This piece is on the subject of agency, in particular about Jesus being sent on his mission as his Father’s agent. That Jesus was sent by his Father to do things that the Father could do - but wanted the Son to do - is common ground for Christian traditions across the board. Thus the Son is 'sent' to 'do his Father's work.' But he is also sent to do his own work: such as dying on the cross.
On the physical level, was Jesus doing things that the Father wouldn't ever be doing? For a crude example, when Jesus is taking a pee after a meal, is he doing so on the Father's behalf? Hardly.
And - get ready to be confused - where Jesus is acting as a representative of humanity, is that effectively the Father representing humanity with Jesus as his agent to carry it out? That seems a confused proposition, so an unlikely conclusion to draw.
So this isn't simple. The Father isn't wearing sandals to traverse Galilee, the Son is. Would the Father ever?
But there are some things done on the Father's behalf, as the Father's 'agent.'
So which is which?
Some commentators explore that 'agent' role. (For example: Christ as Creator (thegospelcoalition.org)) However, that is only half the story, and in fact maybe to degree a misunderstanding. Because virtually in contradiction, you also see commentators say that Father and Son are acting in unity in creation and mission. (For example: God’s Sovereignty in Salvation and the Unity of the Trinity by Steven Lawson (ligonier.org)) On other occasions, the two concepts are woven together and possibly confused. (For example: Is Jesus the Creator? | GotQuestions.org) One is left wondering if people are using the word 'agent' in the same way, as it can mean different things.
So we have two things so far: Jesus as his Father's agent doing his Father's work; but also Jesus as humanity's representative doing his own work. But there's a third thing: Jesus and the Father as joint workers.
And in many situations, rather than agency, the more persuasive reading is that the Father and Son and Spirit are acting jointly. (In my view.) Here's why.
In an agency arrangement with a principal and agent relationship, the idea for practical purposes is that the agent carries out the tasks and the principal does not do so directly. Principal and agent are not co-workers. For example, when a businessman sends a lawyer to negotiate terms of a contract, he leaves the agent to get on with it and not turn up and interfere. He trusts the lawyer whom he sent. If he turns up and starts taking it out of the lawyer's hands, he undermines the process and the agent probably resigns. Turning to the gospels, if the idea were that the Father sends the Son to do a task as agent, then the Father has to be inactive and let the agent do the job on his behalf. That does not seem an adequate description of the Father-Son relationship in the gospels where they are clearly Father and Son acting together at times. For instance, when Jesus says he does only what he sees the Father doing, then they are both clearly active, the Father in heaven and the Son on earth. What is done in heaven is done on earth, as a team. If this were changed to an agent relationship, the Son would say he is doing it and the Father in any practical sense isn't. Instead he says he is doing what he sees the Father doing: co-working in heaven and earth as one. Which means it's not merely agent-principal there. We can add into the mix the idea that perhaps the Father does the heaven side of the job, and sends his Son as agent to do the earth bit of the job for him. That's feasible. But if it's to the exclusion of acting together in unity it can easily become an exegetical mess.
So while there may be occasions of agency, we must not confuse that with occasions of co-working. I err on the side of thinking that Father, Son and Spirit are co-working, acting together, generally in creation and mission, so the extent of any principal-agent situations shouldn't be over-stated or exaggerated. In fact, a useful comparison is Proverbs 8:27-31 where Wisdom is God's companion at creation, not God's agent.
An example of being too simplistic would be to misread a verse such as John 6:38 - Christ's words: "For I have come down from heaven not to do my will but to do the will of him who sent me." If one is unaware of the scope of Christ's life, one might be misled into thinking that this means everything Christ does is done as an agent. Of course, it doesn't mean that. A child doing the will of his parents is doing what he's told, not necessarily acting on his parents' behalf! Much of the time, this is a child's obedience, not agency per se. It's a bit of a leap from obedience to agency.
So, over-estimating the significance of the concept of agency (you won't find codified rules of agency in the Law of Moses anyway) can lead to misunderstanding what Christ is doing in some situations. The valid question: when Christ does something, is it joint working; or is he doing what the Father would otherwise do himself (agency); or is he representing humanity? You can only tell in context which of those three things it is. For example:
a) things he does as humanity's representative - e.g. dying.
b) things that are joint work of the Father and the Son - not one doing it on behalf of the other. e.g. sanctifying the saved (1 Thess 5:23; Eph 5:25-26; 2 Thess 2:13). Or indwelling the church (Romans 8:8-9). Or more generally, Jesus doing what he sees the Father also doing: co-working in heaven and earth as one.
c) things he does that the Father would otherwise do (agency) - e.g. healing the sick.
