Pauline Hermeneutics and Christology

Pauline Hermeneutics and Christology Andrew Perry Introduction The thesis of this paper is that knowing how Paul goes about interpreting Scripture will allow us to uncover his Christology. The paper covers a well-worn pair of subjects, and apart from the fact that each generation needs its own writers and likes to read from the living, there is perhaps no need for another paper. Except that any writer likes to say things in their own words and thinks that they have something to say. Our concern is with what the consensus of New Testament (NT) scholars are saying exegetically1 today about Paul, because they have taken a certain turn since the 1980s and settled, for the moment, upon reading a High Christology in certain Pauline texts. We think this is wrong and propose instead that Paul is fully a Jew with a Low Christology. The consensus today amongst NT scholars is that, in the early years of the church, it was thought that Jesus was divine - a High Christology. The phraseology used by NT scholars today is that Jesus was “included within the divine identity of the one Jewish God”,2 and this view has been given the tag ‘Christological Monotheism’. The prominent names associated with this approach include N. T. Wright (starting with The Climax of the Covenant, 1991), R. Bauckham (beginning particularly with God Crucified, 1998 but also with his essays in the 1980s) and L. W. Hurtado (firstly with One God, One Lord, 1988, and then Lord Jesus Christ, 2003). An oft-cited supporting monograph from the 90s is D. B. Capes, Old Testament Yahweh Texts in Paul’s Christology (1992). More recent authors to support this viewpoint include S. Gathercole (The Pre-existent Son, 2006), C. Kavin Rowe, (Early Narrative Christology, 2006), and C. Tilling, Paul’s Divine Christology (2012). In addition, there have been important collections of essays published including, The Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism (eds. C. C. Newman, J. R. Davila and G. S. Lewis, 1999) and Early Jewish and Christian Monotheism (eds. L. T. Stuckenbruck and W. S. North, 2004). The consensus has been emerging since the late 1980s and is now a common viewpoint in 2015.3 Christological Monotheism replaces the earlier consensus which was a Low Christology, and which in English scholarship reached its high point in the 1980 work of J. D. G. Dunn’s Christology in the Making. The difference between the two Christologies is exegetical, with Low Christology seeing far less in the NT writings that attributes/presupposes divinity or pre-existence to/for the man Jesus Christ. Christological Monotheism is therefore part of the ebb and flow of scholarly fashion between ‘Low’ and ‘High’ exegesis that we could trace in the history of NT scholarship since the Enlightenment.4 A High Christology traditionally was about saying Paul believed in the pre-existence of the Son;5 today, it is about claiming Paul was consciously redefining6 Jewish monotheism in terms that would include Christ. It is this second feature that is now distinctive of High Christology. As for pre-existence and Paul, it is still held that Paul believed in the preexistence of something about Christ, but scholars may vary in how they We aren’t concerned with mapping Paul’s thought in any developmental framework. C. Fletcher-Louis, Jesus Monotheism (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2015), 3; or, again, “the emerging consensus argues both that Jesus was fully and firmly included, as a divine being, within a monotheistic theological framework, and that a High Christology is very early” (8). We might ask whether it is plausible to say the Son would be hidden from special revelation until the advent of Christ if the Son was always part of the Godhead. 3 Fletcher-Louis, Jesus Monotheism, 3, citing the work of Andrew Chester. 4 In older scholarship, High Christology was seen as non-Jewish and built from Hellenistic influences. It was part of the reason why Gentile Christianity broke away from Jewish Christianity. On this see G. D. Fee, Pauline Christology (Peabody: Hendrickson, 2010), 10-12. 5 R. G. Hamerton-Kelly, Pre-existence, Wisdom, & The Son of Man (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 1-13, offers a fairly standard introductory discussion of the concept of pre-existence and concludes unexceptionally, if oddly, with “ ‘Pre-existence’ is a mythological term which signifies that an entity had a real existence before its manifestation on earth, either in the mind of God or in heaven.” We offer no discussion of the concept of pre-existence; we are concerned only with the question of whether any notion of pre-existence in relation to Christ is present in Paul – and this is all about exegesis. 6 For a popular presentation see N. T. Wright, Paul: Fresh Perspectives (London: SPCK, 2005), chap. 5. 