1

Paul:
Jewish Monotheist
or Christ-Worshipper?
2

Contents

3- Introduction

7- Authors

15- Philippians 2.5-11: ‘An Incarnational Hymn’

33- I Corinthians 8.1-6: ‘A Christian Shemā?’

45- Conclusion

Bibliography
3

Introduction

Our focus in this essay is on the worship of Jesus in earliest Christianity,

specifically in the writings of Paul. Hurtado’s work has been groundbreaking in this
field.1 His basic thesis is that the driving force of all the christological development
and innovation of early Christianity, documented in the texts of the New Testament,
was what he terms ‘Christ devotion’. Hurtado offers a refreshing alternative to the
traditional approaches to the christological texts, which focused purely on the
theoretical side of christology; that is “the beliefs about Jesus held by earliest
Christians and the factors that shaped them”2. ‘Christ devotion’ is a much broader
term than christology, including christology within the wider matters of the role of
Jesus in the beliefs and religious life of ancient Christians. It is these wider matters,
Hurtado argues, that influence and inform the actual texts of christology which we
still possess.
Hurtado’s work is important, I feel. He reminds us that doctrines such as
monotheism and christology were never merely theoretical doctrines in the ancient
world. If we are to understand the motivating factors behind the New Testament’s
christology we must consider first the earliest Christian patterns of Christ-devotion
and understand how it was that Christian believers, especially Jewish monotheists,
came to reverence Jesus as divine.
A few words about terminology. When I say ‘second temple Judaism’ I am of
course referring to the form of the Jewish religion that began with the post-exilic
rebuilding of the temple, was current during the early decades of the first century, and
came to an abrupt end in 70CE with the destruction of Jerusalem. Sometimes ‘ancient
Judaism’ is used to refer to the same period. My scope in this essay does not stretch
beyond the early first century.
This stage in Jewish history was characterised by a firm commitment to the
one true God of Judaism, YHWH, and to him alone. Monotheism was a way of life
for first-century Jews; much more than a theoretical doctrine. It acted as a boundary
marker, distinguishing the Jewish people from the near-universal polytheism of the
ancient world. There is strong evidence that the Shemā was in use as a daily prayer at

1
Hurtado, One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish Monotheism (1998 2nd
edition)
2
Ibid., pviii
4

this time. First century Jews were self-conscious monotheists, and this is what I refer
to by the phrase ‘Jewish monotheism’.
By ‘early Christian’ I mean the generation of Christianity either contemporary
to, or earlier than, Paul. At no point do I use ‘early Christian’ to refer to a stage of
Christianity’s development post 70CE. My interest is in the earliest observable stage
of Christianity, hence my focus on Paul.

At some point during the first century a mutation in Jewish monotheism

occurred. It happened in Christian circles and among Christian believers, all of whom
had inherited a commitment to that same monotheism from their Jewish mother-
tradition. The result of the mutation is expounded most fully in the words of John 1:
“and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us”. The ‘mutation’ consisted of an
identification between God and Jesus that was unprecedented in Jewish monotheism,
and included the worship of Jesus by Christian communities. How, and when this
mutation occurred are matters of some debate. Does Paul represent a step towards
that crucial mutation or does his christology show this mutation to be already present
in the early church? What categories or concepts did Christians draw upon to justify
their mutation? Was it a Gentile mutation or are its roots to be found in Jewish
monotheistic tradition itself? These questions will all be asked during the course of
this essay.
But why Paul? Of what use is the thirteenth apostle, the apostle to the
Gentiles, in addressing the question of a Jewish mutation?
To answer the question of why Paul is important I make no apologies for
relying on Hurtado’s excellent justification of Pauline study in Lord Jesus Christ.3
Firstly, it must be noted that Paul’s writings are the earliest Christian writings we
possess, and that therefore the Christianity of Paul and his churches is the earliest
form of Christianity to which we have undisputed first-hand sources, all of which are
dated within thirty years or so of Jesus’ crucifixion (in the 50s and 60s CE). This fact
alone makes Paul of crucial importance when considering the origins of Christology.
Secondly, Paul’s own acquaintance with the Jesus-movement was both
extensive and extremely early. His conversion is dated, at the latest, to within two
years of Jesus’ death, and following his conversion he spent time with Peter, James

3
Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity, 2003 Wm. B. Eerdmans, pp80-
85
5

and Barnabus, influential leaders of the Jerusalem church, and many other Christians
throughout Judea and Palestine (Gal1.15-24, 1Cor15.3-8, 2Cor11.32-33). Moreover,
Paul’s familiarity with Palestinian Jewish Christians goes back even further, prior to
his conversion, when as a Pharisee he attempted to destroy the fledgling Christian
movement (Gal1.13-14, 1Cor15.9, Phil3.6).
Thirdly, Paul’s letters show a great deal of disagreement with other Christians
over circumcision, trouble in the churches, and defective views of faith, but “nothing
in Paul’s letters indicates any awareness that his fundamental view of Christ was
unique or that he had made any serious innovation in the way Christians before him
had regarded the exalted Jesus”4. When Paul talks about the status of the risen Lord
he is never trying to convince his readers of his beliefs, in fact he assumed such a
familiarity with the Christology he expounded that he often uses it as a basis to argue
from.5
Fourthly, Paul was a Jewish Christian. Both his Judaism and his Christianity
are important for this essay. Paul’s letters are heavily indebted to Jewish conceptions
and attitudes, Paul himself being a self-defined Jew (Rom9.1-4). He appeals to
Jewish conceptions in his arguments, even when introducing an apparent break with
tradition (e.g. Gal3 where he appeals to Abraham to argue against the circumcision of
Gentile converts). But at the same time Paul was a Christian convert. He had
persecuted the earliest followers of Jesus, inspired by his ‘zeal’ for Judaism (Gal1.13-
14), but a dramatic experience whereby God “revealed his Son” in/to Paul (Gal.1.15-
16) caused a complete turnabout in his attitude to Jesus of Nazareth and to those who
followed him. Paul went from staunch opponent of the Christian message to avid
promoter of the same message, himself being persecuted by the Jewish authorities (cf.
2Cor11.24-26). But what was it that caused Paul to persecute the Church originally
and then to become the subject of persecution? Why did the pre-Christian Saul feel it
was necessary to oppose this new Jewish sect, and why did subsequent Jewish
authorities feel it was necessary to discipline Paul as a member of this sect? The
answers, I submit, were Christology and Christ-Devotion. The ways that the earliest
Christians imaged and reverenced Jesus was felt by other Jewish monotheists to be a
serious breach of true Jewish monotheism, and this was one of the main reasons that
the early Church experienced conflict with the Jewish authorities right from her
4
Hurtado, One God, One Lord, p4
5
e.g. Phil.2, where Christ’s example is used to urge humility with one another, and 1Cor8, where a
statement of Christian belief in vv5-6 is a cause for brotherly love.
6

conception. It must be noted that there exists no direct Jewish source from the early
first century that tells us what the attitude of the Jewish religious leaders was towards
the early Church’s Christology and Christ-Devotion. However, post-70CE Jewish
sources are explicit in their condemnation of it, famously interpreting Christian
devotion as implying “two powers in heaven”, and we must assume that pre-70CE
Jews held a similar view, especially when we take secondary evidence into account. 6

The two main chapters of this essay will focus on Philippians 2.5-11 and
1Corinthians 8.6. Both these Pauline passages, I will argue, represent a genuine
‘mutation’ of Jewish monotheism, and show that the identification of Jesus with the
one God of Israel had very early beginnings, as the christology Paul presents is not
one which he considers controversial. Both passages use the title “Lord” of Jesus
with divine intent and both passages incorporate explicitly monotheistic Old
Testament passages in order to make their point.
Before I begin my exegesis, I feel it may be helpful to introduce the main
authors whose work has informed this essay, and whose names will make quite
regular appearances throughout.

6
Cf. Hurtado, ‘Pre- 70CE Jewish Opposition to Christ-Devotion’, Journal of Theological Studies 50
(1999)
7

Authors

One of the most influential contemporary scholars in the study of

christological origins is J. D. G. Dunn. Dunn’s 1980 book, Christology in the Making
set a landmark in the study of the origins of the doctrine of the Incarnation, forcing all
those who followed to grapple with this weighty tome.
Dunn’s aim in Christology was to trace the origins of the Christian belief that
Jesus was both pre-existent and divine. He sees the statement of John 1.14 that “the
Word became flesh” as a clear indication of Incarnational christology, and he wants to
discover how this became a standard Christian confession. Unlike Bauckham,
Hurtado and Wright (our other key authors), Dunn doesn’t believe that Paul’s
christology was ‘Incarnational’. Paul’s is an earlier stage in christological
development, and because of his Jewish monotheistic convictions he cannot bring
himself to identify Christ with the one God of Israel in this way. His christology
makes steps towards the idea of Incarnation, with his use of ‘Wisdom’ as a way of
understanding Christ’s nature, and his texts were undoubtedly reinterpreted by a later
generation of (mainly Gentile) Christians as in fact advocating this doctrine, but this
was not Paul’s original intent.
The debate surrounding Dunn’s work has been fairly intense, and we will not
here list all of the authors who have had issue with or supported his thesis.7 L. W.
Hurtado, R. J. Bauckham and N. T. Wright have all taken issue with Dunn’s claims
about Paul’s christology and, in one way or another, have sought to demonstrate its
Incarnational nature.
Hurtado’s work, in 1988, sought to offer a new angle on the christological
origins debate, using Christ-devotion as a broader and much more useful term for
considering the Christian mutation. The term Christ-devotion refers to the historical
fact that early Christians showed cultic reverence to the figure of Jesus in his status as
risen and exalted Lord. Following Hurtado others have questioned to what extent the
veneration of early Christians towards Jesus can be called ‘worship’8, and exactly how
prolific the practice of Christ-devotion was, but there is no doubt among scholars that
it did actually happen.

