New Testament Theology – Class 02 – The Theology of Paul the Apostle
We are beginning with Paul because he is the earliest Christian writer whose writings we have. It is, for all intents and purposes, impossible to simply start with the teaching and ‘theology’ of the historical Jesus. To study Jesus historically means, among other things, to dig back behind the Gospels and other historical, archaeological, and literary evidence that we have, and this presupposes an understanding of the nature of the witness and of the historical information contained in each of the Gospels. It is thus much more straightforward in a sense to begin with the written documents we have, in the order of their being written (to the extent that we know what order they were written in). Yet there is also a danger if we begin with Paul’s writings and his theology. Paul did not invent Christian theology, nor did he write in a vacuum. At many points, he presupposes, alludes to, and in other ways takes for granted the teaching of Jesus, in a form similar to that which is found in the Synoptic Gospels. So in beginning with Paul, we are skipping over the historical figure of Jesus who had influenced Paul, and we are also skipping over the ‘theology’ that Paul inherited from other early Christians. When Paul writes, he does not write systematic theology. I am convinced that this is true even of Romans, which many take to be something like a systematic treatment of Paul’s theology. Paul’s letters are almost without exception contextualized answers to questions that the churches he wrote to were facing, and thus they are just one fragment of an ongoing conversation with the churches he planted or with which he had contact.
What are the sources we have available to us in order to study Paul’s theology? Well, obviously we have a number of letters written by Paul. But critical scholarship has raised questions regarding whether all of the letters that bear Paul’s name were actually written by Paul. Now, this is often shocking news to Evangelicals, so I should elaborate a bit on this. While some may question the Pauline authorship of certain letters because of their theological prejudices or because of excessive skepticism on their part, this is by no means universally the case; in fact, there have been a number of Evangelical scholars who have questioned that Paul wrote all the letters attributed to him in the New Testament. There are a number of reasons why this is the case.
First, let me draw to your attention that of the letters we have from Paul, not all were authored by him alone, and few were penned directly by him without a scribal secretary or something similar. A reader could be forgiven for feeling shocked the first time he or she reads Romans 16:22, which says “I, Tertius, who am writing this letter, greet you in the Lord”! 1 Corinthians was written by Paul and Sosthenes; 2 Corinthians by Paul and Timothy; Galatians was written by Paul, but he adds “and all the brothers with me”; Philippians and Colossians were written by Paul and Timothy; 1 and 2 Thessalonians were written by Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy. This list in itself is interesting, because the letters that I have not mentioned, those which only have Paul as their sole author, are the ones that are most frequently doubted to be authentically Pauline: Ephesians and the Pastoral Epistles (1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus). These letters are genuinely set apart from the other Pauline letters by differences of style and vocabulary. This has led me to wonder if, rather than these being the least Pauline, they are not perhaps in fact the most Pauline, the letters the express Paul’s thinking and his alone. Be that as it may, there is no problem in a letter being from Paul and others and written by one of the ‘others’, and yet genuinely expressing his thinking. This is not to say that Paul and his co-workers simply thought the same in all respects, but that there was a fundamental coherence and unity in their theology – otherwise, they presumably would have found it harder to cooperate, had they differed on essentials.
This being said, there are important differences of style and vocabulary between the other Pauline letters and those whose authenticity has been questioned. I will focus attention in particular on the example of Ephesians, since a few Evangelical scholars have felt that the differences of style are so significant that it must have been a follower of Paul rather than Paul himself who wrote it (e.g. Andrew Lincoln, Ralph Martin). Yet the Pastoral Epistles fall into a similar category. In the Pastoral Epistles, 36% of the total number of words in them are not found in any other Pauline writing, which is 2-3 times as many as in the Pauline letters that are unanimously considered authentic. There are also many words that are found in other Pauline writings, but not in the Pastorals. So it is really comparison and statistics that have led to this conclusion, and thus the question is whether it is legitimate to expect an author to be consistent in his style and vocabulary [See further P. N. Harrison, The Problem of the Pastoral Epistles, Oxford University Press, 1921].
