An Author Interview from Books At a Glance
Just what do we mean when we confess that Jesus is “Lord”? What should we mean when we say it?
I’m Fred Zaspel, executive editor here at Books At a Glance, and that’s the topic David Capes takes up in his book, The Divine Christ: Paul, the Lord Jesus, and the Scriptures of Israel. This is Dr. Capes’ first time with us, and I’m eager to talk to him about his new work.
David, welcome, and congratulations on your new book!
Capes:
Thanks so much, it’s been a long time coming. I’ve been working on this question for awhile, but it’s been of interest to me I guess for at least twenty or twenty-five years.
Zaspel:
Tell us in broad overview what your book is about. What is the focus of your study, and what is the contribution you are hoping to make?
Capes:
I became fascinated. I’ve been studying Paul, Fred, for a number of years and very interested in his letters and I began to be interested in the fact that when he made Old Testament quotations that contained the divine name, how he did that and what that meant. For those who don’t know, the divine name at the time of Jesus and early Christianity was treated with utmost respect. There was a commandment, “do not take the name of the Lord God in vain,” right? And so that meant, for some people, they never said it, they never wrote it, when they talked about God, they just sort of approximated it. So the name of God became a very precious thing. What I noticed is that there were a number of places in Paul’s letters when he is quoting the Old Testament, a passage that refers to the divine name, he also made application of that to Jesus. And that, to me, was kind of a marker to say what an incredibly high Christology that has to be, to take the very name of God and associate that Jesus. And not only to Jesus but in a sense to the saving actions of Jesus. For example, when Paul writes in Romans 10:13 he says, “for everyone who calls upon the Lord will be saved.” Well, that’s a quotation from the book of Joel, and if you look back at the book of Joel that word Lord is actually the divine name, the unspeakable, ineffable name of God, four letters in the Hebrew. And so that name, now, is being associated with Jesus. It is clear when he is talking about that because he has earlier just said, “Jesus is Lord and everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved,” he is clearly referencing Jesus. That, to me, was just a remarkable thing that somebody needed to take notice of.
Zaspel:
How has the scholarly consensus changed in the last few decades on the question of the church’s earliest worship of Jesus?
Capes:
Wow, that’s an incredibly important question. Larry Hurtado at the University of Edinburgh has done probably more than anybody to highlight that. A number of years ago, in the 1950s and 1960s, there was a movement about the myth of God incarnate. That was the name of the movement; there was a book written about that and some scholars gathered to talk about this whole idea of the myth of the incarnation. And there were a number of scholars that began to react to that. The idea was that the divinity of Christ was something that developed very late. The first believers in Jesus thought he was a good teacher, maybe thought he was a prophet, maybe thought he was a Messiah, a human being, but not in any way divine.
But we began, a number of scholars, and I was one of those, began looking at that question and began wondering exactly how early was it that Christians began? Was it in the third century, was it in the late first century, like Jimmy Dunn has argued in his book on Christology in the Making? We refer to that particular group as the “late, low, and slow” group. It comes late, it’s a very slow process. But I belong… I’m a card-carrying member, (or actually a mug-carrying member because we have mugs that say this) of a group called the High Christology Club. We are people who believe and have written books and articles arguing that from the very first moment that we have evidence, the letters of Paul, that Jesus is regarded as divine; Jesus is worshiped; Jesus is prayed to; he is believed to be present with them when they gather; they baptized in his name; they celebrate a meal in his name. And all of that points to the fact that Jesus is occupying a place that is right there with God, that the risen Jesus is understood as God manifest. The idea of incarnation – maybe it takes a while for the “doctrine” of incarnation to develop, for the thinking about the ins and outs, the ups and downs and what that means, but there was a commitment from very early on, Fred, in the belief that Jesus occupied this divine space to the glory of God. So that to call Jesus Lord and to bow the knee to him and to confess him, is all to God’s glory and it doesn’t detract in any way from God’s glory. That’s kind of a movement that’s been going on now for about twenty, twenty-five years and I’ve been a part of that conversation. And I’m grateful to have been part of that.
Zaspel:
In chapter 2 you track the discussion of how early the title “Lord” was used with reference to Jesus and what Christians would have meant by it. Can you just summarize your conclusions here?
