Ideology and Exegesis: A Response to Gerald O’Collins

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In the first part of his critique, entitled ‘From Adam to Angel Christology’, O’Collins rejects my claim that Paul presents Christ in Phil 2:6-11 as a preexistent ‘great angel’ that was eventually promoted to God’s ‘angelic vice-regent’ in the tradition of the Name-bearing angel that was taking shape in contemporary Jewish apocalypticism. He offers three reasons. The first is that Paul held a low view of angels and would therefore have never considered Christ to be one of them. As proof O’Collins lists in two short parentheses five prooftexts (Rom 8:38; 1 Cor 8:3; 2 Cor 11:14; Gal 1:8; 3:19), after which he lands on a sixth, Col 2:18, where, we are told, ‘the apostle takes his distance from the “worship of angels”’.

This is a careless and shoddy argument. For starters, Colossians was almost certainly not written by ‘the apostle’. And O’Collins’s prooftexts, if one bothers to look them up and read them, hardly support his claim. How, for instance, does Paul’s hyperbole in Gal 1:8, which begins ‘even if an angel from heaven etc.’, imply a low view of angels? But even more glaring is the fact that in selecting references to angels in Paul O’Collins conveniently fails to mention, much less discuss, Gal 4:14, where Paul reminds his wavering recruits of their previous enthusiasm with the following words: ‘you welcomed me as an angel of God (ὡϚ ἄγγελον θεοῦ), as Christ Jesus (ὡϚ Χριστὸν Ἰησοῦν)’. Paul here not only expresses what is certainly a ‘high view’ of angels, but through simple apposition appears to identify Christ as one of them—though no doubt a very important one on the order of Daniel’s famous angelic ‘one like a son of man’ or 1 Enoch’s now equally famous angelic ‘messiah’/’son of man’. ³

Gal 4:14 is a crucial text for reconstructing Paul’s evolving understanding of Christ, and so I will pause to say more about it. Paul believed that after Christ’s death God returned him to his pre-metamorphic state as a divine ‘spirit’ (πνεῦμα): ‘and the last Adam became a life-giving spirit (πνεῦμα)’ (1 Cor 15:45). Paul also believed that as a ‘spirit’ Christ had entered his body and now possessed him. ‘I no longer live’, he famously boasts to the Galatians (2:20), ‘Christ lives inside me!’ According to Lucian of Samosata, Alexander of Abonoteichus, who introduced the cult of the healing god Glycon to the Galatians in the century after Paul, made a similar boast as he proclaimed his own recently incarnated divinity who indwelt him: ‘I am Glycon!’ (εἰμὶ Γλύκων!). ⁴ Like Paul’s Christ cult, Alexander’s Glycon cult steadily took root. ‘Little by little’, Lucian writes, ‘Bithynia, Galatia, and Thrace came pouring in’.

Spirit possession was central to Paul’s self-understanding. But it was also central to his gospel. At Rom 8:9 Paul uses the language of spirit possession—’to have a spirit’ (πνεῦμα ἔχειν) ⁵ —to describe not only his possession by Christ, but to insist that all believers were similarly possessed: ‘if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ (πνεῦμα Χριστοῦ οὐκ ἔχει), that person is not one of his’. From the beginning Paul encouraged displays of spirit possession in his assemblies: ‘Do not put out the fire (σβέννυτε) of the spirit’, he told the Thessalonians (1 Thess 5:19). The Corinthians went so far as to fetishize spirit possession, leading Paul to complain that they had become ‘crazy for spirits’ (ζηλωταί . . . πνευμάτων; 1 Cor 14:12). ⁶ But all Paul’s assemblies were spirit-possession cults whose members frequently spoke in ecstatic gibberish (‘tongues’) and from time to time could be heard to ‘cry out’ (κράζω) something that sounded to Paul like ‘abba’, the Aramaic word for ‘father’. At Gal 4:6b he cites this as evidence that his recruits were possessed by the spirit of God’s son: ‘God sent the spirit of his son into our hearts crying out (κρᾶζον) “Abba!” which means “father”‘ (Gal 4:6b). He assumed this was true of the Romans, too: ‘you have received the spirit of adoption, by which we cry out (κράζομεν) “Abba!” which means “father”‘ (Rom 8:15).

