Second book project

Well, Mutated Faith never took off, but I don't mind. It played an important role in getting me to where I am now. Folk sometimes download or consult the sample chapter I put online at Academia here.

But the point is that for some time I have been thinking the creative drive to rethinking how we translate Kyrios in our Bibles has created such a body of research and momentum even on this blog, that it is time to review it all and place it in some form greater order, which is now looking quite a lot like a book.

This book, however, is very different from Mutated Faith. Mutated Faith I had hoped would appeal to genuine seekers who were also interested in ancient Christianity and questioning their faith, but I never managed to convince publishers - not yet at any rate. In its initial edition of the current book, I want to appeal to a much smaller readership: the Committee on Bible Translation responsible for the New International Version of the Bible.

What is its working title? I'm currently using:

Kyrios 2.0: Why and how to gently relieve the Lord from 500 years of service

Some words of explanation about this title are in order.

“Kyrios 2.0”: Kyrios has been translated as “Lord” or “the LORD” for centuries and is now so deeply rooted into Christian parlance that it can be difficult to rethink these as suitable holders for the crucial underlying term in Greek. The “2.0” is to suggest that it is indeed time for an update.

“Why”: 2 reasons will be given as to why the Lord should be prepared for retirement - modern usage and grammatical inaccuracy.

“How”: the book will propose a bespoke, context-driven methodology for translating ‘Kyrios’ and finally offer a “test-drive” of this methodology throughout the New Testament.

“Gently retire”: as I started to realise in the build-up to penning Blind Lover Tina Discovers Name Change, it is impossible to overstate how deeply rooted and central the Lord is to Christianity - it is a question that goes significantly further than an ivory-tower decision on a Greek translation.

“500 years”: a reference to the earliest widespread translations into English that included “Lord”, most notably the publication of the Tyndale Bible.

“Service”: a clear recognition that Lord has had a hugely successful and helpful role for the church.

Book update: Mutated Faith and the Triune Hub

Happy New Year!
May it bring more bowing of the knee to Christ to the glory of God the Father, in the power and revelation of the indwelling Spirit.

Please take a look at the following picture - it presents a pictorial representation of the proposal I will be making in my book (hopefully 2017 will see it completed):

This is a very amateurish sketch, and there is absolutely no significance about the planets being the planets of our own tiny solar system, or of Venus being circled! That said - this is the kind of idea I would like to convey on the cover. My working title keeps evolving, but I hope it won't move too far from "Trinitarian Interpretations: Mutated Faith and the Triune Hub". Cryptic, huh?

While it represents a long, sometimes painful and unfinished journey for me, it might be a slightly upsetting book for some. In fact - for those who have theological commitments, my historical analysis of first century Christianity is likely to displease most, and seems to fit into no common categories that I am currently aware of. That said, I still need to interact more with Samuel Clarke who I suspect had an early version of the Triune Hub model included in this book.

Trinitarians want to assert that - because Christianity is birthed out of monotheistic Judaism - God himself is the hub around which everything else is in orbit. He is the centre. And then the Son and the Spirit into the mix, ushering a whole host of attempted explanations frequently failing to satisfy. Me? Not just me - even within the Triune-God camp, because they all seem to disagree with one another (that's the second chapter of the book). Another group, also not monolithic, is the Unitarians. They assert strongly that Christ cannot be God, because only the Father is God, and they will also frequently assert that the Spirit is not really something that is separate from the Father. Another group of Unitarians exist - albeit only implicitly, and covers some biblically distant and popular charismatic expressions, whom Richard Rohr describes as Jesusism movements. In these you frequently see the Father and Spirit as just shadows of the One that really matters, Jesus. Believe it or not, that too is Unitarianism - it just doesn't know it.

So what does the first century have to say theologically, with respect to the Old Testament heritage? A lot. A later chapter in the book is going to outline the different contours of the "mutations" of the Jewish faith that permitted early Christianity to still be Jewish, leaning especially on doctors NT Wright and Larry Hurtado. Baptism into the "name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" is a first century diaspora Jewish historical fact. The mutation that I am basically offering is that the Trinity makes a lot more sense when we understand it as a Trinity of design and not a Trinity of essence. If we understand that it is first century Christian faith that is now articulated in Trinitarian language rather than the being of God himself, then suddenly the apparently chaotic chopping and changing between most of the Unitarian and Trinitarian readings of the texts suddenly become still and at peace with one another.

So why did that model get ditched in the fourth century, in favour of a Triune God model? This is quite a complex question. My proposal is not to replace other explanations offered, but to add another angle. Ousia (Greek) and substantia (Latin) afforded the institutionalising Greek-empire-based church the language it needed to ensure that none of the Trinity were dissociated on the most fundamental level possible, which is precisely what some of the intervening heresies would have promoted (or at least allowed for). Although the result is becoming problematic in my view, this enterprise is commendable and has stood the faith very well for centuries. It is most certainly not what Anthony Buzzard describes as "Christianity's Self-Inflicted Wound".

