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The coronation of Jesus

Sitting in church yesterday, listening to an account of Jesus's baptism, it occurred to me that there is a good analogy that works against the adoptionist overtones historically seized upon both by critics and by heretics (but I...). All agree that the use of Psalm 2 paints the scene in royal colors: this is a coronation. The adoptionist reads this in line with Israel's long-standing practice of suggesting that, in some important but mysterious sense, the king of Israel is or becomes God's son upon succession, for to be the human king under the divine king implies a relationship of intimacy and representation analogous to human paternity and generation. The anti-adoptionist reads the scene as both the fulfillment and the archetype of such a practice, for Jesus is uniquely God's Son, naturally and from all eternity. The Gospels (not least Mark) all bear out this distinct status and relationship, from which derive all that Jesus is, says, and does.

How, then, to explain the scene as one of confirmation rather than adoption? By analogizing the event, not with prior coronations in Israel, however similar, but to ordinary coronations. For what happens when the son of a king is himself made king? Does he thereby "become" the king's son, having not been so prior to that point? No. The prince is always the king's son; what remains is for the prince to be crowned king, like his father.

In the same way, the antecedent and eternal Sonship of Jesus is revealed, not bestowed, at his baptism by John in the Jordan. The one and only Son of YHWH is manifested as what he is, not as what he may or could or does become.

Now, does that mean Jesus was not King prior to his baptism? No and yes. No, in the sense that the divine Son, incarnate in and as Jesus, has, as true God from true God, from all eternity, reigned as Lord. But yes, too, in the sense that the human life of Jesus enacts in time what is true beyond and apart from time. Jesus's baptism-coronation crowns him King in the same way and to the same degree that, at the beginning of his life, the Magi pay his royalty homage and, at the end of his earthly career, he is garlanded with crowns and, after being raised from the dead, he ascends to the right hand of the Father in glorious power. Each is a temporal moment in the one revelatory sweep of the royal Son's fleshly rule in and over all creation, precisely as a fellow creature (better: through assumed creaturely nature). None of the moments "make" the Son king; yet without any of them he would not be the incarnate King he is.

Such is the mystery of the economy of the sovereign incarnate Son of God.
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Brad East Brad East

Not one, just he: Barth on the universal promeity of the gospel

"It happened that in the humble obedience of the Son He took our place, He took to Himself our sins and death in order to make an end of them in His death, and that in so doing He did the right, He became the new and righteous man. It also happened that in His resurrection from the dead He was confirmed and recognized and revealed by God the Father as the One who has done and been that for us and all men. As the One who has done that, in whom God Himself has done that, who lives as the doer of that deed, He is our man, we are in Him, our present is His, the history of man is His history, He is the concrete event of the existence and reality of justified man in whom every man can recognize himself and every other man—recognize himself as truly justified. There is not one for whose sin and death He did not die, whose sin and death He did not remove and obliterate on the cross, for whom He did not positively do the right, whose right He has not established. There is not one to whom this was not addressed as his justification in His resurrection from the dead. There is not one whose man He is not, who is not justified in Him. There is not one who is justified in any other way than in Him—because it is in Him and only in Him that an end, a bonfire, is made of man’s sin and death, because it is in Him and only in Him that man’s sin and death are the old thing which has passed away, because it is in Him and only in Him that the right has been done which is demanded of man, that the right has been established to which man can move forward. Again, there is not one who is not adequately and perfectly and finally justified in Him. There is not one whose sin is not forgiven sin in Him, whose death is not a death which has been put to death in Him. There is not one whose right has not been established and confirmed validly and once and for all in Him. There is not one, therefore, who has first to win and appropriate this right for himself. There is not one who has first to go or still to go in his own virtue and strength this way from there to here, from yesterday to to-morrow, from darkness to light, who has first to accomplish or still to accomplish his own justification, repeating it when it has already taken place in Him. There is not one whose past and future and therefore whose present He does not undertake and guarantee, having long since accepted full responsibility and liability for it, bearing it every hour and into eternity. There is not one whose peace with God has not been made and does not continue in Him. There is not one of whom it is demanded that he should make and maintain this peace for himself, or who is permitted to act as though he himself were the author of it, having to make it himself and to maintain it in his own strength. There is not one for whom He has not done everything in His death and received everything in His resurrection from the dead.