7
Suffice it to say that Murphy-O’Connor and Casey are both in agreement with Dunn on his central
point.
8
Notably Dunn, Theology of Paul the Apostle (1998), pp257-60, and Casey, ‘Monotheism, Worship
and Christological Development in the Pauline Churches’ in The Jewish Roots of Christological
Monotheism (1999), pp214-233
8

Hurtado sees the early Christians’ veneration of Jesus as a remarkable and

novel development in Jewish monotheism, but one that didn’t involve a rejection of
their monotheistic roots and tradition. Rather, the earliest Christians drew on their
Jewish religious tradition and reshaped it in light of Jesus and their experiences of
him. Hurtado explicitly rejects the notions of some scholars, who attribute the rise of
Christ-devotion to the influence of pagan religious ideas and practices that were
prominent in the Church as she grew to include more and more Gentile converts, and
moved further and further away from her Jewish roots. This assumption simply
doesn’t fit with the chronological evidence that Christ-devotion was already
prominent in the Church at the time of Paul, and probably even earlier. At this time
the Church was still self-consciously Jewish, as Paul’s letters show, and as resistant as
her Jewish mother-tradition was to the paganising influences of the Greco-Roman
world. Claims that the Jewish monotheism of the second temple period had already
been corrupted by polytheistic influences are equally as unfounded, says Hurtado.
For Jews of the first century monotheism was of vital importance, serving to define
Judaism over and against her polytheistic contemporaries, who were considered as
idolaters by loyal Jews. All of the Jewish literature of the period displays the same
strongly monotheistic concern and it is wrong, as some have done, to take a small
minority of seemingly contradictory evidence and prioritise it over and above the
overwhelming consensus of the rest. Even the seemingly problematic passages,
however, on closer inspection prove to be far more concerned with the uniqueness of
the one God of Israel than others have allowed for. If we use, as Hurtado has done,
the Jewish concern for worship as a criterion for reading these texts, then we are in a
much better position to assess the true state of Jewish monotheism in the second
temple period.
None of the so-called intermediary figures of the second temple titerature, as
exalted as they may have been, were considered to be worthy of worship. Worship
was the exclusive reserve of the one true God of Israel, and him alone. In all the
passages that scholars have pointed to as problematic for true monotheism, the same
scruples about worship are present. Monolatry was the test of monotheism for ancient
Jews and they are careful not to cross that line. Even the Son of Man figure in
1Enoch, problematic as he might seem, sitting on God’s throne in eschatological
glory, didn’t receive any actual cultic reverence by any Jewish groups.
9

Having seen the strong scruples that Jews had about worship being due only to
the one true God we can see how much of an innovation the Church’s Christ-devotion
really was. The real innovation in early Christianity was not in the writing of texts in
which Jesus was portrayed as exalted, but in “accommodating Jesus into their
devotional pattern, joining him with God as a recipient of their cultic devotion.”9 No
other Jewish group had done anything remotely analogous to this with an exalted
figure. The christology reflected in the texts springs first and foremost from the
actual Christ-devotion of the authors and groups which they represented.
Hurtado’s believes that the concept of ‘divine agency’ is a useful way of
understanding how the earliest Christians felt justified in worshipping Jesus alongside
God. He believes that the many intermediary figures evidenced in second temple
Judaism can all be understood as ‘divine agents’, in as much as they are used by God
to fulfil God’s purposes, be it in creation (Wisdom), revelation (the prophets, angels,
exalted patriarchs), or eschatological redemption (the ‘Son of Man’ of 1Enoch). This
term is all-encompassing, including both exalted patriarchs and angels, figures who
are clearly separate from and subordinate to God, and also so-called personifications
of God’s attributes like his Wisdom and his Word. These were the concepts upon
which the first Christian communities drew in order to explain the position given to
Christ in their experience and devotion. Christian theology, like that of second temple
Judaism, was a tradition of exegesis. Christians examined the Hebrew scriptures,
especially those passages that used a ‘divine agency’ category, and applied this
category to Jesus, claims Hurtado, picturing Christ as God’s principle agent in
redemption, revelation and creation. This understanding of the earliest christology
helps us to understand the various Old Testament pictures that are present in many of
Paul’s depictions of Christ.
Some scholars have replied to Hurtado that the early Christian veneration of
Jesus, remarkable as it was, didn’t amount to actual worship.10 It was only later
Christians, influenced by pagan polytheism, who could conceive of the actual
worshipping of Jesus. Hurtado replies that early Christian worship was already
‘binitarian’ in shape, and that pattern of devotion is reflected in Paul’s letters, the
earliest Christian sources. Jesus was, in fact, worshipped by early Christian groups,

9
Hurtado, One God, one Lord, pxiii
10
Notably Dunn, Theology of Paul the Apostle, 1998 T&T Clark, pp257-60, and Casey, ‘Monotheism,
Worship and Christological Development in the Pauline Churches’ in The Jewish Roots of
Christological Monotheism, pp214-233
10

but not as a second god, rather as a divinely appointed Lord. Christians offered
worship to Jesus with the sense that it was God’s will that they should do so.
“Reverence for God characteristically demanded a programmatic inclusion of Jesus
with God in their devotional life and practices that are unparalleled except in the ways
God was cultically reverenced.”11 Both Dunn and Casey can’t see this ‘mutation’ in
monotheism evidenced in the New Testament until John, in the post-70CE period.
One of the reasons that Casey gives for this view is the lack of any evidence of
controversy over christological issues, both within the Church and from external
Jewish authorities. Hurtado acknowledges the lack of inner conflict about Christ-
devotion evidenced by the earliest sources, but takes this as evidence that the
‘mutation’ in Christian devotion had very early origins, and was acknowledged
universally by all subsequent converts as a basic belief for entry into the church
community. The religious experiences of the earliest Christians, both vivid and
widespread, meant that believers were convinced that it was God’s will for Jesus to be
reverenced in this way.
Hurtado lists two major factors, then, in the rise of Christ-devotion in the
earliest Christian communities. Firstly, Christians drew on the concept of ‘divine
agency’ to explain how Jesus could be linked so closely with God, and secondly, the
catalyst for this was their powerful religious experience, convincing Christians that it
was God’s will that Jesus be reverenced in this way.
Paul Rainbow isn’t convinced that religious experience can be responsible for
major innovations in belief. We always interpret our experiences through existing
schemata, he claims, and the existing schemata of first century Jews -strict
monotheism- couldn’t have interpreted the exaltation of Jesus as introducing a
mutation in that central belief. At the most, religious experiences of Jesus’ exaltation
could have prompted early Christians to view him in terms of a subordinate divine
agent, but experience alone can’t have prompted “the complication of faith in one
God itself.”12 Hurtado responds to Rainbow’s criticism in the preface to his second
edition. He points out that a small consensus of sociologists and anthropologists
agree that significant innovations in religious movements “often arise from the
“revelations” received by founder figures or so-called “minor founder figures””.13

11
Hurtado, One God, One Lord, pxiii
12
Rainbow, ‘Jewish Monotheism as the Matrix for New Testament Christology: A Review Article’
Novum Testamentum 33 (Jan., 1991), p87
13
Hurtado, One God, One Lord, pxv
11

Rainbow’s criticisms were rash, as it seems he was insufficiently informed about the
actual evidence. Hurtado points to the high place given to “revelations” in the New
Testament’s religiosity and concludes that it is entirely plausible to assume that such
experiences could be the basis for a profound rethinking of Jewish monotheism.
More damaging, however, is Rainbow’s his criticism of ‘divine agency’, and
this Hurtado ignores. Rainbow questions the sense in a category that includes both
divine attributes and exalted patriarchs. He questions whether this takes seriously the
gulf which Jews perceived between God and all else; there is surely no fluidity
between aspects of the unique God’s very own being and between mere exalted
mortals. “To posit “divine agency” as a bland, general taxon unifying both classes
may be more confusing than illuminating.”14 More confusing still is Hurtado’s claim
that early Christians applied the concept of divine agency to Jesus to help them
resolve the apparent contradiction between monotheism and Christology. Hurtado
has spent chapters 1-4 of his book that divine agency did not modify monotheism,
because personifications fall short of hypostases and exalted figures are distinct and
subordinate, but, more crucially, because divine agents were not objects of worship.
But if Jews didn’t worship divine agents then how can divine agency be a useful
category to explain the veneration of Jesus? “If belief in divine agency did not affect
Jewish monotheism, how can it explain the mutation in Christian monotheism?”15
The conceptual category of divine agency, then, has some quite serious flaws,
and I do not regard it as a satisfactory tool for analysing Paul’s christology.
Richard Bauckham suggests the use of ‘divine identity’ as a concept with
which to analyse the ancient texts. It is a far better, and much more Jewish way of
thinking, Baukham argues, than the previous ‘functional’ and ‘ontic’ categories,
which assumed that Jewish Christians could somehow envisage Jesus taking on God’s
‘functions’ without taking on his ‘essence’. But these aren’t Jewish categories.
Jewish monotheism was concerned, first and foremost, not with what God or divinity
was, but with who YHWH, the unique God of Israel, was. God in the Jewish
scriptures is a character with a personality. His character is defined both by his
relationship with Israel, and also by his relationship to all created order, the second of
these being the most important for our point.

14
Rainbow, pp84-5
15
Ibid, p86
12

God’s character as opposed to all other existence, what defined and separated
YHWH from everything and everyone else, was his role as sole Creator and sovereign
ruler over all he has created. This was a ‘strict’ monotheism, with well-defined ideas
of God’s uniqueness, and the boundary markers that distinguished him from all other
existence. Isaiah 40-66 was a very important text for Jewish monotheism, and helped
to inform an expectant, eschatological monotheism, where God would finally
demonstrate his unique identity to the whole earth.
A symbol of God’s status as one and only sovereign ruler that Bauckham
picks up on is the divine throne. God’s throne is always presented as the only throne
in heaven, and it is only God who sits on it (Cf., for example, Isa6.1-5).
Bauckham is influenced by Hurtado’s work, and is insistent also on the
centrality of worship to distinguish God from creation. Worship was the practical test
of monotheism. Only God could legitimately be worshipped by a monotheistic Jew,
and Jewish monotheism required that he must be worshipped. All else was idolatry.16
The so-called ‘intermediary figures’ of second temple Jewish literature were
never seen as compromising Jewish monotheism, precisely because of this strict and
well-defined definition of God’s identity. So-called ‘hypostatizations’ such as
Wisdom and Word, are not separate divine entities, but metaphorical descriptions of
God’s own Wisdom and Word, part of his own identity.17 Likewise, the highly
exalted human figures of much ancient Jewish apocalyptic speculation were never
seen as ‘semi-divine’, or in any way encroaching on God’s own identity. His status as
sole Creator and supreme Ruler were never in question, and accordingly, worship was
never offered to any of these figures.18
What is remarkable about Paul’s Christology, then, considering his Jewish
monotheism, is the way he systematically includes Jesus within the identity of the one
God of Israel, applying the unique characteristics of God to the exalted Christ. He
portrays Christ both as sovereign over all things and included in the creation of all
things; Christ is identified by the divine name of YHWH and portrayed as worthy to
receive worship. A higher Christology than this is not conceivable.

16
For Bauckham the only valid exception is the Son of Man figure in 1 Enoch. But this is “the
exception that proves the rule.”
17
Cf. Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (1998), pp20-22.
Are these ‘personifications’ mere literary devices or can they be seen as having real existence? If the
latter, then this is good evidence that Jews were comfortable with real distinction in God’s identity,
says Bauckham, providing a good precedent for the Christian mutation.
18
Ibid., pp17-20
13

Bauckham sees this inclusion of Jesus within God’s unique identity as a very
early innovation for the Christian movement, as it is common to all the New
Testament texts. So, in a provocative claim, Bauckham says that “the earliest
Christology was already the highest”19
Despite there being no precedent in Jewish monotheism for the inclusion of an
exalted figure within God’s own unique identity, Bauckham wants to claim that
Judaism of the second temple period was still “structurally open” to this development.
Early christology didn’t blur the boundaries between God and creation; they were still
as stringent as ever. Paul’s writings are strongly and self-consciously monotheistic.
He knew the dangers to monotheism that an exhalted and worshipped Jesus posed,
and for this reason he carefully and systematically portrayed the risen Christ not as a
separate divine figure to rival God, but as part of the unique divine identity of the one
true God. This, claims Bauckham, is the only way to understand both Paul’s
monotheism and his Christ-devotion.
Psalm 110.1 was a foundational text for christology, but very rare in the
Jewish literature of the time.20 For this reason early Christian reflection on the status
of Christ can’t have merely involved a straightforward transfer of exalted Jewish
figures onto Jesus. That both second temple Jewish theology and early Christian
theology were primarily traditions of exegesis is an important point to note for the
study of the origins of Christology. What early Christians wanted to say about Jesus
was unique within Judaism; no Jew had ever wanted to say about any kind of exalted
figure the things that early Christians wanted to say about Christ, so fresh exegesis
was required. The concern of Ps110.1 exegesis in christology was to understand the
identification of Jesus with God. It was understood by Paul and others as God placing
Jesus on the divine throne, and when combined with Ps. 8.6 it was used to emphasise
Jesus’ sovereignty over all.
Bauckham is clear then, that Jesus is not pictured as a semi-divine figure on a
spectrum of ever increasing divinity, but is identified directly with the one God of
Israel, seated on his same divine throne. In Jewish thinking, the idea of a sliding scale
of divinity would be heretical nonsense. For ancient Jews there was an “unbreachable
gulf” between God’s heavenly throne and all other reality. There was no way that a
figure could be thought to be only ‘semi’ divine within a Jewish definition of divinity.

