{"id":6168,"date":"2019-11-27T21:17:00","date_gmt":"2019-11-28T03:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=6168"},"modified":"2019-11-27T21:25:13","modified_gmt":"2019-11-28T03:25:13","slug":"hurtado-on-the-worship-of-jesus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/hurtado-on-the-worship-of-jesus\/","title":{"rendered":"Hurtado on the early worship of Jesus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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At his blog Dr. Larry Hurtado points out that N.T. Wright never shows where, in Paul, claims are made about the man Jesus being the return of Yahweh in person. He then adds,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, if a \u201creturn of Yahweh\u201d<\/strong> isn\u2019t evident in Paul (our earliest evidence) as a central factor, and if Messiah isn\u2019t a sufficient category, then how to account for the remarkable \u201cdyadic\u201d devotional practice<\/strong> in question?\u00a0 My own proposal has been that earliest believers treated the risen\/exalted Jesus as they did\u00a0<\/strong>only because they felt required to do so by God.\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0<\/em>Note that the typical way that reverence of Jesus is justified in various New Testament texts is to invoke God\u2019s action of exalting him and requiring that he be reverenced:\u00a0 E.g., Philippians 2:9-11; 1 Corinthians 15:20-28; Hebrews 1:1-4; Acts 2:36; John 5:22-23,\u00a0et alia).<\/p>

How then would the conviction have been formed that God had done such an astonishing thing, and now required this novel development in devotional practice?\u00a0 Well, my own proposal<\/strong> is that\u00a0this conviction\u00a0was formed through an interaction of powerful \u201crevelatory\u201d experiences (e.g., visions of Jesus in heavenly glory, etc.), prophetic oracles (declaring his exaltation), and intensive and creative interpretation of certain biblical texts (e.g., Isaiah 45:22-23; Psalm 110:1). \u00a0(For further discussion, see, e.g., my discussion of the \u201cForces and Factors\u201d in\u00a0Lord Jesus Christ<\/em>, 27-78).\u00a0 But, whatever the means\/process, the key point is that earliest believers seem to have come quickly to the conviction that Jesus had been exalted to a unique heavenly status, had been given to share in the divine name and glory, and must now be reverenced\u00a0in obedience to God.<\/em><\/p>

In short, we have to reckon with two distinguishable convictions:\u00a0 Jesus as Messiah and Jesus as rightful recipient of cultic devotion.\u00a0 Both erupted early, perhaps simultaneously.\u00a0 But resurrection, by itself (i.e., restoration to life and a vindication of Jesus as Messiah), didn\u2019t suffice for the latter conviction or the devotional practice in question.\u00a0 For that, a \u201cglorification\u201d of Jesus<\/strong> seems to me to have been necessary, a glorification understood as by God and requiring that Jesus be reverenced. (emphases added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Here’s the whole post<\/a>. A couple of observations<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n