But anti-Trinitarians have made a thing about agency, claiming that it debunks some of the evidence for Jesus being divine. They tend to mention the post-biblical Hebrew word for agent, which is shaliach.
Those are the reasons why I am writing this piece.
The first time I gave any serious thought to the subject of
agency was in a secular context about two decades ago working in Whitehall. I
was dealing with lawyers and accountants who were representing businesses. Some
of the legal stuff was too complicated for the businesses to deal with. So they
would enter into a principal and agent arrangement, making an expert lawyer (or
auditor) their agent to come to an agreement with government on a range of
technicalities. And the person they would come to was me. Usually, I would
never get to see the businessman (‘the principal’). I would only get to see his/her
agent, who would happen to be the expert lawyer or auditor. An obvious example
of an agent to most people is an estate agent. Bear in mind though that not
every kind of representative is an agent in English usage.
Some time after this, I saw some Jehovah’s Witnesses in an
online debate against Trinitarians using the word shaliach like a playing
card to trump some of the Trinitarian arguments for Jesus being true God. It didn’t take long
to find out that the word shaliach was being used where they could have
just said ‘agent’. That is, God the Father is the principal who sends Jesus;
and Jesus goes as his agent/shaliach. This is not actually Bible
language, and it was going over some people’s heads. It’s also not actually
controversial anyway. Anti-Trinitarians and Trinitarians alike could affirm that
Jesus is the shaliach in this arrangement in some situations (where they are not co-workers). But it’s a bit of a scholarly
niche as far as biblical studies are concerned. So, for these reasons, you don’t
normally hear any mention of it. So why do I think it’s worth writing about now?
Well, I’m recently
seeing more anti-Trinitarian use of the word, this time with Unitarians using
the word shaliach like a playing card to trump some Trinitarian arguments. This doesn't work, and I want to leave a few words here of
explanation. As I hope you'll see, there is room here for discussion and interpretation, but there isn't room for one-sided polemic.
WHERE IS IT FROM?
First things first. Is there a formalised law of agency set out in the Law of Moses? The answer is no. That may be surprising as the Law of Moses is pretty extensive.
Yes when I’ve seen commentators talk about 'the law of agency,' it sounds as if people like us should think it's something we should have learned from the Bible. But, of course, the word shaliach is not there, and neither is a formalised law of agency.
Nowhere in the Hebrew Bible will you find that particular word, even though you do find the word-group it fits in. That's not a problem in itself, but it means we must search a bit harder. Some Christians who press the point refer to this area as the Jewish law of agency and leave the impression that this is something we should have learned from the Bible. But again, nothing formalised is set out in the Bible. Perhaps the obvious place to look for rulings on “the Jewish law of agency” would be in the Law of Moses, in the Pentateuch, but as said, there’s nothing codified on the surface. You can find narratives where people act out agent roles, but you can't find whatever rules they are following. It took creative work for the rabbis to turn the narratives into something resembling case law later. So it's valid to infer that people are sometimes acting in agent roles in Biblical narratives, but not to over-interpret it in terms of later written rabbinic law, and it's best then not to confound the matter by using an anachronistic term such as shaliach.
So where is it from, the
word shaliach and the formalised Jewish law of agency?
It's actually from the Talmud, which only began to be
written by rabbis in the 3rd century CE/AD. Other than Hebrew
Scripture, the Talmud is Rabbinic Judaism’s central set of writings and source of religious law.
So why is there some law of agency in the Talmud? Well, basically, because it’s
needed, of course. Sophisticated societies have situations where one man/woman
needs to appoint another man/woman to be their agent to do something, and rules
are needed for it to protect the rights of the parties to it, just as we have
rules for estate agents. In those early centuries, Roman Law had been building up
a body of law on agency, and the Talmud did so too, but with a very different
approach.
ROMAN LAW AND TALMUDICAL LAW
A word on Roman law first. Much of what scholars know about
Roman law on agency is from a 6th century CE/AD compilation that we
call the Digest of Justinian, and it contains a huge amount of collected
opinions of Roman jurists spanning centuries. Scholars now are too canny to think
that we know exactly what was going on ‘on the ground’ with Roman law though.
