Now and not yet: Jesus' error, part 2

Thanks to all of you for your insightful comments on the previous post. You have grappled gamely with the problem I raised: Did Jesus make an error when he (evidently) predicted that the eschaton would come within a generation of his ministry?

You offered the following solutions:

• The Son of Man coming in his kingdom (Mark 9:1 // Mt. 16:28 // Luke 9:27) may have referred to the transfiguration. (suggested by James)
  
• In context, Mark 13:29-30 (// Mt. 24:34 // Luke 21:32) may have referred to the destruction of Jerusalem. (again, James)
  
• Perhaps Jesus meant only that his prophecies about the end times will all be fulfilled within the scope of a lifetime. (suggested by Cliff)
  
• The prophecy may have been conditional. (Jamie)
  
• Finally, John observed that we must also keep in mind Mark 13:32 ("But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father") and Acts 1:7 ("It is not for you to know times or seasons that the Father has fixed by his own authority").¹

Jamie's suggestion is intriguing. Would the kingdom have come then and there, if the Jews had accepted the Gospel and embraced Jesus as their Messiah? If so, would the Romans have crucified Jesus anyway, or would the crucifixion never have happened? The latter possibility is almost unthinkable from a Christian perspective.

We'll come back to John's comment below. I think it's an important counterweight to the appearance of watertight certainty that the other sayings possess.

As for your other suggestions, I think they all have merit. Meanwhile, the fact that there are so many attempts at a solution is evidence that interpreters have struggled to understand Jesus' sayings over the years.

In this post, I want to offer three theological concepts which, taken together, at least reduce the magnitude of the problem.

1. Now and not yet:

In my view, Jesus' prediction was fulfilled in part. The New Testament authors generally agree that the kingdom of God was inaugurated with (a) Jesus' resurrection followed by (b) the pouring out of the Holy Spirit.

Both are eschatological events — both were supposed to happen at the end of history, not part way through history. That's why St. Paul refers to the resurrection (1Co. 15:20) and the indwelling Spirit (Ro. 8:23) as "firstfruits". Again, Paul speaks of the Holy Spirit as a down payment. We have received a partial fulfillment now, guaranteeing that a perfect fulfillment will follow in due course.

The eschaton has been inaugurated (it is "now") but not consummated (it is "not yet"). This is the first theological concept we must bear in mind. Scholars use this terminology, now and not yet, to capture the paradoxical nature of the church age. John's Gospel provides a classic example of this now/not yet tension at 5:25 —

Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.

The concept implies that Jesus' prediction was fulfilled, if only in part. It also explains why the first generation of Christians lived in such fervid expectation of Christ's return. First there were Jesus' predictions; then those predictions were followed by unmistakably eschatological events. Surely Jesus' return could not lag far behind!

2. Jesus' self-emptying:

But Jesus did not return immediately, and so the question persists. Did Jesus err, at least in part?

In my view, there's no getting around it:  what happened wasn't exactly what Jesus expected and confidently predicted. Here we must return to the sayings John called to our attention — particularly Mark 13:32.

But concerning that day or that hour, no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

This saying is another problem passage. At least, it's problematic for folks who assume that Jesus possessed all of the divine attributes, including omniscience, even during the period of his incarnation. And yet St. Paul says that Jesus "emptied" himself (Php. 2:7, NRSV) during the period of his ministry.

This self-emptying (Gk. kenosis) is the second theological concept we must bear in mind. Logically, Jesus would have to divest himself of at least some of the divine traits in order to be considered fully human. To be human is, by definition, to be subject to limitations which cannot apply to God.

And so it is with Mark 13:32, where Jesus admits that his knowledge of "that day or that hour" is finite. It seems that Jesus, like Paul, could prophesy only "in part".

Robert Peterson introduces a helpful distinction.² I have added numbering and italics to his presentation for greater clarity:

To understand the timing of the second coming, we have to deal with all the information God gives us, and that information falls into three categories, three types of passages.

1. There are imminence passages, which cause people to look for Jesus to come.
   
2. There are interval passages, which indicate certain things have to happen before He comes.
   
3. And most importantly, there are ignorance passages, which tell us that we do not know, that nobody knows, the day or the hour.

… It seems to me that if we hold these three things together, we will be much better off.

3. Prophetic foreshortening:

Finally, let me observe that the prophecy in Mark 13 is an outstanding example of "prophetic foreshortening". This is the third theological concept that we must bear in mind. It is a commonplace of prophecy that events which are separated by centuries of history are "foreshortened", or telescoped together in the prophet's message.

One classic illustration involves someone looking at a mountain range from a distance. (Please excuse my lack of artistic talent!)


The general significance of the illustration is as follows. From a distance, the mountain peaks appear to be close together. It is only as you arrive at the first peak that you realize the second peak is actually quite distant.

