Freethought & Rationalism Archive

GakuseiDon · 10-07-2011, 06:35 PM

While writing my review of Doherty's "Jesus: Neither God Nor Man", I collected a lot of notes on various topics, including on Paul's Adam Christology. I only briefly referred to this topic (Doherty interestingly enough wasn't aware of it or Dunn's work on it), but it's an interesting subject that perhaps others have not heard about either. So I've pulled out those notes I collected -- mostly quotes from scholars -- and put them below.

Many scholars accept the idea of "Adam Christology" in some form, though it's application to Phil 2 is controversial. While it doesn't necessarily refute the idea of Jesus' pre-existence and divinity, it does suggest them as unnecessary to its reading. And so it is frowned upon by anyone requiring a high Christology, including (naturally) conservative Christians and some mythicists.

It's clear that Paul saw Christ as a new Adam who negates the actions of Adam. As Paul writes:

Rom 5:19 For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.

That statement alone tells us how important this concept was to Paul. Christ -- by his obedience -- was undoing the sin of the very first man and everyone following that first man.

Karl-Josef Kuschel, writing in the 1990s, states:
http://benadam74.wordpress.com/2009/...time-extracts/

... an increasing number of present-day New Testament scholars with good reason question the premises of exegesis hitherto and cannot see pre-existence, let alone incarnation, in the Philippian hymn...

Already in the 1960s and 1970s Anglo-Saxon exegetes had paid more attention than representatives of German exegesis to the basic alternative that in this text Christ is not celebrated as a pre-existent heavenly being, but in good Jewish fashion as a human counterpart to Adam[18]. That view cannot be completely false, simply because in other passages in his correspondence Paul also compares Christ with Adam (Rom. 5.12-21; 1 Cor 15.21f, 45-47). In fact we can ask: is not Adam, the first, original man, here replaced and surpassed by Jesus as the definitive, ultimately valid man? In that case we should regard Gen. 1-3, the creation and fall of the first man, as the traditio-historical background.

Linguistically, this seems to be supported simply by the fact that one can virtually identify ‘form of God’ (morphe theou) – thus literally, and better than ‘he was like God’ – with doxa (glory) or eikon (image) of God[19]. The same holds for the Greek word homoioma (‘and in the likeness of men’) of v.7, which, moreover, is occasionally translated ‘in form like a man’. So the first line of the hymn would speak of Christ, who like Adam was created ‘in the image’ of God and like Adam participated in the ‘glory’ of God before his fall. The contrasting term to ‘form of God’ would further confirm this derivation: ‘form of a slave’ is evidently an allusion to Adam’s fate after the fall. The second contrasting pair at the beginning of the text would point in the same direction: ‘likeness of God’ probably alludes to Adam’s temptation (he wanted to be like God, Gen. 3.5) and ‘likeness of men’ in turn to Adam’s state after succumbing to sin...

So there is no question here of a pre-existent heavenly figure; Rather, Christ is the great contrasting figure to Adam... Adam the audacious man – Christ the man who humbled himself; Adam the one who was humbled forcibly by God – Christ the man who voluntarily humbled himself before God; Adam the rebellious man – Christ the man who was utterly obedient; Adam the one who was ultimately cursed – Christ the one who was ultimately exalted...

Jerome Murphy-O’Connor can therefore draw the basic conclusion:

‘Strophe 1: As the Righteous Man par excellence Christ was the perfect image (eikon) of God. He was totally what God intended man to be. His sinless condition gave him the right to be treated as if he were God, that is, to enjoy incorruptibility in which Adam was created. This right, however, he did not use to his own advantage, but he gave himself over to the consequences of a mode of existence that was not his by accepting the condition of a slave which involved suffering and death.

Strophe 2: Though in his human nature Christ was identical with other men, he in fact differed from them because, unlike them, he had no need to be reconciled with God. Nonetheless, he humbled himself in obedience and accepted death.

Strophe 3: Therefore, God exalted him above all the just who were promised a kingdom, and transferred to him the title and the authority that had hitherto been God’s alone. He is the Kyrios whom every voice must confess and to whom every knee must bow.

