Tag Archives: High Christology
On Old Testament Conceptual Metaphors and the Christology of Luke’s Gospel: A Book Review
Lanier, Gregory R. Old Testament Conceptual Metaphors and the Christology of Luke’s Gospel. Library of New Testament Studies. London: T&T Clark, 2018.
The Christology of the canonical Gospels is remarkably multifaceted. From titles such as Son of God, Son of Man, Lord, and Christ, to John’s “I AM” statements, to the numerous Old Testament images and metaphors applied to Jesus, the Gospel writers employ a variety of categories to describe the complexity of Jesus’s person and work. No single title or image exhausts their Christological portrait; rather, it is through the convergence of these various titles, images, actions, and scriptural patterns that we begin to appreciate the fullness of their presentation of Christ. This is particularly important for the Gospel of Luke. While some have characterized Luke’s Christology as comparatively “low,” such a description can easily undersell the intricate ways in which Luke presents the identity and mission of Jesus. In his published dissertation, Old Testament Conceptual Metaphors and the Christology of Luke’s Gospel, Gregory R. Lanier takes up the question of Luke’s Christology by examining four characteristic metaphors that are distinctive to Luke’s Gospel. The result is a masterpiece of literary and exegetical analysis that demonstrates how deeply Luke’s presentation of Jesus is shaped by Old Testament patterns of thought. By tracing these metaphors through their Old Testament backgrounds and their distinctive deployment within Luke’s narrative, Lanier demonstrates that Luke’s Christology is considerably richer and more sophisticated than attention to explicit Christological titles alone might suggest.
Using the tools of conceptual metaphor theory (CMT), Lanier takes up four metaphors from the Gospel of Luke whose precise scriptural backgrounds and Christological significance have been variously interpreted. These four metaphors include the “horn of salvation” (Luke 1.68–69), the “dawn from on high” (Luke 1.78–79), the bird that gathers her chicks under her wings (Luke 13.34), and the “stone the builders rejected” (Luke 20.17–18). While scholars generally agree that these images draw upon the Old Testament and the interpretive world of Second Temple Judaism, there is considerably less agreement concerning which particular Scripture or Scriptures stand behind them and how those backgrounds illuminate Luke’s use of the images. Using CMT, Lanier approaches each image not simply as an allusion to a single Old Testament passage but as a conceptual metaphor drawing upon a wider network of Old Testament texts and images to map out the contours of Jesus’s person and work. Most significantly, Lanier argues that these metaphors draw upon imagery used in the Old Testament to describe the identity and activity of God, which Luke then reapplies to Jesus. The result contributes to a kind of “divine identity Christology” in which Jesus is portrayed as doing the kinds of things that Israel’s God does. Of course, these four metaphors do not exhaust Luke’s Christological perspective. Luke’s Christology is multilayered and must be constructed from the convergence of numerous titles, images, actions, and narrative patterns. Nevertheless, Lanier’s analysis demonstrates why the simple dichotomy between “high” and “low” Christology is inadequate for describing the complexity of Luke’s presentation of Jesus.
One of the greatest strengths of Lanier’s study is the explanatory power that conceptual metaphor theory brings to Luke’s use of Old Testament imagery. Studies of the New Testament’s use of the Old Testament often focus on identifying a particular source text behind a quotation or allusion. While this approach is useful when the textual relationship is relatively clear, it can prove more difficult when dealing with images that appear across a wide range of Old Testament texts. Lanier’s use of CMT provides a compelling way forward by allowing these metaphors to draw upon a broader network of scriptural associations rather than requiring them to depend upon a single identifiable source text. Thus, an image such as the “horn of salvation,” the dawning of light, the protection of a bird’s wings, or the rejected stone can evoke a constellation of Old Testament texts in which the same conceptual associations repeatedly occur. Importantly, this approach does not amount simply to collecting possible verbal parallels. Lanier demonstrates how recurring patterns of language and imagery establish conceptual relationships that would have shaped the meaning of these metaphors within the scriptural world inherited by Luke. This allows him to account for the richness of Luke’s imagery without reducing it to dependence upon any one passage. Lanier’s use of CMT therefore does more than identify additional Old Testament backgrounds for Luke’s language; it provides a compelling account of how a network of scriptural imagery can contribute cumulatively to Luke’s presentation of Jesus.