Turning to the specific problem of Mark 13 and parallels —
Point 1 marks the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE. Point 2 marks 2,000 years (and counting) of Church history. That timespan was evidently hidden from Jesus; at any rate, it doesn't feature in the sayings we have been considering. Point 3 marks the parousia (Second Coming).

In his predictions, Jesus jumbled these events together as if they were all part of the same constellation. And indeed, some of the events may ultimately be fulfilled twice:  for example, an intense persecution of the Church and the coming of false Messiahs. Those predictions may have been fulfilled at point 1 in my diagram. (Josephus spoke of false prophets, who may in fact have been messianic pretenders.) It doesn't mean that there won't be a second fulfillment when history arrives at point 3.

For another example of prophetic foreshortening, consider Joel 2 (= Acts 2):

For these people are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was uttered through the prophet Joel:

"'And in the last days it shall be,' God declares,
'that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams;
even on my male servants and female servants
in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.
And I will show wonders in the heavens above
and signs on the earth below,
blood, and fire, and vapor of smoke;
the sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the day of the Lord comes, the great and magnificent day.
And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.'"

(Acts 2:15-21)

Here we see the pouring out of the Holy Spirit packaged with the arrival of the eschaton. And indeed, this foreshortening phenomenon is a commonplace of biblical prophecy (particularly with respect to eschatological events).

Conclusions:

1. The several suggestions offered in response to my previous post testify that there is no completely satisfactory solution to the problem I outlined.
   
   
2. Several of the suggestions also testify to a partial fulfillment of Jesus' prophesies. In particular, I would emphasize Jesus' resurrection and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. According to Acts 2, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on Jesus' disciples is evidence that he had been exalted to the right hand of God, and installed as king (= Christ).
   
   And yet there is a remainder — various elements of Jesus' expectation which have not yet been fufilled. This unexpected development, a partial fulfillment of prophecy, is articulated in the theological expression, now and not yet.
   
   
3. In my view, the events were not quite as Jesus had anticipated and predicted. But perhaps this is only what we might have expected. St. Paul speaks of Jesus' self-emptying (kenosis), and Jesus confessed that his knowledge of eschatological events was limited.
   
   
4. We should compare Jesus' partially fulfilled prophecies with the general pattern of prediction and fulfillment in the Bible. At that point, we may be surprised to realize that prophetic foreshortening is a commonplace of biblical prophecy (i.e., a clustering together of events that turn out to be separated by centuries of history).
   
   
5. Finally, I wish to reiterate the point that I made in the conclusion of my previous post. That these (and other) "hard" sayings of Jesus were preserved in the Gospels testifies to the Evangelists' unwillingness to destroy authentic tradition. This conservative impulse reassures us that the Gospels are a trustworthy source of information about the historical Jesus.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
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¹Unless otherwise indicated, scripture is quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

²I believe Peterson is crediting David Jones for the three-part categorization of scripture mentioned above.

Jesus' error

Last Sunday, I mentioned that Jesus was apparently mistaken in one of his prophecies. The prophecy is this:

For the Son of Man is going to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay each person according to what he has done. Truly, I say to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom. (Mt. 16:27-28)¹

There's a similar saying in Mark's "little Apocalypse":

So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that [the Son of Man] is near, at the very gates. Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place. (Mark 13:29-30 // Mt. 24:34 // Luke 21:32)

The meaning of these two sayings seems perfectly straightforward:  the eschaton will arrive within the lifetime of that generation. Is it possible that Jesus erred? — that he made a prediction that was not fulfilled?

It might help if we could reconstruct how the first generation of Christians understood Jesus' prediction. I suggest that we can get a reasonably clear insight into their expectations by considering the following three texts.

• 1Th. 4:13-18

But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord. Therefore encourage one another with these words.

To properly understand this text, we have to read between the lines a little. It seems that the Thessalonian Christians were worried:  some members of the community had died, and the surviving Thessalonians didn't know whether the departed believers could still be saved.

From our perspective, 100 generations later, the Thessalonians' concern is touchingly naïve: even bizarre. Was it really necessary for Paul to explain that departed believers are not lost? — that they will be raised to be with the Lord when he returns?

Such a concern would only arise in a church where Christ's return was expected almost immediately. "This generation" was not supposed to die; the Lord was supposed to return without delay.

And so Paul patiently reassures them:  not only will the departed believers be raised, their salvation will precede ours. ("The dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them.")

I might note, in passing, that most scholars regard 1 Thessalonians as the earliest of Paul's epistles. (It's possible that Galatians is even earlier.) This passage is evidence of the letter's early date:  it seems to have been written during that brief window of time when Christ was expected to return almost immediately.

• 1Co. 7:25-31

Now concerning the betrothed, I have no command from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who by the Lord's mercy is trustworthy. I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that. This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.

This is another problem text. (The Bible is simply full of them, in my view — but maybe I'm unjustifiably cynical.) The problem here is Paul's shockingly negative view of marriage. For example, "if you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned."

