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2 Thessalonians 1.12
hopōs endoxasthē to onoma tou Kyriou hēmōn Iēsou en hymin kai
ὅπως ἐνδοξασθῇ τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ Κυρίου ἡμῶν , Ἰησοῦ , ἐν ὑμῖν , καὶ
so that might be glorified the name of the Lord of us Jesus in you and
hymeis en autō kata tēn charin tou Theou hēmōn kai Kyriou
ὑμεῖς ἐν αὐτῷ , κατὰ τὴν χάριν τοῦ Θεοῦ ἡμῶν , καὶ Κυρίου
you in him according to the grace of the God of us and of [the] Lord
2424 [e]
Iēsou Christou
Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ .
Jesus Christ
Then the name of our Lord Jesus will be honored because of the way you live, and you will be honored along with him. This is all made possible because of the grace of our God and Lord, Jesus Christ. (New Living Translation)
The rendering shown above, from the New Living Translation, is virtually unique among modern English translations in presenting Christ here as being ‘God’, although it has found support from a number of theologians.<1> If this is a correct translation, and assuming the letter is genuinely by Paul (some scholars doubt this, for reasons that are far from persuasive) it would constitute perhaps the earliest written description we have of Christ as ‘God’, made just twenty years after the crucifixion.
Three lines of evidence might appear to support such a claim:
a) The Greek construction construction is almost identical to that in Titus 2.13 and 2 Peter 1.1, passages now acknowledged almost universally as describing Christ as ‘God’.
b) Earlier in the chapter we find several examples where Paul seems to transfer Old Testament descriptions of Yahweh onto Christ himself. For example, while Isaiah 66 says that Yahweh will ‘come with fire’ to ‘punish all the people of the world whom he finds guilty’ (vv. 15–16 GNB), Paul writes about Jesus being ‘revealed from heaven in blazing fire’ to ‘punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel’ (2 Thess. 1.7–8).
c) Twice in Paul’s letters to the Thessalonians, we find Father and Son acting together in the lives of believers with such unity of purpose that only singular verbs are used:
Now may our God and Father himself and our Lord Jesus clear [singular] the way for us to come to you (1 Thess. 3.11).
May our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father . . . encourage [singular] your hearts and strengthen [singular] you in every good deed and word (2 Thess. 2.16–17).
The reason that most other translations prefer ‘the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ’, however, is that Paul has already distinguished ‘our God’ from ‘our Lord Jesus’ earlier in the same Greek sentence. Referring both titles to Jesus has little support in church history and does not appear to have been proposed until Granville Sharp suggested it at the end of the eighteenth century.<2> Since the title ‘Lord Jesus Christ’ occurs repeatedly in Paul’s writings, whereas the phrase ‘God and Lord’ has no parallel anywhere in the New Testament, it seems more likely that the traditional interpretation is correct here.
1 Timothy 3.16
kai homologoumenōs mega estin to eusebeias mystērion Theos/Hos ephanerōthē
καὶ ὁμολογουμένως μέγα ἐστὶν τὸ εὐσεβείας μυστήριον θεος /Ὃς ἐφανερώθη
And confessedly great is the of godliness mystery God /[He] who was revealed
en sarki edikaiōthē en pneumati ōphthē angelois ekērychthē en
ἐν σαρκί , ἐδικαιώθη ἐν πνεύματι , ὤφθη ἀγγέλοις , ἐκηρύχθη ἐν
in [the] flesh was justified in [the] Spirit was seen by angels was proclaimed among
ethnesin episteuthē en kosmō anelēmphthē en doxē
ἔθνεσιν , ἐπιστεύθη ἐν κόσμῳ , ἀνελήμφθη ἐν δόξῃ .
[the] nations was believed on in [the] world was taken up in glory
And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness:
God was manifested in the flesh,
Justified in the Spirit,
Seen by angels,
Preached among the Gentiles,
Believed on in the world,
Received up in glory. (New King James Version)
Does this passage read ‘God was manifest in the flesh’ (a rendering supported by the NKJV almost alone among modern versions) or the more mysterious ‘Who was manifest in the flesh’ (RSV)?
