Abstract
Historical critics studying New Testament Christology have usually tried to distance themselves from later doctrinal formulations. For example, it is well known that Augustine can find the persons of the Trinity in all manner of passages in the Old Testament (referred to as prosopological exegesis from the Greek word prosopon = person) but this should not be read back into the New Testament. Of course, it is recognized that some New Testament passages do something similar: Hebrews 1.8–10 shockingly asserts that texts like Psalm 45.6 (‘Your throne, O God, endures for ever and ever’) and Psalm 102.25 (‘Long ago you laid the foundation of the earth’) were addressed to the Son, and Paul can identify the rock that sustained the Israelites in the wilderness with Christ (1 Cor. 10.4). However, these are usually explained by reference to the oddities of first-century Jewish exegesis and regarded as idiosyncratic. The thesis of this book is that far from being idiosyncratic, prosopological exegesis is central to the New Testament, occurs in its earliest strata and most likely goes back to Jesus.
Bates begins by outlining four different explanations for how the doctrine of the Trinity has been related to the New Testament and the use of prosopological exegesis in the ancient world. Though it may seem arbitrary (even gratuitous) to us, it is rooted in a genuine desire to identify the person or persons speaking, when this is not adequately specified. For example, to enquire of the speaker and the one addressed in Psalm 2.7 (‘I will tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to me, “You are my son; today I have begotten you”’) is a genuine exegetical question. Prompted by Jesus himself (Mark 12.35–37), the early Church identified Jesus as the ‘I, me, son, you’ in the quotation and understood it as a dialogue between divine persons prior to the incarnation. The chapters that follow take a thematic approach, showing how the Son’s mission (chapter 3), passion (chapter 4), rescue (chapter 5) and triumph (chapter 6) were announced in Scripture, not so much by messianic prediction, nor by what scholars call typology, but dialogues between Father and Son and enabled by the Spirit.
To give a flavour of the insights that follow from this, when Jesus cries out, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? (Mark 15.34), he is not identifying with David’s suffering but enacting the script that has been given to him. David’s prophetic gift was that the he could sometimes speak in the character (person) of the Son addressing the Father. Acts 2.29 offers an argument for why David is clearly not speaking about himself (he died and his tomb is with us) and so the quotation in Acts 2.25 (‘I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand so that I will not be shaken’) is understood by Peter (Luke) as the Son addressing the Father, who on this occasion, is at Jesus’ right hand. Though I have my doubts about whether this can confidently be said to go back to Jesus, it does raise important questions about New Testament Christology and its relationship to what followed.