Talk about damning marriage with faint praise! Whatever happened to family values?! This chapter of 1 Corinthians is one of the reasons that Paul has acquired a reputation as a misogynist.

The problematic nature of the text is diminished (though it doesn't completely disappear) if we emphasize verse 29 — "This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none."

Paul isn't concerned about propagating Christianity by making lots of babies (which seems to be the Roman Catholic model). He seems to advocate celibacy, or at least a radical shift in conventional priorities so that sex virtually vanishes from view: "From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none."

How can Paul talk this way? It's simple:  he does not envision 100 generations of Church history ahead. On the contrary, "the appointed time has grown very short".

Once again, we have an indication that Christ's return was expected almost immediately.

• John 21:20-23

Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved following them. … He said to Jesus, "Lord, what about this man?" Jesus said to him, "If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow me!" So the saying spread abroad among the brothers that this disciple was not to die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but, "If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?"

Here we must exercise our imaginations a little. The years pass; one by one, the apostles die off (mostly through martyrdom). Eventually, only one apostle survives:  John, "the disciple whom Jesus loved".

And still the years continue to pass. John is now an exceptionally old man. Death inexorably closes in on him. Gradually the conviction takes shape in his mind:  the Lord is not going to return in "this generation" per everyone's expectation.

But John's church hasn't come to that conclusion. Decades after Jesus made his prediction, the saying has been spun a certain way within the Johannine community:  Jesus promised to return before John's death.

The days of John's life are so many grains of sand in an eggtimer. Before the last grain of sand falls, Christ will return:  he promised! If it doesn't happen that way, John's death could precipitate a crisis of faith.

And so this postscript is added to John's Gospel. (Scholars believe John originally ended at 20:30-31, and chapter 21 was a late addendum.) The misleading rumour must be addressed. "Jesus did not say to [Peter] that [John] was not to die, but, 'If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?'"

Here (sixty years later?) we have travelled a long distance from Jesus' original prediction. But the issue is the same:  "there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."

Conclusion:

Did Jesus expect the kingdom of God to arrive within a generation? The evidence suggests that he did. First we have the prima facie meaning of the two sayings quoted in the introduction to this post. Second, we have the clear expectation of the first generation of Christians. Everyone "knew" that Jesus would return almost immediately — certainly before the last surviving apostle died.

I'm going to leave the reader hanging at this point. I want to pose this question as a theological / exegetical problem. Theologically, can we accept that Jesus made an error? If not, how do you exegete the sayings to make them appear true?

I will follow up with part two later this week. I plan to broaden the question to encompass Old Testament prophecies as well. Jesus' saying is not the only instance of a prophecy that seemingly fell to the ground, unfulfilled.

But for now, let me offer one positive conclusion that we can derive from the above data. The Gospels were relatively conservative in their handling of Jesus' sayings.

Yes, some sayings are of doubtful historicity. Yes, each of the Evangelists had his own theological perspective, and they were not above "spinning" Jesus' sayings to make them fit a preferred theological paradigm.

But a careful reading of the Gospels demonstrates a second tendency, moving in the contrary direction:  a conservative tendency. Some very difficult sayings were preserved for posterity when the tradition was committed to writing. This tells us:  (a) that the tradition became relatively fixed at an early date — presumably while "this generation" was still alive; and (b) that later copyists were unwilling to destroy authentic tradition, even when it gave rise to significant problems.

This survey of the data leads me to a Janus-faced conclusion; one that is fundamental to my understanding of scripture. On the one hand, we shouldn't be so naïve as to deny that real problems are present in the text. On the other hand, we can trust that the tradition preserves authentic information about the historical Jesus. The tradition thus provides an adequate foundation for Christian faith.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
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¹Unless otherwise indicated, scripture is quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

Adam soteriology: a refinement

In a comment on the previous post, Jamie asked why Christ's death is important to Adam soteriology, the atonement theory I had proposed.

My immediate answer was (in part):

My response would be to bring Christ's death into relation with his act of obedience. Jesus had to obey to the furthest depths of his being. Where Adam sought to exalt himself, Christ had to abase himself to the ultimate extent. A willingness not merely to die, but to suffer torture and public humiliation — and even a season of alienation from God — to obey such a destiny is surely the ultimate act of obedience.

That was my immediate answer, but I confess to some ongoing ambivalence about it.

The challenge with any atonement theory, it seems to me, is to hold two principles in uneasy tension. On the one hand, we must accord real, salvific significance to Christ's death (this is what Jamie challenged me to do), and not reduce it to a mere accident of history. On the other hand, we don't want to depict God as some sort of vengeful monster who demands nothing less than brutal violence, bloodshed, and death as a satisfaction for sin.

In order to exonerate God of this charge of savage cruelty (sadism), we might blame the brutality of Christ's death on the human actors who executed him:  the Roman procurator, the Jewish high priest, or whomever we deem culpable. The problem is, this seems to reduce Jesus' death to a historical accident.