A second major strength of Lanier’s study is the Christological payoff that emerges from his analysis of these metaphors. Discussions of Luke’s Christology have often focused primarily on explicit Christological titles such as “Son of God,” “Son of Man,” “Lord,” and “Christ.” While these titles are undoubtedly important, Lanier demonstrates that Luke’s presentation of Jesus cannot be adequately reconstructed from titles alone. The conceptual metaphors examined in this study provide another important avenue through which Luke communicates Jesus’s identity and mission. Particularly significant is Lanier’s demonstration that each of these metaphors participates in patterns of Old Testament imagery associated with the identity and activity of YHWH. The significance of Luke’s application of these images to Jesus is therefore greater than the metaphors might initially suggest. Jesus does not merely perform actions analogous to those of other divinely appointed figures; he is portrayed through images that describe the saving, protecting, judging, and vindicating activity of Israel’s God. Lanier thus demonstrates how a robust Christology can emerge through the cumulative effect of Luke’s scriptural imagery without depending exclusively upon explicit statements concerning Jesus’s identity. This is one reason the traditional distinction between “high” and “low” Christology can prove inadequate for describing Luke’s Gospel. Lanier’s study shows that some of Luke’s most significant Christological claims are embedded within the scriptural images through which he narrates the identity and mission of Jesus.
The principal limitation of Lanier’s approach arises, somewhat ironically, from the same methodological breadth that makes his analysis so illuminating. By moving beyond the search for a single source text, CMT allows Lanier to account for the wider network of scriptural associations that may inform Luke’s metaphors. Yet this breadth also raises the question of how the interpreter determines the boundaries of that network. If a metaphor can draw upon a constellation of Old Testament texts without requiring a direct verbal correspondence with any one passage, it can become difficult to distinguish between conceptual associations that Luke plausibly intends to evoke and associations that are present within the broader scriptural tradition but may not contribute directly to the meaning of the Lukan text. Consequently, some of Lanier’s proposed connections are necessarily more persuasive than others, particularly where the linguistic or contextual relationship between Luke and the proposed Old Testament background is less explicit. This does not undermine the usefulness of CMT or the cumulative force of Lanier’s argument. Indeed, the recurrence of similar patterns across the four metaphors provides considerable support for his broader Christological conclusions. Nevertheless, the method places a significant burden upon the interpreter to demonstrate why particular texts and conceptual associations should be included within the relevant metaphorical network. Lanier’s study therefore demonstrates both the promise of CMT for the study of Luke’s use of Scripture and the need for careful exegetical controls when reconstructing the scriptural world that informs Luke’s Christological imagery.
In the final analysis, Old Testament Conceptual Metaphors and the Christology of Luke’s Gospel is an outstanding contribution to the study of Luke’s Christology and his use of the Old Testament. Lanier demonstrates both the explanatory value of conceptual metaphor theory and the importance of attending to forms of scriptural influence that extend beyond explicit quotations, direct allusions, and traditional Christological titles. His analysis of the “horn of salvation,” the “dawn from on high,” the gathering bird, and the rejected stone reveals how seemingly familiar images can carry a remarkable amount of Christological significance when situated within the broader conceptual world of Israel’s Scriptures. Although the breadth of CMT raises important questions concerning the boundaries and controls of these scriptural networks, Lanier applies the method with considerable exegetical care and produces a cumulative argument that is difficult to dismiss. More importantly, his study reminds us that Luke’s Christology cannot be adequately described simply by cataloguing the titles applied to Jesus or locating the Gospel somewhere along a spectrum from “low” to “high” Christology. Luke’s presentation of Jesus emerges from the convergence of titles, actions, narrative patterns, and deeply embedded scriptural images. Lanier has provided a compelling account of one important dimension of that portrait, and his study deserves serious attention from anyone interested in Luke’s Christology, Luke’s use of Scripture, or the relationship between the Old and New Testaments.