Thus understood, the original hymn represents an attempt to define the uniqueness of Christ considered precisely as man. This is what one would expect at the beginning of Christian theology.’[21]

Read that way, there is no need to see pre-existence or divinity in Jesus, anymore than we see pre-existence or divinity in Adam.

Probably the scholar best known for promoting an "Adam Christology" in Paul is James Dunn. He writes in "Christology in the Making", available on Google Books (my bolding below. As I cannot render Greek text, I've noted where it appears below):

What we have here in fact is very similar to Heb. 2.6-9 and is best understood as a fuller description of what was involved in the divine programme for man being run through again with Jesus. Christ faced the same archetypal choice that confronted Adam, but chose not as Adam had chosen (to grasp equality with God). Instead he chose to empty himself of Adam's glory and to embrace Adam's lot, the fate which Adam had suffered by way of punishment. That is, in the words of the hymn, 'he made himself powerless' (Greek text) , freely accepting the lot and portion of man's slavery (to corruption and the powers) - (Greek text), the antithesis of (Greek text); he freely chose to share the very lot and fate of all men - (Greek text), the antithesis of God's immortality and incorruption. What is expressed in one phrase in Rom. 8.3, 'sent in the very likeness of sinful flesh', is expressed in two phrases in Phil, 2.7, 'taking the form of a slave, becoming in the very likeness (Greek text) of men'.

Reading through Paul and Hebrews with an "Adam Christology" in mind makes a lot of things clear. Christ is a sinless man, the image of God, just as Adam was before he ate of the tree. But where Adam was disobedient, Christ was obedient. Thus "as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one [man] shall many be made righteous".

Under this reading, Jesus is still a man, but a special one. He is sinless, in "the image of God". He is like Adam before Adam sinned. However, he is not pre-existent nor divine, any more than Adam was thought to be. This explains why Paul calls Jesus "man" throughout the letters, while at the same time stating that Jesus came "in the likeness of sinful flesh" and in "the likeness of men". He can be born of a woman, a son of David, a descendent of Abraham, come from the Israelites.

aa5874 · 10-07-2011, 07:52 PM

GakuseiDon, are you in denial? Why can't you accept the actual written evidence??

Please, can't you even admit that Paul did NOT ever preach that men should be worshiped as Gods? See Romans 1.25

Philipians 2

Quote:

5 Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: 6 Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: 7 But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: 8 And being found in fashion F7 as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

Jesus was GOD first then a man of no reputation later.

This is so basic.

stephan huller · 10-07-2011, 10:37 PM

Marcion's version of 1 Cor 15.47 (according to most scholarly reconstructions of what appears in Tertullian) "The first man is of the earth, the second the Lord from heaven."

GakuseiDon · 10-07-2011, 11:25 PM

Isn't that the same as what we have in Paul now?

I don't know much about Marcion. Did his version of Paul have comparisons between Adam and Christ?

stephan huller · 10-07-2011, 11:33 PM

Our text reads 'the second man ...' and Tertullian seems to indicate that Marcion wanted to distance Jesus from being considered a 'man.' We have to take Tertullian's words with a grain of salt but still, we have also to consider that there might be some truth.

GakuseiDon · 10-07-2011, 11:46 PM

Just a quick glance through Tertullian's five books against Marcion:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...ullian125.html

For to this effect he just before remarked of Christ Himself: "The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit." Our heretic, however, in the excess of his folly, being unwilling that the statement should remain in this shape, altered "last Adam" into "last Lord;" because he feared, of course, that if he allowed the Lord to be the last (or second) Adam, we should contend that Christ, being the second Adam, must needs belong to that God who owned also the first Adam. But the falsification is transparent. For why is there a first Adam, unless it be that there is also a second Adam?

So, if Tertullian can be believed, Marcion's letter by Paul differed here where Christ is said to be the last or second Adam. Marcion (according to Tertullian) changed it to "last Lord". Since Marcion believed the first Adam was created by the inferior God, then Tertullian reasons that if Christ was the second Adam, then that would imply he was from the same Creator.

