It is a widespread notion in Christendom that the words "God" (Heb. elohim, Gk. theos) and "Lord" (Heb. yahveh, Gk. kurios) both refer to God the Father in Old Testament texts. As a result, most Christians have acquiesced to the idea that the Trinity is a concept found only in New Testament literature. Some "conservative" interpreters have attempted to solve this problem by proposing that the "angel of the Lord" in the Old Testament (but, inconsistently, not in the New) is a reference to God the Son. Others believe that it is sufficient to stress how the Old Testament predicts the future Messiah, which however assists the longstanding error of disjoining the testaments. The Old is seen as a "law/works" testament centered on God the Father, whereas the New is seen as a "gospel/faith" testament centered on Jesus Christ.
The New Testament's own statements on the subject suggest a very different approach to the Old Testament. A number of passages demonstrate that the unmodified word theos refers to God the Father (e.g. John 1:18; 2 Cor. 13:13; Col. 1:15). Jesus, by contrast, is flatly declared to be kurios (1 Cor. 12:3). The angel of the Lord exhibits the characteristics of the Holy Spirit as the one who reveals the work of God and Christ (Matt. 1:20, 28:2; Luke 1:11).
The following study considers what various important texts would mean if the above definitions of the divine persons are employed consistently.
"Rationalist" interpreters have pointed out for over two hundred years that the creation story in Genesis 1:1-2:3 diverges from the remainder of Genesis 2. The latter is referred to as a second creation story, and is assumed to have been the product of a separate author or document, despite the total lack of any ancient witness to such a theory. The most compelling datum in this argument is the consistent use of elohim/theos in Genesis 1, whereas the central divine character in chapters 2-4 is yahveh/kurios.
If the New Testament definitions of the divine names apply to the Old, the distinction between Genesis 1 and 2-4 is not two different documents, but two different divine persons. Further evidence for the latter is provided by the fact that theos in Genesis 1 does nothing but speak; he has no visible manifestation. This is identical to God the Father at Jesus' baptism (Mark 1:11) and transfiguration (Mark 9:7). By contrast, kurios in Genesis 2-4 has visible, indeed human, attributes (esp. Gen. 3:8; see also Gen. 18:1-8).
There is compelling evidence that Genesis 2 is a story, not of physical creation at all, but rather of spiritual redemption. The latter, after all, is the principal office of the Lord Jesus Christ. The act by which the Lord "breathed the breath of life into Adam's face" (Gen. 2:7) results in the redemption of Adam's soul; "the man became a living soul" describes the fulness of his existence, spiritually alive as well as physically. This is confirmed by the fact that the rare verb emphusaó ("breathed") reappears at a crucial place in the NT, when the resurrected Jesus gave the Holy Spirit to his disciples (John 20:22).
Based on the New Testament definitions, the "burning bush" incident is as clear a reference to the Holy Trinity as any text in Scripture. Especially problematic for unitarians is 3:4, "When yahveh saw that Moses turned aside to look, elohim called to him." Although the Septuagint rendered both Hebrew names in this verse with kurios, it agrees with the Masoretic text in subsequently presenting first kurios (v. 7), then theos (v. 12) speaking to Moses.
A most fascinating aspect of this text is the fact that Moses encountered the persons of the Trinity in reverse order, namely, the angel of the Lord (= the Holy Spirit, v. 2), the Lord (= the Son, v. 7), and God (= the Father, v. 14). This is indeed how Christian theology presents a believer's encounter with God. The Holy Spirit causes a person to be "born again" (John 3:5) and creates faith in Christ (1 Cor. 2:14, 12:3), and whoever sees Christ has seen the Father (John 14:8).
