Jewish Agency

What is this concept?

In ancient Jewish law, an agent — a shaliach (Hebrew, "sent one") — is someone who acts with the full legal authority of the person who sent them. The agent doesn't represent the sender in a vague or symbolic way. The agent is the sender, for all practical and legal purposes. When the agent speaks, the sender speaks. When the agent acts, the sender acts. When the agent makes a deal, the deal is binding on the sender.

This is not a metaphor. It is a legal institution, widely attested in Jewish literature, with precise rules and boundaries. The agent can do only what the sender authorised. The agent does not become the sender. But within the scope of the mission, there is no functional difference between dealing with the agent and dealing with the sender directly.

Where does it come from?

The foundational principle appears in the Mishnah, the earliest major compilation of Jewish oral law (codified around 200 CE but reflecting much older traditions):

"A man's agent is as himself."

— Mishnah Berakhot 5:5

But the concept is far older than the Mishnah. It runs through the entire Hebrew Bible, shaping how Israel understood God's relationship with the figures who spoke and acted on his behalf. Three examples stand out.

First, Moses. God tells Moses directly: "I have made you God to Pharaoh" (Exodus 7:1). Moses does not become YHWH. But in his role as God's agent to Pharaoh, he carries divine authority and speaks divine words. The title "God" is applied to the agent because of the mission, not because of ontology.

Second, the Angel of YHWH. This figure appears throughout Genesis, Exodus, and Judges with a remarkable pattern: the angel is "sent by" YHWH, yet speaks as YHWH in the first person, and is sometimes called YHWH by the narrator. In Genesis 16:7-13, the angel speaks to Hagar, and she calls the one who spoke to her "YHWH." In Exodus 3:2-6, the angel appears in the burning bush, yet it is God who speaks from the bush. The angel is not YHWH. The angel is sent by YHWH. But the angel speaks as YHWH because that is what agents do — they carry the sender's identity within the scope of the mission.

Third, the judges of Israel. In Psalm 82, God stands in the divine assembly and addresses the judges as elohim — "gods." These are human beings exercising judicial authority on God's behalf. They bear the title because they carry God's delegated authority, not because they are divine beings.

How does it appear in the New Testament?

The language of sending saturates the Gospel of John. Jesus describes himself as "sent" — using both apostellō and pempō (Greek, "to send") — over forty times. This is not casual language. It is the technical vocabulary of agency. Jesus is the shaliach of God.

The agency logic is explicit. Jesus states the principle directly:

"Whoever receives the one I send receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me."

— John 13:20

This is a chain of agency. The Father sends Jesus. Jesus sends the disciples. To receive the disciple is to receive Jesus. To receive Jesus is to receive the Father. The logic is identical at every level — and no one argues that the disciples are ontologically identical to Jesus.

The same framework illuminates one of the most striking statements in John:

"Whoever has seen me has seen the Father."

— John 14:9

Read through the lens of agency, this is not a statement of identity — "I am the Father" — but a statement of faithful representation: "I so perfectly represent the Father that to see me at work is to see the Father at work." Jesus himself clarifies the distinction moments later: "The Father is greater than I" (John 14:28).

The sending language extends further. In John 20:21, the risen Jesus tells his disciples: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you." The same verb. The same structure. The disciples become agents of Jesus as Jesus is the agent of the Father. If "sent" implies ontological equality with the sender, then the disciples are ontologically equal to Jesus — a conclusion no tradition accepts.

Jesus also invokes Psalm 82 directly in John 10:34-36. When accused of making himself God, he responds: "Is it not written in your Law, 'I said, you are gods'? If he called them gods to whom the word of God came — and Scripture cannot be broken — do you say of him whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, 'You are blaspheming,' because I said, 'I am the Son of God'?" His defence rests precisely on the agency precedent: if human judges could be called elohim, how much more can God's supremely authorised agent bear exalted titles?

Why does it matter for the debate?