Instead of "consubstantial", which I see as distinctly secondary in light of this research, I therefore propose "co-central". I am also very fond of the orthodox term "co-essential", although again, with reference to the faith. There is so much more to say, and some of which will indeed be said in the book, but I thought it might interest blog readers where this key chapter will go. In light of that, let's just notice something from the picture that I think could really appeal to the Triune-God advocates - the planets orbiting these Three, have a single orbit, experience one main gravitational pull, have a single centre comprising three Stars. I can only hope this contribution will lead to fruitful discussion in the ongoing Trinitarian conversation and not fresh Star Wars ;)

Blessings.
John

Explicit statements continued: Hebrews 1:8, assumptions

Hey, this is the fifth post in a thread about explicit New Testament statements pertaining to Christ's divinity. The thread has been spread across other posts, so if you need to see the progression of thought, then please recap first here (introduction) and then here (Thomas' declaration to Jesus), then here ("He says: Your throne O God", part 1), then here ("Your throne O God", part 2, "Elohim options"). This constitutes a new "sub-chapter" I am adding to my paper, Trinitarian Interpretations, which I initially published last August. So let's buckle up and conclude.

Back to Hebrews: necessary assumptions in both camps

Returning to Hebrews 1 now, we really want to establish what the necessary and speculative interpretations are, in light of the explicitly set goal within the passage (to demonstrate Christ’s superiority over the angels) and of the Old Testament options available with regard to Elohim. Having covered some important Old Testament ground on this second point, we can understand that in applying Psalm 45:6-7 to Christ, the Hebrews author would not be overstepping Old Testament Israelite-Jewish boundaries in speaking of divine rule in relation to humans. So what are the assumptions necessary to both blue (Triune-God suggestive) and green (Triune-God dissuasive) camps?

Blue assumptions: That author is selecting the ultimate Elohim available to illustrate Christ's greatness with respect to angels, and not one of the others (i.e. not other divine council members, sometimes referred to as sons of God, not great human bearers of Elohim responsibilities, etc.), that Hebrews 1:8 provides an essential “upgrade” from the initial Elohim understanding of Psalm 45:6, that this upgrade supersedes the “son of God” status of the other divine council “sons” (likely, given that the other sons had not received “the name which is above all other names”), that it would be legitimate and normal for members within a triune Godhead to refer to one another as “their God”, and in a sense that is quite different to how first-century Jews spoke of X or Y being “their God”, and that this idea of a top-level Trinity, or at least one-being-multiple-persons deity was already existent albeit in embryonic form at the end of the first century.

Green assumptions: That the author and his recipients are aware of the other Elohim possibilities available to them (likely, given Hebrews 1:9), that the author does not upgrade the Elohim identity of Psalm 45:6 to that of Yahweh (or the Elohim of Psalm 45:7) and that there is no major shift in nuance between the Hebrew form “elohim” and the Greek translation “theos”.

From my perspective, it actually seems like the assumptions stack up greater on the blue side, although I am open to correction here. It is startling that Jesus is referred to as God, but it is clear to me that a decent part of that impact was due to my ignorance of the function of Elohim and a disregard for other dissuasive parts of the pericope.

Explicit statements continued: Hebrews 1:8, Elohim possibilities

This is the fourth post in a thread about explicit New Testament statements pertaining to Christ's divinity. The thread has been spread across other posts, so if you need to see the progression of thought, then please recap first here (introduction) and then here (Thomas' declaration to Jesus), then here ("He says: Your throne O God", part 1). This constitutes a new "sub-chapter" I am adding to my paper, Trinitarian Interpretations, which I initially published August 2015. So let's buckle up and look at the Hebrews 1 passage over the remaining two posts...

Elohim possibilities

We are assuming that “God” in Hebrews 1:8 (Psalm 45:5), is not the same one referred to as “God” in Hebrews 1:9 (Psalm 45:7), but how does that work if Christians and Jews are all monotheists? There surely can’t possibly be more than one Elohim, Theos, God, or whatever language you want to use! This modern way of looking at ancient perceptions of the supernatural realm is disintegrating in theological circles (see also chapter 2, monotheism), in favour of a more hierarchical perspective. There is only one supreme God – for the Israelites, this is Yahweh: He created everything and no-one can be compared to him. He is an Elohim. And there are other Elohim. Michael Heiser sets out Elohim into 6 types:

1.      Yahweh, the God of Israel (thousands of times—e.g., Genesis 2:4–5; Deuteronomy  4:35)

2.      The members of Yahweh’s council (Psalms 82:1,6)

3.      Gods and goddesses of other nations (Judges 8:33[1], 11:24; 1 Kings 11:33)

4.      Demons (Hebrew: shedim—Deuteronomy 32:17)

5.      The deceased Samuel (1 Samuel 28:13)

6.      Angels or the Angel of Yahweh (Genesis 35:7)

This list is initially quite striking, but hard-core monotheists confronted with such strong textual evidence might still want to emphasise that there is a difference between Elohim referring to gods (plural) and Elohim referring to the singular God, synonymous with Yahweh (e.g. Psalms 82:1,6). I too was struck by that possibility, but that was still the influence of my modern evangelical world-view (and English translation[2]) skewing my interpretation.

