Jamieson, R. B. (2020) - 1 Corinthians 15.28 and The Grammar of Paul's Christology. New Testament Studies, 66 (2), 187-207
Jamieson, R. B. (2020) - 1 Corinthians 15.28 and The Grammar of Paul's Christology. New Testament Studies, 66 (2), 187-207
Jamieson, R. B. (2020) - 1 Corinthians 15.28 and The Grammar of Paul's Christology. New Testament Studies, 66 (2), 187-207
Cor . is widely regarded as one of the most problematic passages for
‘divine Christology’ in Paul. The reasoning is: if, in the end, ‘the Son himself will
also be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him’, that
must tell against ontological equality with the Father; it must qualify or limit
Christ’s identification with God. The burden of the current article is to argue
that this conclusion involves a category mistake. The reading the article will
contest implicitly takes Cor . to speak of the intrinsic dignity of Christ’s
person, whether that dignity is construed as divine or otherwise. Against this con-
strual of the verse, this article aims to show that Christ’s humanity and represen-
tatively human messianic vocation are not only presuppositions of Paul’s
argument but are in centre frame. Rightly relating Cor . to Paul’s divine
Christology calls for a consistent distinction between what Paul says of and on
the basis of Christ’s divinity, and what Paul says of and on the basis of Christ’s
humanity.
Unless noted, English biblical citations are from the NRSV. Old Testament references follow
English numbering unless noted.
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R. B. JAMIESON
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Cor . and the Grammar of Paul’s Christology
figures the end-time subjection of the Son to the Father as the appointed end of
the incarnate Son’s mediating messianic reign, the last Adam’s final, conclusive
act of obedience. Fourth, the article concludes with two methodological
recommendations.
See e.g. D. M. Hay, Glory at the Right Hand: Psalm in Early Christianity (SBLMS ;
Nashville, TN: Abingdon, ) : ‘Ps .c must have seemed invaluable to the apostle
precisely because he could find in its “until” a clear scriptural prophecy of a time gap
between the onset of Christ’s reign and the consummation.’ Charles Hill similarly comments:
‘An exercise of regal power amid existing foes for a duration prior to their final crushing-
under-foot is precisely the kingdom envisioned in Ps. ’ (C. E. Hill, ‘Paul’s Understanding
of Christ’s Kingdom in I Corinthians :–’, NovT () –, at ; emphasis ori-
ginal). For a defence of a conscious allusion to Ps . in Cor .b, see W. Hill, Paul and
the Trinity: Persons, Relations, and the Pauline Letters (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ) –.
Hill argues against e.g. the choice Jan Lambrecht forces between a ‘proof text’ and Paul’s use of
‘a scripture verse … to express his own ideas’ (J. Lambrecht, ‘Paul’s Christological Use of
Scripture in Cor. .–’, NTS () –, at –).
This assertion parallels that of ., ‘Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to
God the Father after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power.’ For the par-
allel as structural see e.g. Hill, ‘Christ’s Kingdom’, –; though cf. the alternative structure of
J. Lambrecht, ‘Structure and Line of Thought in Cor. :–’, NovT () –, who
still notes a ‘chiastic parallelism between vv. b and b’ (). Whatever one makes of the
paragraph’s structure, the conceptual parallel between vv. and is striking. Given this
affinity, we will engage . as well, though . is the primary focus.
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R. B. JAMIESON
challenges a divine Christology. For instance, John Ziesler takes Cor . and
to prohibit identifying Christ as God: ‘Things traditionally said about God may
now be properly said about Christ, but not that he is God, for the element of sub-
ordination remains.’ James McGrath writes of Cor .–, ‘Monotheism is pre-
served not because Jesus is absorbed into God or included in the divine identity
but because even though Jesus reigns over absolutely everything else on God’s
behalf, God himself is not subjected to Christ, but Christ is subjected to God.’
Larry Kreitzer suggests that ‘this final theocentric affirmation may arise precisely
because the Christocentric content of the previous verses impinged upon the
ontological territory of God so much that the note of subordination of Christ to
God was thought to be necessary as a concluding remark’. Similarly James
D. G. Dunn: ‘Whereas the lordship of Christ is unqualified in relation to other
“lords many” ( Cor. .–), his lordship in relation to God as Creator is qualified.
This presumably helps explain why Paul’s fullest statement of Christ’s lordship
( Cor. .–) climaxes in the Lord subjecting himself to the one God of all
(v. ).’
Each of these statements takes the Son’s subordination in Cor . to
limit or compete with an ascription of divine identity. Such subordination
means we cannot say ‘Christ is God’; Christ’s subordination clears him off of
divine ontological territory he might otherwise ‘impinge’ on, and so on. Each
of these readings implicitly treats Cor . as answering the question
either of the Son’s ontology or of his intrinsic relationship to God. Each treats
this verse, particularly the assertion of subordination, as speaking directly of
Christ’s being, whatever that being might be. All these scholars submit this
verse as evidence in the trial of Christ’s divine nature and essential relationship
to God the Father.
My engagement with this question was initially prompted by, and remains indebted to, that of
Hill, Paul and the Trinity, –, –.
J. A. Ziesler, Pauline Christianity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, rev. edn ) –
(emphasis original).
J. F. McGrath, The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in its Jewish Context (Urbana,
IL: University of Illinois Press, ) .
L. J. Kreitzer, Jesus and God in Paul’s Eschatology (JSNTSup ; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic,
) .
J. D. G. Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ) –. See
also J. D. G. Dunn, Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? The New Testament Evidence
(Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, ) –.
Similar statements can be found in A. W. Wainwright, The Trinity in the New Testament
(London: SPCK, ) ; E. Schweizer, The Good News according to Mark (trans. D. H.