To give examples of apparent theological differences in Ephesians, we may note the following: (1) elsewhere ‘church’ refers to a local body of believers, but in Ephesians it seems to refer to the Church in a non-local sense, with a ‘capital C’ as it were; Christ is the ‘head’ of the body, whereas in 1 Corinthians one could be an eye or an ear, part of the head; the holy apostles and prophets are referred to as the foundation of the Church, rather than Christ. There is also no mention of dying with Christ, and little mention of the cross, while Ephesians does say that we have been raised with Christ, something that Paul avoids saying in his other letters. The language, and the hymnic style of the opening section, also set Ephesians apart. The fact that Ephesians and Colossians are so closely related also leads many scholars to conclude that one of the two is a later work, which borrows heavily from the other [For further information see Andrew T. Lincoln, Ephesians (Word Bib.Comm. 42), Dallas: Word, 1990].
All these points need to be taken seriously. However, I personally have a slightly different hypothesis. Ephesians, in all likelihood, was not written primarily for the Ephesians. There are a number of indicators that this is the case. First, a number of manuscripts do not have the words ‘in Ephesus’ in verse 1 of chapter 1. Second, there are at least two affirmations made by Paul that do not fit a letter written to the church in Ephesus, a church Paul himself had planted and in which he was well known: Ephesians 1:15 has Paul refer to himself as having heard of the faith of those he is writing to, and in 3:2 Paul says that those he is writing to have surely heard about his ministry. Note also that, although Paul greets many people he knows in Romans, even though he had never been to Rome, in Ephesians there are no such greetings. This last point on its own is not decisive, but taken with all the other points we mentioned, it seems to confirm what we have suggested. And so it is best to take the letter we know as ‘Ephesians’ to be a circular letter from Paul to a number of churches. A copy will have been sent to Ephesus as well, presumably, but they were not the only or even the primary recipients.
This being the case, I would suggest that perhaps in Ephesians we have access to some of the underlying emphases that lie beneath the surface in other letters. In ‘Ephesians’, Paul emphasizes some of the underlying aspects of his theology, its central features, elements that he could take for granted as familiar when writing to churches to whom he was known. And so, rather than being unPauline, it is possible that Ephesians is one of the ‘most Pauline’ letters in the New Testament. At any rate, I intend to take all the letters that claim to be Pauline as evidence of his thought. This is not because I think that one should reject automatically the idea that they could have been written by someone else. It is simply that I find the evidence capable of being explained in another way. I also find it highly unlikely that a follower of Paul, who regarded Paul as ‘his hero’ so that he wrote in his name, would call Paul ‘the chiefest of sinners, not worthy to be called an apostle’ (cf. 1 Timothy 1:15; Ephesians 3:8). These words seem to me to be most likely to come from Paul himself. At any rate, I also think that, even if any of these letters does not stem directly from Paul, they stem from his early followers and thus give evidence, to an extent at least, to ‘Pauline theology’.
In the case of Acts, it is another matter. Luke is clearly a different author than Paul, and although he was very influenced by Paul and was his travel companion for some time, it would be wrong to assume that Luke and Paul see eye to eye on all matters. In fact, many have asked whether the Paul who argued so strongly for the liberty of the Gentiles in Christ and that they are not under law, would really have done the things he is described as doing in Acts: circumcising Titus, taking a Nazirite vow, offering sacrifice for others who have done so, and agreeing to the things imposed on Gentile Christians after the Jerusalem Council described in Acts 15. So, while there may in fact be agreement between Luke and Paul, it would be as wrong to assume this a priori as it would be to force Matthew, Mark, and Luke to agree without listening to their distinctive voices. We will thus refrain from using Acts to tell us about what Paul thought and about his theology and practice, unless we already have evidence of the same ideas from Paul’s own writings.
Let’s now turn to look at our next topic, the presuppositions of Paul’s theology. There are many Christians today who might think of Paul as a ‘convert from Judaism to Christianity’. But it does not take too much thought to realize that that is a very anachronistic way of thinking about the situation. Christianity and Judaism were not two world religions in Paul’s time, as they are today. Christianity was rather a form of messianic Judaism, which found itself in tension with some other types of Judaism (and with some more than others). This messianic Jewish group then began to incorporate Gentiles into their fellowship. But even in his letter to the Romans, Paul still thinks of the Gentiles as being grafted into the olive tree of Israel (Romans 11:16-24). What is it precisely that he abandoned from his past when coming to faith in Christ? Surely it was not his Jewish conviction that God is one: that is something he repeats on a number of occasions in his letters. Nor was it his Jewish belief that God had revealed himself to the people of Israel as recorded in the pages of Scripture. Scripture itself did not cease to be authoritative for him, and he quotes or alludes to it often to settle matters. In fact, Paul does not use the language of ‘conversion’ to refer to what happened to him on the Damascus Road. Rather, it was his calling, although this miraculous call turned him around from opposing the Messiah and his followers to becoming a follower and servant of the Messiah himself. But there was nothing involved in this process that would have led to him becoming ‘more’ or ‘less’ Jewish. This is important to remember.
