Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T08:30:38.190Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“My Lord and my God”: The locus of confession

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 April 2024

Timothy Radcliffe O P
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Most New Testament scholars would agree with Raymond Brown when he claims that there are only three passages in Scripture which indisputably call Jesus God, and that two of these are in John’s gospel, in the first verse and at the very end, in Thomas’ confession (20:28). And theologians are divided in their reaction to this “high” johannine christology between those who welcome it as an unambiguous declaration of the divinity of Christ, the first step towards Nicea, and those who find it very odd, perhaps intolerably odd, to address any man, even this man, as God and so can only accept it as an eccentric way of claiming that Jesus is the definitive revelation of God, or that, at worst, this is the beginning of a dogmatic tradition that betrays the man Jesus. I would like to suggest that the way forward is to recognise that something very curious is indeed happening in the Prologue and in Thomas’ confession but rather than cope with these odd statements by pretending that they are actually saying something much less scandalous (“Jesus is the man who definitively reveals God”), we must admit that they only have meaning within a particular context.

It should be possible to write a sociology of the early church which would show that particular sorts of christological claims only came to be made at a certain point in the history of the church because it was only then that the ecclesial context existed in which such claims could make sense.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 65 , Issue 764 , February 1984 , pp. 52 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © 1984 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Brown, R.E., Jesus, God and Man, London and Dublin, 1968Google Scholar.

2 e.g. John Robinson in “Christology—The Debate continues”, Theology Vol. LXXXV, Sept. 1982pp324—338.Google Scholar

3 I accept the arguments of James Dunn that we should not accept Romans 9:5 as a confession of Christ's divinity. See Christology in the Making, London, 1980, page 45.

4 ibid., page 34.

5 Studia Biblica, Vol III, ed. E.A. Livingstone, Martin Hengel, “Hymn and Christology”, pp 173—197.

6 ibid., p.194

7 loc.cit.

8 Lash, Nicholas, “How Large is a ‘Language Game?’”, inTheology Vol. LXXXVII, January, 1984pp19—28CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and also Fergus Kerr, O.P., “Wittgenstein and Theological studies”, New Blackfiars, Vol 63, 1982, pp.500—508.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Meeks, Wayne A., The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul, New Haven and London, 1983, page 74Google Scholar.

10 I owe the phrase to Dr. Robert Morgan.

11 ibid., page 91.

12 Kasemann, Ernst, Commentary on Romans, London, 1980, page 104Google Scholar.

13 Beker, J. Christiaan, Paul the Apostle, Edinburgh, 1980, p.332Google Scholar.

14 Dahl, N.A., Studies in Paul: Theology for the Early Christian Mission, Minneapolis, 1977Google Scholar.

15 cited from Kasemann, op.cit., p.103.

16 Howard, G., “The Tetragram and the New Testament”, inThe Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol 96, 1977, pp.63—83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 For Raymond Brown's discussion of the evidence, cf. The Gospel according to John, London, 1971, Vol. 1, page17.Google Scholar

18 Culpepper, R.A., “The Pivot of John's Prologue. New Testament Studies, Vol. 27, 1980, pp1—31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 Martin, J.L., History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel, New York, 1968, p.33Google Scholar.

20 Hooker, M.D., “The Johannine Prologue and the Messianic Secret”, New Testament Studies, Vol 21, 1974pp.40—58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 ibid., page 55.

22 Meeks, Wayne A., “The Man from Heaven in Johannine Sectarianism”, inThe Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 91, 1972, p.70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23 ibid., page 69.

24 Brown, Raymond E., The Community of the Beloved Disciple, London, 1979.Google Scholar

25 ibid., page 35.

26 “Theos in the New Testament”, Theological Investigations, Vol. 1., London, 1961, page133.Google Scholar