At first sight, this is a fairly straightforward matter. The earliest surviving manuscripts all say os (‘who’). Although this might seem an odd pronoun with which to begin a quotation from what is, by common consent, an early Christian hymn, it should be remembered that the hymn-
In the later manuscripts, however, os has become theos (‘God’) which, given the word was commonly abbreviated to just its first and last letters (θς), would have differed from os (ος) by just the small stroke of a pen. While it is easy to see why a copyist might (to clarify the sense of os) have altered it to theos, it is less easy to see any motivation for a change in the other direction. Moreover, the manuscript variants of this passage can only be easily explained if os was original.
Two apparent allusions to the passage in early second century Christian writings might seem to further rule out ‘God’ as the subject. Thus we find in Chapter 12 of the Epistle of Barnabas a reference to ‘Jesus who was manifested, both by type and in the flesh’, while the slightly later Epistle to Diognetus states that
He sent the Word, that he might be manifested to the world; and he, being despised by the people [of the Jews], was, when preached by the Apostles, believed on by the Gentiles.<3>
Furthermore, as Bruce Metzger points out, ‘no patristic writer prior to the last third of the fourth century testifies to the reading θεος’.<4>
However, this still leaves some questions unanswered. Immediately before Paul’s mysterious relative pronoun os is the phrase ‘the mystery of godliness’. So how is it that Ignatius, writing at the beginning of the second century, also discusses the ‘mystery’ that ‘God appeared in human form,’<5> or that Clement of Alexandria should talk of ‘a mystery made manifest, God in man’?<6> Why is it that elsewhere Clement talks of Christ appearing at the transfiguration as ‘God in the flesh’,<7> or Hippolytus writes that he ‘manifested God in the body’,<8> or Origen declares that ‘God . . . appeared in a human body’?<9> At face value, these passages might seem to offer support for the reading theos.
We may conclude that, even if the passage originally contained os (a viewpoint that depends partly on one’s estimation of the value of the earliest surviving manuscripts) it was widely understood as implying theos.
Titus 2.13
prosdechomenoi tēn makarian elpida kai epiphaneian tēs doxēs tou megalou
προσδεχόμενοι τὴν μακαρίαν ἐλπίδα , καὶ ἐπιφάνειαν τῆς δόξης τοῦ μεγάλου
awaiting the blessed hope and [the] appearing of the glory of the great
Theou kai Sōtēros hēmōn Christou Iēsou
Θεοῦ καὶ Σωτῆρος ἡμῶν , Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ ;
God and Savior of us Christ Jesus
while we wait for the blessed hope – the appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ . . .
This passage can be translated in one of four different ways:
The glorious appearing of the great God and of our Saviour, Jesus Christ
(AV)
The appearing of the glory of the great God and our Saviour, Jesus Christ
(NAB; similarly NWT)
The glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ
(NIV)
The appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour, Jesus Christ
(RSV and most modern versions)
In favour of the first two translations, we should note that the title ‘God our Saviour’ is applied to the Father just three verses earlier, following a consistent pattern in both 1 Timothy and Titus. Moreover, throughout the Pastoral letters the titles ‘God’ and ‘Christ’ are clearly distinguished from one another. It is also significant that the earliest known reference to the passage by a Christian writer, Justin Martyr, clearly separates the two names, and this is the interpretation which found its way, via the Latin Vulgate, into the Authorised Version.
However, if we were to accept such a reading, it would split an otherwise well-
Three other pieces of evidence can be used to support a reference to Christ as ‘God’ here:
(i) The term epiphaneian (‘appearing’) almost always refers to the visible appearance of deity in the Greek of this period. Yet it is only ever applied to Christ in the New Testament.
(ii) A simultaneous appearing of Father and Son, though it might be suggested by Daniel 7, would be completely unique in the New Testament and would directly contradict the statement that Paul makes in 1 Timothy 6.16.
(iii) In continuing the sentence by declaring that Christ ‘gave himself for us to redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own’ (RSV), Paul is drawing on two Old Testament descriptions of Yahweh (Ps 130.8 and Deut 14: 2) and applying them directly to Jesus.
(iv) The later second century writer Clement of Alexandria cites the verse on two occasions as proof of the deity of Christ.<11>
We may conclude, with the vast majority of modern translations, that in this verse Jesus is being described directly as ‘God’.