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  • From: "Chris Tilling" <chris AT christilling.de>
  • To: <corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Corpus-Paul] Approaches to the question of divine-Christology in the NT
  • Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2005 12:37:30 +0200

Dear All,

Firstly, thank you to you all for your responses to my previous postings.

Some more musings on the matter of (Pauline) divine-Christology.

Richard Bauckham, in his increasingly recognised 'God Crucified', suggests that approaches to divine-Christology in NT research can be divided into three approaches. Firstly, there are those (like Casey and Harvey) who maintain that Jewish monotheism is simply too strict (i.e. a monotheism that cannot accommodate any other divine being next to or included in the God of Israel), and therefore cannot accommodate a divine-Christology. Secondly, there are those who deny, in one way or another, a strict monotheism in Second Temple Judaism (most notoriously Barker, but also Rowland, etc.). Thirdly, is the approach that Bauckham himself identifies with, that indeed Second Temple Judaism maintained a strict monotheism, but nevertheless held a divine-Christology 'by identifying Jesus directly with the one God of Israel' (p. 4. And for the rest of the discussion see pages 2-4).

I am left with a couple of questions and I would be interested to hear your response to them.

1) Bauckham associates Hurtado with the second approach outlined above. But is this correct? In no way does Hurtado say that the risen Lord is like an intermediary figure, but rather that a significant mutation has taken place identifying Jesus with the one God of Israel (thus Hurtado's 'binitarianism').

2) Bauckham initiated this discussion with the claim that his summary of the approaches is 'Simplifying somewhat the range of views for the sake of illustration' (p. 2). Can anyone think of any scholars who do not sit in one or other of these approaches, or is Bauckham's outline complete?

Thanks for any feedback,

Chris Tilling

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  • [Corpus-Paul] Approaches to the question of divine-Christology in the NT, Chris Tilling, 06/15/2005

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