Tired of Praising The LORD? Marre de louer Le SEIGNEUR?

My friend Barney Aspray has kindly hosted a post we have worked on together on the question of Praising "The LORD" in English. Unfortunately the site is experiencing an issue at the moment, but I will post up the link as soon as possible. Today I will post just the opening part and also provide my entire French adaptation, which I am also trying to share with

Mon ami Barney Aspray a gentillement publié un article que nous avons travaillé ensemble sur la question de Louer "Le SEIGNEUR" en anglais. Malheureusement, le site a un problème technique en ce moment, mais je donnerai le lien dès que possible. Aujroud'hui je partage la première partie mais aussi mon adaptation intégrale en français. Cette dernière fait l'objet d'une demande de partage que j'effectue auprès de l'Alliance Biblique, mais ce sera mis en stand-by pour un petit temps.

One of the most famous and sung anthems from the Psalms is the beautiful sentiment of αλληλουια, Hallelujah, rendered ‘Praise the Lord’ in many of our modern English Bibles and hymn sheets.

Unfortunately, since ‘the LORD’ was suggested by John Wycliffe—way, way back in the late 1300s—it has become a poor translation of the Hebrew Name for God, Yahweh.

In the English spoken and written today, ‘Lord’ usage has really slumped, and the little that remains is scarily dark! Whether it is a warlord or drug lord, or a science-fiction / fantasy genre bad guy (e.g. Lord Voldemort in Harry Potter, the Dark Lords of the Sith in Star Wars and even the Lord of the Rings), the connotations are not good. Even landlords can be pretty dark and shady characters you might be thinking!

In addition to the usage problems, there are some rather striking grammatical issues with ‘the Lord’, in part arising from the fact that Wycliffe and other medieval translators were translating directly from the Latin Vulgate.[1] Finally, we continue to see young people leaving the church in their droves, seemingly still in search of good, stable and accessible forms of authority, purpose and spirituality in their lives.

Despite these apparently legit concerns, ‘the Lord’ is somehow managing to dodge reassessment in nearly all of our most modern and dynamic translations into English. And so ‘the Lord’ limps on. Why is that? The reasons are multiple. Shaking the earth clear from each root we progressively loosen history’s firm hold on this inadequate expression. Could praising the Lord be one of these roots? (.... read the full article soon on the EveryDayTheology blog

ARTICLE COMPLET EN FRANCAIS!

Une des belles expressions de culte la plus connue des écritures Bibliques et chantée le dimanche matin se retrouve dans les Psaumes, vous la connaissez sûrement bien : « Louez l’Éternel », ou «Louez le SEIGNEUR», rendue en Grec αλληλουια (c’est d’où vient « Alléluia »). 

Malheureusement, depuis que « le Seigneur » a été donné comme traduction en français par Guyart des Moulins—il y a long, longtemps en 1297—elle est devenue une traduction insuffisante pour porter le nom Hébreu de Dieu, Yahvé (ou Yahweh).

Extrait de traduction réalisée par Guyart des Moulins en 1297, première traduction biblique en français (Proverbes 9:10)

Dans la langue française telle qu’elle soit parlée et écrite aujourd’hui, l’emploi de « Seigneur » s’est vraiment effondré, et le peu qui demeure n’est pas très gai ! Surtout maintenu dans les histoires fantastiques, comme Le Seigneur des Ténèbres, Voldemort, de Harry Potter, Les Seigneurs Noirs des Sith, de Star wars, et Le Seigneur des Anneaux, on pourrait se poser la question si de manière générale le titre de « Seigneur » s’est approprié des connotations bien moins positives.

Dark Vader, Seigneur Noir des Sith de Star Wars

S’ajoutant aux problèmes d’emploi sont des questions grammaticales marquantes. Celles-ci peuvent s’expliquer par le fait que Guyard des Moulins, John Wycliffe et les autres traducteurs médiévaux se servaient en partie ou même en totalité de la Vulgate (version en latin de la Bible de l’église Catholique) comme langue de source pour réaliser leurs traductions respectives.[1] Enfin, nous continuons à constater que les jeunes quittent l’église en masse, pourtant toujours en quête de formes positives, stables et accèssibles d’autorité, de sens et de vie spirituelle. 

Malgré ces inquiétudes légitimes, « le Seigneur » a réussit à s’échapper presque toute remise en question dans la plupart de nos traductions françaises dîtes modernes ou dynamiques d’aujourd’hui. Pourquoi?

Les raisons sont multiples. En libérant chaque racine de la terre qui l’obscure, nous nous permettons un lâcher-prise sur cette traduction insuffisante. Est-ce que « louer le Seigneur » pourrait être l’une de ces racines ?

Je contemplais cette notion, donc, de αλληλουια (Alléluia, Louez le SEIGNEUR, Louez l’Eternel). Je me suis arrêté, paisiblement. Malgré les problèmes que j’essayais de rendre visibles, il y avait et il y a quelque chose de si bon ici. Pourquoi l’appellerais-je même « beau » ? Puisque valoriser tout ce qui est bon est beau. Cela me fait sourire en profondeur lorsque le fond de la phrase transcende mes inquiétudes sur sa forme et je suis donc bien reconnaissant de cette perspective supérieure !

Cependant, je me retrouve face à une idée intéressante. Est-ce qu’il serait possible que notre adoration francophone « du Seigneur » aurait depuis des siècles fortifié ce langage ? Relisez avec moi très doucement les paroles en question (la ponctuation est là pour nous ralentir un peu).

L O U E Z :   

   

« L E.       S E I G N E U R. » [2]

Qu’est-ce que cette instruction opère à notre inconscient chrétien collectif ? Gardons en tête que ce soit une pratique spirituelle très ancienne, belle, bonne et sacrée. Néanmoins, dans la façon que c’est formulé, elle pourrait conduire à figer ces vieux mots français à ce niveau profond et intime à cause d’une confusion en traduction : Louez celui dont le nom est ‘Le SEIGNEUR’, plutôt que louez celui dont le nom a été traduit par ‘Le SEIGNEUR’, et investissez ce titre français de valeur, de sainteté et d’amour. Faites de ce titre français médiéval le véritable nom de Dieu, et préservez-le donc à tout prix.

Malgré les apparences, il s’agit d’une transition signifiante de perspective. Le nom d’une personne est relativement intemporel et il est conçu pour désigner la personne même, de telle sorte que le nommé et le nom ne font qu’Un. 

Nous pouvons constater ce phénomène déjà à l’œuvre dans l’ancien testament : 

 « Tous les peuples de la terre verront que tu es appelé du nom de « l'Eternel » et ils auront peur de toi » (Deutéronome 28.10, Segond 21)

Donc, si nous apercevons qu’on nous exhorte à « louer le Seigneur », réfléchissons à la fois à la puissance de l’idée de ce psaume et à l’incapacité de « l’Eternel » ou de « le Seigneur » à continuer à nommer celui que nous appelons également « Dieu ».

