From: hedrick@geneva.rutgers.edu (Charles Hedrick)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: NT basis for Christology
Date: 8 Nov 92 05:29:04 GMT
Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J.

This is a response to Kermit's "Re: LdS ignoring the example of the Bereans"

I'm not sure quite what sort of response is appropriate for your
posting, since at this point I'm not even sure how much of what you
say I disagree with.  You say that Jesus is presented by the Gospels
as the Messiah.  Certainly this is true.  Whether he went beyond that
depends somewhat on what you think it means to be the Messiah.  Of
course Christians interpreted Messiah to refer to the role that Jesus
played.  But obviously other Jews believed that Jesus' life, and
particularly his death, was inconsistent with the Messiah.

There's been a lot of work on the Jewish background of the NT.  One
that I use a lot is a book on Paul by a Jewish scholar, Schoeps.  He
sees a Jewish background for almost everything Paul said, yet the
overall way Paul puts things together seems to him quite un-Jewish,
since it puts Jesus in a position that only God can fill.

The NT seems to do a fairly good job of distinguishing between what
Jesus said during his life here, and the way Christians reacted after
his resurrection.  John is the major exception.  What do we see in the
Synoptics that at least points to the way Christians regarded Jesus
after his resurrection?  Note that I don't claim that none of these
things can be understood of the Messiah.  However they way they were
all put together was rather different.

  - I believe Jesus applied the suffering servant passages of
	Isaiah to himself, e.g. Lk 22:37
  - Jesus saw himself as dying to establish a new covenant.  See
	particularly the words of institution, but also passages
	like Mk 10:45.
  - this is somewhat ambiguous, but looking at uses of the word
	"faith" in the KJV (which is the only online Bible we've
	got in our CWIS system) in the Synoptics, I get the
	impression that most of the time it represents faith in
	Jesus.  See also references to people doing things in
	his name in Mar 9:38 ff, and people gathering in his name 
	in Mk 13:6.

While any one of these things can be understood of the Jewish Messiah,
it's clear from Acts and Paul's letters that the way his followers
actually understood them moves in a somewhat different direction.  In
Acts and Paul, faith becomes primarily faith in Jesus' name.
Salvation is obtained through him.  He is understood as a mediator,
who died for us, and salvation is available to us only through union
with Christ.  God is understood as working through Christ, and many of
the OT references to "the Lord" are understood of Christ.  E.g. 1 Cor
1:8, where "the day of the Lord" is now understood as being the day of
our Lord Jesus Christ.  Or 2 Cor 5:18-21, which in my opinion
identifies Jesus' actions as God's.  Acts has similar language.
Again, faith is typically in Christ, Christians are shown as acting in
his name, salvation is through Christ (e.g. Acts 15:11, 16:31) Christ
died for us, the term "Lord" is typically used for Christ.  I think
these terms give Christ more of God's role than would be appropriate
in the normal Jewish concept of the Messiah.

What I would claim is that Jesus' role is fairly similar in Paul,
Acts, and John.  Only John projects this back unambiguously into
Jesus' lifetime.  Luke is fairly careful in Luke and Acts to avoid
this anachronism, though as I said above, I believe enough is present
in the Synoptics to form a basis for later Christian reactions when
seen in the light of the Resurrection.  Unfortunately we don't have
writings from Matthew and Mark that correspond to Acts.  So in some
sense we don't know their view of how Christianity developed after
Jesus' death and resurection.  But given the broad level of agreement
between John, Acts, and the various letters, I would assume that
Matthew and Mark would hold views fairly close to Luke's.  Thus I
would suggest that the lack of explicit Christology in Mat and Mk is
not because their authors didn't believe in Christ as Lord and savior,
but because like Luke, those gospels were trying to be true to what
Jesus actually said during his life.  To see what Mark actually
believed of Jesus, I think you can probably use 1 Peter.  (Most
commentators seem to take seriously the early tradition that Mark is
based on Peter's preaching.  While I would not want to argue for 2
Peter, my impression is that 1 Peter is probably his.)  1 Peter has
all the same themes as Paul: Jesus was chosen before the creation.  He
died for us. We are saved through belief in him.  He is Lord.  His
spirit lives in us, and the Holy Spirit who spoke through the Prophets
is identified as the Spirit of Christ (1:11).

As I understand your posting, you are primarily concerned about the
identification between Jesus and God.  You feel that this occurs only
in John.  I still say that you need to be very careful in
understanding what is meant by identification of Jesus and God.  The
most typical NT formulation is "God gave his son".  This is present in
all the traditions.  John is most explicit about identifying Jesus
with God, though even in John the identification is somewhat veiled:
The word made flesh -- which I think can be understood metaphorically
as saying the Jesus reveals God, Jesus' use of "I am", etc.  Even "I
and my father are one" is probably meant only to indicate a unity of
will, not that Jesus is simply identical to God.  Paul and Hebrews
come next, with the Jesus as the exact likeness of God's being (Heb
1:3, Col 1:15).  But these explicit statements are fairly rare.  I
think Christology should be based on primarily on the broad NT
concensus of Jesus' role, even if we also try to do justice to these
heights of poetic expression.

As I've said before, what I mean when I talk about the Incarnation
is primarily:

  - that in looking at Jesus, we see God
  - that Jesus' actions are God's

On the first, see Lk 10:22 (no one knows the Father except those to
whom the son reveals him), John 1:1 (that Jesus is God's Word made
flesh), and of course John 14:9 (he who has seen me has seen the
Father).  But the most characteristic example is Jesus' death, which
shows God's love for us (Rom 5:8, 1 John 4:10).  On the second, see
Act 2:22 and 2 Cor 5:19, both of which talk about God working through
Christ.  Again, the most characteristic example is Jesus' death, which
is typically expressed as God sending his son to die for us.  It's
clear that this is seen as an act of God's love (and not for example
as God giving an unpleasant task to someone else).  See Rom 8:32, 1
John 4:10, Act 20:28.

In fact the role of representative goes both ways.  Not only does
Jesus represent God to us, but he represents us to God.  He does what
all of us should do but only he can do -- lives and dies righteously,
and God agrees to credit this to us if we are in Christ.  Because of
his dual role of representing God to man and man to God, one
characteristic term for Christ is mediator.

Now you may well protest that none of this establishes Jesus as God --
it simply makes him God's representative, which is a role not that far
from prophet.  Actually I don't mind using Jewish ways of thinking
about Jesus, rather than the Greek metaphysics that the church later
ended up using.  I believe it would be perfectly appropriate to
interpret Jesus' role in a Jewish context, as someone sent by God
(very common NT language) to represent him.  But the representation is
more direct than a prophet.  As I've said elsewhere, the way I
understand the "two-nature" model is that every action of Jesus should
be seen in two ways: as the action of a human being, motivated by his
understanding of his role and of God, and as the action of God, who
shows us through Christ what he is like.
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