We live in a world filled with competing truth claims and realities. This is nothing new or unique to our era and society, to adapt Marx’s phrase, the history of human society is the history of ideological struggle.
This is evident when we read the Bible. From the ideological criticisms of Babylonian imperialism embedded in Genesis 1, to the neighborly ethic of the Decalogue over against Pharaoh’s endless demands, to Amos’ confrontation of the false religion and injustice of his nation, to Jesus’ complete subversion of his contemporaries’ expectations for him, the Scriptures testify to the showdown between God’s reign and the forces of evil in this world. We see this particularly in the Apostle Paul's use of the words evangelion and kyrios, both of which have specific historical meanings in both Judaism and Greco-Roman society.
The term evangelion means, on a basic level, “good news”. It is used in the Septuagint, specifically Isaiah 40:9 and 52:7, and in extra-biblical writings of the Second Temple period to refer to “YHWH’s return to Zion and enthronement, and the return of Israel herself from her exile in Babylon" (Wright 1997:42). That is, it is connected in Jewish thought to Israel’s eschatological hope.
In the Greco-Roman context, it “is a regular technical term, referring to the announcement of a great victory, or to the birth, or accession, of an emperor”, which one was, of course, meant to associate with an era of peace and flourishing (43). In other words, it is also connected to the pagan political hope.
This dual meaning also shows up with the term kyrios. In the Septuagint, this is used in place of the divine name YHWH, as most pious Jews considered it too holy to pronounce. In the wider Greco-Roman world, it was used as a polite form of address to a social superior. But it also denoted the emperor, the one who was supposed to be heralded by the proclamation of the evangelion and who ruled justly (56).
Consequently, Paul’s use of the term as a title for Jesus implies two infinitely daring claims: a) that Jesus is identical with Israel’s God (as explicated in John 1:1-18 and Philippians 2:5-11) and b) that he has usurped all the rulers and authorities of the world by his death on the cross and subsequent vindication by the Father in his resurrection and ascension.
These claims are built on the foundation of the whole prior biblical witness. The claim has always been the YHWH is the one true creator God over against all pagan pretenders, the one true Lord of the world over against all the military might of the empire. In the words of the Psalmist,
Some take pride in chariots, and some in horses,
but our pride is in the name of the Lord our God. (Psalm 20:7 NRSV)
Paul draws on these texts to both affirm Jewish monotheism and incorporates Jesus into it. In 1 Corinthians 8:6, he sets up a direct parallel with the Shema in Deuteronomy 6:4, proclaiming that the pagan claims to many gods are false in the face of the one true God. In Tom Wright’s words,
The whole argument of the chapter hinges precisely on his being a Jewish-style monotheist, over against pagan polytheism; and, as the lynchpin of the argument, he has quoted the most central and holy confession of that monotheism and has placed Jesus firmly in the middle of it (66-67).
Paul does something similar in Philippians 2:5-11. Particularly of interest are verses 10-11:
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
This directly mimics Isaiah 45:3, in which YHWH declares:
To me every knee shall bow,
every tongue shall swear.
Again, Paul is quite clearly challenging polytheism with traditional Jewish monotheism and also incorporating Jesus into that monotheism. This is nothing short of radical in both a Jewish and Greco-Roman context, just as Jesus himself was.
So what does this mean for the church today? The church is united by its basic proclamation that Jesus Christ is Lord. This naturally has wide-ranging implications for how we live our lives, but that must always be the basis from which we work. No matter what else we may want to talk about, no matter what other opinions we may have, no matter what context we find ourselves in, we have to submit all of these to this confession.
The church is made up of people from every tribe, language, time, place, gender, socioeconomic class - from every single division that exists among humans. It is inevitable that we will have vast differences with others in the church, differences that may seem irreconcilable to an outside observer. But Christ has indeed torn down the dividing wall of hostility (Ephesians 2:14), making peace by the blood of his cross (Colossians 1:20). We, the church, are united by the blood of Christ, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and our call to preach this good news of the one true Lord to the whole world.