Madvig; London: SPCK, ) –; R. E. Brown, An Introduction to New Testament
Christology (New York: Paulist Press, ) n. .
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Cor . and the Grammar of Paul’s Christology
While at least one modern proponent of divine Christology (N. T. Wright) appeals in passing to
the solution developed here, no recent scholarly work on Paul’s Christology that I have
encountered does so in detail. Hence, a ‘partitive’ reading of our verse is essentially absent
from contemporary neutestamentliche debates about Paul’s Christology. It is worth nothing
that Larry Hurtado’s treatment of the verse is difficult to categorise. On the one hand, he
sees the passage as consistent with the worship of Jesus, arguing that such worship was ‘actu-
ally a requisite demonstration of their reverence for God “the Father”’ (L. W. Hurtado, Lord
Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ) ).
On the other hand, Hurtado treats Cor .– as an example of Jesus as ‘God’s chief
agent’, balancing the cosmic scope of Christ’s rule against its temporal limitation and deriva-
tive character (L. W. Hurtado, One God, One Lord: Early Christian Devotion and Ancient Jewish
Monotheism (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, ) ).
R. Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New
Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ) .
G. D. Fee, Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson,
) (emphasis original). Further, ‘The Son obviously does not cease to exist, nor is he
here being placed eternally under the Father’s authority; rather, in the event described in
this passage, his functional subordination in his role as Messiah, and thus as currently reigning
messianic Lord, is now completed, so that the “one God” … is all in all’ (–). This solution
has broad affinities with mine, though see the critique below.
C. Tilling, Paul’s Divine Christology (WUNT II/; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, ) , –.
Tilling, Paul’s Divine Christology, –.
Hill, Paul and the Trinity, –, at .
Hill, Paul and the Trinity, , .
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R. B. JAMIESON
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Cor . and the Grammar of Paul’s Christology
the unique identity of God. The aim of this section is to show that these two ways
of putting the matter should be taken as complementary, equally valid and equally
necessary.
This identification is most strikingly evident in Cor .–. In Cor ., prob-
ably citing the Corinthians’ letter, Paul affirms that ‘there is no God but one’. This
traditionally Jewish monotheistic confession, which Paul fully endorses, con-
strains what follows. Paul then acknowledges that non-Jews multiply deities:
‘Indeed, even though there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth – as in
fact there are many gods and many lords’ (.). Pagans offer allegiance to many
‘gods’ and ‘lords’, a practice that Paul, with all Jews, opposes. By contrast, Paul
asserts that Christians owe allegiance not to many gods and lords, but to one
God and one Lord: ‘yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all
things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are
all things and through whom we exist’ (.). Paul here reformulates the Shemaʿ
of Deut .. It is crucial to recognise that Paul does not add Christ as ‘one
Lord’ alongside the ‘one God’ of the Shemaʿ. Such an addition would constitute
ditheism, a repudiation of the Shemaʿ itself. Instead, Paul identifies Jesus as the
‘Lord’ whom the Shemaʿ confesses as one. That is, ‘the term “Lord”, applied here
to Jesus as the “one Lord”, is taken from the Shemaʿ itself’. Hence, as David
Lincicum observes, ‘Paul does not present this as a correction or an addition to
the Shemaʿ, but as an interpretation of it that discloses its true referent’.
See Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel, , and throughout.
The discussion here of Cor .– is especially indebted to Bauckham, Jesus and the God of
Israel, –, –. For treatments that support the primary conclusions drawn here, see
also N. T. Wright, The Climax of the Covenant: Christ and the Law in Pauline Theology
(Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, ) –; N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God
(Christian Origins and the Question of God ; Minneapolis: Fortress, ) –; O.
Hofius, ‘“Einer ist Gott – Einer ist Herr”: Erwägungen zu Struktur und Aussage des
Bekentnisses Kor ,’, Paulusstudien II (WUNT ; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, ) –
; O. Hofius, ‘Christus als Schöpfungsmittler und Erlösungsmittler: Das Bekenntnis Kor
, im Kontext der paulinischen Theologie’, Paulusstudien II, –; Fee, Pauline
Christology, –, –; E. Waaler, The Shema and the First Commandment in First
Corinthians (WUNT II/; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, ) –; Hill, Paul and the
Trinity, –.
For the most extensive case to date that in Cor .– Paul consciously echoes the Shemaʿ, see
Waaler, The Shema and the First Commandment.
Contra e.g. McGrath, The Only True God, –. See the apt response in Hill, Paul and the
Trinity, –.
Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel, .
Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel, .
D. Lincicum, Paul and the Early Jewish Encounter with Deuteronomy (WUNT II/; Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, ) (emphasis original). Cf. Hofius, ‘“Einer ist Gott – Einer ist Herr”’, :
‘Das Bekenntnis Kor , ist … nicht eine Erweiterung und Ergänzung des Schemaʿ, sondern
seine Auslegung und Entfaltung.’
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R. B. JAMIESON
Therefore, Paul’s understanding of the ‘one God’ has room enough, so to speak, to
include Jesus. This validates Bauckham’s language of ‘the inclusion of Jesus in the
unique divine identity’.
On the other hand, since Paul affirms that there is only one God, who is the
one Lord, it is just as valid and necessary to say that, in confessing Jesus to be
the ‘one Lord’ of the Shemaʿ, Paul identifies Jesus as the ‘one God’, the only
God who merits the title. As Paul certainly would have known, κύριος (‘Lord’)
in Deut . was not a mere title, but a surrogate for YHWH, God’s personal
proper name. In the syntax of the Shemaʿ, YHWH names the subject: it is this
God who is ‘one’. And the sense of κύριος in Cor . is determined by its
source in the Shemaʿ. By lifting κύριος from the Shemaʿ and laying it on Christ,
Paul names him as the one true God of Israel. The name that belongs only to
God belongs to Christ.
