, but that would be a flat out waste of my time since it’s obvious what I’m talking about. You think the New Testament never identifies Jesus as God. Hurtado does. So he doesn’t agree with you.
I don’t know if I would jump the gun on using Trinitarianism to define who is/is not a Christian. It’s possibly valid although I’d need more certainty before throwing Unitarians off the cliff.
My point is a general one and not meant to identify any tradition/denomination - the central point is that the Christian faith teaches of one God, who saves us through the sacrifice of His Son and has given us His Holy Spirit as our Comforter. The Trinity is a formalisation of this central tenet that was formulated to help Christianity from adopting false beliefs. We pray to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as One God; the Trinity has been formulated to show us this is in essence One God.
I guess I am convinced that all Christian traditions and denominations identify their faith as Christian within this Orthodoxy. It is difficult to believe there are exceptions, but you may provide additional information/insights if you wish.
No, I didn’t say that. I said I don’t see the Holy Spirit as frequently and intimately connected with God and Jesus. I see it as frequently and intimately connected with God, but not with Jesus. I gave my reasons for this. You have now given me just three instances of the Holy Spirit connected with Jesus.
- “Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit”
- “After the baptism of Jesus, the Holy Spirit descends upon him in the form of a dove and God speaks to him”
- “John says that Jesus will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with Fire”
That’s it. Three instances. I am not convinced that this shows the Holy Spirit is frequently and intimately connected with Jesus/
None of this requires the Holy Spirit to be a person. Again, you are not reading the new Testament’s description of the Holy Spirit in its Second Temple Period context. I find it odd that some Trinitarians are entirely willing to read Genesis in its Ancient Near East context, but prefer to read the New Testament in the context of fourth century theology.
Ok well the Bible never says this. That’s the same kind of ad hoc argument which YECs use.
No I didn’t miss it. I just didn’t reply to it earlier. I don’t always reply to every post the first time I see it. Sometimes it’s because I don’t have time. Sometimes it’s because i want to think about my reply longer before writing it.
It is not a reinterpretation, and it is not “confected” for this verse at all. As I have already explained, I treat this verse in exactly the same way as I treat the same subject in non-biblical contexts. The real issue here is that you are skim reading what I write, and in this case you are attributing to me an argument which is the exact opposite of what I have said.
It is no more “Trinitarian” than it is Judaistic, or Unitarian. Again, do you note that the Holy Spirit doesn’t even have a name?
I am not sure if you understand the issue being discussed. It beaglelady turned to this passage to argue that the Holy Spirit is a person. She argued that since the Holy Spirit is differentiated from God, then the Holy Spirit is a person. I agreed with her that the Holy Spirit is differentiated from God. I also pointed out that just because the Holy Spirit is differentiated from God, does not mean that the Holy Spirit is necessarily a person.
If you believe that differentiating X from Y means that X is necessarily a person, then you can tell me if you differentiate between your chair and you, and if this therefore means that your chair is a person. The Old Testament and the New Testament both differentiate the Word of God from God. This does not mean the Word of God is a person. The Old Testament speaks of God sending His Word, and His Word going out from Him and returning. This does not mean the Word is a person. Again, you are simply not reading this passage in its original socio-historical context.
No, that is not the conclusion of my interpretation at all. As I have already said, I differentiate between the Father and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is not the Father, and the Father is not the Holy Spirit. If we substitute “Holy Spirit” with “The Spirit of the Father” (not my interpretation, but whatever), we get “The Spirit of the Father, which the Father will send in my name”, and what is being sent is not the Father, but the Spirit of the Father.
[quote=“ManiacalVesalius, post:274, topic:37535”]
I don’t see how you can consider the Spirit and Father the same persons in light of this unequivocally clear verse.[/quote]
This proves you just skim read what I wrote. I do not believe the Spirit and the Father are the same person. The fact that you think I do, proves you are not reading what I write.
That’s nearly correct. We don’t claim to go back to the original disciples. We do not claim any form of apostolic succession. We trace our history back to the Radical Reformation, especially the Socinians, but no further. Nevertheless, we do believe that we hold to the gospel as preached by the apostles, and we reject all the creeds and councils as non-authoritative and non-binding. In this regard we are Restorationists, and we are also cessationists, so we do not believe that Christians after the first century were guided by the Holy Spirit, or that the gifts were available for more than a generation after the apostles died.
Ok I am going to call it. You looked through my lists, you haven’t read enough Hurtado to know if he would agree with me or not, and you’re actually too nervous to look in case he actually agrees with me on any or all of these points.
Can you please provide just six cases of Hurtado saying that the New Testament identifies Jesus as God? Over the last two weeks I have been reading these books by Hurtado (as well as many of his blog posts).
- How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God: Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus
- At the origins of Christian worship: the context and character of earliest Christian devotion
- One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism
- Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity
Please let me know where Hurtado says that the New Testament identifies Jesus as God, in any of these books.
This is my long awaited reply to all your previously unanswered points. Thank you for your patience.
Point one. Skim reading.
Something I would like you to change, is your habit of skim reading. Skim reading me, skim reading my sources, and skim reading your own sources. Here are some examples.
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You ask me how I understand the logos in John 1:1. I explain it, and provide quotations from scholars saying virtually the same thing (I note explicitly where I differ from them). You then ask me why I posted that information, and how it is arguing against your position. This shows you had completely forgotten what you previously asked me to do, and it shows you did not realize that I was not posting them to argue against your position but to explain mine.
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You claim I didn’t respond to your lengthy comment about Jesus’ use of theos when quoting Psalm 82”6 (“You are gods; all of you are the sons of the Most High”). In fact I did respond to it. Your lengthy comment was arguing that this passage is not relevant to establishing the translation “and the word was divine”. I agree. I never said it was. When I responded to you on this point, I said specifically “the only reason why I cited this usage by Jesus was to demonstrate that θεός does not always mean God; it doesn’t have any other relevance to John 1:1”.
It was a waste of time making the argument “This is a plural use of theos, not the singular form we find in John 1:1c, so you can’t claim this usage is in John 1:1c” or whatever. I agree. I never said this. I never appealed to this passage to try and argue that theos in John 1:1c should be translated “divine”. You seem to have skim read right over all this.
- I asked “Do you understand that the frequency with which a Greek word is translated in an English Bible has absolutely no relevance to whether or not the word has a particular meaning in a specific verse?” You responded thus.
Actually, it most certainly has relevance. If we know the standard usage of a word in a language, then we must further know that we should only abandon understanding it in its primary sense if there is reason to do so.
I then pointed out to you that the frequency with which an English translation has translated a word, does not give us any information about how that word is used in a specific context. I said specifically “Think about this for a minute; we’re talking about an English translation of the word”.
You then completely changed arguments and said this.
“That is not what I was talking about at all! I was precisely citing the way he uses the Greek words, not the English translations.”
Let’s look at how you changed what you said.
• Me: Do you understand that the frequency with which a Greek word is translated in an English Bible has absolutely no relevance to whether or not the word has a particular meaning in a specific verse?"