Quant aux traducteurs, eux aussi sont des chrétiens. Ils ressentent aussi un fardeau de fidélité forte au passé, et ils aperçoivent aussi le statut privilégié inculqué par toute la louange et honneur associés à ce nom prétendu « du Seigneur ». Une remise en question sérieuse du vocabulaire autour de l’autorité divine est donc évitée, mais ce n’est pas obligé que c’en soit ainsi ! Une fois que nous réalisons tous que :

- ‘le Seigneur’ n’est pas sacré de son propre sort, 

- ‘le Seigneur’ n’était peut-être pas la meilleure traduction en français même au moyen âge, et que

- ‘le Seigneur’ est tout à fait incapable de représenter les divers niveaux d’autorités signifiés dans les langues d’origine, 

. . . alors nous les chrétiens de 2019 pouvons repenser comment exprimer l’autorité divine dans nos vies. 

Et nous le faisons déjà. Par exemple, Eugene Peterson a eu un succès éblouissant avec sa traduction, The Message en anglais qui a beaucoup remis en question l’expression sœur en anglais, « The LORD ». Au lieu de répéter de manière irréfléchie les 6894 instances de « l’Eternel » par « The LORD », il a opté pour « DIEU » (ou simplement, Hallelujah ! )[3] Dans d’autres lieux d’interface entre l’église et la société, il semble bien qu’il y ait une dépendance réduite en discours de « seigneurie ». Attention, je ne dis pas qu’il n’y a pas encore beaucoup d’attachement au mot ni que l’attachement n’a pas de très bonnes explications, mais que la manière que l’autorité de Dieu ou de Christ s’exprime, lorsqu’il s’exprime bien, évolue et doit évoluer.  Mais il reste beaucoup à faire ! Nous avons besoin de perspectives et ressources linguistiques nouvelles qui nous invitent à expérimenter et exprimer l’autorité divine comme quelque chose de vraiment digne de notre louange. Pour cela nous avons besoins d’outils en français courant parce que le Grecque c’était en Grecque courant, tout simplement !

En conclusion, « le Seigneur » a eu son moment utile, le grand attachement que ressent l’église au mot peut s’expliquer aussi, mais il faudrait rattraper le retard par réexaminer comment nous devrions expressimer cette—si importante à une vie chrétienne contextualisée. Je suis certain que Guyart des Moulins en serait ravi 😊.

---

[1] This problem concerns the adding of articles that the Hebrew authors and Greek translators were so careful to avoid in order to preserve the personal name of God. Since Latin does not have articles, translators may have been ignorant of this fact.
Ce problème concerne l’ajout des articles que les auteurs hébreux et traducteurs grecques avaient avec prudence évité dans les langues d’origine afin de préserve le caractère d’un vrai nom personnel de Dieu. « L’Eternel », malgré son assez grande originalité ne s’échappe pas non plus, donc, de ce piège posé par la traduction directe du Latin.

[2] Cet effet est également percutant ailleurs, tel que : Entrez, courbons-nous, inclinons-nous, mettons-nous à genoux devant « le SEIGNEUR » qui nous a faits (Psaume 95.6, PDV, guillemets ajoutés)

[3] Ce n’est pas une réflexion que ni la Bible en Français Courant ni la Parole de Vie ne semblent prêtes encore à entreprendre.

LJC S2 Part 7: Paul assumes and does not criticise Christ-worship and Jesus centrality

In Part 6 we tracked the development of the Gentile inclusion process, from Peter addressing Jews from all nations in Acts 2, through understanding (and rejoicing) that non-Jews could be partakers in the great eschatological people via their legitimate receiving of God's great outpouring of his Spirit, to the eventual dawning in Galatians that the scope of Christ's salvation for his People of God was far wider - far greater - than Torah observance of circumcision.

Before advancing in Hurtado's chapter today in Paul, perhaps I could just add in the tension enhanced by Matthew's later addition in Matthew 5:18: "For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished." (NIV). So, hopefully it is starting to become more obvious as we allow Hurtado to immerse us in the first-century world, just what a whopper of an issue male circumcision was to the flourishing Christian movement.

Remember how in Chapter 1 we surveyed Hurtado's general thesis? We looked at his four major reasons that helped shaped Christian worship the way it did, and I praised it for its clarity. We had (the rather epic) Jewish monotheism, Jesus himself, religious experience and the religious environment. Here now Hurtado dips briefly into this model and asserts that for Paul indeed Jesus was this ultimate model for Christian living: "Jesus also functions as the inspiring model of the ethical qualities that are to characterize the present life of the redeemed and of the eschatological outcome of their redemption as well." (p. 134)

The section I want to focus on today is simply entitled "Binitarian Worship". Readers might remember that in the first series I had a post entitled: What does Hurtado mean by "binitarian"? I don't want to re-hash all of that here, but I'd like to give a shout out to blog reader, Richard Wilson, who astutely pointed out in a comment he left on one post that Hurtado has distanced himself over the last decade or more separating us from this important 2003 publication Lord Jesus Christ over this term, preferring to speak these days more of "dyadic worship". This is indeed evidenced over the exchange I had with Hurtado concerning his differences with Dunn here and here, alsoace given to Jesus in Pauline Ch in the first series. Good spot Richard! This problem of quite how we describe this early Christian worship is indeed not satisfactorily solved by calling it "binitarian". Binitarian sounds a lot like trinitarian-minus-one. Trinitarianism itself suffers from a lot of ambiguity, but given its ultimate form of the Triune God, then we could indeed agree that Hurtado's move away from binitarian to be a good one. Our author is certainly not implying that for our first-century founders that God himself is binitarian, otherwise his use of "both" would be entirely redundant: "The christological material we have surveyed here reflects an impressive... place given to Jesus in Pauline Christianity. As Kreitzer and Richardson have shown, in Pauline Christianity we see a remarkable "overlap" in functions between God and Jesus, and also in the honorific rhetoric used to refer to them both." (p. 134)

What I can say in summary and in strong agreement with Hurtado throughout this part is to assert the following: Is it not extraordinary that in all of the Pauline correspondence, despite all the issues that he addresses, that the centrality of Jesus and his overlap in functions with God are never critiqued? Hurtado goes into some detail to attempt to demonstrate that this would have included the earliest, Aramaic-speaking followers of Jesus themselves.

Worship

I am particularly pleased with what follows. I am a bit of a stickler for detail, as my queries on the precise definition of "binitarian" have probably shown. This time, however, on the question of "Christ devotion", which is clearly demonstrated, Hurtado is going to take head on the challenge (particularly from the likes of Dunn) that this should not be overlapped with how we might define "worship". Does the devotion to Christ reflected in Paul's letters really amount to "worship" in the sense of reverence directed to a deity? (p. 137) Here, Hurtado throttles up to full power and unleashes dense summaries of a string of publications he has published over the years that demonstrate the unique and divine status and "programmatic inclusion" of Jesus alongside the one true God of the Israelites. He is able to compellingly sweep aside allusions to occasional alternative intertestamental Jewish figures who had received some honorific recognition, or some sort of emergence of Jesus in the pagan sense of the Roman religious context of the time, highlighting the consistent "constellations" of practices evidenced and assumed by this earliest extant Christian writer, Paul.

In my next  post, we'll see what Hurtado has to say about prayer in particular, which I hope should cause us who believe in Christ and the Father to reflect afresh about how we address them in light of the earliest Christian practice.