Further, by asserting that ‘all things’ are ‘through’ Christ (δι᾽ οὗ τὰ πάντα, .),
Paul names Christ as God’s mediatorial co-agent in the creation of all things. On
the one hand, since Paul confesses only one God (cf. .), who is creator of all,
Paul here places Christ on the divine side of the line between creator and creation,
thereby reinforcing his identity as the only God. Therefore, in the act of creating all
things, Christ is not a passive tool but an acting subject. On the other hand, Paul
clearly casts Christ’s agency as mediate: all things are ‘from’ God the Father (ἐξ
οὗ), and we exist ‘for him’ (εἰς αὐτόν), whereas all things are ‘through’ Christ
(δι᾽ οὗ), ‘we’ included (καὶ ἡμεῖς δι᾽ αὐτοῦ). Hence, Cor . presses us to
speak of God and Christ in terms of both identity and distinction. Paul both iden-
tifies Christ as God and distinguishes him from ‘the Father’. Christ is indeed dis-
tinct from the Father, yet such distinction is an internal differentiation within
God, not a distinction between God and one who is not God.
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Cor . and the Grammar of Paul’s Christology
Another means by which Paul identifies Jesus as the one true God of Israel in
Corinthians is his interpretation of scriptural passages in which he takes the name
YHWH, in the form of its Greek surrogate κύριος, to refer to Jesus. We have
already witnessed this in Paul’s allusion to Deut . in Cor .; here two biblical
citations are worth noting. The first citation is of Jer . (LXX .) in ., ‘Let
the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’ Paul’s citation compresses LXX Jeremiah’s
‘in this’ (ἐν τούτῳ) and ‘that they understand and know that I am the LORD’ (… ὅτι
ἐγώ εἰμι κύριος) into a boast ‘in the Lord’ (ἐν κυρίω). In the preceding verses,
Paul asserts that God chose those who had no humanly reckoned worth in
which to boast (.–), ‘so that no one might boast in the presence of God’
(.). Christ alone is for the Corinthians all they could wish to boast in –
wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption (.). It is God who
caused the Corinthians to be ‘in Christ Jesus’, so that their boasting would be
in ‘the Lord’ (.–). Paul’s goal in this passage is to remove all grounds for
boasting other than Christ, and Paul’s compressed citation supports this claim.
Since Christ himself is all that warrants boasting, Paul takes Jeremiah’s passage
to name Christ ‘the Lord’, the one God of Israel, in whom alone it is right to
boast.
Second, in ., Paul cites Ps . (LXX .) in order to warrant the purchase
of previously sacrificed meat: ‘For, “the earth and its fullness are the Lord’s”.’ So
that we can discern the referent of ‘the Lord’ in this verse, we need to trace that
referent back through the preceding verses. This ‘Lord’ is the same Lord whom
Paul warns the Corinthians not to provoke in ., in language about YHWH bor-
rowed from Deut .. How might they provoke him? By partaking of the cup and
: and affirming their irreducible distinction from one another as unique agents or “persons”
is to do justice to both of those elements present in Cor :’ (emphasis original). Hofius’
comments in ‘Christus als Schöpfungsmittler’, – are similarly on-point. And H.-C.
Kammler, ‘Die Prädikation Jesu Christi als “Gott” und die paulinische Christologie:
Erwägungen zur Exegese von Röm ,b’, ZNW () –, at – rightly identifies
the differentiation implied in these prepositional phrases as ‘einer inner-göttlichen
Unterscheidung’ (emphasis original).
See esp. D. B. Capes, Old Testament Yahweh Texts in Paul’s Christology (WUNT II/;
Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck), ); and now Capes, The Divine Christ. For a tabu-
lation of all such passages in the undisputed Pauline epistles, see Bauckham, Jesus and the God
of Israel, –.
In the interest of space we pass over the allusions in . (Mal ., ) and . (Deut .,
where κύριος, lacking in the LXX, is supplied by Paul). Further, while many scholars take the
referent of κύριος in the citation of Isa . in Cor . to be Christ, the arguments of H.-C.
Kammler, Kreuz und Weisheit: Eine exegetische Untersuchung zu Kor ,–, (WUNT ;
Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, ) – in favour of a reference to the Spirit have sowed
enough seeds of doubt for me to pass over it here.
Similarly Kammler, Kreuz und Weisheit, –.
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R. B. JAMIESON
table ‘of the Lord’, and also the cup and table of demons (.). Why are these
two commensalities incommensurable? Because the Lord’s cup and table enact
communal participation in the blood and body of Christ (.). The ‘Lord’ in
view throughout is Christ. The Lord at whose table the Corinthians feast is the
Lord who owns all things because he created all things (cf. .). In Cor .,
Paul identifies Christ as the Lord whom Ps . praises as possessor of all
because he is the creator of all.
These two citations confirm that, in Corinthians, Paul identifies Christ as the
one true God of Israel. For Paul, God’s personal proper name identifies Christ.
Not only that, Paul assumes his letter’s recipients will not require any argument
in order to accept this astonishing identification. For Paul, Christ and God are
not two figures standing so close together that, observed from the right angle,
their outlines blur into each other. Paul does distinguish between Christ and God
the Father, a distinction difficult to describe without using the traditional theological
term ‘person’. Nevertheless, when the question is not the relationship of Christ to
the Father but the relationship of the one God to all created reality, Paul straightfor-
wardly identifies Christ as God. Christ is the one Lord of the Shemaʿ (.), the Lord in
whom alone one may boast (.), the creator who owns all (.). Christ’s identity
as God is the only pillar sufficient to bear the conceptual load of this repeated scrip-
tural ascription of the name of God to Christ. If, for Paul, Jesus were not God
simply and absolutely, these passages could not be talking about him.