Tertullian goes on:

In like manner (the heretic) will be refuted also with the word "man:" "The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven." Now, since the first was a how can there be a second, unless he is a man also? Or, else, if the second is" Lord," was the first "Lord" also? It is, however, quite enough for me, that in his Gospel he admits the Son of man to be both Christ and Man; so that he will not be able to deny Him (in this passage), in the "Adam" and the "man" (of the apostle). What follows will also be too much for him. For when the apostle says, "As is the earthy," that is, man, "such also are they that are earthy"-men again, of course; "therefore as is the heavenly," meaning the Man, from heaven, "such are the men also that are heavenly." For he could not possibly have opposed to earthly men any heavenly beings that were not men also; his object being the more accurately to distinguish their state and expectation by using this name in common for them both. For in respect of their present state and their future expectation he calls men earthly and heavenly, still reserving their parity of name, according as they are reckoned (as to their ultimate conditions) in Adam or in Christ.

Here Tertullian is saying Marcion tried to remove the word "man" as a description for Christ. Tertullian claims that Paul calling Christ "man" refutes Marcion. Interesting.

andrewcriddle · 10-08-2011, 02:26 AM

Hi GakuseiDon

Is this account of Paul's Christology compatible with Pauline authorship of Colossians ? (IMHO it is easier to interpret Philippians without a doctrine of pre-existence than to interpret Colossians in this way.)

Andrew Criddle

GakuseiDon · 10-08-2011, 10:47 AM

Hi Andrew -- Dunn sees Colossians and Ephesians as being compatible with the idea of a non pre-existent Jesus, though he invokes Colossians using "mystery terminology" to do so. His points here are less convincing IMO, though if they were written after Paul then it is less of a problem if they are not compatible.

Solo · 10-10-2011, 08:58 AM

FWIW,
an interesting take on Dunn's (and others') attempts to make the early Christian cosmology more pliant to ecumenical correctness by denying pre-existence => Douglas Mc Cready "He Came Down From Heaven"

Best,
Jiri

GakuseiDon · 10-10-2011, 10:35 AM

Thanks Solo, that was an interesting read. Though a shame he didn't discuss the passages themselves, only the implications of removing pre-existence from Christian dogma.

