Paul's Christology of Divine Identity © Richard ... - For an Answer

Bauckham: Paul's Christology Page 8
take the divine name to designate either God or Christ, occasionally even in the same
text cited on different occasions (Rom 11:34; 1 Cor 2:16: Isa 40:13).
The texts about YHWH that Paul applies to Jesus rather than to God are quite diverse
and cannot all be explained by one principle. But what has rarely been noticed is that
most of these texts are (or would have been read by Paul as) expressions of
eschatological monotheism. We can certainly claim that a major factor in Paul's
application of texts about YHWH to Jesus is his christological reading of the
eschatological monotheism of the Jewish Scriptures.
3. Eschatological monotheism in the christological YHWH texts
When we consider the scriptural texts about YHWH that Paul applies to Jesus within
their scriptural context, it is remarkable how many of them either function as
monotheistic assertions in themselves or relate to a monotheistic assertion in the
fairly immediate context: 25
Joel 2:32 [Rom 10:13; cf. 1 Cor 1:2]: A standard monotheistic formula occurs in
2:27: 'You shall know ... that I the Lord (YHWH) am your God, and that there is no
other besides me.'
Isa 40:13 [1 Cor 2:15; cf. Rom 11:34]: This verse is a monotheistic denial that in the
creation of the world YHWH needed or received any advice from any other being. It
was the source of a standard Jewish way of claiming that God created the world alone
and denying any polytheistic notion of creation as a collaborative project of several
gods (Isa 40:13 is echoed in this sense in Sir 42:21; 2 Enoch 33:4aJ; Philo, Opif. 23;
cf. also 4 Ezra 6:6; Josephus, C. Ap. 2.192). In its own context in Isaiah 40, verse 13
belongs to that chapter's lengthy exposition of the incomparability of YHWH, which
in turn relates to the eschatological monotheism of the following chapters: the
expectation that, since YHWH is the one and only Creator and Lord, YHWH will
come to be acknowledged by all the nations as the incomparable one.
Jer 9:24 [1 Cor 1:31; 2 Cor 10:17]: This verse is implicitly monotheistic in the sense
that it makes YHWH the only proper subject of boasting and counters the selfdeification
of the arrogant who boast of their own wisdom, power or wealth (9:23; cf.
Isa 2, discussed below). In Jeremiah 9:23-24 there is no indication of an
eschatological context, but this passage also occurs, inserted into the song of Hannah,
in 1 Kingdoms 2:10 in connexion with words that would certainly have been read as
messianic in early Judaism ('he will judge the ends of the earth ... and will exalt the
horn of his Messiah').
Isa 45:23 [Rom 14:11; Phil 2:10-11]: The accumulation of monotheistic assertions in
Isaiah 45:18-25 ('I am the Lord and there is none besides'; 'I am God and there is no
other besides me'; 'there is none but me'; 'I am God and there is no other') make it the
most insistently monotheistic passage in Isaiah 40-55. Moreover, verses 22-23 are
the most explicit assertion of eschatological monotheism in these chapters. The
accumulation of monotheistic rhetoric climaxes in YHWH's oath that all will in the
end acknowledge him as the only righteous and saving God.
25 The translations that follow are from LXX.