Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

How could the apostles and Jewish-Christian teachers express the fact that God himself had spoken and acted totally and in unsurpassable fashion in Jesus? That God had uttered himself completely in him, so that Jesus was the never-to-be-surpassed self-definition of God, the final image and definitive place of God in the world? Because that is exactly what Jesus’ disciples had experienced, and that same experience had to be “appropriately” expressed after Easter. There were two basic possibilities for this in Israel, eschatological and protological:

In Terms of the End

In this case “eschatological” means: the end of time is here. Therefore, God is now acting conclusively, because these are the “last times,” that is, the hour for God’s concluding word and final action has come. The definitive, conclusive, unrepeatable, in which everything, without exception, is said and done, is expressed precisely in the fact that it takes place at the end, that it is the last in time, that nothing more can be added afterward. Jewish apocalyptic literature in particular sees the end of the world and what happens at the end as the definitive revelation of God. To take one example, in chapters 24-27 of the book of Isaiah, often called the “Isaian apocalypse,” the glory of God shines forth at the end of time over all peoples. This glory is, however, also a dreadful judgment on the nations. And yet what took place on Sinai for the elders of Israel and thus for all Israel (Exod 24:9-11) is now repeated in worldwide dimension: God will spread a banquet on Zion for all peoples, and there all tears will be dried, the shroud of sadness that covers all the nations will be taken away, and death will be destroyed. God’s royal glory will be revealed to the whole world (Isa 25:6-8; 24:23). What is promised in Isaiah 24–27 is definitive and unrepeatable. Therefore it reveals the true nature of God. The whole and conclusive truth about God is evident in that it is located “at the end.”

The oldest post-Easter Christology that is still entirely Jewish-Christian formulated the mystery of Jesus within this same thought pattern: namely, within an eschatological horizon. It says not only that God raised Jesus from the dead, that is, that the general resurrection of the dead at the end of time has already begun in him, but beyond that, “God has made both Lord [kyrios] and Messiah this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36). As the context shows, this means that God has made the crucified Jesus Lord and Messiah in that God raised him from the dead and exalted him to God’s right hand. In this way God has shown that this very Crucified One, who appeared to have failed and been discredited in every respect, has been approved in God’s eyes, and not only approved but made Lord of all. The exaltation Christology of Matthew 28:18 belongs here also: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” And we should mention here the confessional formula Paul received, which he quotes in Romans 1:3-4: “the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead.”

This very early Christology would be totally misunderstood if we were to leap to the conclusion that Jesus only became, through his exaltation, something he was not beforehand. For such confessional formulae do speak of an event, but not one that can be compared to the promotion of a human being to a higher position. Jesus’ exaltation, his heavenly installation as “Son of God”—in Acts 2:36 even kyrios—is in no way to be compared with the awarding of a PhD or the inauguration of a president. Instead, Jesus’ exaltation is an eschatological event, that is, here God is acting conclusively in Jesus inasmuch as God shows who Jesus truly is and thus demonstrates eschatologically, i.e., definitively, that he is who he always has been. In this way the one exalted through resurrection is proved and shown to be the final, conclusive, and unrepeatable truth of God, God’s final Word and God’s last act. That is precisely what these oldest Christian confessions are trying to say.

They definitely did not intend to say that Jesus was not the Messiah previously, that he was not the Son of God and kyrios but became all that only through his resurrection and exaltation. Enthronement here signifies confirmation, justification, proof, recognition. Jesus is, so to speak, publicly elevated to the status his opponents had denied that he possessed. We must on no account introduce into these very ancient confessional formulae the much later adoptionist Christology of the second century. That existed within a different context and did not simply reflect the earliest time of Christian beginnings.⁸