• You saying that the frequency with which a Greek word is translated in an English Bible is relevant: “Actually, it most certainly has relevance.”
• You later, saying the complete opposite: “That is not what I was talking about at all! I was precisely citing the way he uses the Greek words, not the English translations”.
I think it’s clear that what happened here is you simply skim read me the first time and didn’t realize I was speaking specifically of the frequency with which a Geek word is translated in an English text. If we both agree that the frequency with which a Geek word is translated in an English text has no relation to its actual meaning in Greek, then we’re good on this point.
However I will repeat what I said. Even if a Greek word appears in a text with one meaning 90% of the time, this does not tell us anything about what it must mean in the remaining number of instances. We only have grounds to conclude that it means the same thing if it is used in the same context.
- You have misread Hurtado in his exchange with Ben Witherington.
As I have pointed out, Witherington asks Hurtado why he won’t just say (as Bauckham does), that Jesus is part of the divine identity, that “God was complex, involving more than one personal entity”. Hurtado states explicitly that the reason why he will not say this, and the reason why he objects to terms such as “Godhead”, divine “persons”, divine “substance” and others, is that they do not reflect the way that the New Testament writers thought about Jesus. He says that these terms refer to concepts which only came later, after the first century. He does not believe that the earliest Christians thought in these categories. He does not believe that the earliest Christians though God was more than one person, or that Jesus was one of the persons in a multiple-person “Godhead”. This is abundantly clear when you read his books and blog posts.
You claim that Hurtado is just being restrained when he refrains from saying Jesus is referred to as God in the New Testament, saying “he restrains in the way that any careful scholar restrains from making outright declarations”. But that simply isn’t true. Scholars such as NT Wright, Bauckham, Evans, Witherington, Loke, Fletcher-Louis, and others are all perfectly willing to say Jesus is identified as God in the New Testament, and also to say that Jesus id identified as a person in a multiple-person “Godhead” in the New Testament. The reason why Hurtado does not say the same thing is not because of any scholarly restraint, but because he does not believe it. This is precisely why he differs from Bauckham, Loke, and Fletcher-Louis, and precisely why all of them say they disagree with him. I will later provide you with an extensive demonstration of what Hurtado says in his own words.
- You claimed that both instances of theos in John 1:1 refer to the Father. When I pointed out that this was “confusing the persons” and constituted modalism (and quoted a scholar saying so explicitly), you denied this. In an attempt to defend yourself, you then posted the Scutum Fidei. You clearly did not understand what it was or how to read it, and for some reason you even posted a version which had three crucial parts of it missing. The irony is that the Scutum Fidei specifically denies the very claim you were making. You claimed that the Son is the Father, when the Scutum Fidei states explicitly that the Son is not the Father, following the Athanasian Creed.
This suggests you have a rather inadequate understanding of the doctrine of the Trinity for a start, and you certainly have an inadequate understanding of the historic creeds and forumulae invented specifically to define and defend it. It also suggests you grabbed the first thing you could find which you thought (on a quick glance), supported your view, when in fact if you had read it properly you would have understand that it said the opposite of what you were saying.
Point two. My views.
I said explicitly that Jesus is divine in origin since he was the son of God (I assume we both accept the virgin birth?), that he was therefore in a unique relation to God (totally excluding the idea that we are “sons of God” in the way that he is “the son of God”), and that he is a human who was given unique authority, unique titles, a unique role, and that God worked through him uniquely, specifically because he was the son of God, and therefore God’s representative on earth.
Strangely, you said this was “vague”. I am not sure how it was vague, but perhaps it’s because Trinitarians don’t make a very strong distinction between God and humans, and don’t see these are mutually exclusive categories. So for a Trinitarian, just because you’re a human doesn’t mean you can’t also be a god, or even The One True God.
However, since you asked me specific questions, here are my specific answers.
-
“Does Jesus pre-exist his birth?” No. As I said, he is a human. Humans don’t exist before they are conceived (I was pretty sure Trinitarians agreed with this, but whatever).
-
“Is Jesus destined to eternally rule the kingdom of God?” Yes he is.
-
“Is Jesus the Creator alongside the Father?” No.
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“Are Jesus and God of the same ‘substance’?” They are of the same “substance” in the same way that God and the angels and the (future), glorified saints are of the same “substance”. All the Bible says is that they are “spirit”, and consequently cannot die, nor can they have any weaknesses or infirmities. I do not believe that they are “consubstantial”, in the sense of both belonging to the same being or entity.
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“Is Jesus to be worshipped?” Yes, but not as God. The earliest Christians did not worship him as God.
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“How did the Word exactly become Jesus during the incarnation?” The same way that the word became Adam; God spoke, and it was so. Thus Psalm 33:6 says “By the word of God were the heavens made, and all the stars in the sky were created by the breath of His mouth”. Saying that the word became flesh is just another way of saying that Jesus’s conception and birth was miraculous; it couldn’t be clearer that Jesus was created by God. This is completely compatible with the way that the word of God is treated as a creative power in Second Temple Period literature, including Philo. In fact this has already been pretty well explained in the commentaries on this point which I quoted earlier.
-
“What sense at all does it to make to posit a discontinuity between the Word and Jesus when the incarnation took place?” Because all through the Old Testament and the Second Temple Period literature, the word of God is a descriptor of an attribute, or creative force, or command or speech, of God, and a distinction is made between God’s word and what God’s word causes to be.
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“Did the Word suddenly cease to exist and Jesus appeared in place of the Word?” No, because the word is not a thing, any more than your words are things. God’s word doesn’t really exist as an entity at all, just like your words don’t literally exist as entities. What you’re saying is like saying “When God speaks in Isaiah of His word going forth and then returning to him, does that mean that when His word goes forth He is unable to speak until it comes back again?”.
Here are my core views about the relationship between Jesus and God. See how much you agree with.
- There is one God, the Father.
- The Father is the only true God.
- Jesus, even after his resurrection and ascension, is a man attested by God, with miracles which God did through him.
- Jesus has been appointed by God as the eschatological judge of all the world, and ruler of God’s future eternal kingdom on earth.
- Jesus is a (and the only), human mediator between God and humans.
- Jesus is the uniquely appointed principal agent and representative of God.
- The representation of Jesus in the New Testament is best understood in the context of Second Temple Period understanding of divine agency and representation, and the New Testament accordingly depicts Jesus as God’s uniquely appointed principal agent and representative of God.
You claim that the consensus that Jesus is not depicted as God in the Synoptics is “clearly changing and quickly”. However you don’t cite any evidence of actual change. You cite a number of authors who have always argued this, which is not evidence for a change in the consensus. Scholars such as Hurtado and even Fletcher-Louis, speak of the current consensus as unchanged (Hurtado also agrees with this consensus, though Fletcher-Louis does not). Note that Hurtado also denies there is any Christology of pre-existence in the Synoptics (do you agree?).