Such identification does not admit of degrees. A person might be more or less
closely identified with, say, a cause or concept, based on the extent to which they
embody or advocate it. But there is no ‘more’ or ‘less’ in being identified as
someone. The relation of identity between Christ and God that we have discerned
in Corinthians is not a near-fit that could still be tightened by taking in some
theological fabric. The matter is more like picking a suspect out of a line-up:
the identification either succeeds or fails. Being creator and possessor of all
(.), and being the right referent of God’s personal, proper name (.; .;
.), are identifiers that pick one, and only one, out of the line-up of all conceiv-
able ‘gods’ and ‘lords’.
Similarly D.-A. Koch, Die Schrift als Zeuge des Evangeliums: Untersuchungen zur Verwendung
und zum Verständnis der Schrift bei Paulus (BHT ; Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck),
) n. ; Capes, Yahweh Texts, –; Hofius, ‘Christus als Schöpfungsmittler’, –.
Cf. the broader observation of S. J. Gathercole, ‘Paul’s Christology’, The Blackwell Companion
to Paul (ed. S. Westerholm; Oxford: Blackwell, ) –, at : ‘[T]hroughout his letters,
Paul appears to assume this divine Christology rather than arguing for it: it seems to be a com-
monly accepted view in the earliest Pauline communities’ (emphasis original).
At the conclusion of his in-depth study of this same phenomenon in Rom ., Kavin Rowe
makes the same point with reference to identity of the God whom Paul served: ‘Paul’s God and
the God of Israel are the same God only if YHWH is so identified with Jesus and Jesus with
YHWH that the first two commandments are not violated’ (Rowe, ‘Romans :’, ).
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Cor . and the Grammar of Paul’s Christology
Further, the phrase’s equivalent recurs frequently with the same sense in the portions of Enoch
attested in Ethiopic. See En. ., ; .; .; .; .; .. On the basis of these Enochic
parallels, Hofius takes ‘Lord of glory’ in . as a ‘Gottesprädikation’ (‘“Einer ist Gott – Einer ist
Herr”’, ). Others who take the phrase to predicate divinity include C. C. Newman, Paul’s
Glory-Christology: Tradition and Rhetoric (NovTSup ; Leiden: Brill, ) –; N. Walter,
‘Alttestamentliche Bezüge in christologischen Ausführungen des Paulus’, Paulinische
Christologie: Exegetische Beiträge (ed. U. Schnelle and H. Hübner; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck &
Ruprecht, ) –, at –; Kammler, Kreuz und Weisheit, –; Fee, Pauline
Christology, ; J. A. Fitzmyer, First Corinthians: A New Translation with Introduction and
Commentary (AB ; New Haven: Yale University Press, ) .
Cf. the ubiquitous biblical phrase ‘the glory of the Lord’, e.g. Exod .; Num .; Kgs .;
Ps .; Isa .; Ezek .; Luke .; Cor .; .. Also relevant for fixing the sense of
‘Lord of glory’ are the phrases ‘God of glory’ (Ps . LXX; Acts .) and ‘king of glory’
(Ps .– LXX).
On the fit of Cor . within the fabric of paradoxes that constitutes Paul’s argument in Cor
.–., see e.g. J. M. G. Barclay, ‘Crucifixion as Wisdom: Exploring the Ideology of a
Disreputable Social Movement’, The Wisdom and Foolishness of God: First Corinthians –
in Theological Exploration (ed. C. Chalamet and H.-C. Askani; Minneapolis: Fortress, )
–, esp. –.
The quoted phrase is from R. Bauckham, ‘The Worship of Jesus in Apocalyptic Christianity’,
NTS () –, at , who is speaking not of Paul but of Revelation.
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R. B. JAMIESON
conceptual paraphrase of Cor . must describe a single agent, one ‘who’, who
has a twofold manner of existence, two ‘whats’. One ‘what’ warrants Christ’s iden-
tification as the one true God; the other renders him crucifiable.
To approach our second, hermeneutical, implication, there are three basic
ways of responding to the argument of this whole section. First, one could deny
that Corinthians identifies Christ as the one true God of Israel. The previous
section was an effort to show, albeit briefly, that such a denial fails to account
for Paul’s inclusion of Christ in the Shemaʿ and his repeated identification of
Christ as the one Lord, YHWH, of whom scripture speaks. Second, one could
posit that Paul’s Christology is fundamentally incoherent, internally inconsistent.
This seems a counsel of despair. Paul’s is an agile, supple intellect. A radical dis-
tinction between creator and creature, operative in the demand to serve the one
true God and reject idolatry, is basic to Paul’s theology (Rom ., ), vocation
( Thess .) and his moral appeals to the Corinthians (e.g. Cor ., , ).
Rather than positing self-contradiction, might it not be more plausible to allow
that when Paul ascribed both divine and human qualities to Christ he knew
what he was doing? For Paul, these categorically distinct realities coalesce in
the one Christ, and in that unity retain their difference. This leaves open a third
response, one that I recommend and will employ in the remainder of this article.
This third response, which is a hermeneutical implication of the divine Christ’s
crucifiability, is to recognise that Paul speaks of the single Christ in a twofold way,
corresponding to Christ’s twofold manner of existence. He is both Lord of glory and
crucifiable, or, to use equally valid language, both God and man. Given this twofold
manner of existence, we should ask of each of Paul’s christological predications: in
what sense does this apply? To which aspect of Christ’s existence does this refer?