Another point that needs to be made in this context is that we often read Paul through Luther’s eyes. Luther was weighed down with a burden of sin, and when he discovered Paul’s teaching on justification by faith, he was set free. This was a wonderful thing to happen, but was Paul’s experience exactly like Luther’s? Paul does reject some things from his past, but note that it is not his failures that he repudiates but all the things he had going for him, all the positive achievements he had in his favor! See Philippians 3:7 and its context. What were once his ‘assets’ Paul now considers ‘loss’. So Paul, unlike Luther, was not burdened down by guilt of sin, but rather those things which he repudiated and left behind are things he considered valuable, his greatest achievements, as it were. In the light of Christ, even things that might be considered good in themselves pale in comparison to the light of Christ. Having been forced to conclude that Jesus is in fact the long-awaited Messiah, he was forced as a consequence to rethink and re-evaluate the values he had previously held, especially those that had previously led him to conclude that Jesus couldn’t possibly be the Messiah. We’ll come back to this point a bit later. But note for now that, whereas Luther was burdened by an ever-growing awareness of his own sinfulness, Paul’s summary of his previous life is rather different. In Philippians 3:6, what he actually says is that “as far as the righteousness that can be achieved under the Law is concerned, [he was] blameless”. So in looking at Paul’s theology, one thing we must avoid doing is assuming that Paul’s ‘calling’ (as he puts it) was exactly like the ‘conversion experience’ that Luther had, or that you or I had. Paul was not a ‘westerner’ as Luther was and you and I are, and he seems to show no signs of the psychological anxiety that typifies our society! Luther had searched for a gracious God but had not found him in the 16th century Catholicism in which he lived. But could Paul, living within Judaism and having studied the Hebrew Scriptures, been unaware of the God who is gracious and forgiving? This is a question to which we shall have to return [See further on this subject Krister Stendahl, Paul among Jews and Gentiles and other essays, Fortress Press, 1976].
At any rate, Paul describes his experience of coming to faith as a ‘calling’ in Galatians 1:12-16, which he suggests is similar to the calling of the Old Testament prophets. This is an important aspect of Paul’s self-understanding in his present mission work. He does not understand himself as a ‘convert from Judaism’ but as a Jew who, having been called by Israel’s Messiah to serve him, is now a prophet to the nations, one who had (unbeknownst to him) in fact been set apart for this task since before he was born. This too is an important Pauline presupposition, since it suggests Paul understood his ministry to be essentially in continuity with what God had been doing in the Scriptures, what Christians today call the ‘Old Testament’.
What other presuppositions of Paul’s might we mention? The oneness of God is clearly another important presupposition, and we could add to this the whole OT revelation concerning God. It is not that Paul never mentions these truths: it is that they are part of the foundation of his thought, and are far more important than they might seem simply from a counting of references to them.
And so, when we turn to the question of the center of Paul’s theology, we must have in mind this crucial point, that what is emphasized in his letters may not be what is central to his thinking as a whole. Can anyone tell me why this might be the case? For one thing, because his letters are contextual treatments of matters confronting the churches. For another, because he can assume that the fundamentals of the faith are known to his Christian readers.
Two of the most influential suggestions have been justification by faith and participation in Christ. Which strikes you, simply in terms of first impressions, as more likely to be central to Paul? Why?
In Christ as central; Justification as dealing with how one gets to be ‘in Christ’ – especially Gentiles!
Note that the word ‘justify’, so common in Romans (15x) and Galatians (8x), occurs only two other times in the rest of Paul’s letters (1 Cor.6:11; Titus 3:7). [Cf. Gordon Fee & Douglas Stuart, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth, Zondervan, 1993, p.49] On the other hand, ‘in Christ’ is a concept found throughout Paul’s writings: the phrase occurs 83 times, not including all the occurrences of ‘in him’ that in the context refer to Christ. This is striking in view of the fact that the phrase occurs nowhere else in the NT except for 1 Peter (3:16; 5:10,14). It is thus a typically Pauline phrase. To this list we must add ‘in the Lord’ which occurs 47 times, and the fact that Paul uses numerous verbs (some of which he made up himself!) that carry the idea of ‘with Christ’ – e.g. participate with, live with, die with, reign with, be glorified with, be buried with, suffer with, and so on, and so on. [See Dunn, Theology of Paul, pp.396-403]
New Perspective on Paul – Mirror Reading ‘the Works of the Law’1. Luther’s influence; unlikelihood that 1st century situation was exactly the same as that in 16th century Catholicism.