"Not one. That is what faith believes. . . .

"When a man can and must believe, it is not merely a matter of an 'also,' of his attachment as an individual to the general being and activity of the race and the community as determined by Jesus Christ. In all the common life of that outer and inner circle he is still himself. He is uniquely this man and no other. He cannot be repeated or represented. He is incomparable. He is this in his relationship with God and also in his relationship with his fellows. He is this soul of this body, existing in the span of this time of his. He is this sinful man with his own particular pride and in his own special case. For all his common life he is alone in this particularity. It is not simply that he also can and must believe, but that just he can and must believe. And if the being and activity of Jesus Christ Himself is the mystery of the event in which he actually does so, then we must put it even more strongly and precisely: that in this event it takes place that Jesus Christ lives not only 'also' but 'just' as his Mediator and Savior and Lord, and that He shows Himself just to him as this living One. He became a servant just for him. It was just his place that He took, the place which is not the place of any other. In this place He died just for him, for his sin. And, again, in his place He was raised again from the dead. Therefore the Yes which God the Father spoke to Him as His Son in the resurrection is spoken not only also but just to him, this man. In Him it was just his pride, his fall which was overcome. In Him it is just his new right which has been set up, his new life which has appeared. And in Him it is just he who is called to new responsibility, who is newly claimed. It is just he who is not forgotten by Him, not passed over, not allowed to fall, not set aside or abandoned. It is just he—and this is the work of the Holy Spirit—who has been sought out, and reached, and found by Him, just he whom He has associated with Himself and Himself with him. God did not will to be God without being just his God. Jesus did not will to be Jesus without being just his Jesus. The world was not to be reconciled with God without just this man as an isolated individual being a man—this man—reconciled with God. The community was not to be the living body of Christ without just this man being a living member of it. The whole occurrence of salvation was not to take place but just for him, as the judgment executed just on him, the grace addressed in this judgment just to him, just his justification, just his conversion to God. The gift and commission of the community of Jesus Christ is personally just his gift and commission. And all this not merely incidentally, among other things, or only in part for him, but altogether, in its whole length and breadth and height and depth just for him, because Jesus Christ, in whom all this is given to the world and the community, in whom God Himself has sacrificed Himself for it, is Jesus, the Christ, just for him. That this shines out in a sinful man is the mystery, the creative fact, in the event of faith in which he becomes and is a Christian, so that he can and must acknowledge and recognize and confess as such what is proper to him as this subject.

"What do I acknowledge and recognize and confess as this subject? That Jesus Christ Himself is pro me, just for me."

—Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1: The Doctrine of Reconciliation, 629–630, 754–755
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Brad East Brad East

Figural christology in Paradise Lost

In the last two books of Paradise Lost, the angel Michael instructs Adam about what is to come. Together it amounts to a poetic summary of the whole biblical narrative, focusing especially on the bookends: the first 11 chapters of Genesis (the immediately subsequent history of Adam and Eve's progeny) and the antitype of Adam, Christ the Son of God incarnate, in whose life and work Adam finally finds consolation for the misery his and Eve's sin will unleash on so many generations of their children.

One of the most striking features of Milton's biblical precis is his depiction of figures from the "primeval history" of Genesis, those chapters between Adam and Eve's expulsion from Eden and the calling of Abram. Specifically, his language about Enoch and Noah evokes Christ, not least through its anonymous description: by not naming the person in question, Milton leaves ambiguous just who is in view. The overall literary and theological effect is a brilliant, compelling figural christology, using words apt for the Gospels' protagonist to redescribe the initial descendants of Adam, planting verbal seeds in the mind of the reader as she is led, eventually, to the figure's fulfillment in the flesh.