The two aspects of Christ’s existence that we have seen in Corinthians warrant a
‘partitive’ exegesis, a reading of Paul that recognises that he speaks of Christ on two
complementary planes, neither of which constricts the other.
Further, while my case for the validity of partitive exegesis does not depend on
this, and space prohibits a full investigation, it is worth nothing that Paul himself
arguably employs just such a partitive expression on two occasions. In Rom .
Paul declares that the gospel concerns God’s Son, ‘who came into being by
means of the seed of David as it pertains to the flesh’ (τοῦ γενομένου ἐκ
σπέρματος Δαυὶδ κατὰ σάρκα). Here, I would suggest, Paul employs the
As do e.g. McGrath, The Only True God, –; Dunn, The First Christians, –.
Cf. Wainwright on John .: ‘The man who wrote “The Word was with God, and the Word was
God” knew that his statement contained a paradox’ (The Trinity, ).
Translation adapted from M. W. Bates, ‘A Christology of Incarnation and Enthronement:
Romans :– as Unified, Nonadoptionist, and Nonconciliatory’, CBQ () –, at
. For a full justification of this interpretation of Rom ., see –. Cf. the parallel, incar-
national uses of γίνομαι in Gal . (ἐξαπέστειλεν ὁ θεὸς τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ, γενόμενον ἐκ
γυναικός, γενόμενον ὑπο νόμον).
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Cor . and the Grammar of Paul’s Christology
partitive qualifier κατὰ σάρκα to specify that Jesus’ Davidic ancestry pertains to
his humanity, precisely because as God’s ‘Son’, who ‘came into existence’
(γενομένου) as a human, Jesus has, so to speak, another ‘origin’ that is independ-
ent of, and unconstrained by, his human one. Similarly, in Rom ., Paul specifies
that it is ‘as pertains to the flesh’ that the Messiah descends from the Israelites
(ἐξ ὧν ὁ Χριστὸς τὸ κατὰ σάρκα). Why does Paul conceptually delimit the
scope of this predication to the Messiah’s ‘flesh’? I would argue that it is
because, in the subsequent phrase, Paul acclaims Christ as the one ‘who is
God, over all, blessed forever, amen’ (ὁ ὢν ἐπὶ πάντων θεὸς εὐλογητὸς εἰς
τοὺς αἰῶνας, ἀμήν). If this reading of these two phrases is accurate, then
further support for partitive exegesis is found in Paul’s own partitive predications.
Too much Pauline scholarship is governed by a tacit zero-sum equation
between divinity and humanity, such that the more Christ is one the less he
must be the other. However, in light of the absolute distinction between creator
and creature that Paul, as in this respect a mainstream first-century Jew, both
assumed and articulated, it is a category mistake to regard divinity and humanity
as, as it were, entities that compete for the same space. My recommendation is
that Pauline exegetes recognise two distinct, non-competitive, non-contradictory
registers in Paul’s predications of Christ: the divine and the human. We need not,
indeed should not, assume that these two resonances, both present in
Corinthians, contradict each other.
Translation mine.
Whether Christ is the referent of θεός in Rom .b is, of course, endlessly disputed. For sub-
stantive defences, see e.g. M. J. Harris, Jesus as God: The New Testament Use of Theos in
Reference to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker, ) –; Kammler, ‘Die Prädikation Jesu
Christi als “Gott”’; G. Carraway, Christ Is God over All: Romans : in the Context of Romans
– (LNTS ; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, ); S. J. Gathercole, ‘Locating Christ
and Israel in Romans –’, God and Israel: Providence and Purpose in Romans – (ed. T.
D. Still; Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, ) –, at –. Kammler aptly comments
on the partitive force of κατὰ σάρκα in Rom ., ‘Durch die Hinzufügung des Artikels wird
betont eine Einschränkung zum Ausdruck gebracht: “insoweit als das Leibliche in Betracht
kommt”. Von daher legt sich die Annahme nahe, daß Paulus bei der Formulierung τὸ
κατὰ σάρκα neben dem Aspekt der menschlich-irdischen Herkunft Jesu noch einen
anderen Aspekt im Blick hat: nämlich den seines göttlich-himmlischen Ursprungs. Genau
dieser zweite Aspekt würde in V. b ausdrücklich angesprochen’ (‘Die Prädikation Jesu
Christi als “Gott”’, ). Similarly Harris, Jesus as God, .
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R. B. JAMIESON
messianic mediation of the Father’s rule over the cosmos, and offers to the Father
a climactic act of human obedience, both of which bring fitting closure to the
Son’s saving, incarnate work as Messiah. Versions of a partitive solution have
been offered by many pre-modern readers, some more satisfying, some less.
Further, glimpses of this solution are present in some modern works. And at
least one modern commentary develops this solution at some length. The
point is not that this solution is new, but that it is sufficient and contextually
satisfying, it follows the grammar of Paul’s Christology, and the reasoning inform-
ing it deserves broader currency. The following sections discuss three observa-
tions on our verse that support a partitive reading.
See e.g. Hilary of Poitiers, The Trinity .; Epiphanius of Salamis, Pan. II..., ., .–
.; John Chrysostom, Hom. Cor. .; Ambrose, Fid. ..; Jerome, Epist. .;
Augustine, Div. quaest. LXXXIII .; Aquinas, Commentary on Corinthians ...