Jesus did not regard martyrdom that way. He regarded it as his destiny, his calling:

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, "Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you."

And he said to them, "Go and tell that fox, 'Behold, I cast out demons and perform cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I finish my course. Nevertheless, I must go on my way today and tomorrow and the day following, for it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.'" (Luke 13:31-33)¹

Some scholars are sceptical about the three predictions of crucifixion attributed to Jesus (Mark 8:31; 9:31; 10:33-34). The more detailed the predictions become — note the specifics of the third prediction — the more likely it is that they were composed after the event.

Other scholars argue that Jesus easily could have foreseen a death of the sort described in Luke 13. The powers-that-be were hostile to Jesus' ministry, and prophets had been martyred in the past in a vain attempt to silence them. Thus it is not difficult to imagine that Jesus predicted his martyrdom in general terms, which were perhaps fleshed out in greater detail post eventu.

Jesus was fully aware that death awaited him in Jerusalem, but he made no attempt to evade it. He saw martyrdom as a divinely appointed destiny:  a divine "must" (Gk. dei)² compelled him onward toward it:

And he [prayed], "Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will." (Mark 14:36)

Based on the above text, we could summarize the course of events as follows:  (1) God willed Jesus' death; (2) therefore Jesus voluntarily submitted to betrayal and execution. I propose, instead, a slightly more complex chain of cause-and-effect:

1. God willed Jesus' obedience (in contradistinction to Adam's disobedience);
   
2. Precisely because of his uncompromising obedience to God's will, Jesus made powerful enemies, who resolved that he must be silenced;
   
3. Therefore it was inevitable that continued obedience would culminate in Jesus' martydom.

On this analysis, God didn't directly will Jesus' death, but merely Jesus' obedience.

The decision of the powers-that-be to murder Jesus was not a direct reflection of God's will; it merely expressed the hatred human beings harbour toward God, who was embodied perfectly in Christ. The crucifixion is a kind of train wreck, where the human "way" intersects and collides with the divine "way", giving rise to murderous passions on the part of the human actors.

When Paul depicts Jesus as an antitype of Adam in Romans 5, the typology turns on the contrast between Adam's disobedience and Jesus' obedience. It is the obedience that is salvific. And yet, because the crucifixion was an inevitable consequence of Christ's perfect obedience, Paul can assert:

… he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Php. 2:8)

My intent, obviously, is to step back from the ham-fisted formula, God tortured Jesus in order to effect our salvation.

Insofar as we speak of God's destructive wrath poured out against sin, I have no objection to the penal substitution atonement theory. 2Co. 5:21 is pertinent here:

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

If Christ in some sense became sin, God's wrath is poured out on sin. But as soon as we begin to envision God's destructive wrath poured out upon Jesus, I suspect our analysis has gone off track. (Though admittedly, it is a fine distinction I'm making here!)

In any event, I propose that Adam soteriology is free of this potential defect. The right way to look at it is, God directly willed Christ's obedience, and it is this obedience which is salvific. The crucifixion was merely a by-product of the obedience, though it was inevitable because of the violent hatred fallen human beings harbour toward God.

The only way for Jesus to evade martyrdom was to cease to obey God. That option, obviously, wasn't open to him.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
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¹Unless otherwise indicated, scripture is quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

²Mark 8:31 and Luke 13:33, both cited above; Luke 17:25, 22:37, 24:7.

Adam christology in the Philippians 2 hymn

who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

(Php. 2:6-11)¹

Johannes Weiss first called attention to the rhythmic nature of the above text in 1899. Today, there is nearly universal agreement that Paul is quoting a very early Christian hymn composed in honour of Jesus. The opening word, ὃς ("who"), hints at the same conclusion. "Who" sometimes functions as a kind of pivot introducing hymnlike confessions of faith:  see Col. 1:15, 1 Tim. 3:16, and Heb 1:3.

We've been discussing "Adam christology" (see the previous post). What does that mean? In the words of James Dunn,

The divine program for man [was] run through again with Jesus. Christ faced the same archetypal choice that confronted Adam, but chose not as Adam had chosen (to grasp equality with God). Instead he chose to empty himself of Adam's glory and to embrace Adam's lot, the fate which Adam had suffered by way of punishment. (Christology In the Making, p. 117)

Consequently, God super-exalted Jesus and installed him to the highest office, Lord of all.

Dunn is fitting the language of Php. 2:6-11 ("equality with God", "emptied himself") into the paradigm, Adam christology. It's a controversial interpretation of the Philippians text.

Evangelicals wouldn't know it, but the interpretation of Php. 2:6-11 is extremely contentious. Gerald Hawthorne writes,

The number of genuine exegetical problems and the sheer mass of books and articles it has called forth leaves one wondering where to begin. … There is little that can be agreed upon, whether the topic discussed is the precise form of this section, its authorship, its place and purpose in the letter, the sources used in its composition, and so on.

