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Every now and then I like posting something incisive that was written in the past because it speaks so well into the present. The sweet thing about this is that these guys, who are often waved away today, have dealt with a lot of the same issues while remaining simultaneously (by the modern mind) ignored.
A warning: this section is very messy. This entire series was pretty much sifting what I’ve been studying and trying to slap it into some sort of form that others can read but this execution is, admittedly, less refined (if not outright rough).
I’m going to focus on Matthew. Not because I think Matthews account was first (I actually think priority goes to Mark), nor because I think that Matthew is most reliable (I think Luke’s account gives the most historically pertinent information) but because Matthew account might possibly, yet without conviction, be examined on it’s own.
Divorcing Paul’s message from the message of the Gospels is strange. Mark worked with Paul and Barnabas and there are some arguments that he actually records the testimony of Peter; Luke was a historian who traveled with Paul and compiled stories to present to Theophilus (Luke 1:1-4).
Besides that, Paul actually gives us the earliest Christian writings. In Paul we get a peek into the early Church—be it in prayer (1 Cor 16:22 praying to Jesus as YHWH) or the formulations of what they believed. From a historical perspective, Paul is just as critical as the Gospels for understanding what Christians confessed.
It also appears that at least portions of Luke’s compilation of Scripture was available at least by Paul’s later years when we read Paul quoting from it:
For the Scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads the grain,’ and, ‘the laborer is worthy of his wages (1 Tim 5:18)
In Paul and Luke, we might even have some mingling of cross-purposes. Luke was a gentile; Paul was the apostle to the Gentiles. Paul traveled throughout the Gentile world; Luke accompanied him on many of these journeys. Paul argued with Jews but spent his time spreading the Gospel to Gentiles; Luke’s Writings (Luke and Acts) deals with the Jews but makes a point of expanding out to the Gentiles (and towards Theophilus).
Just like John, Paul sees Christ as King. He outright says in Romans 2 that the resurrected Jesus is the Son of David and the Son of God with power. And some of the argumentation in Acts recalls Peter’s words in Acts 2 where Jesus functions as the Messiah of God, David’s rightful heir, ruling and waiting for his enemies to be made his footstool.
The idea is littered throughout Paul’s writings so that it is impossible to miss it. One doesn’t have to look further than 1 Corinthians 15 where Paul theologically argues for the necessity of a physical resurrection by pointing to the need of the human race to have a human ruler who is under God—and that this will finally happen where all things are put in subjection to Christ and even Christ is put in subjection to God.
In fact, what we find in Paul (just like we find in John) is a rich multifaceted view of Christ. He is not only son of David, he’s the second Adam, he’s the mercy seat, he’s the point of creation—etc.
So the question “Does Paul see Christ as King?” is just as superfluous as the question “Did John the Evangelist see Christ as King?” Of course he did. The question I want to deal with is “Did Paul see Christ as God?”
Now that we’ve been brought back to the very point of the Apostles, it would be helpful to look at the writings of the last remaining apostle by the time of the early church fathers: John. The evidence seems clear that his Gospel account was written after the Synoptic accounts were circulating so they bear indication that John didn’t intend his account to be read in a vacuum. In regards to literature then, it is interesting to see which stories the Synoptic accounts include and which John feels important enough to bring up once again.