E.g. Hill, ‘Christ’s Kingdom’, n. : ‘The best approach to this seems to be to keep in mind
that the ruling spoken of is messianic and mediatorial, in which Christ executes to perfection
the role in which the first Adam proved delinquent’ (cf. –); Wright, Climax, : ‘We must
remember that he is not here talking about the relation between Jesus and God per se.’
R. E. Ciampa and B. S. Rosner, The First Letter to the Corinthians (PNTC; Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans, ) –, –.
Hence the common question of whether Cor .– is ‘Christocentric’ or ‘theocentric’ has
limited heuristic value at best, and at worst erects a false theological antithesis. For one treat-
ment of the passage that is driven by this question, see S. M. Lewis, ‘So That God May Be All in
All’: The Apocalyptic Message of Corinthians ,– (Tesi Gregoriana: Serie Teologia ;
Rome: Gregorian University Press, ) –.
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Cor . and the Grammar of Paul’s Christology
E.g. A. Robertson and A. Plummer, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the First Epistle of
Saint Paul to the Corinthians (ICC; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, ) , ; A. Schlatter, Die
Korintherbriefe (Stuttgart: Calwer, ) –; F. W. Grosheide, Commentary on the First
Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ) –; E.-B. Allo, Saint
Paul. Première Épitre aux Corinthiens (EBib; Paris: Gabalda, ) ; Hill, ‘Christ’s
Kingdom’, ; Fee, Pauline Christology, –; Fitzmyer, First Corinthians, ; Ciampa
and Rosner, First Corinthians, –; N. A. Meyer, Adam’s Dust and Adam’s Glory in the
Hodayot and the Letters of Paul: Rethinking Anthropogony and Theology (NovTSup ;
Leiden: Brill, ) .
So many scholars, e.g. Lambrecht, ‘Christological Use’, ; Hill, ‘Christ’s Kingdom’, . It is
only by overlooking this point that J. Martini, ‘An Examination of Paul’s Apocalyptic Narrative
in First Corinthians :–’, CTR () –, at can conclude, ‘Significantly, the solu-
tion is not because Christ was raised so the believer will be raised.’
Noted by e.g. Lambrecht, ‘Christological Use’, ; Hill, ‘Christ’s Kingdom’, ; W. Schrage,
Der erste Brief an die Korinther, vol. IV: Kor ,–, (EKKNT /; Düsseldorf: Benziger,
) .
Translation mine. For resurrection as messianic enthronement in Rom ., see e.g. U.
Wilckens, Der Brief an die Römer, vol. I: Röm – (EKKNT /; Zurich: Benziger, ) ;
T. R. Schreiner, Romans (BECNT; Grand Rapids: Baker, ) –, –; C. G. Whitsett,
‘Son of God, Seed of David: Paul’s Messianic Exegesis in Romans :–’, JBL ()
–, at –; J. R. D. Kirk, Unlocking Romans: Resurrection and the Justification of God
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, ) –; Bates, ‘Incarnation and Enthronement’, –; J. W.
Jipp, Christ Is King: Paul’s Royal Ideology (Minneapolis: Fortress, ) –. Further,
Capes has argued that the same logic is evident in Rom .: the end for which Christ ‘died
and lived again’ was ‘that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living’ (Yahweh
Texts, –, –).
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R. B. JAMIESON
‘those who belong to Christ’ have been raised ‘at his coming’ (v. ), he will deliver
the kingdom ‘to God the Father’. At the successful completion of his messianic
mission, Christ will return to the Father the keys to his office: mission accomplished.
Once all enemies have been subdued, the general will return to the king who
commissioned him and will render fitting submission to that king. This, I would
suggest, illumines the purpose for which the Son submits to the Father, ‘that God
may be all in all’ (v. ): ‘All things will be directed to God without obstruction or
need of mediation.’ This conception of Christ’s messianic reign could imperil his
divinity only if our passage were the only evidence for his divinity. Instead, we
have seen elsewhere in Corinthians that this ‘general’ is also himself ‘king’ in the
fullest possible sense. This one who submits to the Father also bears the name
YHWH ( Cor .). By virtue of that name, and the unique divine identity it singles
out, lordship remains his even after he delivers the kingdom to the Father. Since
Christ holds his messianic vicegerency by virtue of his humanity, its limited duration
does not exclude or mitigate his divine sovereignty. This holds whether the evidence
for Christ’s divine identity in Corinthians comes only from other passages, or, as
Wesley Hill and others have argued, from Cor .– as well.
Ciampa and Rosner deploy this analogy in detail (First Corinthians, –, –). If one keeps
the analogy within its proper scope, as they do, it is entirely apt.
Meyer, Adam’s Dust, ; cf. Robertson and Plummer, First Corinthians, ; Fitzmyer, First
Corinthians, .
Hence I concur with those who argue that Paul does not assert an absolute end to Christ’s
reign. Some distinction between the manner of Christ’s reign between his resurrection and
parousia and the sovereignty he exercises after ‘the end’ seems required by the grammar of
Paul’s Christology. For a variety of attempts to distinguish between the sense in which
Christ’s reign ends and that in which it continues, see e.g. Gregory of Nazianzus, Or. .;
Augustine, Div. quaest. LXXXIII ., ; Robertson and Plummer, First Corinthians, ;
C. Wolff, Der Erste Brief des Paulus an die Korinther (THNT ; Berlin: Evangelische
Verlagsanstalt, ) .
Again, Hill argues that, by making Christ the subject who places all things under his (own) feet
in Cor .b, a role reserved for God in Ps ., Paul indicates ‘an overlap of identity
between Christ and God when read together with the “Father” (πατήρ) and “Son” (υἱός)
titles in . and ’ (Hill, Paul and the Trinity, –, at ). Similarly Wright, Climax, .
