We're on a journey to Hebrews 1 when it comes to the super-exaltation aspect of Jesus being called KYRIOS by first-century Christians. We started that part of the trek in Acts 2, dropped in via Philippians 2 and now it is time for Colossians 1. Here, then, are a few selected verses based on our key title for Jesus, Kyrios in Greek, giving us more insight into Jesus' "super-exaltation":
verse 3 We always thank God, the Father of our KYRIOS Jesus Christ, when we pray for you...
verse 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the KYRIOS, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God...
verse 13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son...
verse 15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
The Acts 2 and Philippians 2 analyses provide us with some helpful “packaging” for KYRIOS for Paul (or Pauline thought, if Colossians is a subsequent expression of nonetheless Pauline theology and language). Verse 3 clearly articulates “our KYRIOS” to be the Son of God and is constantly associated with God throughout this passage (which is typical for nearly all of the New Testament). Verse 10 transitions from “our KYRIOS” to “the KYRIOS”. That is significant. I had hoped that we might be able to favour a Peterson favourite (author of The Message translation), “our Master”, as a handy way to communicate to churches and disciples of Jesus their allegiance in a way that they could identify themselves:
* in their current allegiance
* in continuity with how they imagined their earliest predecessors, the first Judean followers (if imagined via a gospel with a stronger Kyrios emphasis than Mark).
However, Paul frequently does this move of identifying Jesus as “the” KYRIOS to speak of a greater sovereignty than that released over individuals or groups through their allegiance to him. So is Paul saying that Jesus is Yahweh? Wasn't Israel's god the ultimate Kyrios? You might like to think so, but for Paul, the answer is absolutely not - Jesus and Yahweh remain 2. Paul shows strong familiarity with the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which I have measured in its entirety (summaries published via this blog), which removes the article preceding KYRIOS when translating Yahweh. Paul does not do that for THE Kyrios Jesus. That said, this level of reign is massive and I am certain that the descriptor "divine" is fine. Listen, the Kingdom of God is now the Kingdom of his Son. (A more transitional theology can be found in Revelation 11:15 where there is co-ownership of the Kingdom: “the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah”. Clearly, again, we cannot be dogmatic about how we translate these lexical units.)
Moving on to verse 15, often trumpeted as proof for “the divinity of Christ”, we have this magnificent revelation. This KYRIOS, the Christ, reveals God in a unique way. He is the way to the Father, and, by appealing to another hellenistic Jewish idea of a divine and mediating logos, he is the way of the Father to bring about creation. All roads to God and from God pass via the Son - pleasing God and obedience to God and allegiance to God and honouring God. These divine interactions are so unanimous and consistent that they become virtually synonymous (e.g. "pleasing Jesus" is "pleasing God", etc.). Prior to this poing, the Jews would only see one such focal point of all these aspects, their god, Yahweh. This is all the more extraordinary when we realise that Jews like Paul were rigorously instructed to understand these qualities as God's alone, at least in this ultimate and most consistent sense. Now, quite suddenly, even creation, redemption and divine kingship intersect through this extraordinary person, Jesus.
So does this reduce in any way the redundancy of “Lord” for passages like these? Of course not! Although KYRIOS will never fade, “Lord” has to go, albeit progressively and gently. But how do we go about it for such an exalted perspective? Before I say anything else about that, let us, firstly, be straight about “Lord”: aside from religious language, there is nothing particularly exalted about that word anyway. In medieval times, lords usually only had regional power. In Roman times, Kyrios power was greater, extending up to the Emperor himself.
We already suggested for the early Christological hymn cited by Paul in Philippians 2 that a dynamic equivalent to the title of KYRIOS would be the verb to reign. That is the key idea in these exalted passages where the reach of the simpler parameters we were able to associate with “our Master” scenarios no longer function adequately. I see three potential solutions - one sticks with the hard work of rendering verbs like “to reign” or “to rule”, as worked out above for Philippians 2, and the other accepts that an alternative title can be considered for such a frequent Greek title as HO KYRIOS. I continue to reserve the specific solution to “Lord of lords” as “Commander-In-Chief” for those few scenarios in Revelation and 1 Timothy). Here are the three possibilities:
1. so as to walk in a manner worthy of he who rules, fully pleasing to him...
No - it's too clunky here. What about an alternative title? What did we establish for Mark in the story of the borrowing of the colt? His Highness (and the sky's literally the limit!)
2. so as to walk in a manner worthy of His [Royal] Highness, fully pleasing to him.
I still really like it, but am only really convinced of its suitability in the synoptic gospels' colt-borrowing story. A third possibility we have already visited at various stages:
3. so as to walk in a manner worthy of the King, fully pleasing to him.
Not bad! Since we have already seen the very close biblical association between the Greek words for King and Lord, why not go the “whole hog” and simply keep translating HO KYRIOS as the King? But does that go far enough? It might not. Look again at the extent of this reign - I said we can call it divine because it is clearly depicted as operating at that level. Although I absolutely do not think Paul was trying to say that the KYRIOS Jesus was the anarthrous KYRIOS of his Greek Old Testament, strong links are being amply provided here on the grounds of divine rule. I will save my final tweak to “the King” for Hebrews 1, which will then, at last, enable me to offer a suitable Lord-free translation for the hardest New Testament passages faced by my Lordship retirement policy: Romans 10 and 1 Corinthians 8.
