It’s the weekend, and that means yet another installment in my book analysis series on Stephen De Young’s The Religion of the Apostles: Orthodox Christianity in the First Century.
In my previous post, I detailed De Young’s argument that in both the Old Testament and Second Temple Judaism itself, there was a clear belief that YHWH, the God of Israel, existed in multiple hypostases, or “persons.” No, ancient Israelites didn’t hold to a clear “Trinitarian” concept of God, but there was an acknowledgement that, in some mysterious way, YHWH indeed existed in multiple hypostases. Furthermore, De Young argues that later, in clear reaction against Christian teaching about the Triune God (which, again, is rooted in the Old Testament, although not explicitly stated), post-AD 70 Rabbinic Judaism actually condemned the previously held Jewish beliefs regarding the “multiple personhood” of God.
If I can put it another way. After the momentous event of the Jewish War of AD 66-70 and the destruction of the Temple in AD 70 was, the only two remaining “Jewish sects” at the time were the Christians and the Pharisees. There thus became the question, “Which group faithfully reflects the true aim and intent of the Old Testament and Second Temple Judaism?” Christianity claimed to be its fulfillment and developed its understanding of the Triune God from Old Testament itself. The Pharisees regrouped and formed Rabbinic Judaism which condemned previously held Jewish views of God as heretical and re-centered everything on the Torah alone.
The Rest of Chapter 1: All About the Way Jesus is Presented in the New Testament
All that said, once De Young argues that the Old Testament presents YHWH as existing in multiple hypostases, he then shows how the New Testament intentionally presents Jesus Christ as the incarnation of one of those hypostases—the incarnation of the Word of God as mentioned in passages like Genesis 15:1 (and the other passages mentioned in my previous post).
He first, though, takes a few pages to refute the latest “flavor of the month” novel academic view put forth by the likes of Bart Ehrman—namely that there was an “evolution” of the Christian faith within the first century. This is the view that argues the Gospel of Mark presents a merely human Jesus, but then the later Gospel of John presents Jesus as completely divine. The same kind of “evolution of the faith,” Ehrman claims, can be seen in the other New Testament writings as well. De Young, quite obviously, is not impressed with such an argument. He argues that the Gospel of Mark focuses more on Christ’s actions, whereas the Gospel of John focuses more on Christ’s words—yet both still emphasize Christ’s divinity.
That being said, I think De Young’s explanation of Mark 6:45-52’s telling of Christ walking on the water is a bit off. He argues that Mark is alluding to Job 9:8, that presents YHWH as “walking on the waves of the sea.” Mark, by presenting Christ as walking on the sea, thus is expressing Christ’s divinity.
Although that is a valid connection, De Young misses a much bigger Old Testament allusion that can be seen in Mark’s unusual statement that Christ was “intending to pass by” the disciples. There are two places in the Old Testament where YHWH “passes by” someone: (1) Exodus 33:18-23, where YHWH “passes by” Moses and revealed His glory to him, and (2) II Kings 19:11, where YHWH “passes by” Elijah. So yes, the only one who treads upon the sea is YHWH, and yes Jesus is identified with YHWH. But by missing this allusion to Exodus 33:18-23 and II Kings 19:11, De Young doesn’t realize that what is happening in Mark 6:45-52 is that Jesus is wanting to “pass by” and reveal His glory to the disciples. But because they basically freak out, he doesn’t do it at the time. It is later, at the Transfiguration in Mark 9, where he does just that—and not surprisingly, who is there with him when he does? Moses and Elijah.
Paul’s Presentation of Christ
The actual earliest New Testament writings are the letters of Paul. And, to confront the idea of some kind of “evolutionary development” of the Christian faith put forth by the likes of Ehrman, De Young highlights three passages in Paul that show, despite what Ehrman claims, the earliest Christians saw Christ as divine. The first passage is Philippians 2:5-11, where Paul presents Christ as originally “being in the very form” of God and then “emptying Himself” into being made in the likeness of men. Here, Christ is presented as eternally existing in the form of God, only later to be incarnated into a man.