The second verse of this psalm reads, "The kings of the earth take their stand ... against the Lord and against his Christ." But if Jesus is Lord, who is his Christ? As noted above, yahveh is strictly speaking a title of the divine nature, which Jesus fully shares. By contrast, christos (Heb. mashiach, "messiah" or "anointed one") is strictly speaking a title of the human nature, which God the Son fully shares. Jesus is thus called "the Christ of God" (a human approved by God the Father, Luke 9:20), "the Christ of the Lord" (a human approved by God the Son, Luke 2:26), and "Christ the Lord" (a human who is God the Son, Luke 2:11).
In the OT, christos may be applied to any human holder of a divinely instituted office, that is, to any prophet, priest, or king. Thus even a non-Israelite king (Cyrus of Persia) is called "Christ" in Isaiah 45:1. Most Christians are but dimly aware of this usage, and are astonished to find the plural form christoi in Psalm 104:15 (105:15 MT). As a result, Psalm 2 does not refer to Jesus alone. Revelation 2:26-27 makes clear that the promises to the "son" in Psalm 2:7-9 refer to every Christian. "The kings of the earth" (Ps. 2:2) oppress all believers in one manner or another, against which the believers take refuge in the fact that they are "begotten of God" (Ps. 2:7; John 1:13). Such refuge would of course be impossible without Jesus, who as Lord is eternally begotten of God. It is nevertheless one thing to say that Jesus is the only source of this status, another thing entirely to view him as the only possessor of the same. The latter, though a widespread "Christian" idea, is incompatible with the principle that God and man are truly reconciled in Christ.
The first line of this psalm may be rendered, "yahveh said to adonai, sit at my right hand." The traditional Christian explanation is that God the Father is inviting God the Son (specifically, the incarnate God the Son after his ascension) to share in his reign over the universe. God the Father does indeed offer this to God the Son, but if the New Testament definition of kurios applies here, the purpose of this passage is to describe what God the Son offers to Jesus' human nature. In other words, the union which this verse explains is the personal union of Jesus' two natures rather than the eternal unity of two divine persons.
The Septuagint eliminated the distinction between yahveh and adonai, translating both with kurios, which the New Testament does nothing to overturn. The reason for this would appear to be that both Hebrew terms describe the same person, namely Jesus Christ. The continued use of separate terms, originally intended to distinguish Jesus' divine nature from Jesus' human nature, could have aided the all too common tendency to disjoin these two natures (cf. the illicit contrast between "the Jesus of history" and "the Christ of faith").
The same principle illustrated by Psalm 110 applies here. "yahveh has laid on him the iniquity of us all" is God the Son commissioning Jesus' human nature to share mankind's cursed condition, rather than God the Father so commissioning God the Son.
It should be noted that this famous chapter does not teach the widely held "substitutionary satisfaction" theory of atonement, in which Jesus somehow replaces all other humans in suffering the penalty of sin. Apparently, the phrase "the iniquity of us all" has been misread as "all the iniquities of us," as though God blamed Jesus for the sins all others had committed (such a transferal of blame would violate Deut. 24:16). In fact, Jesus suffered the same curse and death which every human experiences (Gal. 3:10-13), not some distinct or unique punishment, and was blessed in his resurrection and ascension for the same reason as any human is blessed: "through faith" (Gal. 3:14; Rom. 3:22).
In dozens of texts, believers address Jesus as kurios. While some of these individuals may have simply intended formal respect ("sir," as in John 4:15), such cannot be posited of the angel of the Lord on Christmas (Luke 2:11), Peter at the transfiguration (Matt. 17:4), or Thomas after Easter (John 20:28).
Nowhere in the Gospels does anyone, including Jesus, employ the unmodified word kurios to describe God the Father. John the Baptist certainly did not come to prepare the way of the Father (Mark 1:3, and thus also Is. 40:3). Due to the modifying phrase, "Father, Lord of heaven and earth" (Matt. 11:25) is not an exception to this, just as references to Jesus as "unique God" (John 1:18) and "genuine God" (1 John 5:20) do not contradict the principle that the unmodified word theos solely describes God the Father.
