Friday, March 11, 2022

Andrew Perry (Christadelphian) on "Representative Identity" and the use of Old Testament YHWH Texts in the New Testament

  

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)