Even in its plural form applied to a singular being, Elohim can be applied descriptively to another singular being. Judges 8:33-34 is a clear example of this: the people replace their God (Elohim), Yahweh, making Baal-Berith their God (Elohim). The Israelites also re-assign the works and status of Elohim Yahweh to the Elohim of the golden calf (see Exodus 32). These biblical cases inform us that within a hierarchical system, the one at the top qualifies for plural status.

Thus far we have established that options for understanding Elohim can be plural OR singular, and can refer to Yahweh or NOT to Yahweh. That is significant. But what of human kings – can a human king be referred to as Elohim? But regarding human bearers of the title, we need to refer back at this point to scholars on the Hebrew of Psalm 45 at this point.

Donald Hagner, commenting Hebrews 1, states: “The king originally in view was an Israelite monarch, but so glorious are the words spoken to him that their ultimate fulfilment can only be in the messianic king, the son of David … [there is] a difficulty of understanding the original historical context wherein a king of Israel is addressed as God. The latter difficulty can be explained as hyperbole for the king who functions as God’s representative in his office.”[3]

Constable, for whom Christ just is God in Hebrews 1:8, agrees with this exegetical option for the Psalm used by the Hebrews writer: “the writer addressed his human king as “God” (Elohim). He did not mean that the king was God but that he stood in the place of God and represented Him”.[4]

Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Peter H. Davids, F.F. Bruce and Manfred T. Brauch also agree: “The king was not regarded as the incarnation of deity. Rather, he was “Yahweh’s anointed and served as the Lord’s deputy on Earth”.[5]

I don’t know how you read Hagner, but he does not appear totally coherent to me. On the one hand we have glorious hyperbole denoting God’s representative, while on the other it could not be making sense without a future fulfilment necessary. Views about Old Testament prophecy vary. Mine is very basic: it made sense[6]. However it was reinterpreted later (by the Hebrews writer for instance), it already made sense then. Furthermore, whatever that sense was must not be presumed absent from the later, first century, author’s mind either. But is this the only instance of Elohim applied to humans? Heiser also reminds us that the revived spirit of Samuel was Elohim too, but he takes it no further, despite the fact that one of his foundational understandings of the Biblical picture of humanity is that of being “imagers” of God. So human imagers of God in this Elohim puzzle has to be developed – we can’t stop at a strange, murky corner of the canon on Samuel’s spirit.

1.      Exodus 4:16: He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God (Elohim) to him. The speaker is Yahweh, the “he” is Aaron, Moses’ brother, and the “you” is Moses, needing a lot of reassurance about confronting the Egyptian authorities. Notice this “as if you were God”. Exodus 4:16 gives us concrete scope that when addressing a later leader of Israel, the Psalmist of Psalm 45 could certainly have the same idea. 

2.      Exodus 21:6; 22:8-9: We will not lose time quoting these passages, but you can check the context – here the Elohim are almost certainly human judges, not God or gods, but exercising a task with delegated authority from the divine realm, and ultimately from Yahweh Himself.

3.      Deuteronomy 3:24: Sovereign LORD, you have begun to show to your servant your greatness and your strong hand. For what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do the deeds and mighty works you do? Throughout the Bible, we have these two great realms represented – the spiritual unseen realm and the Earth realm, both of which are populated and organised. That is why Jesus teaches his disciples to pray to the Father, saying: May your will be done here on Earth as it is in Heaven. The other Elohim in Heaven and the Elohim on Earth are not comparable in greatness or love to Yahweh; but it pre-supposes their existence: they are impressive, authoritative and noticeable authorities in both spheres.

4.  Psalm 45:2,6-7: You are the most excellent of men […] Your throne [O] God will last for ever and ever; a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom […] God your God has set you above your companions[7]. Assuming that this Psalm is not saying “Your throne is God”, this key passage for Hebrews 1 interpretation is also a key component to understanding the biblical picture of how humans can be bearers of the Elohim image.

Please click here to see my take on the Hebrews 1:8 assumptions. Thank you.

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[1] Judges 8:33-34 is my addition to the sample references provided by Heiser, I think even more striking than Judges 11:24. Here I believe NIV make a mistake in applying the lower-case “g”. It should read: They set up Baal-Berith as their God, that is to say that, within a henotheistic framework, Baal-Berith is set up as occupying the place of God (of gods) that is actually Yahweh’s by right.

[2] The fact that a translation of the plural form of Elohim as singular God, god, spirit when not referring to Yahweh is not criticised – I simply note it to as a contributing factor to my uninformed view.

[3] Hagner, p. 34

[4] Thomas L. Constable, Notes on Psalms, 2016 Edition, p. 233, available in PDF form and updated at www.soniclight.com. These notes are those adjoining the NET Bible study notes.