1 2 read Paul on this matter. They could talk in terms of the preexistence of the Son, or the Logos, or the Wisdom of God, or the Son of Man, and in an ideal or an actual sense. This is a less travelled route today because it is a well-worn path with little to add to what has already been said. Instead, today, it is felt that showing Christ was included within the divine identity in the NT writings can form a satisfactory beginning to a trajectory leading to Nicea and better prospects for fresh writing. If High Christology is all about Jesus being included in the divine identity of the one God of Israel,7 Low Christology is all about Jesus being ‘human’. To establish a Low Christology, it is not enough to show exegetically that Paul thought Jesus was a man or that he didn’t think he pre-existed as the Son of God (or God the Son) or another divine hypostasis such as the Logos. It is also now necessary to show that Paul was not redefining Jewish monotheism when he included Christ within the divine identity (if that’s what he did).8 Our argument would be that in Paul, Jewish monotheism remains very much as across Second Temple Judaism,9 and including Jesus within the divine identity of the one God of Israel is consistent with scriptural precedent and is actually indicative of a Low Christology. Later church doctrine says that Jesus was fully God and fully man and it is concerned with the question of the nature or person of Christ. It has been argued that this is unhelpful for understanding Paul and that the notion of identity is a better catch-all for his thinking. So, what we are examining in this paper is not whether Paul thought that Jesus had a divine and/or human nature. Paul doesn’t discuss Jesus in terms of his nature; rather, he makes statements about Christ that later church writers use as their raw data for discussing Christ’s nature. Instead, we are discussing Paul’s Christology in terms of an identity. We are interested in how Paul uses terms such as ‘God’ and ‘Lord’; how he conceives of the Father and the Son and their relationship together; and how he understands the role and position of Christ. Were we to investigate Paul’s presentation of Christ and his relationship to his father, we would find that he doesn’t redefine Jewish monotheism nor does he think that Jesus, as such, pre-existed; for Paul, Jesus was a man, God’s actual10 son. If Paul includes Jesus within the divine identity, this is because he has a representative identity as the ‘image of the invisible God’ (Col 1:15) being ‘in the form of God’ (Phil 2:6). This was Paul’s view of both the earthly and heavenly Jesus.11 This understanding of the earthly Jesus had been demonstrated by his resurrection and exaltation to the highest status in heaven (Rom 1:3-4). Hermeneutics Our general position on the New Testament is that the writings are early (pre-AD70) and we treat them in a harmonic and synchronic way as a collective witness to the thinking of leaders of the apostolic church from AD 30-70. We generally follow the dating assignments of J. A. T. Robinson for Paul,12 and we assume We offer no definition of ‘divine’; it is placeholder for whatever any particular scholar says. Again, we offer no definition of ‘divine identity’; it is another placeholder for whatever any particular scholar says. 9 Following the consensus, we take ‘Second Temple Judaism’ to embrace the religion and religious sects of the Jews from about the 2c. BCE up until around the end of the 1c. CE when Rabbinical Judaism emerged. R. Bauckham usefully tabulates ‘one God’ texts from the Second Temple period as an appendix to his essay, “The Shema and 1 Corinthians Again” in N. T. Wright’s Festschrift, One God, One People, One Future (eds. J. A. Dunne and E. Lewellen; London: SPCK, 2018), 86-111. 10 It is a misrepresentation to call this view ‘Adoptionism’; if we want an ‘ism, it is ‘Actualism’. Nevertheless, it is likely that our approach will be (mis)classified as ‘adoptionist’; see Fee, Pauline Christology , 11. A working definition of ‘Adoptionism’ would be that Christ was fully human and that he was adopted by God as his son at some point. It might be further argued that this was the earliest view about Christ in the church. These aren’t our opinions. 11 This point is important because it might otherwise be thought that representative identity is an earthbound notion, as say in the case of a priest or prophet. The representative identity of Christ relates to the reality of the new creation which mirrors the intent of the old creation of which the heavens were a part and from which the earth is administered. 12 See J. A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (London: SCM Press, 1976), 31-85. Our qualification of Robinson would be that we date Philippians later and in the Roman Captivity. 