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A Man Attested by God

 

Daniel Kirk has written an important new book entitled A Man Attested by God: The Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels (Eerdmans 2016).  At the heart of his project is an attempt to resuscitate an idealized humanity at the heart of the Gospels.  The tendency for many, he thinks, is to read Matthew, Mark, and Luke through the lens of John’s Gospel or of Paul’s divine Christology expressed in say, the Philippian hymn (Phil 2:6-11).kirk-a-man-attested

For Kirk Jesus is an extraordinary figure of history.  But he is not just extraordinary because of his deity; he is extraordinary because of his humanity.  The grand scheme of the Bible presents the God of Israel as One who does not give up on humanity.  From the beginning (Genesis) God had a great plan and vision for what humanity was supposed to be.  So Kirk proposes that the Synoptics offer a high human Christology (a play on words based on the emerging consensus of “an early high Christology”).  In this case high does not equal divine, but a fully realized and idealized humanity. In other words the Synoptic Gospels present us with a Jesus who is everything humanity was created to be.

Now Kirk doesn’t deny the orthodox picture of a divine Christ.  He just thinks the Synoptics are telling a different sort of story, a story that can be easily lost in accentuating Jesus’ divinity.  As long as we stress Jesus’ divinity, we don’t have to take seriously what it means to walk as he walk, live as lived, love as he loved.  In other words “following Jesus.”

Kirk’s monograph stands in contrast to recent work done on the Gospels by the likes of Larry Hurtado, Richard Bauckham, and even his own former teacher, Richard Hays.  But more about this in another post.

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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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Morna Hooker on “the Faith of Jesus”

Earlier this year Michael Bird highlighted an article by Morna Hooker in the Scottish Journal of Theology: 

Morna D. Hooker, “Another Look at πίστις Χριστοῦ,” SJT 69 (2016): 46-62.

In that article she joins a chorus of scholars who agree that at key moments in his letters Paul relates that redemption is centered in the faith or faithfulness of Jesus.  This is a position argued decades ago by Richard Hays.  Now, I’m pleased to note, many scholars have begun to read Paul this way.  As Hooker notes, this new reading has deep implications for Paul’s theology.Morna Hooker

To read Bird’s blog post click here.

 

When I was working on The Voice translation of the Bible with Thomas Nelson, I made and won the argument that “faith/faithfulness of Jesus” is how these texts ought to be read on the fact that the King James Version (1611) got it right!  Here are two examples:

Romans 3:22-23:

22 Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference:

23 For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;

And Galatians 2:20:

20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

Most modern translations take this as an objective genitive and render it “faith in Jesus” or “faith in the Son of God.”  In The Voice we translated those key passages as subjective genitives: Jesus exercises faith/ trust/ faithfulness (to God).  Hooker is correct that Jesus is clearly an object of faith in Paul; but in these and other key places when Paul is describing the essence of the gospel he is clear that our redemption is due to God’s rightness and Jesus’ faithfulness.

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Pauline Exegesis and the Divine Christ

Here is a link to the third lecture I did at Acadia Divinity School in Nova Scotia in fall 2014.  Thanks to Danny Zacharias, fleetwd1 and Mike Harris for making this video available to me and anyone interested.

https://youtu.be/0pokwuUniYE

 

 

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Gathercole at Lanier Theological Library

University of Cambridge professor, Simon Gathercole, is soon to give his second lecture at Lanier Theological Library.  On May 7, 2016 from 7.00 to 9.00 pm Simon will offer a lecture entitled:

“The Journeys of Jesus and Jewish Geography”

The Gospels in the New Testament contain a remarkable amount of geographical information, especially in the quantity of references to areas, towns and villages that Jesus (and John the Baptist) visited. Are these genuine or fictitious?  Some Jesus skeptics have doubted the existence of places like Nazareth and Capernaum.  Even many New Testament scholars are unaware of the evidence for Gospel sites. Strikingly, however, a huge proportion of the place-names in the Gospels are paralleled in Jewish literature outside the New Testament, even down to some of the small villages.  This illustrated lecture will examine the historical evidence, some already known, some presented for the first time, for the places in the Gospel.  It will show how this evidence has clear implications for the reliability of the Gospel narratives.Simon Gathercole

The lecture is free and open to the public.  Click here for more information and to register.

If you have never been to the Lanier Theological Library or the Stone Chapel, you are in for a treat.  Mike Bird calls it “DisneyLand” for scholars.  Mark and Becky Lanier have done a wonderful job building these classic structures , collecting some of the world’s best books and artifacts, staffing the library, presenting lectures, and hosting events.  Scholars, teachers, and leaders come from all around the world to see this place. Charles Mickey is director of the library and coordinates all these events. He has a cracker-jack staff who do everything you can imagine to make these events successful.