Here is how Milton describes Enoch:

...till at last
Of middle age one rising, eminent
In wise deport, spake much of right and wrong,
And judgment from above: him old and young
Exploded, and had seized with violent hands,
Had not a cloud descending snatched him thence,
Unseen amid the throng. (XI.664–671)

Enoch, like Christ, proclaims judgment and righteousness; escapes the violent mob by walking through their midst; and departs from the earth by ascending to God's side on a cloud. When Adam asks Michael, "But who was that just man, whom had not Heaven/Rescued, had in his righteousness been lost?" (681–682) the angel replies:

But he, the seventh from thee, whom thou beheld'st
The only righteous in a world perverse,
And therefore hated, therefore so beset
With foes, for daring single to be just,
And utter odious truth, that God would come
To judge them with his Saints—him the Most High,
Rapt in a balmy cloud, with winged steeds,
Did, as thou saw'st, receive, to walk with God
High in salvation and the climes of bliss,
Exempt from death, to show thee what reward
Awaits the good, the rest what punishment . . . . (700–710)

Again: Like Christ, Enoch is the one righteous man in a fallen world, generating hatred to the point of violence, and calling down God's judgment upon all unrighteousness. For his pains, Enoch is raised to life eternal with God and freed forever from death, at once the divine exemplar and the divine pedagogy for all humankind.

Adam next foresees Noah, and here is how Milton depicts him:

At length a reverend sire among them came,
And of their doings great dislike declared,
And testified against their ways. He oft
Frequented their assemblies, whereso met,
Triumphs or festivals, and to them preached
Conversion and repentance, as to souls
In a prison, under judgments imminent;
But all in vain. (719–726)

Noah here figures the ministry of Christ, joining his neighbors as he finds them but not condoning their behavior, instead bearing witness to another way. Not only does he meet them with the proclamation of a message of repentance, like Christ at the outset of his ministry, but he did so "as to souls/In a prison," almost word for word a transposition of 1 Peter 3:19's account of the crucified Christ preaching to the spirits in prison—traditionally interpreted as the descent into hell. Noah typifies the Son of God in both his earthly and his spiritual missions to the lost.

Michael elaborates the sense for Adam:

So all shall turn degenerate, all depraved,
Justice and temperance, truth and faith, forgot;
One man except, the only son of light
In a dark age, against example good,
Against allurement, custom, and a world
Offended. Fearless of reproach and scorn,
Or violence, he of their wicked ways
Shall them admonish, and before them set
The paths of righteousness, how much more safe
And full of peace, denouncing wrath to come
On their impenitence, and shall return
Of them derided, but of God observed
The one just man alive: by his command
Shall build a wonderous ark, as thou beheld'st,
To save himself and household from amidst
A world devote to universal wrack. . . . (806–821)

To which Adam responds in delight:

Far less I now lament for one whole world
Of wicked sons destroyed, than I rejoice
For one man found so perfect, and so just,
That God vouchsafes to raise another world
From him, and all his anger to forget.
But say, what mean those coloured streaks in Heaven,
Distended as the brow of God appeased? (874–880)

Finally, of the "peace from God, and covenant new" (867) that Adam spies, the angel replies and thereby concludes their discourse as well as Book XI:

Day and night,
Seed-time and harvest, heat and hoary frost,
Shall hold their course, till fire purge all things new,
Both Heaven and Earth, wherein the just shall dwell. (898–901)

Milton lays his cards on the table by explicitly referencing 2 Peter 3:1–13, inviting the reader to make the connection that the biblical author has already drawn: Noah and the ark are to the flood as Christ and the church are to the purifying fire of the End, which like the deluge is a consummating sign of both new covenant and new creation. Christ, as the Second Adam, is in fact the Second of all Adam's children, and thus a Second Enoch and a Second Noah, the one just and perfect man come to rescue God's good but fallen creatures from their own violence and, consequently, from God's righteous judgment. So when, on "The second time returning" (859), in the bill of the Spirit-dove is found "An olive-leaf . . . pacific sign" (860), then "from his ark/The ancient sire descends, with all his train" (861–862): all, that is, of Adam's faithful sons and daughters, delivered from death and kept safe in the fleshy ark of his true Seed's body, the church. For the church is a mother to Christ's new sisters and brothers, who, along with their first parents, are now spotless children of God the Father.
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Brad East Brad East

Figural christology in children's Bibles

The two Bibles my wife and I read to our children are The Jesus Storybook Bible, written by Sally Lloyd-Jones and illustrated by Jago, and the Jesus Calling Bible Storybook, by Sarah Young. Their favorite story by far is "the Moses story" (a title I required instead of their original "the Pharaoh story"), which they quickly came to know like the back of their hand.

