Abstract. These two poem-songs captured in Paul's writings described the Christ in terms of Adamic imagery and of God's wisdom in the Jewish tradition. The christological paradigm in Second Isaiah (deutero-Isaiah) of YHWH and His messiah, Cyrus, illuminates the first passage immensely, and indeed informs the christology of the entire NT. Later interpretations are not faithful to this original context or adequate to the Pauline data.

Introduction & method – listening to the text in its own context

We have noted how the oneness of God (the shema Israel) is affirmed repeatedly in the NT and the one God of heaven identified as the Father of Jesus. We have noted that all titles and honors bestowed on Christ in the NT are derived from the one God of heaven, his Father, as Davidic king vassal, shaliach agent. We have also seen how the logos poem in John (~85 CE in present form) presents how the personified word and wisdom of God became a person, a unique human being, Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, and that the Christ's preexistence was so understood by the early church until well into the 3rd century CE. We will add more affirmations from the writings of Paul the apostle (a shaliach agent).

Apostolic greetings. Letter-writing was a common way that the apostles and prominent disciples of Jesus communicated among each other and with the Christian churches springing up around the Roman world. Paul the apostle like the other letter writers of the NT affirmed one God who is the Father of Jesus and of all.

Throughout the one God of heaven, our Father, is clearly distinguished as the One who resurrected and exalted Messiah, our Lord Jesus Christ.

(1) Determination of the text(s). Variations in the Greek text for these passages are not major (Aland et al., 1998; eds. The Greek New Testament).

(2) Ascertaining the literary / oral form. Both of these poems (Phil. 2 and Col. 1) are likely to be pre-Pauline poems extant in the early Christian community which he appropriated and cited in his letters. In the Philippians 2 poem, Jesus Christ is contrasted with the first Adam (second only to Heb. 2:5-9 as a statement of Adam christology; Dunn, 1998). Other passages explaining the Adam christology include Rom. 5; I Cor. 15; are based on Ps. 8, 110 (Dunn, 1989).

By what Dunn (1998) calls 'common consent' among scholars, Colossians 1:15-20 is a hymnic poem in the tradition of Jewish wisdom literature (e.g., Habermann, 1990; von Lips, 1990; Kuschel, 1992). It is full of citations, allusions, and echoes of earlier wisdom writings. Other 'wisdom' passages in the NT include Heb. 1:1-4; John 1:1-18; Gal. 4:4 ~ Rom. 8:3 (Schweizer, 1966); I Cor. 8:6; 10:4; Rom. 10:6-8.

The Colossians 1 poem transitions from Christ as the embodiment of God's personified and preexistent Wisdom in the first creation to the resurrected and exalted historical person of Jesus of Nazareth, who is the Christ of God over the new creation.

(3) Recovering the contemporary historical life situation (setting). The letters to the Philippians and Colossians were given to Christian churches in the mid-1st century CE, to strengthen and encourage, and also to correct against syncretic heresies entering in (Col. 2).

(4) Meaning of the words and idiom for original author and audience. Apparently in the early wisdom tradition of Jewish thought, the immanence of the transcendent God is revealed in the world and in dealings with humankind. This immanence was characterized and even personified as the Wisdom of God, the Word of God, the Spirit of God, the Glory of God, and the Name of God. It is "not something other than God, but God's Wisdom, God in his wisdom" (e.g., Prov. 2:6; Sirach 1:1; Wisd. 7:15; Dunn, 1998), i.e., God revealed in His Wisdom, in His Word, in His Spirit, in His Glory, and in His Name throughout creation and human affairs. The figures of speech or metaphors of personification and preexistence are freely applied to these attributes of God (see Part 6, on the logos poem of John 1:1-18), without a compromise of the central scriptural truth that God is one.

(5) Understanding the total context and historical background. In Phil. 2, it is not as God that Jesus Christ begins, but as Man as God intended him to be, the second Adam, the only-begotten Son, and from there he steps down, doing just the opposite of the first Adam. Philippians 2 is not about what Jesus supposedly did as God, but what he did as the Man (the last Adam), in contrast to the first Adam. Paul urges the Philippian Christians to emulate the attitude and actions (not of a preexistent 'God the Son' or even logos) but of the man Christ Jesus who began as Adam in the form and image of God, and by contrast made the supreme choice to self-abase even unto death, rather than to self-exalt. This is why God has super-exalted Jesus (v9)!