7 8 the traditional authorship ascriptions of his letters except for the Letter to the Hebrews. Further, we incline to the view that the collection of Paul’s letters originates with Paul and his keeping of copies of letters that he sent to ecclesias.13 Mainstream scholarship would disagree with this methodological choice. It would argue that the later letters attributed to Paul show development or change of thought and this is evidence of pseudonymity. Since we find Paul’s writings to be quite compatible, we have no reason to doubt that he is the author of all the letters traditionally attributed to him;14 hence, we don’t find the arguments for there being Deutero-Pauline letters to outweigh those for traditional authorship.15 Our position is a standard conservative one. It is common to discuss Paul’s Christology in developmental terms, looking both for the origins of Paul’s thinking and situating him in a trajectory of thinking from Jesus16 through to the sub-Apostolic era. The dates of his letters are important for this, because they are supposed to make different contributions to the historical project. Issues of development are not our concern; we are just interested in exegesis. Harmonic reading of Paul is entirely possible, as is a synchronic approach to Pauline Christology. Moreover, while the later letters no doubt have different (complementary) ideas to the earlier ones, this cannot show that Paul didn’t think the same way in the 40s; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. So, while people no doubt develop in their thinking as time goes by, they also hold views persistently in the face of opposition. The fifteen years or so during which Paul wrote his letters come from the mature part of his life, sometime after his joining the Christian sect. It is not an unreasonable presumption to read his letters for a stable and coherent picture. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating. The method of interpretation we deploy is the simple one of exegeting what Paul says against a Jewish scriptural background. In this we focus on what he actually says rather than impute to Paul what we think he presupposes in his remarks. Our assumption is that Paul was brought up as a faithful Diasporan Jew, educated to a high level at Jerusalem, and continued to think of himself as a faithful Jew after joining the Christian sect. As far as possible we exclude the prejudices of later formulations of Christian doctrine as we approach the text.17 There are other methods of approach to Paul but our interest is in the results of this one method. Of course, Paul’s language doesn’t exist in a vacuum and so any exegete pays attention to semantic and syntactic patterns of usage for the language he uses, but this is a different matter from looking at how he exegetes the Hebrew Scriptures.18 Putting the Hebrew Scriptures front and centre is Paul’s own practice, Which things also we speak, not in the words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Spirit teacheth, comparing spiritual things with spiritual. 1 Cor 2:13 (KJV) See E. R. Richards, “The Codex and the Early Collection of Paul’s Letters” BBR 8 (1998): 151-166. Robinson, Redating the New Testament, 84. 15 See D. Guthrie, New Testament Introduction (4th ed.; London: 496-528; 572-577; 592-599; 621-641. 16 There is a debate around how different Paul’s teaching is to that of Jesus, on which see V. P. Furnish, “The Jesus-Paul Debate: from Baur to Bultmann” in Paul and Jesus (ed., A. J. M. Wedderburn; Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1989), 17-50; there is also a debate around the relative influence of Hellenistic ideas on Paul. 17 This is a failing of Fee in his Pauline Christology, where he also seeks to lay bare Paul’s presuppositions in Christology. 18 Most scholars would prioritize or at least include the Old Greek (OG). We use the OG insofar as we have it in the critical edition of the LXX as a route to consider the Spirit’s quotation of the Hebrew original insofar as we have it in the Masoretic Text. We use the term ‘Hebrew Scriptures’ to refer to those Scriptures of Jesus’ day that became the Masoretic Text that we have in our Hebrew Bibles. This includes the Aramaic portions, but we are obviously excluding any translations extant in Jesus’ day when we use this term, for example the Old Greek or any Aramaic Targums. Our assumption is that Paul regarded the Hebrew exemplars of the Scriptures in the Jerusalem temple as authoritative regardless of what local Hebrew or Greek copies he used. 13 14 These things happened to them as examples (tupikw/j) and were written for our instruction, on whom the ends of the ages have come. 1 Cor 10:11 (NET) We can compare Paul’s statements with his wider co-text, whether this is comprised of Palestinian or Hellenistic Jewish texts, or broader Greco-Roman texts. These are the cultural worlds in which Paul grew up and lived. This compares the spiritual with the non-spiritual, which is the widespread default practice in scholarship. These comparisons determine the semantic possibilities for Paul’s words and position Paul in relation to the thinking of his day. However, such comparisons lie in the background of our primary goal of giving an exegesis of Paul’s use of the Old Testament (OT). It is worth noting that the more we see uniqueness in Paul’s teaching, the less we will see of his background. Generally, scholars do not factor in the inspiration of the Spirit in Paul when presenting Paul’s Christology. However, it