The Digest is a selection of different Roman legal opinions from different
eras, and just because a jurist had an opinion isn’t enough to tell us if legal
courts far and wide in the empire were faithfully following such interpretations
at a particular time. But it is a mine of information on Roman law.
The Talmud is rather different. It was growing into a body
of literature at the same time that Roman imperial law was building up, but the rabbis
who wrote it referred back emphatically to the Hebrew Scriptures, especially
the Pentateuch, for authority.
At the same time, in the Talmud we can see evidence of
awareness of the wider world. For instance, in dealing with the subject of agency,
it has this word for a child’s guardian: ‘Epitropos.’ It’s interesting that
this is a Greek translation of a Roman term.
The writers of the Talmud knew that a codified law of agency was
needed, so that the faithful could carry on business as principals and agents
with a seal of rabbinic approval and to protect people’s rights. But how did
they manage to extract a divorce law of agency from the Torah when, well, there isn’t such
a law there? Through ingenious legal logic. And with an interest in divorce. They
observed how Moses gave permission for a certificate of divorce to be given.
With an intense focus on the Hebrew words, they concluded that a husband could
get an agent to do the job of giving a certificate of divorce to his wife,
so that he didn’t have to do it. And that, indeed, both husband and wife could
use agents to send and receive the certificate of divorce. They also deduced
that a man wanting a wife could get his agent to go and get the marriage contract
signed on his behalf. On these findings, the Talmud had a basis to go and build
up a body of agency law, with rules for the role of the agent, the shaliach.
They also gave very careful consideration to questions such as whether a priest
involved in a sacrifice was acting as God’s agent or the people’s agent. Over
time a body of law built up, with these issues as foundational to
Talmudical law of agency: Paschal Lamb and marriage and divorce; with the whole
thing stemming from the law of marriage and divorce initially. The Talmud doesn’t have a specific
section all about agency, but it comes up when discussing various subjects. Christians
remember: these writings date from hundreds of years after Christ.
But what exactly were the practices of Jewish people in terms of agency before the Talmud was
written? There is less certainty. We can’t just read the Talmud backwards through time
as if people of earlier times all followed the same rules. We don’t know that.
Scholars are increasingly cautious about treating the Talmud as an indicator of
the legal situation of earlier times because it is itself the intricate product
of specific rabbis who belong to their own time. It is impossible to say that
people of earlier centuries would have seen eye to eye with every detail of
what the Talmud contains on agency, although the rabbis endeavoured to be faithful
to the law of Moses. There are different rabbinic schools of thought on one
matter or another. For instance, the Talmud has a tradition that Rabbi Shammai dissented,
to a degree, from the view that ‘there is no agency in wrongdoing.’ But then,
differences between the Talmud’s law of agency and that found in English law
are sharper, albeit there are similarities too.
ANTI-TRINITARIAN POLEMICS
How on earth did we get from these matters, which to most
Christians are highly obscure, to the sight of some Jehovah’s Witnesses
thinking that the concept of shaliach is a trump card against some arguments
for the divinity of Jesus? It is rather a stretch. I suspect that little or
none of the above is known to the Jehovah’s Witnesses whom I saw mishandling it. In
fact, if they don’t know much about the Talmud, they would be wiser just using the
English word ‘agent.’ Using a Jewish word does not give a bad argument more
force. But they did know that the Talmud’s key legal principle about agency is “A
man’s agent is as himself.” (The Talmud is much stronger on this idea from a legal point of view than English
law is.) And that is the one thing they latched on to. If the sole thing being
cherry-picked is one key principle, then it won’t do for such polemics to claim to use the Jewish law of agency as the touchstone for understanding
Jesus’ status as an agent. This is basically using one sentence from the Talmud to understand Jesus, which is unsound. To say that Jesus was acting in accordance with Jewish law is only feasible if we mean that he was acting in accordance with the oral tradition that rabbis taught in his own day, but we don't even know exactly what that oral teaching was. I’ve never even seen these polemics mention that the
source for this is the rabbinic Talmud, written long after biblical times. I
don’t think they know.
This is perhaps fuelled by Christian commentators speaking
in similarly vague terms. For instance, the IVP Bible Background Commentary
on the New Testament, commenting on John 5:30, says vaguely “Jesus is thus
a faithful shaliach, or agent; Jewish law taught that the man’s agent was as a
man himself…” This sort of anachronistic vagueness can help foster as much ignorance
as understanding. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I will refer to
Jesus as an agent rather than a shaliach for this reason. There was
agency in Jesus’ day. We see that in the Parable of the Talents where each
servant is given discretion to work out how best to invest their funds to benefit
their master. But what we can’t do is to say that Jesus observed the exact same rules
of agency as we find in the Talmud.