During his initial evangelizing of Galatia Paul was afflicted with what he called ‘a weakness of the flesh’ that became instrumental in his proclamation: ‘you know that it was through (δι᾽) a weakness of the flesh that I originally proclaimed the gospel to you’ (Gal 4:13). Paul does not say what kind of ‘weakness’ this was—he didn’t need to tell the Galatians what they already knew—but it is clear from his remarks that the Galatians had taken it to be a case of spirit possession. I suspect Paul had periodic seizures, like the epileptic boy at Mark 9:17-29 (par.), whose repeated seizures were interpreted as bouts of severe spirit possession resistant to exorcism. ⁷ The ophthalmic effects of a seizure would explain the reference to Paul’s eyes in v. 15: ‘if possible, you would have pulled out your own eyes and given them to me’. While a tonic-clonic or so-called grand mal seizure would also go a long way toward explaining what Paul meant at Gal 3:1: ‘before [your] eyes Jesus Christ was publicly displayed (προεγράφη) as crucified’. ⁸

Whatever the case, shortly after Paul’s arrival the Galatians had a choice to make. Was Paul possessed by an evil spirit? Or was he possessed by an ‘angel of God’? If the former, they would want to ward off the spirit, one technique for which was spitting. ⁹ If the latter, they had better welcome him as a divine herald. They chose the latter: ‘though you were severely tested by my condition, you did not despise me, nor did you spit (ἐξεπτύσατε), but welcomed me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus’. According to Lucian, Alexander of Abonoteichus affected divine seizures when spreading his gospel, in response to which he, like Paul, received enthusiastic receptions (Alex. 12). ¹⁰ Over confident in his creed, O’Collins ignores both Gal 4:14 and this body of illuminating ancient evidence.

The second reason O’Collins offers for rejecting my interpretation of Phil 2:6-11 is that the great angel tradition almost always includes a judgment scene and a throne of judgment, and that these elements are missing in the relevant portion of Paul’s encomium (vv. 10-11). Instead, O’Collins notes, Paul quotes Isa 45:23—‘every knee shall bow etc.’—which describes not a judgment scene but a theophany of the Israelite god Yahweh, who is of course not an angel. O’Collins cites in support the interpretation of Isa 45:23 by the OT/HB scholar Klaus Baltzer. Baltzer is a fine historical critic and his interpretation of Isa 45:23 merits careful consideration. But it is irrelevant for reading Paul, since, as is well known, apocalyptic Jews like Paul cared little for historical meaning in their quotations of Scripture. The Qumran pesharim are a parade example of this.

Regarding Paul’s use of Isa 45:23, O’Collins should not have quoted Baltzer—as if Paul were a modern historical critic—but Paul himself, who cites the Isaiah text in his earlier letter to the Romans at 14:10-11. ¹¹ Here it is: ‘For we must all stand before the judgment seat of God (τῷ βήματι τοῦ θεοῦ), for it is written: “As I live, says Yahweh, before me every knee shall bow etc.”‘ For Paul, Isa 45:23 was indeed a judgment scene, complete with a βῆμα or ‘judgment seat’. Of course, the fact that at Phil 2:10-11 Paul applies to Christ words originally attributed to Yahweh is precisely what we should expect in the great angel tradition, in which an exalted angel not only sits on Yahweh’s throne and executes judgment on Yahweh’s behalf, ¹² but bears Yahweh’s name as well (e.g., Apoc. Abr. 10–11; b. Sanh. 38b). Subsequent Jewish tradition would even call one of these angels the ‘Lessor Yahweh’ (יהוה הקטן‎). There is none of O’Collins’s centuries-later Nicene trinitarianism in Paul’s Isaiah reference.

O’Collins has cherry-picked his methods for reading biblical texts to arrive at the conclusion he has been told by his creeds is correct. He insists that Isa 45:23 be read historically and that Paul himself did so. However, he believes himself to be entitled to read Paul ahistorically as anticipating a later orthodoxy, and he chides me for not doing so. By contrast, I read both Paul and Isaiah historically, keenly aware that the historical Paul was not a historical critic, and that he did not read Isaiah 45:23 with an eye to its historical meaning.

The third reason O’Collins offers for rejecting my interpretation of Phil 2:6-11 is that it is innovative: ‘and now we have Paul Holloway . . .’. And worse, that it is Jewish: O’Collins is scandalized that the index to my commentary contains ‘nearly two columns’ of references to 1 Enoch. For O’Collins, this constitutes a clear lack of imagination on my part. Instead, I should have ‘countenance[d] the possibility that the early Church had come to believe that Christ’s relationship with God was unique . . . which [belief] flowered in classical Christian doctrine’. For O’Collins, Paul was not an apocalyptic Jew but a budding Nicene Christian. But since in my unbelief I ‘dropped this conviction’, I was forced to ‘look elsewhere’ and to ‘light upon’ a Jewish angel-Christology.

