Restoring Apostolic Faith

Introduction: Why This Is Not a Side Issue

Modern Christian theology often treats Jewish agency as an introductory concept—useful for background color, but ultimately insufficient once “real theology” begins.

The New Testament does not.

If we fail to understand shelīaḥ (שליח), we do not merely miss nuance; we mishear how first-century Jews would have understood Jesus at all. Agency is not a preliminary exercise to be discarded once theology matures—it is the conceptual grammar through which the earliest Christology actually functioned.

This essay argues a simple but consequential claim:

Shelīaḥ theology is not an interpretive convenience.

It is the primary framework by which Jesus’ authority, obedience, revelation, and exaltation were first intelligible.

Recovering this framework does not diminish Christ’s divinity.

It restores precision—and with it, reverence rooted in the apostolic witness.

1. Shelīaḥ: The Native Grammar of Divine Authority

Second Temple Judaism operated with a well-established principle of agency:

“The one sent is as the one who sends him.”

This statement does not imply ontological identity.

It describes functional equivalence within authorized representation.

Key features of shelīaḥ agency include:

• Authority that is real, not symbolic

• Speech that may legitimately occur in the first person of the sender

• Transfer of honor and obligation without merging beings

• Obedience as the measure of legitimacy

• Appointment as the limiter of scope and duration

This logic explains how prophets speak as YHWH, how angels bear the divine Name, how Wisdom is personified, how kings rule in God’s stead, and how judgment can be exercised without confusion of identity.

Shelīaḥ is not speculative theology.

It is the working logic of Jewish monotheism in action.

2. Jesus’ Earthly Ministry: Authority Without Ontological Collapse

Nothing Jesus does during his earthly mission requires ontological divinity in order to function coherently.

He forgives sins, commands unclean spirits, reinterprets Torah, speaks with final authority, and acts as the decisive agent of God’s reign. Every one of these actions fits cleanly within the established logic of agency.

Two distinctions must be preserved:

• Authority is not essence

• Representation is not identity

Preserving these distinctions safeguards what the Gospels actually emphasize: real obedience, real temptation, real faithfulness, and real cost. Without agency, the incarnation risks becoming theatrical. With agency, it regains its covenantal seriousness.

First-century Jewish hearers would not have stumbled here.

They already spoke this language fluently.

3. How the New Testament Uses “God Language” for Jesus

Much modern confusion arises from treating “God language” as a single category. The New Testament does not. It employs divine language for Jesus in distinct but related modes, corresponding to narrative phase and theological function.

A. Agency Language (Mission Phase)

Jesus speaks and acts with God’s authority.

He speaks God’s words, performs God’s works, and executes God’s judgment by commission. This language is authentically Jewish and thoroughly agency-driven. It explains the data without importing metaphysical conclusions the texts themselves do not yet articulate.

B. Exaltation Language (Post-Resurrection Phase)

After obedience unto death, God acts toward Jesus.

God raises him.

God exalts him.

God gives him authority.

God bestows the Name.

God appoints him judge and king.

Texts such as Philippians 2, Acts 2, and Hebrews 1 are explicit:

“Therefore God highly exalted him…”

This language describes installation and vindication, not retroactive ontology. It honors the narrative movement from obedience to exaltation rather than collapsing the story into static metaphysical categories.

C. High and Ambiguous Christological Titles

Certain passages often pressed into service as metaphysical proofs are, in fact, grammatically complex and contextually flexible. They require careful attention to syntax, articles, and Jewish conceptual ranges. They function confessionally and rhetorically, not as systematic definitions.

Later conciliar theology, responding to genuine distortions of apostolic teaching, often formalized these tensions in ontological language in order to safeguard worship and salvation. While this move served an important stabilizing function, it sometimes obscured the Jewish agency framework through which the texts were originally intelligible.

Recognizing this is not a rejection of the Fathers—it is an attempt to read the New Testament before later categories were required to do defensive work.

4. The Danger of Premature Ontology

Here lies the central interpretive risk.

When readers are rushed too quickly into:

• Ontological divinity

• Pre-existence metaphysics

• Nature-language (ousia, hypostasis)

…the Gospel narrative itself is short-circuited.

The Gospels are not asking:

“What is Jesus metaphysically composed of?”

They are asking:

“Who is this man, by whose authority does he act, and why must Israel respond?”

Answering the second question faithfully is what eventually gives rise to the first. Reversing the sequence distorts both the story and its theology.

5. “Who Do You Say That I Am?” — Recognition Before Definition

Peter’s confession is often treated as a metaphysical breakthrough. The text itself frames it differently.

Jesus identifies not the accuracy of the confession, but the source of recognition:

“Flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father.”

This is Spirit-discernment language, not philosophical insight.

Demons recognize Jesus by the same mode—not through ontology, but through encounter with divine presence. John the Baptist identifies him because the Spirit remains upon him. The Elijah role is fulfilled through continuity of Spirit and vocation, not essence transfer.

Peter perceives God’s decisive presence and action in Jesus.

That perception—revealed, not deduced—is what Jesus names as the “rock.”

The ekklēsia is built upon faithful discernment of God’s action, not premature doctrinal closure.

6. Are We Stretching Shelīaḥ Beyond Second Temple Judaism?

An honest question demands an honest answer.

No surviving Second Temple Jewish text systematizes this framework in later philosophical terms. But systematization is not an ancient expectation—it is a modern one.

What the evidence does show is:

• Jewish monotheism actively negotiating its boundaries

• “Two powers” traditions being later policed rather than invented

• Exalted agents provoking concern precisely because conceptual space already existed

Arguments that “Judaism never went this far” often rest on arguments from silence rather than positive prohibition.

The apostles were not system-builders. They were witnesses responding to resurrection and Spirit events using inherited categories that strained under new realities. That strain is visible in the New Testament itself.

This is not incoherence.

It is living tradition under pressure.

7. Shelīaḥ and Trinitarian Faith: Not a Rival, but a Root

This framework should not be mistaken for adoptionism or as a denial of Trinitarian theology. On the contrary, it sharpens it.

The New Testament does not present divine authority as emerging from isolated essence, but from relational sending.

• The Father sends

• The Son obeys

• The Spirit reveals and empowers

These are not masks or ranks, but coordinated divine action. Sending is not subordination—it is the grammar of love, purpose, and mission. Later Trinitarian ontology sought to secure what the narrative already displayed relationally.

Shelīaḥ does not undermine Trinitarian faith.

It grounds it historically—before later language was required to protect it.

Conclusion: Reverence Through Precision

This approach does not reduce Christ.

It refuses to flatten him.

It preserves:

• The cost of obedience

• The meaning of exaltation

• The integrity of Jewish monotheism

• The authority of apostolic proclamation

Most importantly, it allows pre-cross and post-cross reverence to remain distinct without being divided.

Not because later theology solved the tension,

but because the apostles lived faithfully within it.

Shelīaḥ is not a detour to be discarded.

It is the key that allows the whole narrative to speak—clearly, faithfully, and with power.

To read more, please see the full monograph