Paul and the Trinity

Persons, Relations, and the Pauline Letters

Wesley Hill

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781467443029
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Paul's ways of speaking about God, Jesus, and the Spirit are intricately intertwined: talking about any one of the three, for Paul, implies reference to all of them together. However, much current Pauline scholarship discusses Paul's God-, Christ-, and Spirit-language without reference to trinitarian theology.In contrast to that trend, Wesley Hill argues in this book that later, post-Pauline trinitarian theologies represent a better approach, opening a fresh angle on Paul's earlier talk about God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Spirit. Hill looks critically at certain well-known discussions in the field of New Testament studies -- those by N. T. Wright, Richard Bauckham, Larry Hurtado, and others -- in light of patristic and contemporary trinitarian theologies, resulting in an innovative approach to an old set of questions.Adeptly integrating biblical exegesis and historical-systematic theology, Hill's Paul and the Trinity shows how trinitarian theologies illumine interpretive difficulties in a way that more recent theological concepts have failed to do.Watch a 2015 interview with the author of this book here:

Chapter Four

Jesus in Relation to God:
1 Corinthians 8:6 and 15:24-28

In the previous chapter we confronted an objection to my overarching thesis. I have argued that, for Paul, to speak of God and Jesus Christ is to speak of two identities constituted by their mutual relations. God is not who God is apart from his relation to Jesus, and likewise Jesus is not who he is apart from his relation to God. Or to say the same thing positively, specifying the identity of God — who God is — requires reference to the saving act achieved in Jesus Christ; and specifying the identity of Jesus — who Jesus is — requires reference to God as Jesus’ originating “sender” and vindicator in the act of raising him from the dead.

But the objection is that, whatever “mutuality” may be said to obtain in God and Jesus’ relations to and with one another, there remains a sense in which Jesus is subordinate to God, so that God retains a priority over Jesus: God is who God is first without Jesus and only then further enacts his identity in and through Jesus, whereas Jesus himself enjoys no such priority apart from God. The previous chapter attempted to address this objection by filling out the notion of an asymmetrical mutuality between God and Jesus and by distinguishing that relational mutuality from the oneness or unity they share. In the roles they each assume in the drama of salvation, God and Jesus are differentiated insofar as God is the one who exalts Jesus and bestows on him the divine name (Phil 2:9-11). And yet that differentiation does not prevent Jesus from determining God’s particular identity as Father (2:11). God determines Jesus’ identity as the exalted one (ὁ θεὸς αὐτὸν ὑπερύψωσεν) and the bearer of the name κύριος, but in a movement of reciprocity, God is thereby determined in his identity as the one who exalts Jesus and is glorified inseparably with Jesus as the one who is “Father” vis-­à-­vis Jesus as “Son.” So the relationship remains asymmetrical but not for that reason any less mutual. And, at the same time, while God and Jesus are differentiated from one another in this way, they enjoy a basic oneness or unity via the κύριος name that remains God’s (as the appeal to Isaiah 45 makes clear) even as it is shared with Jesus.

In this chapter I want to sharpen that answer by attending closely to two texts that are usually grouped together with Phil 2:6-11 as making closely similar assertions: 1 Cor 8:6 and 15:20-28.1 I will discuss each of them in turn.

1. 1 Corinthians 8:6 as “Redoubled” Discourse

A number of features establish the connection between 1 Cor 8:6 and Phil 2:6-11. First, 1 Cor 8:6 distinguishes Jesus Christ as κύριος from the one to whom Jesus relates as θεὸς ὁ πατήρ, as Phil 2:11 does with the same terms. Second, 1 Cor 8:6 preserves an apparently hierarchical relation between these two, with “God the Father” being the one “from whom” (ἐξ οὗ) all things (τὰ πάντα) are said to derive and the “one Lord Jesus Christ” being the one “through whom” (δι’ οὗ) they exist, just as Phil 2:9-11 makes God the acting subject who exalts Jesus to be “Lord,” and the acclamation of Jesus as such redounds to God’s glory. And third, 1 Cor 8:6 relies on a classic text of Jewish monotheism (Deut 6:4 LXX) as the medium with which to make its constructive claims, in the same manner that Phil 2:9-11 depends on Isa 45:23 LXX.2 Taken together, these features have led many interpreters to construe 1 Cor 8:6 along the same lines as they do Phil 2:6-11: the identities of Jesus and God are not mutually constitutive; rather, Jesus exists as God’s instrument through whom God made all things, and his status as “Lord” is one traceable back to God’s prior and superior status, which rules out any bilateral effort to speak of God’s identity as God being constituted by and in his relation to Jesus.3

My response to this construal is, likewise, parallel with the exegesis of Phil 2:6-11 offered above. As I attempted to do there, I will begin here by separating the elements of 1 Cor 8:6 into two categories: those which highlight oneness between God and Jesus and those which necessitate distinction.

