In reading the Book "The Only True God" by James F. McGrath some startling observations were made concerning Monotheism and the Letters attributed to Paul, especially concerning Jesus and the exalted position given him by Jehovah.
"That Pauls application of the divine name "Lord" and of Yahweh text from the Hebrew Bible to Jesus is intended to present Jesus as God's agent, who shares in God's rule and authority, becomes clear when one considers Romans14.9-11, where Paul takes up the language of Isaiah 45.23 once again, but here emphazes that the throne of judgment is ultimately God's, even though Christ is the Lord through whom the judgment is carried out. In 1 Corinthians 15.27-28 Paul makes clear the roles played by Jesus and God: Jesus is the "(son of Man)" to whom all things are to be subjected.
That is to say, Jesus is the representative of humankind whom God has chosen to be his agent and mediator of judgment" pg 49-50
It does not configure that Jewish nor Christian monotheism was compromised by attaching the divine Name nor ascribing some sort of proskeneo (worship, obescience)to others to the ultimalte exhaltation to the supreme God or Lord,( Give thanks to the God of gods....give thanks to the Lord of lords. Ps.136.2,3) who is exalted over all as Almighty God Jehovah.
"To put it another way, readings of Philippians 2.6-11 which emphasize the exalted status of Jesus and the application to him of language which applied to Yahweh in Isaiah tend to emphasize only part of what this passage actually says. That Paul believed Jesus occupied this exalted status can hardly be questioned. However, this text makes equally clear thst Jesus was exalted by God to this postition, and the clear implication is that this was a position he did not previously occupy. God exalted him." pg 51
"In ancient Judaism, God could empower his agent to wield his full power and authority, precisely because any figure so empowered always remained by definition subject and subordinate to the one empowering him, namely God." pg 51
In conclusion, unless forced to understand these text in some sort of unnatural way. We must go with the clear and unambigious text and let other text help us along the way.
McGrath is right that Paul never abandons Jewish monotheism; where his thesis misfires is in assuming that the only way to preserve it is to reduce Jesus to a commissioned agent who merely channels God’s rule. Philippians 2:6–11 will not bear that reading. The hymn begins, not with an exaltation that manufactures a status Jesus lacked, but with a pre-existent subject “being in the form of God” and already possessing “equality with God” that he refuses to exploit. The idiom “did not regard [equality with God] a thing to be grasped/exploited” presupposes the equality is his to use; it is precisely because the Son has it that his self-emptying is humility rather than aspiration. Paul then narrates the incarnational descent—taking the form of a slave, becoming in the likeness of men, being found in human schema—and only after obedience unto death does God “hyper-exalt” him and “give him the Name above every name,” so that Isaiah 45:23’s universal homage to Yahweh is now rendered to Jesus. That is not the shaliach principle scaled up; it is the inclusion of Jesus in the unique divine identity. In Second-Temple usage “the Name” functions as a reverent stand-in for the Tetragrammaton; to bestow “the Name above every name” is not the conferral of a mere title but the public revelation of who he is. This is why Paul’s climax is not “to the glory of Jesus instead of God,” but “to the glory of God the Father”: the worship of Jesus as Kyrios is the manner in which Israel’s monotheistic worship is now rendered.
ReplyDeleteAppealing to Romans 14 and 1 Corinthians 15 does not rescue an agency-only reading. In Romans 14 Paul frames the judgment as God’s and then immediately applies Isaiah 45:23’s “to me every knee shall bow” to the risen Christ; in 2 Corinthians 5:10 he can call the very same tribunal “the judgment seat of Christ.” The interchangeability is the point: the Lordship of Christ is not a delegated magistracy set alongside God but the eschatological manifestation of God’s own rule in and through the Son. First Corinthians 15:24–28 likewise speaks to economy, not ontology. The Son “hands over the kingdom to the Father” and is “subjected” so that “God may be all in all,” language about the mediatorial office assumed in the Incarnation and brought to consummation when the work of subduing enemies is complete. It does not say the Son ceases to share the Father’s nature; it says the incarnate, messianic reign terminates in doxological transparency to the Father. The Fathers never stumbled here: what is “handed over” is the mediatorial kingdom the Son exercises as the last Adam; what abides is the eternal communion of the Son with the Father, in whom “all the fullness of deity dwells” bodily.
Nor does the JEWISH-AGENT analogy fit the raw data of Paul’s language. Jewish emissaries could represent, but they did not receive the exclusive cultic honors of Israel’s God, nor were they placed on the Creator side of the Creator–creature divide. Yet Paul habitually repurposes Yahweh-texts for Jesus (Isa 45; Joel 2 in Rom 10:9–13), reworks the Shema itself into a dyadic confession (“one God, the Father … and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and we through him”), and speaks of calling on, praying to, and worshiping the Lord Jesus in ways Second-Temple Jews reserved for God alone. Angels refuse such honor; the Son receives it. “Lord of lords” in Psalm 136 magnifies Yahweh’s unique supremacy; the New Testament ascribes that same supreme lordship to the Lamb without hint of idolatry because the earliest Christians understood Jesus to belong within the identity of the one God they worshiped.
Finally, “God exalted him” proves only what the hymn itself celebrates: the Father publicly vindicates the Son’s obedient humiliation by enthroning him as the crucified-and-risen Messiah and revealing the Name he always possessed. The exaltation is not an ontological promotion from creature to deity; it is the eschatological unveiling of the Son’s lordship in history. Read naturally, without forcing alien categories onto Paul’s Greek, Philippians 2 does not give us a merely empowered proxy. It gives us the eternal Son who, already equal with God, refuses to clutch his prerogatives, descends in obedient love, and is acclaimed with the worship Isaiah reserves for Yahweh—“Jesus Christ is Lord”—to the glory of God the Father.
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