G. Jackman, The WordBecame Flesh, 2016, pp 179-85.
The notion of agency has played a significant part in Hebrew/Jewish thought and practice since earliest times until today. Peder Borgen provides a succinct article that has exerted a considerable influence on the study of John's Gospel since it was first published in 1968.[1]
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An agent is like the one who sent him, or even ‘the
agent ranks as his master’s own person,’ so that there is a unity between
sender and sent.
·
The agent carries out his mission obediently.
·
The sender transfers his/her rights and property
to the agent. But the age is still agent, thus the sender takes possession when
the agent does.
·
The agent reports back to the sender.
·
An agent can appoint an agent.
In contemporary Jewish legal thinking, the term used for
this kind of empowered emissary is shaliach, which has been defined as follows:
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A person's shaliach is as he himself.
·
… The shaliach does not abnegate his intellect, will,
desires, feelings, talents and personal ‘style' to that of the one whom he
represents; rather he enlists them in the fulfilment of his mission. The result
of this is not a lesser bond between the two, but the contrary: the meshaleiach
[i.e. the one who 'sends' the agent) is acting through the whole of the
shaliach - not only through the shaliach's physical actions, but also through
the shaliach's personality, which has become an extension of the meshaleiach's
personality.
·
The emissary's final achievement is attributed
to the principal.
·
The emissary's every action is attributed to the
principal.
·
The emissary completely embodies the principal.
·
... while the goal is for the principal to be
represented - in order to this, the emissary must bring his own entire being
into the mission.
So a shaliach enjoys all the authority of the principal, the
one whom he represents, indeed for practical purposes he is the principal. He acts on his own, responsible initiative, yet
remains totally subordinate, dependent on his principal. In the contemporary
Western world, its closest parallel is probably the increasingly familiar
notion of ‘power of attorney.’
The account of Abraham sending his servant to find a wife
for Isaac in Genesis 24 demonstrates how ancient this notion is. The sender
Abraham determines the goal to be achieved and, in outline, how it is to be
accomplished (v. 3-8), but the agent employs his own personality, abilities and
judgment deciding how, in detail, the goal is to be achieved (vv. 11-14) - he is
very far from being merely a tool of his master. The servant, as agent, acts
with a full authority of his master, so that his actions are effectively the
actions of his master - he is a 'plenipotentiary'. In consequence, he enjoys
the status of his master and is treated as the latter would be (v. 31-32).
Nevertheless, the agent is, ultimately, not his master.
At least since the appearance of Borgen's article, it has
been increasingly recognized that this concept provides a satisfying way of
approaching John’s presentation of Jesus and especially of the apparently
contradictory things that Jesus says about himself, that mix of absolute
authority and self-effacement…a way that is far more convincing than the
creeds' notions of 'two natures' and ‘two wills.’
The shaliach is, after all, one 'sent,’ that is what the
term actually means - and in repeatedly describing the Father as ‘He that sent
me’, using the two verbs apostello and pempo…Jesus is referring quite
specifically to the concept of agency, specifically as known and practices
among Jews. This is not to say that the Jewish law of agency explains the
relationship between Jesus and God: rather, it provided for Jesus an analogy or
parable with which to illuminate the nature of that relationship for hearers familiar
with this institution. The principle is clear enough in the Synoptic Gospels:
whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me, says Jesus in Mark
9:37, while a parallel account in Matthew illustrates also one agent (Jesus)
appointing another (the disciples): Whoever welcomes you welcome me, and
whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me (Matt. 10:40).
In John too we find Jesus speaking of just such a
relationship: servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers
greater than the one who sent them (13:16). The fit with John’s Gospel is
clear: in sayings such as the following we hear the shaliach’s sense of duty
and obedience to the ‘sender’: John 5:30; 8.28; 12:50.
When, on the other hand, he says The Father and I are one.
(10:30) or Whoever has seen me has seen the Father (14:9) we see realized the
principle that ‘A person’s shaliach is as he himself’. The recurrent ‘He that
sent me’ similarly reflects the notion of an empowered emissary, while the
prayer of chapter 17 illustrates Borgen’s comment that ‘the agent reports back
to the sender’ [17:4].
Ashton points out that this fundamental conception was
already at work in OT prophecy and adds that ‘the convention according to which
the agent was fully representative of his master was more than a legal fiction:
it illustrated and exemplified a way of
thinking’.[2]
However, the analogy with OT prophecy that Ashton introduces is nor entirely
helpful. The prophets’ recurrent phrase: ‘The word of the Lord came to me,
saying…’ or similar indicates precisely a limited empowerment—they could not go
beyond the word received. But the word did not ‘come’ to Jesus—he was the word
and so represented his ‘sender’ in everything that he said and did. It is he
who fully realizes the shaliach principle that ‘the emissary must being his own
entire being into the mission’. This accords with our earlier comment that
Jesus is far from being an ‘empty vessel’ or externally directed automaton.