For Paul’s modifications, see R. E. Ciampa and Brian S. Rosner, ‘ Corinthians’, Commentary
on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament (ed. G. K. Beale and D. A. Carson; Grand
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Cor . and the Grammar of Paul’s Christology
to Christ’s present reign as Messiah, Paul figures this reign as fulfilling the viceger-
ency God conferred on humanity at creation. Adam was a ruled ruler, exercising
dominion over creation under God. This dominion was fatally distorted by
Adam’s disobedience, yet Cor . takes Ps . to say that this dominion is prin-
cipially restored in Christ’s present reign as resurrected Messiah. In his current
reign and coming defeat of death, the resurrected Christ reinstates human domin-
ion, in his own person bringing to fruition God’s original purpose for humanity. And
a key requisite of this purpose is obedience. While Paul does not make the point
explicit here, he elsewhere argues that Christ’s obedience overcame the disastrous
effects of Adam’s disobedience (Rom .–). The adamic overtones of Ps . in
Cor . should at least prime our ears to hear representative, climactic notes in
Jesus’ human obedience in .. Just as Christ’s present reign representatively
restores human dominion, so also his final act of obedience is a representative one.
This brings us to the second Old Testament passage, Gen –, the backcloth to
.: ‘For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead
has also come through a human being.’ While Paul does not cite a specific passage
or develop this discussion further, he clearly presupposes the narrative in Gen –
of Adam’s disobedience and its catastrophic consequences. That this passage is
Paul’s source in . is confirmed by his explicit engagement with Gen . in
Cor .–. The problem solved by Christ’s resurrection and death-defeat-
ing reign is the legacy of Adam’s fateful disobedience.
Our third Old Testament passage is alluded to in ., which says that the
‘end’ will come when Christ delivers the kingdom to God the Father ‘after destroy-
ing every ruler and every authority and power’ (ὅταν καταργήσῃ πᾶσαν ἀρχὴν
καὶ πᾶσαν ἐξουσίαν καὶ δύναμιν). Together with ., . bears striking
affinities with Dan .– and –. In the former, ‘one like a son of man’
Rapids: Baker, ) –, at . Paul anticipates the citation of Ps. . in . by insert-
ing πάντας into the allusion to Ps . in .. As Meyer comments, ‘The synchronizing of
Pss and does not merely indicate that Ps has been read messianically, but that Ps
has been read with the cosmic-anthropological overtones of Ps ’ (Adam’s Dust, ).
Cf. Meyer, Adam’s Dust, . For other discussions of how Christ’s reign as resurrected
Messiah brings God’s frustrated purposes for humanity to fruition, see e.g. Wright, Climax,
–; E. J. Schnabel, Der erste Brief des Paulus an die Korinther (HTA; Wuppertal:
R. Brockhaus, ) –; Ciampa and Rosner, ‘ Corinthians’, –.
On which, see especially N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Christian Origins
and the Question of God ; London: SPCK, ) –; Meyer, Adam’s Dust, –.
For fuller discussion, see Meyer, Adam’s Dust, –. Paul’s evocation of Dan in these verses
is also noted by Schrage, Der erste Brief, IV.–; Wright, Resurrection, –; Ciampa and
Rosner, First Corinthians, –; M. V. Novenson, Christ among the Messiahs: Christ
Language in Paul and Messiah Language in Ancient Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, ) ; J. T. Hewitt and M. V. Novenson, ‘Participationism and Messiah
Christology in Paul’, God and the Faithfulness of Paul: A Critical Examination of the Pauline
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R. B. JAMIESON
comes to the Ancient of Days and receives universal dominion (Dan .–,
ESV). In the latter, the ‘dominion’ (ἐξουσίαν) of the fourth beast is taken away,
to be consumed and destroyed ‘until the end’ (ἕως τέλους), and dominion is
given instead to ‘the people of the saints of the Most High’, whom ‘all dominions’
(πᾶσαι αἱ ἐξουσίαι) will serve (ὑποταγήσονται) and obey (Dan .–, ESV).
Not only the notion of a kingdom being given ‘until the end’ to God’s delegate
(whether individual or corporate), but also the terms for the powers that this dele-
gate subdues (ἀρχή, ἐξουσία, δύναμις), and the verb naming their subjection
(ὐποτάσσω) are common to Dan and Cor .. This strongly suggests
that Paul’s conception of Christ’s kingdom in our passage draws materially on
Dan . As reigning ‘son of man’, Christ representatively effects the rule of the
‘saints of the Most High’; his dominion is also theirs.
What do these allusions and citation add up to? As Messiah, the reigning ‘son
of man’, Jesus rules as a representative human, restoring adamic vicegerency over
creation and bringing that ruled rule to its divinely determined destination. As
the ‘last Adam’ ( Cor .), Christ is the ‘human being’ (.) whose resurrec-
tion reverses the results of Adam’s sin. As the man to whom all things are sub-
jected, he now achieves humanity’s appointed telos. All of these overlapping
scriptural roles constitute crucial context in which to read the Son’s submission
to the Father at ‘the end’ (.). Given that humanity’s deviance from its
appointed destiny was instigated by the sin of one man, it is fitting for the final
feat of the last Adam’s mediatorial reign to be an act of obedience. The human
destiny is fulfilled when Christ not only restores human dominion over creation
but enacts humanity’s stipulated subjection to God in his own person.
Theology of N.T. Wright (ed. C. Heilig, J. T. Hewitt and M. F. Bird (WUNT II/; Tübingen:
Mohr Siebeck, ) –.