(Philippians, Word Biblical Commentary, ad loc.)

Most interpreters continue to see a clear reference to Christ's pre-existence in Philippians 2:6-11. But Dunn dares to question that interpretation:

As J. Murphy-O'Connor has recently maintained … the common belief that Phil. 2:6-11 starts by speaking of Christ's pre-existent state and status and then of his incarnation is, in almost every case, a presupposition rather than a conclusion, a presupposition which again and again proves decisive in determining how disputed terms within the Philippians hymn should be understood. (p. 114)

Perhaps the easiest way to proceed is to lay out these two possible interpretations of the text side by side.

	pre-existence	Adam christology
was in the form of God (μορφῇ θεοῦ)2	refers to Jesus' divine status in heaven, before his conception in Mary's womb	Refers to Jesus' Adam-like status after his birth. "Form" (μορφῇ) of God is synonymous with "image" (εἰκών) of God. Like Adam before the first sin, the man Jesus bore the image and glory of God perfectly.
did not ἁρπαγμὸν [cling to?] [snatch at?] equality with God	Jesus, who already possessed equality with God, did not cling to it	Jesus, like Adam, was tempted to snatch at the possibility of god-like status (see Ge. 3:5) — but resisted
emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, γενόμενος [being born?] [becoming?] in the likeness of men	refers to Jesus' incarnation: he divested himself of his deity and was born in the likeness of a human being	γενόμενος is not to be translated "born" but "becoming" (just as it is translated in vs. 8). When Adam sinned, he became estranged from God, a slave to sin and corruption (suffering / death). Jesus, who did not sin, might have claimed an exemption from the universal human pattern (the "likeness of a human being"). He did not stand on his rights but emptied himself: i.e., he voluntarily participated in Adam's state of slavery.
being found in form as man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross	emphasizes death by crucifixion as the ultimate expression of Jesus' self-emptying	ditto; with the theological observation that Jesus' suffering and death were a voluntary participation in Adam's suffering and death
Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name ("Lord") that is above every name	a return to the status Jesus already enjoyed prior to his incarnation, concluding a pattern of glory/descent/return to glory	elevation to a status Jesus had not formerly possessed: the status that Adam was destined for but never attained because of his sin

Dunn summarizes:

The Christ of Phil. 2:6-11 therefore is the man who undid Adam's wrong:  confronted with the same choice [whether to snatch at equality with God], he rejected Adam's sin, but nevertheless freely followed Adam's course as fallen man to the bitter end of death; wherefore God bestowed on him the status not simply that Adam lost, but the status which Adam was intended [but failed] to come to. (p. 119, emphasis in original)

Via his obedience unto death, Jesus became God's final prototype, the last Adam.

Am I convinced that Dunn's interpretation of Php. 2:6-11 is the right one? No.

Am I convinced that Dunn's interpretation of Php. 2:6-11 is a legitimate, possible interpretation? Yes.

This controversy is an outstanding example of the difficulty of interpreting the biblical texts. Individual words (μορφῇ, "form"; ἁρπαγμὸν, "cling to" or "snatch at"; and γενόμενος, "born" or "becoming") are ambiguous. Their interpretation turns on our presuppositions:  the paradigm we impose on the text.

When we read the text through the traditional lens (trinitarianism, fully articulated only in the post-biblical era), Php. 2:6-11 clearly refers to Christ's pre-existence. It never occurs to us that another interpretation might be possible — one that sees no reference to pre-existence in the text. But then another paradigm is suggested — in this case, Adam christology — and we realize with some shock that it makes sense.

What then? We're left with two divergent interpretations, and it is impossible to know for certain which one is correct.

Postmodernists say that all interpretation is like that:  we get out of the text what we bring to the text; therefore no text has a single "right" interpretation. Meaning is always subjective and legitimately contested.

The postmodern perspective is obviously problematic for the concept of biblical authority. But whether or not we're comfortable with its implications, Php. 2:6-11 is a good example of the real challenges of interpreting biblical texts.


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
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¹Here, Php. 2:6-11 is quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. When individual phrases are later inserted into a table, I am not following any one English translation.

²The Greek text is copied from the Online Greek Bible using the font, Athena.

Adam christology in Paul's letters

And now for something completely different …!

In general, Emerging From Babel consciously focuses on exegesis of the Old Testament. But since I'm a Christian, interacting with other bibliobloggers, I continue to get drawn into dialogue on New Testament issues as well. Thus I've gotten sidetracked (it happens all the time) by a recent post on Chris Tilling's blog.

Chris has been surveying the content of a recent publication by Gordon D. Fee:  Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study (Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson, 2007). Part 7 of Chris's survey touches on the question of Adam christology:

While there is an Adam Christology in Paul, "in terms of actual language and echoes from Gen 1-2, it is limited to two kinds of passages:  first, explicit contrasts between Christ and Adam … and, second, where the incarnate Christ is seen as the true bearer of the divine image".