Perhaps the best illustration of the idea at work in John is
the beginning of the conversation in John 5:17-23. On the one hand, Jesus
enunciates in v.17 the principle that the service of the agent is determined by
the ‘sender’ and in v.19-20 emphasizes his dependence. On the other hand, he
also stresses his empowerment (v.21-22) and the honour that accrues to him as
the agent of his ‘sender’ (v.23). His adversaries, by contrast, see in his
claim to represent and to act for the Father as a claim to equality-the same
fundamental error that soon began to be made, and is still being made, by
John’s expositors.
In this passage we in fact see a further parallel with
Genesis. In chapter 1, God’s declared intention is that man should be in his
image, after [his] likeness—in other words, ‘as God’, not in status but in practice,
as the agent should be. In chapter 3, however, the serpents’ suggestion to Eve
is that by eating the forbidden fruit she and Adam will be ‘like God’—no longer
in the practical, functional sense but in status. it is interesting to observe
the actual formulation of the serpent’s’ suggestion: You will not die; for God
knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like
God, knowing good and evil (Gen. 3:4-5). The subtlety lies not so much in the
‘you will not die’ as in the ‘God knows that’: the serpent suggests to Eve that
the reason for the prohibition is that God wishes to keep them in subjection—he
introduces the notion of competition, changing the ‘as God’ in the sense of
chapter 1 into ‘like God’ in the sense of equality of status. The serpents’ way
of thinking excluded the idea of agency and the honour to both parties that
accrues from it—it can think only of individualistic rivalry. That is how
Jesus’ critics respond to his words in John 5, and something like it is also at
work in Trinitarian thinking: if Jesus acts and speaks like God, then he must
be God—and equal to him.
What, then, was the commission that was entrusted by God to
his agent? What ‘authority’ did He give him? There are at least three answers
to this question: first, when the shaliach reports back in chapter 17 to the
One who sent him, he enumerates all that he has done—and the key word is
‘give’. Just as the Father has entrusted His word, the revelation of His nature
and the completion of His saving work to the Son, so Jesus has ‘given’
(didomi—this verb occurs no less than 17 times in John 17) to those who have
believed first God’s words (v.8,14), but also even the glory of being his
agents (v.22). His first commission, then, is essentially revelatory: to
communicate to those who believe all that he has received. This illustrates
again the divine sharing which contrasts so markedly with the competitive
spirit of the world.
That giving is in turn the means through which a further
charged laid upon the Son is being fulfilled: you have given him authority
(exousia) over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him
(17:2). We recognize in these words an echo not only of the beginning of the
Prologue (in [the world] was life…--v.4) but also, much more importantly, of
chapter 5: just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the
Son gives life to whomever he wishes (5:21). The phrase ‘to whomever he wishes’
is perhaps indicative of the shaliach’s freedom of action in pursuit of his
principal’s’ objective.
There is, however, a third ‘authority’ that has been
entrusted to him [John 10:17-28—‘power’ translates exousia = ‘authority’ in
both cases].
The key to the accomplishment of the Father’s purpose is the
giving of his own life, followed by his resurrection, and Jesus strongly
emphasizes that he fulfills this commission freely, voluntarily: ‘no one takes
it from me‘. He is neither a slave, nor an externally directed automaton, nor
yet ‘God’ divesting Himself for a brief moment of a life that stretches back to
eternity and which is therefore never seriously at stake—though how a ‘God’,
for whom unending life is perhaps the most essential quality that he possesses,
could ever ‘lay it down’ remains quite without explanation! However much,
therefore, Jesus’ life may appear to run ‘on tramlines’ towards the cross—the
word ‘fulfilled’ (pleroo) appears 7 times between chapter 12 and chapter 19, as
we saw in chapter 2—we have all the time to see Jesus as one voluntarily
choosing to follow the path that the disputes marked out for him. Indeed,
whether we see the raising Lazarus, as in John, or the cleansing of the temple,
as in the Synoptics, as the event which finally triggers his death, it seems
that Jesus, the freely action shaliach, himself brings about the final climax.
In fact, to think of Jesus as God’s ‘agent’ takes us back to
the question of what is revealed that we discussed in the previous section. The
concept of shaliach implies that the one sent is, to all intents and purposes,
the one who sent him. This means that in the closeness of His relation to the
Son, the Father is Himself bearing what the Son bears. We are at a loss to
understand how there can be an analogy between a human father suffering the
loss of a son and the eternal God who ‘sends’ His Son into the world to face
the cruelty of men, yet that is exactly what John 3:16 implies, as does the
more explicit parallel with Abraham’s experience that we find in Romans 8:32:
He did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us.
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