2. Focus on circumcision – least appropriate ‘work of the Law’ to represent self-justification and self-righteousness!
3. Circumcision in early Judaism:
Jubilees 22:16: Separate yourselves from the Gentiles: Do not eat with them, and do not do the things that they do, and do not have fellowship with them. For all their deeds are defiled, and all their ways are corrupt, and depraved, and disgusting.Letter of Aristeas 139,142: In his wisdom the Lawgiver (i.e. Moses)…surrounded us with unbroken fences and with walls of iron, so that we might not be permitted to mix with any other people in any respect…Thus, in order to protext us from corruption through contact with others or through association with bad influences, he surrounded us on all sides with strict traditions relating to eating, drinking, hearing, touching and seeing, in the manner of the Law.
4. Deuteronomy 9:4-6 Is the Law itself opposed to grace?
5. Was early Judaism completely legalistic (there were surely legalists then, but there are legalistic Christians today; the question is about the overall character of the religion as a whole). See the hymn from Qumran which says: “I know that righteousness does not belong to men nor perfection of path to the sons of men. To God Most High belong all righteous deeds.” [1QH 4,30-32. Cited in Lincoln, Ephesians, p.114]
6. Legalistic individual self-righteousness vs. corporate, election-based nationalistic righteousness.
7. Relevance for today (story about a pastor’s question for Richard Hays): focus on boundary markers rather than on fundamentals; how do we identify a true Christian?
Can this fact account for the other developments in Paul’ theology? It certainly accounts for a number of important points:
1) The resurrection of Jesus clearly started the process: the forced recognition that God had raised Jesus from the dead necessitated Paul’s change from opposition to support of the Christian vision.
2) Jesus had been raised, and not merely resuscitated. This brought about the shift in thinking about the relationship between the two ages. [Diagram & explain]
3) The idea that Christians ‘in Christ’ are free from the powers of the present age is also connected with the resurrection, as we saw when we thought about the work of Christ in Paul.
4) Can the resurrection explain Paul’s view of the Law? Some would say yes: Jesus had been rejected on the basis of the Law, and being crucified had been cursed by the Law, and thus God’s vindication of Jesus meant an overturning of the Torah’s verdict and thus of Torah itself. But does this do justice to Paul’s view of the Law as he himself explains and expresses it?
Paul’s view of the Law appears to have been reached in a manner similar to that attributed to Peter in Acts 10-11. The Gentiles have been granted the gift of God’s Spirit, and thus have been accepted by God as Gentiles, without being required to enter the covenant people. Here this seems to be the key stimulus, although Paul then goes on to develop other exegetical and theological arguments. It is important to remember that the arguments whereby he justifies and demonstrates his conclusion are not necessarily the ones that first convinced him to reach them! But once he saw that God gave his approval to Gentiles simply on the basis of their faith in Christ, he came to realize:
1) that the Law, of which the Jews boasted, did not in fact produce righteousness on the national level. This last point is important. Paul’s statements are sometimes taken to mean that no individual ever sought God, had a relationship with God, or found forgiveness in Old Testament times. Such a view amounts to a negation of the truth of the Old Testament. But this is not what Paul says. Rather, it is the nation that did not achieve righteousness even though it had the Law. The Sinai covenant was with a nation, not with individuals. It was the nation that had the Law, failed to obey (as a nation) and (as a nation) came under the curse of exile. Since Paul, like others of his Jewish contemporaries, accepted that Israel is still in exile, it was not difficult to conclude that the Law does not justify.
2) that the Law, although good, was powerless to produce a righteous people within an age already influenced by and under the dominion of sin. He makes this point by comparing the narratives concerning Adam and Sinai in Romans, in particular in chapter 7. Thus what was needed was liberation from the present age and all its powers, including the Law.