Why We Bind Theology To Doxology

1. Any theology that does not lead to song is, at a fundamental level, a flawed theology (J. I. Packer).

Logos.com describes Packer as "perhaps one of the most influential theologians of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries."

2. I think a good theologian prays well, first. No theologian who doesn’t has even begun to understand the discipline. And then s/he serves the Church, and his or her particular part of it (down to a local congregation) in humility and faithfulness. Theology belongs to the Church; any theologian divorced from the Church is a bad theologian, however brilliant or knowledgeable. A good theologian has a grasp of gospel values, and would swap everything s/he has written to see one sinner repent, or one broken life healed. A good theologian writes and speaks only to help the Church be more faithful to the gospel, bringing whatever knowledge of the tradition, whatever insight into contemporary modes of thought, and whatever native cleverness s/he may possess, all into service of this one end. A good theologian is marked by humility and cheerfulness, knowing how far short of the mystery of God and God’s works his/her best efforts fall, and knowing that in the good grace of God something of lasting worth may still come from them. A good theologian, finally, does know something, and has some capacity of thought, and so can make a contribution through his/her God-given vocation.

I am not a very good theologian.

(S. Holmes)

I describe Stephen Holmes as an extremely knowledgeable and apparently humble theologian. Holmes had an important impact on my own understanding of the Trinity around 2014-2015, and I continue to use his book for reference on historical contributions.

The purpose of our learning and contributions is not for us, but for Another and for others who worship that Other - God, say Holmes and Packer and indeed the lion's share of Christian theologians. Are they correct? Does theology lead to doxology? Doxology defines itself pretty clearly to me, but how is theology to be defined? If it is that which we can say of God via the biblical text on the historical platform from which we gaze, then we presume the reality of the God in question. Thus, in the case of Christian theology, then we must indeed humbly agree and reaffirm what is said above.

However, it should probably be remembered as well that Christianity is also an intensely historical phenomenon which has affected humanity globally. Therefore, historical studies can and must overlap considerably with the work of theologians. This is where we need to tread carefully and, I think, welcome the inter-worldview historical task. On the one hand, "neutral" history without faith commitment could actually shed greater light on Christianity's authenticity. On the other hand, it could also cast doubt on central tenets, doctrines or beliefs. 

This comparison and overlap remind me a little of the evolution "debate": we see some anti-christian science on the one hand, and six-day creationists on the other. However, I think, most people overlap: scientists on the most-part are not setting out to disprove religions, simply to understand the universe better and produce life-enhancing insights. It's positive, not negative. Further, many Christians, myself included, do not believe a six-day creation 6000 years ago to be at all credible in light of the data produced by extensive research. What do we do in that overlapping space? We interact. Christians do science; scientists have faith. Both are enhanced. 

The same should be said and clarified for theology and history. Historical theology reaches back through the hermeneutical spiral toward the source, both for theologians and historians of religion. Collaboration is necessary. Collaboration produces the results both enterprises need and should detract from individual glory.

But let's get back to the Christian task of theology. Yes, theology in its brute form is without a doubt a Christian task. But why point out that it has to lead to doxology? What might the alternative be? Obsession? Pride? Distraction?

For me, I do believe there is truth in this from the perspective in which I have been raised and have now affirmed as an adult believer. But during my recent journey, theology has been quite historical when I was horrified to consider that my cherished trinitarian beliefs no longer seemed to fit the biblical text that I also cherished so dearly. Theology is also about wanting to know the truth, and that's ok. That can take time. And mistakes. And learning. And humility. Such a process can run deep through your soul, and, without you even realising it, prepare the way for a deeper and sounder doxology than the fractured, pride-ridden self could have arrived at without the history. 

Is the theology to doxology idea something of a paradox, why even bother saying it? Perhaps theology requires that it be said from the same lips of those who have authentically and personally wrestled with the issue for themselves (I make no judgement on either Holmes or Packer here), but that incarnational approach I find deeply appealing. Any preacher who speaks of his own pride gets my instant and total attention. I can relate to him or her. Now we get real. Now we get to ditch the crowns, and we can do it together and we can do it alone.

Perhaps also theology doesn't want Christians to get too lost in historical analysis and forget their purpose. As we have said, there is this wide overlap with historical analysis, with its neutral goal of simply better understanding past events. There can be a conflict of interests though here. Let's take my example of the Gospel of Matthew. I have deeply divided feelings about the Gospel of Matthew. Part of me loves it - in particular, we get the sermon on the mount, which is amazing. My history part loves it too, as I now understand the baptism formula in 28:19 in a new light that enhances earlier teaching. However, my faith part has at times suffered as I have wrestled with the modifications that I see this author has made to his sources and his thinly concealed objectives. My understanding of Scripture and inspiration has been severely tested in the case of Matthew, yet when I look back in history I also get fresh faith: Matthew ends up being the most popular and retranscribed gospel (I think) for the early church. A massive contribution has been made by Matthew, and I am an inheritor of its contribution, whatever the conclusions I reach about it. 

It may feel like a paradox at times when we get to ugly texts or bits we don't know if they are even literally truely recounting actual events in our past. But if we stop for a second as Christians and ask ourselves why we are even asking that historical question, we should remember to answer ourselves: because we want to know God better.

Lord Jesus Christ, S2 Part 2: Jesus' divine sonship

Hurtado will now move through sections of Paul's Jewishness, Paul the Convert, The Gentile Mission, Christological language and Themes, Jesus as "Christ", to Jesus' Divine Sonship. I propose to pick up again here (don't worry, any important elements fast-forwarded here will be recalled during the chapter summary), Jesus' divine Sonship. Here Hurtado is weighing the various arguments for the source of this idea of divine sonship. Was it from the Roman pagan world (where indeed divine sonship did exist)? Or was it from within the Jewish Bible? 

Hurtado cites serious scholars Nock and Hengel as both having shown how difficult it is to demonstrate that it is the application of pagan mythology onto Christ in Paul's writings that permits him to apply divine Sonship, Nock even concluding "[T]he attempts which have been made to explain it from the larger Hellenistic world will fail." (p. 103) (My emphasis. A. D. Nock, Early Christianity and its Hellenistic Background (New York: Harper and Row, 1964, p. 45). So if the divine sonship motif comes from within Judaism, how did that work? What did that mean? Paul's most exalted term for Jesus actually isn't "son of God", and in particular, it is absent at times when we might have seen it fitting to have used it (1 Corinthians chapters 8-10). 

