“God’s Equal”

Sigurd Grindheim, God’s Equal: What Can We Know About Jesus’ Self-Understanding in the Synoptic Gospels? Sigurd Grindheim, Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2011 (ISBN 978-0-567-43111-0), xviii + 270pp.

Taking his lead from the late Norwegian scholar Sverre Aalen, Grindheim counters the multitude of scholars who have concluded that Jesus’ understood himself to hold the position as the foremost of God’s messengers, or the final and ultimate agent of God. He argues instead that Jesus’ understood himself to be doing things that no mere messenger could accomplish. Only God himself was capable of such tasks, and Jesus, in doing them, claimed to be God’s equal. Through a study of the synoptic gospels, relying especially on the criteria of embarrassment, double-dissimilarity, and multiple attestation, Grindheim contributes to the recovery of an early and high Christology and contends that the beginnings of this Christology can be traced back to Jesus himself.

            In the first two chapters, Grindheim considers the actions of Jesus. He opens with an overview of the theme of the ‘kingdom of God’ in Israel’s Scriptures and Second Temple Jewish literature. Grindheim notes that in both traditions, the eschatological reign of God and the Messiah’s kingdom are consistently differentiated, and the reign of the Messiah is predicated on the preceding intervention of God himself, without a human intermediary, to defeat Satan and establish a new universal world order. Grindheim interprets the Beelzebul pericope (Lk 11.17-23 par.) against this background of eschatological expectation, arguing that in defeating Satan Jesus is not the agent of God, but is himself the divine warrior. Faced with the question of how Jesus understood the significance of the miracles he worked, Grindheim notes that, unlike other ‘miracle workers’ of the time, Jesus’ miracles were not the result of petition or mediation, but of his own power. Through exegesis of Mt. 11.5 Grindheim concludes that “Jesus’ miracles represent the fulfillment of God’s own eschatological works as he brings the new creation” (59). He argues further that Jesus understood John the Baptist as the eschatological Elijah, the forerunner not of the Messiah, but of God himself.

The next five chapters consider Jesus’ words. In chapter three, Grindheim defends the authenticity of Mk 2.1-2 and, refuting various possible explanations (priestly, messianic, and otherwise), argues that in offering forgiveness, Jesus took on the prerogative of God himself. Chapters four through six follow the same pattern with reference to Mt. 25.31-46 (Jesus as eschatological judge), Mt. 5.21-48 (Jesus’ authority with reference to the Law), and Mk 10.28 (Jesus’ relationship to his disciples). Chapter seven cautiously explores the way Jesus speaks of himself using the metaphors of bridegroom, mother bird, king and sower, all of which were well-established epithets for God (124).

In chapter eight Grindheim turns more directly to consider various mediatory figures in Second Temple Judaism that have been considered as parallels to Jesus: the Messiah, actual messianic pretenders, the Angel of the Lord, the Prince of Light, Melchizedek, Moses, other enthroned characters, the Son of Man, Philo's ideal human being, and the Logos. Although there are similarities, especially with Melchizedek as eschatological judge and savior, and the Son of Man who sits on the throne in heaven, there are even greater differences. All such figures remain fundamentally inferior to God and exercise power and authority on an ancillary level. This leads, in chapter nine, to a discussion of Jesus’ relative subordination to and equality with God. Through a consideration of passages such as Lk 10.21-22, Mk 13.32, and Mk 10.18, Grindheim argues that Jesus thought of his relationship to God in terms of a unique sonship. Although he considered himself subject and obedient to the Father, “he belonged on the divine side of the divine­–human divide” (188).

In chapter ten, Grindheim offers his take on Jesus’ puzzling use of ‘son of man’ in the gospels, and maintains that, rather than being a general designation for human beings, the term was intended as a specific reference to Jesus, which contained a cryptic allusion to the heavenly being of Daniel 7.9-14. In chapter eleven, Grindheim considers Jesus’ relationship to the temple, arguing that Jesus threatened its destruction and announced that a new and better temple would emerge. Given the disjunction between these actions and Messianic expectation, Grindheim finds a parallel in the visions of the eschatological temple which, it was said, would be built by God himself. Jesus carried out the judgment and renewal of the temple in line with the prophecies of God’s own coming to earth. In conclusion, Grindheim defends the idea that Jesus’ words and actions unambiguously made the claim that by virtue of his identity (rather than by appointment), and on the basis of his own power, he was acting in a way that only God was capable of doing. At the same time, ‘sonship’ emerged as the metaphor Jesus used to express both his equality with God and his submission to the Father (220). For Grindheim, all of this implies that “there may thus have been a direct line from Jesus’ own self-understanding to the Christological claims of the early church” (221).

Although he helpfully defends the authenticity of each key passage, it is questionable whether Grindheim’s compact arguments would convince anyone not already predisposed to agree with him. Many of the key texts have been ruled out by historical scholars precisely because they point to Jesus’ divine status. Hence, Grindheim’s argument at times serves only to underline the inherent limitations of the historical methodology as it has been applied to the Gospels. Nonetheless, Grindheim has helpfully arranged the material and engaged with a wide array of extra-biblical sources. Even if his arguments are at times cursory, he has attentively delineated the key exegetical battlegrounds and collected much of the relevant material into one place.