3) that Gentiles who sought circumcision were essentially seeking to be incorporated into the people of Israel and their covenant. However, Paul considered the Sinai covenant to be precisely that which had brought Israel into her current dilemma of exile due to disobedience. Thus, Israel needed to be incorporated ‘into Christ’ in order to be freed. Yet these Gentiles who were ‘in Christ’ were seeking to be incorporated into Israel! Thus Paul felt this was essentially an example of heading the wrong way down a one-way street. It would, if nothing else, communicate to non-Christian Jews that salvation is found in the Law, with nothing more than repentance needed. Perhaps this is why Paul avoids the language of repentance! What is needed is not simply a return to the covenant that had got them into this mess, but participation in the new covenant through the ‘second exodus’ offered by participation in Christ’s death and resurrection, whereby one ‘exits’ with Christ from under the dominion of the powers of the present age, and shares already in the power of the age to come, the messianic age, the age of resurrection.
I am convinced that, once one sees the basis for Paul’s understanding of the Law, it is possible to see an underlying coherence and consistency in his use of the Law. Here we must distinguish between what Paul regards to still be valid or in force in the Law and what he considers to still be true in the Law.
The Torah was the basis of God’s covenant with the nation of Israel. It revealed God’s moral character and his moral requirements, and it also established customs that would keep Israel separate from other nations and exclude non-Jews from the covenant people. [At least, this is how these rules were understood in Paul’s time. See the quote from Aristeas above, and also the discussion in Gordon Wenham’s excellent commentary on Leviticus (in the NICOT series).] Many Christians make a convenient distinction between ‘moral’ and ‘ritual’ laws, and thus seek to solve the problem. Circumcision is not required (it is a ritual), murder is still forbidden (it is a moral requirement). This view has two insuperable difficulties. First, it ignores commandments like the Sabbath, which were both moral and ritual. Second, it ignores the fact that Paul and his contemporaries assumed the unity of the covenant: God had established this covenant, and one could not simply ‘pick and choose’ from it. And thus, when he says Christians are ‘not under Law’, he means that the entire Sinai covenant is set aside, and they are not under its jurisdiction. They are part of a new covenant, based on the ‘law of the Spirit’ (whatever that means!), which does not separate Jews from Gentiles. Thus for Paul none of the Sinai covenant is still in force for Christians.
This is only half of the story, however. The Sinai covenant has been set aside for only one principle reason: it separates Jews from Gentiles, whereas it is God’s plan to unite them in Christ. The inability of the Law to empower those under it to obey is not really an issue in why the Law is set aside, since God could easily have provided the Spirit and said ‘There you go: now keep the Law!’ And so the inclusion of Gentiles is the reason for the new covenant not being coterminous with the old. Yet this being the case, everything in the Torah that does not separate Jews from Gentiles can provide moral guidance for Christians. It is not a legislation that is in force as far as they are concerned. Yet it is emphatically the same God who instituted both covenants. And for this reason, even though Christians are not under the Law, there is no reason why they cannot or should not learn about God’s character and his desires from the Law, as from the rest of Scripture. And thus, while none of the Law is in force, all of it (even apparently ritual aspects) is true, as long as they are not things that separate and divide Jews from Gentiles. I believe it is for this reason that Paul, even though he says ‘you are not under Law’, can quote even from the details of Torah in order to make points that Christians can learn from.
The understanding of who Jesus is that is presupposed and advanced in connection with Paul’s understanding of salvation in Christ is striking, and is easily misunderstood. On the one hand, there is a very real danger that we will presuppose that Paul had in mind all the finely-nuanced philosophical categories that later creeds came up with. The biggest danger in connection with this point is perhaps that we will fail to see how Paul’s understanding of Christ fit without much difficulty within the context of the Jewish monotheism of his time – note that while he defends his view of the Law adamantly against Jewish objections, he nowhere feels the need to defend his view of Jesus against charges of ditheism or something similar. But equally dangerous is the possibility that we will fail to see how remarkable it is that, within a couple of decades after Easter, Paul could take for granted an understanding of Christ that transcends humanity as we know it, which views him as the image of God, the embodiment of all God’s fullness. These christological categories, derived first and foremost from Jewish ideas concerning personified Wisdom, are here applied to a person in a way that can only be described as unique, and perhaps even ‘startling’. And so it is that Martin Hengel wrote his famous phrase that “more happened in this period of less than two decades than in the whole of the next seven centuries, up to the time when the doctrine of the early church was completed” [From The Son of God. Here it is quoted from The Cross of the Son of God, p.2].
