How Christology Begins with Stan Porter

Here is a conversation I had recently with Dr. Stan Porter on “The Stone Chapel Podcast.” That podcast is part of the ChurchLeaders Podcast Network.

Stan Porter  

I’m Stanley Porter and I’m the President and Dean and Professor of New Testament at McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

David Capes  

Dr. Stanley Porter, Stan. Good to see you. Welcome to The Stone Chapel Podcast.

Stan Porter  

Thanks, David. Good to see you, too.

David Capes  

It’s a pleasure to have you. I’ve been wanting to [have you on the podcast] for a while. I got your book, The Origins of New Testament Christology, the one you wrote with Bryan Dyer. And I’m very excited to be chatting with you today about it. Because you know, I love Christology. I just resonate with it. But for those who don’t know you, who is Stan Porter?

Stan Porter  

Well, that’s a good question. I have a lot of things I could talk about. One of my main interests is Greek language and linguistics. That’s how I started out my career. I’m originally from the United States, and was educated, at least in part there. And then I did my PhD in Britain, at the University of Sheffield. And I’ve taught at a lot of different places. I taught in the States, I taught in Western Canada, and I taught in the UK. Now I’m in Canada. I’ve been in Canada since 2001. I’ve been at McMaster Divinity College, probably for the biggest part of my career, and it’s been great. I’ve been President at McMaster Divinity College, and we’ve had a great time working with a lot of great students in developing a lot of different programs. And they’ve been, I think, serving the church very, very well.

David Capes  

Is there a denominational connection at McMaster?

Stan Porter  

McMaster Divinity College, we’re a Baptist seminary. We’re connected with the Convention Baptists. It’s distinctly Canadian Baptist. We’re connected to the Canadian Baptists of Ontario and Quebec. About 10% of our students are Convention Baptists, but we have a lot of other students. We have close to 40 different denominations, from a lot of different places around North America and around the globe.

David Capes  

It’s a great school. I’ve known a number of people to have gone there over the years. And it has a fantastic reputation in part because of your leadership there. And you’ve got a brilliant faculty as well. 

Stan Porter  

Thank you, David. Yeah, we’ve worked hard to develop a good faculty. 

David Capes  

That’s a big factor. And that attracts some good students, I would imagine over the years. Let’s talk about your book Origins of New Testament Christology. Here’s the subtitle, An Introduction to the Traditions and Titles Applied to Jesus. Now you wrote this, along with Bryan Dyer. How was it working with Bryan? 

Stan Porter  

Bryan’s a great guy. Bryan, I struck up a friendship and a working relationship. We edited a book on Paul and rhetoric. And I wrote this book on sacred traditions. Bryan contributed a chapter. And when we were working on that book, developing this notion of how important sacred traditions are, we got the idea of doing more, and that turned into the Christology book. It was a great experience working with Bryan. 

David Capes  

He’s a brilliant fellow. And I’m really grateful for him. Can you do a wrap it up in terms of the big focus of your book? (Now Christology means the doctrine of Christ, I guess is a simple way of putting it.) When you think about the person of Jesus, and the significance and those things, in a way you’re thinking Christologically. How does this book fit into other books about Christology? What’s the big idea of your book, Stan?

Stan Porter  

Actually, it’s a pretty complex question, because Christology is a complex issue. There are a couple of things, I think, to your question that I could address. The big idea is that we’re trying to get out how is Jesus Christ depicted in the New Testament for who he is? What are the New Testament writers doing? And what kinds of ways of depicting him do they use? How do they go about doing this? What are they saying by doing this? 

And hence, we have used a form of the titles approach. There have been important Christology books. Cullmann’s book, you know, is a well-known Christology in some ways. We patterned [our book] after that. Or at least think of it in terms of serving academia and the church in a similar kind of way. In other words, going through and not doing an exhaustive and comprehensive treatment, but a good solid treatment. Especially for students in seminary, or advanced undergraduates, of key ways that Jesus is depicted, we pattern the book then both in terms of the history of research like Cullmann and some of the others. Even at the end, in the last chapter, we position it in relationship to what some people would call the second history of religion movement, or this idea of “how Jesus became God” and try to address how it fits in there. But our primary task is to say, let’s take what the New Testament presents and show how Jesus is depicted. 

David Capes  

And that’s done, like you said, through a modified title approach. Because you don’t just do titles you do traditions and titles together. I like that. In fact, I was concerned a few years ago, when people seem to be abandoning Christological titles for other things. Those other things are good. But I didn’t feel honestly that we could divorce the titles from some of those other things, particularly narrative Christology, let’s say.