My base text is Rahlfs, which includes some phrases that the editors of the Göttingen text
exclude; Theodotion differs as well, though with close synonyms. However, as Meyer points
out, ‘Since Paul is not quoting or alluding to a specific phrase (or phrases) per se it is not neces-
sary to sort out which textual tradition is most prominent. What is striking is the confluence of
themes and vocabulary: An end (τέλος) marks the transition from the reign (ἐξουσία, ἀρχήν)
of the enemy of God and God’s people to the submission (ὑποτάσσω) of all authorities to
God’ (Adam’s Dust, ).
So e.g. Wright, Resurrection, : ‘The result is the establishment of a final, stable “order” in
which the creator and covenant god is over the Messiah, and the Messiah is over the world
– with the Messiah, in other words, taking precisely the position marked out in Genesis
and for the human race, and in Daniel for “the people of the saints of the Most High”:
under the creator, over the world, reflecting the divine image into the world in terms of bring-
ing the creator’s victorious, wise, rescuing order to the world that would otherwise be subject
to the destructive rule of death and all the powers that lead to it.’ Similarly Barrett on .:
‘Messiah and Man can thus be used to interpret each other’ (C. K. Barrett, A Commentary
on the First Epistle to the Corinthians (BNTC; London: A & C Black, ) ).
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Cor . and the Grammar of Paul’s Christology
. Conclusions
The scope and significance of the Son’s subjection to the Father in Cor
. are conditioned decisively by his humanity. This submission is not eternal
but enacted at the consummation of all things. The submission Paul predicates
of the Son refers not to his ‘naked’ divinity, but to an act he performs in and by
virtue of his humanity. Hence it is not special pleading to take Paul’s predication
of submission as referring precisely, and only, to the Son’s act as a human, not to his
divine existence or intrinsic relation to the Father. Instead, to perceive such a
limited scope of this predication is to follow the way Paul’s words run, to keep
them in the channel that the context carves out. By contrast, to take the Son’s sub-
mission in Cor . to indicate intrinsic inferiority is like measuring the air tem-
perature to find out the day of the week, or weighing a person to discover how tall
they are. Those qualities are distinct. One does not tell you the other; they cannot be
plotted on a single axis. So with the Son’s divine and human characteristics and the
activities they underwrite. Therefore, I suggest that at least some pre-modern
readers were right to read the passage in this way, limiting its scope to what
Christ does as the incarnate God-man, and therefore as conceptually delimited
from who he is considered simply as divine.
How is reasoning about Cor . in the manner recommended here not
simply a convenient way to exclude evidence that might damage the case for
‘divine Christology’? In addition to the contextual argument above, I have
argued that a distinction between divine and human registers in christological
predications belongs to the grammar of Paul’s Christology evident elsewhere in
Corinthians (.; .; .; .). To ask ‘Is this spoken of Christ with reference
to his divinity or his humanity?’ is a necessary response to the twofold-ness in
Paul’s account of Christ. For a proponent of divine Christology, to employ parti-
tive exegesis is to use a resource the position itself affords, not an expedient
smuggled in to shore it up. To assert that a proponent of divine Christology
cannot make such a distinction would be to prohibit him or her from defending
the position with resources intrinsic to it. In such a case it would not be the pro-
ponent of divine Christology who is in danger of special pleading.
The term ‘naked’ is borrowed from Cyril of Alexandria, to refer to Christ in his divinity alone,
apart from his assumed humanity. See That the Christ Is One (PG .); translation and
discussion in J. A. McGuckin, St. Cyril of Alexandria and the Christological Controversy: Its
History, Theology, and Texts (VCSup ; Leiden: Brill, ) –.
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R. B. JAMIESON
On the Spirit in relation to God and Jesus in Paul, see especially Hill, Paul and the Trinity, –
. On Paul’s ‘expanded’ monotheism, see e.g. C. K. Rowe, One True Life: The Stoics and Early
Christians as Rival Traditions (New Haven: Yale University Press, ) –, especially his
comments on Rom .: ‘Now notice what the Roman Christians have learned: the Lord
whom we are to confess is Jesus, and yet the Lord spoken of in the book of the prophet is obvi-
ously the one Lord of the Shema. The proximate juxtaposition of these two statements
enlarges the referent of the word Lord – again, God’s own name in Israel’s Scripture – to
include Jesus without placing him in competitive relation to God. In God’s case, oneness
can include distinction without ceasing to be oneness. This is the underlying logic of
Corinthians :, too’ (; emphasis original).
As Rowe observes, ‘Paul’s “doctrine” of God must yield the conclusion that in Pauline theology
we either see a complete contradiction with the OT (as many Jews today would still hold) or a
fundamental theological seed of Nicaea’ (‘Romans :’, ). Similarly Walter on Cor .:
‘Hier nennt Paulus, und zwar – man möchte zunächst denken: ohne speziellen Anlaß – im
Zusammenhang mit seiner Kreuzigung, Jesus den κύριος τῆς δόξης, eine Formel, die auf
jemanden anders als Gott selbst zu beziehen für jeden Juden, der nicht selbst Jesus als den
“Herrn” bekennt, geradezu gotteslästerlich klingen muß’ (‘Alttestamentliche Bezüge’, ).
See especially Hill, Paul and the Trinity, –.
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Cor . and the Grammar of Paul’s Christology
I am deeply grateful to Dr Jonathan Linebaugh and Dr James B. Prothro for their insightful
comments on an earlier draft of this essay, as well as to the anonymous reviewer for NTS,
whose criticisms considerably strengthened the final product. I also gladly thank Dr Simon
Gathercole for a perceptive suggestion about the structure of the argument that prompted
fruitful revision.
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