Corpus-Paul

["Jeffrey B. Gibson" <jgibson000 AT home.com>]

JERRY SUMNEY wrote:
> Dave Hindley noted the scarcity of references to
> pre-existence for Christ in
> Paul (I think by you 3 times you meant in the Pauline Corpus, not the
> whole
> NT)and commented that there might be a gnostic sort of viewpoint reflected
> in those passages.  However, note Charles Talbert, "Myth of a
> descending-ascending redeemer myth in Mediterranean antiquity," _NTS_
> 22
> (1976): 418-40 for evidence that the idea of a pre-existent descending
> and
> ascending redeemer figure appears outside a gnostic framework.
I wonder if, in the discussion of NT passages that seem to speak of Jesus
as pre-existent, we are (a) taking them too literally and (b) looking in
the wrong place for the context in which they took on whatever meaning
they would have conveyed to those who heard them.

Instead of Gnosticsim, should we not be looking at Judaism and what it said was "pre-existent", as well as what was being done by Jews when one asserted the "pre-existence" of what was said to be "pre-existent" (Torah, the "name" of the Messiah", "the heavenly throne",  Divine Wisdom, etc.),  as the interpretative matrix in which these statements about Jesus (or the Logos which, ala GJohn,  becomes incarnate in him) take on meaning and derive their particular significance and theological force? If so, then it seems to me that what  "Paul" is doing in Colossians and elsewhere when he speaks of Jesus/Christ as "preexistent" is carrying on a debate parallel with the debate that Luke was carrying on with his ascription of Caesar's titles to Jesus, of where it is that the God of the universe is most powerfully and bindingly known/to be found.

So I guess what I'm asking is whether we should view "preexistence" language not so much ontologically as functionally within the framework of the question of "where do you find God and his purposes revealed?".

Yours,

Jeffrey
--
Jeffrey B. Gibson, D.Phil. (Oxon.)
7423 N. Sheridan Road #2A
Chicago, Illinois 60626
e-mail jgibson000 AT home.com