You cite Staples’ paper, which I obviously can’t read because it’s behind a paywall. However, as Hurtado and others have already pointed out, Jesus bearing the divine name and titles doesn’t indicate a claim to be God, especially in the Second Temple Period context. I will need to read Staples’ argument in order to see what he is actually saying, but in the context of the parable of the virgins, it is the virgins who are calling the bridegroom “Lord, Lord”. Since Jesus is basing this parable on Jewish custom, and since “Lord, Lord” is addressed by the bridesmaids to the bridegroom, are we really to believe that it was Jewish custom for the bridesmaids to refer to the bridegroom as “Yahweh”? It will be interesting to see what Staples is actually saying here.
I am also interested in what he says about this verse.
Luke 6:
46 “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and don’t do what I tell you?
Obviously, despite the fact that Jesus is apparently saying that the people to whom he is speaking were literally calling him “Lord, Lord”, there is actually no record of anyone in any of the gospels ever calling Jesus “Lord, Lord”. Not his followers, not his disciples (either before or after his resurrection), nor anyone else. So what is Staples actually arguing with regard to this verse? Does Staples argue that Jesus is saying here “Why do you call me Yahweh, but don’t do what I, Yahweh, tell you to do?”, or is he saying something else? If you have access to the article I would appreciate you sending it my way, if possible (that should be covered in Fair Use law, but don’t worry about sharing the article with me if it isn’t legal in your country to do so).
By the way, saying that binitarianism is just Trinitarianism with two people instead of three, is like saying France is just Germany in a different place, with a different culture, and a different language. Binitarianism and Trinitarianism are not the same, and you cannot smuggle the latter into the former. I don’t understand why some Trinitarians can’t accept what mainstream Trinitarians acknowledge; that the doctrine of the Trinity was a post-apostolic theological development which took a couple of centuries and was the result of much theological argument during which Christian views went through several different models of God and Jesus before settling on a view which was not taught by Christ or the apostles.
Point three. Murray’s summary of views on John 1:1.
You asked who Wallace cites in the footnote in which he says that even the application of theos to Jesus in John 1:1 is debated. Wallace cites Murray Harris, “Jesus as God: The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus’ (1998). Murray is an extremely conservative commentator, far more than Hurtado or even Wallace. He claims that the New Testament writers already had a fully developed Trinitarian theology, and that they wrote the New Testament with this Trinitarian theology in mind, which his way beyond even what Bauckham argues. However, although he believes that theos in John 1:1c means that Jesus is “god” in the sense of being one of the persons in the Trinity, he acknowledges that there is a range of views on the meaning of John’s use of theos here.
Over the course of 14 pages, Murray cites several different views of the meaning and intended referent of logos, five different grammatical views on the reason why theos is anarthrous, three different theological views on the reason why theos is anarthrous, and five different translations of “and theos was the logos”, (including “the word was divine” and “the word was deity”). In each of these cases he provides a list of scholars who support the view. While acknowledging the case for “the word was divine”, he predictably prefers “the word was God”, though with some reserve since (as he acknowledges), it implies a confusion of the persons (“But the Word is not the Father nor the Trinity”), and must therefore be accompanied with careful exegesis.
The claim that my view belongs to “a tiny tiny minority of scholars” is simply untrue. It is the dominant view of all the grammarians.
“A fourth option is to translate theos as “divine” (an adjective). This option seems to enjoy the majority vote of the grammarians as became clear in 2.3 but not of the commentators (like Barrett, Carson, Bultmann, Schnackenburg, Wilckens, etc. against Keener and Haenchen who seem to favour the qualitative interpretation).” [1]
In fact it is significant that it is the majority view among grammarians, whereas the theologians prefer “and the Word was God”.
“It is interesting to note that although the grammarians mainly opt for interpreting theos as “divine”, this is not favoured by theologians in their commentaries.” [2]
But even among exegetes it is not a “tiny tiny minority” position.
“Because in the phrase ‘The Word was God’ the word theos is used without a definite article, many scholars hold that it should be translated ‘The Word was divine’, leaving the exact form of identity with God indeterminate.” [3]
See that? Many scholars hold that it should be translated “the word was divine”. Not “a tiny tiny minority”, but many. This is because most commentators understand that the passage is making a distinction between the way that the Father is theos and the way that the logos is theos.
“Most commentators agree that the prologue makes a distinction between “the God” that the Word is and the “God” the Word is. This is occasionally rendered into English as “the Word was with God and the Word was divine.”” [4]
Consequently it is not at all difficult to find exegetes who render it “and the word was divine”, as I have already shown.
“There are two sections in particular of this passage which drive the whole debate: Jn 1.1 (‘In the Beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was divine’), and Jn 1.14 (the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, as of the Only-begotten from the Father’).” [5]
Even Loke says John “states that the Word was divine”.
“On the contrary, the beginning of the Gospel states that the Word was divine and Creator of all (John 1:1-3), and the end of the Gospel indicates that he was of the same divine status as YHWH (John 20:28-29; see further Section 7.3.3).” [6]
Point four. Origen’s view of John 1:1.
Despite the fact that I quoted a well respected German scholar citing Origen as understanding John 1:1c as saying “the word was divine”, you made an attempt at well-poisoning by claiming the commentary was “associated” with the Jesus Seminar. In fact, as I pointed out, it was simply translated by one of the members of the Jesus Seminar. This has absolutely no relevance to what the commentator wrote. You also tried to dismiss it by saying it was 40 years old (without explaining why this was relevant). Finally you appealed to a web page (non-scholarly, not that it mattered particularly), which had an English translation of some of Origen’s texts, together with some commentary on them. On the basis of the contents of this page (largely on the basis of the English translation), you concluded that Origen thought Jesus was God in the same sense that the Father is God.
Your understanding of Origen’s complex and developing theology is seriously under-informed. Scholars have wrestled with Origen for many years, due in part to the fact that he was grossly misrepresented by Rufinius, who deliberately rewrote some of Origen’s work to make it look like Origen held beliefs which didn’t even exist until after his day. Rufinius’ motivation for this was to make Origen look like a Trinitarian, when he very clearly was not.
Let’s start with what Origen believed about John 1:1c.
“The Word Was Divine? This leads us to consider the third translation, “divine,” the equivalent of θεῖος, suggested already by Origen, and represented often by the phrase “Gott von Art” or “God of a kind.”” [7]
There you have it. Origen’s translation was “the word was divine”. Here’s another exegete pointing out that Origen’s view was ‘the Word was divine”, and specifically that it was not divine in the same sense as the Father was divine.
“The various “non-Nicene” schools laid stress on that part of Origen’s system that argued for the absolute unicity of God the Father, whose being transcended all others, the Word of God included. From this perspective, although the Word was divine, it was not divine in the absolute and unconditioned sense in which the supreme originative Godhead, the Father, could be spoken of as divine. Origenians of this tradition could confess the Word as “god from God” while at the same time denying that the sense of divinity being used was “consubstantial,” that is absolutely the same meaning of “God” in each sense.” [8]
McMahon likewise makes the point that Origen saw a distinction in John 1:1c between the way that the Father was theos, and the way that the logos was theos.