Capes:
The book is divided into several places, but, yes, there were a number of scholars that thought at one point that Jesus could be called Lord because the word “Lord” is associated with divinity. Jesus can only be called Lord where there were, as I say in the book, gods aplenty. When you have lots of gods Jesus could be added as just one other one. So, it was something that happened among Gentiles. My conclusion, and the conclusion of others has been that, no, from a very early point, Jews who confessed the oneness of God, the Shema, “Hear oh Israel the Lord our God is one,” believed that Jesus was one with God and would argue that, would say that, and would use the divine name in such a way. So that to call Jesus Lord was not just to say he’s a master or a good teacher, but to call Jesus Lord is to say that he is one with the God who created the universe and the one who will ultimately judge the world. That happens I think very early. And even Wilhelm Bousset, who argued that this happened first among Gentiles, said it happened early; but he said it had to leave the constraints of Judaism, the monotheism of Judaism, in order for that to have happened. In a sense that’s what chapter 2 is about – taking a look at those scholars who have made those particular arguments. Deconstructing those in some ways and then making the case that to call Jesus Lord is to do something remarkable in the early church because that language of Lord is so closely associated with the name of God.
Zaspel:
It’s incredible to me how that could have been missed. You almost have to want to.
Capes:
You know, that was my thought. There’s only one or two other scholars that pay much attention to that; one in France back in the 1920s. I didn’t find many people remarking on that, so I thought there needs to be a systematic study and looking into that.
Now, there’s another thing, too, I need to say, Fred. There are times when Paul quotes what I call a Yahweh text. I use that language. Yahweh text refers to a quotation of or an allusion to an Old Testament text that contains the divine name. There are places where Paul quotes a Yahweh text and refers them to God the Father. So, he’s not just taking them all and referring them to Jesus; some are references to God the Father, others are references to “the Lord Jesus.” That, to me, is even more remarkable.
Zaspel:
I was just going to say that observation itself has some profound significance. He uses the same terminology.
Capes:
Right, because it’s very easy for him and it would be very easy for him just to use it in one particular way; but the fact is, early Christians, in a sense, had redrawn what Jesus called the Shema. 1 Corinthians 8:6 is that passage where Paul does this wonderful thing and he is talking about Christian behavior and Christian thinking in and around about eating meat sacrificed to idols. He says, “but for us there is one God, the Father from whom are all things and to whom are all things and there’s one Lord Jesus Christ through whom are all things, and we through him.” In other words, he has taken that oneness of God and, in a sense, he has not made it to God, he said that the one God that we know is available to us in God the Father and the Lord Jesus. This is early, before any kind of trinitarian reference.
Zaspel:
What I think is fascinating about that is that it’s so assumed – it’s common property with Paul and his readers. You make the point somewhere in the book that the apostle Paul never argues the deity of Christ, and that’s a fascinating observation because we go to the apostle Paul to argue it ourselves, but Paul shares that as common property with his readers.
Capes:
That’s exactly right. He never says I want to try to convince you that Jesus is Lord and that he’s divine and he’s worthy of worship. When he is writing his letters, he just says this is what we do, this is who we are. We are those who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, 1 Corinthians, 1:2. We exist with a multitude of churches of people who call upon the name of the Lord. Which is actually an allusion to an Old Testament practice of going to the Temple and calling upon the name of God, Yahweh, in the Temple. It’s always accompanied with sacrifices and with hymns and with praise. And so, he says we are those who call upon the name of the Lord Jesus and see Jesus in this particular place.
Zaspel:
You point out in chapter 3 that Paul does not use the titles “Christ” and “Lord” haphazardly, and in fact he tends to use the term “Lord” with reference to Jesus in some specific contexts. Can you just sketch this out for us briefly?
Capes:
I was reading Paul, and began noticing that when Paul talks about crucifixion and the death of Jesus, it’s always the Christ died, Christ died for us and so on. We see that over and over, Christ crucified; he does not say the Lord crucified.