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On the Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith
One of my favorite topics in the study of the New Testament is the historical Jesus; it is an area of study that attempts to understand Jesus as he was within the context of first century Judaism. However, many who study the historical Jesus argue that the Jesus of history (the first century Jewish teacher) is not the Christ of faith (the exalted Lord proclaimed by the church). In other words, the early church’s understanding of Jesus has been embellished and augmented by influences that go well beyond who Jesus actually was and what he taught. This presupposition is one of the the primary factors that originally inspired the now century old quest(s) for the historical Jesus. Of course, we must affirm that historical investigation is indispensable for understanding the person and work of Jesus, but the hard distinction between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith collapses under the weight of the earliest evidence. The church’s confession of Christ emerges not as a departure from Jesus, but as the historically grounded interpretation of his life, death, and resurrection. In the space that follows, I would like to defend this thesis by examining why history matters, where the split came from, and why the evidence actually favors continuity and not discontinuity.
It would seem to be readily evident that the historical study of the New Testament is essential for understanding the Christian faith. This is because Christianity makes several direct and specific claims about real events that took place in historical space and time. So understanding these events and their historical and theological significance is a matter of first importance when it comes to understanding our faith. As a case in point, when the eternal Son came incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ, he stepped into a particular place at a particular time, the fullness of time according to Galatians 4.4. In other words, the doctrine of the incarnation requires some historical understanding of the place and time when Jesus was born. In fact, the Gospels themselves are anchored in the geography, personalities, and events of the first century Palestine. The point is that if Jesus is severed from the places and times in which he lived, then we run the risk of distorting the significance of his life and teaching. More than this, we run the risk of reshaping Jesus into a man of our making, as a some kind of modern therapist or social reform mascot. The bottom line is that the hard work of history disciplines our theology and grounds it in the life of our savior as he lived it. Or to put it more simply, to confess that the Word became flesh is to confess that history matters.
The point of this is to say that historical inquiry is not the enemy of faith. The problem comes when we presume to dictate what history is allowed to contain. During the Enlightenment of the 18th Century, philosophers and historians began to doubt the details of the New Testament’s depictions of Jesus. Because of their presuppositions about the supremacy of human reason in the pursuit of truth, they were highly skeptical of the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus’s miracles, particularly his resurrection. Their skepticism resulted in an approach to history that might be called methodological naturalism, or the idea that anything that even remotely smells like it might be supernatural must be ruled out as a theological fabrication. Ultimately, their dismissal of the miracles of Jesus, particularly his resurrection, led them to conclude that the church’s high Christology, or its understanding of Jesus as the divine Lord of heaven, must be a late addition to the New Testament that has nothing to do with who Jesus was and what he did and taught during his lifetime, a conclusion which had more to do with their own presuppositions than with any actual analysis of the evidence. The real question, however, is not whether the theology of the early church developed over time (it clearly did), but the question is whether that development moved away from Jesus or unfolded from within the impact of his life and resurrection. An examination of the earliest documents clearly demonstrates that this is in fact what happened.
Now, the earliest Christian documents are the 13 letters of Paul, which were likely written between the years 49 CE and 68 CE. (The earliest of these is most likely 1 Thessalonians, and the latest is 2 Timothy.) Important for this post is the fact that several of these letters include embedded hymns and creedal material that clearly exalt Jesus as the divine Lord. For example, in Philippians 2.6, he “existed in the form of God,” and in Colossians 1.15, “He is the image of the invisible God.” In 1 Corinthians 8.6, the Apostle writes, “for us there is one God, the Father. All things are from him, and we exist for him. And there is one Lord, Jesus Christ. All things are through him, and we exist through him.” This is clearly a reworking of the Shema (Deut 6.4) which equates Jesus with the God of Israel. Even outside of Paul, in Hebrews 1.3, Jesus is “the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word.” And in James 5.9 (possibly the earliest document in the New Testament), he is “the judge [who] stands at the door!” The point of all this is to show that the church’s so called “high Christology” developed very early in the life of the church, and that within the context of strict Jewish monotheism. And so the question must be asked, “How did first century Jews come to worship Jesus as God so quickly?” The only possible answer is that the seeds of this belief were already present in the life and ministry of Jesus.