is one thing to ask what does Paul mean and why is he saying this and where are the ideas coming from; it is another thing to ask what is the Spirit saying through Paul and is the Spirit using Scripture. The question here is how we see the inspiration of the Spirit in Paul’s thinking. So, if we take the Spirit to be the axis upon which our exegesis turns the questions become something like this: The ‘comparing of spiritual with spiritual’ is the comparison of the use of language in two or more contexts, and the language we compare may be as short as a word or phrase or as long as a citation. This is important because the holy Spirit sometimes uses words and phrases from different places in Scripture, as well as the more obvious device of a longer citation. The holy Spirit does this because it is deploying echo and allusion as well as quotation in its engendering of Paul’s language. This is a critical point: whether Paul is responsible or not for his language, we see the Spirit picking up individual words (as well as longer stretches of language) from various places in the Hebrew Scriptures as its way of guiding readers. Inspiration is not a prominent methodological assumption in scholarly exegesis. As an assumption it engenders recognition of complexity, subtlety and nuance in the text in keeping with it having been authored by the holy Spirit.19 In terms of complexity, we need to recognise as exegetes that Paul (or the Spirit) may be using the referential values and concerns of a precursor scriptural text or he may be exercising some transformation upon that text, and in particular he may be configuring the text in typological (tupikw/j) terms. Intertextual use of Scripture can take over some or all of the values in sense, reference and tone of the precursor text, but typological usage transforms some or all of those values. These levels of meaning are what we are seeking to uncover in the comparing of spiritual with spiritual. What emerges in the results of this methodological approach is a satisfactory explanation of Paul’s (or the Spirit’s) reasoning and teaching, and this in turn blocks faulty readings based on comparisons with nonscriptural texts. The argument here is that if Paul is writing Scripture, then his own approach to Scripture is one we should follow, and when we do this, our results in Christology will be different to those of Christological Monotheism. Scholarship is familiar with intertextual and typological exegesis and commentators may disagree over types and patterns. It is also familiar with reading the text for multiple echoes and allusions to different parts of the Jewish Scriptures.20 21 There is nothing new in the method; only in the proposals we put forward. In It is not part of our brief to set out a philosophical theology on how the Holy Spirit engenders a text; see our Biblical Investigations. 20 We use ‘Jewish Scriptures’ as a term of reference for the Hebrew Scriptures and Greek translations. Scholars tend to work with the broader concept and so we represent their arguments with this term. We take the view that the Spirit through Paul quoted the Hebrew, and so we use the narrower term of reference when making intertextual points. 21 R. B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). For a nontypological approach that places Christ more literally in the events of the Old Testament see A. T. Hanson, Jesus Christ in the Old Testament (London: SPCK, 1965). 19 following this method, we are putting the story-narrative of Scripture centre-stage because Paul believed Jesus and the Christian church were part of that story and that it foreshadowed the events of his era.22 We are prepared to see very subtle kinds of intertextual use of precursor Scripture by the Spirit in Paul. This is the difficult stuff that comes out of the left field and requires repeated reading and time to uncover. It’s also the stuff that blocks the misinterpretation of Scripture, which has been so evident in the history of the church. But to be fair, readers may take a different view. And there are other historic-critical methods that yield results. The easier and more acceptable interpretation is typological. This is a correspondence of detail between persons and events in the Hebrew Scriptures and Paul’s description of the realities of his age, particularly Christ. Correspondences are affirmed by interpreters on the basis that the Hebrew Scriptures23 are prophetic and proleptic in its narrative stories—prophetic of Christ. Paul refers to the Jews’ reading of the Law in terms of a ‘veil’, but one that can be removed if Christ is used as an interpretive template (2 Cor 3:14-16). For the student of Paul, the ability to read typologically is a matter of either taking forward into Paul the language of type from the Hebrew Scriptures or, contrawise, taking the language of the anti-type in Paul’s letters back into the narrative of the scriptural story. We will look at two examples to illustrate this method. (Example 1) The Lord is the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3) Paul