There are myriad flaws with this argument. I will note four. First, as satisfying as it must have been to charge me with unbelief, ¹⁴ the problem is not that I have ‘dropped’ this or that ‘conviction’ but that O’Collins, in doting upon ‘classical Christian doctrine’, has allowed that doctrine—his ‘conviction’—to predetermine his understanding of ‘the early Church’ and thus his exegesis of Paul. Second, historical arguments—and O’Collins here is attempting a historical argument (‘the early Church had come to believe’)—do not rest on this or that ‘possibility’ generated by some subsequent creed but on the probable meaning of the evidence in its contemporary context, which in Paul’s case is, dare I say, Jewish. Third, to say that Paul’s Christ myth ‘flowered’ in later doctrine imposes on Paul’s letters a teleology of the sort universally rejected in modern historiography: O’Collins teleology is simply a theological metanarrative masquerading as history. And finally, it should go without saying that in Jewish apocalyptic myth and thus in Paul’s Christ myth the relationship between the Name-bearing angel and God was also ‘unique’.

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I turn now to the second part of O’Collins essay, entitled ‘The Central Message of Phil 2:6-11’, where he offers what at first glance appear to be two further criticisms. The first, however, is simply another go at the citation of Isa 45:23. I will skip it. The second argument is new and turns on 1 Cor 8:6, which is indeed a pivotal text for reconstructing Paul’s Christ myth. Here it is: ‘for us there is one god, the Father, out of (ἐξ) whom are all things and for (εἰϚ) whom we exist, and one lord, Jesus Christ, through (δι᾽) whom are all things and through (δι᾽) whom we exist.’ I briefly discuss this text in a recent article ¹⁵ and will treat it in much greater detail in the commentary on 1 Corinthians that I am preparing for the International Critical Commentary series.

O’Collins claims that in 1 Cor 8:6 Paul ‘split[s] the classic Jewish confession of monotheism contained in the Shema (Deut 6:4-5), glossing “God” with “Father” and “Lord” with “Jesus Christ” . . . [thus] redefining Jewish monotheism to include Christ’, whom Paul now, in some imagined medieval scala naturae, places ‘on the side of the universal Creator’. This is nonsense. For not only does O’Collins fail to understand the Shema, which does not affirm Jewish monotheism but ancient Israelite henotheism—the proper translation of Deut 6:4 is not ‘Yahweh our god, Yahweh is one’ but ‘Yahweh is our god, Yahweh alone’ (see the NRSV)—a henotheism that Paul explicitly repeats in 1 Cor 8:6, when he writes, ‘there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is one god etc.’. ¹⁶ But O’Collins also fails to discern Paul’s programmatic use in 1 Cor 8:6 of what Gregory Sterling has called ‘prepositional metaphysics’, in which different prepositions are used to describe different types of causality. ¹⁷ I will make three further comments on this text.

First, 1 Cor 8:6 is not a primitive creed but a clever sententia that Paul has crafted in response to the sententia of his rivals in 8:4. It was common in Paul’s day to play with prepositions in order to produce an artful saying, which is what Paul has done here. ¹⁸ He offers a similar sententia based on prepositions at Rom 11:36 (see below).

Second, in 8:6 Paul imagines Christ as a kind of Platonic demiurge ‘through whom’ the sensible world was formed. We can see this if we look more closely at the history of so-called prepositional metaphysics, which began with Aristotle’s theory of the various kinds of causes, and then developed along two different trajectories: the Platonic and the Stoic. In its Platonizing form, it allowed for a demiurge ‘through (δι᾽) whom’ the material world was created. In its Stoicizing form, this demiurgical function was absorbed into a metaphysical monism. Paul follows the Platonizing version here in 1 Cor 8:6: ‘and one lord Jesus Christ, through (δι᾽) whom are all things etc.’ He follows the Stoicizing version in the clausula of Rom 11:36, where he writes of God that ‘out of (ἐξ) him and through (δι᾽) him and for (εἰϚ) him are all things’. ¹⁹

Third, Paul therefore does not in 1 Cor 8:6, as O’Collins would have it, imagine Christ sharing in the ‘eternal existence of the one Lord God’, but as a divine craftsman ‘through whom’ the sensible world was created. Convinced that his orthodoxy has provided him the correct reading of Paul, O’Collins has again stopped short of a thorough examination of the evidence. Like all apologists, O’Collins is too easily satisfied with loose logic, careless proof texting, cherrypicked methods, and mere possibility, confident that his conclusions have been secured in advance by his ‘convictions’.