What is important to say from the first-century Roman era of Judaism is that the diversity of translations available to the Jewish communities of their Holy Scriptures would most certainly have included ideas of "sons of God", in particular with reference to the heavenly realm's population. But given the "failure" of this as the predominant ignition for the idea of Jesus' divine sonship, we need to look into Israel's sacred past. The most significant association, then, would most likely have been the ways in which God's anointed king of Israel (see esp. 2 Sam 7:14), other righteous individuals (some extra-biblical literature usage would have been well known) and Israel collectively (e.g., Exod. 4:22; Deut. 14:1; Isa. 1:2; Jer. 3:22; Hos. 1:10; 11:1; Wisd. of Sol. 12:21; 16:10, 26; 18:4, 13) as son(s) and "firstborn" of God. (p. 103). Given Paul's preference for other titles of Jesus with regards to the level of his exaltation, i.e. Kyrios (Lord), I think the most important allusion we should make here is that shared with the leading theme of the second gospel, Mark. The Jesus-God relationship represents the relationship God had always intended to maintain with his people collectively. Jesus powerfully represents "his" people. Whose people? It's now a double "his". God's people are now entrusted to their rightful king, the Messiah Jesus. In which case, although this is not a developed biblical speculation, there is also a double "son", the restored people of God as restored sons of God and Jesus as the archetypical Son.

Whatever the Pauline nuance usage behind his usage of the expression, I think the context shows that it was fairly far removed from the ways in which we can often hear it used today. As Hurtado himself points out (in agreement): In this messianic usage, divine sonship did not function to connote divinity, but it certainly indicated a special status and relationship to God.

We do not need to go through the various Pauline examples takes here, but as I went through it I wondered if there was something that could have been said about uniqueness. Hurtado says on pp. 107-108 "If, as is likely, in his preconversion oppostion Paul rejected early Jewish Christian claims that Jesus was God's unique Son.... this would help explain the importance that Jesus' divine sonship seems to have had in Paul's postconversion religious life." It could explain a lot more besides. If Jesus' first followers whom he had persecuted claimed that he embodied "true Israel" as the true son of God, as a uniquely chosen people (or son), then we also have a backdrop for deep Pauline reflection on the grafting in of other nations into God's special unique people/family.

So in summary: the divine sonship was a Jewish idea and Paul's occasional use of it in relationship to Jesus does not express his inherent divinity, but rather his unique standing and intimacy with God, and his involvement in God's redemptive work. (see p. 104) Regarding the fact that this took place in a social context where divine sonship meant something else, we can perhaps expect that this may have had an underscoring effect on the full ontological divination of Jesus as the serious theologizing and apologetics began to get into full swing in the subsequent centuries - part of a wider process I am calling triunification of God.

Lord Jesus Christ, S2 Part 1: CHAPTER 2! Paul's material takes us as far back as we can go and takes us forward

YES AT LAST we will attempt to respond to Hurtado's second chapter of his great book Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (LJC). For anyone new to this series, a recommendation from the author himself is available here and a summary of material covered thus-far is available here.

To avoid the burdensome feel of a huge series, I have decided to reset the counter. Instead of stating "Part 16", I have entitled it S2 Part 1; the S standing for Series 2, these series roughly corresponding to the 10 chapters of LJC. Note that since not all are necessary in the depth I am giving here for the research purposes of my own work around Mutated Faith and the Triune Hub, it is unlikely that I will be covering all 10 in this fashion. 

A final word of introduction is necessary to point out that I am in the midst of a couple of other things on the blog, not least of which is an exchange with author Dr Dale Tuggy, where our dialogue can be traced Dialogue with Dr Dale Tuggy: here, here and here. It's his turn to respond, and I am expecting it to be a corker (at least I threw everything I had at my last contribution). Furthermore, I also had intended to share on the blog some more of the insights of French philosopher, Paul Ricoeur, into our quest, but I'll hold onto to that i think until the relevant time. His approach to phenomenology will be crucial to helping us understand how a religion could shift from a binitarian/trinitarian something to a binitarian/trinitarian God.

Also, in the current chapter but also elsewhere, other interruptions to LJC have been planned for a while, when for instance our author will turn to Q, John the Baptist and the "Son of Man" literature. At these points, we will see read up on some other literature that will not necessarily support the positions taken by Hurtado in LJC. But God willing, we will try to see the book through despite these inevitable interruptions (better to consider them interactions). 

So let's open Chapter 2. Hurtado wants to start testing his thesis he laid out in Chapter 1 chronologically, beginning with Paul. Although Paul is not considered representative of the first "wave" of Christianity as his writings date typically from the 50s-60s, they are the earliest direct and undisputed source we have to the form of earliest Christianity. He nonetheless affirms with the majority of scholars I have read on the period that: the emergent Christian movement were made up of Jewish adherents in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Roman Judea (Palestine) pp. 79-80. Hurtado also points out the importance of these epistles in their efforts to maintain the bridge between the gentile converts and the Jewish roots of the church with which he is still in close relationship and from within which he is at pains to remind people that his own dramatic conversion experience took place. It is important for proponents of "mutation" metaphors like myself to make abundantly clear that personal conversion to Christ is not at all equivalent to "converting from Judaism to Christianity". It was perfectly acceptable, like for Jesus himself, to be a true follower of God as a Jew. The big question for the early church was now how to interpret that huge body of holy literature around the events of Christ and the Holy Spirit's outpouring.

Since the Triune Hub presentation will be taking the writings of John Dominic Crossan very seriously on the specific mutation of the collaborative kingdom (as opposed to interventionist), I need to be particularly attentive as to when he and Hurtado disagree on other matters (see p. 82). but the issue is more methodological - Crossan wants to "bracket out" Paul in order to focus on this earlier stage of Christianity, something which Hurtado considers pretty impossible. Furthermore, Paul's deep personal association with the early Christian movement during those formative years alluded to in some of his brief biographical sections in his epistles can provide us further insights into that period. His reasons for starting with Paul in bullet form then (with my emphasis):

1. Pauline Christianity is the earliest form of the Christian movement to which we have direct access from undisputed firsthand sources.
2. Paul's letters... also incorporate and reflect emergent Christian traditions of belief and religious practice from still earlier years.
3. Paul's own associations with Christian circles, which include important Jewish Christian figures such as Peter, James the brother of Jesus, Barnabas, and others, go back to this conversion, which is to be dated approximately 32-34, and so his acquaintance with beliefs and practices of Christian circles is both wide and extremely early.
4. Several of Paul's letters reflect disagreements between him and other Christians, in particular, some Jewish Christians with different views of the terms for full acceptance of Gentile converts, making Paul's writings our earliest and most unambiguous evidence that there was a certain diversity of beliefs and groups in the earliest decades of Christianity, and also our best indication of the nature of this diversity and whatever commonality linked the groups.
5. The Christ-devotion attested in Paul's letters amounts to a notable development in the history of religions, especially when set in the context of the Jewish religious tradition and the larger Roman-era religious environment, and his letters exhibit this development as having already taken place at a remarkably early point
6. Finally, the place of Christ in the Pauline letters also anticipates, represents, and likely helped to promote the Christological beliefs and devotional practices that came to be widely characteristic in Christian groups after Paul. (p. 85-86)

Makes sense to me. 

Lord Jesus Christ, by Larry Hurtado, Part 14: Jesus Worship Roundup

LARRY HURTADO HAS given us in this opening chapter some great content to think about, but perhaps most importantly, he has provided for us a meaningful and (we shall see) workable model in which conversations about Christology and Jesus-worship can be situated. I'll give an example of what I mean in a second, but we really should first give that model in its most summary form. Here I also include the corresponding posts to each of Hurtado's factors and some of the introductory posts in order to give as comprehensive a summary as possible.