is a master typologist, but he does not always state that he is offering typological interpretation with such words as typos (tu,poj) and its cognates (Rom 5:14; 6:17; 1 Cor 10:6, 11; 1 Thess 1:7; 2 Thess 3:9; Phil 3:17; 1 Tim 1:16; 4:12; 2 Tim 1:13; Tit 2:7). Consequently, a reader has to be alerted to seeing his language as ‘typological’. For example, the statement, “the ‘Lord’ is the Spirit” is a narrative identity in typology rather than an identity in metaphysics; the same is true of the statement ‘For a man…is the image and glory of God’ (1 Cor 11:7). A whole passage in Paul can be typological. For instance, typology is at the root of 2 Corinthians 3. There is an extended parallel drawn in this chapter with the activity of the Angel of the Presence at Sinai (Isa 63:9; Acts 7:38). The typological parallel is between this angel as the ‘Lord’, and the Spirit in believers with both manifesting the glory of God. Paul opens the chapter with a comparison with Moses’ ministry. The Corinthian believers were an epistle written not with ink or in tables of stone, but they were a letter written in the fleshy tables of the heart (2 Cor 3:3). This alludes to Exodus 34 and the ‘tables of stone’ (v. 4) as well as the ‘writing’ of the Ten Commandments (v. 37). Paul asserts that his ministry is superior because it is written in fleshy tables of the heart. With this last phrase, he is alluding to Jer 31:31-33. In Exodus 34, Moses ascends Sinai to receive the Law engraved upon the tablets of stone. When Moses comes down the mountain, he has to cover his face with a veil because his face shone with a reflected glory from having spoken with the Angel of the Presence face to face. Paul’s comment upon this account is this: v. 16 Nevertheless when it [the heart, v. 15] shall turn to the Lord (ku,rion), the veil shall be taken away. v. 17 Now the ‘Lord’ (o` ku,rioj) is the ‘Spirit’: and where the Spirit of the Lord (kuri,ou) is there is liberty. 2 Cor 3:16-17 (KJV revised) This is roughly the method of approach that Wright sketches except that we are more overtly scriptural in our focus; Paul: Fresh Perspectives, chap. 1. 23 Although we are setting up our point in terms of a set of writings, typology has its basis in the individuals and events of history. This means that such individuals and events are themselves prophetic and proleptic— the end-times were taught in word and deed. 22 In v. 16, the divine name is used in the guise of its proxy, the anarthrous ku,rioj, but this proxy is then picked up and mentioned by Paul in v. 17 and given a reference—the ‘Lord’ is the ‘Spirit’. This is a typological identity and it allows Paul’s thought to flow seamlessly from v. 16 to v. 17. We know that Paul is mentioning the divine name in v. 17 rather than using it as in v. 16 because in v. 17 we have an article with ku,rioj. The alternative reading is to see ‘the Lord’ as a reference to the Lord Jesus. This has no connection with Exodus 34 but, more significantly, an identity asserted here between the Lord Jesus and the Spirit doesn’t fit well with the mention of ‘the Spirit of the Lord’ which refers to the Spirit of Yahweh. The Spirit Paul is referring to is the ‘Spirit’ of earlier verses: How shall not the ministration of the Spirit be rather glorious? 2 Cor 3:8 (KJV) …the Spirit giveth life… 2 Cor 3:6 (KJV) …the Spirit of the living God… 2 Cor 3:3 (KJV) This Spirit is the ‘Lord’ of Exodus, that is, the ‘Lord’ of Exodus is a type of ‘the Spirit’ in the Christian era. Paul therefore concludes, But we all [as opposed to just one—Moses], with unveiled face (unlike the children of Israel), beholding [as they] as in a mirror the glory of the ‘Lord’ (kuri,ou) [as Moses beheld the glory of the angelic manifestation of Yahweh], are changed into the same image from glory to glory just as from the ‘Lord’, the Spirit. 2 Cor 3:18 (KJV revised) In this typology, believers behold the image of Jesus through the Spirit, and they are being changed by the Spirit into that image. (Example 2) The Man is the Image of God (1 Corinthians 11) In 1 Corinthians 11, Paul puts forward arguments for the wearing of a head-covering on the part of women.24 Paul reinforces his first argument which is based around notions of honour and shame with an argument based on the Genesis creation account. For a man, ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man. (For man was not made from woman, but woman from man. Neither was man created for woman, but woman for man.) 1 Cor 11:7-9 (RSV) The argument isn’t being deployed as a premise in support of Paul’s points about honour and shame (vv. 4-6); these are consequences of either covering or not covering the head. Rather, Paul’s argument here is a theological foundation for a practice relating to head-coverings. The argument has not been without controversy. It is based on a harmonised reading of the two creation accounts in Genesis. In particular, Paul quotes from Gen 1:27 and interprets wta arb ~yhla ~lcb to refer to the male of the species in avnh.r… eivkw.n kai. do,xa25 qeou/ u`pa,rcwn rather than humanity.26 In addition, he states that h` gunh. de. do,xa avndro,j evstin, and he explains this in terms of the woman’s origin, relying on the creation account in Genesis 2. This is contested, but our defence is in A. Perry, Head-Coverings and Creation, (4th ed. Rev. 1; Sunderland: Willow Publications, 2013). 