SCOPE OF AGENCY
Another thing the Jehovah’s Witnesses seemed not to acknowledge is that agency is not all encompassing of an agent's personal identity.
Obviously, the agent doesn’t have to
make himself look like the principal. He doesn’t have to dress the same.
Indeed, when the agent happens to be a slave, he will probably be dressed
differently indeed from the principal. They don’t have to look alike. The agent
doesn’t even pretend to be the principal. But he does have to say something
like, “I have been sent here to speak to you on behalf of my master.” And the
third party in return, for the purposes of the task in hand, has to treat the
agent as he would treat the principal. That is all that’s really meant by the
words “a man’s agent is as himself.”
Although “a man’s agent is as himself,” this has limits. Taking
an example from above, a Jewish man might send his agent to complete a marriage
contract for him, but the agent can’t then go to bed with the woman. That would
obviously be out of order. It would void the agency contract. Agency therefore does
not entitle the agent to all the privileges of the principal. If a woman sends
her agent to procure a very nice meal for her, the agent can’t then eat the meal.
That would be out of order. It would void the agency contract. The Talmud itself
gives examples that illustrate that being an agent has boundaries. (See the paper
by Levinthal - details below). This becomes of interest in the study of Jesus
as an agent.
The scope of agency in Talmudical law does not stretch infinitely.
In practice, it tends to refer to roles in relation to marriage, child welfare,
religious ritual, and buying and selling. It is odd to see the word being stretched
to include some of the extraordinary matters in the story of Jesus. And
bandying about the word shaliach does not necessarily add to our
understanding of them. For sure, we cannot assume that all our assumptions
about what an agent’s role is will apply here. The Talmud wasn’t written when Jesus
was ministering in Judea, and the Talmud in turn is not the same as English
law. We can’t be entirely sure what Jesus would have thought are the boundaries
of agency.
To take one example. I’ve seen it claimed erroneously that a
clear example of the Jewish agency principle - a man’s agent is as the man himself – is
found in Jesus’ words in Mark 9:37: “Whoever receives one child like this in My
name receives Me.” However, this does not fit the known Jewish law of agency at all, as
both parties here represent Jesus. The disciples represent Jesus (“Whoever … in
my name”) but the child also represents Jesus (“one child … me”). I really don’t
think Jesus is saying “my agent receives my agent” which would mean “I receive
myself”! More importantly, in the Talmud a child was not considered competent
to be an agent; and an agent also has to be appointed to carry out a task, whereas
Jesus is not imagining appointing someone else’s child to any task here. Jesus
is speaking rhetorically here, perhaps indicating something profound, but
certainly not speaking within the legitimate scope of Talmudical law, and anyone
who says that the child representing Jesus is what Jewish shaliach status
looks like doesn’t know what they’re talking about. This muddies the waters for
the whole verse, and this is not a case where the Talmud can be used to explain
the verse. In fact, it looks worse if this is being used to explain that Jesus is an agent. Are we then looking at a situation where sub-agents (disciples) on behalf of an agent (Jesus) are receiving another sub-agent. Would the rabbis of the Talmud even bother to tear this to shreds? This is just one example of why using the Talmud to find agency status
in the gospels is hazardous.
In connection with all that, we might ask if Jesus ever heard the phrase 'a man’s agent is as the man himself.' That is an unsafe conclusion due to lack of evidence. When rabbis wrote that phrase centuries later, it was in a context where they needed new laws because the Romans had laws about it, to conduct divorces and business with legal safeguards as the Romans could.
I've seen a Unitarian appeal to New Testament usage of the Greek word apostolos (i.e. apostle, meaning one who is sent), but this risks mixing up a general missionary call with something different. Apostolos in the New Testament is not really congruent with the role of a business agent or a legal agent carrying out specified actions for specific transactions. (Interestingly, when, at the start of the 17th century AD, people had started translating the Greek New Testament into the Hebrew language, as an interesting exercise - or to evangelise Jews - they sometimes adopted this later word 'shaliach' to translate the earlier word 'apostolos.' Theose translators probably didn't realise they were using a word that didn't exist in Jesus' day. And they probably weren't thinking through the difference between a missionary and a business agent.)