Hurtado section/factor	Post
“Unwrapping” my book	Unsuccessful Mutations
Introduction	Part 2: Introduction
Introduction	Part 3: Opening words of "Centrality" hit the nail on the head
Introduction	Part 4: No to history-of-religions explanations; No to naive Christian apologetics explanations.
Chapter 1: Forces and Factors Jewish monotheism	Part 5: Forces and Factors: "the decisive criterion"
Chapter 1: Forces and Factors Jewish monotheism	Part 6: mid-first century and late-first century Christian worship perspectives Here I began to press a little harder to scope the breadth of meaning contained in Hurtado’s important use of “binitarian”, with a view that Dunn’s evolutionary model could be both compatible and manifest the diversity to which Hurtado holds.
Chapter 1: Forces and Factors Jewish monotheism	Part 7: Response from Dr Hurtado
Chapter 1: Forces and Factors Jewish monotheism	Part 8: the line no-one ever crossed
Chapter 1: Forces and Factors Jewish monotheism in Christianity	Part 9: what does Hurtado mean by "binitarian" and monotheism effects on Jesus worship
Chapter 1: Forces and Factors           Jesus	Part 10: Jesus, the polarizing figure, just like Marmite...
Chapter 1: Forces and Factors           Religious Experience	Part 11: Religious Experience
Chapter 1: Forces and Factors           Religious Experience	Part 12: Inside the "furnace"
Chapter 1: Forces and Factors           Religious Environment	Part 13: The Religious Environment

Now I did warn readers that this series was not to be understood as chapter summaries, but I had no idea then just how much I was going to write. I don't know what the word count is for Chapter 1 in Lord Jesus Christ, but it can't have been a whole lot briefer at over 12000 words over the thirteen posts here! Whoops. But that is a good segue to promote the actual reading of the material I have been discussing for yourself. As was evident from my use of Kindle Locations in the earlier posts (I worked out a way in the end of identifying page numbers), my copy was purchased from Kindle. At times I wished I had purchased the paper version, but at other times it was very useful to be able to use the electronic format, especially when doing searches (e.g. for a key conceptual term or for a cited author).

I mentioned above that perhaps the most useful contribution here from Hurtado is the actual structure itself, which helps situate our Christological and theological conversations. Without the content he has provided in that structure (in summary form only remember - the rest of the book is devoted to filling it and bolstering it from the first 160 years of Christianity), the model would obviously fall flat, so we can consider that the two do indeed go together. Now, I mentioned very early on in the series that this book brings the reader to consider what they might think about various issues that perhaps they didn't even know people held views about! Once confronted with the options and the evidence, you can no longer remain indifferent - you are engaged in a significantly deeper level of inquiry and can't look back. An example of how this plays out could be in the Jesus section we covered in Part 10. The content that Hurtado provides in summary form focuses primarily on the effect of Jesus on people. Just like Marmite, by promoting a love/hate response, the object or subject in question has a tendency of "going viral". It's a great point and is situated well within the "Jesus" factor. But of course, more could be said. Simply because of Hurtado's methodology, my own thinking is now probing the reflective space that it opens up for me and I find myself wondering: "what about Jesus' devotion to God"? That question is also situated within the Jesus factor even though Hurtado does not treat it. My point is that if you had simply asked me to discuss Jesus devotion more loosely, I am not sure I would have considered this aspect.

OK - it's time for me to have a break now, so back in a few days. Thanks again for your interactions and your time.

Lord Jesus Christ, by Larry Hurtado, Part 13: The Religious Environment

MONOTHEISM CONTINUES TO be a major discussion point among historians of Christian origins, and we looked for quite some time at that factor (Parts 5, 6, 8, and 9), that is to say, a factor or force that influenced the worship of Jesus by the first generations of Christians. I think it can legitimately cause us to marvel afresh at how these factors combined to permit monotheistic Jews to worship a human being. There was a considerable lot more going on, however, within both Judaism itself and the imperialist Roman regime's religious dimension.

Hurtado does not want to shy away from the possibility that early Christians, presumably including those who penned parts of what we call the New Testament, would have been affected by the environment in which they lived, with its opportunities and constraints. I'd wholeheartedly agree. I'm trying to push as firmly as I can in my unsophisticated way toward a realisation that the principles of the hermeneutical circle apply constantly, are basic to our humanity, and certainly applied to the authors of the New Testament. For instance, first-century hermeneutics will be an important part of my argument for the gospel of Matthew's treatment of misconstrued understandings of Jesus' baptism and a reinvigorating of Jewish Christianity in his own day and age. The voie longue of Ricoeur says that if we want to understand best what happened at a point then we have to follow that circle and even identify our own place in it. Anyway, the point is that acknowledging influence is good, but can be developed, I think, usefully according to hermeneutics theory.

For the remainder of today's post, I propose to simply list the examples provided of influences affecting Christ devotion, bearing in mind that they were clearly not intended to be exhaustive.

Religious influences of external origin (Greek/Roman):

• The literary genre of bios adopted by the four canonical gospel writers (I wasn't particularly clear at first how this was relevant to the question of Jesus-devotion, but when we take the experiences described in the previous post I was reminded of just how far we have gone in the post-modern West from the holistic thinking evidenced in these diverse early Christian communities)
• Message differentiation, in a very real sense those early Christians were asking for trouble! Check this interesting connection Hurtado makes: the rising frequency in the Christological use of divine sonship language that we see in the Christian writings of the late first century and thereafter may very well reflect a reaction against the contemporaneous increase in the use of the same rhetoric in the emperor cult under the Flavians and thereafter. (p. 75)
• Making a stand - following their great example, Jesus, who was vindicated by God after making his own stand at the cross, Christians would have been aware of the high potential costs of making a stand as a follower of the Way. Or... not. Jesus had set a polarizing set of wheels in motion, which the brutal regime would reinforce through various forms of pressure.

Religious influences of Jewish origin

• Calling Jesus, Christos, "a claim directed to Jewish hopes of the time for God's messianic mercy" (p. 75)
• Christian baptism echoing John's baptism. That is correct to file this under "Jewish", however, Ehrman, Crossan and others I feel are correct in identifying a particular strand of Judaism into which both John and Jesus fitted, that of Jewish apocalypticism, no doubt strongest in the occupied homeland. Regarding impact on cultic practices, a connection could easily be made between this pressing concern for divine world clean-up and eager charismatic expectations of Christ's return.
• Hostile Jewish criticism, themselves under pressure from the Roman regime to enforce a peace of submission. In fact, some were even led to interpret Roman Emperors in a messianic light. Here again, I was initially unclear as to the direct effect on Jesus-devotion, but the basic point seems to be that this might have reinforced the polarization effect already described. What might the positive end of that polarization look like (this is my addition)? Devotion to Jesus can and could be a bonding and entrenching proclamation; a proclamation that is imbued with significance because, in the communal setting, we are bound to our common belief in the face of criticism and mistrust from the establishment and even close family members. I wonder if the experience of hostility from religious family members could have felt similar to that experienced in many Muslim countries today by indigenous converts, whereby in both cases believers could receive consolation and purpose in the communal worship context.
• Clearer definition of the people of God in countering the Jewish Christian insistence of Gentile circumcision. Actually, this is just an example to the wider influence of Jewish religious practice and belief of what it means to be God's chosen people. It seems to me that there could be other Jewish theological influences affecting the cultus, but these examples give a good flavour.