The key structural terms of 1 Cor 8:6 — εἷς, θεός, and κύριος — are all present in the LXX of Deut 6:4 which reads: Ἄκουε, Ισραηλ· κύριος ὁ θεὸς ἡμῶν κύριος εἷς ἐστιν.4 What sets Paul’s interpretation apart, however, is its apportioning these terms, all of which denote the same agent in their LXX context, to two different agents — God, designated as ὁ πατήρ, and Ἰησοῦς Χριστός. This interpretive move has been described by some as the “addition”5 of Jesus as κύριος to the affirmation of “one God,” so that a unilateral movement from Jesus back to God is preserved: “God” is the one God of Israel, and now also, alongside him, there is Jesus as the exalted agent through whom he acts. This reading can point to the use of καί connecting the two main clauses of 1 Cor 8:6, as well as the non-­overlapping roles assumed by God and Jesus that are indicated by the differing prepositions governing their actions (ἐκ and διά respectively). But what this reading does not account for satisfactorily is that the designation given to Jesus — κύριος — is taken from Deut 6:4 itself, not imported into it. As Bauckham writes, “Paul is not adding to the one God of the Shemaʿ a ‘Lord’ the Shemaʿ does not mention. He is identifying Jesus as the ‘Lord’ whom the Shemaʿ affirms to be one.”6 In other words, Paul is making an interpretive gloss.7 To pick out the God to whom Deut 6:4 is referring, he says in effect, requires one to mention both “God the Father” and “Jesus Christ”; where Deut 6:4 affirms, “The Lord our God is one,” we are to understand “the Lord our God” as inclusive of both “God the Father” and the “Lord Jesus Christ.”8

Two observations confirm this interpretation. The first is that in addition to Deut 6:4, Paul draws on another monotheistic formula and splits it apart it in a similar way, assigning half of it to “God the Father” and half to the “Lord Jesus Christ.” Prior to its Pauline modification, the formula likely would have resembled Rom 11:36a: ἐξ αὐτοῦ καὶ δι’ αὐτοῦ καὶ εἰς αὐτὸν τὰ πάντα.9 In its original form, the object of all the prepositions would have been the same figure, namely, God. But in Paul’s adaptation of it, two of the prepositions — ἐκ and εἰς — continue to take “God,” now specified as ὁ πατήρ, for their object, while the third of the prepositions — διά — now takes the “one Lord Jesus Christ” for its object. In the same way that Paul apportioned the affirmations of Deut 6:4 to both God and Jesus, he now does the same with the affirmations of a similarly well-­known monotheistic formula, with the result that God and Jesus are bound together not only by sharing the divine name (κύριος) but by sharing the role as originator as well as concluder of all things. What previously served to demarcate God’s uniqueness — that all of creation is from, through, and for him10 — now functions in 1 Cor 8:6 to emphasize the uniqueness of God and Jesus together in contradistinction from the “many gods” and “many lords” of vv. 4 and 5.

This leads to the second confirmation of the present interpretation. The adversative ἀλλά that begins 8:6 places the affirmation that there is εἷς θεός and εἷς κύριος in opposition to the θεοὶ πολλοί and the κύριοι πολλοί of v. 5. Whatever the Corinthians might be inclined to regard (or whatever they may have heard others regard) as divine, in reality there is only one true God and one true Lord. This reference to “one” God and “one” Lord is, however, an expansion of the affirmation already made in v. 4: οὐδεὶς θεὸς εἰ μὴ εἷς. There the contrast is not, as in vv. 5-6, simply between gods and lords whose deity may be an object of doubt and the only true God, but is, more sweepingly, a contrast between an idol which is “nothing” (οὐδὲν εἴδωλον) and the God besides whom there is no other. Therefore when Paul comes to fill out the content of that εἷς in v. 6 and includes Jesus within its ambit,11 the implication is that Jesus is thereby being placed on the side of divinity in a contrast involving what it means to be God over against a vacuous idol or a so-­called “god” or “lord.” As Erik Waaler puts the matter, “The strongest argument for unity between the Father and the Lord Jesus is found in Paul’s use of the ‘no God but one’ [v. 4] phrase in close association with the ‘one Lord’ phrase.”12

None of this, however, should be taken as war...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• One: The Eclipse of Relations in the Interpretation of Pauline God-Talk
• Two: God in Relation to Jesus
• Three: Jesus in Relation to God: Philippians 2:6-11
• Four: Jesus in Relation to God: 1 Corinthians 8:6 and 15:24-28
• Five: The Spirit in Relation to God and Jesus
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index of Subjects and Names
• Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Writings
• Index of Greek Words