An important point is that an agent is no agent at all unless competent to fulfil the agreed tasks as agreed with the principal. What about creation of the universe in the beginning? It is sometimes said that the Word did this as God's agent, insomuch as nothing was created but 'through' the Word. So let's talk about 'through'.
Prepositions
That is relying too much on the word 'through' as if through necessarily signals 'agent' when the truth is that only sometimes is it used that way. For instance, Romans 11:36 says, "from him and through him and to him." So 'from whom' is not superior to 'through whom.' If this is talking about the Father, then the 'through him' is true of the Father. But it is talking about the Son, then the "from him" is true of the Son. This shows the folly of over-reliance on prepositions. And additionally:
- From him:
- God (the Father): 'one God, the Father, from whom' (1 Cor 8:6)
- The Son: 'from his fulness, we have all received' (John 1:16)
- The Spirit: 'That which is born from the Spirit is spirit' (John 3:6)
- Through him:
2. The Son: 'one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom' (1 Cor 8:6)
3. The Spirit: 'to one is given through the Spirit' (1 Cor 12:8)
So, Father, Son and Spirit are co-workers in creation, unless of course you are one of Jehovah's Witnesses: they believe that the Word is none other than the archangel Michael, that Michael is completely separate from God, and was the agent at creation: this seems to me wholly lacking - how was Michael competent to fulfil the tasks of producing the physical universe? If Michael was not 'hands on' competent in these 'physical' tasks, then his agency is an illusion. An agent is no agent at all unless competent to fulfil the agreed tasks.
In ordinary human relations, by definition an agent is doing it when the principal isn't: if the human agent is doing it directly, then the human principal isn't doing it directly - so that's agency. That's the point of sending an agent to do the work - so that the human principal wouldn't have to do it directly. So, if we tried to think through Watchtower belief, what tasks did Michael actually do directly that God didn't directly do at creation? In human terms, it's meaningless to say something was done 'through' an agent unless there were actual tasks and the agent directly performed them instead of the principal. The question would be this: what did the angel (Michael) do, such that God didn't? That is the definition of an agent. I just don't see a valid answer to that. But if, as they do, you split God and the Word apart into completely separate beings, then 'agency' turns God into someone who doesn't actually do any of the creating directly, and turns Michael into someone who somehow - how? - can ably carry out the task of creating a universe by himself. Whereas I see it as Father, Son & Spirit acting together, all participating, Jehovah's Witnesses make it principal and agent, with all things made by the agent, but this makes the principal inactive in the tasks. The principal, God, would be only the "legal" creator but would be 'hands on' maker of nothing. Is God really only our maker in a legal sense? That's a problem.
Perhaps an answer to this double problem will yet be forthcoming from Jehovah's Witnesses.
What more can we say about the case of Jesus being an agent of the Father? Well, those Jehovah’s Witnesses tended to turn their attack on Trinitarian use of the very many astonishing instances where Hebrew Scripture verses about YHWH are turned into verses about Jesus in the Christian Scriptures. So let’s turn to that next.
YHWH TEXTS APPLIED TO JESUS
Before we are finished with 'agency,' this is a useful subject to visit: Old Testament YHWH texts applied in the New Testament to Jesus.
A few examples follow, and the first thing that has to be
said, as seen above, is that these can’t be dismissed with a wave of the hand by appeal to “the Jewish law”. What matters is to test the Unitarian argument and check
if they should confidently dismiss each as merely being about a human agent
personally undertaking a specific agreed task directly on behalf of the divine
Father. (And I’ve gone for a bunch of out of copyright translations for these six
examples.)
“for they shall not be ashamed
that wait for me [YHWH].” (KJV Isaiah 49:23)
“For the scripture saith, Whosoever
believeth on him [Jesus] shall not be ashamed.” (KJV Rom. 10:11)
Here, Paul is not saying that Jesus is fulfilling an agency
task. Paul is specifically stating that the scripture about YHWH is about
Jesus. This is very clear indeed.
NEXT
“But let him that glorieth glory
in this, that he understandeth and knoweth me, that I am the Lord [YHWH]…” (KJV
Jeremiah 9:24)
“That, according as it is
written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord [Jesus].” (KJV 1Cor 1:31)
“But he that glorieth, let him glory
in the Lord [Jesus].” (KJV 2 Cor 10:17)
Again, Paul is not saying that Jesus is fulfilling an agency
task. Paul is specifically saying that the scripture (“as it is written”) is
actually about Jesus, where in the Hebrew text it says it is about YHWH.