And when we come to the word Lord, he uses it in specific places. One is ethical, when he is urging certain Christian behavior, certain kinds of practices. He uses that phrase the Lord, because the Lord has the right to command our lives and to direct our lives. And then he uses it, also, in eschatological places when he talks about becoming of the Lord, the parousia, the Second Coming and such. In the Old Testament you read about the day of the Lord, and that was always Yahweh, the day of Yahweh. For Paul it becomes the day of the Lord Jesus Christ or the day of the Lord Jesus. So Paul is sort of reframing that around the coming of the Lord and the judgment that will take place, both as a threat and a promise at the time of the coming of Jesus in the future. And then, finally, he uses it in the eschatological and the ethical, but he also uses it when he is talking about worship and devotion. We don’t have the Table of Christ, we have the Table of the Lord and the Lord’s Supper, those kinds of things. And when he is talking about hymns and singing hymns, the word Christ may be in there, but it’s primarily the word Lord that’s going to be most present. In those liturgical contexts he’s talking about God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
So those are the three places where Paul is going to use the word. The Christological titles aren’t just sort of sprinkle around, a little bit here and a little bit there, they are used in particular contexts because of the associations related to it. For Christ it’s about the death, the burial, the suffering of Jesus. For Lord it’s about the Resurrection, about the worship of Jesus, about how he commands our lives, how we are to live in this time.
Zaspel:
That was all new to me and fascinating when I read it. That was very helpful.
Capes:
Good.
Zaspel:
Give us a sample or two of passages where Paul cites a verse from the Old Testament that speaks of YHWH and refers it to Jesus.
Capes:
There’s a chapter dedicated, in the book, called Yahweh Texts with Christ As Referent, and that’s kind of a fancy way to say this is a text where he refers the text over to Jesus. I think probably the most common one was the one I had mentioned earlier, Romans 10:13, “for everyone that calls upon the name of the Lord (read Jesus) shall be saved.” A few chapters later there’s a passage in Romans 14:1 where he talks about… Let me just read the passage. There’s a wonderful passage in Romans 14 where he is quoting passages from the Old Testament and he says, “whether we live or whether we die we belong to the Lord. He died and he lived again so that he might be Lord over the living.” Isaiah 45:23 says, “as I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow to me and every tongue will confess to God.” That’s the passage that Paul refers to. Now, he doesn’t quote that exactly; we don’t know exactly what it meant to quote a passage in those days. Did he have a Bible handy that he could refer to? But the passage in particular, Romans 14:11, says this: “why do you pass judgment on your brother? Why do you despise your brother? For we all stand before the judgment seat of God.” And here’s the passage, “for it is written, as I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow to me, every tongue will give praise to God. So each of us shall give account of himself to God.” Now, clearly God is a part of the reference, but what I’m arguing in there is that that first phrase, “as I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow to me,” is a reference to Jesus. In the second part of that phrase, “every tongue shall give praise to God,” that is God the Father. There’s a place, like in the Shema, where he talks about God the Father and the Lord Jesus. He does exactly the same thing here. There’s a lot of things happening in the Greek text underneath this passage that leads me to think that. In particular, because it says, “as I live, says the Lord, every knee will bow to me.” Earlier, Paul had talked about the fact that in the resurrection Paul never refers to as ‘to live again.’ He does so here, and this is an oath formula that is taken over to refer “as I live again in the resurrection, says the Lord Jesus, every knee will bow to me.” It’s a play on words, in a sense, from the Old Testament oath formula. “As I live, every knee will bow to me,” is kind of taking an oath. But now, in the hands of Paul, in this particular passage, what he is meaning is he is trying to refer to the fact of the resurrection. A few verses up, Paul says, “if we live, we live to the Lord, if we die, we die to the Lord. So then whether we live or whether we die we are of the Lord for to this end (this is the key) Christ died and lived again so that he might be Lord of the dead and the living.” Paul never refers to the resurrection of Jesus as ‘living again’ except here. And I think that’s the key to reading that next passage, “as I live, says the Lord Jesus, every knee will bow to me.” That’s an Old Testament Yahweh text that is taken over and made reference to Jesus as a matter of praise and devotion.
Zaspel:
Fascinating.
In the Great Commission Jesus includes himself in the divine name when he commands us to baptize “in the name [singular] of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” It’s been said that from here on God’s name has been known as Father, Son, and Spirit. So, here is some warrant from Jesus himself for Paul’s referring of Old Testament YHWH passages to Jesus. Is this where Paul learned to do this? Or are there other factors involved?