I'd like to explore this topic here (having already posted several long comments on Chris's blog).

In this post, we'll deal with the topic of Adam christology in general. In the follow-up post, we'll take a look at the great hymn contained in Philippians 2.

1. Allusions to Adam:

Adam plays a larger role in Paul's theology than is usually realized. … Adam is a key figure in Paul's attempt to express his understanding both of Christ and of man.

(James Dunn, Christology In the Making: An Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation, 2nd ed., 1989, p. 101.)

Dunn argues that there are numerous allusions to Adam where Adam is not explicitly mentioned. I would summarize the texts by saying that they deal with the whole notion of the "fall of man":  a fall from grace into depravity, separation from God, hardship, suffering, and ultimately death.

Those themes are of course sounded in the story of Adam's creation and disobedience, recounted in Genesis 1-3 —

• created in God's image / likeness;
  
• bore God's glory;
  
• tempted by the promise that he could be like God;
  
• disobeyed God's command;
  
• forfeited God's glory and perhaps also God's image / likeness;
  
• became a slave to sin and death;
  
• the creation likewise was subject to bondage and decay.

Of the above items, the most interesting concerns the image / likeness / glory of God. Did humanity forfeit these things, either in Adam's sin or in our own subsequent sins (or both)?

That humanity forfeited God's image at the fall was not a traditional Jewish view:

The motif of man made in the divine image does not play a large part in Jewish thought — it seems to have been taken more or less for granted. … More striking is the fact that there is little or no thought of the divine image being effaced or obscured in Adam as a consequence of his fall (cf. Gen. 5:1-3; 9:6; James 3:9). (Dunn, p. 105)

On the other hand:

There may have been no real idea that Adam forfeited the image of God by his fall, but there was certainly a firm conviction that he had forfeited the glory of God. … Thus in [the rabbinic texts] Gen. Rab. 12:6 and Num. Rab. 13:12 glory (or lustre) is one of the six things taken from Adam which would be restored in the world to come (see also Gen. Rab. 11:2; 21:5; Deut. Rab. 11:3). (Dunn, p. 106; I added the italics on "image" and "glory")

As for Paul, at one point he states that man (meaning literally the male) is the image and glory of God. But:

The dominant motif in Paul is that man is rather the image of fallen Adam, shares his corruptibility (1Co. 15:49), and that salvation consists in the believer being transformed into the image of God (2Co. 3:18), consists in a progressive renewal in knowledge according to the image of the Creator (Col. 3:10; Eph. 4:24). So there is something of an Adam soteriology here [NB. even where Adam is not explicitly mentioned] — salvation as a restoration of man to that image in which Adam had been created. (Dunn, p. 105)

Accordingly, Dunn sees references to Adam where a casual reader would not notice any such thing:  e.g.,

• "for all have sinned and forfeited the glory of God" (Ro. 3:23; Dunn's translation);
  
• "I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me" (Ro. 7:9).¹

On the latter text, Dunn comments:

Romans 7:9f. can be fully explicated only by reference to Adam. Only if he was thinking of Adam could Paul properly say that he was alive once apart from the law, and that the coming of the commandment brought sin to life and resulted in death for him. For a life "apart from law", and a "coming" of law which resulted in sin and death, was true of Adam in a way that it would not be true of anyone born after or under the law. …

Finally with Rom. 7:11, "for sin, finding opportunity in the commandment, deceived (ἐξηπάτησέν) me and by it killed me", we have a fairly explicit echo of the woman's complaint in Gen. 3:13 — "The serpent deceived (ηπάτησέν) me and I ate." (p. 104)

2. Explicit references to Adam:

The divine program for man which broke down with Adam has been run through again in Jesus — this time successfully. … Christ could not become last Adam, progenitor of a new manhood beyond death, if he had not first been Adam, one with the manhood which the first Adam begot. (Dunn, pp. 110-111)

We can now turn our attention to the only two texts in which Paul explicitly develops an Adam christology. First, Romans 5:12-19 —

Sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. … Adam … was a type of the one who was to come.

But the free gift is not like the trespass. … For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. …

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.

Dunn comments:

Adam and Christ are alike (Adam the type of Christ — vs. 14) in that in both cases the action of one man had fateful consequences for those who followed. Both also died, but here the similarity ends. For where Adam's death was the consequence of his trespass, his disobedience, Christ's death was his act of righteousness, his act of obedience. …

By freely following out the consequences of Adam's disobedience (i.e. death), Jesus burst through the cul-de-sac of death into life. … [Thus] he was able to catch up man in resurrection, to make it possible for God's original intention for man to be fulfilled at the last. The point can be expressed thus:

          Adam's disobedience ———> death
               Christ's obedience to death ———> life.