“Although Christians today are unanimous in affirming that the Word is fully divine, and read John 1:1 as reflecting this, it was not so clear to many ancients. The apparent distinction offered in this passage would be cited by luminaries like Origen and would fuel the fires of christological speculation in the years after the writing of the New Testament.” [9]
So yes, Origen did render the text “the word was divine”, and he did so precisely because he saw a difference between the way that the Father was theos, and the way that the logos was theos. He believed that only the Father was “very God”, and that the Son was subordinate both functionally and ontologically. He did not believe Jesus was “very God”, and he did not believe the Son was consubstantial with the Father. This is well known in Origen studies.
Point five. Hays on Boyarin.
You cited Richard Hays saying Boyarin has “provocatively destabilized conventional beliefs about what first-century Jews could and could not have believed about the multiplicity within the divine identity”. You objected to me suggesting that when Hays wrote “provocatively destabilized”, he was politely saying Boyarin has made extremely bold claims which have convinced very few people at all, and only highly qualified assent has been given to any of his claims. You pointed out that Hays agrees with Boyarin, and says Boyarin’s views were influential on him. However I was not saying anything about whether Hays agrees with Boyarin, I was suggesting that Hays was using rather coded language to communicate that Boyarin has not convinced many other people.
My main reason for this is that when scholars refer to each other’s works they often use quite coded language. I will give Hurtado as an example. In a review of Craig Evan’s book ‘How God Became Jesus’, Hurtado referred to it as “readable and lively response to Ehrman’s book on how Jesus came to be regarded as in some sense divine”, and said that Evans’ book “ put alternative views that deserve to be noted and that show that the scholarly discussion remains in play”. This sounds like an enthusiastic endorsement, but as soon as I read it I felt that Hurtado was using coded language to be polite about the book while carefully maintaining his distance from its conclusions.
Another reader of Hurtado’s blog, however, interpreted Hurtado’s words as endorsing Evan’s book. Hurtado immediately corrected him with this comment.
“A careful reader will note that I endorse the book as a “lively” response, and don’t however express disagreement or agreement”.
Based on my knowledge of how scholars often used such coded language when referring to each other’s works, I interpreted Hay’s wording as saying that Boyarin has made extremely bold claims which have convinced very few people at all, and only highly qualified assent has been given to any of his claims. Once I started reading scholarly review after scholarly review after scholarly review of Boyarin’s work, I found that this was indeed the case; regardless of the fact that Hays has found Boyarin persuasive, the overwhelming majority of scholars have not. I will present that evidence now.
Point six. Scholarly reception of Boyarin.
- NT Wright says that Boyarin has “claimed much more than the texts will support”.
“The idea that a high christology must be late and non-Jewish has in fact been so widely rejected that a recent Jewish scholar, Daniel Boyarin, has swung round in the opposite direction, arguing that most if not all of the elements of early christology, not least the ‘divinity’ of the expected Messiah, were in fact present within pre-Christian Judaism itself. Even if such revisionist proposals were to be accepted – and my own view is that Boyarin has claimed much more than the texts will support – we would still have to recognize that the early Christians, already by the time of Paul, had articulated a belief in the ‘divinity’ of Jesus far more powerfully, and indeed poetically, than anyone had previously imagined.” [10]
-
James Paget says that Boyarin’s thesis that binitarianism was common in the Second Temple Period, is “contentious”, and that the “The sources on which he bases his wide-ranging conclusions about Jewish binitarianism are problematic, as his reading of the prologue of John’s Gospel in terms of a kind of history of Jewish binitarianism”. He also says Boyarin’s effort to suggest that a high Christology would not have been out of place in Second Temple Period Judaism “remains unproven”. [11]
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Adiel Schremer has extensively criticized Boyarin’s use of later rabbinic commentary, saying that Boyarin’s claim that specific rabbinic texts refer to early Christian views of Jesus as examples of the Two Powers heresy, are “has never been demonstrated”. He also disputes Boyarin’s tendency to read references to Christians into rabbinic texts where they do not exist, and that the dating of one of his key pieces of evidence “is difficult to accept”. Assessing similar rabbinic evidence presented by Boyarin, Schremer describes the reliability of the attributions as “extremely feeble “. [12]
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Mark Smith says Boyarin’s claim that binitarian views were normative in the Second Temple Period “is highly controversial” and “exceeds the available evidence”. Commenting on Boyarin’s thesis that Israel worshipped two gods until one of them was subsumed into the other, remerging briefly as the “Son of Man” in Daniel 7, Smith comments “Boyarin’s view requires further evidence”. [13]
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I need hardly mention Schafer’s review of Boyarin, a review which Hurtado described as “very well informed”, and “rather devastating”. Hurtado says Boyarin “posits claims that are not only idiosyncratic but are rather easily refuted”, and that Boyarin’s treatment of some of the key issues is “either derivative” or “well, plainly wrong”. He also comments that this view is “simply what the great majority of informed scholars would say”. Schafer and Hurtado are fully in agreement on their comprehensive rejection of Boyarin’s thesis.
So regardless of whether or not you agree with my interpretation of Hay’s coded language, there is plenty of evidence that what I said is true; Boyarin has made extremely bold claims which have convinced very few people at all, and only highly qualified assent has been given to any of his claims. This is mainly because he did not present any actual evidence that God was viewed as a “duality of persons” at any time during the Second Temple Period. Hurtado states bluntly, “there is no indication of any duality in the worship practice of 2nd temple Jews”.
However, there is more to come. Having now read both “Border Lines” and “Jewish Gospels”, I will present you with some facts about Boyarin’s views which I doubt you’ll agree with (and which I doubt you were even aware of).
Point seven. Boyarin’s views.
When I directed you to an online critique of Boyarin’s interpretation of the “son of man” in Daniel 7, you objected on the grounds that the critique was addressing an argument found in “Jewish Gospels”, not an argument found in “Border Lines” (the book you were discussing). As I explained to you, the argument about the identity of Daniel’s “son of man” which was being critiqued, is the same argument found in both “Jewish Gospels” and “Border Lines”. You have denied this, which further convinces me that you have not read either book.
If you have access to both books, you can read these pages for yourself, and see that Boyarin does indeed make the same Daniel 7 “son of man” in both “Border Lines” and “Jewish Gospels”. I will show you now.
- There are two divine figures in Daniel 7 (Border Lines 141, Jewish Gospels 39-40).
- The “son of man” in Daniel 7 is a title referring to God (Border Lines 141, Jewish Gospels 33).
- This use of “son of man” to refer to God, is also found in 1 Enoch (Border Lines 141, Jewish Gospels 52, 73, 77).
- A text attributed to Ravi Akiba (second century), shows he interpreted Daniel 7 as referring to “two powers in heaven”, which Boyarin presents as evidence that early Christians believed the “son of man” in Daniel 7 was one of two divine persons in a binitarian sense (Border Lines 140, Jewish Gospels 40-41).
