Was Jesus Divine, Part Three

Paul's Perspective

This week I’m continuing a series of posts that respond to the question, “Was Jesus Divine?” In the first two posts I explored the title “Son of God” through first century Jewish and Roman lenses. Click here to read parts one and two.

Today I want to ask the question, “When did Jesus become the Son of God?” It seems like a no brainer, right? Jesus was always the Son of God, the preexistent Second Person of the Trinity that, two thousand years ago, took on a body and walked among us. You might even be thinking about the language of the Nicene Creed which says,

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven…

At some point we’ll explore the meaning of these words more fully, but for now it’s just important to note that the Nicene Creed expresses what has become the classic understanding of the Jesus experience. Jesus was the preexistent, Second Person of the Trinity. From this perspective, Jesus was always fully the Son of God, without beginning. This leads to the assumption that this is what the Bible teaches and what Christians have always believed with uniformity. That’s just not the case. Throughout the New Testament we can see the development of Christology over time.

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Regardless of where one stands on the statements in the Creed (whether or not they landed in the right place theologically), that the perspective on Jesus and his divinity is in process is evident when comparing texts across the New Testament.

To trace the perspectives of the biblical writers we must begin with the earliest witness, Paul. While there are thirteen letters attributed to him, the broad consensus of scholarship is that the historical Paul actually wrote seven of those letters (1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 + 2 Corinthians, Philemon, Philippians, and Romans). What does Paul say about Jesus and divinity?

Let’s begin with Galatians, one of the earliest Pauline letters we have. Written as early as 50, it includes one of the only mentions in Paul of the birth of Jesus.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law… (Galatians 4:4, NRSVue)

When it comes to Jesus’s birth, Paul doesn’t mention any of the major details that are included in Matthew and Luke, which were composed at the earliest thirty years, and the latest even sixty years, after Galatians. No magi or shepherds, no star or angels, no virginal conception or manger appear in Paul. Here in Galatians he says that Jesus was essentially a human (born of a woman) and Jewish (born under the law). Nothing too groundbreaking there.

Next we turn to Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi, a major Greek city and Roman colony. Writing, likely, in the mid-50s, Paul includes what scholars think to be an early hymn about Jesus. It’s not thought that Paul wrote the hymn himself. There are good reasons to think he didn’t. But he does include it in chapter two, and calls the community to embody the same attitude as Jesus.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a human,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.
Therefore God exalted him even more highly
and gave him the name
that is above every other name,
so that at the name given to Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
(Philippians 2:5-11, NRSVue)

While Paul doesn’t author this hymn he does insert it into his writing, so I’d assume he agrees with the content. On first glance it seems pretty clear that the hymn, and also Paul, are painting a portrait of a preexistent Christ, who came from heaven to earth, put on humanity to die as part of God’s redemptive plan to save us all.

I would suggest that we see that so clearly, not because it’s what Paul is saying, but because we tend to read Paul backwards, through the lenses that have been developed after his time. For example, when we put on the glasses developed by the Nicene Creed, and look at Paul through them, it seems obvious that Paul is articulating a perspective that is right in line with the Creed. The problem is Paul wrote this in the 50s, perhaps only two-ish decades after the death of Jesus. Remember, perspectives on Jesus did not develop to the Nicene understanding that quickly. What would happen if we tried to meet Paul in his time and context?

In Philippians 2 Paul isn’t talking about Jesus as a preexistent divine being; he’s casting Jesus as a new Adam. Let’s explore this idea more.

…who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped…

In the Genesis 1 creation narrative God makes the first humans in God’s image, and in Genesis 3 those first humans eat the forbidden fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. That fruit, according to the serpent, would make them equals with God, knowing good and evil as God does. Think about this as being able to make judgements: who is good or bad, and perhaps even who should live and who should die. After all the word sin doesn’t occur for the first time in Genesis 3. It happens a chapter later with Cain’s killing of Abel. If humans have an Original Sin, it’s not eating fruit naked in a garden, but our addiction to and participation in violence.

