Representative
Identity
The best sense for ‘included’
within the divine identity is representative identity—i.e. where someone
represents (acts for) someone else. . . . Paul quotes Isa 45:23 in Phi 2:9 which
while ‘anthropomorphic’, is quite specific in its personal language: ‘my mouth’
and ‘unto me’—this singular language doesn’t seem to offer much room for others
to receive obeisance.
I have sworn by myself, the word
is gone out of my mouth in righteousness, and shall not return, that unto
me (כי לי) every knee shall bow, every tongue shall sear. (Isa 45:23 KJV)
Commentators assuming that bowing ‘at
the name of Jesus’ is equivalent to bowing before Jesus alone. It is as if
their exegesis drops ‘the name’ from their consideration of what Paul is
saying. However, if you bow ‘at the name’ and that name is ‘Yhwh’, then Yahweh
is involved as an indirect recipient of the obeisance when the one being bowed
to is a representative (it is wroth noting that obeisance is not worship).
The bowing goes hand in hand with
the confession that Jesus Christ is kyrios. Is this a confession that
Christ is ‘Yhwh’, a bearer of the divine name; is it a confession that Jesus is
Yahweh; or is it a confession that he is the believers’ lord?
Christ is not only given a name;
he is highly exalted, an elevation which is all about ‘lordship’ (quoting Isa 52:13-15—a
position of authority over kings). Exegetically, kyrios (‘Jesus Christ
is Lord’) could be a proxy for ‘Yhwh’; however, since kyrios is not
being quoted from a Yhwh text, we have no prompt for this reading. The sense of
kyrio, which we noted above, includes ideas of lordship and being a
master or ruler, and this fits with the obeisance in the act of bowing. It is
likely that Paul is saying that confession to God’s glory is a matter of
acknowledging Jesus bears the divine name or that he is the believer’s lord? To
state the question is to answer it.
How do we account for the use of
Isa 45:23 in Phil 2:9-11? The simplest and most Jewish explanation is that the
identity implied by name-bearing is representative. Jesus represents
Yahweh (as a name-bearer of ‘Yhwh’), so that bowing to him is bowing to Yahweh.
Hence, bowing and confessing is to/for (Paul picks upon on ‘unto me’ from Isa
45:23 and translates this with ‘to’ the glory of God the Father) the glory of God
the Father, and not the glory of Jesus. Rather than placing Christ on an equal
footing, first his exaltation and then the believer’s glorifying of God through
him, define his position as subordinate.
The situation in which someone
represents the identity of another person is a common occurrence in diplomatic
contexts, in government, and in legal settings. The example of Isa 45;23 and Phil
2:9-11/Rom 14:11 suggests that Jesus Christ is a plenipotentiary representing
Yahweh (cf. Joseph and Pharaoh) (other examples in which prophecies that refer
to Yahweh have their fulfilment with Christ include Rom 9:33 [Isa 8:14;
28:16]).
It should be noted that the use of
Isa 45:23 in Rom 14:11 is more formal than that in Phil 2:9-11,
For it is written, “As I live,
says kyrios, to me every knee shall bow and every tongue confess to God.”
The differences here with Isa
45:23 are the change from ‘By myself have I sworn’ to ‘As I live’ and the
addition of ‘says kyrios’. The lack of the article, and the conventional
formula ‘thus says the Lord (God)’ in the Prophets (The declaration ‘As I live’
tends to go with ‘Adonai Yahweh’ e.g. Ezek 5:11; 14:16-20; 16:48; 18:3; 20:33;
33:11; but Num 14:28; Isa 49:18; Jer 22:24 have ‘Yhwh’), particularly Ezekiel,
suggests that kyrios in Rom 14:11 is standing proxy for ‘Yhwh’ and
refers to Yahweh. This is clear from the fact that what is said was back
then and Christ is not a figure back then—just Yahweh.
Romans 14:11 is about what was
written; it is not about something being said contemporaneously. We might ask
why Paul dropped ‘By myself have I sworn’ and used ‘As I live’. To this we can
say, first, the ‘As I live’ Yhwh texts are pronouncements and commands, but
mostly judgments. This accounts for Paul’s composite quotation: he is
relating the pronouncement of Isa 45:23 to the judgment seat of Christ; secondly,
the first person of ‘By myself have I sworn’ is kept in in ‘As I live’; and
thirdly, ‘As I live’ evidently has the same force as the speech act of swearing
reported in Isaiah.
