In his doctoral
dissertation from Oxford, Thomas E. Gaston wrote the following about the
Christology of the Epistle of Barnabas (dated between 70-135). His comments are
interesting as it shows that the epistle is not
reflective of proto-Trinitarianism:
Despite having no apparent affinity with
Pauline or Johannine Christianity, and their purported high Christologies, the
Epistle of Barnabas does contain explicit reference to the pre-existence of
Jesus. For example, the author describes Jesus as having been “the Lord of the
entire world, the one to whom God said at the foundation of the world, ‘”Let us
make a human according to our image and likeness’,” (Barn 5:5; cf. Gen 1:26).
He also explains that the Son of God had to come in flesh, otherwise humans
could not have looked at them and survived: “for they cannot even look intently
at the sun, gazing directly into its rays, even though it is the work of his
hands” (Barn 5:10). These passages have the implication that the Son was with
God in at creation and was the creator (or, perhaps, co-creator). One might be
tempted to read the Epistle of Barnabas as affirming a form of incarnation
Christology, with the pre-existent Son taking on flesh to save mankind.
However, closer examination reveals that the
author presupposed a different Christology, what we might term a Posessionist
Christology. Concerning the law on fasting, the author writes: “For the Lord
gave the written commandment that ‘Whoever does not keep the fast must surely
die’, because he himself was about to offer the vessel of the Spirit as a sacrifice
for our own sins” (Barn 7:3). The ‘Lord’ in this verse is, presumably, the
Father, but the ‘sacrifice’ is obviously a reference to Jesus. The translation ‘the
Spirit’ is preferable to ‘his spirit’ given the absence of autou, and this reinforces the point that it is the Holy Spirit,
and not the spirt of Jesus, that is being referred to. As God is offering ‘the
vessel of the Spirit’ as the sacrifice, then Jesus must be identified as that ‘vessel’
(c. Barn 11:9). To describe Jesus as ‘the vessel of the Spirit’ implies the
possession of Jesus by the Holy Spirit. This may in turn indicate that the
author did not regard Jesus as anyway divine in himself, but as a human vessel
for the Holy Spirit.
Given a Christology that identifies the
divine person dwelling within Jesus as the Holy Spirit, it is natural that the
author should believe that this person existed with God at creation and was the
creator because neither point would have been controversial for Christians.
Genesis is explicit that the Holy Spirit was present at creation (Gen 1:2) and
elsewhere in the Old Testament the creative activity of the Spirit is affirmed
(c. Ps 104:30). The proposal that God was speaking to the Holy Spirit when he
said “Let us make . . .” (Gen 1:26) is not stated in the Genesis text but is a
natural corollary of ascribing that creative role to the Spirit. The only
aspect that might require explanation is the personhood of the Spirit, as for
Jews and the early Christians, the Spirit was impersonal However, once one had
taken the step to understand Jesus as a man possessed by the Holy Spirit then
adding personhood to the understanding of the Spirit may have seemed a natural
implication. (Thomas Edmund Gaston, Dynamic
Monarchianism: The Earliest Christology? [2019], 125-27)
With respect
to “Possessionist Christology,” Gaston offered the following definition (Ibid.,
126 n. 169):
The term “Possessionist” is one coined by Michael
Goulder to describe the view that Jesus was a mortal man who was possessed by
the Holy Spirit, usually at baptism. Goulder ascribes this Christology to the
Ebionites, to Petrine (i.e., Jesus Christians (who are responsible for the books
of Matthew, James and some “strands” of Revelation) and to the opponents of
Ignatius (usually identified as Docetics). For myself, I am not persuaded that
Possessionism is the correct understanding of the Ebionite Christology, nor do
I believe there is compelling evidence to warrant projecting Ebionite views of
early Jewish-Christians, nor do I believe that there is evidence of
Possessionism in the opponents of Ignatius. Nevertheless I can see the
applicability of the term for the Christology expressed in the Epistle of
Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. Goulder, A Tale of Two Missions, 107-134; Goulder, “The Pre-Marcan Gospel”,
456-7; Goulder, “A Poor Man’s Christology”; M. Goulder, “Ignatius’ ‘Docetists’”,
Vigiliae Christianae 53:1 (1999)
16-30.