Stan Porter  

Yeah, those are really good observations. David, I think you’re absolutely right. There was a push back against the tiles approach. And in some ways, I think it was warranted, because in a lot of treatments of titles, there tends to be a focus on particular wordings. And sometimes the wordings are not particularly Christological. And you get this problem of trying to do a kind of word theology that I think goes much too far. And it’s probably not a good responsible way of dealing with lexical items. And what we’re trying to do is to say you need some kind of an organizing principle. And yes, others have used other ways of doing that book by book narratively, etc. 

But there are certain ways that Jesus is depicted or addressed by the New Testament authors. And we wanted to focus on those not trying to provide comprehensive treatments, for example, of every time a given lexeme appears in the New Testament. But when this particular set of wordings may be used, especially in these contexts that are theological, what is being meant by and that’s where the traditions part comes in. Because we found and are supporting the idea and trying to develop further, that a lot of these did not come from nowhere. But they are reflecting traditions that were found in the Jewish world and in the Greco-Roman world, and I don’t like to make a bifurcation between those two. But you know, Jesus lived within that wider thought world in which the New Testament was written. And we pick up on those particular kinds of wordings, and hence develop it along that way. That’s why it’s a bit of a modified titles approach, because the traditions help inform how this language came to be used and why it has significance in the New Testament.

David Capes  

Sometimes people look at a particular word, and say I don’t find that word, therefore, the idea is not there. I feel like that’s overreaching. Yes, that word might not be there. But still, the same idea is being expressed, let’s say in the questions being asked, or the statements being made, or the claims being made about Jesus, for example.

Stan Porter  

Yeah, absolutely. There’s that kind of thing, or just because a particular word might be used, I suppose you could say, I don’t know I’m just thinking for an example the word ‘son”. Every time “son” is used, it’s got to have some kind of theological significance to it. It’s a term that does sometimes in contexts have that theological meaning as we want to talk about that, but not do an exhaustive study of the lexeme. And all of its different uses. 

David Capes  

You and Bryan did 11 chapters on it. Let me just read the names of the chapters. And I’m going to ask in a second about the order you guys chose. Number one, Jesus the Lord. Number two, Jesus the Prophet. Number three, Jesus, the Son of Man. Number four, Jesus, the Son of God. Five, Jesus, the Suffering Servant. Six, Jesus, the Passover Lamb. Seven, Jesus the Messiah. Eight, Jesus, the Savior. Nine, Jesus, the Last Adam. Ten, Jesus, the Word and Eleven, Jesus, the High Priest. is there anything significant about that order, or was that just something you came up with as a way of getting all those titles and traditions represented,

Stan Porter  

It’d be great and clever if we said that it’s really some kind of a hidden code that spells Bryan’s middle name or something, but it’s not! That’s a good question, David. We actually debated the order. We debated whether there should be other chapters in the book. And once you open that up, you can find lots of other possibilities. You’ll notice, for example, that in dealing with “Jesus as the Word” I think we have wisdom in there. And we put those together. We maybe could have had a separate chapter or, do Moses or, there’s all sorts of things like that. But I think what we tried to do—and I’m not sure that you can ever do this in an entirely consistent way—was to have several different things going on. One starting with the broader and most well known kinds of titles. 

And so especially with “Jesus is Lord”, that’s a really important one, especially throughout the New Testament. And then we start with that one, it has a lot of implications regarding who Jesus is, as God. They move on to some of the other ones that are perhaps more specialized, but often thought of as important. Now “prophet” is interesting. Because if you say Jesus is Lord, well, then you have the prophets proclaiming the Word of the Lord. And so, you know, Jesus comes along and so “prophet” seems a natural thing. But then if you get into things like “Son of Man” and “Son of God”, “Son of Man” is pretty much a Gospel’s only kind of title. 

But when people think in terms of depicting Jesus, it seems to be the way that Jesus thought of himself often refers to that and is big in the Gospels. It needed to be probably near the top of things. “Son of God” is one of those that reaches into the Greco Roman world, in a big way. It ties in with some of the traditions concerning how especially Eastern rulers were thought of. So, there’s a long history there and we tried to tease that out. And then after that, you get into some of the perhaps even more specialized titles if you get into “Passover lamb”, there are a few places in the desert, but it’s predominantly John’s Gospel that depicts that and then you get some that are probably less overtly divine Christological titles. Some more human ones. You have the “Suffering Servant”, although that’s got some interesting things to it and “Messiah”, perhaps could have been put earlier. 