Thus we find that the argument Boyarin makes in Jewish Gospels concerning the son of man in Daniel 7 (the argument which was criticized in the article to which I linked), is the same argument which Boyarin makes in Border Lines concerning the son of man in Daniel 7. Yes, it is the same argument, almost word for word.
You’ve claimed that people have misread Boyarin as arguing that some Second Temple Period Jews believed in something like ditheism, when in fact (as you claim), he has never done this. As has already been pointed out to you, Boyarin actually uses the following terms on a regular basis when discussing Second Temple Period Jewish views, and the views of first and second century Christians. Here are just a few examples from “Jewish Gospels” and “Border Lines”.
• “two divine figures” (Jewish Gospels, 39)
• “two divinities” (Jewish Gospels, 40)
• “two divine figures in heaven” (Jewish Gospels, 40)
• “a second divine figure” (Jewish Gospels, 43)
• “a young God subordinated to an old God” (Jewish Gospels, 51)
• “Son as a “Second God”” (Border Lines, 90)
• “a second God” (Border Lines, 92)
• “a “second” God” (Border Lines, 113)
• “second god” (Border Lines, 116)
• “second god” (Border Lines, 122)
• “two divine powers” (Border Lines, 123)
• “second god” (Border Lines, 125)
• “second God” (Border Lines, 138)
• “two divine figures” (Border Lines, 141)
• “two divine figures” (Border Lines, 301)
You find it incomprehensible that Boyarin could make such statements and mean what he says, given the strength of Second Temple Period commitment to monotheistic Judaism by both Jews and Christians. I wonder what you would make of this claim of Boyarin’s.
“In the first and second centuries, there were Jewish non-Christians who firmly held theological doctrines of a second God, variously called Logos, Memra, Sophia, Metatron, or Yahoel; indeed, perhaps most of the Jews did so at the time. There were also significant and powerful Christian voices who claimed that any distinction of persons within the godhead constituted ditheism.” [14]
Do you agree with that? Do you agree in particular that there were “significant and powerful Christian voices” in the first and second centuries who claimed that “any distinction of persons within the godhead constituted ditheism”? I really do not think you are very familiar with his views.
But let’s move on. I already explained to you in a previous exchange why Boyarin does not see multiple divine figures as an actual breach of monotheism. As I mentioned, he believes in a “soft” monotheism which he describes thus.
“Seen in this light, it really is a sort of quibble to distinguish between second divinity and highest angel. We need to remember that in antiquity monotheism meant not the sole existence of only one divine being but the absolute supremacy of one to whom all others are subordinate (and this was good Christian theology until Nicaea as well). Fredriksen, “Mandatory Retirement,” 35-38, is a concise, excellent presentation of this position.” [15]
Do you agree with that? Do you agree that it is a mere quibble “to distinguish between second divinity and highest angel”? Do you believe that in antiquity monotheism did not mean “the sole existence of one divine being”? Do you believe that this was “good Christian theology until Nicaea”?
There’s still more. As I explained to you in a previous exchange, Boyarin differentiates between two senses of “divinity”. One is functional (when a human, angel, or other agent of God performs divine activities on God’s behalf), and one is ontological (when a being is actually a god, or the God). In “Jewish Gospels”, Boyarin states explicitly that when he uses the term “divine”, he means it in the functional sense, not the ontological sense. Here is the relevant quotation from “Jewish Gospels”.
“Adela Yarbro Collins has recently distinguished two senses of “divinity”: “One is functional. The ‘one like a son of man’ in Daniel 7:13-14, ‘that Son of Man’ in the Similitudes of Enoch, and Jesus in some Synoptic passages are divine in this sense when they exercise (or are anticipated as exercising) divine activities like ruling over a universal kingdom, sitting on a heavenly throne, judging human beings in the end-time or traveling on the clouds, a typically divine mode of transport. The other sense is ontological.” Adela Yarbro Collins," ‘How on Earth Did Jesus Become God’: A Reply," in Israel’s God and Rebecca’s Children: Christology and Community in Early Judaism and Christianity: Essays in Honor of Larry W. Hurtado and Alan E Segal, ed. David B. Capes et al. (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2007), 57. It is that former sense to which I refer throughout this book, as I believe that the very distinction between “functional” and “ontological” is a product of later Greek reflection on the Gospels.”” [16]
This is significant. This means that every time Boyarin refers to Jesus as “divine”, what he actually means is functionally divine, in the sense of being a non-god being who performs divine activities as God’s specially appointed and empowered agent. So when he speaks of the “Son of Man” in Daniel being “divine”, he only means “functionally divine”, and when he speaks of Jesus being “divine”, he only means “functionally divine”.
Is that the sense of “divine” that you mean when you refer to Jesus? Do you agree with Boyarin?
Point eight. Your questions about John 1:1.
You wrote this.
You have not addressed the contextual considerations I mentioned, which I will re-post:
” 1) The Word exists in the beginning. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with theos, and the Word was theos”. John 1:2 even says “He was in the beginning with God.”
2) In John 1:3, we’re told “All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.” This is talking about the Word, the entire Johannine Prologue is talking about the Word (who is in fact Jesus, not only Jesus after the incarnation). According to John 1:3, EVERYTHING that came into being was through the Word, and if it were not for the Word, then nothing would have come into being.
3) In John 1:14, we are told the Word is the “father’s only son”. It’s clear that the Word possesses a relationship with God the Father that, not only does not exist with any other being to the Father, but cannot exist with any other being to the Father.”
Actually I addressed all of this specifically in my detailed explanation of my understanding of the logos in John (and I even cited several commentaries and explained which statements of theirs I agreed with). The description of the logos here is not only entirely within the boundaries of Second Temple Period characterization of the logos, it is even less personified than typical Second Temple Period characterization of the logos.
- The logos (Word [of God]), was with theos (God, the Father), and the logos was theos (divine).
- All things came into being through the logos, and without the logos not one thing came into being. See Genesis 1 and Psalm 33. Nothing was created without the word of God; He spoke, and it came to be.
- In John 1:14 Jesus is spoken of for the first time; the word became flesh. The text is no longer describing the word. No, we are not told in John 1:14 that the word is the Father’s only son; the phrase about the only begotten comes later, in John 1:18. Regardless, even if John 1:14 was saying that the logos was the only son of the Father, that would simply be repeating what Philo had already said about the logos many decades earlier.
Point nine. Points I raised previously which weren’t addressed.
- The New Testament uses none of the “multiplicity of persons” language which we see in texts which actually are referring to a multiplicity of persons.
- The New Testament shows clear evidence that many Jews considered Jesus’ claim to be the son of God, to be deeply heretical; where is the evidence that they understood he was referring to himself as one of the persons in a multi-personal God, but had no problems with that?
- Claiming that John 1:1 can be understood as referring to a multiplicity of persons is one thing, but demonstrating that this is what he meant, is quite another.