19
Ibid., pviii
20
Only in Job33.3, but used in a very different way to the early Christian midrash.
14

This would contravene Jewish monotheism in a way that was unacceptable for Jews
like Paul. God was still the sole creator and sovereign ruler; all other existence was
created by and subject to him, no matter how exalted. To suggest, as some do, a
gradually increasing Christology where Jesus comes to be pictured as more and more
divine as the first century progressed would make a mockery of Jewish monotheism.
Self-consciously monotheistic Jewish Christians would not be able to help noticing
the challenge to the one God posed by this semi-divine Christ. This is why Bauckham
is forced to see the very earliest christologies as already the highest; Jesus was either
completely included within God’s identity or he wasn’t.

N. T. Wright deserves a mention in this chapter. In his book The Climax of

the Covenant Wright examines the themes of Christ and the Law in Pauline
theology21. Wright’s main premise is that Paul’s theology involves two key doctrines:
monotheism and election (that is, God and the people of God), and two key
adaptations: Christ and the Spirit. All of the innovations in Paul’s theologising,
claims Wright, can be attributed to his redefinition, by means of christology and
pneumatology of these two key doctrines.22
For the purposes of this essay we will be focusing on only one of those
Pauline innovations, but that is more than enough. We will consider how Paul, by
means of the person of Christ, redefines traditional Jewish monotheism.
I start from Bauckham and Hurtado’s premise that Paul’s christological
concerns were primarily derived from the much wider issue of Christ-devotion. Paul
portrays Jesus in ways that were previously reserved exclusively for God precisely
because his devotional practice involves honouring Jesus in ways that were previously
reserved exclusively for God. It is with this in mind, then, that I turn to the first of
our key passages, Philippians 2.5-11.

21
Wright, N. T., The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology (1991)
22
Ibid., p1
15

Philippians 2.5-11: An Incarnational Hymn?

The power of these seven verses cannot be overestimated. Their impact on the
history of Christian doctrine, devotion, and interpretation has been enormous, and
they have captured the minds of scholars, preachers and students alike. Today they
are attracting more scholarly interest than ever, with an abundance of ink being spilled
on the exegesis of these eighty-five words. Debates rage over the subtleties of
harpagmos and the equivalence of ‘form of God’ with ‘equality with God’. Exegetes
ponder the significance of Jesus’ exaltation, and what it might mean for Paul to say
“Jesus Christ is Lord” (v.11). The task of this chapter is to consider Philippians 2.5-
11 in terms of worship. The debate concerning the nuances of words and phrases, and
what christological emphasis they are intended to convey cannot and should not be
ignored. If we take Hurtado’s claims about worship seriously then we can see that the
figure of Christ which Paul is promoting in Philippians 2 is the same Christ to whom
he offers veneration, and remembering this will help us to understand the reasons
behind the depiction he offers. Therefore I shall consider the christology of the
passage in the context of Paul’s Christ-devotion.
At the outset I feel it would be helpful to include the passage in full, as
translated by the NRSV:

5Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus,

6 who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death-
even death on a cross.

9 Therefore God also highly exalted him

and gave him the name
that is above every name,
10 so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
11 and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
16

A Hymn?
One thing that should be immediately obvious about this passage is the layout
that the NRSV translators have given to the words. Ever since Lohemeyer’s
influential study, scholarly consensus has been that this passage is one of the New
Testament’s hymnic passages (other examples include Col1.15-20, 1Tim3.16,
23
Luke1.46-55; 68-79). The poetic language and the celebratory theme of these
verses lend themselves very easily to a hymnic interpretation. If the passage could be
shown decisively to be an existing hymn, or a fraction of an existing hymn, already in
use as a liturgical piece within the early churches and quoted here by Paul, then these
verses would be a precious insight into the corporate worship of early Christian
groups. The existence of hymns that celebrate Jesus’ significance is not itself in
doubt (Col.1, for instance), but can Philippians 2 be used as another example of early
Christian liturgy? There are some quite severe difficulties to overcome, it seems, if
we are to make this passage fit the hymnic mould.
Philippians 2.6-11, if it is a hymn, is one of a kind. Gordon Fee notes that the
passage not only lacks any kind of correspondence with Greek hymnody, but also “the
alleged Semitic parallelism of this piece is unlike any known example of Hebrew
psalmody.”24 Scholarly efforts to show either the Greek or Aramaic hymn-like quality
of the passage, Fee believes, have been unconvincing and contrived. The NRSV’s
choice of how to break the ‘hymn’ down into lines and stanzas is only one of many
different options that scholars have proposed. There is very little agreement as to the
structure of the ‘hymn’ precisely because it lacks the rhythm and parallelism that one
would expect to find in material that was designed to be sung. It is certainly poor in
comparison to the hymns of Luke 1 or 1Tim3.16, to name a couple of New Testament
examples. The ‘hymn’ is less balanced in structure than other Pauline passages
which, because of their content, have not been deemed to be liturgical (e.g. 1Cor7.2-4
(!)). Moreover, as Fee notes, this passage is thoroughly Pauline in style. The not/but
contrast of vv.6-7 followed by another clause (v8), and one final clause introduced
with the Greek hoti “therefore”(v9), is typical of Paul’s argumentation elsewhere.25
We need not look further than Paul for the authorship of Philippians 2.
23
Lohemeyer, E., Kyrios Jesus: Eine Untersuchung zu Phil 2, 5-11 (Heidelberg: 1928), summarized
on Martin, R. P., Carmen Christi, Philippians ii: 5-11 In Recent Interpretation and In the Setting of
Early Christian Worship (1967 Cambridge University Press), pp25-30. Indeed Martin’s own title
‘Carmen Christi’ means hymn of Christ.
24
Fee, G. D., Paul’s Letter to the Philippians (1995), p41 (his emphasis)
25
Fee, Philippians, p42
17

Fee explains that the danger of seeing a pre-Pauline hymn in these verses is
the tendency of scholars to become preoccupied with finding an ‘original’ pre-Pauline
version, and the highly speculative nature of this exercise. When the passage is
removed from the context of Paul’s theology every imaginable ideological
background can and has been argued for, from Hellenistic Jewish Wisdom speculation
(Georgi), to Iranian Heavenly Redeemer myth (Beare)26. All of this misses the point
that we can only view the ‘hymn’ in its current context, and in light of Paul’s use of it.
What previous Christians may or may not have thought of the ‘hymn’ and its contents
is not possible to tell, we must focus rather on Paul’s own interpretation of its
meaning, and his use of it in the context of his letter to the Philippian church. We
must remember that even when Paul does use existing material he uses it to fit his
argument, and often adapts it to do so: “What Paul dictates he takes ownership of,
even if it had prior existence elsewhere”27
Reconstructions of the ‘hymn’ that forget this point inevitably end up losing
important Pauline emphases. For example, many reformulations claim that verse 8c
must be a Pauline addition to the original, as it renders any proposed hymnic structure
irregular, but surely 8c “even death on a cross” is a vital emphasis of the passage,
demonstrating the extreme lengths to which Jesus’ obedience and humiliation took
him. Remember also that crucifixion was a slave’s punishment, so “death on a cross”
may be a necessary and natural outworking of Jesus’ “form of a slave” (v.7b).
But what of the poetry of the passage? Is not the literary quality of these
verses an indication that Paul is quoting an earlier, liturgical piece? Clearly not. Paul
is quite capable of exalted prose when he feels the need; we need only think of the
famous ‘love poem’ of 1Corinthians 13 to deduce that. The reason for his poetry
here, I submit, is that what he is trying to describe can only be done so figuratively.
Paul is dealing with divine mysteries.
A final reason why we should take the Pauline ‘authenticity’ of this passage
seriously is the part it plays in the letter to the Philippians as a whole. Considering the
doubt that has been cast on it Pauline authorship it fits remarkably well with he wider
argument of Philippians. Paul alludes to its language in 2.3, argues from it in vv.12-
18, and there are striking parallels with Paul’s story of chapter 3. Also, the Greek

26
Georgi, D., “Der vorpaulinische Hymnus Phil ii,6-11” in Zeit und Geschichte Dankesgabe an Rudolf
Bultmann zum 80. Geburtstag (ed. E. Dinkler; Tübingen, 1964) p263-93, Beare, F. W., The Epistle to
the Philippians (HNTC; New York, 1959), cited on Fee, Philippians, p43-44
27
Fee, Philippians, p45
18

word hos (“who”), which opens verse 6 has caused many to see the start of a
quotation, especially with the parallels of Col1.15 and 1Tim3.16. But hos fits
smoothly here, not like the awkward joiners of Colossians and 1Timothy.
I have shown that it is unlikely that Philippians 2.6-11 was ever a piece of
Christian liturgy before its inclusion in Paul’s letter, but it is important to note that
this was a letter that was intended for public reading, no doubt during a meeting of the
church, and we can’t rule out the possibility that it was therefore used in liturgical
ways. I have not sought to disprove the reality of Christ-devotion itself, merely the
mistake of attributing too much ‘pre-Pauline’ identity to this particular passage.
Before we press on to the exegesis of the passage itself, then, it may be of interest to
our question to ask: what Pauline evidence do we have for the singing of hymns in
celebration of Christ?
In Colossians 3.16 Paul urges believers to encourage one another by means of
“psalms, hymns, and spirit-songs”, singing with grace in their hearts “to the Lord” [tō
kupiō], and Ephesians 5.19 which, whether Paul’s own or an imitation, certainly
reflects Pauline thought, says much the same thing. These liturgical songs are to be
addressed to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus was to form
the content and the context of their praise, as Casey notes.28 Whether these verses
indicate worship was directly addressed to Jesus is another matter (one that will be
addressed below in the context of creation’s eschatological praise), but it is clear that,
in the earliest Christian communities, Christ was celebrated hymnically in their
meetings.
If this passage is not a hymn, designed to be sung, how should it be
understood? It is narrative in form and focuses on the actions of Jesus: his self-
emptying, humility and death, followed by God’s action in raising and vindicating
him in eschatological glory. It is to the precise exegesis of this narrative that we now
turn.