10-07-2011, 06:35 PM	#1
GakuseiDon Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 5,714	Paul's Adam Christology While writing my review of Doherty's "Jesus: Neither God Nor Man", I collected a lot of notes on various topics, including on Paul's Adam Christology. I only briefly referred to this topic (Doherty interestingly enough wasn't aware of it or Dunn's work on it), but it's an interesting subject that perhaps others have not heard about either. So I've pulled out those notes I collected -- mostly quotes from scholars -- and put them below. Many scholars accept the idea of "Adam Christology" in some form, though it's application to Phil 2 is controversial. While it doesn't necessarily refute the idea of Jesus' pre-existence and divinity, it does suggest them as unnecessary to its reading. And so it is frowned upon by anyone requiring a high Christology, including (naturally) conservative Christians and some mythicists. It's clear that Paul saw Christ as a new Adam who negates the actions of Adam. As Paul writes: Rom 5:19 For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. That statement alone tells us how important this concept was to Paul. Christ -- by his obedience -- was undoing the sin of the very first man and everyone following that first man. Karl-Josef Kuschel, writing in the 1990s, states: http://benadam74.wordpress.com/2009/...time-extracts/ ... an increasing number of present-day New Testament scholars with good reason question the premises of exegesis hitherto and cannot see pre-existence, let alone incarnation, in the Philippian hymn... Already in the 1960s and 1970s Anglo-Saxon exegetes had paid more attention than representatives of German exegesis to the basic alternative that in this text Christ is not celebrated as a pre-existent heavenly being, but in good Jewish fashion as a human counterpart to Adam[18]. That view cannot be completely false, simply because in other passages in his correspondence Paul also compares Christ with Adam (Rom. 5.12-21; 1 Cor 15.21f, 45-47). In fact we can ask: is not Adam, the first, original man, here replaced and surpassed by Jesus as the definitive, ultimately valid man? In that case we should regard Gen. 1-3, the creation and fall of the first man, as the traditio-historical background. Linguistically, this seems to be supported simply by the fact that one can virtually identify ‘form of God’ (morphe theou) – thus literally, and better than ‘he was like God’ – with doxa (glory) or eikon (image) of God[19]. The same holds for the Greek word homoioma (‘and in the likeness of men’) of v.7, which, moreover, is occasionally translated ‘in form like a man’. So the first line of the hymn would speak of Christ, who like Adam was created ‘in the image’ of God and like Adam participated in the ‘glory’ of God before his fall. The contrasting term to ‘form of God’ would further confirm this derivation: ‘form of a slave’ is evidently an allusion to Adam’s fate after the fall. The second contrasting pair at the beginning of the text would point in the same direction: ‘likeness of God’ probably alludes to Adam’s temptation (he wanted to be like God, Gen. 3.5) and ‘likeness of men’ in turn to Adam’s state after succumbing to sin... So there is no question here of a pre-existent heavenly figure; Rather, Christ is the great contrasting figure to Adam... Adam the audacious man – Christ the man who humbled himself; Adam the one who was humbled forcibly by God – Christ the man who voluntarily humbled himself before God; Adam the rebellious man – Christ the man who was utterly obedient; Adam the one who was ultimately cursed – Christ the one who was ultimately exalted... Jerome Murphy-O’Connor can therefore draw the basic conclusion: ‘Strophe 1: As the Righteous Man par excellence Christ was the perfect image (eikon) of God. He was totally what God intended man to be. His sinless condition gave him the right to be treated as if he were God, that is, to enjoy incorruptibility in which Adam was created. This right, however, he did not use to his own advantage, but he gave himself over to the consequences of a mode of existence that was not his by accepting the condition of a slave which involved suffering and death. Strophe 2: Though in his human nature Christ was identical with other men, he in fact differed from them because, unlike them, he had no need to be reconciled with God. Nonetheless, he humbled himself in obedience and accepted death. Strophe 3: Therefore, God exalted him above all the just who were promised a kingdom, and transferred to him the title and the authority that had hitherto been God’s alone. He is the Kyrios whom every voice must confess and to whom every knee must bow. Thus understood, the original hymn represents an attempt to define the uniqueness of Christ considered precisely as man. This is what one would expect at the beginning of Christian theology.’[21] Read that way, there is no need to see pre-existence or divinity in Jesus, anymore than we see pre-existence or divinity in Adam. Probably the scholar best known for promoting an "Adam Christology" in Paul is James Dunn. He writes in "Christology in the Making", available on Google Books (my bolding below. As I cannot render Greek text, I've noted where it appears below): What we have here in fact is very similar to Heb. 2.6-9 and is best understood as a fuller description of what was involved in the divine programme for man being run through again with Jesus. Christ faced the same archetypal choice that confronted Adam, but chose not as Adam had chosen (to grasp equality with God). Instead he chose to empty himself of Adam's glory and to embrace Adam's lot, the fate which Adam had suffered by way of punishment. That is, in the words of the hymn, 'he made himself powerless' (Greek text) , freely accepting the lot and portion of man's slavery (to corruption and the powers) - (Greek text), the antithesis of (Greek text); he freely chose to share the very lot and fate of all men - (Greek text), the antithesis of God's immortality and incorruption. What is expressed in one phrase in Rom. 8.3, 'sent in the very likeness of sinful flesh', is expressed in two phrases in Phil, 2.7, 'taking the form of a slave, becoming in the very likeness (Greek text) of men'. Reading through Paul and Hebrews with an "Adam Christology" in mind makes a lot of things clear. Christ is a sinless man, the image of God, just as Adam was before he ate of the tree. But where Adam was disobedient, Christ was obedient. Thus "as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one [man] shall many be made righteous". Under this reading, Jesus is still a man, but a special one. He is sinless, in "the image of God". He is like Adam before Adam sinned. However, he is not pre-existent nor divine, any more than Adam was thought to be. This explains why Paul calls Jesus "man" throughout the letters, while at the same time stating that Jesus came "in the likeness of sinful flesh" and in "the likeness of men". He can be born of a woman, a son of David, a descendent of Abraham, come from the Israelites.