25 The notion of glory is absent in Gen 1:27; Paul is picking it up from Ps 8:5 which is a commentary on Gen 1:26-28. 26 The evidence for this approach in Jewish writings prior to the emergence of rabbinical Judaism in the second century C.E. is set out by A. Hultgard, “God and Image in Early Jewish Religion” in The Image of God, Gender Models in Judeo-Christian Tradition, (ed. K. E. Borresen; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1995), 2949. 24 This reading of Gen 1:27 has been termed the ‘asymmetric reading’, and it separates in thought the parallel clauses, “So God created man in his own image; in the image of God he created him” and makes these refer to Adam - the man. The third clause of the verse, “…male and female he created them…” is joined in thought with Gen 1:28 as a lead into the announcement that Adam and Eve were to be fruitful and multiply. In other words, the mention of the female is separated off from the declaration as to who has been made in the image of God.27 The thrust of Paul’s argument has traditionally been taken to reinforce a hierarchical social order based on creation. Summarising this approach, the feminist scholar L. Fatum observes, “The consequence of being created in God’s image is to Paul a mark of qualitative value, reflecting at once man’s special distinction as a creature in relation to God and the distinction of the man, his gender role and status, in relation to the woman. Woman’s status as a creature subordinated to man makes her subordinated and dependent on him in her relationship to God.”28 The head-covering is then taken to reflect this order. Whether this interpretation of Paul’s theology is correct is open to serious question on two levels: • It has been shown29 that the notion of headship in v. 3 is not hierarchical and authoritarian; it is unlikely therefore that Paul would then use the order of creation to make such a point. • As pointed out by scholars such as A. Padgett,30 this interpretation is at odds with the baptismal principle of equality in Christ (Gal 3:28). This principle is fundamental to Paul’s taking of the Gospel to the Gentiles (Gal 2:8); further, he reiterates the principle as the basis of the spirit-filled ministry a few sentences on in the letter (1 Cor 12:13). Consequently, scholars have sought to mute what they have perceived as Paul’s patriarchal views. For example, E. Schüssler-Fiorenza comments, “…perhaps sensing that his midrashic proof could be misunderstood, Paul insists that he does not want to deny the equality of women and men in the Lord (1 Cor 11:11) …”.31 However, it is possible to avoid these difficulties by treating Paul’s use of Genesis as typological. Instead of making a literal application of the created order to social relationships in the ecclesia, Paul might have been pitching his points at the level of type and anti-type. This approach diminishes the social significance of the argument (it removes the patriarchal overtone) and proposes instead that Paul is advocating that men and women in ecclesial meetings respect some symbolic differences. A typology is suggested in Ephesians, Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish. Eph 5:25-27 (KJV) For two justifications of this reading see, M. G. Kline, Images of the Spirit (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1980), Chap 1; and P. A. Bird, “Sexual Differentiation and Divine Image” in The Image of God, Gender Models in Judeo-Christian Tradition, (ed. K. E. Borresen; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1995), 5-28. It is beyond the scope of this paper to defend or refute the asymmetric reading of Gen 1:27; however, given Paul’s cultural upbringing and his use of avnh.r in 1 Cor 11:7, it appears that it was his reading. 28 L. Fatum, “Image of God and Glory of Man: Women in the Pauline Congregations” in The Image of God, Gender Models in Judeo-Christian Tradition, (ed. K. E. Borresen; Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1995), 50-133. 29 A. Perriman, Speaking of Women (Leicester: Apollos, 1998), chap. 1. 30 A. Padgett, “Paul on Women in the Church” JSNT 22 (1984): 69-86. 31 E. Schüssler-Fiorenza, In Memory of Her (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 229. 