Isaiah 45:23 is quoted in Romans
in support of the proposition that all must appear before the judgment seat of God;
hence, all confess to God. However, because the judgment seat of God is the
judgment sea of Christ, all will bow the knee to God by bowing the knee to
Christ. In Isaiah’s day, the expectation was that the people would bow the knee
to the Arm of the Lord.
In general, insofar as Christ does
the same thing his father does, the same action predicates are applied to them
both. For example,
To the end he may stablish your
hearts unblameable in holiness before God, even our Father, at the coming of our
Lord Jesus Christ with all his saints. 1 Thess. 3;13 (KJV)
. . . and kyrios my God
shall come, and all the saints with thee. Zech 14:5 (KJV)
This allusion seems clear: Zechariah
is typical language for God acting on behalf of his people (‘come’) manifest in
an individual. The context is the Last Days and the Day of the Lord (Zech 14:1,
3, 4). Yahweh goes forth into battle and ‘his feet’ stand on the Mount of
Olives.
This allusion is an example of
Yhwh texts that describe God acting on behalf of his people in the land. The language
of Yahweh coming in the person of another is seen, for example, in the case of
the Arm of the Lord (Isa 40:3; 10; 51:9; 53:1; John 12:38). This is God being
manifest in the flesh (1 Tim 3;16) and fulfilling his own declaration, ‘I will
be who I will be’ (Exod 3:14). That God is manifest in someone on the
ground is indicated by the prediction that ‘his feet’ would stand on the Mount
of Olives. As Adey observes, “A Biblical criterion of being the true that is
that Go’s identity can be depicted by another” (Adey, “One God: The Shema in
Old and New Testaments”, 31).
The predicates of action are
equally applicable to Yahweh as they are to the person on the ground (Hence, it
is not enough to aver that does things in person, because this doesn’t
distinguish the theologies of incarnation and manifestation). There are
criteria of application for these predicates which are satisfied by Yahweh and
the person on the ground. The point here is not that the person bears the name ‘Yhwh’,
nor that they necessarily represent Yahweh (pace foreign potentates
brought against Israel), though this may be true: the point is that God is
manifesting himself in someone through the Spirit—their actions are the actions
of God. In this sense, that person is included in an identity with God (and
vice-versa) but without any confusion of persons.
Fletcher-Louis states, “Time and
again we find divine action or functions ascribed to Christ in a
way that now makes sense if Christ belongs within the divine identity and if he
fully participates in the divine nature” (Jesus Monotheism, 14). What we
need to question here is the ‘fully participates in the divine nature’. This
sounds like theologically motivated eisegesis designed to support later church
doctrine.
The framework for understanding
the same divine action being attributed to God and to Christ is representative.
This is clear from the use of ‘parentheses’ in Paul,
Now God himself and our Father,
(even our Lord Jesus Christ), direct our way unto you. 1 Thess 3;11 (KJV
revised); cf. 2 Thess 3:5
The singular verb ‘to direct’ is
attached to the subject ‘God’ as shown by the emphasis ‘himself’, but the
guidance is through the Lord Jesus, as shown by the ‘even’ sense of the conjunction.
Paul uses the same construction for emphasis in 1 Thess 5:23, “May the God of
peace himself (Αυτος δε ο θεος) sanctify you wholly”, and 1 Cor
9:6 makes the relationship clear: spiritual things are of the Father but
through the Son . . . The singular verb attaches to the emphasized
subject, God the Father, but the parenthesis provides a substitution for the
reader, a device which therefore does not contravene the normal grammar of
noun-verb agreement. Fletcher-Louis’ grammatical analysis is therefore wrong “two
personals grammatically expressed as one acting subject” (Jesus
Monotheism, 14). It is rather two grammatical subjects (one primary,
one secondary) available for one action verb. (Andrew Perry, Before
He Was Born: Combating Arguments for the Pre-existence of Christ [7th ed.
[4th revision]; Staffordshire, U.K.: Willow Publications, 2022], 383-88)