Incarnational? (vv.6-8)
Ralph Martin, writing in 1967, remarks that the assumption “that the hymn
sets forth the Incarnation of Christ in his humiliation and subsequent enthronement is

28
Casey, P.M., ‘Monotheism, Worship and Christological Development in the Pauline Churches’, The
Jewish Roots of Christological Monotheism (1999), p214-233
19

universally agreed”.29 Forty years later and this assumption is no longer universal.
James Dunn can reasonably be considered as the foremost scholar in denying an
incarnational aspect to the passage; other prominent figures include Jerome Murphy-
O’Connor and Maurice Casey.30 Those who, responding to Dunn and others, have
produced modern apologies for an Incarnational reading have included Gordon Fee,
Larry Hurtado and Tom Wright.31 Let us turn to the exegesis of these difficult verses,
where the argument will unfold.
In verses 6-7 there is a contrast between two ‘forms’, “the form of God” and
“the form of a slave”. The first form was one that Christ already possessed and
existed as, the second is something that he chose to adopt. Dunn sees a double
contrast here, the second being between “equality with God” and “human likeness”.
Much of the interpretation of these verses depends upon how the two contrasts are
seen to relate to one another. For instance, what is the relationship between “form of
God” and “equality with God”? Can they be simply two ways of saying the same
thing or is the relationship more complex than that? The problem is compounded by
the difficulty of the words themselves.
“[Jesus], being in the form [morphē] of God did not consider equality with
God as harpagmos”(v6). The interpretation of morphē and harpagmos is “one of the
most thorny questions in the whole field of New Testament exegesis”32. Both words
appear only here in the New Testament, with scant examples of harpagmos to be
found in any of the extra-biblical evidence. Whole books have been devoted to this
subject and I will not have space here to cover the entire scope of interpretation. But
it is interesting, as Fee notes, that all the most difficult issues of interpretation are
concentrated in the passage that deals with “divine mysteries”33. Human words are
clearly insufficient when describing the indescribable.
James Dunn disagrees. There is no “divine mystery” described here, in the
sense that Christ existed from eternity in the divine nature and that what these verses

29
Martin, Carmen Christi: Philippians ii: 5-11 In Recent Interpretation and In the Setting of Early
Christian Worship (1967), pviii
30
Dunn, Christology in the Making (1989, 2nd edition), pp.114-119; Theology of Paul the Apostle
(1998), 281-293, Murphy O’Connor, J., “Christological Anthropology in Phil 2, 6-11”, Review
Biblique83 (1976), pp.23-50, Casey, P. M., From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God (1991), pp.112-117.
Casey thinks that the passage displays a pre-existent christology, but not a fully Incarnational one. He
has difficulty with the loose definition of Incarnation employed by Martin et al.
31
Fee, G. D., Paul’s Letter to the Philippians (1995), pp.191-229, Hurtado, L. W., Lord Jesus Christ
(2003), pp121-123, Wright, N. T., Climax of the Covenant (1991), pp.56-98
32
Martin, Carmen Christi, p134
33
Fee, Philippians, p198
20

describe is his incarnation in the earthly body of Jesus of Nazareth. This view, Dunn
argues, is informed by presuppositions that are shaped by the later christologies of
John and the Nicene council. Reading the hymn through these lenses it is quite
understandable how it can be understood as depicting the heavenly Son making his
pretemporal decision to take on human flesh, but this is not, Dunn thinks, what Paul is
saying. This kind of Incarnational theology would not have made sense to Paul and
the early Christians; Jesus was too close a figure historically for them to conceive of
his pre-historical existence.
The best way to understand verses 6-8, thinks Dunn, is as a reference to
Genesis 1-3, and the story of Adam.
It is well established that for the New Testament authors in general, and Paul
in particular, the figure of Adam was of some interest. The story of Adam’s creation,
temptation and fall informed much of Paul’s theologising, be it explicit or implicit.
For Paul, “man is fallen in Adam”34, and shares in his fate. Indeed ‘Adam’ can be
seen simply as Paul’s shorthand for ‘the whole of sinful humanity’. “What can be
said of Adam is true of men in general, what can be said of men in general is true of
Adam.”35 In Adam all men die (Rom5.17) and live in a state of fallen sinfulness
(5.19). Romans 1.18-25 extends the action and the consequence of Adam’s sin to all
men as they “exchanged the truth of God for a lie” and “exchanged the glory of the
incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man”. Romans 8.19-22 echoes
Genesis 3.17-19 in its claim that all of creation is caught up with Adam’s fall, his
“bondage to corruption”. Man shares in the ‘image’ of the fallen Adam, and his
corruptibility (1Cor15.21) so, for Paul, salvation involved a “fashioning or reshaping
of the believer into the image of God.”36(Cf. 2Cor3.18) This line of thought is by no
means new to Paul; it is grounded in his Jewish roots and Jewish ideas about man,
God, and salvation.
Where Paul breaks with Jewish tradition, however, is his insistence that Christ
alone succeeds where Adam has failed. It is Christ alone who, through his life, death
and resurrection has restored the image of God that Adam lost. For this reason Paul
calls Jesus the ‘last Adam’ (1Cor15.45), the one who reversed the sin of Adam and
broke the consequences of his fall: “in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made
alive” (1Cor15.21). In Paul’s soteriology Adam represents ‘fallen man’ and Christ
34
Dunn, Christology, p101
35
Ibid., p101
36
Ibid., p105
21

represents ‘man risen from the dead’. This thinking is implicit in much of Paul’s
contrasting of old and new, dead and alive.
The most important text for New Testament soteriology was Psalm110.1,
interpreted by the earliest Christians as relating to Jesus’ resurrection and his
exaltation when the Father subjected all things under him37. When Psalm 8.6,
depicting man in his original position of glory, was attached to Psalm110.1 in early
Christian midrashim, then the result was a ready vehicle for Adam christology. The
clearest examples of this hybrid at work are in 1Cor15.25-27, Eph1.20-22, and
Heb1.13-2.8. In these passages the language of exalted humanity in Psalm 8 is
applied to the risen and exalted Jesus. The risen Jesus had fulfilled God’s original
intention for man, and the climax of his rule was therefore submission to God- the
very antitheses of Adam’s sin (1Cor15.28).
Importantly, Christ couldn’t become last Adam without first becoming Adam;
receiving the same manhood that Adam begot. In the shape of the first Adam Jesus
ran through the divine programme for humanity again, succeeding this time where
Adam had failed. Jesus shared in man’s frailty and bondage to the law (Gal4.4), even
accepting death (the punishment for Adam’s sin), and by so doing he opened up the
way to new life and renewal in God’s image and glory (Ps8.6; Gal4.5). In an
extraordinarily mundane metaphor Dunn declares that “Jesus burst through the cul-de-
sac of death into life”.38
Dunn is adamant that it is within this context of Adam christology that the
Philippian hymn must be understood. Adam christology, he says, provides the most
coherent and complete reading of the passage. In fact, suggests Dunn, Philippians
2.6-11 is “one of the fullest expressions of Adam Christology that we still possess”.39
The point of the hymn, according to this interpretation, is “the epochal
significance of the Christ event, as determinative for humankind as the “event” of
Adam’s creation and fall”.40 Christ, by his life, death and resurrection has reversed
the catastrophe of Adam. By accepting death voluntarily and not as a punishment
Jesus completes the role of dominion over all things originally intended for Adam.

37
References include Mark12.36 (& parallels); Act2.34f.; Rom8.34; 1Cor15.25; Eph1.20; Col3.1;
Heb1.3, 18; 8.1; 10.12f.; 12.2; 1Peter3.22
38
Dunn, Christology, p111. Do believers now live on the “dual carriage-way of salvation” I wonder?
39
Ibid., p114
40
Ibid., pxix
22

Dunn’s argument is persuasive. Both Romans 5.15-19 (an explicit Adam

parallel) and Philippians 2.6-11 contain the common theme of Christ’s obedience.
The echoes of Christ’s exaltation in 1Corinthians 15.27, a passage in which Adam and
Christ are contrasted, are also obvious. That a reference to Adam is intended in this
passage, then, is virtually certain.
Since Dunn’s influential study many more scholars have begun to recognise
the Adam parallels of the hymn41. The more controversial aspect of Dunn’s exegesis,
however, is his denial of any Incarnational aspect to the passage at all. The parallel
with Adam demands, in Dunn’s view, an exclusively terrestrial view of Jesus in
verses 6-8.
For Dunn, then, morphē theou (“form of God”) is here the equivalent of eikōn
theou (“image of God”), and is supposed to allude to the Genesis statement that Adam
was made in God’s image (Gen1.27). This claim is contested by Hurtado, who argues
that morphē theou is not simply a variant of eikōn theou, and that the words cannot be
understood as synonyms. “Words acquire their specific meanings and denotations
when used in phrases and sentences with other words”, and morphē theou is never
used interchangeably with eikōn theou in the Old Testament, nor is morphē theou ever
used in any allusion to Adam throughout either the second temple Jewish literature or
the New Testament.42
There is, however, a partial overlap of meanings between morphē and eikōn
(morphē= form; outward appearance; shape, eikōn= image; likeness; form;
appearance), but if Dunn is going to support an Adam allusion here he must explain
the inclusion of the new term morphē as opposed to the traditional eikōn. Dunn’s
explanation is that morphē was chosen over eikon in order to make the second half of
the contrast (morphē doulou) clearer; Jesus didn’t just appear to be like a slave, he
was a slave. But he can’t have it both ways: if morphē doulou means that Jesus was,
in essence, a slave, then surely morphē theou means he was, in essence, God?43 Fee
agrees: “morphē denotes “form” or “shape” not in terms of the external features by
which something is recognised, but of those characteristics and qualities that are
essential to it”44. Paul needed a word that he could use both literally (“form of God”)
and metaphorically (“form of a slave”), and that word was morphē.

41
Some remain resistant to any Adam allusion, for example Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ (2003), p121
42
Ibid., p121
43
Cf. Hurst, “Christ, Adam and Preexistence Revisited”, Where Christology All Began (1998), p85
44
Fee, Philippians, p204
23

This reading, it should be noted, does not rule out an Adamic parallel. Rather,
it rules out Dunn’s kind of rigid Adamic interpretation, in which the last Adam,
Christ, must have “faced the same archetypal choice that confronted Adam.” 45 This
reading, as we shall see, doesn’t do justice to the extreme parallel being set up by
Paul, or the extent of Jesus’ ‘self-emptying’(v7a). In fact, as Fee points out, it does
not do justice to the grammar either: Dunn’s exegesis “requires a considerable
accumulation of merely possible, but highly improbable, meanings, all of which are
necessary to make it work.”46 A better way to read Paul’s Adam allusion is as a more
extreme contrast between Adam trying to become like God and Christ willingly
becoming man.
But can the grammar support this interpretation? Christ was already in the
form of God, but does this equate with equality with God, or how are we to
understand it? The answer to this question is dependent on the understanding of the
word harpagmos in verse 7, translated “something to be exploited” by the NRSV.
What did Christ not consider “equality with God” as? Wright’s study on all the
possible nuances of harpagmos and its historical interpretations is invaluable.47
Whereas Lightfoot gave only two main options for its interpretation and Martin gave
four (slightly confused) definitions48, Wright lists at least ten different meanings, each
adding its own distinct twist to the feel of the verse.49 The major distinction that
concerns us is between equality with God that is already possessed by Jesus and so
regarded retentively, and an equality with God not possessed by Jesus that he may
have been tempted to grasp. The latter option is obviously Dunn’s choice50, useful as
it is to support his view of a purely earthly Jesus, but the truth is that this
interpretation is no better than the other, both relying on their proponents’ perceived
context of the word in the passage as a whole. Most of the interpretations of
harpagmos have been tainted with their advocates’ preconceptions for precisely this
reason.