But on the other hand, there’s a lot of debate about what were the theological implications of Messianism at the time. We tend to take a more diverse view of Messianism than a lot of people are doing these days. Right now, there’s a lot of depiction in terms of the Davidic line. And the King Jesus ideas, the way of defining Messiah. But we take a little bit of a broader view, recognizing that was probably broader terminology. So, it fits then within certain other kinds of things. It will have some ties to priest, perhaps, as well. And so, you have “high priests“ there near the end, giving you a little bit of an idea of, at least how I can think of it in terms of once we settled on the order, but we did think about that.

David Capes  

Yes, some [scholars] distinguish between human titles, the human Jesus, his humanity and then the Divine. I don’t think there’s always a good clean line, sometimes between those. Let me ask you this, because I’m curious. Among the earliest Christians, they’re trying to sort out Jesus in the first century, having not had a New Testament. But what they had was the Old Testament. What they had was their culture at the time. I’m wondering what you and Bryan are thinking about the doctrine of Christ today. Is it a settled matter? Has it been settled? Or do you see things in culture or maybe in the churches that seemed to be detracting from the person and the work of Jesus these days?

Stan Porter  

It’s a live topic. It’s a hot topic. That’s part of reason we wrote the book, and you’ll see that the way we framed it we talk especially in terms of adoptionism as one of the big issues. And I mentioned earlier some of those who’ve been discussing this whole concept of the “How Jesus became God” debate that’s tied in with that whole thing. I think we frame it near the end. There’s the question of, if that’s an issue how and when. And those are big, big debates, right? Was it something that took place much later and the church bestowed? Or was it something that was there from the start? And so, in that sense, Christological issues, I think, are a very, very big issue, and are constantly being debated. 

So, some would conclude in the Jesus became God debate, it’s right from the beginning. There’s the sense in which Jesus was regarded as divine, and then the church’s language was just unfolding. Others would say, we can point to a place or a time or an event or something that occurred where some in the church people decided, that is when Jesus became regarded as divine.  We don’t get as involved in that debate, as others have, as I said, in the final chapter, we try to place our work within that larger context. 

Our primary focus is to see how the New Testament authors depict Jesus. And I think our own conclusions might be called and it’s traditionally been called a High Christology, emerges from that. From what we can see in the earliest documents, there’s a sense of Jesus being in some way divine. We want to take that seriously, and are less concerned for teasing out the rest of it. So, in that sense, we are not part of the adoption as a group, and no, we’re not. But we’re not overtly making an argument against it so much as trying to take the text as we see them. And then let others do that. 

David Capes  

I think you’re right. The other thing I’ve notice as I run into Christians who have a sense that Jesus was a prophet, he was this and that, but he wasn’t really God. That was just something that was added later. The other thing that I’m seeing, and I have noticed, it seems like there’s an abiding Gnosticism. That in the church, a sense that Jesus was never fully human. So, we get the divinity of Jesus [early], but the full humanity of Jesus was never really established. If you look up Gnostic Christianity on the Internet, there’s websites where people today are still calling themselves Gnostics. And I don’t know if that’s a thing in Canada, if that’s just a thing down here in the States or not.

Stan Porter  

I think you’ll find that in a lot of different places. But yes, you’re absolutely right. And I think some of the pushback that’s occurred in some circles, to the High Christology probably has gone too far. In emphasizing Jesus’ humanity, in an effort to make sure that we don’t forget that he’s human, I would like to think our book does address that, in some ways. All the titles probably fit into the larger picture of who Jesus is. And that overall is a High Christology, but not every one of them, is a way of naming him as God in the same way as all the others are. And so, I think we’ve tried to maintain that balance, and so that you can appreciate fully his humaneness whilst seeing how that fits within the larger picture of his divinity.

David Capes  

And the church does deal with these things and puzzles them out, in a sense over many decades, centuries. They’re trying to sort out what they find there in the earliest texts themselves. We’re talking to Dr. Stanley Porter about his book with Bryan Dyer, The Origins of New Testament Christology: An Introduction to the Traditions and Titles Applied to Jesus. It’s a brilliant book. I’m going use this as a textbook next time I teach Christology, because I think that it handles so many of the important issues. Dr. Stan Porter, thanks for being with us today on The Stone Chapel Podcast. 

A Nugget of Wisdom from Stan Porter  

One of the things that I often talk with my students about is that we work in a discipline [theology/biblical studies] that tends to emphasize the individual scholar. But I’ve had great pleasure over the years of working collaboratively with somebody else. And sometimes we wonder why is it that science seems to make so much progress. And one of the things I observe is that scientists often work collaboratively and you get the dynamic and synergy and the kind of excitement that comes from a lot of people sharing the abilities that they have. And I would like to encourage a lot of us within the field of Biblical Studies to think of working together. And I think there’s a lot of potential and a lot of good that we can do in the work that we do if we think in those terms.