Nearly a century ago, Paul Volz, who is known primarily for his research on early Jewish eschatology, wrote a provocative analysis of the divine spirit in Jewish antiquity; one quarter of this study is devoted to “the spirit hypostasis” (Geisthypostase), that is, spirit (πνεῦμα) interpreted as an independent being rather than a natural element, such as wind, or the spiritual element of humankind, such as the soul.1 In the context of this intriguing discussion, Volz observed that “Philo unequivocally describes the spirit as an hypostasis,” for it mediates God's own power (Mittelwesen), accomplishes concrete actions, such as visiting and leading to truth, and possesses particular characteristics, such as invisibility and complete wisdom. According to Volz, however, Philo understood this spirit hypostasis less as a personal being than a cosmic principle:

The personal character of the Philonic pneuma normally retreats into the background, despite its hypostatic character. The reason for this lies probably in Stoic influence, from which Philo took over the panpsychic pneuma, and moreover in the Philonic conception of the Logos, alongside which the pneuma could never fully be developed.

One of the strangest texts to be included in recent collections of biblical pseudepigrapha is that known as the Ladder of Jacob. Known only from the Slavonic Tolkovaya Paleya, this text elaborates on the story of Jacob's dream at Bethel in Gen 28:11–22, adding details to the vision described there and containing a prayer and angelic revelation nowhere present in the biblical narrative. It is clear that the Slavonic text is a translation from Greek; it appears likely to me that the Greek is itself a translation from an original Aramaic or Hebrew text dating from, roughly speaking, the Second Temple period.

The argument that the Gospel of Thomas is or is not independent of the canon has often turned on the issue of whether or not there are visible in the text of Thomas words or phrases that arose in the redactional efforts of the individual evangelists. If specific Lukan or Matthean redactional traits of a saying, for example, are present in the text of Thomas, then, the argument runs, the Gospel of Thomas must have post-dated and been derived from that author and work and not from some independent tradition. The argument has not yet been made, so far as I am aware, for influence in the other direction, that sayings of the community that produced the Gospel of Thomas have influenced the text of the Synoptic Gospels. The method used in this study is the same: where Thomas redaction is found in the text of Luke, then the text of Luke must post-date and be dependent on sayings formed in Thomas Christianity.

The question of how human language functions in relation to God constitutes one of the most difficult problems in Christian theology. I contend that Christian notions of language about God should be constructed in light of christology, since both are concerned with the relationship between the human and the divine. Northrop Frye, drawing on the poetry and thought of William Blake, speaks of the importance of “the double vision of a spiritual and a physical world simultaneously present” in understanding how religious language works. This fundamental quality of double vision or tension characterizes the relationship between the human and the divine both in language about God and in christology. In this article I shall examine several aspects of the relationship between the human and the divine: first, the basic problem of theological language as discussed by George Lindbeck; second, the notion of theological language as metaphorical, as discussed by Sallie McFague; and third, christology as found in the Chalcedonian definition of Christian faith. I shall conclude that it is appropriate to construct notions of language about God in light of Chalcedonian christology.

Throughout the history of Christian thought the theological role of scripture as source of transcendent meaning has exercised considerable influence on the art and manner of biblical interpretation. In the early church the problems revolved mostly around the canon, specifically although not exclusively the New Testament, as defining the confines of scripture. The question arose, therefore, which biblical writings were divinely inspired and which were of doubtful origin. The latter were unacceptable for the Christian communities that had broken away from their ancestral Judaic religion. Even before the canon was fixed, however, the problems shifted from the divinely inspired composition of the Bible to its intrinsic signification; interpreters saw scriptural language itself as infused with theological content. As exegetical positions led to the development of credal statements that solidified into theological dogma, the early church established a link between biblical interpretation and sound doctrine. By enforcing sanctioned interpretations through effective excommunication, an ever more powerful church sealed the dominance of orthodoxy over heresy with the nearly divine force of ecclesiastical authority. In the church-dominated culture of the Middle Ages, the adequacy of scriptural interpretation—its method, its content, the credentials of its practitioners—often depended on its conformity with an expanding theological tradition.