Scripture taken and adapted from The Holy Bible, New International Version® (Anglicised), NIV®. Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Limited, a division of Hachette UK.
verse 3 We always thank God, the Father of our KYRIOS Jesus Christ, when we pray for you...
verse 10 so as to walk in a manner worthy of the KYRIOS, fully pleasing to him: bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God...
verse 13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son...
verse 15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
The Acts 2 and Philippians 2 analyses provide us with some helpful “packaging” for KYRIOS for Paul (or Pauline thought, if Colossians is a subsequent expression of nonetheless Pauline theology and language). Verse 3 clearly articulates “our KYRIOS” to be the Son of God and is constantly associated with God throughout this passage (which is typical for nearly all of the New Testament). Verse 10 transitions from “our KYRIOS” to “the KYRIOS”. That is significant. I had hoped that we might be able to favour a Peterson favourite (author of The Message translation), “our Master”, as a handy way to communicate to churches and disciples of Jesus their allegiance in a way that they could identify themselves:
* in their current allegiance
* in continuity with how they imagined their earliest predecessors, the first Judean followers (if imagined via a gospel with a stronger Kyrios emphasis than Mark).
However, Paul frequently does this move of identifying Jesus as “the” KYRIOS to speak of a greater sovereignty than that released over individuals or groups through their allegiance to him. So is Paul saying that Jesus is Yahweh? Wasn't Israel's god the ultimate Kyrios? You might like to think so, but for Paul, the answer is absolutely not - Jesus and Yahweh remain 2. Paul shows strong familiarity with the Greek translation of the Old Testament, which I have measured in its entirety (summaries published via this blog), which removes the article preceding KYRIOS when translating Yahweh. Paul does not do that for THE Kyrios Jesus. That said, this level of reign is massive and I am certain that the descriptor "divine" is fine. Listen, the Kingdom of God is now the Kingdom of his Son. (A more transitional theology can be found in Revelation 11:15 where there is co-ownership of the Kingdom: “the Kingdom of our Lord and of his Messiah”. Clearly, again, we cannot be dogmatic about how we translate these lexical units.)
Moving on to verse 15, often trumpeted as proof for “the divinity of Christ”, we have this magnificent revelation. This KYRIOS, the Christ, reveals God in a unique way. He is the way to the Father, and, by appealing to another hellenistic Jewish idea of a divine and mediating logos, he is the way of the Father to bring about creation. All roads to God and from God pass via the Son - pleasing God and obedience to God and allegiance to God and honouring God. These divine interactions are so unanimous and consistent that they become virtually synonymous (e.g. "pleasing Jesus" is "pleasing God", etc.). Prior to this poing, the Jews would only see one such focal point of all these aspects, their god, Yahweh. This is all the more extraordinary when we realise that Jews like Paul were rigorously instructed to understand these qualities as God's alone, at least in this ultimate and most consistent sense. Now, quite suddenly, even creation, redemption and divine kingship intersect through this extraordinary person, Jesus.
So does this reduce in any way the redundancy of “Lord” for passages like these? Of course not! Although KYRIOS will never fade, “Lord” has to go, albeit progressively and gently. But how do we go about it for such an exalted perspective? Before I say anything else about that, let us, firstly, be straight about “Lord”: aside from religious language, there is nothing particularly exalted about that word anyway. In medieval times, lords usually only had regional power. In Roman times, Kyrios power was greater, extending up to the Emperor himself.
We already suggested for the early Christological hymn cited by Paul in Philippians 2 that a dynamic equivalent to the title of KYRIOS would be the verb to reign. That is the key idea in these exalted passages where the reach of the simpler parameters we were able to associate with “our Master” scenarios no longer function adequately. I see three potential solutions - one sticks with the hard work of rendering verbs like “to reign” or “to rule”, as worked out above for Philippians 2, and the other accepts that an alternative title can be considered for such a frequent Greek title as HO KYRIOS. I continue to reserve the specific solution to “Lord of lords” as “Commander-In-Chief” for those few scenarios in Revelation and 1 Timothy). Here are the three possibilities:
1. so as to walk in a manner worthy of he who rules, fully pleasing to him...
No - it's too clunky here. What about an alternative title? What did we establish for Mark in the story of the borrowing of the colt? His Highness (and the sky's literally the limit!)
2. so as to walk in a manner worthy of His [Royal] Highness, fully pleasing to him.
I still really like it, but am only really convinced of its suitability in the synoptic gospels' colt-borrowing story. A third possibility we have already visited at various stages:
3. so as to walk in a manner worthy of the King, fully pleasing to him.
Not bad! Since we have already seen the very close biblical association between the Greek words for King and Lord, why not go the “whole hog” and simply keep translating HO KYRIOS as the King? But does that go far enough? It might not. Look again at the extent of this reign - I said we can call it divine because it is clearly depicted as operating at that level. Although I absolutely do not think Paul was trying to say that the KYRIOS Jesus was the anarthrous KYRIOS of his Greek Old Testament, strong links are being amply provided here on the grounds of divine rule. I will save my final tweak to “the King” for Hebrews 1, which will then, at last, enable me to offer a suitable Lord-free translation for the hardest New Testament passages faced by my Lordship retirement policy: Romans 10 and 1 Corinthians 8.
Scripture taken and adapted from The Holy Bible, New International Version® (Anglicised), NIV®. Copyright © 1979, 1984, 2011 Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Hodder & Stoughton Limited, a division of Hachette UK.
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