45
Dunn, Christology, p117
46
Fee, Philippians, n41, p203
47
Wright, N. T., ‘άρπαγμός and The Meaning of Philippians 2: 5-11’, Journal of Theological Studies
37 (1986), reprinted in his more recent Climax of the Covenant (1991), pp62-98
48
Analysed in Wright, Climax, pp63-69
49
See his table on Ibid., p81 for an accessible summary of the last 140 years worth of scholarship on
this word
50
Murphy-O’Connor expounded this interpretation before Dunn in “Christological Anthropology in
Phil. II”, Révue Biblique 83 (1976), pp25-50, summarised on Wright, Climax, pp74-75
24

The work of both Moule and Hoover offer us a refreshing and convincing way
out of the harpagmos quagmire.51
Moule, looking at the formation of Greek nouns, takes the –mos ending of the
verb, as opposed to the regular –ma, as implying an abstract verb, whereby the
meaning is found in the action of the verb and not its results. Such an interpretation
of harpagmos could be phrased as “consisting in snatching”.
Hoover’s approach is to point to the idiomatic usage of the verb in some of its
other contexts and to argue that its meaning here is also to be understood
idiomatically. An idiomatic understanding of harpagmos refers to “the attitude one
will take towards something which one has and holds and will continue to have and
hold”.52
Both Moule and Hoover’s conclusions, reached on quite different grounds,
point in very much the same direction. 53 “For Moule and Hoover the ‘grasping’ or
‘advantage taking’ does not aim at το ισα θεω [equality with God]: it begins from
it.”54 Wright’s definition of harpagmos, drawing on Moule and Hoover, sounds very
much like the NRSV: “he did not regard equality with God as something to be used
for his own advantage”55
Paul’s point, taking Moule’s definition, is that Christ didn’t consider God-
likeness to consist in grasping or snatching, but rather in self-emptying. Christ does
not lose the form of God by taking on the form of a slave; rather, he reveals it more
fully. Paul’s concern is to show to the selfish, bickering Philippians the absolute
humility of Godliness and the ‘self emptying’ that is therefore a natural part of
Christ’s character.
Dunn suggests that the ‘self emptying’ of Christ was not in fact his Incarnation
but his ‘pouring himself out to death’. However verse 8 explicitly deals with Jesus’
self-abasement to the cross so it is unnecessary and forced to read verses 6-7 as an
oblique reference to the same action. Instead verses 6-8 should be read as a narrative
sequence, with verse 8 (the crucifixion) at the apex of Jesus’ selfless actions, and

51
Moule, C. F. D., “Further Reflections on Philippians 2:5-11”, Apostolic History and the Gospel:
Biblical and Historical Essays Presented to F.F. Bruce on His 60th Birthday (eds. Gasque and Martin,
1970) and Hoover, R. W., “The Harpagmos Enigma: A Philological Solution”, Harvard Theological
Review 56 (1971), both summarised on Wright, Climax, pp76-81
52
Wright, Climax, p78, italics original.
53
A strength for Fee, Philippians, p206
54
Wright, Climax , p79, italics original
55
Ibid., p79, italics original
25

verses 6-7 as describing the action of a pre-existent Christ. Murphy O’Connor,

tellingly, ignores verse 7 and jumps straight from 6 to 8.56
Our new interpretation of harpagmos, informed by Moule and Hoover, is on
strong foundations linguistically. Wright points to the ‘articular infinitive’
construction of to eivai theō (“equality with God”) which often points back to
something already mentioned (consider Rom7.18 where both infinitives refer to the
preceding discussion, and 2Cor7.11- “this (just mentioned) godly grief”). Perhaps
“this divine equality” would be a good translation of the phrase.57 Fee, likewise,
notices the ‘A-B-A’ structure of the verse, which suggests Paul is equating “form of
God” with “equality with God”.58
This interpretation of harpagmos rules out any view that Christ could be in the
form of God without possessing equality with God. Equality with God, then, consists
in “a refusal to use for his advantage the glory which he had from the beginning”.59

There are many things to be said for Wright’s interpretation of harpagmos.60

Here are three of his best endorsements:
Firstly, this interpretation explains the relation of verses 6-8 and verses 9-11 in
a much more satisfying way. Verse 9 begins with dio (“and that is why”). If Jesus
had merely not grasped at what he had no right to grasp at then the elevation over all
of creation that he is given in vv.9-11 seems overblown61. If however, he had
voluntarily emptied himself from a position of equality with God, then the exaltation
to God’s position is entirely appropriate, as it is organically related to what has gone
before.
Second, The whole hymn now fits well within the argument of chapter 2. “As
God endorsed Jesus’ interpretation of what equality with God meant in practice, so he
will recognize self-giving love in his people as the true mark of the life of the
Spirit.”62 Hurst notes that Paul’s ethical exhortations usually involve a request for

56
Ibid., p75
57
Ibid., p82
58
So: “in his being in the form of God (A), not harpagmon did Christ consider (B) his being equal with
God (A’).” (Fee, Philippians, n62 p207)
59
Wright, Climax, p83
60
He lists them all on pp84-90 of Climax
61
Cf. Hurst in Where Christology All Began, p89
62
Wright, Climax, p87
26

believers to relinquish rights already possessed, not to abstain from grasping

undeserved merit.63
But possibly the strongest support for his interpretation is Adam christology
itself:
Many commentators who deny the presence of an Adam christology in the
hymn point instead to a ‘Servant christology’, with an allusion to Isaiah 52-53. In the
same way that the Servant willingly laid down his life in order that fallen man may be
rescued from sin and share in the new life that his death brings (Isa53), so Jesus took
on “the form of a slave” in order to achieve precisely the same thing.
The conflict between Adam christology and Servant christology breaks down,
however, when we realise that both christologies are Israel christologies in the Old
Testament. God’s promise to Abraham is a promise that his descendents will be the
means by which God restores what Adam had marred, that in Abraham “all the
families of the earth shall be blessed” (Gen12.3). Israel’s purpose from the start, was
to be the means by which salvation, the renewing of God’s image, could go out to all
the Earth.
That the ‘servant of YHWH’ in Deutero-Isaiah represents Israel is commonly
attested (cf. Isa44.21; 45.4); that he represents Israel fulfilling an Adamic role is less
so, but that is what Wright claims. The servant of Isaiah 40-55 represents an Israel in
obedience to YHWH, fulfilling his purposes of reconciliation, identifying fully with
the broken sinfulness of humanity (52.14) and willingly accepting the death that was
punishment for Adam (53.5-6), thereby opening the way for a new, restored humanity
who occupy the position that should have been Adam’s (53.11-12). For Paul, Christ
took up the role of a ‘last Adam’ who would succeed where Adam failed, and this
also meant his assumption of the role of Israel in God’s purposes.
The servant themes and the Adam themes thereby cohere completely. Christ
became a servant in order to fulfil Israel’s role in undoing Adam’s sin. His final
subjection, crucifixion, was a punishment typically reserved for slaves (douloi),
perhaps the reason why Paul chose this word over ‘servant’ (pais in the LXX of
Deutero-Isaiah).64
Crucially, however, the themes of Adam christology and servant christology in
the Old Testament found their ultimate fulfilment in YHWH, the one God of Israel.

63
Hurst, Where Christology All Began, pp89-90
64
Wright, Climax, pp90-97
27

“The task of the one man who would represent Israel and so save the world is a task
which, in Old Testament language, is reserved for God himself”65. We will see the
importance of this assertion when it comes to the exegesis of verses 10 and 11, but for
now it suffices to say that for Paul, the role of the Servant of YHWH in Isaiah 53
could not be separated from the role of YHWH himself in Isaiah 45.
In this section I have argued for an Incarnational Adam christology as the best
paradigm for understanding verses 6-8. Contrary to Dunn, I think it makes more
sense if we don’t see strict parallelism between Christ and Adam here. Christ’s
obedience is the solution to the problem inherent in Adam’s sin, not simply the
replacing of one kind of humanity for another. Christ’s temptation was not, like
Adam’s, to snatch at undeserved merit, but rather to cling to his rights. Only a divine
being can become obedient to death, for humans it is a necessity. The contrasts of the
passage make the most sense if Christ is seen as progressing from “equality with
God”(v6) to “the likeness of men”(v7).
Contrary to what Dunn supposes, this kind of Incarnational christology
doesn’t depend on Greek philosophy but is entirely Jewish in origin. The concepts it
draws upon (Adam, Israel, possibly Wisdom) are Jewish concepts, and Paul retains a
strong monotheistic emphasis throughout.
This interpretation also does not abandon Paul’s Eschatological perspective.
Rather, it depends upon it. For Paul, the attribution of pre-existence to Jesus
“proceeds from the conviction that he is the eschatological agent of redemption”.66 It
is a “small and natural step”67 to see Jesus as pre-existent when he already believes
Jesus is the eschatological agent of redemption and that final salvation is realised
through him. God’s purposes in redemption and salvation have been from eternity so
why not also the agent of redemption?
It is true that an overemphasis on the incarnation of Jesus at the expense of his
death and resurrection does a disservice to Paul’s theology, but we mustn’t ignore the
clear indications that Paul did hold to some kind of Incarnational christology, as
outlined in these verses.

Exaltation (vv. 9-11)

65
Ibid., p95
66
Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, p124
67
Ibid., p125
28

Verse 9 begins with a causative “therefore” (dio), and a change of subject. As

a result of Jesus’ self-emptying Incarnation and the voluntary humiliation of the cross,
“God also highly exalted him”. What follows is a vivid description of Christ’s
exaltation, his receiving of the divine name, and his eschatological glory in which
“every knee will bow” before him and “every tongue confess” his Lordship.
The causative “therefore” is probably intended to contrast Jesus’ public
humiliation with his open exaltation. Paul may well be drawing on the Jesus-tradition
that “whoever humbles himself shall be exalted” (cf. Luke 14.11), but it is equally as
likely that Isaiah 53 is in view, where the servant of YHWH is vindicated following
his suffering and death (Isa53.11-12). As we have seen, Jesus’ exaltation is seen as
entirely appropriate here as he is returning to the position of glory that he shared with
God prior to his Incarnation. Christ’s exaltation in these verses affirms that his self-
emptying and death did, in fact, reveal true equality with God as Jesus is now
eschatologically vindicated.68
As we have seen, these verses are a natural progression of the ‘last Adam’
narrative being played out here. Having succeeded in his life and death where Adam
failed, Jesus now receives both the position originally intended for humanity (Ps8.6)
and also the status of the risen Messiah (Ps110.1). The inflated rhetoric of exaltation
contain precisely the two affirmations about Christ that the earliest form of Adam
christology made: that Christ was seated at God’s right hand (Ps.110.1), and that God
had subjected all things under his feet (Ps.8.6).69 This high exaltation is perfectly
compatible with an Adam christology. Just look at the obvious parallel of
1Corinthians 15.20-28, where combined with Jesus’ position of authority over “all
powers” there is an explicit Adam-Christ contrast and an allusion to Psalm 8.6.
Richard Bauckham is resistant to this Adam-allusion. The dominion that Jesus
receives in the closing lines, he says, is not the restoration of human earthly dominion
which Adam’s fall marred, but a unique and divine sovereignty acknowledged by all
existence,70 including those “in heaven” and those “under the earth”.
For Bauckham, the whole of the hymn can be understood as a christological
reading of Deutero-Isaianic prophecy. In verses 9-11 the quotation of Isa45.23 is
obvious, but Bauckham also sees the servant passages of Isa52-53 reflected in Paul’s
description of Jesus’ earthly exstence. Jesus, like the servant, was “poured out” to
68
Fee, Philippians, p219
69
Dunn, Christology, p118
70
Bauckham, “The Worship of Jesus in Philippians 2”, Where Christology Began (1998), p134
29