Of course, Jesus never articulated his identity in the language of the Nicaean Creed, but he clearly acted with divine authority. When the Pharisees ask, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Jesus says to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven. Get up, take your mat, and go home.” (Mark 2.1-12) When his disciples were rebuked for picking heads of grain on the sabbath, he responded, “For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.” (Matthew 12.1-8) He calmed the storms, he healed the sick, he cast out demons, he raised the dead. He equated his body with the temple, and he proclaimed a Kingdom of God that centered on his own person and work. And when the High Priest asked him if he was indeed the Christ, he responded, ““I am, and you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming with the clouds of heaven,” to which the High Priest responded by accusing him of blasphemy. (Mark 14.61-64) As a side note, the title Son of Man is most likely taken from Daniel 7, where Daniel sees “one like a son of Man” approaching the Ancient of Days to be vindicated and enthroned as king. The identity of this “one like a Son of Man” is debated, but it is highly likely that Daniel understood him as (quasi) divine figure. The point is that Jesus made several extraordinarily “high” claims about himself, claims that clearly threatened the Jerusalem religious establishment and eventually got him killed.
Moreover, the church did not invent these categories out of thin air; rather, it interpreted the shock of Jesus’ life and resurrection within the context and storyline of Israel’s Scriptures. And for them, the resurrection was the decisive interpretive key. The historical plausibility of the resurrection is practically certain given the cumulative effect of the evidence. The earliest confessions assume the truth of the resurrection (1 Cor 15.3-8). The earliest disciples went from fearing for their lives in the upper room to boldly proclaiming the truth of the resurrection in the temple square. The first witnesses of the resurrection were a couple of women whose testimony would have been viewed as untrustworthy in their day. All eleven of the disciples went to their deaths preaching Christ as risen from the dead, and the apostle Paul went from hateful persecutor of Christians to the most effective preacher and missionary in the early church. In other words, the resurrection was a central component of the early church’s belief, and its exalted understanding of Jesus flows naturally from this belief. If Christ was truly raised from the dead, then he truly was who he said he was, i.e. “the Christ, the Son of the living God.” The point is that the Christ of the church’s faith is what the Jesus of history looks like after Easter. Without the resurrection, a hard divide makes sense, but with the resurrection, the continuity between the two becomes inherently plausible. Or to put it another way, the resurrection is not some theological embroidery added to the story of the historical Jesus. No, it is the primary engine of the early church’s “high” Christology.
The bottom of line is simply this, namely that the hard division between historical events and their theological significance is a false dichotomy. There simply is no such thing as uninterpreted history; all historical events are immediately interpreted. The moment something happens, it is interpreted. The question, then, is not whether theology exists, but whether it faithfully corresponds to what actually occurred. In other words, theology is not the corruption of history; it is reflection upon it. And when it comes the person and work of Jesus, the Gospel accounts are just historical testimony that has been shaped by conviction. The faith of the early church was an organic and continuous development that grew out of the life and teaching of the historical Jesus, and the earliest confessions of Christ are best understood as historically grounded worship. If we separate the Jesus of history from the Christ of faith, the our faith becomes mere myth layered on memory. Jesus came incarnate at a particular time in a concrete place, and he was resurrected and he ascended to be seated at the right hand of the Father. And this is why both the history of Jesus and the faith of the early church matter. The one worshiped in the church is not a theological invention layered upon a forgotten Galilean. He is the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth. There is theological development, yes. There is interpretation, certainly. But there is no canyon between the Jesus who walked the hills of Galilee and the Christ that the church confesses as Lord. There is continuity — deep, historical, and theologically unavoidable continuity between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith.