The second passage is I Corinthians 8:6, where Paul essentially tweaks the Greek translation of the Shema, which reads, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God; He is one Lord.” Paul then adds, “…yet for us, there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things, and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things and through whom we exist.” Here, Christ is clearly presented as that second hypostasis of God.
The third passage is I Corinthians 12:4-6 (and many other places), where Paul uses the clear Trinitarian pattern of “one Spirit, one Lord, and one God.” Hence, what we find in the earliest Christian writings is not only the view that Christ is the second hypostasis of YHWH, but that YHWH is understood in Trinitarian terms.
The Divine Christ in the General Epistles
From there, De Young proceeds to looking at James, I/II Peter, I/II/III John, and Jude. James, as in Paul, describes Jesus Christ as both “Lord” and “the Lord of Glory.” Both I/II Peter and Jude, De Young points out, represent Christian teaching grounded in the larger Second Temple apocalyptic tradition. More specifically, they contain references to the Enoch literature that identifies the apocalyptic “Son of Man” from the Book of Daniel with the second hypostasis of YHWH and presents Him as the Messiah. Finally, what we see in I/II/III John are clear connections to the Gospel of John. Specifically, John sees Jesus Christ as “the true image of the Father who brings the knowledge of God and eternal life uniquely” (I John 5:20-21).
Jesus Christ in Revelation
And then there is how Christ is presented in the Book of Revelation. The “revelation,” De Young says, is not of some kind of dispensationalist “end of the world,” but rather of who Jesus Christ truly is. I would add that it is also the revelation to the first century Christians who were being persecuted of what God was actually doing, and how their suffering fit into the work of Christ. In any case, De Young focuses on the description of the throne of God in Revelation 4. First, God the Father is described as “the One,” which is a reference to the Shema. Secondly, the one whom John sees sitting on the throne of God is, yes, you guessed it, Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God—the second hypostasis of God.
De Young also points out that in Revelation 1:8, as well as in 4:8-9, YHWH, the “Lord God,” is identified with “the Alpha and Omega, who is, who was, and who is coming, the Almighty. Not surprisingly, Christ identifies Himself as “the first and the last” in 1:17, and as “the Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end” in 22:13-16. What does this tell us? The answer is obvious: Christ is identified with God Himself, namely the second hypostasis of the God of Israel from the Old Testament.
Conclusion
Put all that together, and it is clear that the entirety of the New Testament presents Jesus Christ as the incarnation of the second hypostasis of the God of Israel. Christians didn’t take the originally human person of Jesus of Nazareth and change their entire theology by the end of the first century to declare this mere human was God. From the very beginning of the Church, beginning at Pentecost, the Christian message was that Jesus of Nazareth was the incarnation of the second hypostasis of the God of Israel.
Therefore, later on at the Council of Nicaea, they didn’t “make up” this idea that Jesus was divine in some Greek philosophical way. As De Young puts it, “Nicene Trinitarianism and Orthodox Christology, as they were later set down by the councils were ways of using the then-contemporary Greek language to express the identity of Jesus Christ as it was revealed to the prophets and apostles who bore witness to that revelation and whose testimony is recorded in the Scriptures” (50).
As said before, this idea of the multiple hypostases of God that existed in Second Temple Judaism was only later condemned and deemed heretical by the later-developed post-AD 70 Rabbinic Judaism because it was actually reacting against the way Christians were rooting their understanding of Jesus Christ (and the Holy Spirit) in it.
De Young ends his first chapter by referring to the second-century Christian philosopher Justin Martyr who, in his famous Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, lays out the Old Testament evidence that justifies the Christian identification of Jesus with God. In a nutshell, Martyr points out that throughout the Old Testament, God is presented in a variety of ways: the Spirit, the Glory of the Lord, the Son, Wisdom, an Angel, and the Logos (Word)—essentially all the things De Young has laid out in this chapter.
Next time, I’ll look at what De Young specifically says about the early Christian understanding of the Holy Spirit. Since it is a short chapter, I’ll probably also continue onto chapter 3, where De Young “channels his inner Michael Heiser” in a way by talking about the early Christian understanding of God’s Divine Council and the powers of the spiritual world.