death, and has been exalted to the highest place in a similar vein to the servant’s
vindication (53.11-12).
It is quite clear that the eschatological worship of Jesus in these verses is
formulated to echo the eschatological worship of YHWH in Isaiah 45.18-24,
especially verse 23 of this passage, which is quoted nearly exactly in Philippians 2.10-
11. This passage is one of the most rigidly monotheistic passages of the whole
Hebrew Bible, with YHWH’s repeated confessions: “I am YHWH, there is no
other”(Isa45.18); “there is no other god besides me” (45.21); “I am God, there is no
other (45.22). In the dramatic climax of YHWH’s monologue he declares that there
will be a day when “to me [YHWH] every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear”
(45.23). In Philippians 2.10-11, incredibly, it is to Jesus that this eschatological
worship is addressed: “At the name of Jesus every knee should bow… and every
tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord”. “Lord”, in this context, must refer to the
divine name, YHWH, as must the “name above all names” given to Jesus in verse 9
(could a Jew conceive of any other name being higher?). The eschatological glory
due to YHWH and prophesied in Isaiah 45 finds its fulfilment in the exaltation of
Jesus Christ. Somehow, “eschatological monotheism proves to be christological
monotheism”.71
This is an extraordinary piece of exegesis on Paul’s part, but we must not
conclude that eschatological monotheism rules out Adam christology in any way. As
Wright has shown, the only one who could finally fulfil the role of last Adam in the
Hebrew Bible was God himself.72 “For early Christians Isaiah 40-66 was the
scriptural account of the meaning and events of Jesus Christ”73, and the servant
passages were not read in isolation from the themes of eschatological salvation and
monotheism. In Philippians 2.9-11 Paul reads Deutero-Isaiah to say that the way in
which the sovereignty of God comes to universal acclamation is through the servant’s
suffering, death, and exaltation.
It would be obvious to a Jew of 50-60CE, especially a Pharisee of Pharisees
like Paul, that Christ is credited here with rank and honour explicitly reserved in
Jewish monotheism for Israel’s God and for him alone. To link back to verses 6-7,
the implications of this christological monotheism for Incarnational theology are
obvious. As Wright says, either there are now two gods in heaven instead of one, or
71
Ibid., p133
72
Wright, Climax, p95
73
Bauckham, “The Worship of Jesus in Philippians 2”, Where Christology Began (1998), p135
30

else the human Jesus has now been totally absorbed into the one god, or, more
compellingly, Jesus, by his exaltation to the place of God, is receiving “no more than
that which was always, from the beginning of time, his by right.”74
To borrow Bauckham’s terminology, it is clear that Jesus is identified so
closely here with the one God of Judaism that it is necessary for the monotheistic
concerns of the passage that he be included within God’s own unique identity. To
picture the risen Jesus here in any other way (i.e. as an exalted principle agent,
Hurtado) is to compromise Jewish monotheism, setting Jesus up as an exalted
heavenly figure rivalling God himself.
Corresponding to his exaltation over all things, Jesus is also portrayed as
receiving the worship of all creatures, whether heavenly or earthly. As we have seen,
for Jewish monotheism worship was the key test of belief. Only God was considered
worthy to receive the praise of all creation and it was the eschatological hope of
Jewish monotheists that he would, in fact, one day receive that praise. Jesus
participating in God’s unique divine identity and Jesus receiving the eschatological
praise due uniquely to the one God are two sides of the same coin - one necessitates
the other - and Paul is very careful here to portray both.

Philippians 2.9-11 is the earliest existing Christian text in which the worship
of Jesus is depicted. He is pictured as receiving, eschatologically, the worship from
all of creation that was the reserve of God alone. “But Christians who believed that
the exalted Jesus deserves such acknowledgement of his lordship from all creatures
must have accorded to him just such acknowledgement of his lordship in their own
worship.”75 This portrayal of Jesus-worship, claims Bauckham, must relate to an
actual Christian practice of worshipping Jesus. In fact, the portrayal of universal
homage to Christ in this passage is much better evidence that Jesus was worshipped
than a “mere statement” that he was worshipped. Philippians 2 does more than just
show the existence of Christ-devotion, it shows why Christians gave devotion to
Christ, and demonstrates the theological and christological implications of this
worship.76

74
Wright, Climax, p94
75
Baukham, in Where Christology Began, p128
76
Ibid., p128
31

If Bauckham’s thesis is correct, then Philippians 2 helps us to date the origins

of Jesus-worship to at least the early 50s, within Pauline communities, and possibly
even earlier.
But can the honour accorded to Jesus here be properly described as ‘worship’?
For Casey and Dunn the answer is ‘no’. Despite the fact that Philippians 2 portrays
Christ as highly exalted over all things, heavenly and earthly, despite the application
of the divine name YHWH to Jesus at his resurrection, and despite the universal
praise that the hymn pictures him as receiving, “we should not”, argues Casey, “read
into it the daily life of all Pauline churches.77
Contrary to Hurtado, Casey believes that the worship of Jesus in early
Christian communities was not widespread, and was only a very minor factor
influencing christological development. The major developments in Christology
occurred, thinks Casey, with the later transition to Gentile Christianity, and were
conceptual, not experiential in origin. Philippians 2 is written as part of that process
of ever-increasing christology, he proposes, encouraging the Philippian church to
adopt a ‘higher’ christology than previously. As we have seen, within the Jewish
monotheistic tradition of early Christianity, the idea of an ever-increasing Christology
is nonsense. To suppose, as Casey does, that Paul could write a passage like
Philippians 2 without including Jesus conceptually within God’s own unique identity
is to suppose a pagan Paul, who is comfortable with Christian di-theism. That Paul
did include Jesus conceptually within God’s own unique identity has, I hope, been
demonstrated. It is only reasonable to suppose, then, that Paul and other early
Christians also accorded to Jesus a similar status and position within their devotional
lives.
Dunn points to the final clause of the hymn, “to the glory of God the Father”,
as evidence that Jesus wasn’t actually worshipped by Paul, and that the christology of
the passage doesn’t amount to as much of a ‘mutation’ in Jewish monotheism as
Bauckham and Wright propose. But the fact that Paul’s concern in his christology
was always for the glory of the Father doesn’t discount the fact that his letters
represent a real monotheistic mutation. The doctrine of the Trinity, a much later
formulation of the relationship between Father, Son, and Spirit has never forgotten the
ultimate subordination of the Son and the Spirit. It is quite possible to imagine early

77
Casey, in Jewish Roots, p225
32

Christian worship, as Hurtado does, where devotions were offered to Jesus with the
conviction that by so doing the Father would be glorified.
We have shown in this chapter how the ‘hymn’ of Philippians 2 probably
originates with Paul, how it uses the paradigm of Adam christology to describe the
Incarnation, humiliation and death of Christ, as well as his subsequent exaltation. We
have shown how Paul applies an explicitly monotheistic passage to Jesus to describe
the extent of his exaltation, and how the scenes of eschatological worship probably
relate to Paul’s own experiences of Christ-devotion.
One important aspect of the passage which we haven’t had space to discuss is
its purpose here as an ethical exhortation. Paul’s christology, it would appear, is
never a purely theoretical discipline, as our next chapter on 1 Corinthians 8.6 will
show.
33

I Corinthians 8.1-6: ‘A Christian Shemā?’

1 Corinthians 8 appears in a section of Paul’s letter to the Corinthians in which

Paul is responding to some of the Corinthians’ questions. It appears that the
Corinthian church had written to Paul to ask his advice on several issues. “Now
concerning the things of which you wrote to me” (7.1) opens the question of marriage
and celibacy within the church, and the issue of divorce. In chapter 8 Paul turns to the
next of their questions: “concerning eidōlothuta”. The word is literally “things
sacrificed to idols”, but the context suggests the translation “idol food”78. In the
pagan religious culture of the first century what was sacrificed in the pagan temples
and shrines of Corinth subsequently became part of a meal in those same temples, and
what was left over from the ‘god’s table’ was often sold in the marketplace. The
word eidōlothuta was part of a Hellenic Jewish polemic79, absolutely forbidding loyal
Jews to partake of such meat. Many of the Corinthian church, it seems, had inherited
this Jewish caution towards ‘idol food’ and were therefore shocked to see others
within the church eating of it without inhibition. These others, the ‘strong’ in faith (as
they saw themselves) reasoned that since there was only one God, there could be no
harm in eating what had been sacrificed to non-existent entities. This, it seems, was
the gist of their question to Paul. What follows is the first part of Paul’s response to
these ‘strong’ Christians:

1Now concerning things sacrificed to idols:

We know that we all have knowledge.
Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.
2And if anyone thinks that he knows anything,
he knows nothing yet as he ought to know.
3But if anyone loves God, this one is known by him.
4So then, about eating food sacrificed to idols:
We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world
and that there is no God but one.
5For even if there are so-called gods, whether in heaven or on earth
(as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”),
6yet for us there is one God, the Father,
from whom are all things and we for him,
and one Lord, Jesus Christ,
through whom are all things and we through him

78
As Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (1987), p357
79
Cf. Conzelmann, A Commentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians (translation 1975), p139
34

The main focus of this chapter is verse 6. It is a remarkable verse, and one
that is important for any study of New Testament christology, being as it is an early
statement of Christian faith which incorporates Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, within
the traditional Jewish declaration of faith in one God. But to understand the verse
properly it must be studied in its context, and that context is the argument of chapters
8-10: Paul’s answer to the question of idol food. There are certain exegetical
questions which we need to ask: what is the problem that Paul addresses here and
what is his solution? What is the social setting of the Corinthian dispute and in what
first century religious background is it best to understand both the problem and Paul’s
solution? A less obvious but equally important question is: how are theology and
ethics related for Paul? Right in the middle of his argument Paul includes the striking
definition of Christian faith that is our main interest. It appears to be a Christian
reworking of the Shemā, the Jewish statement of faith (Deut6.4-5). But why does
Paul include it at this point in his argument, and of what consequence is it for our
understanding of Paul’s monotheism, christology and Christ-devotion? All these
questions must be asked of the text, and the attempt to answer them will form the
structure of this chapter.

vv. 1-3 The Problem & the Solution: Knowledge & Love
“Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies” (v.1c), or as Thiselton translates it: “It
is love that builds; knowledge merely inflates”.80 All the commentators agree that in
v1b Paul is again quoting from the Corinthians’ letter to himself. 81 In the same vein
as the boast of 6.12 and 10.23 (“I am free to do anything” 82), here their claim is “we
all have knowledge”. The Greek word is gnōsis which has led some commentators to
assume a Gnostic influence on the Corinthian community, but it is certainly not the
full-blown Gnosticism of the (much later) Nag Hammadi texts83. Their knowledge, it
seems, was simply the standard Jewish confession that “an idol is nothing at all in the
world and that there is no God but one” (v4b). This knowledge had informed their
ethic that all food, regardless of the source, was okay to eat. Two points are important
to note. Firstly, this is a thoroughly monotheistic argument. Their ‘knowledge’
stands well within the Jewish monotheistic tradition, and this has led some to argue