One night, when I persuaded them to let me read them something other than the Moses story, we read the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. To my delight, when we got to the part where the three were thrown into the fiery furnace, and "a fourth figure" was there with them, and none of them were burned by the fire, the text and illustration both delivered on the christological implications of the episode and drew the figural connection implicit within it.


First, my children recognized the fourth figure as Jesus, for the simple reason that he is depicted exactly as he is later in the same Bible. And second, when I began to say, "And because Jesus was with them, the fire didn't burn them up..." I was able to continue, without skipping a beat, "...just like the burning bush. What happened to the leaves on that bush?" To which my children answered, "They didn't burn up!"


And so we had ourselves a little family figural reflection on God's presence when it comes near: both its fearsome power and its power to save. A reflection rooted in and oriented to christology, stretching across salvation history and the scriptures of Israel and the church. At a 4-year old level.

Give me these Storybook Bibles over historical criticism every day of the week.
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Brad East Brad East

Zechariah as the sixth evangelist

Isaiah was famously heralded by the church fathers (originally Jerome?) as "the fifth Evangelist." If there's room for another at the table, I propose we give the honor to Zechariah. Having never read the book start-to-finish before, in doing so the last couple of weeks I was repeatedly struck by how deeply interwoven it is into the canonical Gospels; along with Second Isaiah and the Psalms, it is an ineliminable feature of the Evangelists' depiction of Jesus's person, teachings, ministry, actions, and passion. Tug on that thread, and the texts unravel. Given its importance, I wonder—because I don't know—whether and to what extent the fathers and medievals read and commented on Zechariah, or whether, for whatever reason, it slipped by the wayside. Given its non-linear and non-systematic character, its apocalyptic and sometimes violent imagery, and its simultaneous emphasis on contemporaneous political events as well as the coming eschatological future, perhaps it was less immediately conducive to the sort of readings they would have been interested in undertaking.

But, wow, it is a powerhouse of figural christological exegesis. It's basically necessary pretext, historically, literarily, and theologically, for understanding the Gospels' presentation of Jesus. It's all there: Jerusalem (1:14-17; 8:3), exile (passim), YHWH's return (1:16; 8:3; 9:14), Israel's renewed election (2:12), the divine presence at the temple (2:5; 8:3; 9:8), a second exodus (14:16-19), the forgiveness of sins (3:9; 13:1), the Lord's rebuke of Satan (3:2), the eschatological gathering of all nations (passim), a priest-king named Joshua (6:11-13), the capstone (4:10), the anointed (4:14), the blood of the covenant (9:11), the Spirit's power and outpouring (4:6; 7:12; 12:10), grabbing a Jew by the hem of his robe (8:23), Israel's salvation (9:16), Israel's king at once human (9:9) and divine (14:9), 30 pieces of silver (11:12), the house of David (12:8), a cleansing fountain in Jerusalem (13:1), Jerusalem looking on him whom they have pierced (12:10), the shepherd struck and the sheep scattering (13:7), YHWH's feet standing on the Mount of Olives (14:4), the coming of YHWH with his saints (14:5), the day of darkness that is the first evening of the new creation (14:6-7), the singular sovereignty of the name of YHWH (14:9), the nations coming to worship this self-same king (14:16)—and so on.

I realize I'm not the first one to note this. (I'm vaguely aware that Wright, whose corpus I am making my way through as we speak, has made Zechariah central to his proposal about the historical Jesus's self-understanding.) But it's incredible nonetheless, both at a literary-historical level and, especially, in its implications for Christian theological interpretation of the Evangelists proper and of this unique proto-Evangelist.
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