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This brings me to the third and final part of O’Collins’s essay, promisingly entitled ‘Specific Questions’. He raises three. The first concerns the meaning of the expression ‘form of God’ (μορφὴ θεοῦ) and the related expression ‘equality with God’ (τὸ εἶναι ἴσα θεῷ) in Phil 2:6. ‘Form’ is the operative term, since it is in terms of ‘form’ that Paul alleges Christ’s ‘equality with God’. O’Collins insists that μορφή (‘form’) is a worthy precursor of Nicea’s ὁμοούσιοϚ (‘of one being with’) speculation. But the Greek term μορφή does not mean ‘being’ (ουσία). The standard Greek-English Lexicon by Lidell, Scott, and Jones (9^th ed.; Oxford, 1940) glosses ‘outward form’, ‘shape’, or ‘appearance’. The new Cambridge Greek Lexicon glosses ‘visible or physical form’, ‘appearance,’ ‘shape’, even ‘beauty’. ²⁰ The preexistent Christ looked divine. And when he changed μορφή from the ‘form of God’ to the ‘form of a slave’, adopting a human ‘likeness’ (ὁμοίωμα) and ‘appearance’ (σχῆμα), he did not acquire an additional ‘nature’ but simply ²¹ underwent a metamorphosis of the sort common not only in pagan myth but also in Jewish apocalypticism, where angels often change their ‘form’ as they travel back and forth between heaven and earth. Philo’s description of the god-like μορφή in the burning bush at Life of Moses 1.66 offers an apt parallel: ‘and at the center of the flame was a shape (μορφή) most beautiful . . . an image most god-like (θεοειδέστατον), but let us call it an angel (ἄγγελοϚ)’. For both Philo and Paul, at least certain angels appear ‘god-like’. ²²

I will pause here to offer a few further observations regarding Paul’s use of metamorphic language and imagery. ²³ Terms such as ‘form’, ‘appearance’, and ‘likeness’, have obvious connections to the metamorphic tradition. ²⁴ But the longer expressions in which they appear also reflect that tradition. Consider, for instance, the clause ‘taking the form of a slave’ (μορφὴν δούλου λαβών) at Phil 2:7. Euripides uses an almost identical expression to describe the metamorphosis of Zeus at Helen 19: ‘taking the form of a swan’ (μορφώματ᾽ ὄρνιθος λαβών). So does the author of the Greek recension of the Life of Adam and Eve (L.A.E.) in his account of Satan’s appearance to Eve at 29:12 Apoc.: ‘taking the form of an angel’ (λαβών σχῆμα ἀγγέλου), a story that Paul was apparently familiar with: ‘for even Satan transforms himself (μετασχηματίζεται) into an angel of light’ (2 Cor 11:14). ²⁵

But Paul uses other expressions from the metamorphic tradition as well. One of the most common verbs used to describe the metamorphosis of a divinity was ‘become’ (γίνομαι). ²⁶ Paul uses this term in Phil 2:7 when he writes ἐν ὁμοιώματι ἀνθρώπων γενόμενος. O’Collins assures us that γενόμενος here means ‘born’. But this is more carelessness. To be sure, Paul uses γίνομαι to mean ‘born’ at Gal 4:4 and Rom 1:3. But, as I detail in my commentary, in those texts the expression is γενόμενος ἐκ (‘born from’; cf. BDAG, s.v. γίνομαι 1). Here in Phil 2:7 the expression is γενόμενος ἐν, which BDAG understands to mean ‘entry into a new condition’ (s.v. γίνομαι 5c). Phil 2:7 should therefore be translated something like ‘adopting a human likeness’ (the translation I proposed in my commentary) or ‘assuming a human likeness’ (the translation I now offer in my translation of Philippians in the NRSV-Updated Edition). An illuminating parallel is again found in L.A.E., which at 17:1 Apoc offers a second account of Satan’s metamorphosis before approaching Eve: ‘Satan adopted (ἐγένετο ἐν) the likeness of an angel’. I assume O’Collins would not wish to translate L.A.E. 17:1 Apoc as, ‘Satan was born in angelic likeness’.