80
Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (2000), p622
81
Other verses that are considered to be Corinthian quotations include 6.12, 7.1, 8.1; 4, 10.23
82
Conzelmann’s translation in Corinthians (1975), p139
83
See Wright, Climax, p123
35

that the Corinthians had been influenced by ‘Judaizers’ similar to those who subverted
the Galatian church (Gal3), but this is unlikely.84 Second, Paul doesn’t deny the truth
of their knowledge. Paul himself is a Jewish monotheist and is keen to stress Jewish
monotheism. Paul’s problem is with the way that these ‘strong’ Corinthians employ
their knowledge.
Conzelmann argues that the problem with the Corinthians’ knowledge, was its
desire to master the object of its knowing. It was self-inflating knowledge that
“puffed up” those who possessed it.85 Paul’s comment at the end of verse 1 cuts right
to the heart of the matter. The Corinthians’ view of faith as knowledge was a
distortion of true faith, whose aim is always love. A faith that is predicated on the
way of knowledge inevitably leads to pride and destroys others, but Christian faith is
based on love, which is in fact the true way of knowledge. Paul spells this out in
vv.7-13 and, more fully, in chapter 13’s famous ‘love poem’. “In Christian ethics
“knowledge” must always lead to love”.86
Paul analyses and critiques his opponents on the basis of the Christianised
Shemā of verse 6. So in vv.1-3 his conclusion is that true knowledge is not your
knowledge of God but God’s knowledge of you, and this springs from the believer’s
love for God, a crucial part of the Shemā (Deut6.5).

The Socio-Religious Context

Just as his opponents argued on the basis of the one true God, Paul also argues
from the basis of monotheism. He affirms their monotheism in verse 4 with an
explicit statement: “we know that an idol is nothing at all in the world and that there is
no God but one”, but immediately feels the need to temper it with verse 5. Of course
it is true, says Paul, that there is only one true God, but the pagan pantheon are still a
real cultural phenomenon and cannot simply be ignored. Only God is truly God, the
creator of all. The many gods are “so-called” (legomenoi), and don’t have any real
power as they are mere creatures, part of the created order, and so by definition not
gods (cf. Gal4.8). But Paul does not rule out their existence altogether. In chapter 10
he equates them with ‘demons’ (10.20), and here he demolishes their claim to actual

84
Ibid., p123. Although there is considerable evidence of Jewish influence on the church, this view
“fails to completely explain why it is that Paul never uses in this letter the sort of arguments, or even
the tone of voice, that we find in Galatia”
85
Conzelmann, p141
86
Fee, 1Corinthians, p369
36

deity, but for those who worshipped them (which doubtless included many of the pre-
Christian Corinthian converts), they had a ‘subjective’ reality.87 The ‘weak’ saw the
gods as real powers, so the sight of the ‘strong’ openly eating idol food would have
wounded their conscience (vv.7, 10), and Paul insists that the ‘strong’ must take
account of this.
The actual cultural phenomenon of the gods is one of the reasons why Paul
needs to make the statement of verse 6. Paul’s concern in the passage is an explicitly
monotheistic one. But Jewish monotheism was no was no mere theoretical belief- it
was a fighting doctrine; battling dualism on the one hand, with its rejection of the
material world, and paganism on the other, with its deification of the material world.
In this argument Paul wants to avoid dualism by making sure he affirms God’s good
creation, but the most immediate threat he has to counter is paganism and the ‘gods’
of the Corinthian temples. Monotheists could not flirt with paganism, Jews had
always known this. This is why the argument of the ‘strong’, that there is absolutely
no problem with idol-food, is not necessarily sound. Paul must restate monotheistic
principles, but avoid the Corinthians’ mistake of making monotheism into mere
knowledge that can be mastered. True monotheism, Paul wants to say, is found not in
‘knowledge’ or ‘wisdom’, but in Jesus Christ.88

Verse 6 ‘The Christian Shemā’ (Religious context)

This leads us to the centre of the whole chapter and of Paul’s argument, and
also our focus of interest, the summary of Christian faith in verse 6. The statement is
essentially two parallel statements (“one God” and “one Lord”), with “one God”
explained as “the Father”, and “one Lord” as Jesus Christ. Each statement is then
qualified by a clause relating the Father and Jesus both to creation (“all things”) and
to believers (“us”). The father is the one “from whom” and “for whom”, whereas
Jesus is the one “through whom”.
As with the ‘hymn’ of Philippians 2, a wide range of influences have been
suggested for this verse. Kerst supposes that ta panta (“all things”) is Stoic, heis
theos (“one God”) is Jewish, and kyrios (“Lord”) is a Christian innovation.89 Stoic
pantheism features quite high on the suggested influences, especially because of a
striking parallel with Aristotle, picking up on pantheistic conceptions: “from God are
87
Ibid., p373
88
Cf. Wright, Climax, p127
89
In Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, p635
37

all things and through God they hold together”.90 The pantheistic formulas used eis
(“to”) and ek (“from”) to define God as both the origin and goal of all, and therefore
its sum total. By the time of Paul Hellenistic Judaism had also taken up these terms,
and applied them not to a pantheistic conception of the world but to the one true
Creator God, the source and origin of all.91 Paul takes this reinterpretation for granted
when he utilises these terms in his Christian confession. After all, Paul’s concern is
neither pantheistic nor philosophical. He is not utilising Stoic conceptions in order to
reason how a transcendent deity could be involved in creation; Paul’s concern is a
Jewish one.
So argues Hurtado in Lord Jesus Christ. Paul’s logic proceeds, he says, from
convictions about God’s sovereignty in the Jewish apocalyptic tradition. That is, all
history is subject to God, whose predetermined purposes will prevail. “God’s
redemptive purpose is supreme and will triumph in eschatological glory”.92
Hurtado also argues for the presence of Jewish ‘Wisdom’ conceptions, with
Wisdom participating with God in creation. We will explore this concept further
below.
Hurtado is right to see a strong Jewish emphasis in Paul’s argument, but
perhaps the most obvious Jewish influence here is that of the Shemā. Less of an
allusion and more of a quotation, it is odd that more scholars haven’t noticed its
presence here. Paul reproduces every word of the LXX Deuteronomy 6.4 in a new,
Christian, formulation. That the Shemā was used as a regular Jewish confession
during the second temple period is well attested, so the allusion can’t have been
missed by his Corinthian audience.
As to whether this verse is a pre-Pauline Christian creed, the evidence is by no
means conclusive. Dunn points out that there are no observable parallels either in
Paul’s letters or in any other early Christian source. He claims that the confession
“Jesus is Lord” was characteristic of Hellenistic Christianity, but the sort of
confession that Paul uses here is a definite innovation on that basic statement.
However our knowledge of early Christianity independent of Paul is neither wide nor
detailed, so we shouldn’t base too much on this observation. Fee and Dunn both
argue that, as with the Philippians passage, this verse seems too well suited to the
argument of the chapter to be an existing creedal statement. Fee assumes that verse 6
90
De Mundo 6, quoted on Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, p635
91
Conzelmann, Corinthians, p144
92
Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, p124
38

is an ad hoc insertion, caused by the aside of 5c that there are, in fact, gods, in the
sense that they are worshipped. Paul now sets what is true for Christians over and
against the pagan world.93 But this still doesn’t rule out the possibility that Paul is
quoting an existing liturgical piece for use in his argument.
Often the search for the origin of Paul’s thought in either Greek philosophy or
Judaism can miss the point that Paul, despite his reliance on thoroughly Jewish ways
of thinking, is also distinctively Christian. 1 Corinthians 8.6 is a distinctively
Christian confession, and it shows us something about the distinctive nature of Christ
devotion. Influenced by its Jewish roots, on the one hand Christianity is “offensively
strict” to polytheistic paganism, with its insistence on the worship of only one God,
and its denial of the power of the “so-called” gods. On the other hand it is distinct
from its Jewish background in that it links Jesus with this one God, and confers on
him a title of divine honour, ‘Lord’94. For Hurtado 1Cor8.6 reflects the ‘binitarian’
shape of early Christian devotion.95 In a Christian interpretation of monotheism,
loyalty to this one God entails loyalty to Jesus.
The religious influences on the wording of this particular confession are quite
varied, then. Stoic pantheism influences the language of creation, Hellenistic
Christian confessions are responsible for “one Lord Jesus Christ”, and Jewish
Wisdom categories come into play in the understanding of Christ’s work in creation
and redemption. Monotheism must be seen as the central context as the inclusion of
the Shemā indicates. This verse is one of four in the Pauline epistles where Paul uses
the traditional “one God” formula, displaying an expressly monotheistic intent. 96 But
this confession is much more than the sum of its total parts. No non-Christian Jew
(or, for that matter, any Stoic pantheist) could subscribe to its central tenets. It is a
distinctively Christian innovation, a mutation of Jewish monotheism.

v6: The Christian Mutation

93
Fee, 1Corinthians, p373
94
That a divine title is meant by “Lord” here is supported both by its use in the previous verse to refer
to pagan deities, and also by the obvious allusion to the Shemā.
95
Hurtado, One God, One Lord, pp1-2
96
The other passages are Gal3.20; Rom3.29-30; 1Tim2.5
39

Verse 6 reveals the basis for Paul’s argument, a formula of confession based
on the Jewish Shemā. The basic Jewish confession is developed into a twofold
statement “one God, one Lord” in which all the words of the Shemā are reproduced
(Deut6.4 that is, not v5) and carefully rearranged between “the Father” and “Jesus
Christ”. An explanatory phrase is then added to each of the two halves. These
phrases “express the divine activity characteristic of each and indirectly the functional
subordination of the Son to the Father.”97
“Just as in Philippians 2 and Colossians 1, Paul has placed Jesus within an
explicit statement, drawn from the Old Testament’s quarry of emphatically
monotheistic texts, of the doctrine that God is the one and only God, the creator of the
world.”98
Why has Paul defined God here as “the Father”? Is it, as Wright suggests, an
implicit identification of Jesus as “Son”, or does it designate God’s position as
Creator of the cosmos, as Conzelmann thinks?99
Conzelmann argues that the prepositional clauses after both “Father” and
“Jesus Christ” prove that God’s relationship to the cosmos is what Paul has in view.
Paul has pagan readers in mind, Conzelmann thinks, who may not be associated with
the Jewish concept of God as Creator, and so he explains this relationship to them in
terms of Fatherhood. This is an unlikely reading of the verse firstly, because Paul’s
readership is the Christian church at Corinth, and the belief in God as Creator must
have been familiar to them already, and secondly, because throughout the Pauline
epistles Paul uses “the Father” in conjunction with “Jesus Christ” in a way which
implies a Father-Son relationship.100 Jesus addressed God as “Father” (Aramaic
“Abba”) in his prayer life and taught his followers to do the same, something Paul is
well aware of (cf. Rom8.15; Gal4.6). Paul is using father-son language which echoes
the God-Israel or God-Messiah language of the Old Testament, and reminds his
readers that Jesus fulfils the role of Messiah in the redemption of the world to which
he alludes.
The Father is the source and destiny of all things including us, the Lord Christ
is the divine mediator through whom God created all things and redeemed us. This is