[5] Walter C. Kaiser Jr., Peter H. Davids, F.F. Bruce and Manfred T. Brauch, Hard Sayings of the Bible, p. 270-271, Intervarsity Press, Illinois, 2009.

[6] Assuming no textual corruptions.

[7] The use of capitals here is to simulate the Hebrew and remove interpretative bias through capitalisation (or non-capitalisation) of certain Gs.

Explicit statements continued: Hebrews 1:8

This is the third post in a thread about explicit New Testament statements pertaining to Christ's divinity. The thread has been spread across other posts, so if you need to see the progression of thought, then please recap first here (introduction) and then here (Thomas' declaration to Jesus). This is a new "sub-chapter" I am adding to my paper, Trinitarian Interpretations, which I initially published last August. So let's buckle up and look at the Hebrews 1 passage over the next three posts...

Hebrews 1:8-9 – About the Son: “Your throne, O God…”

The only text that remains to be treated in this sub-chapter is perhaps the strongest of all: Hebrews 1:8-9. The great late Catholic theologian Raymond Brown classified it as one of the three texts explicitly asserting the divinity of Christ (the other two being the previous passage of Thomas’ declaration of faith and John’s prologue). We shall see that translation is a key component in understanding and interpreting these two verses. In the popular NIV translation, we read:

But about the Son he says, ‘your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever; a sceptre of justice will be the sceptre of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy.

There can be virtually no doubt about it. Not only does this text seem to describe Jesus as “God”, which is of course highly compatible with a triune-God view, but it seems to have the Father addressing his Son as “God”. Let us not content ourselves with a purely superficial reading, however; let us strive for a fuller understanding about what the author of Hebrews – and the author of the quoted Psalm – meant here. This would be a good practice regardless, but it is even more worthwhile as the passage is located in a context that has some components pretty dissuasive of a triune-God view (see development below[1]).

So let us attempt the following: firstly, to identify the key speakers and addressees in Psalm 45, then to ensure we have a biblical understanding of Elohim, the Hebrew word used here for “God”, and then to use this and our knowledge of the Hebrews passage to understand the assumptions underpinning two alternative interpretations.

Hebrews 1:8-9 Who’s doing the talking and who is/are the God(s)?

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In order to achieve the first objective and reduce confusion about speakers and addressees, we must turn a spotlight onto the translators’ “helping hands”. To continue with the colour theme of this paper, words in blue are suggestive. This time, however, they are added or interpretative words, not necessarily original in the Greek manuscripts. Please read carefully, as it is such a small thing, and could be deemed not significant. Yet we all know that a tiny word can radically change the whole meaning of a sentence, right? Well, there is precisely one of those tiny words hiding in there in verse 6. Here is the passage in its context with emphasis placed on the key speaker words:

⁵ For to which of the angels did [God] ever say, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father”? Or again, “I will be his Father, and he will be my Son”? 

⁶ And again, when God brings his firstborn into the world, he says, “Let all God's angels worship him.”

⁷ In speaking of the angels he says, “He makes his angels spirits, and his servants flames of fire.” 

⁸ But about the Son [he says], “Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever; a sceptre of justice will be the sceptre of your kingdom. ⁹ You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy.” 

¹⁰ [He also says], “In the beginning, Lord, you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands….

¹³ To which of the angels did God ever say, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet”?

The way translations like the NIV set up the speaker here is downright confusing! It really does not need to be, but the way God is made to be the active speaker throughout indicates to me possible theological bias. We want to allow verse 8 to imply “God the Father addressing God the Son”. That would be so neat, placing the writer hundreds of years ahead of the pack, theologically. The word for “he said”, legei is quite frequently used in the New Testament to introduce an Old Testament quotation, and does not require a personal “he”. We should not ignore this possibility here. In verse 6, I am therefore suggesting, that we should allow interpretative space for one of the following more meaningful renderings:

• And again, when God brings his firstborn into the world, it says [legei], “Let all God's angels worship him”
• And again, when God brings his firstborn into the world, God says through the Scriptures [legei], “Let all God's angels worship him”.

This “it” would be comparable to “Scripture says”, such as we see as the more likely (and favoured translation in most modern translations) in Acts 13:34-35[2], Galatians 3:16[3], Ephesians 4:8[4] and 5:14[5]. The second option for legei is more of a compromise between the simple “it” or “he” dichotomy, and can be favoured based on Hebrews 4:7[6]. Donald Hagner, NIBC commentary contributor, does not consider these options, even leaping onto another possible reference to the deity of the Son as early as early as verse 6, containing our first legei: “What is remarkable in this passage […] is that the one who is worshipped is the Lord, or Yahweh […] and thus the Son is identified with Yahweh of the OT.”[7] However, this commentator’s enthusiasm does not develop the grammatical gymnastics required by making God the unique active speaker throughout, or at least some thought given to the imprecise ways in which the author would need to be using legei.