Capes:
That’s a great question; I have to admit, I don’t know exactly. I think there are a lot of passages in the Gospels where Jesus takes on a divine role. There’s a great book by Richard Hayes, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, published by Baylor University Press, where he plows into those texts in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to show that, particularly in these echoes of Scripture, Jesus is taking on a particular role, a role that is unique to Yahweh. For example, in Mark, chapter 4, there is this wonderful passage where Jesus stills the storm. At the very end, the punchline of that is, the disciples say, “who is this that even the wind and the seas obey him?” Wonderful passage. Well, if you know the Scriptures, you know the Old Testament, there are Psalms, I think Psalm 86, that refers to God as the one who commands the seas and the waves. So, in a sense, when they asked the question, “who is this that even the wind and the seas obey him,” the answer is obvious. This is not just any prophet, this is not just any teacher, this is one who speaks with the authority of God. And later on, in Matthew, Jesus says “all authority has been given to me.” I don’t know whether it’s something Jesus says or something Jesus does or just who Jesus is that compels Paul later to be able to use these Yahweh texts as a way of describing the significance of Jesus. That’s what Christology is. Christology is: how do we describe the significance of Jesus, his importance? I think that’s part of what Paul is on about when he’s writing these letters.
Zaspel:
Yes, and so it’s not the Great Commission only, but it’s all of the above.
Capes:
It really is. I think the whole portrait of Jesus… You start back again in the Gospel of Mark 1:1 where there’s a quotation of Isaiah 40:3. That’s a passage about the coming of God, the coming of Yahweh, back to his people. And Mark and the other Gospel writers clearly show that that is a connection to Jesus. “Behold I am sending my messenger before your face (that’s John) who will prepare the way, the voice of one calling in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord.” If you look back in the Old Testament, that’s a Yahweh text. That’s a text referring to the divine name. “Prepare the way of Yahweh, make his paths straight.” And clearly what happens next is that John is preparing the way for Jesus, who is one with God. So, I think this is going on early, at least, probably some would say, within a decade of the resurrection of Jesus. After Jesus is executed and resurrected, we have disciples trying to figure out, who is this Jesus? What is his significance? Trying to remember what he said, the Spirit directing them, I’m sure, to come to the right conclusions. And then Paul, obviously writing in the 50s, (his letters may be late 40s, early 50s or early 60s) giving witness to what they were concluding and saying about the risen Jesus.
Zaspel:
Put a sharp point on all this for us. The church has since the beginning confessed that Jesus is Lord. Just what do we mean by that. What should we mean by it?
Capes:
Well, when I was a young Christian, I thought the word Lord means boss; that means Jesus is to be boss of my life. Now, that’s true; I’m not taking away from that, at all; but I think the word Lord has a grander, greater sense than that. Not just the one who rules my heart, but the one who rules the world and will rule the world. There’s a cosmic significance to the word kurios, the word Lord, so that the one who has created the world, the one who will judge all things, is now coming into a superintendency over the world. And as the kingdom of God is arriving and continues to arrive, as the world is remade, the new creation comes, his Lordship, which is to some degree hidden now, will become evident to the whole world. Everyone will know who the Lord is. And by Lord we mean one who is one with God; one who is Yahweh manifest. He is manifest in his life, in his incarnation, in his humanity; he is making God known.
Zaspel:
Before we sign off, give us a brief overview of your book so our listeners can know what to expect.
Capes:
The book is called, The Divine Christ: Paul, the Lord Jesus, and the Scriptures of Israel. It makes the argument from the very beginning, earliest that we have evidence, that early Christians like Paul and the traditions that he is drawing from are confessing Jesus as Lord. And that means that he is fully divine. He doesn’t grow into a divinity later as people realize it. It’s not a late, low and slow kind of process. But Christians very early on, like Paul, can believe and confess the Lordship of Jesus, which makes him one with God, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. And so, the Scriptures of Israel, knowing them, reading them, become an important tool for helping us understand who Jesus is.
Zaspel:
We’re talking to Dr. David Capes, author of The Divine Christ: Paul, the Lord Jesus, and the Scriptures of Israel. It’s an excellent resource for understanding the thinking of the apostle Paul and the early church regarding Jesus and, in particular, his status as “Lord” and participation in the divine name. I’ve benefited from the read, I enjoyed it thoroughly, and I’m happy to commend it to you too.
David, thanks so much for talking to us today.
Capes:
My pleasure, Fred. Thank you.