Often we feel more comfortable with Paul and with John than with the Synoptic Gospels, precisely because they seem to speak a language that is much more Greek and much more theological. In fact, the difference has more to do with literary genres. In the Synoptics (and even in John to a large extent, except for the prologue) whatever christological teaching there is, is given in a narrative form, in the form of a story. In the Pauline letters, on the other hand, Paul is not bound by a narrative genre and framework, and so he can say things like ‘He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for through him all things were made…all things were through him and for him’. This is what we want to hear, and that is OK, but when we move on to Mark’s Gospel, it will be important that we do not look down on Mark’s presentation of Jesus simply because it focuses more on what Jesus does, and does not speak about Jesus in precisely the terms Paul does. On the other hand, I’d like to highly recommend an interesting article on Paul’s Christology: Marion L. Soards, “Christology of the Pauline Letters”, in Who Do You Say That I Am? edited by Mark Allan Powell and David R. Bauer (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999, pp.88-109). Whereas others tend to try to reconstruct a prepositional theology underlying the narratives of, say, the Synoptic Gospels, Soards does essentially the opposite: she seeks to reconstruct from the references to Jesus scattered in an unsystematic way throughout the Pauline letters, what the underlying narrative or story of Jesus would have been.
Anyway, for today, there are two passages that in particular have been the focus of attention in considering Pauline Christology: Philippians 2:6-11 and Colossians 1:15-20. One first thing to note about both these passages is that in both of them most scholars believe Paul to have been quoting early Christian hymns. This is important for a couple of reasons. On the one hand, it suggests that these impressive christological expressions are traditional and not Paul’s own inventions: they are part of the larger heritage of the Christian Church. It also indicates that Christology and worship were not separate fields in the earliest Christian communities. Christology was something they sang, and not something done only in seminaries and ivory towers of academic theology. It is worth noting that, in later times Arius (yes that’s the one, the famous heretic) had a huge influence in churches because he put his Christology to music and in song. In our time, there is a lot of Christian music, but the potential for using music to teach worshipping communities about the one they are worshipping and why they are worshipping him! Having said this, there is a further important aspect of interpreting these two passages: if they are in fact hymns, as appears to be the case, then their language is poetic, and thus we must interpret their role in Paul’s theology by paying careful attention to how he talks about Christ in non-poetic contexts. On the one hand, this can be an enormous relief to Christians who are worried by language like ‘firstborn’ which the Jehovah’s Witnesses use to argue that the pre-incarnate Christ was a created being, the first-born or first created being. However, once we recognize that much of the language is poetic, we may also need to be cautious in using it to defend our own positions as well!
All this having been said, I want to continue to focus on general questions and most of all the background to these ‘hymns’. Since you have as one option for your assignment to study one of these passages, I will not focus on it in detail (that would spoil your fun!). However, I will recommend some key books that deal with questions of interpretation of these passages. [See especially N. T. Wright, Climax of the Covenant; James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making (and also ch.3 of his New Testament Theology in Dialogue, co-authored with James P. Mackey); and Where Christology Began, a collection of essays edited by Ralph P. Martin and Brian J. Dodd]
Paul (or the author(s) of these hymns) says some things in reference to Jesus in these passages that, particularly in relation to the monotheism of Judaism as we know it today, sound outlandish and unacceptable. How can a human being be one through whom God created all things – especially a human who was born long after the initial act of creation?! How can Paul take language that in Isaiah applies to God the Most High, and apply it to the human being Jesus, to whom God apparently gives even the divine name itself!?! Just look at Isaiah 45:21-25 – it is an affirmation of monotheism! How could Paul take this language and rework it in such a way that he now applies it to Jesus? Something significant is obviously going on here…what is Paul doing?
Alongside all these points we need to not another striking point, one that certainly surprises us today. Why is there no evidence anywhere in Paul’s writings that he got into controversy and conflict with non-Christian Jews over these things that he said about Jesus? We can presume, in view of the fact that he traveled the world proclaiming Jesus, that he was not keeping his beliefs a secret! If one were to say these things in the context of Judaism today, they would provoke controversy; yet in Paul’s time, we hear only of conflict concerning the Law of Moses, the Torah, but not concerning Christology or monotheism. How can this be? The only explanation I have been able to find is that, within monotheism as understood within Judaism in the first century, such language would not have seemed controversial, out of place, or inappropriate. [Click here to read Larry Hurtado’s excellent article on this subject, entitled “What do we mean by ‘First-Century Jewish Monotheism’?” – it is in a zipped format, so let me know if you have trouble accessing it. See also, of course, his many other articles on the subject, and most importantly his book One God, One Lord.] Or as James Dunn puts it, “Only when the scope of his inherited monotheism has been grasped can the nuances of Paul’s christology of Jesus as Lord be properly appreciated” [James D. G. Dunn, “Pauline Theology”, in The New Testament Today, ed. Mark Allan Powell, Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1999, p.106].