So if we can agree that it is at least possible and meaningful that legei here might be reserved for the God-inspired Scriptures (“it says”) as the active speaker, then verse 8 “pros de ton huion” (concerning the Son), could most naturally be understood: “About the Son, it says: “Your throne O God…”. This appears viable. Note, of course, that the addressee is still “God”, and that when the Hebrews author specifies that he is talking about the Son here, he is using Old Testament Scripture to show that Jesus can be called “God” in some way. All we have simply attempted to clarify is that it would be clearer as a quote from the God-inspired Scriptures rather than as a quotation of God calling his own Son, “God”. This distinct possibility gains momentum when we read Psalm 45, where the Psalmist is addressing the current King of Israel throughout[8].

Theologians have also pondered a lot over the following verse (Hebrews 1:9), where you get a curious repetition: “ho theos ho theos sou”, translated “God, your God”. Here, this time with a wider consensus, we can postulate that the Psalmist’s repetition in verse 9 (Psalm 45:7) serves to clarify that we are not talking about the same theos (or Elohim) as in the previous verse. Without the repetition and clarification, the two “ho theos” of Psalm 45:6 and 45:7 would have been otherwise confusing.

Please click here to see the Elohim options. Thank you.

[1] 7.4 Jesus implied to have had a beginning, or a time when he was adopted OR non-Christological NT precedent for “pre-existence” as conceptual / in God’s mind, p. 81.

[2] Acts 13:34-35: God raised him from the dead so that he will never be subject to decay. As God has said, “I will give you the holy and sure blessings promised to David.” So it is also stated elsewhere “You will not let your holy one see decay” (NIV). The “it” translations of the speaker in Acts 13:35 include NIV, NLT, Aramaic Bible in Plain English, GWT.

[3] Galatians 3:16: The promises were spoken to Abraham and to his seed. Scripture does not say “and to seeds,” meaning many people, but “and to your seed,” meaning one person, who is Christ. (NIV). There is no “Scripture” in the Greek here, just just “ou legei” – he/it does not say. “It” or “Scripture” translations of the speaker in Galatians 3:16 include

[4] Ephesians 4:8: This is why it says: ‘When he ascended on high, he took many captives and gave gifts to his people’ (NIV). “It” or “Scripture” translations of the speaker in Ephesians 4:8 include NIV, NLT, ESV, NASB, HCSB, NET, Aramaic Bible in Plain English, GWT, Weymouth New Testament.

[5] Ephesians 5:14: This is why it is said: ‘Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you’ (NIV). “It” or “Scripture” translations of the speaker in Ephesians 5:15 include NIV, NLT, ESV, NASB, HCSB, ISV, NET, Aramaic Bible in Plain English, GWT, Weymouth New Testament.

[6] Hebrews 4:7: God again set a certain day, calling it “Today.” This he did when a long time later he spoke through David, as in the passage already quoted: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.”

[7] D. Hagner, New International Biblical Commentary: Hebrews, p. 33, Paternoster, Carlisle, 1995. Hereafter, Hagner.

[8] The Psalmist sets it up without ambiguity in the opening verse: My heart is stirred by a beautiful song. I say, “I have composed this special song for the king; my tongue is as skilled as the stylus of an experienced scribe.” (NET)

New subchapter: "explicit" statements of Jesus' divinity

Actually, I don't care too much for the word "divinity" because of its ambiguity, but I thought it would be more likely to tempt you to read this addition to my paper Trinitarian Interpretations than the true sub-chapter title, which reads: 6.4 Jesus is called “God” directly or possibly referred to as such indirectly. (The chapter title reads:  6. Four Types of “Blue” Suggestive New Testament Writing Traditions)

Before I provide you the draft section, perhaps a couple of words for those who have not already seen the paper for context. In the summer of 2015 I wrote a paper that suggested that forced endorsement of a full Trinitarian creed (such as the Niceno-Constantinoplitan Creed) should not be mandatory for followers of Christ who hold to the Bible as superior, more inspired and of greater normative value to all prior and subsequent theological ideas. My three main arguments against this necessity are not equally weighted or explored, but basically:
1. The terminology is so hotly contested and variously interpreted today that it is somewhat meaningless or superficial to require "allegiance" to the words if the words are not understood the same way or even a close way.
2. In the three hundred years separating the first church and the great ecumenical council period, mainstream Christian theology did not especially hold to Divine Essence/Substance theories or One God in Three Persons ideas, and even later had to U-turn on some early "anathemas".
3. The New Testament itself leaves justifiable doubt as to the necessity of stating trinitarianism in any of these ways.