27 The point here is that the ecclesia is a “woman” and the recipient of attention by Christ (“the man”) whose aim is to obtain a “glorious” ecclesia. It follows from this that the ecclesia has glory from her Lord and as such is his glory – the glory of the man. This is an Adamic typology whereby the ecclesia represents a new Eve who has her source of life in an Adam (cf. 1 Cor 11:8-9). The women of the ecclesia represent the glory of a new creation. The symbology of the head-covering represents the fact that the woman is the glory of the man.32 For a woman to discard a head-covering would dis-honour Christ: the head-covering represents her created status in Christ, and she represents the ecclesia. The symbolic role of the men in the ecclesia complements this role on the part of women. They are representative of their head – Christ – the image and glory of God. It is important to appreciate the typological dimension to Paul’s argument. The literal dimension consists of the facts about creation; the typological dimension is the application of the facts to order behaviour in the new creation. Paul is not ordering the behaviour of women in respect of brethren in the ecclesia generally and using the facts of creation to subordinate women to men. He is ordering the behaviour of women at the Lord’s Supper in respect to Christ – ‘the man’ of the new creation.33 On this reading, there isn’t a conflict between the baptismal principle of equality and Paul’s use of creation because Paul is not subordinating women to men in the ecclesia. Instead, he is ordering two social behaviours (one for men and one for women) so as to reflect a relationship of representation that each has to Christ. Paul is not supporting an old patriarchal order based on creation but using the order of the old creation to model the new creation.34 In conclusion, a conservative method of interpretation will produce a different outcome to any of the historico-critical methods. We follow the traditional ascriptions of the Pauline letters and therefore assume early dates. Our method of interpretation is harmonic. We factor into our interpretation a reality of divine inspiration. We not only ask what/who influenced Paul and what did Paul mean to his readers; we also ask what is possible for the Spirit to have said through Paul. These are all subtle game-changers and these hermeneutical principles would not be accepted by more liberal scholars. Christology - Outline of Argument Does a sola scriptura method for Paul lead to exegesis that is supportive of Christological Monotheism? Our subject-matter divides into two: what Paul articulates about the earthly Jesus and what he says about the resurrected Christ. The argument is that Paul portrays the earthly Jesus as divine because he makes statements about Jesus that make him more than a man; in some sense, he implies that Jesus was the embodiment of a pre-existent Son. The usual evidence that is cited is comprised of Paul’s so-called use of the language of pre-existent Wisdom for Christ. On the basis of this evidence, it is then argued that Paul maintains his monotheism by including Jesus within the divine identity of the one God of Israel. Our counter argument is that Paul doesn’t make the earthly Jesus more than a man in terms of any preexistence of Wisdom or the Son but, rather, he thought that Jesus actually was the son of God. As historians An implication of this approach is that the notion of “the glory of man” does not carry a negative overtone; for example, it is not a notion to do with sin or man’s fallen state as in 1 Pet 1:24. This is shown by the fact that Paul is using material from the creation account in Genesis 2 prior to the Fall of Man. The notion of glory is something to do with creation, not sin. This approach is the opposite of that proposed by M. Hooker in “Authority on her Head: An Examination of 1 Cor 11:10” NTS 10, (1964): 410-416. Hooker argues that a woman is to wear a head-covering in order to hide the glory of man, whereas the head-covering displays the glory of “the man” (Christ) – it symbolises his work with the ecclesia. 33 It is difficult to see how Paul could be ordering the behaviour of women in respect of men generally; all he is concerned with is the wearing of head-coverings – not general relations. 34 In case he is misunderstood by the Corinthians, Paul balances his teaching about the distinctive symbology of “the man” and “the woman” in the ecclesia with a statement about their interdependence (vv. 11-12). 32 or, better, systematic theologians, we might then say that Paul was including Jesus within the divine identity of the one God of Israel insofar as God dwelt in him through the Spirit, but this is God-manifestation in an image and a representative identity, and it doesn’t carry any implication of pre-existence, nor is it a form of monotheism we might dub ‘Christological’. The reason for this is that God has included others within his representative identity before Jesus insofar as he has bestowed his Spirit upon and been represented by men on earth, pre-eminently in Israel’s prophets. It is also plausibly held that angels share in this kind of divine identity because they represent and manifest God on earth. We may give our competing viewpoint the tag ‘Monotheistic Christology’ because it maintains Jewish monotheism without attributing any redefinition of such monotheism to Paul. Paul maintains Jewish monotheism by applying scriptural patterns and types to teach his churches about Jesus. These types and patterns are precedents