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James McGrath and Christology

James McGrath, professor of New Testament at Butler University in Indiana, is somebody you need to know.  He’s a good scholar and a faithful blogger.  He’s worth reading on a variety of subjects. He has good judgment and sound methods.

.  In a recent post he collected some of the hubbub going on right now on the web regarding “an early high Christology,” a topic I have some interest in.  In fact over the next few years I hope to return to the topic–though I never really left it, I got distracted–with what I trust is a more measured and mature reading of certain texts. In the meantime I thought I’d link to his Patheos blog.  mcgrath-james

Click here for the link

or type the URL below into your browser.

 

Early High Subordinationist Christology around the Blogosphere

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Jesus Monotheism

I met Crispin Fletcher-Louis in 1998 at a conference at St. Andrews. He was a rising star in historical and theological matters relating to the origins of Christianity. His star continues to rise.

Recently he published the first volume of a four volume series entitled Jesus Monotheism. This particular volume is Christological Origins: The Emerging Consensus and Beyond (Cascade, 2015).

In this series Fletcher-Louis hopes to explain how it happened that early Jesus-followers came to see him as divine and worshiped him in continuity with the worship of the One God of Israel (what I like to call an early high Christology). His purpose is historical: where did it happen? With whom? What caused it? What shape did it take?jewish-monotheism

I’ll have more to say on this in an upcoming article.  For now at least let me introduce the key elements.

Fletcher-Louis thinks that there are antecedent traditions which anticipate the inclusion of Jesus in the divine identity (Bauckham’s phrase). While the worship of Jesus alongside God and beliefs in his divine identity are new and surprising, they could have been anticipated if we were attuned correctly to certain movements and ideas within second temple Judaism.

Fletcher-Louis situates the causative factor for an early high Christology not in powerful religious experiences post-resurrection but in Jesus’ own self-awareness. He claims that the historical Jesus had an incarnational self-consciousness. The resurrection, of course, is a key event. For the crucifixion appears on the surface to deny Jesus’ messianic and divine claims. In the event Christians call the resurrection something happened to reverse the negating elements of Jesus’ death and confirm not only that Jesus is Israel’s Messiah but that he is also the incarnation of a divine being. Now, for those of you who’ve been following the scholarship in this arena, that is a bold claim.

Fletcher-Louis starts with the emerging consensus. Frankly, I don’t know recall who coined the phrase but it is a good one. The emerging consensus among many scholars is that a divine Christology is indeed early (that’s why I am a founding member of the early high Christology club) and located historically within Jewish milieu. It did not arise late in the first century only after Gentiles had streamed in and overtaken the Jesus movement.   Divine Christology means that early followers included Jesus within the divine identity and engaged in actions toward him which can only be described as worship, or as Larry Hurtado has put it “Christ devotion.”

There are scholars, however, who haven’t emerged. These include Maurice Casey, Jimmy Dunn, James McGrath, and Bart Ehrman.

To this point Fletcher-Louis finds himself in broad agreement with the emerging consensus and its leading lights, Hurtado and Bauckham. Where he goes “beyond” is to try to locate (historically) the belief in a divine Messiah in pre-Christian Judaism and in the self-awareness of Jesus. Jewish writings which could have a pre-Christian origin such as the Life of Adam and Eve and the Similitudes of Enoch can be read in such a way to suggest that Jews before Jesus had a messianic expectation which included a divine Messiah who comes from heaven.

Hurtado has made the case that it is powerful religious experiences post- resurrection which caused these early, Jewish followers to consider Jesus divine and to worship him. Apparently, through visions and prophetic utterances early Christians “saw” Jesus enthroned at God’s right hand and came to believe that worshiping Jesus was the will of God. While Fletcher-Louis applauds Hurtado’s sense that we need to take seriously the role of religious experience, he does not consider it is enough to account for what happened so quickly after Jesus’ execution. The problem, as he sees it, is that with no precedent for the worship of a divine person or Messiah in pre-Christian Judaism or without taking seriously the possibility that Jesus’ himself had a sense of his own divine identity, it is hard to account for the speed and exact shape Christ devotion took in the first decades after Jesus’ execution. It is more believable, according to Fletcher-Louis, that Jesus had a divine self-consciousness.

Well, his chips are on the table. Scholars, emerging and otherwise, are likely to agree with some of his points and disagree with others. Three more volumes to come. These are a welcome additions to the conversation.

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OnScript

I found a podcast series which may interest you.  Matt & Matt cohost this series which describes itself as “conversations on current biblical scholarship.”  The reason I found it is because a friend, Chris Tilling, was a guest on their podcast recently to discuss a topic I have interest in: New Testament Divine Christology.Chris-Tilling

If you’ve followed this blog, you know I’ve highlighted Chris’ book Paul’s Divine Christology on a couple of occasions.  Chris is on to an important and overlooked feature of early Christology.