So while I consider all three of these arguments quite compelling (the power of 3 in 1!), the third argument is the one to which most people can relate to, albeit through diverse contemporary lenses. As I re-read through the New Testament myself and also read what various theologians have argued over the centuries, I attempted to categorise all Christological passages into several dozen "suggestive" or "dissuasive" sub-categories. After describing the results in chapter 5, I offer a few sub-chapters on each side of the "suggestive/dissuasive" fence in chapter 6, each one looking at a different sub-category. In the original paper, on the suggestive side, I looked at:

• 6.1 Triadic formulae
• 6.2 Jesus and the Father are "one"
• 6.3 Jesus inciting outrage for blasphemous association with God: the power of rhetoric

Here then, split over three posts, is a draft of:

• 6.4 Jesus is called “God” directly or possibly referred to as such indirectly

References:                       Mark 10:18          Luke 18:19           John 1:18             John 20:28           Romans 9:5         Titus 2:10&13       Hebrews 1:8-9      2 Peter 1:1         

Finally – now he has to admit it, the Bible says that Jesus is “God” and that therefore the Trinity (or one of the definitions of the Trinity) has to be correct! I really wish it were that simple. Before we zoom in on this blue category, I should mention why John 1:1 is not listed here (In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the word was fully God, NET). According to the categorisation system I have applied, this belongs to a different set of suggestive New Testament texts: “Jesus seems eternal, or seems to have existed prior to incarnation”. I hope to discuss this category and its associated texts in a future edition[1].

So let us jump straight in with these texts that seem to call Jesus, “God”[2].

As far as I can tell, the only clear texts potentially suggestive within the synoptic gospels of a Trinitarian position regarding Jesus (possibly) being called “God” Himself, are Mark 10:18 and Luke 18:19. In the previous sub-chapter I developed how rhetoric functions and was utilised by Jesus as attested by all four gospel writers. So it is difficult to build too much on these verses if it requires the rhetoric to work in a diametrically opposed way to how Jesus generally applied rhetoric.

Romans 9:5, Titus 2:10 & 13 and 2 Peter 1:1 are all Greek constructions that could work either way – either they do state that Jesus is God, or there is an implied distinction there between Christ and God, thus restoring the Father back into the picture. Scholars have of course debated these passages at great length, and these debates are often reflected in the footnotes of the better modern bible translations. I am relatively convinced of unfair bias toward the theos title attribution to Jesus in at least the Romans and 2 Peter examples based on assumptions of author consistency and the ambiguity of the Greek. I remain less sure of Titus [3].

John 1:18 is an example of what textual scholars sometimes call “conflations”. What happened in the scribal transmissions over this verse is difficult to fully explain, as this example has already highlighted earlier (I used this verse to illustrate the relevance and importance of textual criticism in the second chapter). Some of the scribal changes in this verse concern inclusion or removal of definite articles, others either changed huios (son) to theos (God) or the other way around, while others removed both (to leave simply “the only begotten”). When scribes of antiquity were aware of more than one version of the text they were copying, they would on occasion conflate their sources – that is to say, out of reverence and a desire to ensure that the original text not be lost, they attempted to remove that risk by combining variants. So instead of choosing variant A, B OR C, the scribe wrote A and B and C (or some such combination). Since this also then forms an ancient manuscript and manuscript tradition upon which modern translations can lean, and since modern translation committees also share the goal of the ancient conflating scribe, the conflated text is the manuscript of choice for NIV and others, resulting in: “who is himself God”[4]. The textual uncertainty of the original wording – which in my view probably read “only begotten son” as everywhere else in John’s gospel – means that Trinitarians should not (and tend to not) devote too much time to this verse in developing their more weighty evidence for suggestiveness of Trinitarian doctrines.

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[1] For now I can say this: despite general historical shifts in understanding what is going on with “Word” (logos), “God” (ho theos and theos) and “Become” (egeneto), that Christians having access to this passage or its precursor, have always believed that God’s eternal divine word was incarnated in (or into) Jesus (as a Christian I also have made the choice to believe that). This leaves incarnation Christology still very open as my chapter above on the church fathers demonstrates. It is precisely the interpretative options that I must still articulate and align with John’s overarching themes and goals.

[2] You will recall that there is a penalty system in place for texts where the strength of their suggestiveness or dissuasiveness is weakened according to a number of defined causes (see p. 51). This category is concerned more than any other by the penalty system as we shall now briefly see before we zoom into one of the most crucial of all blue texts in the entire New Testament canon which is certainly not penalised: Hebrews 1:8-9

[3] Titus is harder for me to assume this because I cannot apply the same criterion of consistency to a book that might be the only text we have by its author. If that were true and it were written in a later and more christologically developed situation, then the assumption of distinction is a considerably weaker option. Earliest manuscript is Papyrus 32, dated late 2^nd century.

[4] Fortunately, this variation is footnoted by the NIV, which alerts readers to the shakiness of this evidence

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In the next two posts we will zoom in on John 20:28 and Hebrews 1:8 respectively.

