It is instructive that Bauckham draws an absolute bright line distinguishing God as sui generis from all beings who has a species. This line is supposedly created between the one God as creator and everything else (thus assuming the later doctrine of creatio ex nihilo). Yet every time Bauckham attempts to demonstrate this bright line by reference to the literature of Second Temple Judaism, he finds himself attempting to explain away exceptions. For example, he asserts that “it was for Jewish monotheism unthinkable any being other than God could even assist God [to create].” (Bauckham, God Crucified, 17) however, he immediately acknowledges that Philo did think of the heavenly hosts as assisting God to create humans as stated in Genesis 1:26. (Ibid. Philo, De Optificio Mundi, 72-75) He asserts that the throne of God is reserved only for the One God Yahweh in the literature of Second Temple Judaism and then immediately recognizes that the Testament of Job also points to Job’s enthronement at the right hand of God. (Testament of Job 33:2-9) Further, exalted humans sit on thrones in Revelation 3:21 and 20:4 and also in the Ascension of Isaiah. In fact, the Son of Man also sits on the throne of God in the Similitudes of Enoch (1 Enoch 68:39). As I’ve argued, the very point of referring to texts such as Psalm 110, Daniel 7, and Isaiah 45 is that Paul reads them as referring to two divine figures. This distinction between God the Father as the ultimate king of kings and the Son who delivers the kingdom to God and subjects himself to God is especially clear in 1 Corinthians 15:24-26. Nevertheless, Bauckham asserts:
Although
the use of “divine” terms (gods, songs of the gods, sons of God) for heavenly beings
other than the one God YHWH almost disappeared in Second Temple Jewish
literature other than Qumran writings and (for different reasons) Philo,
exegetes were well aware that the words elim and elohim were sometimes
used in Scripture to refer to beings other than the one God (some clear cases
were Ex. 7:1, 15:11; Ps. 82:1, 86:8, 97:9). They did not think this terminology
made such angelic beings semi-divine beings who straddled the otherwise clear distinction
between the one God and all other reality, but simply that these words could be
used for heavenly beings created by and subject to the unique Creator and Lord
YHWH. (Ibid., 23. Citation style standardized)
In short, Bauckham’s exegesis of the literature of Second
Temple Judaism, which tries to establish an absolute ontological demarcation between
divine and nondivine as created and uncreated, dies the death of a thousand
qualifications. He acknowledges that the texts use the words but argue that
they just don’t mean what they say. Bauckham is there reading the texts through
the eyeglasses of the Nicene Creed where the theologians were at odds about how
to draw the supposed line between creator and created. If the line was so
clear, then why did Christians struggle with it for the next two hundred years?
Why all of the debate and discussion if it was already clearly established? The
answer is obvious: This line was not bright and did not exist until Nicea. That
line became a division between divine and non-divine only after the doctrine of
creatio ex nihilo was accepted and Nicea adopted this ontological division
to define the Trinity. Bauckham seems an incipient Nicene Trinitarianism in the
New Testament that analyzes the “one God” to include within the identity of
this one God both the Father and the Son—the so-called “binitarianism” that
Hurtado refers to but with a significantly different dividing line. However,
such a reading is anachronistic and begs the question in favor of the resolution
reached at Nicea as the only possible alternative because it glosses “one God”
with both Father and Son, whereas Paul expressly refers to only the Father
as “one God.” Bauckham’s reading is therefore not merely anachronistic but
misleading.
In fact, nowhere do the texts say that the so-called “semi-divine”
agents of God are created. The Apocalypse of Abraham carefully details that
Yaoel is from “above the firmament,” implying that he exists in the realm of
the uncreated that is above the heavens and earth aid the uncreated waters and
the heavenly temple of God. Paul Owen argues that, because 11Q Melchizedek
identifies the “gods” of Psalm 82:1-2 with “Beliel and the spirits of his lot”
and because the War Scroll says that Beliel is created, it must also follow
that “Melchizedek [in 11Q Melchizedek] should likewise be understood as a created
angel distinct from God.” (Paul Owen, “Monothiems, Mormonism, and the New
Testament,” 300. 1QM states: “You created Beliel for the pit, angel of enmity;
his domain is darkness, his counsel is for evil and wickedness. All the spirits
of destruction walk in the ways darkness.” This text asserts merely that Beliel
has been consigned to the pit. This text doesn’t say that Beliel or any other
spirit is created in al lrespects) While Melchizedek is indeed distinct from
God, Owen’s argument goes beyond the warrant of the text. The text never says
that Melchizedek is created. Moreover, Christ is “raised up after the likeness of
Melchizedek” (Heb. 7:15), and there it appears that Hebrews actually asserts
that Melchizedek is uncreated and eternal. Hebrews 7:3 says that Melchizedek is
“without father, mother, or ancestry, without beginning of days or end of life,
thus made to resemble the Son of God, he remains a high priest forever.”
Hebrews appears to be drawing from the same cycle of Melchizedek traditions as
11Q Melchizedek, where the text compares him to God.
The texts do not explain this division or give the explanation
of monotheism that Bauckham gives. These texts assume that other beings than
the one God are of the same king as God and partake in the one God’s divine
nature, but they do not have the same completion and fulness of divinity—except
the Son of God who is given that the fulness by the Father at the resurrection.
However, the fact that the fulness of
divinity is given to Jesus Christ, demonstrated by the receipt of the name of
God and the title “Lord,” does not mean that the distinction of identities
between the Father and the Son disappears so that they are both referred to
without the term “one God” by Paul. Paul refers only to the Father as “the one
God.” It is a practice that id supplicated in the Gospel of John (John 17:3).
The explanation of how the Father and the Son are one in a sense that does not
violate the commitment to the one God as the ultimate sovereign and Most High
God is that the Father is the one God and the Lord has divine status only at
the sufferance of this one God. The one God is the highest monarch and the ultimate
power, but he can endow others with his very powers and divine status as his
agents. As Larry Hurtado noted; “Paul’s formulaic language in 1 Corinthians 8:6
indicates that already at this early point in the Christian movement believers
were attributing to Christ not only preexistence or foreordination, but also an
active role as divine agent in creation. Scholars commonly (and cogently)
suggest that this reflects an appropriation of biblical/Jewish traditions about
God’s Wisdom pictured as God’s companion in creation.” (Larry Hurtado, Lord
Jesus Christ, 125)
Blake T. Ostler, Exploring Mormon Thought: Of Gods and
Gods (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2008), 146-49
