2 Cor 1:21-22: “Anointed
into the Anointed One”
If most of
the passages treated in this chapter have received considerable attention in
the secondary literature, one has received very little, although a few
interpreters have pointed to it as a potentially important contribution to the question.
In 2 Corinthians 1, in the midst of a defense of his reasons for not yet having
come to Corinth, Paul writes:
ὁ δὲ βεβαιῶν
ἡμᾶς σὺν ὑμῖν εἰς Χριστὸν καὶ χρίσας ἡμᾶς θεός, ὁ καὶ
σφραγισάμενος ἡμᾶς καὶ δοὺς τὸν ἀρραβῶνα τοῦ πνεύματος ἐν ταῖς καρδίαις ἡμῶν.
It is God
who establishes us with you into the anointed one [“Christ”] and anointed
[“christened”] us, who moreover sealed us and gave us the collateral of the
spirit in our hearts. (2 Cor 1:21-22)
This
passage is significant not because it comprises a sustained discourse on Christology—it
does not—but rather because in it Paul gives an indication of the range of
meaning within which he uses the word χριστος. This is the only
instance in the Pauline corpus of the verb χριω, “anoint,”
which here follows immediately upon its cognate χριστος, “anointed
one.” Unlike the verb, of course, the noun is extremely common in the Pauline
corpus. Paul’s use of the two cognates together in close proximity but not in a
standard cognate construction is an instance of paronomasia, in this case a
play on their common root. Martin Hengel, one of the few who comments on this
feature of the passage, rightly notes, “How very conscious Paul is of the
actual meaning in the name χριστος—which implies God’s
acting on, and with Jesus—can be seen in the word play of 2 Cor. 1:21. . . .He
uses [the word χριω] to show the connection between those ‘anointed’
with God’s Spirit and him who is the ‘Christos,’ that is, the Anointed par
excellence.
Hengel is
surely right, over against his interlocutors, that Paul is “conscious of the
actual meaning” of the word χριστος. What is more, the
paronomasia in 2 Cor 1:21 shows not just lexical awareness but literary artifice.
Paul deploys the word here in a play on its multiple senses: God anoints the
believers and establishes them in the anointed one. N. T. Wright comments on
this verse: “There could hardly be a better indication of Paul’s intention to
mean ‘the anointed one,’ i.e. ‘the Messiah,’ when he says Χριστος, or of the
incorporative significance that the word then carries.” While Paul’s use of the
word here is not determinative of his use of it elsewhere, it nevertheless indicates
an aspect of the range of meaning within which he takes χριστος to function.
This Pauline
connection between the anointing of believers and the anointed Jesus is unusual
in the New Testament. The only analogy is 1 John 2:18-27, where it is those who
have the χρισμα, “anointing” (1 John 2:20, 27), who know that Jesus
is the χριστος, “anointed one” (1 John 2:22). Conversely, the person
who lacks that χρισμα denies that Jesus is the χριστος and
therefore is himself an αντιχριστος (1 John 2:18, 22).
Outside the New Testament, this connection is reflected in several second-century
patristic sources. Theophilus of Antioch explains the etymology of the label Χριστιανος, “Christian,”
with reference not to “Christ” but rather to the “christening” of believers: τοιγαρουν ημεις τουτου εινεκεν καλουμεθα χριστιανοι οτι χριομεθα ελαιον θεου, “Therefore,
for this reason, we are called ‘Christians,’ because we are ‘christened’ with
the oil of God” (Autol. 1.12). Likewise, Tertullian, in a passage on the rite of unction that accompanied Christian baptism, gives an etymology
of the dominical name Christus:
Exinde, egressi de lavacro, perugimur
benedicta unctione de pristina disciplina, qua ungi oleo de cornu in
sacerdotium solebant. Ex quo Aaron a Moyse unctus est: unde Chrristus dicitus,
a chrismate quod est unction, quae Domino nomen accommodavit, facta
spiritualis, quia spiritu unctus est a Deo Patre.
Then, after existing form the font, we are anointed
all over with a blessed anointing, from the old discipline whereby they used to
be anointed in the priesthood with oil from a horn, ever since Aaron was
anointed by Moses. Whence he [Aaron] is called “Christ,” from the “chrism,”
that is, the anointing, which, made spiritual, adapted a name for the Lord,
because he was “anointed” with the Spirit of God the Father. (Bapt. 7
[PL 1206C-1207A])
More generally, one might point out . . . to
the relatively common ancient convention of wordplays on the meanings of names.
Paul’s purpose here is neither hostile nor humours but he nevertheless
capitalizes on the etymology of the honorific Χριστος to make a point about his believers in
Corinth. Jesus is the anointed one par excellence, but God also anoints
all those who are “established into him.” If we ask what range of meaning χριστος had for Paul, 2 Cor 1:21-22 supplies part of
an answer. (Matthew V.
Novenson, Christ Among the Messiahs: Christ Language in Paul and Messiah
Language in Ancient Judaism [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012],
146-49]