- To claim that a multiplicity of person was a Christian innovation is of course an even more difficult challenge to meet, but either way at some point you need to address the fact that the overwhelming use of θεὸς in the New Testament refers to one person, the Father, and the fact that God in the entire Bible is never referred to as “they”.
Point ten. On the emerging consensus.
I keep pointing out that it’s important to note what the consensus is, and what it is not. The emerging consensus is described by Fletcher-Louis as an agreement that a high Christology emerged very early, within the life of Paul. However, he defines high Christology thus.
“In particular, there has been a long-running debate about the phenomenon that scholars traditionally call a “high Christology” (the belief that Jesus was somehow divine and was treated as such by his followers).” [17]
Note that this definition of “high Christology” is very broad. In Fletcher-Louis’ definition, high Christology just means believing that Jesus was “somehow divine”. He does not describe it as the belief that Jesus was understood to be God, or the belief that Jesus was understood to be one person in a multiple person Godhead. Under Louis-Fletcher’s definition of “high Christology”, even I believe in a high Christology.
This is a curious definition of high Christology. It is a very broad definition, into which my own views would fit. This is a particularly curious definition given the fact that a high Christology has traditionally been defined as the belief that Jesus was specifically God, and claimed to be God, and was believed by his followers to be God.
Additionally, Fletcher-Louis describes low Christology as this.
“On this view, during his ministry in Galilee and Judea the disciples must have had either no Christology—no very strong beliefs specifically about Jesus—or a “low” one in which Jesus is simply a created being (a prophet, or even the long-awaited Jewish messiah). In other words, if the historical Jesus had any sense of his own special voca¬tion he only believed he was a specially chosen human being, and as such was, like all human beings, subordinate to God his Creator and Lord.” [18]
This is the view which Hurtado holds, but Fletcher-Louis counts Hurtado as part of the “emerging consensus” on a High Christology. Fletcher-Louis’ definition of the “emerging consensus” for a high Christology therefore, actually means this “an emerging consensus that Jesus was somehow divine and was treated as such by his followers, but this doesn’t necessarily mean he was God, or that his earliest followers understood God to be more than one person, and doesn’t mean that they believed him to be God or even divine, during his ministry”. Would you agree that this is what the “emerging consensus” is?
On a similar note, you have cited Ehrman’s views in “How Jesus Became God”, saying “In Bart Ehrman’s 2014 book as well, it is revealed Ehrman also concedes the Synoptics think of Jesus as God in some verses”. Fletcher-Louis also cites Ehrman as having been influenced by the “emerging consensus”, saying “Even Bart Ehrman, in his recent popular-level book, shifts from his earlier view to accepting that a divine Christology appears early on in the Christian movement”. [19]
This is true insofar as it is true that Ehrman’s views have shifted slightly, so that he believes a divine Christology emerged earlier than he used to think. However it is slightly misleading, since it doesn’t reveal exactly how early Ehrman believes this divine Christology emerged. In fact, Ehrman still holds the view which preceded the “emerging consensus”. Whereas the “emerging consensus” claims (according to Fletcher-Louis), that Jesus was considered “somehow divine” by the earliest Christians, mere months after his resurrection, Ehrman still holds the view that the earliest Christians did not believe Jesus was “a preexistent divine being who is equal with God”, and that a divine Christology did not emerge until after Paul and the Synoptics. He says this.
“Scholars have long held that the view of Christ in the Gospel of John was a later development in the Christian tradition. It was not something that Jesus himself actually taught, and it is not something that can be found in the other Gospels. In John, Jesus is a preexistent divine being who is equal with God. The earliest Christians—Jesus’s disciples, for example—did not believe this. And there are clear historical reasons for thinking they did not. The earliest Christians held exaltation Christologies in which the human being Jesus was made the Son of God—for example, at his resurrection or at his baptism—as we examined in the previous chapter. John has a different Christology.” [20]
He also says this about the Synoptics.
“I have already made the case that followers of Jesus were not calling him God during his lifetime and that he did not refer to himself as a divine being who had come from heaven. If they had done so, surely there would be a heavy dose of such views in our earliest records of his words—in the Synoptic Gospels and their sources (Mark, Q, M, and L).” [21]
And this.
“If Jesus really were equal with God from “the beginning,” before he came to earth, and he knew it, then surely the Synoptic Gospels would have mentioned this at some point. Wouldn’t that be the most important thing about him? But no, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke he does not talk about himself in this way—nor does he do so in their sources (Q, M, and L).” [22]
Now according to Fletcher-Louis, that is the “old paradigm”, and that is a “low Christology”. Not only that, but Ehrman’s view of the earliest “incarnational Christology” is this.
“Jesus was thought of as an angel, or an angel-like being, or even the Angel of the Lord—in any event, a superhuman divine being who existed before his birth and became human for the salvation of the human race. This, in a nutshell, is the incarnation Christology of several New Testament authors.” [23]
Is that your understanding of the earliest incarnational Christology? Ehrman argues that this view was later replaced with another view, which understood Jesus as God himself.
“Later authors went even further and maintained that Jesus was not merely an angel—even the chief angel—but was a superior being: he was God himself come to earth.” [24]
The only change in Ehrman’s view is that he now believes that the view of Jesus as “a preexistent divine being who is equal with God” did not originate with John’s gospel. He believes it preceded John’s gospel, and that John was drawing on this tradition.
Nevertheless, Ehrman believes that this was not the original view of Jesus. He believes the view of Jesus found in the gospel of John was not the view of the original Christians (such as Paul), but a later development.
“It will become clear in the following chapters that Jesus was not originally considered to be God in any sense at all, and that he eventually became divine for his followers in some sense before he came to be thought of as equal with God Almighty in an absolute sense.” [25]
But there’s still more. Ehrman does not believe that the gospel of John depicts Jesus as existing before he was born.
“The poem is decidedly not saying that Jesus preexisted his birth—and there is nothing about him being born of a virgin here. What preexisted was the Logos of God through whom God made the universe. It was only when the Logos became a human being that Jesus Christ came into existence. So Jesus Christ is the Logos that has become a human; but Jesus did not exist before that incarnation happened. It was the Logos that existed before.” [26]
He says it again here.
“As I intimated before, the Prologue is not saying that Jesus preexisted, that he created the universe, that he became flesh. Instead, it is saying that the Logos did all these things. Before all else existed, it was with God, and since it was God’s own Logos, in that sense it actually was God. It was through the Logos that the universe and all that was in it was created and given life.” [27]
Not only that, but Ehrman believes that John understood the logos as a being separate from God.
“As in other Jewish texts, the Word is a being separate from God, and yet since it is God’s word, his own outward expression of himself, it fully represents who he is, and does nothing else, and in this sense it is itself God.” [28]
Ehrman believes that the earliest Christology was indeed a low Christology.
