Revelational Christology

I was arguing with some Unitarians recently and they were using a few proof texts.

Hebrews 1:3 states:

And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

This is common anti-trinitarian prooftext. The idea is that Jesus is a “copy” of God as unitarian Greg Stafford argued with Dr. James White. Here Steve Hays speaks on it:

As to Heb 1:3, we need to keep a couple of things in mind:

i) To speak of the Son as a “copy” of God is figurative image. A metaphor is an analogy. Every analogy has an element of disanalogy. So the question at issue is to single out the intended point of commonality.

Stafford, with wooden literality, acts as if the process of replication is the point of commonality. But x can be a copy of y in another sense: resemblance. A copy, while numerically distinct, may be essentially identical with the original. And that’s the point of comparison in Heb 1:3. Not the process, but the product.

And keep in mind, once again, that this is figurative. The Son is not the actual end-product of a process. The intention, rather, is to establish the consubstantial identity of the Son with the Father.

Likewise, “radiance” or “reflection” is another picturesque metaphor, with literary debts to the Alexandrian wisdom tradition, but also allusive, I suspect, of the OT Shekinah. Once more, Christ is the visible manifestation of the invisible God.

ii) This interpretation is reinforced by the fact that, in chapter 1, the author of Hebrews goes out of his way to emphasize the deity of the Son by several different lines of evidence.

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2007/07/only-true-god.html.

Colossians 1:15-20 states:

“15. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. 16. For by Him all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities—all things have been created through Him and for Him. 17. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together. 18. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything.18. He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that He Himself will come to have first place in everything. 19. For it was the Father’s good pleasure for all the fullness to dwell in Him, 20. and through Him to reconcile all things to Himself, having made peace through the blood of His cross; through Him, I say, whether things on earth or things in heaven.”

The genre of this is highly poetic and very hymnic because of its use of metaphor, Form, and imagery. That is why scholars think that it is from early Christian hymns. It paints the images of an amazing revelatory Christ and his triumph. It’s tied in imagery that takes the reader from Gen. 1:1 to Rev.22. Obviously, the reference to Christ being the “image of the invisible God” is echoing to Gen. The new heavens and new Earth as the cosmos being renewed. It paints Christ in terms used for military victory. That is the bit of the imagery that is similar to the slaughtered lamb in Rev. 5. The imagery in Rev. 5 is a slaughtered Lamb with crowns symbolizing Kingly authority. Here you have the cross showing a shameful sacrifice and the blood symbolizing triumph. The idea is that cosmic victory of Christ came through his sacrifice on the cross. As James D. G. Dunn states:

Moreover, the combination of the elements (“blood” and “cross”) and the present context put them at some remove from the more characteristic Pauline usage: the “blood” of Christ in Paul more naturally evokes the thought of his death as a bloody sacrifice (Rom. 3:25; 1 Cor. 11:25; and cf. Eph. 2:13–18 with Heb. 10:19), whereas here the imagery of warfare and triumph (2:15) suggests rather the blood of battle. And in Paul the “cross” usually evokes thought of shame and embarrassment because of the shamefulness of death on a cross (1 Cor. 1:17–18; Gal. 5:11; 6:12; Phil. 2:8; cf. Heb. 12:2), whereas here it is itself an instrument of warfare by which peace is achieved (see on 2:14–15).

The issue of Christ being the “Firstborn of all creation” crops us in the discussion of this text. Paul and John usually use different biological metaphors. John usually emphasizing the reproductive/biological metaphors and Paul using an adoptive metaphor. Here is interesting as “firstborn” is a biological metaphor to emphasize one’s preeminence. This is found used throughout the Bible(Ex. 4:22, Psalm 89:27, 1 Chr. 5:1-2, Jer. 31:9, Col. 1:18, Rev. 1:5). Peter O’Brien states:

The term “firstborn” was frequently used in the LXX (130 times), mostly in genealogies and historical narratives, to indicate temporal priority and sovereignty of rank. Frequently “firstborn” was employed to denote one who had a special place in the father’s love. So Israel is called “my beloved son” (υἰὸς πρωτότοκός μου, Exod 4:22), a phrase that expresses the particularly close relation between God and Israel. In Judaism the messianic king, as well as Israel, the patriarchs and the Torah are given this title of distinction (for references see Str-B 3, 256–58, 626; Michaelis, TDNT 6, 873–76). Within the NT “firstborn” (πρωτότοκος), which occurs in the plural at Hebrews 11:28 and 12:23, always refers in the singular to Jesus Christ. In most of these contexts while priority of time is in view (Rom 8:29; cf. the parallel expressions in 1 Cor 15:20 and Acts 26:23; Rev 1:5) the notion of supremacy or priority of rank tends to dominate. The title “firstborn,” used of Christ here and in verse 18, echoes the wording of Psalm 89:27, where God says of the Davidic king: “I also will make him my firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.”

Some Unitarians think that this is attached to wisdom literature. That it is an allusion to Proverbs 8:22. But it isn’t a direct allusion to that text, but more to a wisdom literature tradition. As Steve Hays states:

As Moo explains, there are generally two postulated sources for Paul’s usage: the wisdom tradition and the Genesis creation account. Even assuming that Paul is tapping into the wisdom tradition, that’s not a direct appeal to Prov 8, but Prov 8 filtered through a subsequent theological tradition. Not Prov 8 in itself, but a theological tradition that takes on a life of its own, taking Prov 8 as the initial stimulus, but is now independent of the initial stimulus. Paul may be using some free-floating categories to express himself, but the meaning depends on Paul’s utilization.

Jesus is what solves the Transcendence/immanence problem. He is the only perfect revelation of these things because he only can relay the information of what he “saw”. The phrase “invisible” was used about things that transcended space and time. The types of things that allude sensation. The natural question that arose at that time is “How can that be known?”. In Paul’s mind, the answer is Christ is what has revealed God. John has the same concept in mind in his Gospel (1:1-18, 6:35-47). As Hays points out, he is able to do this because:

This is further grounded in v1. V18 forms an inclusio to v1, where you have the same dialectical interplay between two divine parties, one of whom assumes a revelatory role, as the divine word. Christ is uniquely qualified to reveal God because Christ is what he reveals.

The metaphor is a bit paradoxical “The image of the invisible God”. That is similar to that of John’s metaphors of seeing/hearing. It emphasizes Christ as unique compared to every created thing. That he is the “image” of something that is invisible. Paul seems to be using mirror/reflection imagery (1 Cor. 13:12, 2 Cor 3:18; 4:4, 6, 18, Jas 1:23).
Hays once observed something about mirror imagery

Keen observers of meteorological phenomena. This raises the possibility that when Scripture uses mirror imagery to illustrate the interrelationship between the Father and the Son, this could be a double reflection, like arranging two mirrors face to face. They mirror each other, in mutual reflection.

So, just like mirror reflections, the Son is able to reflect or represent the Father perfectly. This representation can be said to be a manifestation of God.

(1) Paul says that Jesus Christ is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). Here, he uses a word and a picture which would waken all kinds of memories in the minds of those who heard it. The word is eikōn, and image is its correct translation. Now, as the New Testament scholar J. B. Lightfoot points out, an image can be two things which merge into each other. It can be a representation; but a representation, if it is perfect enough, can become a manifestation. When Paul uses this word, he declares that Jesus is the perfect manifestation of God. To see what God is like, we must look at Jesus. He perfectly represents God to men and women in a form which they can see and know and understand. But it is what is behind this word that is of such enormous interest.
Barclay, W. (2003). The Letters to Philippians, Colossians, and Thessalonians (3rd ed. fully rev. and updated., p. 135). Louisville, KY; London: Westminster John Knox Press.

Christ is the image of the invisible God in a way no creature could ever be. He is the archetypal image of God and we are the ectypal image of God. The text isn’t about Christ being inferior or about him being derivative of the Father.