In the podcast Matt & Matt do a good job in laying out the contours of where current Christological discussions have gone over the past 20-30 years.  Chris is well-versed in “the state of the question.”  If you’re interested in whether the earlies followers of Jesus regarded him as divine, then you will want to take some time and listen to Chris’ take on things.

Here’s a link:

http://onscript.study/podcast/chris-tilling-talking-new-testament-christology/

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The Divine Name . . . before Nicea

 

Charles Gieschen, professor and dean at Concordia Theological Seminary (Indiana), has written what I regard to be a significant article.  I’d like for people to know about it.  It is in a refereed journal entitled Vigiliae Christianae 57 (2003): 115-158.   The title of the article is “The Divine Name in Ante-Nicene Christology.” His thesis is this: many references or allusions to the “name” of Jesus in early Christianity should be understood as signifying that Jesus possesses the Divine Name, the holy, unspeakable name of Israel’s God (YHWH), often called the Tetragrammaton.  The “name” of Jesus in these contexts does not refer to the name given to him on the eighth day by his parents.  Gieschen spends a good deal of time in the New Testament but he also considers such extra-canonical texts as 1 Clement, the Ascension of Isaiah, the Odes of Solomon, the Shepherd of Hermas, the Gospel of Thomas, the Acts of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, among others. gieschen

Clearly, I think Charles is onto something.  He cites favorably my own book Old Testament Yahweh Texts in Paul’s Christology, WUNT (Tubingen, 1992), that showed how Paul, the earliest Christian theologian, took Scriptural texts containing the Divine Name and applied them to Jesus.  The name “Jesus” was a common name in its day, even if it is unusual in English-speaking circles.  It is a transliteration through Greek, into Latin, into English of the Hebrew name “Joshua.”  I’ve been to many a baseball game where players from Latin American countries were named “Jesus” (pronounced Hay-soos).

When Paul says that “at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus the Messiah is Lord . . .” (Phil 2:9-11), it seems clear that the Greek genitive should be rendered possessively “the name that belongs to Jesus.”  And what name belongs to Jesus?  Gieschen argues, and I think he is correct, the covenant name of God revealed to Moses at Sinai (YHWH).

Gieschen concludes his study asking why a Divine Name Christology fades in the next Christian centuries.  He gives two reasons.  First, as the Jesus movement became more and more Gentile, knowledge of the Divine Name is no longer determinative for how Christ followers assess his significance.  This begins to happen even among Greek-speaking Christians who read Kyrios as the standard translation/ rendering of the Divine Name in Hebrew biblical texts. Knowledge of the Divine Name traditions began to fade. Second, it seems that heretical groups in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD are those who utilize and keep the Divine Name Christology in tact. The “orthodox,” in responding negatively to the “heretics,” set aside their teaching which associated Jesus so clearly with the Divine Name.

To cite one example:

“One single name is not uttered in the world, the name that the Father gave the Son, the name above all things: the name of the Father.” (Gospel of Philip II.54.5-8)

If Gieschen is correct, the heretics kept alive a neglected aspect of early Christology.

 

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Is there a “center” in Paul’s theology?

An earlier generation of scholars were fond of questing for the “center” of Paul’s theology.  Even in the midst of occasional, contingent situations, they believe there was an inner logic, a coherence to Paul’s thinking.  Today, scholars are less prone to talk about “center” though they do use adjectives like “central,” “integral,” and the like.  I’m wondering are we beyond trying to locate a theological center for Paul, a conceptual place from which he theologizes?  St. Paul

In an earlier book (Rediscovering Jesus, IVP [2007], with E. R. Richards and Rodney Reeves)I went in quest for the center of Paul’s theology and decided on the following criteria.

How can the center of Paul’s theology be determined? Put another way, what criteria will lead us to the center? The center will be that/those aspect/s of Paul’s theology that best satisfies the following criteria:

The center must be

1.. integral: it finds expression in all parts of all his letters.

2.. generative: it participates in—and to some degree generates—all his theologizing. It can help to explain everything else.[1]

3.. experiential: it results from encounters he has with the risen Jesus.

4.. traditional: it is consistent with the traditions he inherits and uses.

5.. scriptural: it serves as the interpretive key to new readings of Scripture.

6.. theological: given Paul’s commitment to monotheism, the theological center is ultimately a word about God, explaining and revealing him.

7.. presuppositional: at times it sits beneath the surface of Paul’s letters, supporting and limiting the argument.

The aspect or aspects of Paul’s theology that fit these criteria are likely candidates for the center of Paul’s theology.

[1]E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism: A Comparison of Patterns of Religion (Philadephia: Fortress, 1977), p. 441, states it negatively: “a theme cannot be central which does not explain anything else.”

I’m wondering if the quest for a “center” or what is central/ integral is still relevant.  What do you think?