Christ Is King: Paul's Royal Ideology by Joshua Jipp

Abstract

Reviewed by: Christ Is King: Paul's Royal Ideology by Joshua Jipp Julien Smith joshua jipp, Christ Is King: Paul's Royal Ideology (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015). Pp. 388. Paper $40. Why does Paul, having insisted that the Galatian believers not submit to Torah, nevertheless exhort them to fulfill the "law of Christ" (Gal 6:2)? Within what historical-religious framework did the early church come to venerate Jesus alongside Israel's God? What historical-religious antecedents underlie Paul's understanding of participation in Christ? How can one understand Paul's righteousness language while taking seriously his assertion that God's righteousness has been revealed in the resurrection and enthronement of the Messiah (Rom 1:3-4)? Joshua Jipp contends that these disparate scholarly conundrums find solutions when we place Paul's Christ-language in the larger context of ancient political discourse surrounding the reign of the good king. In the first chapter, J. sketches the contours of ancient kingship discourse, drawing from a vast and diverse array of Classical Greek, Hellenistic, Roman, and Jewish texts. The author's intent, however, is not merely to claim that such patterns of thinking were ubiquitous and therefore determined Paul's conception of Christ. Rather, he aims to provide a historical-religious conceptual reservoir which Paul plausibly could have both drawn from and adapted in his own presentation of Christ. The success of J.'s argument then depends on his close reading of a selection of Pauline texts, which unfolds in chaps. 2–5. Paul's command to bear one another's burdens and thus fulfill the "law of Christ" (Gal 6:2) [End Page 320] must be understood against the backdrop of the good king's relationship to the law more broadly in antiquity (chap. 2). The ideal king was thought to be superior in virtue as a consequence of having internalized the law. Just as laws were understood to inculcate virtue, so the king, an "animate law," was able to transform his subjects through his virtuous rule. This was especially true of Israel's ideal king, who through his love of and internalization of Torah bestowed harmony upon his subjects. J. thus argues that Paul, in Gal 6:2 and Rom 13:8–15:13, understands Christ to fulfill precisely this royal function: fulfilling, in his life and death, the Torah as exemplified by love of neighbor (Lev 19:18), and enabling his followers to do the same by uniting them to himself. Early Christian hymns addressed to Christ "as to a god" draw from the conceptual reservoir of ancient royal encomia that praised the king as the vicegerent of the god(s), whose reign sustained his subjects and communicated to them royal benefits (chap. 3). Kings received divine honors when their subjects believed they had achieved what was expected of the gods, most especially for bringing peace and creating or recreating a new world order. This tradition illuminates Col 1:15-20, a panegyric to Christ the Davidic vicegerent who creates, sustains, and rules over creation, and whose reign establishes peace among his people. While Christ's cosmic reconciliation is consistent with what J. Rufus Fears has termed the Roman "theology of victory," no ancient parallel is to be found for a king who achieves this "through the blood of his cross" (Col 1:20) (J. Rufus Fears, "The Theology of Victory at Rome: Approaches and Problems," ANRW 2.17.2 [1981] 736-825). Thus J. argues, largely on the basis of Phil 2:6-11, that the cross, emblematic of Christ's refusal to exploit divine status, is for Paul the royal act that in fact redefines royal power and thus makes Christ worthy of worship. Indeed, "the journey to Nicaea where Jesus is confessed as one substance with God and yet fully human must traverse through kingship discourse" (p. 137). Throughout his letters, Paul deploys the language from these transformed scripts of royal praise in order to socialize the church into a world in which Christ is sovereign, and in whose reign it participates (chap. 4). To make this argument, J. draws on a variety of ancient sources that present the king as bridging the chasm between the gods...