“God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (2:9–11). What is remarkable is that the words found in italics are taken from Isaiah, where Yahweh, the God of Israel, says of himself, “By myself I have sworn, from my mouth has gone forth in righteousness a word that shall not return [void]: ‘To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear’” (Isa 45:23). The passage from Isaiah reappears in Paul, this time quoted fully in Romans 14:11. Here again the context suggests that Paul understands the Lord, to whom every knee will bow, once again to be none other than Jesus, who “died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living” (Rom 14:9).
Other Yahweh texts cited in Paul’s letters appear to be applied to Jesus, some quoted (e.g., Num 16:5 in 2 Tim 2:19; Isa 40:13 in 1 Cor 2:16; Jer 9:24 in 1 Cor 1:31 and 2 Cor 10:17; Ps 24:1 in 1 Cor 10:26), others alluded to (e.g., Deut 32:21 in 1 Cor 10:22; Mal 1:7, 12 in 1 Cor 10:21; Ps 47:6 in 1 Thess 4:16). In an important and learned study of these passages and others, David Capes wonders how Paul could have held to a higher Christology than to apply to Jesus Old Testament passages that refer to God himself.16 The implication is that Paul—a strict Jewish monotheist—believed that Jesus was in some sense God.
The author of Hebrews, who is thoroughly Jewish in perspective and tradition, begins his letter by saying, “In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by a Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world” (Heb 1:1–2). This Jewish author places Jesus in a category of his own. God has in the past spoken to his people “by the prophets,” but in the last days he has spoken to his people “by a Son.” This clearly implies that Jesus is no ordinary prophet. Far from it; Jesus is the “heir of all things” and it is through Jesus that God “created the world.” This is an astounding claim.
Has the author of Hebrews implied that Jesus is perhaps an angel of some sort? Not at all. The author of Hebrews asserts that Jesus is “much superior to angels” (Heb 1:4). He demonstrates this claim by asking,
For to what angel did God ever say, “Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee”? Or again, “I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son” [cf. Ps 2:7]? And again, when he brings the first-born into the world, he says, “Let all God’s angels worship him” [cf. Deut 32:43, according to the Greek version]. (Heb 1:5–6)
The angels are God’s messengers and servants (“winds” and “flames of fire”), but of his Son God says, “Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever, the righteous scepter is the scepter of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore God, thy God, has anointed thee with the oil of gladness beyond thy comrades” (Heb 1:7–9, quoting Ps 45:6–7). As does Paul in his letters, so the author of Hebrews has applied to Jesus an Old Testament text that speaks of God.
Summary
All four Gospel writers give us essentially the same Jesus: an extraordinary, divine figure who makes extraordinary claims of authority, whose purpose is not to serve himself but to serve—indeed, save—all of humanity. Could such an idea arise from nothing more than a theologically-driven legend? And, if so, who gave it this shape?
The Jesus movement grew out of Jewish soil, a soil that was committed to monotheism and rejected pagan notions of divine men. Exalted Christology—both implicit and explicit—is deeply rooted in the tradition; it won’t do to say that exalted ideas about Jesus, placed on his lips, entered the tradition from non-Jewish sources at a very early stage. Paul is himself a guarantor against such a theory, the man who was a Hebrew of Hebrews, a Pharisee, a zealot for the Law of Moses and a persecutor of the Church. But when he encountered the risen Jesus he began to speak of him in very exalted terms, even applying to him Old Testament texts that in their original context spoke of Yahweh, the God of Israel. None of this came from pagan ideas, which he would never have accepted. It came from his experience of Jesus, reinforced by the Jesus tradition itself, with which he became familiar as he matured in his new faith.
The exalted view of Jesus, or what is usually called high Christology, originated in the sayings and deeds of Jesus himself. It did not originate in some post-Easter gradual development, perhaps under the influence of Greco-Roman paganism. Such a proposed scenario strikes us as highly doubtful. Is it credible that four first-century Gospel writers, of whom at least two, if not three, were Jewish, arrived at such an understanding of Jesus—if he were nothing more than a Galilean holy man, prophet and teacher? Jews would hardly invent a story about a divine man, and a friend of sinners and tax collectors at that. Greeks and Romans would hardly invent a story about a suffering savior, especially if he is supposed to be divine. A crucified Son of God? Nonsense! The antiquity, coherence and—we might say—implausibility of the tradition compel us to conclude that it was Jesus himself who entertained exalted thoughts, not later followers.
Chapter 4—Did James and Paul Preach a Different Gospel?
Unity and Diversity in the Early Church
In the previous chapter, it is argued that the belief that Jesus was divine originated in what Jesus said and did. His resurrection provided confirmation. The Jesus movement concurred on this vital point, but the movement did disagree over some matters, especially when it came to aspects of Jewish Law and custom, and expectations with regard to Gentile converts.1 Some differences of opinion had the potential of being very divisive. Other differences may largely reside in the imagination of modern writers.
Some critics have claimed that James and Paul did not see eye to eye, that in fact they held to two very different understandings of the Christian message, the gospel (or “good news”). For this reason, some even go so far as to claim that Paul is the true founder of the Christian Church, since his theology was markedly different from the theology of Jesus and that of his brother James.2 This idea comes to vivid expression in Reza Aslan’s recent book, when he asserts that “Paul’s Christ had long obliterated any last trace of the Jewish Messiah in Jesus…[Paul’s] conception of Jesus as Christ would have been shocking and plainly heretical, which is why…James and the apostles demand that Paul come to Jerusalem to answer for his deviant teachings.”3 Contrary to this remarkable assertion, we shall see that when their respective arguments are fully understood, Paul and James are not at odds with one another in any significant way.
The Message of James: “Without Works, Faith Is Dead”
Tradition holds that the New Testament letter of James was penned by James the brother of Jesus (see Mark 6:3, where the names of the brothers of Jesus are mentioned). The letter doesn’t actually make this claim explicitly; it simply begins, “James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (James 1:1). Not all Church Fathers believed the letter was written by James, but in the end most did, and so it was included in the canon of Scripture. Today a number of scholars, including some who have written major commentaries on James, have concluded that the letter probably was written by the brother of Jesus.4 One reason for concluding this is the letter’s rather modest claim to be written by “a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.” In apocryphal and pseudepigraphal writings, claims of prominent authorship typically are more explicit. In this case, if the author is claiming to be the brother of Jesus, then why not say so? Why not make more of such a distinguished connection? The failure to exploit fully this potential is in favor of the traditional identification of the author.
James first appears in the book of Acts in the context of King Agrippa I’s violence against the leaders of the Church. In Acts 12:1–5 we have an account of these actions:
About