Jesus inciting outrage for blasphemous association with God: the power of rhetoric

References:       Matthew 9:2-3                 Mark 2:7             John 5:18b          John 10:33         

David Martorana is a friend of mine and also a sound evangelical scholar, theologian, teacher and pastor. He has done a Masters in a specific kind of theology known as kenosis. He is – I think – Calvinist and needless to say also a strong Trinitarian. I was not a very strong anything at the time I was working through some of my early questions, so when I shared some of these with him and he argued without batting an eyelid from John 10:33, I knew I had better shut up and listen:

We are not stoning you for any good work,’ they replied, ‘but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be [a] God.[1]

But is it that simple? No, it definitely is not. I have now discovered this to be another clear example of interpretation, and that the passage is not at all without other sound exegetical possibilities. Context will show us why.

In verse 24, the Jews gathering around Jesus are desperate to get some yes/no clarity on whether or not Jesus really was God’s messiah. As is his typical way, Jesus does not give a straight-up answer, but seems to be basically affirming that he is identifiable as the Messiah by the works he does in the name of his Father (verse 25), and by how his followers know him to be that One, the promised Messiah. Jesus seems to then say that God the Father is the greatest of all[2]. Then we get the “assist” – in football, the player who sets up the team-mate who scores the goal is recognised as having provided the “assist”, and in verses 28 and 29 we get just that. Like the crucial pass before the goal, we get to the “assist” of Jesus’ discourse: no-one shall pluck them out from my hand (Jesus’ hand), and no-one shall pluck them from my Father’s hand (and he is the greatest). You can sense the crescendo here, and then the volley into the top corner of the net: I and the Father are one.

We have already analysed what John means (or the limits of what he means) when he talks about multiple persons being “one” in the preceding section. In addition to this we know that this figurative language is not only at work in the word “one”, but also in the word “hand” – the Father does not have physical hands – only the Son, according to Trinitarian theology, became incarnate. But that does not mean that Jesus’ figurative language was bullet-proof against misunderstanding. The New Testament contains many examples of where Jesus was misunderstood by people, especially the religious authorities, and even at times by his own disciples. Despite my friend David’s traditional interpretation of this passage, we shall see that the ensuing allegations of blasphemy do not automatically qualify Jesus’ claim as that of being Almighty God – it may well even be the least probable idea present in Jesus’ (and John’s) mind.

Now Jesus could have remained silent, as he does later before his crucifixion, in which case we would have been left with less context and open to wider speculation on the blasphemy accusations. But on this occasion, John recalls him replying in the form of two questions – either to affirm the allegations, deny them, or to say something else: that is up to every student of the Holy Scriptures to decide.

Question 1 (verse 34): Jesus answered them, ‘Is it not written in your Law, “I have said you are gods?” (yes/no question)

Question 2 (verses 35-36): If he called them gods, to whom the word of God [be]came – and Scripture cannot be set aside – what about the one whom the Father sanctified as his very own and sent into the world, are you saying that I am blaspheming because I said “I am God’s Son”?
(yes/no question)

Finally, verse 37 reiterates almost exactly Jesus’ initial response (verse 25) to whether or not he is the Messiah – he is doing the Father’s work.

Because I knew (and still know) a lot less in theology than David, and it seemed that Jesus’ answer seemed nuanced and far from affirmative, I did some research into Jesus’ questions in the New Testament. There is a fairly obvious reason why Jesus’ questions do not feel affirmative, and that is because of the way rhetoric works, and also how Jesus consistently uses rhetorical questions. This is what I found out.

Jesus asks approximately 150 questions in the New Testament, and the majority of these are rhetorical. We can divide them into:

·       

“either/or” questions (e.g. “From whom do the kings of the earth collect duty and taxes–from their own sons or from others?” [3])

·        “How” questions (e.g. “Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?”[4])

·        “What” questions (e.g. “If you love those who love you, what reward will you get?” [5])

·        “Where” questions (e.g. “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine?” [6])

·        “Who” questions (e.g. “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” [7])

·        “Why” questions (e.g. “Why are you trying to trap me?” [8])

·        “Yes/no” questions (e.g. “Have you never read in the Scriptures?” [9])

This “yes/no” is the category that is of the most interest to us, but the whole rhetoric strategy needs to be kept in full view to help us answer Jesus’ rhetorical questions. In almost every case of rhetorical questioning, there is something negative in the expected response. That is not because Jesus was a negative person; it is simply part of how rhetoric functions. So the point is that rhetorical questions are designed to make the listeners think and, if possible, align themselves with the speaker. It is not about gathering new information. However, if you were to reply in English, they usually require a negative form to get to where the speaker is driving the conversation.

So it looks something like this:

·      

  Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again? OK Jesus, I get it: it cannot.

·        If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? OK Jesus, I see now, I won’t get a good reward that way.

·        Were not all ten cleansed? No, “not not” all ten were cleansed à OK Jesus, it is not true that not all ten were not cleansed (all 10 were indeed cleansed!)

·        Where are the other nine? Sorry Jesus, I do not know, something is wrong, they should be here but they are not.

·        Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? I think I get it Jesus: no-one can!

·        Why are you trying to trap me? OK Jesus, I can see what you are saying: we should not be trying to do that.