It may seem odd to modern readers that Paul believed Christ to be a great angel who ‘assum[ed] a human likeness’ (Phil 2:7) over the course of a whole lifetime by being ‘born of a woman’ (Gal 4:4). But similar myths of life-long metamorphosis grew up around the antediluvian Enoch (1 Enoch 70-71), the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Prayer of Joseph), and John the Baptizer (Origen, In Ioannem 2:31). Enoch was apparently unaware of his angelic identity until Michael broke it to him: ‘You, Enoch, are that Son of Man!’ (71:14). Jacob, on the other hand, knew exactly who he was: ‘I, Jacob, who am speaking to you, am also an angel (ἄγγελος), a ruling spirit (πνεῦμα ἄρχικον). Abraham and Isaac were created before any work, but I, Jacob . . . am the first born (πρωτότοκος) of every living thing’ (frag. A). ²⁷ Interestingly, we owe this important fragment to Origen, who famously cites it in his Commentary on John in support of his theory that Elizabeth’s son John the Baptizer had in fact been an angel sent from God. Paul, I would argue, was no less bold a theorist than Origen. ²⁸ I also note that just as the Prayer of Joseph calls Jacob/Israel a πνεῦμα ἄρχικον or ‘ruling spirit’, so Paul at 1 Cor 15:45 calls Christ a πνεῦμα ζῳοποιοῦν or ‘life-giving spirit’, and that the author of Colossians twice applies the great-angel title πρωτότοκος to Christ (1:15, 17). It would have been helpful if O’Collins, who presumably knows his Origen well, had commented on this tradition, which I discussed in some detail in my commentary (pp. 49-50, 122).

I will make one final comment on Paul’s metamorphic language in Phil 2:6-11. The metamorphic tradition also casts light on the so-called kenosis or ‘self-emptying’ of Christ: ‘he emptied (ἐκένωσεν) himself’ (v. 7). Christian theology has made much of this. But the assumption that a divine being first sets aside his or her divine splendor before assuming a lesser form was a common topos in the metamorphic tradition. I will give three examples. According to Moschus, Europa 79, ‘[Zeus] hid (κρύψεν) his divinity, transformed his body, and became (γείνετο) a bull’. ²⁹ Αccording to Ovid, Metamorphoses 8.626, Mercury followed a similar protocol, laying aside his wings (positis alis) before assuming a human form. And finally, at Testament of Abraham 16-18A, the angel Death must ‘hide’ (κρύπτω) or ‘take off’ (ἀποβάλλω) his terrifying ‘form’ (μορφή) before ‘putting on’ (περιβάλλω) a comelier ‘form’ (μορφή) in order to descend to Abraham. Paul deploys this topos in Phil 2:7 to make a meaningful wordplay: while some display ‘empty conceit’ (κενοδοξία; 2:3), Christ ‘emptied’ (ἐκένωσεν) himself.

O’Collins’s second and third ‘specific questions’ are actually complaints: (1) that I do not cite conservative Bible scholars ³⁰ and (2) that my exegesis is not guided by constructive ‘theology and philosophy’. I will respond to them in reverse order. I do not offer a constructive theological interpretation of Philippians. That is not what I do, and the Hermeneia editors would not have allowed it. But more to the point, I have yet to see a constructive theological reading of a New Testament document that does not do violence to its historical meaning, as O’Collins’s essay itself repeatedly illustrates. I agree with John J. Collins that ‘historical distortion is inevitably present when one attempts to combine historical criticism with theological orthodoxy’. ³¹ Theological exegesis tends strongly toward theological eisegesis. I do not practice it as a matter of principle. ³²

The complaint that I do not cite conservative Bible scholars strikes me as little more than ideological score keeping. It is true that I rarely consult the work of conservative Bible scholars, but that is not because of those scholars’ religious views but because of the poor quality of their scholarship. ³³ It is understandable that conservative Bible scholars wish to be cited as warrantable sources of historical knowledge. But they are religious ideologues who bring to their work a supernaturalist view of the Bible that unduly constrains their interpretation of canonical texts. In some cases, this means that certain conclusions are precluded. In others, that one or more conclusions are demanded. But regardless of the nature of the constraint, conservative Bible scholars rarely if ever rise to the level of academic historians, who at all times are obliged to pursue the evidence wherever it leads and to draw whatever conclusions seem warranted. ³⁴ Historians of ancient Judaism and early Christianity are no more required to read and cite the work of conservative Bible scholars than, say, American historians are required to read and cite the pseudohistory and alternative facts of Lost Cause propagandists. That I very rarely read and cite conservative Bible scholars is a sign of my good judgment.

There is a second reason I make little to no use of conservative Bible scholars that I will mention by way of conclusion. To put it simply, life is short. I allow in my commentary that certain conservative Bible scholars do sometimes make ‘fine exegetical observations’ (p. 10 n. 81). How could that not be the case, given the education and intelligence of many of them, not to mention the sheer volume of most of their writings? But since the bulk of what these scholars write is as predictable as it is tendentious, the likelihood that—apart from some carefully selected topic that promises not to transgress their ideological boundaries—one will come across anything of value, let alone interesting, is comparatively low. Conservative Bible scholars do not bring much bang for the buck. I have chosen and will continue to choose to spend the bulk of my time elsewhere.