This hymn makes the claim that Jesus—the New Adam, made in God’s image and inaugurating a New Creation—doesn’t grasp for that fruit, doesn’t try to take God’s job, as Adam and Eve did in the Garden. Instead of enacting violence, Jesus willingly suffers it, not because God needed it, but because humans demanded it. The result of this obedience to the way of peace and justice led to Jesus’s vindication by God.

Therefore God exalted him even more highly
and gave him the name
that is above every other name,

It seems in Philippians 2 that Paul’s understanding is that Jesus, because of his obedience, even unto death, was exalted by God and given the right to rule (remember Daniel 7?) as God’s just representative. This is similar to Paul’s statement in another of his letters as well.

In Romans, a letter to a community that Paul had never personally met, but wanted to visit, he wrote near the beginning, perhaps quoting an early creed:

Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord… (Romans 1:1-4, NRSVue)

Once again, Paul ties Jesus’s exaltation to resurrection. The resurrection was both God’s vindication of Jesus’s life, vision, and message, and also the declaration of Jesus’s exaltation by God.

Let me try to sum up all this in a couple of statements.

First, Paul has a very Jewish understanding of how and when Jesus was elevated to divinity. After all, in the ancient world divinity was not necessarily a fixed category; it was more of a spectrum. This is also true within Judaism. For example, I once again referenced Daniel 7 above, and I think this text is very important for how the first Jesus followers—including Paul—began to develop their understanding of Jesus as a divine figure. In Paul’s writings it seems that his understanding is that Jesus, because he was faithful to his calling as the nonviolent herald of the Kingdom of God—even unto death—was vindicated and exalted by God’s raising him up from death. That is a multifaceted claim about Jesus, Caesar, and the future of the world. If Jesus has been raised, then he is Lord and Caesar is not. It is Jesus, and not Caesar, who is the true Son of God, and it is Jesus’s vision of a just kingdom that is best to shape the world. You get the picture. I really do think if a Christian understanding of Jesus doesn’t make sense through these Jewish lenses then perhaps we have lost the plot.

Second, Paul isn’t trying to articulate what became the orthodox perspective, because it’s not even a thought in his brain. What I mean is, the categories and language that ends up being created by the later church to explain the Jesus experience would have been foreign to those earliest followers, including Paul. They were throwing spaghetti against the wall, building the plane as they flew it, (insert metaphor here), trying to explain their experience, which fell dramatically outside of the realm of their expectations. Forcing Paul into a Nicene framework ignores his perspective and experience. Sadly, this is what inerrancy does. It steamrolls the uniqueness of the biblical authors and silences their voices. That Paul’s own words do not align with the later creeds is not a problem and shouldn’t be a surprise. He lived hundreds of years before they were conceived, at the very beginning of the Jesus movement.

Beyond inerrancy, anxiety is another factor that causes us to clumsily attempt to paper over all the cracks and soften the jagged edges that are the diversity of opinion within the New Testament. This anxiety is grounded in the fear that if we get something wrong, if we don’t have it all figured out in a nice, neat system, then God might punish us. It’s unfortunate that, for all the talk about grace as unmerited favor, we still practically function as if our standing with God is determined by how right we are. We don’t know. No one knows. We are doing our best. Well, at least sometimes we are. At least some of us. You get it.

Take a breath. Seriously. Take a couple deep breaths.

Your standing before God has nothing to do with you having all the right beliefs. Even within the New Testament, the authors don’t see everything the same way. Some perspectives change over time. It’s okay. We are learning and growing, and that necessitates that we will change. Our interpretations will change. So, too, hopefully, will our our hearts and ways of living. That is the point, isn’t it?

Next week we’ll begin to explore the question of Jesus’s divinity in the Gospels.

1. Christology is the stream of Christian theology that deals with the person, nature, and work of Jesus.