·        Have you never read in the Scriptures? Jesus you know that is not true, that I have read it, but maybe I did not understand it…

The double negative “not not” above is ugly. The French have a neat way out of the negative question; they simply say si. If an implied si is required by the speaker to correct the negative tension in the speaker’s yes/no question, then it is probably rhetorical!

So bearing this negative tension in mind we can return to the blasphemy arguments used by Trinitarians.

Jesus answered them, ‘Is it not written in your Law, “I have said you are gods?” (yes/no question)

Si, it is written in our law “I have said you are gods”.

If he called them gods, to whom the word of God [be]came – and Scripture cannot be set aside – what about the one whom the Father sanctified as his very own and sent into the world, are you saying that I am blaspheming because I said “I am God’s Son”?

This second one is a little more complicated, and some translations separate it into two questions. Remember above how some examples of Jesus’ rhetoric were to get listeners to think about what they should not be doing. All we can conclude from this question is that the speaker, Jesus, was driving his Jewish accusers toward this conclusion: “OK Jesus I was saying that, but I should not have been”.

One unresolved point remains, and it will remain as such – should there or should there not be an indefinite article before “GOD”? We have already seen how biased interpretation regarding the articles has meant people inconsistently read into Justin Martyr’s theology. In Greek, the absence of the article might mean nothing. However, its absence could also be the indefinite article, “a”. Both are possible. However, exegesis leads to a distinct possibility of an intended indefinite article here, simply because of the way Jesus responds to the Jews from Psalm 82. Psalm 82 (Yahweh presides over the council of the gods), Exodus 20 and Deuteronomy 5 (You shall have no other gods before me) and Deuteronomy 32 (the writer tells that the Israelites must remember when Yahweh allotted the nations to various “sons of God”[10]) paint a different picture of monotheism to the one we often adopt today, and certainly do not require us to add the inserted quotations marks around “gods”. Although a more modern scheme of monotheism might require that addition, when we try to understand the Jewish views in Jesus’ time, we need to exercise more caution.

Returning to a similar passage in Mark where Jesus is accused of blasphemy, we see the outrage: who can forgive sins but God alone? Or more literally, who can forgive sins if not one, the God. This time we have the definite article, and indeed for Mark’s teachers of the law, if Jesus, this son of Man, should be forgiving sins then he would be blaspheming on that level. The title The Son of Man applied to the issue of sin-forgiveness is blasphemous precisely because a son of man, in Old Testament parlance, is equivalent to saying “human”[11]. The shocking point of Mark’s gospel is underlined then in this story that Jesus as this human has a very special status and authority as God’s Son (Mark 1:11). The stress of this Markan story therefore is not so much the blasphemous claims of divine identity as the blasphemous claims of divine authority, and is further borne out by Mark 2:8 (and Matthew 9:6): “But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive…”

It would seem that in order for Jesus’ accusers’ outrage to be suggestive of Jesus somehow claiming to be a second member of a triune God, we would need to ignore a distinctively possible alternative explanation: that Jesus incited outrage and was condemned blasphemous, because he claimed he was the special Son of God[12], sent[13], authorised[14], anointed[15] and empowered[16] by God his Father to save God’s people. Not only that, he combined into this claim the counter-attack that the religious authorities were doing quite the opposite. The fight was on and both sides had to get out the biggest guns in their arsenal. Jesus’ was astonishing confidence, appeal to miraculous signs and expounding embarrassing truth with hyperbole, parable and rhetoric. The religious authorities’ was social standing and condemnation of the highest degree.

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[1] Obviously there was no “a” in the quote when David recited it!

[2] Alternatively, but less likely in my view, that Jesus’ followers (his “sheep”) are the greatest thing of all – some translations go for this.

[3] Matthew 17:25

[4] Luke 14:34. There are also a few non-rhetorical “how many” questions – I counted three.

[5] Matthew 5:46. Here rhetorical and non-rhetorical questions appear to be of similar number.

[6] Luke 17:17

[7] Luke 12:25

[8] Matthew 22:18

[9] Matthew 21:42

[10] Some modern translations stay with “sons of Israel”, which had been taken from the Masoretic Text. Much more ancient sources like the Dead Sea scrolls and the Septuagint say “sons of God”.

[11] L. Hurtado, New International Biblical Commentary: Mark, p. 37-38, Paternoster, Carlisle, 1995.

[12] We already looked at Mark 1:11 in context. Among the many other examples of Jesus’ sonship, we should also especially note John 5:18, where Jesus’ claims of sonship meant that the religious authorities wanted to kill him.

[13] John 6:29, John 8:42a, John 17:3b, Acts 3:20, John 8:42b, John 16:27, John 16:30, 1 John 4:9 and 1 John 4:10

[14] Matthew 28:18, Luke 1:32, John 5:27, John 13:3a, John 17:2 and Ephesians 1:22                                   

[15] Acts 10:38 and Hebrews 5:10

[16] Acts 10:38 again: …God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him.