Universal

• Symbolic meals. I'm separating this one out as it seems to me that the young Christian community would have naturally integrated special meals, being influenced from both sides to that end. Jewish followers of the Way would certainly expect something along those lines, and so would Roman, Greek and other converts. I would expect meals to have a universal quality about them.

That's it! We have reached the end of factor no. 4, having already looked at Hurtado's treatment of monotheism, Jesus himself, revelatory religious experiences and now the religious environment. In tomorrow's post, we can summarise and I'll recall Hurtado's chapter structure alongside the corresponding posts from this series. Thank you for following along and your input.

Lord Jesus Christ, by Larry Hurtado, Part 12: Inside the "furnace"

VISIONS OF THE exalted Christ, prophetic oracles, inspired songs and charismatic exegesis of biblical texts - these comprise perhaps the primary examples of the validating religious experiences of the earliest circles of Christianity.

Yesterday we saw how these experiences would have provided the necessary "furnace" to enable and demand that a serious reconfiguration of the existing Jewish devotional matrix be undertaken. Today, then, we can enumerate these various sorts of religious experience.

1. Visions - I note with interest Hurtado's openness to the centrality of the Spirit via his referencing here of 1 Cor. 14:26, which is most powerfully manifest in a collective setting. Think about it: in these revelations, the Spirit is pivotal to making the resurrected Son central alongside the Father.

2. Prophetic oracles and inspired songs  - again this is not every lone Christian experience, but a feature of the shared experience of the group. Interestingly, we have access to some of the productions of this period through some of Paul's citations of hymns known to his recipients (e.g. Phil. 2:6-11). There was no literary brilliance involved either: These were not the products of trained poets but arose out of the religious exaltation of Christians (p. 73).

3. "Charismatic exegesis" - it is interesting to reflect on the very real possibility that Hurtado provides us that integrating a revisitation of the Old Testament texts (also considered to be inspired by the Holy Spirit) could be part of this communal furnace experience. We can tend to associate analysis of biblical texts as a serious and considered preoccupation that is available to a few from the pulpit and the rest of us at home (in light of that pulpit). Not so the first Christians! In particular, Hurtado shows some legitimate wonder at the usage of the highly monotheistic text of Isaiah 45:23 in Philippians 2:10-11, where Christ gets to be Kyrios in this Old Testament passage!

In addition to these aspects, Hurtado also considers that prayer for divine revelations would have featured, and indeed invigorated fresh inquiry into their Jewish scriptures.

It is this highly experiential life and breath understood through the lens of the Spirit that would have permitted such rapid and intense proportions of Jesus devotion to occur. For me, that might make three, even or perhaps particularly in the context of worship.

Come back tomorrow for Part 13: The Religious Environment, which will see us complete the four factors Hurtado provides for the emergence and shape of Christian devotion to Jesus in the first century. Before I go - ever so grateful to Dr. Hurtado for recommending this series on his own blog, I hope any newcomers from there are enjoying the style and approach I've adopted. We are not too far now from the end of chapter 1, at which point I will provide a summary with Hurtado's chapter structure and my corresponding posts for ease of access.

Lord Jesus Christ, by Larry Hurtado, Part 11: Religious Experience

Christ-devotion quickly amounted to what may be regarded as an unparalleled innovation, a “mutation” or new variant form of exclusivist monotheism in which a second figure (Jesus) was programmatically included with God in the devotional pattern of Christian groups. Outside the Jewish-Christian circles in which this binitarian pattern arose, the characteristic force of exclusivist monotheism seems to have prevented any other figure being treated as rightful recipient of cultic devotion, just as this monotheistic constraint served in early Christian circles to work against any additional figures other than God and Jesus being accorded such reverence. (My emphasis. p. 64)

Despite what we noticed yesterday about the polarising effects of Jesus' words and actions, Hurtado is the first to recognise that this is hardly sufficient explanation for the mutation described above. Rather, it is the combination of the constraint of monotheism, the polarisation and religious experiences with "revelatory validity", as Hurtado aptly puts it, that will cause this initially-Jewish movement to "mutate". Similarly to the caution our author extends to the content of the polarisation Jesus caused, we also should satisfy ourselves not with the content of these experiences per se, rather see that these experiences did indeed validate the solidifying belief structures and devotional practices of the earliest Christian communities. Surely, I thought to myself, as I first read through this section with gusto back in May, we are going to be introduced to the central role of the Holy Spirit for these communities? How will Hurtado articulate that centrality within his "binitarian" model? While that question must be left to hang for the rest of the book, Hurtado obviously must integrate discussion at this stage on the Spirit.

First, he notes that these crucial experiences have tended to be sidelined in many historical studies, which prefer to focus on more theological doctrines. Gunkel, writing way back in 1888, is briefly alluded to as a watershed publication on the Spirit's importance for Paul. A few pages are available of this translated work are available as a sample on the Amazon website and are worth a visit:

It cannot be disputed that even at Paul's position at this point in his teaching [the period of his life when he was writing his epistles] can be properly understood and evaluated only when we first consider the ideas that were first available to the apostle within Christian circles. (p. 9)

We must designate Judaism as the real matrix of the gospel (p. 13)

In the matter of the Spirit's activities, we have to do with an ancient Hebrew or perhaps primitive Semitic conception that had undergone only slight changes in the apostolic age. 

In the eyes of the primitive Christian community [this daily experience of the Holy Spirit] render[s] the presence of the Spirit an undeniable fact. 

If the notion of Spirit in ancient Israel had not been uncommonly vivid, a fact that can often enough be proved with examples, then its origin and persistence throughout many centuries up to the apostolic age would be totally inconceivable.

We are dealing here with an idea that was unusually vital in primitive Christianity. (p. 14)

Impressive. Without having accessed this work yet in full, it seems clear that Gunkel had a similar project to Hurtado and ourselves today, although with respect to the Spirit.

Hurtado also cites again his great sparring partner, Dunn, with a great quote from Jesus and the Spirit:

Dunn insisted that we also have to grant “the creative power of his own religious experience—a furnace which melted many concepts in its fires and poured them forth into new moulds. . . . Nothing should be allowed to obscure that fact.” (LJC p. 66)

This is absolute dynamite. What these experiences provide for then is the veritable "furnace" that we are looking for that would permit such rapid reconfigurations of such slowly-developed religious worldviews as Jewish monotheism - and God's experiential Spirit is at the heart of that.

Hurtado explores some of the ins and outs of the argumentation in the literature that basically concludes that these experiences can be genuinely innovative, even if fuelled by traceable influences.