“To do that would take a very long book indeed, and my objective is something else—to explain the two dominant Christological options of the early Christian movement: the older Christology “from below,” which I am calling an exaltation Christology, arguably the very first Christological view of the very first followers of Jesus who came to believe he had been raised from the dead and exalted to heaven; and the somewhat later Christology “from above,” which I am calling an incarnation Christology.” [29]
The only way that Ehrman is a part of the “emerging consensus”, is by defining the conclusions of the “emerging consensus” so loosely that they include people who don’t believe Jesus or his disciples or his earliest believers thought and spoke of him as God, and who argue that Jesus only “became God” at some point later in the first century, prior to the gospel of John. For Ehrman, the earliest Christology was a low Christology. The closest he comes to the actual emerging consensus is the fact that he believes a high Christology emerged sometime after Paul but before the gospel of John, dating it to around the latest third of the first century.
[1] Jan Van der Watt and Chrys C. Caragounis, “A Grammatical Analysis of John 1,1,” Filologia Neotestamentaria 21 (2008): 133-134.
[2] Jan Van der Watt and Chrys C. Caragounis, “A Grammatical Analysis of John 1,1,” Filologia Neotestamentaria 21 (2008): 117
[3] Keith Ward, Christ and the Cosmos: A Reformulation of Trinitarian Doctrine (Cambridge University Press, 2015), 52-53.
[4] Christopher McMahon, Jesus Our Salvation: An Introduction to Christology (Saint Mary’s Press, 2007), 119.
[5] Andrew Lincoln and Angus Paddison, Christology and Scripture: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008), 121.
[6] Andrew Ter Ern Loke, The Origin of Divine Christology, Society For New Testament Studies Monograph Series 169 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), 158.
[7] William Loader, Jesus in John’s Gospel (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2017), 320.
[8] John Anthony McGuckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography (St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001), 236.
[9] Christopher McMahon, Jesus Our Salvation: An Introduction to Christology (Saint Mary’s Press, 2007), 119.
[10] N. T Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God. Book I. Parts I and II Book I. Parts I and II (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 648.
[11] James Carleton Paget, Jews, Christians and Jewish Christians in Antiquity (Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 15-16.
[12] Adiel Schremer, Brothers Estranged: Heresy, Christianity and Jewish Identity in Late Antiquity (Oxford University Press, 2010), 82, 83, 84, 95, 96.
[13] Mark S. Smith, God in Translation: Deities in Cross-Cultural Discourse in the Biblical World (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2010), 297.
[14] Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), 92.
[15] Daniel Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ (New York: New Press, 2013), 166.
[16] Daniel Boyarin, The Jewish Gospels: The Story of the Jewish Christ (New York: New Press, 2013), 55.
[17] Crispin H. T Fletcher-Louis, Jesus Monotheism: Christological Origins. Vol. 1, Vol. 1, (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co Ltd, 2015), 3.
[18] Crispin H. T Fletcher-Louis, Jesus Monotheism: Christological Origins. Vol. 1, Vol. 1, (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co Ltd, 2015), 3.
[19] Crispin H. T Fletcher-Louis, Jesus Monotheism: Christological Origins. Vol. 1, Vol. 1, (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co Ltd, 2015), 5.
[20] Bart D Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2014), 183.
[21] Bart D Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2014), 184.
[22] Bart D Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2014), 199.
[23] Bart D Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2014), 185.
[24] Bart D Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2014), 185.
[25] Bart D Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2014), 39.
[26] Bart D Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2014), 201-202.
[27] Bart D Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2014), 202.
[28] Bart D Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2014), 202.
[29] Bart D Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (New York, NY: HarperOne, 2014), 202.
Hi Jonathan,
Not to make an intrusion into your very interesting discussion with Korvexius, but I did want to note that a few of your personal beliefs (as outlined in your above post) are in conflict with the emerging consensus among many scholars - and indeed, with Hurtado.
Some quick points:
(1) Hurtado has been keen to stress in his published works the extent to which the role and titles attributed to Jesus within early Jewish Christian circles are unique, unparalleled and remarkable, in the context of and compared with the divine agency tradition in Second Temple Judaism.
He has articulated this clearly in his scholarship by employing the key term “mutation”. In his discussion over on the blog with a poster named Sean Garrigan, Hurtado corrected him on this very point. Hurtado writes:
- “…I would myself add that what we seem to have in the early Christian texts is a novel “mutation” (to use a term I’ve deployed for a few decades now) in Jewish “agent” traditions. For one thing, Jesus is accorded a grander set of roles than any previous agent-figure. E.g., he is both agent of creation and agent of redemption and eschatological judgement. Even the august figure of the Similitudes of 1 Enoch doesn’t match this. Further (and in my view even more significantly), Jesus is accorded a programmatic place in devotional practices that has no analogy in 2nd temple Jewish tradition, such that he is invoked, acclaimed, etc., in ways that are otherwise confined to God. So, it’s inadequate simply to say that Jesus is God’s agent. The presentation of him in terms of belief and practices comprises a remarkably innovation “mutation” in agency tradition, such that it was a “natural” development that Christian theologians had to consider how to define “God” in light of this…”
Your claim, therefore: “Jesus is the uniquely appointed principal agent” is overtly contradicted by Hurtado’s line of argument to the effect that “it’s inadequate simply to say that Jesus is God’s agent”.
(2) You have expressed your belief that early Christians and the New Testament writings do not testify to any belief in the personal pre-existence of Jesus as the Divine Logos and His corresponding role in the creation of all things.
Again, this is in direct contrast to Hurtado and the majority of New Testament scholars. Hurtado is explicit in his argument that the Pauline Epistles, the Gospel of John and Hebrews (in particular) take for granted the personal pre-existence of Jesus as a divine being co-eternal and co-equal with God the Father. For instance, Hurtado contends on pages 119 - 124 of his now standard treatment of the topic in the book, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity:
"…The overwhelming majority of scholars in the field agree that there are at least a few passages in Paul’s undisputed letters that reflect and presuppose the idea of Jesus’ preexistence…
Most scholars take these verses to reflect a belief in the personal preexistence and incarnation of Christ…
Paul’s formulaic statement in 1 Corinthians 8:6 indicates that already at that early point in the Christian movement believers were attributing to Christ not only preexistence or foreordination, but also an active role as divine agent in creation.…This is a suitable point at which to underscore certain key results of this discussion of Jesus’ preexistence…It appeared astonishingly early in the Christian movement. Second, the condensed nature of the references indicates that Paul was not introducing the idea but presumed acquaintance with it already among his converts…Third, these references include reflections of the idea that Christ was actively involved as divine agent in creation…
One final point: in these Pauline statements it is the historic figure Jesus who is referred to as preexistent…These passages directly attribute to Jesus personally a preexistence and a central role in creation…"
His position is abundantly and incontrovertibly clear, and is the majority one as Hurtado himself alludes to.
Nothing you have written thus far persuades me to reject this consensual opinion among leading scholars in favour of your own understanding of the issue, it must be said. Extraordinary claims countering mainstream positions, require extraordinary evidence to substantiate them.
One has to wonder why you would place yourself in opposition to what is the “overwhelming majority of scholars” when the evidence is relatively uncontested.
