|
by
Doug Ward |
Early Christians faced persecution from Roman authorities
for refusing to worship the gods of Rome, including the Emperor. Some were even
put to death for this offense. One famous example was Polycarp, bishop of
Smyrna and disciple of the apostle John, who was executed by the Romans in 155
AD.
As
followers of the Jewish teacher Jesus of Nazareth, Christians recognize only
one God: Yahweh, the God of Israel. From the beginning, though, Christians have
also accorded divine status to Jesus, considering him to be included in the
unique divine identity (1 Cor 8:6).
We
see evidence of early Christian devotion to Jesus in Phil 2:6-11, which praises
Jesus for relinquishing his divine status in order to be born as a human and
die on a cross. For this supreme sacrifice, "God has highly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of
Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and
every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the
Father."
Many
scholars believe that this passage is part of an early Christian hymn. It makes
reference to Isa 45:22-23, in which God declares his uniqueness and
incomparability and then asserts that "to me every knee shall bow, every
tongue shall swear allegiance." Since Isaiah says that Yahweh alone will
be universally honored and Philippians states that Jesus will be worshiped by
all, Phil 2:9-11 implies the deity of Jesus.
|
Hints
of a Godhead |
How did those staunchly monotheistic early Christians conclude that
Jesus is God in human form? They seem to have drawn this conclusion from the
testimony of the Hebrew Scriptures and their personal experience with the
resurrected Messiah.
During
the centuries before the coming of Jesus, the Scriptures record a number of
instances in which God sent a special representative to interact with people.
Often this representative is both distinguished from, and yet identified with,
God himself.
One
example involves the mysterious man who wrestled all night with the patriarch
Jacob and then gave him the new name Israel ("he strives with God").
Afterward Jacob was convinced that he had wrestled with God (Gen 32:24-30). The
prophet Hosea later wrote in parallel clauses that Jacob "strove with
God" and "strove with the angel" (Hosea 12:3-4). Jacob made the
same kind of identification between God and his angel at the end of his life
when he blessed Joseph, Ephraim, and Manasseh (Gen 48:15-16).
Later,
at the time of the Exodus, God told the Israelites at Mount Sinai that He would
send an angel to be with them on the trip to the Promised Land. This angel bore
God's Name, was to be obeyed, and had the power to forgive sins (Exod 23:21). All of these characteristics suggest the
angel's divine status. After the Israelites reached the Promised Land, an angel
of the Lord stated that he had brought them out of Egypt, made an unbreakable
covenant with them, and been disobeyed by them (Judges 2:1-5). These statements
again closely connect the angel of Yahweh with Yahweh.
Daniel's
vision recorded in Dan 7 includes a scene in which two divine figures appear
together. First the "Ancient of Days" is described, seated on a
fiery, wheeled throne (vv 9-10). Then "with the
clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man," who was given
authority over an everlasting kingdom by the Ancient of Days (vv 13-14).
The
phrase "with the clouds of heaven" in Dan 7:13 is significant. In the
Ancient Near East, it is deities who are pictured riding on the clouds. In
particular, in the literature of Ugarit, a northern neighbor of Israel, the god
Baal is said to ride on the clouds. On the other hand, in the Bible Yahweh is
portrayed as a cloud rider (Deut 33:26; Ps 68:33;
104:3; Isa 19:1), sending the message that he, not Baal, is the ruler of the
universe. The imagery of Dan 7:13-14, then, suggests that the second figure in
Daniel's vision is both human ("one like a son of man") and divine (a
cloud rider).1
|
Identifying
the Second Power in Heaven |
The vision of Dan 7:9-14 portrays two distinct divine figures in
the same scene. Scriptures like the ones we have been considering led to
speculations during the Second Temple period about the existence of "two
powers in heaven."2 These
scriptures suggested that the unique divine identity, the echad
described in the Shema, might be a kind of compound unity.
The
Jewish literature of this period suggested a number of possibilities for who
Daniel's son of man, the second power in heaven, might be. The candidates
included humans like Adam, Enoch, Jacob, and Moses. Angels like Michael were
also proposed.3
We
know from the Gospels that Jesus often spoke of himself as Son of Man. This
enigmatic designation can refer either to a human being, as in the book of
Ezekiel, or to the divine figure in Daniel's vision. Jesus' use of the phrase
may have added to the speculation that surrounded his identity (Matt 16:13-14).
On
the eve of his crucifixion, Jesus made clear which Son of Man he was. When
asked by Caiaphas if he was the promised Messiah, he replied that "from
now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming
on the clouds of heaven" (Matt 26:64). Jesus acknowledged that he was the
Cloud Rider, the divine Son of Man.
Based
on the words of their Master, the disciples of Jesus were quick to connect him
with earlier visible manifestations of Yahweh like the angel of Exodus 23. The
apostle Paul wrote that Jesus had accompanied the Israelites on the Exodus (1 Cor 10:4). Jude asserted that Jesus "saved a people
out of the land of Egypt" (Jude 5). The testimony of the first followers
of Jesus laid the foundation for the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
1On this topic see
"The Rider of the Clouds," chapter 29 in The Unseen Realm:
Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible by Michael S. Heiser, Lexham Press, Bellingham,
WA, 2015.
2See Alan F. Segal, Two
Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism,
Baylor University Press, Waco, Texas, 2012.
3Dr.
Michael S. Heiser surveys these proposals in The
Jewish Trinity: How the Old Testament Reveals the Christian Godhead, Logos
Mobile Education course OT 291, Logos Bible Software, Bellingham, WA, 2014.
File
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On 21 Feb 2019, 10:12.
