KANSAS CITY (MBTS) – Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary Professor of New Testament John Lee addressed seminary faculty and staff on the importance of understanding Paul’s divine Christology in the Fall 2024 faculty lecture on Sept. 19.
Each fall and spring semester, Midwestern Seminary leaders gather to enjoy a special luncheon and hear a lecture by a fellow faculty member. Lee’s lecture reflected his recent writing on Paul’s divine Christology and his broader research interests in New Testament Christology and early Jewish and Christian monotheism.
“Our semi-annual Faculty Lecture always proves to be an encouraging event,” said President Jason Allen. “It is another opportunity for our faculty to demonstrate quality scholarship for the Church. And that was no less true yesterday with Dr. John Lee’s lecture on high Christology. Dr. Lee is a gift to Midwestern Seminary and the local church, and I am thankful our students get to study with him.”
Lee’s lecture, titled “Jesus is Lord: A Conversation with Key Recent Proposals for Pauline Divine Christology,” critically examined four proposals by contemporary scholars for how to understand the relationship between Paul’s Jewish monotheism and his worship of Christ as divine.
“Many parts of Pauline writings imply that Jesus was the center of the Apostle’s devotion and the recipient of his undivided commitment,” Lee began. “In what sense, however, was Paul the Apostle able to reconcile his Jewish monotheistic commitment, represented by the Shema, with his devotion to Jesus as a divine figure?”
Addressing the significance of this question for the Church since the first century, Lee noted that many people deny that first-century Jews could have believed in the divinity of Christ given their belief in one God. If these people are correct, Lee indicated, then the New Testament’s identification of Christ with God does not reflect the Old Testament beliefs of Christ’s earliest followers, including Paul.
Lee added, “Fortunately, however, we are not the first ones to wrestle with this important question of how Jewish monotheism and Christ’s divinity go hand-in-hand.”
In his lecture, Lee examined the answers that New Testament scholars Richard Bauckham, Larry Hurtado, Chris Tilling, and N. T. Wright have proposed for how to understand the reconciliation of Paul’s monotheism and his worship of Jesus. For each scholar’s proposal, Lee provided a representative overview of key points, strengths, and weaknesses.
“Despite the diversity of these proposals, there is a fundamental unity to the observations and conclusions of the four scholars that I have considered,” Lee said. “These four scholars working on Pauline Christology all conclude that the Apostle uniquely identified Jesus of Nazareth with the one God of Israel. And the clear consensus among these scholars, as such, signifies that Paul’s Christology is essentially consistent with later authority and later orthodoxy.”
Lee went on to say, “I hope my critical interaction with them will be useful in defining and improving subsequent conversations on the topic.”
The four proposals addressed in Lee’s lecture are examined in greater detail in his recent book, The Divine Christology of the Apostle Paul: Retrospect and Prospect, co-authored with fellow New Testament scholars Christoper R. Bruno and Thomas R. Schreiner. In part one of the book, Lee and his co-authors evaluate each of the four proposals addressed in the lecture. In part two, they advance the conversation of Paul’s divine Christology through their own New Testament exegesis.
Addressing his colleagues at the close of his lecture, Lee expressed the enduring significance of this conversation for all believers because of their worship of Jesus.
“The task of doing Pauline Christology, or a little more broadly, New Testament Christology—or even further, biblical Christology—is not bound with these four representative scholars. It is equally our task,” Lee said, “if Paul indeed matters, if the New Testament truly matters, if God’s Word really matters, and if Christology truly matters.”
He went on to say, “Yes, all of us need to do our own work of Christology, not only with our pen or with our own mouth, although that’s important, but also with our life, because this confession does not belong only to Paul the Apostle, but also to each of us.”
Lee concluded the lecture by reading Paul’s confession of the lordship of Jesus in Philippians 2:7–9, reminding his audience of the surpassing worth of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Dr. Lee’s book, The Divine Christology of the Apostle Paul: Retrospect and Prospect, is available for purchase.