The Second Adam
Jewish Categories of Thought
Lamberto Schuurmann as quoted by Anthony Buzzard at: http://www.mindspring.com/~anthonybuzzard/christ.htm
"It cannot be denied that it is the ontological language that has long predominated. Clearly, this is due for the most part to the hegemony exercised by Neo-Platonic philosophy, and its claim to constitute an adequate vocabulary for the articulation of theological affirmation . . . The well-known fact that Hebrew has no way of making ontological statements is evidence by itself of the enormous changes certain Hebrew concepts must have undergone in their transition to a Hellenistic milieu . . . In a word, what is lacking in the great majority of these images [of Jesus] is the relationship between the symbolism projected and the concrete, historical life of the historical Jesus."
Ontology: n. The science of real being; the philosophical theory of reality; the doctrine of the universal and necessary characteristics of all existence. Compare METAPHYSICS. [Gk: ontologia. On, ontos being + logia < logos word, study] (Funk and Wagnalls Dictionary)
The ancient Jews had no technical language or specialized vocabulary to speak about abstract or metaphysical concepts. When speaking of abstract concepts, they would use concrete and pictorial terminology. Thus what appears to us to be explicit statements of reality are actually speaking of things that do not yet exist in reality. Their existence is thought of (in the Jewish manner of thinking) as being in the mind of God only, certain to be realized, but not actually existing.
I am convinced that we Greek-type thinkers need to be very cautious about understanding the Biblical writers in a literalistic manner. The kind of literalism that is our natural mode of thought is not how the Biblical writers thought and spoke. This is true of some Semitic cultures even today. I remember Osama Bin Laden saying something like, "The streets of America will run with rivers of blood, God willing!" This is not a literal way of speaking. It is hyperbole, symbolism, and pictorial terminology. Whenever I catch myself reading a Biblical passage in a literalistic manner, I question my interpretation. There is literalism in the Bible of course. The trick is to accurately answer the question, "What is literal, and what is not?" Personally, I no longer see literalism as the default. We must search the context to find clues as to whether an author is speaking literally or figuratively. We can't assume one or the other. If we do, we set ourselves up for misinterpretation.
Romans 4:17 states, "God, who . . . calleth those things which be not as though they were..." The Biblical writers thought and spoke in these same categories.
Like God, they speak of things that do not exist as though they do.
In Jeremiah 1:5 God tells Jeremiah, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you..." Does this mean that Jeremiah LITERALLY preexisted? If taken literally, it would certainly mean just that, wouldn't it? But we don't take it literally do we? Neither did the Jews, who spoke of abstract realities in concrete language.
An excellent illustration of the Jewish paradigm is given in the Testament of Moses, 1:13, 14a:
"For this is what the Lord of the world has decreed: He created the world on behalf of his people, but he did not make this purpose of creation known from the beginning of the world so that the nations might be found guilty . . . But He did design and devise me [Moses], who was prepared from the beginning of the world to be the mediator of the covenant"
The Jews did NOT believe that Moses literally preexisted. However, according to the Jewish way of expressing these things, it was said that Moses was prepared from the beginning of the world - what is meant (but not said) is: Moses was prepared from the beginning of the world - in the Plan of God. (As an aside, it would also make sense that the Messiah himself was also prepared in like manner, and when we read IDENTICAL language used of Moses and the Messiah, are we not justified in assuming that the concepts and categories of thought behind that language are the same? After all, it says that Messiah would be LIKE UNTO MOSES. The burden of proof should be on the Trinitarian who assigns different content to the same language, depending on who is being spoken of.)
Proverbs 8:1ff - Does not wisdom call, does not understanding raise her voice . . . YHWH created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth; before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world. When he established the heavens I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master workman; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the sons of men.
If taken literally, this means that there was a being named Wisdom/Understanding who existed before the creation of the world, who was with God, and who helped God create the world. But we don't take this literally, do we? We understand that this is a personification, not a person. It's a personification of an attribute of God, namely, his wisdom and understanding. It's because of his wisdom and understanding that he was able to create the world. It is, in the Jewish manner, speaking of abstractions using concrete and pictorial terminology.
So, in general, we see these Old Testament examples for what they are - personifications, hyperbole, and figures of speech. Why then do we, in general, not see the New Testament writings from the same matrix? Why, when Jesus says that the sun will be darkened, the moon not give it's light, and the stars fall from the sky, or when John says the sky rolled up like a scroll - why do we take this literally?