Time to delve into what those experiences must have been; top of the list is obvious: the resurrected Christ (pp. 71-72), which would have led to the following convictions:

(1) that God had released Jesus from death, so that it really is Jesus, not merely his memory or influence, who lives again; (2) that God has bestowed on Jesus uniquely a glorious new form of existence, immortal and eschatological bodily life; (3) that Jesus has also been exalted to a unique heavenly status, thus presiding by God’s appointment over the redemptive program; and (4) that those who were given these special encounters with the risen Jesus were divinely commissioned to proclaim Jesus’ exalted status and to summon people to recognize in his resurrection/exaltation the signal that the eschatological moment of redemption has arrived. (My emphasis. p. 72 )

My sense is that this commissioning and eschatological status of the Christians' new era were profoundly connected to the marked and experienced empowerment of the Holy Spirit. Thus, we are not describing simply "visions" of the resurrected Jesus, but veritable "experiences" of him that empowered his followers with extraordinary purpose. Let us turn briefly to Gordon Fee's Paul, the Spirit and the People of God (Hodder & Stoughton):

The Spirit as an experienced and empowering reality was for Paul and his churches the key player in all of Christian life, from beginning to end. (xv)

In the case of the Spirit we are dealing with the essential matter of early Christian experience [...which] was how the early believers came to understand themselves as living at the beginning of the end times [...] the Spirit was guarantee that God would conclude what he had begun in Christ (= Paul's eschatological framework).  (emphasis original. pp. 2-3)

The experience of the Holy Spirit and of Christ through the Spirit seem to be central to Gunkel and Fee's perspective of these pre-Pauline communities, but Hurtado keeps his focus on the post-resurrection experience of Jesus. He continues from the previous citation on p. 72:... likely involved an encounter with a figure recognized as Jesus but also exhibiting features that convinced the recipients that he had been clothed with divine-like glory and given a unique heavenly status. This description appears to me reminiscent, although not for Hurtado, of the Daniel 7 depiction of the Son of Man. Regardless, it is this exalted experience of Christ that would lead to the necessity to venerate him accordingly, which as revealed and required by God himself, the mutation is not simply justified but mandatory.

We will pause there for today - in the next post we will look at three example forms that these religious experiences most certainly took.

Lord Jesus Christ, by Larry Hurtado, Part 10: Jesus, the polarizing figure, just like Marmite...

JESUS IN BOTH life and memory polarized his listeners.

Today, we move away at last from our discussion around monotheism - Larry Hurtado's first of four factors governing the early emergence of first century "binitarian" Christian worship - and move over to his second factor: Jesus himself. In the previous section, we saw that monotheism provided a constraining influence on the practice of devotion to Jesus, we established some of the contours of what appears to be Hurtado's usage of the word "binitarian" and we questioned the effects and meaning of the inclusion of gentile converts (ex-polytheists). On this last point - just to situate anyone joining us at this point - as an advocate for an early Jewish-Christian form of trinitarian faith, I am asking the question of some of Hurtado's key factors of binitarian devotion: might the Holy Spirit also have been pivotal for such an historic development? More of that in the next post.

Back to Jesus. It might sound like an obvious point, but theologians and historians of Christian origins can do a lot of speculating, postulating and theorising around this or that feature of Christianity and somehow avoid the man himself. I've probably been guilty of that too. Hurtado is not, however, although he will also wisely avoid plunging himself too deeply off-track into appraisals of this or that movement to rediscover what "the historical Jesus" might have required in terms of religious veneration. The material to cover is too vast and the primary point that emerges for his own thesis does not depend on a specific reconstruction, because our author will point to the polarizing effects of Jesus on his followers both during his earthly ministry and in his subsequent memory as resurrected and exalted Lord.

Like Marmite is cleverly promoted through its early image of being a spread British consumers either loved or hated (I love it!), Jesus seems to have thrust a radical choice onto his hearers. Either they accept him as God's messiah of a truly biblical, transformational and inclusive humanity, or you reject him (and repeat, on whatever serious subject matter is necessary). What you don't do, says Hurtado, is adopt some unsubstantiated pacifistic Jesus, who was only made into a polarizing force at some later stage (roughly in this camp: Hurtado tackles Geza Vermes, Burton Mack and, most significantly for me, John Dominic Crossan).

Nonetheless, the bridging mechanism between the polarized Jesus of the church and the polarizing Galilean I felt was not very strongly emphasised by Hurtado in response to authors like Mack: there was likely something in Jesus’ own actions and statements that generated, or at least contributed to, this polarization. In response to Crossan, he is stronger: if [Jesus] intended no special role for himself in their religious life, Jesus would have to be seen as spectacularly unsuccessful in communicating his intentions to his followers. [KL 1088] 

Responding to Mack he responds with solid appeals for proof: we do have direct evidence of how Jesus’ sayings were used by a number of Christian circles and none of these circles corresponds to the sort of group that Mack posits. [KL 1134] 

Hurtado is referring to an argument from Mack, which appears to be substantially based on "Q", which we will be discussing this in more depth later in the series (and always including the quotes around "Q"). W, Hurtado is loyal to the "Q" hypothesis, which is indeed backed by a majority of scholars writing on the synoptic problem, but intercepts Mack's inferences - since it contains primarily sayings of Jesus and lacks central Christian doctrines on the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, Mack claims at the very beginning around when "Q" was written those components weren't yet present in the thinking of Jesus' followers.

All of this said, however, it is still curious to note that Hurtado keeps this mental reserve for some gap between what the impact of Jesus and what Jesus' intentions may have been: "in any case, whether in keeping with his intention or not, people were polarized over Jesus" [KL 1091]. We should understand then that what he is tackling is that there can be any scope for a phase during or after Jesus' earthly life in which the primary response to his words and actions was indifference. Not happenin'.

To close, Hurtado summarizes it best: "the immediate and dominant outcome of Jesus’ career was a sharply divided set of views about him, with some so negative as to justify his crucifixion and some so positive as to form the basis of one or more new religious movements" [KL 1162]

Before I sign off, I just wanted to flag that this is the context for the fascinating idea I cited from Hurtado before, right at the start of the series, about dysfunctional or unsuccessful religious mutations. Tracking the christianities that succeeded as mutations from Judaism is, I think, of great interest, especially if we want to claim (like I do) that the Holy Spirit's centrality could not have been a subsequent mutation. With this in mind, and with the glorious benefit of hindsight (!), it is tempting to hold up the mutated triune hub of successful Christianity as the measuring stick of "success" during the first two centuries in particular.

Lord Jesus Christ, by Larry Hurtado, Part 9: what does Hurtado mean by "binitarian" and monotheism effects on Jesus worship

THIS UNUSUAL “BINITARIAN” devotional pattern certainly requires further analysis and adequate explanation.

These words constitute Hurtado's opening line for this section in which we will see the effects that Jewish monotheism probably had on Christian worship - needless to say, I will have some extra questions regarding quite what the inclusion of Gentiles into this context might have signified - needless to say, however, Hurtado is going to continue to masterfully fill out for us the major contour lines we need.