As Dr. Vern Poythress said,

Christ is the original image, “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15). He is himself, God, so he is a divine image. Adam was made in the image of God, and so is a created image. We can say more precisely that he is in the image of Christ, so he is in a sense an image of an image.

This isn’t used to undermine the Deity of Christ as the very next verse states that he is the creator of all things. The point isn’t directed towards Christ ontology, but rather to his revelatory ability. He can reveal to us the Father. That is because he is also God manifested in flesh. Christ is the representation or manifestation of God. This is tied with John’s statements about Christ:

John 1:18

No one has ever seen God. The uniquely existing God, who is close to the Father’s side, has revealed him.

No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him.

John 12:44-45

44 Then Jesus cried out and said, “He who believes in Me, believes not in Me but in Him who sent Me. 45 And he who sees Me sees Him who sent Me.

It is Christ in his revelatory and redemptive significance who is the subject of praise here; “the description is revelatory, more than ontological” (Martin, Colossians and Philemon 57). And the praise is that his redemptive work (1:14: “in whom we have the redemption”) is entirely continuous and of a piece with God’s work in creation. It is the same God who comes to expression in creation and definitively in Christ; “he who speaks of Christ speaks of God” (Gnilka, Kolosserbrief 61). In short, there is no dualism here. Quite the contrary: this is christology set within Jewish monotheism and predicated on the Jewish theological axiom that the one God has chosen to reveal himself in and through his creative power (cf. Hegermann 101: “dynamic monism”; Wright, “Poetry” 114: “christological monotheism”).

Dunn, J. D. G. (1996). The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon: a commentary on the Greek text (p. 89). Grand Rapids, MI; Carlisle: William B. Eerdmans Publishing; Paternoster Press.

Theologians have long debated just what this “image of God” in which humans were created might be. But this issue is only tangentially related to the question of what it means for Christ to be “the image of God.” In both texts where Paul asserts this about Christ (here and in 2 Cor. 4:4), the focus is on Christ’s revelation of God. He is the “image” in accordance with which human beings are formed. According to both the Old Testament and Judaism, as John puts it, “no one has ever seen God” (1:18); he is, as Paul puts it here, invisible (aoratos). A major question, therefore, in Jewish theology at the time, with parallels in the Greco-Roman world, was this: where can God be seen? In this respect, Colossians 1:15 is similar to John’s depiction of the “Word” in 1:1–18—the Word was “with God” and “was God” (v. 1) and thus has “made him known” (v. 18)—and to Hebrews 1:3—“the Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.” The opening line of our hymn may, then, identify Christ as that original image in accordance with which human beings were created.137
However, the revelatory focus of “image of God” here might point to a different background: the wisdom/word tradition. While lacking Old Testament support, the identification of wisdom or the word with the image of God is found in Jewish writings (Wis. 7:25 and esp. Philo), and often in contexts that focus on the way God can now be known. This latter tradition is almost certainly influential here since, as we will see, this tradition has influenced the hymn at a number of places. But this tradition itself incorporated allusion to Genesis 1 as its starting point. Philo, for instance, regularly connects the “image” with Genesis 1, even as he identifies the image with wisdom or the word. We should probably conclude, therefore, that our hymn, similarly, alludes to both these traditions. In place of the Jewish tradition, which finds the image to be expressed in wisdom or the word, the hymn claims that the original image is to be found in the person of Jesus Christ, God’s Son. And this decision came via the early Christians’ confrontation with the reality of the resurrected and glorified Christ, whom they recognized to be “the perfect manifestation of the invisible God.”

Moo, D. J. (2008). The letters to the Colossians and to Philemon (pp. 117–119). Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co.

Further reading:

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2017/04/the-rightful-heir.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2015/08/the-coming-king.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2011/06/revealing-and-being.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2011/06/seeing-and-revealing.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2010/01/eternal-procession.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2012/12/begotten-not-made.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2010/01/quaternity.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-shadow-god.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2013/01/is-father-yahweh.html

http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2011/11/who-made-god.html