The overwhelming evidence and the best scholarship establish that Phil. 2 references an Adam christology (like so much of the NT, Rom. 5; I Cor. 15; Heb. 2; etc.). No other paradigm is adequate to the data. Certainly attempts of some scholars to find reference to a Gnostic ideal heavenly Redeemer (2nd century CE) fail to pass muster. And even less plausible are the Nicean and post-Nicean attempts to make Jesus into an incarnate member of a plural Godhead (4th and 5th centuries CE).

"Firstborn" is the most basic, literal translation of the term (protokos) in both Col. 1:15 and 18, where Christ is called "the firstborn of all creation" and "the firstborn of the dead" respectively. Christians generally are not reluctant about the literal translation in v18, so why in v15? No conundrum is present if there is no assumption of a binitarian or trinitarian view. (1) As we have already seen, the form and background of the poem is of God's personified wisdom as the firstborn of His creation (Prov. 8, etc.), a thoroughly Jewish category. (2) There is a richly consistent, scriptural sense in which Jesus Christ is indeed "the firstborn of all creation," not only as the eschatological expression of God's primordial, personified wisdom, but also because Jesus the Christ is the first (and only) one to be begotten of God, born of a unique virginal conception to be our Savior (Matthew 1; Luke 1:34-35).

No matter when Jesus was born, early or late in human history, he was 'the firstborn of all creation,' because there never was and never will be another only-begotten of God. In the NT, this is affirmed along with his resurrection as evidence that he was the Christ, the Son of God (Luke-Acts; Romans 1).

Neo-Platonism again. It was only much later after neo-Platonic thought forms were replacing Hebrew thought forms among the church fathers that Christ was interpreted as a preexistent being, begotten before creation (Arian christology). Even years after the Constantinian-controlled Council of Nicea (325 CE), an Arian creed was in fact was adopted by the much more ecumenical joint Council of Rimini-Seleucia (359 CE, >30 years post-Nicea) of more than 500 bishops from East and West when another Roman emperor wanted a creed passed which would be acceptable to all the bishops. All the early church councils and the creeds they adopted, whether Arian or Trinitarian, were influenced directly or indirectly by Roman emperors of the time. Of course, this council was later repudiated, and reference to it suppressed in church history after Chalcedon (451 CE) solidified Trinitarian hegemony (see Richard Rubinstein's When Jesus became God: The struggle to define Christianity during the last days of Rome, 1999; Graesar et al. 2003).

Even in the 4th century CE after Nicea (325 CE), when the Hebrew context for this passage (Col. 1) had been largely forgotten, the desire of perhaps most Christians in the church to retain the unity of God, led to the contemporary and probably majority Arian view, a view still foreign to the passage. The later Trinitarian (a co-equal and co-eternal plurality-in-God) view indeed is even more starkly foreign to Colossians 1 and Philippians 1 – there is no hint of co-equality, co-eternality, or plurality-in-God present at all. Thankfully none of the post-biblical Arian, binitarian, or later trinitarian development is called for or needed. The Hebrew scriptures and Hellenistic Jewish background provide a more than adequate, and indeed the only exegetical, way to understand the passages.

Summary. Like John (Part 6), Paul the apostle was always true to the one God of his fathers, who is the Father of Jesus and who has raised up the Christ from the dead. All of the Adamic-messianic glory and exaltation of the Christ by God is delegated and bestowed. There is not the least compromise of the oneness of God, the one God of heaven and earth, the Father of Jesus and our Father, the One whom Jesus called Abba or 'Papa' (Mark 14:36) and whom "the spirit of adoption" in our hearts calls, "Abba, Father!" (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6)!

Paul generated much controversy among both Jews and Greeks on many subjects, such as the identity of Jesus as Christ, the cross, the resurrection, and circumcision. On one mighty subject, however, there is the deafening silence of no controversy at all – and that is, the identity of God. The reason is very simple: Like Jesus Christ himself, Paul the apostle never proclaimed any other God than the one God of heaven and earth, the one God of Israel, the only One whom Jesus called, Father. Truly, "our heavenly Father has no equals" (Snedeker, 1998)!

Discussion – How do you read?

A) Questions from history:

• What are the historical contexts and forms of the poems in Philippians 2 and Colossians 1?
• What contrasts and similiaries are there between the two Adams, and between the first and new creations?

• Is the very Christ, Jesus of Nazareth, whom the one God of heaven, our Father, raised from the dead, and whom Paul the apostle preached, your Christ?

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