And Moses built an altar and called it, the Lord is my banner. (Exo 17:15 NRSV)
The new-wave of Trinitarian apologists, spearheaded by the likes of Richard Bauckham and his nonsense about “divine identity” would have one believe that if a person possesses the divine name, they share said “divine identity” with Yahweh, and are therefore numerically identical to the one true God (see Dale Tuggy’s refutation of Bauckham here). Using such “logic,” the altar Moses erected is numerically identical to the one God of Israel, as it possesses the divine name ( יְהוָה נִסִּי[Yahweh is my banner]). One should also compare this verse with the following:
You need make for me only an altar of earth and sacrifice on it your burn offerings and your offerings of well-being, your sheep and your oxen; in every place where I cause my name to be remembered I will come to you and bless you. (Exo 20:24 NRSV [here, Yahweh and His name is remembered at an altar])
Be attentive to him [the angel of Yahweh] and listen to his voice; do not rebel against him, for he will not pardon your transgressions: for my name is in him. (Exo 23:21 NRSV [here, the "name" of Yahweh is "in" [בְּ] the angel of Yahweh])
In an excellent blog post, "Markan Christology and the Messenger of YHWH," Daniel McClellan (PhD cand.) writes the following on the angel of Yahweh which is rather á propos:
In addition to the facts that the “person/being” distinction is utterly irrelevant to these texts and that the second concern is a difference of degrees, not kind, the passages Bird cites in the earlier quote are cases of interpolation (see here). They didn’t originally refer to the messenger as God. While it’s true the interpolated texts were later incorporated into a broader theology of presencing, this fact rather undermines Bird’s attempt to distance the conceptualization of the messenger of YHWH from the conceptualization of Jesus. The messenger became identified with God and God’s presence and authority in virtue of possessing God’s name, as we see in Exod 23:20–21:
Look, I’m sending a messenger before you to guard you on the way and to bring you to the place that I prepared. Pay attention to him and listen to his voice. Do not rebel against him, because he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him.
Christ’s possession of God’s name, in his own theophoric name as well as his repeated associated with “I am,” is conceptually identical. He has God’s name, therefore he presences God (reifies his presence) and exercises his authority. This notion of the “indwelling” of the name is found also in the Apocalypse of Abraham, where Yahoel is a name given to God, but also to an angel who meets with Abraham. The angel insists he exercises God’s power “in virtue of the ineffable name that is dwelling in me” (think also of the “place where my name will dwell”).
Interestingly enough, the Exodus 23 passage undermines one of the most common assertions that is made about Christ’s unique relationship with God in Mark. When Jesus forgives the man in Mark 2, the rhetorical bad guys wonder, “who can forgive sins but God only?” This is taken by some to be an accurate assertion of theological fact that means Jesus’ forgiveness of the man’s sins proves he is God, but a far more parsimonious reading has Jesus correct their misunderstanding by showing that he exercises that very power despite not being God. The objection that is usually lodged here is that there are no other examples anywhere of someone other than God having the prerogative to forgive sins. While this objection is an argument from silence, it’s also wrong. The messenger in Exodus 23, whose presencing of God is likely a reflection of those earlier interpolated texts, exercises precisely that prerogative in virtue of having God’s name in him.
The conceptualization of the messenger of YHWH in those Hebrew Bible passages where its identity is confused with that of God provide an exactly parallel conceptualization of the messenger as a figure that, in virtue of being endowed with God’s very name, presences God and exercises God’s authority. This is not to say that Jesus was originally an angel (which is what critics—including Bird—always seem to think angelomorphic christology means), but just that the messenger’s literary form and function as a representative of the deity offered a conceptual template for those nurturing and developing the Christ tradition. The cognitive architecture that predisposes us to conceptualize of agency and even identity as rather fluid and even communicable[.]
Considerations like this show how exegetically weak the “arguments” forwarded by Bauckham and other Trinitarians really are. It is divine agency, not “divine identity,” that is part-and-parcel of the theology of the Old Testament and the Christology of the New Testament.