NEXT
‘neither fear ye their fear, nor
be afraid. Sanctify the Lord [YHWH] of hosts himself; and let him be your fear,
and let him be your dread.’ (KJV Isaiah 8:12-13)
‘and be not afraid of their
terror, neither be troubled; but sanctify in your hearts Christ as Lord... yet
with meekness and fear’ (ASV 1 Peter 3:14-15)
This is not about an agency task, and tends towards ritual
meaning and ontological sameness, being about one towards whom the heart is
sanctified.
NEXT:
‘The table of the Lord [YHWH] is
polluted; and the fruit thereof, even his meat, is contemptible.’ (KJV Malachi
1:7,12)
‘ye are not able of the table of
the Lord [Jesus] to partake, and of the table of demons.’ (YLT 1 Corinthians
10:17,21)
This matching ritual presence of YHWH and Jesus needs a
better explanation than agency, and tends towards ontology.
NEXT
‘O taste and see that the Lord
[YHWH] is good’ (KJV Psalm 34:8)
‘ye have tasted, that the Lord
[Jesus] is sweet’ (Wycliffe 1 Peter 2:3)
Again, this is not about an agency task. It needs another
explanation. It is devotional material. The weight of applying to Jesus this
and similar material about YHWH tends towards ontology.
NEXT
‘those seven; they are the eyes
of the Lord [YHWH], which run to and fro through the whole earth.’ (KJV
Zechariah 4:10)
‘a Lamb [Jesus] as it had been
slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God
sent forth into all the earth.’ (KJV Revelation 5:6)
Again, a different explanation than agency is needed. There
is something profoundly ontological in a shared way about YHWH and Jesus both
being described as having seven eyes.
I could go on, but the point is made in these six examples. Not
all of the application of texts about YHWH to the person of Jesus can be explained
away as examples of an agent carrying out a task for a principal.
ANGEL OF THE LORD
Just a brief note on an/the Angel of the Lord, which I think
is far less significant compared to the above. This is just to say that what we
have learned so far about being circumspect about referring to the Jewish law
of agency/shaliach again has to apply when speaking about an/the Angel of the
Lord. It would be cherry-picking as before to take the rabbinic dictum and
apply it retrospectively to something written many centuries earlier. Even if someone
wants to explain away some of the very strange biblical appearances of an/the
Angel of the Lord as a non-ontological matter of agency, it won’t do to try to argue
this by reference to the Talmud’s law of agency or the word shaliach
applied anachronistically. Much more work on that needs to be done to make a
convincing case that all of the appearances are entirely non-ontological.
JESUS
And in the case of Jesus, very surprising things are told.
Apart from Hebrew texts about YHWH that become Christian texts about Jesus.
More than that, we learn that Jesus breathes out God’s Holy Spirit: but only
God can breathe out God’s Holy Spirit. It is not feasible that breathing out
God’s breath is a valid role of a human agent, since it is a privilege of God
alone, and not delegate-able outside of divinity.
Also, Jesus’ people are a temple in whom he dwells: but only
a god has a temple. If he were only human, such would be venturing to do what
only God is entitled to do, which would be beyond the powers of a human agent,
to put it mildly. Actually, it would be making himself an idol, an entirely
sinful thing for a mere human to do, and would void any agency agreement with his Father! A
one-size fits all application of the concept of agency won’t do, and certainly lacks
explanatory power for such things.
If Jesus and God share the same privileges like
this, then a line has been crossed over, into ontological sameness. Throwing the
word shaliach at it doesn’t make that conclusion go away. Some Jehovah’s
Witnesses would try to dismiss all of this by saying that these are just
instances of Jesus being God’s agent, the shaliach. That is, they might try
to assert that all of these unusual matters can be explained adequately by saying
that Jesus, while being a mere mortal, was merely acting as an agent for God,
but that really lacks explanatory power for the kinds of things I’ve mentioned.
Just as a shaliach doesn’t get to sleep with his
principal’s wife, or to eat the principal’s dinner, a mere human agent doesn’t
get to be worshipped, or to breathe out God’s own holy breath, or to have a temple
to dwell in as divine. There are privileges that a mere human agent doesn’t get.
There is a line between the principal and the agent, and there is also a line between
divine and human. In the case of Jesus and God, the boundaries between them are
hard to see sometimes.
