Wednesday, September 6, 2023

Gabrielle Boccaccini on Paul's Christology

  

The Christology of Paul

 

The absence of any explicit inferences to the full divinity of the messiah in the earliest strata of Christian literature does not automatically link the first followers of Jesus to a low Christology or to the tradition of the human messiah, Son of David. Indeed, there never was in Christianity something like a low Christology centered on the view of Jesus as a human messiah. Since its earliest beginnings, the Jesus movement found cohesion in the belief of Jesu as the Son of Man, an exalted heavenly, divine messiah, the forgiver on earth and the would-be eschatological Judge. However, while exalting Jesus as a divine being and venerating him accordingly, the first followers of Jesus never considered the hypothesis that their messiah could be uncreated. This possibility was simply not part of the Jewish messianic debate at the time.

 

Paul was no exception. His Christology does not radically depart from the Enochic (and Synoptic) pattern. Paul also was very careful never to attribute to the kyrios (Lord) Jesus the title of theos (God), which was unique to the Father. “Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as in fact there are many gods [theoi] and many lords [kyrioi]—yet for us there is only one God [theos], the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord [kyrios], Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist” (1 Cor 8:5-6). And in fact the basic distinction between the Father and the SON was not a matter of divinity; both were reckoned by Paul among the (more or less) divine beings. The Father is the only God (theos) not simply because he is more divine but because he is the uncreated Maker of All, while the (less divine) Son (kyrios) is the instrument the Father used to create the universe.

 

Paul knows a tradition that claimed Jesus “was descended from David according to the flesh” (Rom 1:3), but he fully shares the belief of the early followers of Jesus who attributed to their messiah not only messianic features but also a much higher degree of divinity, corresponding to his heavenly nature and salvific functions. Like the synoptic Son of Man, the Pauline Son-kyrios belongs to the heavenly sphere but is separated from and subordinate to the Father-theos. After completing his mission of forgiveness through his self-sacrifice, “the son himself will be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all” (1 Cor 15:28). If Paul does not use the term Son of Man (even in contexts such as 1 Thess 4:16-17, where the allusion to Dan 7 would have made it obvious), it is because the title would have interfered with the parallelism he established between Adam and the new Adam, by suggesting the subordination of Jesus ben Adam to the first Adam. Therefore, to preserve the parallel, “son of God” is used. As the obedient son, Christ is compared to the disobedient son, Adam, whose nature and dignity he shares as the other “son of God” (see Luke 3:38). Both were created in the image and likeness of God, each taking upon himself the “form” of God. Adam and Jesu, however, are separated by a different fate—that is, one of guilt and transgression in the case of Adam and the other of obedience and glory in the case of the new Adam. The lowering (kenōsis) of Adam is a punishment caused by his disobedience, while in Jesus the lowering (kenōsis) is a voluntary choice for accomplishing his mission of forgiveness and is followed by his elevation and glorification (Phil 2:5-11) to a divine status that is higher than he was before. The veneration of Jesus is evidence of Jesus’s divine status, not of his uncreated status; it is the veneration of the Son of Man at the time his name is manifested. (Gabrielle Boccaccini, Paul’s Three Paths to Salvation [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2020], 98-99)