Invitation to Mike Heiser and John Hobbins

Mike Heiser and I have been carrying on a friendly email conversation, and I have no intention of having anything more than a lively exchange with him online. John Hobbins expresses his opinion of me and this is my response to him and Mike.

A topic has come up which is of intense intellectual interest to me. In spite of what had been said, I am going to ask them both to extend the following discussion.

For background, John and Mike believe that kephale in 1 Cor. 11:3 expresses a relation of hierarchy. I do not, simply because I believe that the submission of Christ to God was for the purpose of Christ taking on human mortality (Phil 2:8), and I do not think that this sentiment finds a parallel in male/female relations. I do not think that man sends woman to die on the cross in an ethical religion.

I believe that kephale refers to sharing sameness of nature with another entity - that as God shares his divine nature with Christ, so man shares his human nature with woman, and Christ shares his new nature with man.

Another way of expressing relations in the godhead, is that God the son is to God the father, as light is to the sun. But once again, woman does not proceed from man, as the son proceeds from the father - the parallel does not hold.

However, Mike introduces the binitarian view of the godhead in the Old Testament and appears to relate it to 1 Cor. 11:3. Mike writes,

In my dissertation, I argued that there was a godhead in Israelite religion. The Old testament is the place from which the later (orthodox until the second century AD) Jewish doctrine of two powers in heaven springs. The binitarian godhead figure in the Old Testament was clearly subordinate to the invisible Yahweh (the “Father” in NT parlance).

Now, I have no argument with this. But Mike continues,

I don’t expect you to follow this; it is merely to say that I think of the whole godhead issue in a way different from any standard articulatuon. I think of it in Old Testament terms. As a result, I do think the Son was subordinate, because the second power motifs of the Old Testament are deliberately applied to him.

I studied this issue for several years, and interacted with quite a few scholars in trying to relate the binitarian view of the Hebrew godhead to 1 Cor 11:3, but without success. I invite John Hobbins and Mike Heiser to provide me with a bibliography and links to elaborate on this discussion.

One further point - Mike Heiser does not expect me to "follow' this discussion. But the facts are as follows. I read Boyarin's paper several years ago, and since then I have read the relevant passages in Plato and Philo, as well as the book of Wisdom and the Sefer Yetsirah, all in the original languages. I spent considerable time researching this topic, so I am genuinely interested in his response. I read through the Psalms in Hebrew and through the neoplatonic philosophers, all in the interests of relating the logos to later views on the power of the alphabet.

There is no topic which is closer to my heart. I await Mike's response on how 1 Cor. 11:3 can be interpreted in the light of Boyarin's binitarian theology.