In John 6:62 Jesus says, "Then what if you were to see the Son of man ascending where he was before?" This is a favorite Trinitarian proof-text. If taken literally, it definitely implies that Jesus preexisted before his life on earth. But did Jesus mean it literally? Jesus' favorite appellation for himself was "Son of man". This phrase means, "human being." Jesus got this phrase from Daniel 7:13, which speaks of a "son of man" - a human being - who came before the "Ancient of Days" (i.e. God) and received "dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him..." Now Daniel makes it clear that this was a PROPHETIC dream. It concerned things in the future, things that did not yet exist except in the mind of God. So, when Jesus references this context by calling himself, "Son of man", he is speaking of his existence in the mind, the plan of God, not any kind of literal preexistence. His reference to "ascending where he was before" is a reference to his future reception of dominion, as foreseen "before" by Daniel. The "existence" of the son of man in Daniel was FUTURE; it was, like God, calling those things that are not as though they are, and that's exactly what Jesus was doing when referencing this phrase, "Son of man." Furthermore, "God is not a man...or a son of man..." (Num. 23:19a)
There are many more examples I could cite to support the thesis that the ancient Jewish mind-set is completely different from the Greek, literalistic mindset, which is where centuries of "Christian" thought have taken us. Preexisting purposes and personifications are all part of the literature of Judaism. It is my conviction that we need to divest ourselves of the literalistic Greek manner of thinking if we want to have any kind of chance at all of understanding the scriptures in the same way as the authors of those scriptures understood them. There are multiple examples of past tenses in the Hebrew Bible that actually refer to future events. The text I cited in Daniel 7 is just one example. They are "past" because they describe events fixed in God's mind and plans and therefore certain to be realized. We disregard this very Hebraic way of thinking when we, for instance, leap to the conclusion that when Jesus said he "had" glory with the Father from the foundation of the world (John 17:5), he meant that he was actually existent at that time - or when he said, "what if you were to see the Son of man ascending where he was before" he was referring to actually existing in heaven before he was born. What he was referring to was Daniel's vision of the Son of man receiving "dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him..."
The fact that the New Testament writers had this same Hebraic mindset is easily demonstrable. Besides Romans 4:17 given above, consider the following examples;
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Rev 13:8 speaks of "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." The Lamb wasn't ACTUALLY slain from the foundation of the world, he was slain in about 30AD. Notice that it literally says, "...slain from the foundation of the world." It doesn't mean what it literally says, it means that it was in God's mind from the foundation of the world, it was God's plan from the foundation of the world that the Lamb would be slain.
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Thus Paul says in Ephesians 1:4 that he (among others) was chosen "before the foundation of the world." Does this mean that Paul existed before the foundation of the world? Only in the mind of God, who calls those things that are not as though they are.
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Speaking of Jesus, Peter says, "He was destined (or foreknown) before the foundation of the world but was made manifest at the end of the times..." (I Peter 1:20) "...destined before the foundation of the world..." does not require literal (pre)existence. It requires existence only in the mind of God, in God's plan. The phrase, "made manifest" DOES require literal existence. The idea is: Jesus was destined according to God's will/mind/plan, but did not actually exist in reality (made manifest) until the "end of the times".
I will deal with John's "logos" (the "Word" of John chapter1) in more detail in a later page. I will now only say that understanding "logos" in Greek philosophical categories and not Old Testament Hebraic categories is a huge mistake. Many of the early Greek fathers were unashamedly Neo-Platonists. They saw little conflict between Plato and Jesus. They consciously fought for, and ultimately won, the integration of Platonism with Christianity. But John was a Hebrew, he had a Hebrew worldview, he thought in Hebrew categories. He was not Greek, he did not define "logos" the way the Platonists did, nor did he, in any of his extant writings, subscribe to Philo of Alexandria's attempt to integrate Judaism and Platonism. Whether or not he even knew who Philo was is pure speculation.
When he says, "...the logos became flesh...", he is saying that God's plan, word, intention, will etc. was brought to fruition, it was made real in the physical world. The existence of Jesus was planned in God's mind. That plan, that intention (logos) was "fleshed out" when Jesus was created in Mary's womb. The intention (logos) was expressed in (i.e. "became") flesh. Trinitarians have it backwards. They have caused the flesh (Jesus) to become the logos (God's plan).
"John's language is not the language of philosophical definition. John has a 'concrete' and 'pictorial' mind. The failure to understand John [in his prologue] has led many to the conclusion that he is 'father of metaphysical [i.e., Trinitarian] Christology''.... The evangelist did not think in terms of the category of 'substance' - a category which was so congenial to the Greek mind." (C. J. Wright, "Jesus the Revelation of God," p. 707, 711)