(p. 111)

Second, 1Co. 15:20-49 —

Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. …

[The body of a dead person] is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. Thus it is written, "The first man Adam became a living being"; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

Dunn comments:

It is likely that there is an underlying connection of thought … to the effect that Christ too first bore "the image of the man of dust" before he became "the man from heaven" (vs. 49), that he too was a "living soul" before he became "life-giving Spirit" (vs. 45). For only he who died as men die could become "the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep" (vs. 20). (p. 111)

Conclusion:

These are complex ideas:  they are familiar to us and yet they stretch our capacity to understand.

In the follow-up post, we will consider the great hymn in Philippians 2 to see whether it, too, is an instance of Adam christology. Dunn thinks it is, even though Adam is not explicitly mentioned.

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¹Unless otherwise indicated, scripture is quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

Did St. Paul corrupt the teaching of Jesus?

Paul was the … first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus.
(Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Short, 1820)

The above quote is from a post on deConversion.com. The topic possesses perennial interest, and I strongly disagree with the stand taken by Thinking Ape.

I decided to address it on my other blog, Outside the Box, because it reaches a broader readership (i.e., including non-Christians).

Holiness, justice, and same sex marriage

This is a follow-up to the previous post, where I quoted Walter Brueggemann:

Sinai interpretation goes in two directions: holiness and justice.

The prophetic books:

Later in his survey of the Old Testament, Brueggemann points out that this dual emphasis carries over into the prophetic books. For example, Isaiah elevates justice above piety:

"What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices?"
says the Lord;
"I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams
and the fat of well-fed beasts;
I do not delight in the blood of bulls,
or of lambs, or of goats. …
Your new moons and your appointed feasts
my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me;
I am weary of bearing them. …
Your hands are full of blood.
Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;
remove the evil of your deeds from before my eyes;
cease to do evil,
learn to do good;
seek justice,
correct oppression;
bring justice to the fatherless,
plead the widow's cause." (Isaiah 1:11-17¹)

The social justice orientation of the prophets is familiar to us. But Brueggemann points out that the prophet Ezekiel fits into the other category:  he is a "holiness guy".

Ezekiel 8 describes various abominations by which the Temple is desecrated. In reaction, the L_ORD's glory leaves the temple by stages:

Successive steps are marked in His departure; so slowly and reluctantly does the merciful God leave His house. First He leaves the sanctuary (Ezekiel 9:3); He elevates His throne above the threshold of the house (Ezekiel 10:1); leaving the cherubim He sits on the throne (Ezekiel 10:4); He and the cherubim, after standing for a time at the door of the east gate (where was the exit to the lower court of the people), leave the house altogether (Ezekiel 10:18,19), not to return till Ezekiel 43:2.
(Jamieson Fausset Brown commentary)

Brueggemann comments,

In Ezekiel, it's not Israel that goes into exile, it's God, because God can't stay there.

— i.e., in a polluted Temple.

Thus, on the one hand, there is Isaiah's emphasis on social justice; while on the other hand, there is Ezekiel's emphasis on holiness. This is the same duality Brueggemann pointed out in the previous post, with reference to Leviticus and Deuteronomy.

The Gospels:

The same duality then carries over into the New Testament texts:  in particular, the Gospels. Jesus was primarily concerned about justice whereas the Pharisees were primarily concerned about holiness:

And as [Jesus] reclined at table in [Levi's] house, many tax collectors and sinners were reclining with Jesus and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. And the scribes of the Pharisees, when they saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, said to his disciples, "Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?" And when Jesus heard it, he said to them, "Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners." (Mark 2:15-17)

Here we see that Jesus was inclusive (tax collectors and sinners were welcome to join his community) whereas the Pharisees were exclusive:  they maintained a strict separation from tax collectors and sinners in order to avoid contracting uncleanness.

I maintain that the Pharisees are portrayed in a very unsympathetic light in the Gospels. Christians should not assume that we are given a full, unbiased picture; rather, we are shown the worst side of Pharisaic religion.²

Consider this:  the Pharisees' emphasis on separation and purity has a rich pedigree in the Old Testament and the intertestamental texts. For example:

But Daniel resolved that he would not defile himself with the king's food, or with the wine that he drank. …

[Daniel said to the steward] "Test your servants for ten days; let us be given vegetables to eat and water to drink. Then let our appearance and the appearance of the youths who eat the king's food be observed by you, and deal with your servants according to what you see." So he listened to them in this matter, and tested them for ten days. At the end of ten days it was seen that they were better in appearance and fatter in flesh than all the youths who ate the king's food. So the steward took away their food and the wine they were to drink, and gave them vegetables. (Daniel 1:8-16)

There are a series of texts like this one in the Old Testament and the intertestamental literature:  i.e., texts in which people of faith refuse to eat certain foods, or otherwise distinguish themselves from the surrounding pagan community.

Thus the Pharisees were not the "bad guys" they are often characterized as from Christian pulpits. They were trying to be faithful to Israel's holiness tradition, as Orthodox Jews are to this day.