Before we go any further, however, let's stop a second. Do you see how Hurtado is using this word, "binitarian"? It is a crucial question, and one that this book does not explore specifically (although see expansion below), but we have to ask it. Is he implying that *someone* is binitarian or that *something* is binitarian? It's a thing. That thing is called here a "devotional pattern". Everything hinges on this distinction for my hypothesis, which, just to remind anyone joining the cruise here, agrees that there are most certainly two distinct but joined stages of trinitarian development in the first four centuries of Christianity. In the first century, monotheistic faith came to be reshaped around two additional entities. The faith - not God himself - became trinitarian in its discourse and practice. So do I agree with Hurtado's usage of "binitarian"? Yes and no - although mainly yes. Yes, for the point I just made about it relating to some aspect of faith. My two itty bitty "no" components are to do with the fact that I don't agree that not explicitly making this distinction is completely fine. Some readers - maybe many - who are reading this may gloss over this language, excited to see that Trinitarianism (capital T) starts as early as they hoped. I hope I am just as excited. Only I want to keep my excitement in line with what careful historians are actually piecing together.

Hurtado introduces now a new term, which we need to understand as a direct translation of his previous preference for "mutation": "variant". This is a curious choice for me - apparently, the reason he makes this switch (although he doesn't give up on mutation completely and has a palette of equivalent terms) is twofold. Firstly, since he wrote One God, One Lord, in which "mutation" was used on scores of occasions, mutation language has received some criticism in the academy as somewhat derogatory, although I have no idea by whom. Secondly, he feels like "variant" is an informative illustrative term because, as he knows, and as some of his readership will know, a textual variant has a specific meaning in the field of textual criticism. But that is a highly specialised and less graphic illustration than mutation, and I won't hide constitutes a peculiar choice for me. So this "variant" is, in fact, monotheistic Christianity, and more specifically, the binitarian worship practice within Christianity that still holds to there being precisely one God. This central feature of monotheism in earliest Christianity, we would do well to remember (and I don't think Hurtado feels the need to remind his readership of this, probably assuming prior knowledge), is not something that was defined in quite those terms. Coincidentally, or perhaps not so coincidentally, I believe it is in the context of worship that the word monotheism first arises, as far as we know, with μονόθεον occurring in a Byzantine hymn (see an old post I did on this here). A hymn! I think Hurtado would have liked that.

But we've still not got much further than simply affirming that Christianity represents a mutation of a nonetheless monotheistic Judaism. Hurtado will go on to emphasise the exclusive force of monotheism on Christianity when he states: "Inasmuch as exclusivist monotheism is manifested essentially...in a refusal to offer worship to any figure other than the one God" (my italics). OK, so you might think maybe Hurtado does mean something more by "binitarian" after all! Sometimes it is difficult to track, to be honest, but I think it's an imperfect line out of step with his wording throughout this section. Indeed, I can also say that from reading quite a bit of Hurtado that this line seems odd. Why? Because Christ is another figure (see below) and is consistently referenced by Hurtado as such, albeit with the usual caveats of distinct-yet-joined. One of my favourite lines in Revelation is chapter 12, verse 10, which I think can bring some clarity about how in the first century we might talk of God and Christ together:

Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say:‘Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down.

Christ is God's Messiah, according to this passage. Elsewhere we can see co-ownership of the kingdom described through the powerful (presumably) single "throne of God and of the Lamb" in Rev 22:1 and 22:3, and most spectacularly here in 11:15:

Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven saying: "The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he will reign for ever and ever." 

Religious priestly activity is also now organised in a binitarian way in Rev 20:6, but look at how it is articulated:

Blessed and holy are those who share in the first resurrection. The second death has no power over them, but they will be priests of God and of Christ and will reign with him for a thousand years.

So this would seem, to me at least, that this sentence of Hurtado's needed some further explanation, that indeed another figure - God's Messiah, the lamb - is indeed in view, albeit in the same devotional snapshot (God would not be able to take a selfie in Revelation without Jesus being in the shot), as my examples seem to demand. Further, the constraints of monotheism must be satisfied from within the Judeo-Christian worldview. This is also an important consideration, as although first century Jewish "converts" to Christianity were able to understand a way in which they were, in fact, being faithful to God's command to worship him and Christ alongside him (or maybe firstly of himself via Christ, his "icon", to adopt Dunn's perspective), that this view was precisely not acceptable to mainstream Judaism, along with other characteristics of the Christian faith.

Hurtado's point, though, for Christianity is that its monotheistic inheritance meant that Jesus could not be deified as a separate deity. That is also crucial, that is the one thing to remember from this section - not my quibbles. We might also add that he could not replace the deity (I wonder if that might be the context behind John remembering Jesus saying "the Father is greater than I", John 14:28, but see also Luke 6:35, 1 Cor 15:27-8). This limitation on Jesus is helpfully termed by Hurtado as "the constraining effect of monotheism".

Turning specifically to how Jesus might be legitimately worshipped now. How was he perceived in this radical new configuration? "[H]is divine significance is characteristically expressed in terms of his relationship to the one God." OK, so we are more comfortably, I would say, back in line with the thrust of the New Testament texts and finding Hurtado's crucial breakthrough of divine endorsement. God knows about this worship, he even desires it and is glorified through it, it's all part of his great Plan. Hurtado has this masterful way of turning back to all those who like me who have pulled their hair out at all those blatant "and"-s separating Jesus and God throughout the New Testament, and saying "you see it but you don't see it"! That is a point I think he also made in an interview somewhere, that it is actually difficult for a New Testament author to speak of God without also speaking of Jesus within a verse or two. The two now function in the first-century mindset together. Hurtado also calls this in the present section "the programmatic inclusion" of Jesus. I quite like this, but programmatic feels slightly too exclusively intentional for me - I don't know what I'd say instead either, but I'd like to appeal also to the organic, natural inclusion of Jesus-worship into Jewish worship practices somehow. Hurtado is also now able to revisit his usage of "binintarian", expanding it slightly: it is still a worship pattern (not a god), around two figures ("God and Jesus", KL 969), operating within a monotheistic framework.

Finally, Hurtado asserts the various ways in which Jesus plays off pre-existent ideas of divine agents developed during second temple times, but also how he has adapted that category in the case of worship - but not in all the other cases. God's accomplishment of salvation for his people through this agent is unprecedented as it has catapulted the people, unexpectedly, into a new era of the Spirit indwelling all peoples. This is my addition, and leads to my question that is not posed in this section: what about the inclusion of Gentiles into this mix? The very fact that they are supposed to be there (although some failure to include is confronted by Paul, as is well known) is also a paradigm-shifting indicator. The first resurrection has happened, of God's messiah, no less. God has operated this inclusive and universal salvation through this Jesus. The presence of monotheistic Jewish Jesus-followers in the meetings is significant, but so is the presence of ex-pagan believers, who have renounced polytheistic practices, accept social discrimination and hardship for not performing the appropriate sacrifices on behalf of their trust in God's open invitation through his son, the Messiah, and the ongoing confirming seal of the Spirit. Thus, this inaugurated age in which all peoples can now come and glorify God is heavily associated by the New Testament authors with the outpouring of his Spirit on "all peoples". So to what extent could we already say that in another sense, this worship practice might, in fact, be "trinitarian", given that "binitarian" didn't have to mean a "binitarian god"? We will be asking questions of the Spirit again when we reach the experiential factors a few posts later.

Next section for tomorrow: how Jesus himself shaped his future worship.

Hope you're enjoying it - any feedback you'd like to leave? Anyone you can think of who might like joining us? Would you please consider forwarding the link to the blog? Thanks so much.