Friday, March 11, 2022

Andrew Perry (Christadelphian) vs. Bauckham et al. on 1 Corinthians 8:5-6

  

A more plausible proposal would be that a Greek-speaking Jew would see an allusion in Paul’s words to the Shema in, for example, ‘God’, ‘us/our’ and ‘one’ (it is important to note that the Shema is not providing the phrase ‘one God’ to Paul), but it is not obvious that Yhwh is to be identified with Jesus Christ. Rather, the descriptive aspect of ‘our God’ and ‘one’ is picked up by ‘to us . . . . one God’, which therefore in turn identifies ‘the Father’ as Yhwh rather than Jesus Christ. Further, the counting aspects of Paul’s conjoined statements, ‘one . . .and one’, rather militates against the interpretation that Christ is being placed within the identity of the one God of Israel. The Shema has a single occurrence of ‘one’ whereas 1 Cor 8:6 has two occurrences. . . . We might agree that Phil 2:10 places Jesus within the same eschatological situation as Yahweh in Isa 45:23, but placement within a situation is not the same as inclusion within the divine identity . . . . The case for the christological monotheist is based around the claim that kyrios is picking up ‘Yhwh’ from Deut 6:4 and using this name for Christ, thus identifying Jesus with Yhwh in some sense. The first counterargument to this claim is that even if Paul is picking up ‘Yhwh’ from Deuteronomy, bearing the name ‘Yhwh’ doesn’t imply the identification of Jesus with Yhwh. This is shown in two ways: first, the name that is above every name was given (the unanswered question for a christological monotheist is why this name was ‘given’ to Christ. Did the Son not have it at the time of the exodus?) to Christ by God (Phil 2:9); and secondly, the name was also given to the Angel of the Lord who led Israel through the wilderness (“My name is in him”, Exod 23:21).

 

The Angel of the Lord is a type of Christ leading his people through the wilderness. In the same way that he bore the name, so too Christ bears the name. Hence, any basis there might be in the possession of this name for identifying Jesus with Yhwh would also apply to the Angel of the Lord. Yet the Angel of the Lord is distinguished from Yhwh in the same way that Paul distinguishes ‘one . . . and one’ in 1 Cor 8:6.

 

However, before we reach this conclusion, we should ask, as a second counter-argument, whether kyrios in 1 or 8:6 is actually picking up ‘Yhwh’ from Deut 6:4 in the first place. ‘Yhwh’ is a proper name, but kyrios in 1 Cor 8:6 is not being used here as a proxy for this proper name precisely because it is modified by ‘one’. The ‘one’ is in a semantic contract with the ‘many’ of v. 5, which in turn has the plural of kyrios. This in turn brings that plural into a semantic contract with the singular of v. 6. Thus, because the plural is functioning as a descriptive title, so too kyrios in v. 6 is functioning as a title and not as a proxy for the name ‘Yhwh’. Accordingly, we can observe a symmetry between the two clauses: just as ‘God’ is not a proper name in ‘one God’ so too ‘Lord’ is not serving as a proxy for a proper name in ‘one Lord’.

 

In a contiguous reproduction of a Yhwh text, kyrios without an article is a fairly clear proxy replacement for the name and it carries some functionality of that name. In freer quotations and allusions of/to Yhwh texts, kyrios may be used with an article as an exegetical replacement for ‘Yhwh’, but where the reference is to Christ, the use of the article makes it unlikely that kyrios is being used as a proxy for the name ‘Yhwh’, and this is because kyrios is being modified by the article.

 

Given that kyrios is generally used to describe or address lords, masters, owners, deities, rulers, persons of rank, as well as the God of Israel, we need to know which use of kyrios we have in 1 or 8:6. If kyrios is being used descriptively of Jesus Christ, then it is not representing the name ‘Yhwh’. Indeed, we might well argue that Jesus ‘Jesus’ means ‘Yhwh saves’ or ‘Yah is salvation’, it is the name ‘Jesus’ which picks up ‘Yhwh’ from Deut 6:4, but this obviously is just a general pick-up of ‘Yhwh’ common to many Hebraic names.

 

If the first clause, ‘there is one God, the Father’, is monotheistic, what type of clause is ‘there is one Lord, Jesus Christ’? (at least one commentator tries ‘monokurism’). It is possible to have a god and a lord within a scriptural faith? Is this conjoining of the Father and the Son so innovative that it redefines Scriptural Monotheism and Jewish Monotheism? Is the associative partnership implicit in ‘of whom are all things’ (the Father) and ‘by whom are all things’ (the Son) actually (or still) monotheistic? (Andrew Perry, Before He Was Born: Combating Arguments for the Pre-existence of Christ [7th ed. [4th revision]; Staffordshire, U.K.: Willow Publications, 2022], 373-76, emphasis in original)

 

In a footnote to the above, we read the following interaction with a leading Trinitarian commentator:

 

G. D. Fee, 1 Corinthians (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 375, claims “Although Paul does not here call Christ God, the formula is to constructed that only the most obdurate would deny its Trinitarian implications . . . the designation ‘Lord’ which in the OT belongs to the one God, is the proper designation of the divine Son.” This illustrates typical theological linguistics: we should rather insist that ‘Yhwh’ is a name given to the Son (Phil 2:9-11) and has no implication as regards the Trinity or divinity. (Ibid., 376 n. 2)