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Jesus and the God of IsraelMonotheism and Christ’s deity?JESUS AND THE GOD OF ISRAEL This is no easy read, but the contents are very rewarding. The book is an expansion on what was originally published as God Crucified in 1998. This forms the first chapter and is an extended essay on how the first Christians would have understood the relationship of Jesus to God. There is no question that the Jews at the time of Jesus were monotheists. So how did they come to believe that Jesus could be God? Many theologians have suggested that the doctrine somehow evolved over time. Perhaps the early Christians speculated that Jesus was some kind of angel or semi-divine being? Or maybe primitive views of Jesus as a ‘son of God’ developed over centuries to become the rather elaborate doctrine of the trinity. Bauckham demonstrates from close reading of first-century texts that this kind of scenario is unlikely and unnecessary. From the earliest period, the first Christians were identifying Jesus with the God of Israel. For a start there is no question that Jews in the first century were staunchly monotheist. Angels and other supernatural beings were important, but they were never confused with God — only God is supreme ruler and creator of all that exists. Everything else is part of the creation. However, the New Testament identifies Jesus with the God of Israel in its very earliest texts; ‘They include Jesus in the unique divine sovereignty over all things, they include him in the unique divine creation of all things, they identify him by the divine name which names the unique divine identity, and they portray him as accorded the worship which, for Jewish monotheists, is recognition of the unique divine identity’ (p.19). How could this be given the strict monotheism of Judaism? What Bauckham demonstrates is that the Hebrew background to divinity allowed for a person to be identified with God. The problems for this belief arise more from later Greek philosophical debates than from Jewish monotheism. Greek philosophical language struggled to express the idea of three persons and one God and it was this philosophical problem that the later church councils sought to solve in response to heresies. However, the early Christians were more concerned with ‘who’ God is than ‘what’ God is and so they affirmed Jesus as the God of Israel without getting waylaid by potentially alien philosophical definitions. Bauckham describes the book as a set of ‘working papers’. We should eagerly anticipate more from him on this theme. Dr. Chris Sinkinson, © Evangelicals Now - June 2009 |