On the other hand, neither does Jesus employ kurios as a self-designation. As noted previously, yahveh/kurios is strictly speaking the name of God the Son, not Jesus' human nature. It is not the office of the latter to confer upon himself the title and status of the former, but to receive it in faith when external witnesses so declare.
In several cases, Jesus quoted Old Testament passages involving kurios, without however offering any commentary. Neither he himself nor his hearers answered his questions concerning Psalm 110:1 (Mark 12:35-37). The two kurios texts which he quoted during his temptation (Matt. 4:7, 4:10, citing respectively Deut. 6:16, 6:13) are deliberately ambiguous. Jesus himself certainly did not put to the test or tempt either God the Father or his own divine nature, nor did he worship himself. At the same time, the church rightly hears these statements as admonitions not to put Jesus to the test, nor to worship anyone but him.
The most sacred assertion of "conservative" Christianity, especially Protestantism, is that "the Bible is the word of God." This formula was intended to teach that the entire Bible is true and authoritative, as opposed to an amalgamation of history and myths, or a collection of irreconcilable theologies. Conservatives have rightly recognized that the latter, the viewpoint of "liberal" Christianity, is a crypto-polytheistic approach to Scripture, overemphasizing the variations in style and viewpoint of the various biblical authors at the expense of the essential unity of their message, as though Moses, Isaiah, Jesus, and Paul were Greco-Roman deities in constant rivalry with one another. The solution to this, however, is not a crypto-unitarian approach, which emphasizes the unity of the divine revelation at the expense of the distinction between its various voices. "The Bible is the word of God" fails to affirm a crucial distinction in Holy Scripture between the word of God the Father, that is, the actual quotations of the head of the Trinity, and that of Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the various human authors inspired by them. To understand the Bible rightly, the quotations of the Father must be read and mastered first, with the rest of Scripture understood in their light.
The failure of "conservative" Christianity to give priority to the word of the Father explains why so many different theologies have been constructed by persons who allegedly agree that Scripture is God's word. In an unqualified application of the latter principle, scriptural texts may be studied in random order, and all scriptural ideas can gain equal importance. Thus Roman Catholics begin with Matthew or James, traditional Protestants favor John or Paul, and certain Protestant extremists spend endless hours with Leviticus or Revelation, with none able to convince the others that theirs is the correct starting point or emphasis. They do however achieve the most tragic sort of agreement in their collective failure to use the word of God the Father to define God and his program for the world. When Genesis 1, which quotes God the Father exclusively, is the starting point for Christian theology, God is found to be gracious, not a wrathful deity who needs to be placated by the works of man or Christ, and his creation is found to be beautiful, not a hopelessly broken realm which needs to be avoided now and abolished later.
Taken seriously, the identification of the Lord of the Old Testament as Jesus Christ would appear to create the most astonishing "temporal causality loop" imaginable, that the human race was created by a divinely incarnate human being (Gen. 2:7) who was born in 5 BC. However much this contradicts church traditions or human logic, it is required by the basic Christian principle that Jesus is both God and man. If any attribute of God is not possessed by Jesus, and does not become fully manifest at the latest by his ascension, then Jesus cannot possibly be "the genuine God" (1 John 5:20). One of these attributes of God is eternity, which does not merely mean extending indefinitely into the future, but also extending indefinitely into the past. If Jesus is God, and God is eternal, then Jesus' human nature goes back to the beginning of time as well as forward to its consummation (thus "alpha and omega," Rev. 22:13). To assert that God the Son, but not the human nature, goes back in time results in a part of God the Son which is not human (contradicting Col. 1:15-19). That the entire Christ, God and man, is with our race from the beginning may be an arresting concept, yet is nothing more than the ultimate fulfillment of a famous Christmas carol's phrase, "pleased as man with man to dwell." The implications of this for us, in light of "we will be like him" (1 John 3:2), will be even more astounding.