for Christ and as such were already consistent with Jewish monotheism before Jesus (to the extent that such monotheism was scriptural). This isn’t a High Christology, but it is a High Anthropology. Paul thought that Jesus manifested God the Father, not that he was the incarnation35 of the pre-existent person of the Son or of Wisdom; he did not think that God was distant from his creation, but close. Jesus manifested his father because he acted as God, or in Pauline terms, he was in ‘the form of God’ (Phil 2:6). This is the sense that we would give to the use of ‘divine’ in relation to Jesus. This, however, doesn’t make Jesus more than a man; rather, he was the first true man (to borrow terminology from N. T. Wright). What Paul thought about the resurrected Christ is different. There are two general arguments of Christological Monotheism to consider. In Paul’s churches, a) Christ was worshipped and addressed in prayer along with God the Father and that therefore Christian worship was ‘binitarian or dyadic’;36 and b) Christ was omnipresent in and for believers through the Spirit and thus thought of as equal to God. The upshot of the two arguments is the same: Paul can only have held to his monotheism if he considered Christ to be included within the divine identity of the one God of Israel. On the question of worship37 and prayer, our counterargument is that worship is not a tabula rasa – it always intrinsically involves an object of worship. So, worship of God remains worship of God when worship of Christ is introduced. Jews worshiped only one God, Yhwh. Jesus is worshiped in his own right, but not as God; such worship instead was intrinsically to the glory of God the Father (Phil 2:9-11).38 Paul’s writings guide his churches to recognize the father of Jesus as the one God of Israel with Jesus alongside him as their lord. In this way, Paul doesn’t change Jewish monotheism because the presence of Jesus in heaven alongside God is consistent with what is possible in Jewish Cosmology.39 As for the second argument, that Paul presupposes or explicitly ascribes divine qualities to/for Christ, C. F. D. Moule expresses the argument in this way: “A person who had recently been crucified, but is found to be alive, with ‘absolute’ life, the life of the age to come, and is found, moreover, to be an inclusive allembracing presence – such a person is beginning to be described in terms appropriate to nothing less than God himself.”40 By ‘incarnation’ we mean ‘embodiment’ in such phrases as ‘the embodiment of God’; N. T. Wright, The Paul Debate (London: SPCK, 2016), 33, 36. 36 L. W. Hurtado, One God, One Lord (2nd ed.; London: T & T Clark, 1998), xii, is principally responsible for this terminology. 37 We use the word ‘worship’ as a catch-all term for whatever scholars say in order to put out counterargument in place. 38 See J. D. G. Dunn, Did the first Christians worship Jesus? (London: SPCK, 2010), 33-37. 39 My worship of a popstar and my worship of my local football team doesn’t make my worship binitarian; I may worship many things. Binitarian worship would require some sort of join to justify such a description. Trinitarian worship has such a join in its trinitarian creeds and liturgy, but this doesn’t have a binitarian parallel in Paul. That is, we don’t have the worship of Christ joined to the worship of the Father; rather, we have the worship of Christ joined to the glory of the Father. 40 C. F. D. Moule, The Origin of Christology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 53. 35 It is important to recognize the exaltation of Christ and his exercise of divine powers and prerogatives alongside that of God the Father. Jesus’ role and position, with the Father working through his son, necessarily involves Jesus’ partaking of the divine nature and attributes, including that of omnipresence. Our argument is that for Paul these were changes for Jesus consequent upon his resurrection and exaltation, changes brought about by God the Father. This isn’t changing Jewish monotheism; it is changing Jewish cosmology. In sum: our contrary (actualist) Christology is that Paul thought of Jesus as a man in the form of God, the son of God, the Jewish messiah, born of the virgin Mary, someone sent from God; who suffered and died for others, and who was raised from the dead and exalted to a position of being lord of all, partaking in divine nature and exercising divine prerogatives. The kind of divine identity in which Jesus was included was a representative identity, but one in which others have also been made to participate by God. Conclusion We should use typological and intertextual interpretation to determine Paul’s Christology because this was his own method for reading Scripture and he himself is writing Scripture. When we do this, we will find that Paul is not redefining Jewish monotheism, nor is he presenting a form of monotheism, to wit, Christological Monotheism. Rather, Paul’s Christology is consistent with existing Jewish monotheism and this is because his Christology affects Jewish cosmology.