In the name of Jesus
There are plenty of things that don't fit mere agency. For example, the disciples baptised "in the name of Jesus." Why would they baptise in the name of an agent, instead of baptising in the name of the principal?
As such, it would be no surprise if the disciples had learned to baptise in the name of YHWH, or in the name of the Father. But they don't say that. A mere agent would surely teach them to do so.
Instead, are they really saying that they baptise in the name of the agent? That would be bizarre.
Hopefully, you can see how odd that would be if Jesus was merely a stand-in, or an agent. Clearly, Jesus has a status above and beyond agency, otherwise we would only baptise in the name of the Father. We baptise in the name of Jesus, and in so doing, we are the agents, not Jesus.
Summary
In short, some things that Jesus did, he did as his Father’s
agent, such as calling his fellow Israelites to repentance. Some things were
shared privileges, such as being worshipped, and having their temple to dwell
in as divine. And some things were his own prerogative, such as going to the
cross. But it would be over-stating the evidence to try to get everything to
correspond to the Talmudical law of agency. As such, shaliach is
probably not the most apposite word to use. If we must, we could just use the
word agent, as Gentile commentators in English with no special wisdom to
bring from the Talmud. What it does not provide is a trump card against
Christian belief in the Trinity.
As you may well be expecting me to say, I offer up the explanation which I am sure is the satisfactory one. Trinitarians are right. The remarkable things in Scripture about Jesus that I have mentioned above are explained by Jesus being the incarnation of the third 'person' of the Trinity. What was known as the 'Name of Yahweh' in the Hebrew Scriptures, those which tell about Solomon's temple, is now known as Jesus of Nazareth. He is the Name incarnate, the Word incarnate. That is why the Christian Scriptures are so comfortable applying YHWH verses to Jesus, both where it is actually to do with agency and where it isn't.
With all that done, I thought I’d finish with a few thoughts
comparing Jesus’ life with Talmudic wisdom on agency.
DID JESUS DIE AS A SHALIACH FOR THE FATHER?
A bit of a thought experiment. If we could confidently apply Talmudical law back in time to Jesus, what could we say about him? What observations might we make?
This is where I turn now to the question that heads this article. The
answer is: no, Jesus did not die as a shaliach for the Father. I mention this
to introduce the point that not everything Jesus did was as an agent (if we
suppose that we can use the Talmud as some kind of guide, in the absence of
much else to go on). I am confident about this one because the Talmud notes the
obvious: if someone could not do an act himself, then he can’t appoint an agent
to do it in his place either. If the Father cannot die, then Jesus cannot die as
his agent. Jesus did this in his own capacity, on his own decision. One
cannot draw a broad brush over the whole of Jesus’ life therefore and put everything
down to being his Father’s agent. (There's also the matter of being co-workers.)
Another bit of Talmudic wisdom is that if an agent goes
beyond and outside the principal’s instructions, then those extra actions are
void in terms of agency. The agent has to bear responsibility for them. When
Jesus says he acts only as far as he sees his Father acting likewise, he is
effectively acting like someone staying within the terms of an agency agreement.
When Satan tempts Jesus, Satan is effectively trying to take Jesus beyond. If
Jesus turned the stones to bread for instance, the narrative gives the
impression that this is beyond what Jesus thought the Father wanted of him. So
he declines to do so, citing Scripture to make the point. When Satan offers Jesus the
kingdoms of the world, to accept this from Satan would be sinful, contrary to
the Jewish religion. It would be impossible for a sinful act to be a valid act
of an agent according to the Talmud, and here again Jesus turns the suggestion
down. He knows it is outside the scope of what his Father wants.
One thing that is required of agency is that everything
benefits the principal and does not bring the principal any loss. You might have
your own ideas about how Jesus benefitted the Father, but one that occurs to me
is that he always brought his Father glory.
Anyway, I’ll leave these reflections there for now, so here
is my final thought on this. One thing we have seen is that in different times
and places there were different moments for deciding the meaning of agency, but
there are similarities too. Not the least of which is that there is always work
for lawyers and accountants.
Further reading:
Levinthal, Israel Herbert, "The Jewish Law of
Agency" in The Jewish Quarterly Review 13, 2 (1922): 117–191.
Simmons, L. M., "The Talmudical Law of Agency" in The Jewish Quarterly Review 8, 4 (1896): 614–631.
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