97
Fee, 1 Corinthians, p374
98
Wright, Climax, p129
99
Wright, Climax, p130; Conzelmann, p144
100
“The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” is a common Pauline formula (2Cor1.3; 11.31;
Eph1.3; Col1.3).
40

the meaning of the prepositions “from”, “for”, and “through”. The inclusion of “us”
the believers in the creedal statement is important. Paul reminds the Corinthians that
their existence is for God’s purposes, something that will form the ground for his
following argument.
The second clause, “one Lord”, places Christ in the closest kind of relationship
with God. For Fee, “the Trinitarian [binatarian?] implications” are obvious. In the
same breath that he asserts the uniqueness of the one God Paul places the divine Son
in the position of Lord, God’s name in the Old Testament. Paul feels no tension
between monotheism and the two persons of the Father and Jesus Christ, says Fee.101
Richard Bauckham similarly claims that Paul is clearly and unambiguously
“including Christ within the unique divine identity”.102
Paul is very careful, says Bauckham, not merely to tack Christ on to the end of
the Shemā as this would constitute di-theism, and contradict the Shemā. Instead Paul
identifies Jesus with the ‘Lord’ of the Shemā, who is one, resulting in what Bauckham
calls “Christological monotheism”.103
Conzelmann notes that while “God” is qualified with a description: “the
Father”, “Lord” is merely attached to “Jesus Christ” and left to stand with no further
explanation. Paul assumes both familiarity and consensus about meaning of this
word, it seems.
James Dunn, commenting on this verse, counts three points at which Paul
introduces a striking innovation. Firstly, as noted, he splits the Shemā between the
Father and Christ the Lord. There is no earlier parallel of this, Dunn is sure.
Secondly, he splits the regular Stoic cosmos formula between the one God and the
one Lord, the best parallel for which is in Jewish Wisdom literature (more on this in a
minute). Thirdly, as we have seen, he adds a reference to himself and his readers. 104
But what is the reason for these innovations? Paul’s concern, thinks Dunn, is
to stress the unity of creation and salvation, so as to prevent dualism. This is the
reason for his insistence that the one Lord of believers is not separable from the one
God, the creator. The Lord through whom salvation comes is the same Lord through
whom all things come; salvation for us means that we live for the one God through
the one Lord. The spiritual experience of the one Lord (“through him”) is not to be

101
Fee, 1Corinthians, p375
102
Bauckham, God Crucified, p38
103
Ibid., p38
104
Dunn, Christology, p180
41

separated from responsibility to the creator God (“for him”). The implication is that
the Corinthian believers must have a sense of responsibility in handling created things
before God and with due respect for fellow believers (“us”).105 Conzelmann agrees:
The verse is “deliberately constructed in parallel terms, thus giving expression to the
correspondence between creation and redemption.”106 Other Pauline passages which
affirm Jesus as the one through whom God both created and redeemed are Colossians
1.15-20 and 1Tim2.4-5107, both of which, like 1Corinthians 8.6, have been suspected
of harbouring ‘Wisdom’ christology. In this verse Christ is included as the
instrumental cause of creation, by means of the “through” prepositions. This
constitutes an implicit identification of Christ with the ‘Wisdom’ of God (Prov8,
Sir24.9, Wisd.Of Sol.7.22; 8.4; 9.9), through whom God was said to have created the
universe.108 The implications are clear: If Christ is the one through whom “all things”
exist, then Christ was actively involved in the work of creation and must have existed
for all eternity with God.
Dunn doesn’t dispute that an allusion to ‘Wisdom’ is probable here. He sees
an extension of Paul’s thought from 1.18-2.16, that Christ embodies God’s Wisdom
and thereby fulfils God’s salvation plan. In this verse, Dunn thinks, Paul now extends
the reach of divine Wisdom into creation to make the point that God’s salvation plan
is continuous with his power in creation. In uniting creation and salvation so closely
Paul gives complete disregard to the traditional Hellenistic dualism of his day.109 .
But Dunn is also wary to equate ‘Wisdom’ automatically with thoughts of
Christ’s pre-existence. “Paul is not making a statement about the act of creation in the
past, but rather about creation as believers see it now.”110 Likewise, Murphy-
O’Connor claims that “all things” primarily denotes the new creation which believers
inhabit, the focus of Paul’s thought being soteriological not cosmological. In fact
Murphy-O’Connor wants to claim that the passage has an “exclusively soteriological
meaning”.111 In this view Paul does not think Christ is a pre-existent being, but rather
the expression of God’s creative power and action. 112

105
Ibid., p180
106
Conzelmann, Corinthians, p144
107
Cf. Fee, 1Corinthians, p375
108
Cf. Bauckham, God Crucified, p39
109
Dunn, Christology, p182
110
Ibid., p181
111
Murphy-O’Connor, J., “1 Cor.8.6: Cosmology or Soteriology?”, 253-67, cited on Thiselton, The
First Epistle to the Corinthians, p635
112
Dunn, Christology, p182
42

Dunn and Murphy-O’Connor’s claim that the verse only indicates redemption
activity and not creation is a narrow exegesis. Dunn’s statement that Christ’s
Lordship “is the continuation and fullest expression of God’s own creative power” 113
begs the question and makes Paul’s christology unclear. Is it possible for Paul to
attribute Christ a role in creation activity without considering the implications of that
claim? Surely he would have been aware, even if he himself didn’t intend it, of the
potential of this verse to be interpreted as implying pre-existence. Dunn has a
“limited view of what pre-existence might mean”114, says Wright.
Hurtado laments Dunn’s disregard of the actual passages. Here Paul is clearly
attributing pre-existence directly and personally to Jesus and a central role in the
creation of the world. This is no mere philosophical or metaphysical speculation, but
it is prompted by profound religious convictions on Paul’s part.115 Two key
christological convictions are found in the pre-existence passages, says Hurtado: 1)
that Jesus’ origins and meaning lie in God, above and before creation and human
history, and 2) that Jesus’ agency in creation corresponds to his central role in
redemption116
Paul’s close connection of creation and redemption is important. “God’s
redemptive purpose is supreme and will triumph in eschatological glory”.117 This
triumph corresponds to, and fulfils, God’s creation purpose, so eschatological entities
can be referred to as pre-existent “in various ways”.118 “The distinction between ‘real’
and ‘ideal’ pre-existence is often fluid”119, notes Dahl. As in Philippians 2, the
conviction that Jesus is God’s eschatological agent of redemption is only a small and
natural step away from the conviction that he was also the agent of creation, and pre-
existent.
When we remember that this Wisdom christology appears in the same verse in
which Jesus is explicitly and purposefully included within the Jewish monotheistic
statement of faith then we can be in no doubt that Paul has a pre-existent Jesus in
view, through whom God created the entire material cosmos.

113
Christology in the Making, p182, on Wright p131
114
Wright, Climax, n32 on p132
115
Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, p126
116
Ibid., p126
117
Ibid., p124
118
Ibid., p124
119
Dahl, quoted in Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ, n109, p124
43

The highest possible christology is evident in this verse. Jesus is placed within
the very monotheistic confession itself, set within an argument that is itself
monotheistic. Paul’s lack of elaboration shows that he could take for granted that the
truths that this ‘creed’ embodied were commonly known and accepted by the
Corinthians. He even uses them as a basis for his following argument.

A Basis for Ethics: Monotheism and Love, “through” Christ

In order to answer the Corinthians’ question Paul has gone back to the
foundations of Christian belief. People defined by this belief, his implicit argument
runs, form a new family with a new code of behaviour. Three points need to be
emphasised.
First, the Christianised Shemā is needed by Paul to reassert monotheism on the
one hand, and the primacy of love on the other. Love of God is central to the Shemā
and should be central for the people of God, over and against ‘knowledge’ which
“puffs up”. Love for brothers is at the heart of Christian monotheism, so the principle
of love informs his ethics.
Secondly, the redemptive activity of Father and Son together forms the basis
of Christian behaviour. The Corinthians have argued from an abstract monotheism
but Paul’s monotheism is distinctly practical: it is about what the Father and the Son
have done in creation and redemption and the subsequent position of the Corinthians
in relation to them, which is what should ultimately determine their behaviour.
“Christian ethics is grounded in proper Christian theology.”120
And finally, the overwhelming emphasis of this verse, as we have seen, is that
the Corinthians cannot drive a wedge between the spiritual (redemption) and the
physical (creation) and thereby decry one as unimportant to Christian ethics. “All
things take their origin from God, even food, and it is through one Lord Jesus Christ
that all things (the world of creation and the blessings of salvation) come.”121

In this chapter we have explored Paul’s distinctively Christian confession of

1Corinthians 8.6. As with Philippians 2.5-11 we have seen how Paul redefines,
through Jesus the Messiah, his definition of Jewish monotheism. Paul cannot now
conceive of God without Christ; Jesus is essential to his Christian understanding of

120
Fee, 1Corinthians, p376
121
Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians, p638
44

Jewish monotheism. Through Christ God both creates and redeems, and it is through
Christ that believers now live. Paul has a clear conception of Jesus as an integral part
of God’s own unique identity.
45

Conclusion
To conclude. It is clear from our study that Paul’s christology, in its Jewish
monotheistic religious context, is as ‘high’ as any christology could hope to be. Paul
considers Jesus as an integral part of God’s unique character, existing prior to his
Incarnation in equality with God, and involved in the work of creation as God’s sole
agent. This Christ, in Paul’s view, lived an earthly life as Jesus of Nazareth, went
willingly to his death, and has been raised from the dead to an incomparable position
of power and glory over the whole created order. It is more than likely that Paul, and
the early Christian groups with whom Paul associated, included Jesus within their
devotions to the one God of Israel, believing that by so doing they were bringing
glory to God.
It has only been touched on lightly but is nevertheless of importance, I feel,
that both of the passages of christology on which we have focused have their roots in
ethics. Paul doesn’t do christology for christology’s sake. Rather, Paul’s main
concern in these passages is practical theology. In Philippians 2.5-11 and it’s parallel
2Corinthians 8.9 he commends Christ’s selfless humility and generosity, urging
believers to adopt a similar attitude of selfless humility towards one another and to
live generously, ‘emptying themselves’ for the sake of their brothers in Christ. 1
Corinthians 8.6 is an extraordinary example of careful and precise christology,
including Jesus within a Christian reworking of the Shemā, but Paul’s purpose in
doing so is practical: to remind the Corinthians of the central law of love that must lie
behind all Christian action, and to encourage a concern for the welfare of their fellow
Christians. Paul had no room for ‘ivory tower’ christology, as Hurtado’s work has
shown, but perhaps Hurtado’s definition of Christ-devotion needs widening to include
the whole scope of the believers’ lives. For example, the worship of Jesus
eschatologically portrayed in Philippians 2.10-11 may or may not have reflected an
actual Christian practice of cultic reverence within early Christian circles, but this was
not Paul’s concern. His point in demonstrating the appropriateness of such worship to
the exalted Jesus was not that churches should create liturgy whereby Jesus could be
praised in this manner, although this undoubtedly did occur. His point was, rather,
that Christians should live out their daily lives in worship to this humble, selfless, and
now exalted Lord precisely by imitating his humble and selfless attitude in their
dealings with one another.
46

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