I am providing you with handouts which will give some of the most important background to the hymn in Colossians. It is also crucial background to the similar language used in John 1, as we will see in a few weeks’ time. I am referring here to the language that was used in the Judaism of New Testament times in reference to Wisdom, that is, the Wisdom of God. You are, I am sure, familiar with the roots of this language in the way Wisdom is described in Proverbs: the one whom the Lord brought forth as the beginning of his works. In later Judaism, these ideas were carried forward and developed. We shall see when we look at John how one particular Jewish author, Philo of Alexandria, merged the portrait of Wisdom with the idea of God’s Word or Logos, in ways that may be reflected in John’s Gospel. But for now, let’s limit ourselves to Wisdom. On the handout you will find excerpts from two works from the Apocrypha, or in other words, from extra-canonical Jewish writings that were popular and well-known in Paul’s time. Have a read through them now [if you are reading this on the internet click here], then we can discuss possible influences on Paul’s Christology.
Points to note:
1) 1 Corinthians 1:24 - Jesus as “God’s Wisdom”
2) In both passages, Wisdom is identified with Torah. This may be significant: Paul was arguing against the ongoing place of the Torah in God’s purposes, so it would not be surprising to find him presenting Jesus as the embodiment of divine Wisdom, rather than Torah.
3) In Ecclesiasticus (also known as ‘The Wisdom of Jesus ben Sira’) and in Baruch, the language used is clearly not literal. So far, so good. But what does it mean? Is it simply a poetic way of saying that God’s wisdom and truth are found in the Torah? And what does this language mean in reference to Jesus? Obviously, it does not mean that the human person of Jesus, born around 6 B.C., was around for the creation of the world. But then what does it mean? Is it simply a way of saying that ‘God’s wisdom is now found in Jesus and not in Torah’? Or is it saying more than that?
4) To answer this last question, we need to understand how this language that is applied to Wisdom was understood within contemporary Judaism. The alternative that was placed in relation to the Christological debates that led up to the Council of Nicaea was this: either Wisdom is a created being, or Wisdom is essentially another person or hypostasis ‘within God’. But there are two other alternatives that need to be considered. First, there is the possibility that this language is simply a metaphorical, personified way of speaking about God’s own attribute of wisdom, about God in his interaction with humankind. This is at least part of what is happening in these Jewish writings. But we must also realize that in the Judaism of this time Philo could say of God’s Word that it or he is “neither uncreated as God, nor created as you, but between these two extremes”. This reminds me of what John writes in John 1:1 – the Word was with God and the Word was God. For us today, we feel like we want an answer: “But which is it really? You can’t have it both ways, you know!” But apparently there was no need to draw a firm line on either side of God’s Word or God’s Wisdom, saying ‘This is where God ends and something else begins’. In a sense, Wisdom was the dividing line, but the edges on both sides were blurry, and so it is that Wisdom can be spoken of as a separate person from God, and yet is clearly none other than the Wisdom of God himself. And so to seek to pin down this language too much in answer to questions that we have today may be legitimate, but we may also be forced to realize that Paul does not answer those questions, and so any answers we give are emphatically ours, and not just the spelling out of what was implicit in Paul’s own thought. This is not to say that we should leave matters open-ended. When issues arose and it was felt necessary to answer new questions and to address new problems, and to draw a sharp dividing line where none had existed before, I am convinced that those whom we consider the orthodox Fathers like Athanasius were right: the one whom we meet in Christ is not a second, lesser God, but the revelation and embodiment of the one true God himself. But in saying this, we must recognize that the issues were difficult and less than clear cut, and that the problems being addressed would perhaps not have seemed such to Paul, for whom his Christology, with its use of language that was applied to Wisdom within contemporary Judaism, was not controversial, except inasmuch as it had implications for his view of Torah.
Philippians 2:6-11 Contrast with Adam, Adam as significant (underlying Romans 5, and indeed all of Romans; and also in 1 Corinthians 15).