The Christology of Early Christian Practice

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.) This article suggests that an early view of Jesus as an eschatological could serve as a to which most other christological conceptions may be related. It explores the possibility of confirming an early prophet typology1 through examining the practice of early groups of Christ-believers2 as reflected in NT texts. It is suggested that the practice of early followers of Jesus to a large extent could be viewed as a christopraxy3 and that such a christopraxy is based on experience; believers related their own social and religious experiences to historical (primary) experiences of the earliest Jesus movement, through narrative (secondary) experiences, mediated by the Jesus tradition, whether orally or as texts. While a developing is frequently associated with expressions and doxological language, traces of social action in imitation of Jesus' own practice point in a different direction, reflecting Jesus' actions as an eschatological of the kingdom. As we will see, such traces are found both in Pauline letters and in later texts. In the shadow of the history-of-religions school, christological developments were often seen as results of syncretism; ideas of Jesus' divinity developed as the Palestinian Jesus movement met Hellenism and paganism. Honorific titles of various kinds were ascribed to Jesus in a manner similar to the apotheosis of Greek and Roman heroes.4 From the mid-twentieth century onward, however, we find several studies of tracing historical impulses to christological development from various types of both Hellenistic and Jewish environments.5 As a result, a number of expressions used to identify Jesus have been shown to originate in Palestinian Jewish traditions, with no ontological connotations of divinity attached to them.6 As research on the historical Jesus took a new orientation-the so-called third quest-focusing on the Jewish environment, there was an increased interest in studying not only the words but also the acts of Jesus for clues to the type or role with which he was identified.7 A number of studies have explored the eschatological as such a model, and there is also evidence of this model carrying messianic connotations.81 find the model of Jesus as an eschatological of God's kingdom convincing, not least because it is grounded in experience-the historical experience of first-century Jews as well as religious expectation based on then current interpretations of Scripture.9 This interest in experience is shared by many scholars, such as Edward Schillebeeckx, Marinus de Jonge, James D. G. Dunn, and Larry Hurtado.10 In 1980, when Dunn described early christological development in Christology in the Making, he drew a picture of a relatively slow process, in which a clear theology of incarnation did not appear until the end of the first century, as in the Gospel of John. Although Jesus is given a crucial role in Paul's christology, not even Phil 2:6-11 is considered to reflect a high christology in an ontological sense.11 Although Dunn was still basically working from tides, the role of experience is emphasized and it becomes more obvious in later publications.12 Hurtado's focus is explicitly on experience, in particular on worship, and he enlarges the idea of early to incorporate devotion to Jesus in a broad sense. In contrast to Dunn, he regards christological development as a quick explosion, taking place within a few years or even months, finding evidence for this in early Christian prayer, confession, baptism, Eucharist, hymns, and prophecy.13 Although including devotional or liturgical experience, I want to focus in the present article on early Christian practice as christopraxy, with an emphasis on its social and ethical aspects. However quickly or slowly the veneration of Jesus as a divine being developed, I think there is evidence from early Christian practice for an underlying root model being constitutive for various strands of early Christbelief. …