In our prior and separate discussion concerning the intermediate state in early Christian thought, I distinctly recall you were wont to emphasize the overriding importance of “scholarly consensuses”.
So, why the sudden change of heart?
(3) You are quite correct to say that Hurtado is disinclined to interpret the authors of the New Testament as having thought in terms of Greek ontological categories or distinctions e.g. between the divine nature and essence.
However, your description of his stance thoroughly diminishes the complexity and nuance evident in his argument. For example, in his discussions in the comments section with Richard Bauckham, Hurtado has conceded something very important. He writes:
in a number of NT texts, Jesus (and/or the Word/Son) is uniquely placed with God, such that Jesus is constitutive for adequate discourse about God and adequate worship of God. In that sense, Jesus is placed on God’s side of a line distinguishing creator and creature
Perhaps this might be one reason why you are at pains to deny the scholarly consensus in support of an early Christian belief, emerging at some point after his death but likely well before Paul wrote his letters (in tandem with the emerging consensus), that Jesus was the incarnation of a divine being who had personally pre-existed his human birth and played an active role in creation, thereby - as Hurtado and Bauckham both agree - placing him squarely in the “Creator” side of the line dividing creator from creature, as well as the human side.
Furthermore, while Hurtado does not think it ever occurred to the earliest Christians to conceptualize Jesus’ relationship with the Father in explicitly ontic terms (and he recognizes this view of his isn’t a majority or consensus position), he also cautions: “Note, please, the writers don’t reject such terms or conceptions; they just don’t use them”.
(4) Ehrman has affirmed the personal preexistence of Jesus prior to his human birth in other remarks of his - albeit as an angel-mediator, in St. Paul’s case, between the human-divine realms rather than God, but personally preexistent in this manner nontheless. For instance, he baldly stated on his blog post dated June 7th 2014: “I did indeed find Gieschen’s argument that Paul understood Jesus as an angel prior to becoming human extremely provocative and convincing” and:
"…Jesus certainly was a human with a human family for Paul. But he became a human after being a divine being with God. See Phil. 2:6-8…According to Phil. 2:6-8 he is equal with God for the time being.
It’s because of the last lines, that every knee shall bow to Christ and every tongue confess — words applied to Yahweh, and him alone, in Isaiah 45…"
Or as he noted in a different blog post from 2015:
- “…my view that the apostle Paul understood Christ, before coming into the world, to have been the great angel of God, a divine being who was absolutely a pre-existent divinity, but was not on a level equal with God. He then came into the world in order to fulfil God’s plan, died for sins, and was exalted, as a result, to a position of even greater power and authority as one actually equal with God.…”
Christ/Jesus literally and personally was a “pre-existent divinity” before he came into the world in order to die for men’s sins, according to Ehrman’s understanding of the Apostle Paul’s belief system.
Ehrman adheres to a high early Christology for at least Paul - just short of absolute equality with God until the resurrection.
By the time the Gospel of John was written, Ehrman is unmistakably clear about the fact that Jesus had been equated with God. He just sees more of a developmental process over the course of the first century, whereas the pro-emerging consensus scholars advocate an early explosion of belief in Jesus’s divinity.
“Paul understood Jesus as an angel prior to becoming human”. Jesus became human according to Ehrman. Jesus, not some pre-existent divine agency that God merely infused into his completely human person after adopting him or a case of elaborate poetic licence in lieu of the personified Wisdom tradition. If he is contradicting himself in different contexts, then he should perhaps do a better job of clarifying his position.
As a final point, you offer an answer at one junction which to me is perplexing:
- “Is Jesus to be worshipped?” Yes, but not as God. The earliest Christians did not worship him as God.
This is simply not true. Hurtado’s main contention, for which he has amassed a veritable armada of persuasive evidence that has resulted in an emerging consensus, is that Jesus was from a very early stage after his death subsumed into the worship of the One God, the Father. Hurtado has stated plainly on his blog how:
Jesus is portrayed as included within discourse about God, and is included within the worship offered to God, and as sharing/given divine glory and throne. To judge what that means in “ontological” terms is a fair question.
Jesus was included or subsumed within the cultic devotion and invocation in the shema (see 1 Corinthians 8:6), the worship offered to the one almighty God. He wasn’t worshiped as a separate entity without reference to God other than by means of some vague role as vizier/agent, as you seem to insist above, for that would have been blasphemous in a Jewish context. (Just ask a devout Muslim how heinous in his eyes he would regard “associating partners with God” or shirk to be, its no different for other cultic monotheists). Rather, he was incorporated within the worship traditionally offered to God - something unprecedented in the preceding ‘divine agency’ tradition - partly because their elevation of him post-mortem to divine status had to be made congruent with traditional Jewish cultic exclusivity/monotheism (Hurtado explains how he thinks this occured, by means of post-resurrection revelatory experiences of Christ as an exalted divine being).
To offer worship to a being other than God is certainly not what the ancient Jewish Christians behind the writing of the New Testament books had in mind. The only way they could justify their extraordinary cultic devotion to Jesus while remaining monotheistic-cultic-exclusivists like other Jews, was to associate him with God in an unprecedented fashion and effectively subsume Jesus into the worship directed towards the one God, which led to the belief on their part that Jesus had always pre-existed and had an active role in the creation of the universe. Not many scholars claim Jesus proclaimed this about himself, but a majority do believe that this belief is reflected in the New Testament because his followers came to believe it after his death. The only major point in contention between the emerging consensus and those outside its ranks is to do with when not what the early Christians believed about Jesus’s divinity. Ehrman for instance is clear that Jesus is equated with God in the Gospel of John, as opposed to merely a pre-existent angel-mediator as he now thinks Paul believed.
Simply put, the earliest Christians worshiped Jesus as God - even if Hurtado is right that they didn’t explicitly utilize Hellenistic-inspired ontological, philosophocal categories in doing so. (Although Hurtado does suggest that later moves to do so represented, perhaps, a “natural” development.)
I would opine that the latter isn’t even necessary anyway to make the original point about Jesus being the incarnation of a pre-existent, co-eternal divine agent whose origins and meaning lie in God the Father - above and before creation (which pre-existent Jesus was personally involved in) - who subsequently has the central role in redemption and eschatological judgement, and whom God the Father has enthroned as regent over all following his resurrection and ascension into heaven: requiring Jesus, henceforth, to be worshiped in ways otherwise confined strictly to God in Second Temple Judaism, by being included in the very worship offered to God…and all at an incredibly early stage in the aftermath of Jesus’s death but well before the writing of the Pauline epistles some twenty years later…which is precisely what Hurtado argues and you don’t agree with him based upon your expressed positions to the contrary.
Which is perfectly fine by the way, but it does set you at odds with a scrupulously well-evidenced emerging consensus that a majority or plurality of scholars find compelling and persuasive.
How would the Holy Spirit give gifts and not be a person? How would it be the Comforter?
You don’t think that Jesus emptied himself?