10-07-2011, 11:46 PM	#6
GakuseiDon Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 5,714	Just a quick glance through Tertullian's five books against Marcion: http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...ullian125.html For to this effect he just before remarked of Christ Himself: "The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit." Our heretic, however, in the excess of his folly, being unwilling that the statement should remain in this shape, altered "last Adam" into "last Lord;" because he feared, of course, that if he allowed the Lord to be the last (or second) Adam, we should contend that Christ, being the second Adam, must needs belong to that God who owned also the first Adam. But the falsification is transparent. For why is there a first Adam, unless it be that there is also a second Adam? So, if Tertullian can be believed, Marcion's letter by Paul differed here where Christ is said to be the last or second Adam. Marcion (according to Tertullian) changed it to "last Lord". Since Marcion believed the first Adam was created by the inferior God, then Tertullian reasons that if Christ was the second Adam, then that would imply he was from the same Creator. Tertullian goes on: In like manner (the heretic) will be refuted also with the word "man:" "The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from heaven." Now, since the first was a how can there be a second, unless he is a man also? Or, else, if the second is" Lord," was the first "Lord" also? It is, however, quite enough for me, that in his Gospel he admits the Son of man to be both Christ and Man; so that he will not be able to deny Him (in this passage), in the "Adam" and the "man" (of the apostle). What follows will also be too much for him. For when the apostle says, "As is the earthy," that is, man, "such also are they that are earthy"-men again, of course; "therefore as is the heavenly," meaning the Man, from heaven, "such are the men also that are heavenly." For he could not possibly have opposed to earthly men any heavenly beings that were not men also; his object being the more accurately to distinguish their state and expectation by using this name in common for them both. For in respect of their present state and their future expectation he calls men earthly and heavenly, still reserving their parity of name, according as they are reckoned (as to their ultimate conditions) in Adam or in Christ. Here Tertullian is saying Marcion tried to remove the word "man" as a description for Christ. Tertullian claims that Paul calling Christ "man" refutes Marcion. Interesting.

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10-07-2011, 10:37 PM	#3
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	Marcion's version of 1 Cor 15.47 (according to most scholarly reconstructions of what appears in Tertullian) "The first man is of the earth, the second the Lord from heaven."

10-07-2011, 11:25 PM	#4
GakuseiDon Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 5,714	Isn't that the same as what we have in Paul now? I don't know much about Marcion. Did his version of Paul have comparisons between Adam and Christ?

10-07-2011, 11:33 PM	#5
stephan huller Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Location: seattle, wa Posts: 9,337	Our text reads 'the second man ...' and Tertullian seems to indicate that Marcion wanted to distance Jesus from being considered a 'man.' We have to take Tertullian's words with a grain of salt but still, we have also to consider that there might be some truth.

10-08-2011, 02:26 AM	#7
andrewcriddle Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: Birmingham UK Posts: 4,876	Hi GakuseiDon Is this account of Paul's Christology compatible with Pauline authorship of Colossians ? (IMHO it is easier to interpret Philippians without a doctrine of pre-existence than to interpret Colossians in this way.) Andrew Criddle

10-08-2011, 10:47 AM	#8
GakuseiDon Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 5,714	Hi Andrew -- Dunn sees Colossians and Ephesians as being compatible with the idea of a non pre-existent Jesus, though he invokes Colossians using "mystery terminology" to do so. His points here are less convincing IMO, though if they were written after Paul then it is less of a problem if they are not compatible.

10-10-2011, 08:58 AM	#9
Solo Veteran Member Join Date: Oct 2004 Location: Ottawa, Canada Posts: 2,579	FWIW, an interesting take on Dunn's (and others') attempts to make the early Christian cosmology more pliant to ecumenical correctness by denying pre-existence => Douglas Mc Cready "He Came Down From Heaven" Best, Jiri

10-10-2011, 10:35 AM	#10
GakuseiDon Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 5,714	Thanks Solo, that was an interesting read. Though a shame he didn't discuss the passages themselves, only the implications of removing pre-existence from Christian dogma.

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