Indeed, the Pharisees tried to uphold priestly standards of purity in their everyday lives per Exodus 19:6, "You shall be to me a kingdom of priests."

Jesus took the other path:  the path of justice and inclusiveness. He reached out not only to tax collectors and sinners but to lepers, the demon-possessed, Gentiles, Samaritans, women, and (not least!) the poor.

All such individuals were spurned by the Pharisees. For example, women were assumed to be in a state of continual menstrual impurity. Thus Mark 5:25-34 and Luke 7:36-50 are remarkable texts. On both occasions, Jesus allowed a woman to touch him; in Mark 5, it is explicitly a woman with a flow of blood.

Divorce and homosexuality:

Some "liberal" Christians support homosexual rights on the basis of this social justice tradition in the Gospels. This is an issue that cannot finally be resolved, in my opinion. (Though I personally support same sex marriage and other rights for gays and lesbians.)

On the one hand, we have explicit statements condemning homosexual acts — not from Jesus, but from Paul. Thus it is surely a biblical position to argue, from a holiness standpoint, that homosexual acts are not an acceptable practice.

On the other hand, there is Jesus' radical commitment to social justice and inclusiveness. But let's take a step back, to consider the subject of sexual purity more broadly.

Jesus was at his most conservative on the subject of divorce. Scholars believe that Mark 10 preserves the original form of Jesus' saying on divorce. That is, Jesus did not make any exceptions:  divorce was not permitted even in cases of adultery (contra Matthew's version of the same saying).

Arguably, however, Jesus was not concerned about sexual purity per se. When he prohibited divorce, he may have been responding to the vulnerability of women in that society:  women were economically dependent on their husbands. Thus easy access to divorce ("Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?" — Mt. 19:3) was terribly harmful to the interests of women.

Jesus never addressed the subject of homosexuality. The subject presumably wasn't being debated among Jews in that era.

But what would Jesus say if he was facing this issue in contemporary society? One cannot assume that Jesus would have sided with the "holiness" impulse instead of supporting justice, mercy, and inclusiveness. That, in effect, is the stand taken by "liberal" Christians like me, who support rights for homosexuals.

Conclusion:

We might summarize the data like this:

Holiness, separation	Justice, inclusiveness
Leviticus	Deuteronomy
Ezekiel	Isaiah
Pharisees	Jesus
some Pauline texts	other Pauline texts

As you can see, Paul is the wild card here. But I won't attempt to analyze the Pauline texts in this post.

Yes, the table represents a simplification of the data. As I indicated in the previous post, Deuteronomy shows some interest in holiness and Leviticus shows some interest in justice. But in terms of emphasis, the table is accurate.

I know evangelical readers insist that there is no necessary conflict between the holiness and justice traditions. But the split between Judaism and Christianity illustrates the powerful centrifugal forces at work here; so does the more recent divide between evangelical Christianity and "liberal" Christianity.

In the previous post, I maintained that the Church must learn to live with this inescapable tension instead of trying to enforce uniformity. Jamie responded:

How, then, would you propose we deal with the issue of homosexual marriage? Surely you can’t support (respect, tolerate) those who oppose these marriages; that would go against your view that such people are propagating an injustice. …

With gay marriage, there can only be one "right" way. It cannot simultaneously, in the same circumstances, be right both to forbid gay marriage and to embrace it. Nor could God simultaneously both approve of and forbid the practice.

Jamie is right when she asserts that same sex marriage is either right or wrong — it can't be both. However, she is wrong to assume that I cannot respect and tolerate the position of Christians like her, who disagree with my conclusions on the issue.

In my view, we cannot finally be certain of the right answer to many of the vexed questions that roil the Church. To quote Brueggemann once again:

[The Bible] invites us to do an interpretation for now, knowing that we’re going to have to go back to Sinai and do it over again and again and again.

Indeed, I think that figuring out obedience is like having a teenager in the house. Having a teenager means, nothing stays settled. You’ve got to do it all over again.

Sometimes we think a certain issue is settled; but then someone goes back to the scriptures and mounts an argument that we hadn't considered before.

Similarly, a change of social context forces us to reconsider issues that we thought were settled. The exile forced Israel to reconceptualize its theology. Likewise, modernity forces the Church to revisit first principles with a fresh perspective.

Every conclusion we reach is provisional. We must therefore respect and tolerate the convictions of those who think differently than us.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.

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¹Unless otherwise indicated, scripture is quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version.

²After the death of Jesus, the Pharisees became the primary opponents of Christianity. Some of the conflicts of a later era appear to have been inserted into the Gospels anachronistically. For example, John 9:22 — "the Jews had already agreed that if anyone should confess Jesus to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue." Scholars insist that excommunication from the synagogues was not introduced until several decades after the death of Jesus. The point is, these later conflicts colour the presentation of the Pharisees in the Gospels.