Agency is the hinge concept in the Christological debate because it offers a coherent explanation for the "high" language applied to Jesus in the New Testament — without requiring the conclusion that Jesus is ontologically God.

If the Angel of YHWH can be called YHWH without being YHWH, then Jesus can be called "Lord" — and even "God" (as in John 20:28, Thomas's exclamation "My Lord and my God!") — within the same Jewish framework. The title describes the agent's role and authority, not his metaphysical nature.

The question, then, is whether the New Testament stays within this framework or breaks out of it — whether Jesus is an agent (however supreme) or something the category of agency cannot contain.

What do the different traditions say?

Trinitarian: Agency is real and genuinely present in the New Testament, but it is insufficient to account for the full range of data. Jesus does things no previous agent ever did. He receives proskyneō — bowing, honour, reverence — in contexts that go beyond what any previous agent received (Revelation 5). He is identified as the creator of all things (Colossians 1:16, John 1:3). He forgives sins on his own authority (Mark 2:5-7). He shares the divine throne (Revelation 22:1,3). The category of agent breaks at these points. The early Christians were not simply extending the shaliach model — they were including Jesus within the identity of the one God of Israel. Scholars like Richard Bauckham and Larry Hurtado have argued that the "Christ-devotion" of the earliest church goes beyond anything precedented in Jewish agency.

Biblical Unitarian: Agency is the primary interpretive framework, and it explains all of the so-called "high" language without remainder. Each of the Trinitarian claims can be addressed directly. (1) Proskyneō: Jesus receives bowing and reverence, but so do kings and prophets throughout Scripture. In 1 Chronicles 29:20, the assembly bows (proskyneō in the LXX) to YHWH and to King David simultaneously — yet no one concludes David is God. In Daniel 2:46, Nebuchadnezzar falls prostrate before Daniel and even commands offerings be made to him, recognising that God's power works through his agent. The sons of the prophets bow before Elisha (2 Kings 2:15). The word covers a wide spectrum. (2) Creator of all things: the preposition dia ("through") marks Jesus as the agent, not the source; God remains the one "from whom" (ek) all things come (1 Corinthians 8:6). Philo uses the identical prepositional framework for the Logos as God's instrument in creation. (3) Forgives sins: Jesus forgives as God's authorised agent, not on independent authority. The paralytic is healed "so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins" (Mark 2:10) — this is delegated authority, granted precisely so that people will know it has been delegated. (4) Shares the divine throne: Revelation 3:21 explicitly explains how Jesus came to sit on the throne — "as I also overcame and sat down with my Father on his throne." He sits there because of his faithfulness, not because of eternal co-equality. The throne is his Father's; he is invited to share it. Scholars like Anthony Buzzard and James McGrath argue that every "high" text falls naturally within the agency model when the Jewish background is properly understood. Dale Tuggy's entry on the Trinity in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy reinforces this by demonstrating that "God" and "the Father" co-refer throughout the New Testament — if God simply is the Father, then Jesus bearing God's name and authority is agency, not identity. The resources at BiblicalUnitarian.com, developed by Dustin Smith and others, treat agency as the foundational interpretive key across the entire New Testament.

Sean Finnegan (Restitutio, ep. 521) traces how the Jewish agency framework was lost as the church became predominantly Gentile. In Greco-Roman culture, "god" meant something very different than in Judaism — the cultural translation from Jewish agency to Gentile ontology drove the development of deity claims about Jesus. When Greek-speaking converts heard that Jesus bore the divine name, exercised divine authority, and received proskyneō, they lacked the shaliach framework that would have made sense of these claims without ontological identification. The shift from a Jewish to a Gentile majority church was not merely demographic — it was hermeneutical.

Logos Christology: The Logos is the supreme agent — genuinely divine, but divine by derivation from the Father, not by co-equal self-existence. The Logos is the one through whom God creates, reveals, and redeems — a real divine being, not merely a human agent, but still distinct from and subordinate to the Father. This view draws on Philo of Alexandria's concept of the Logos as God's principal agent and on Justin Martyr's "second God" theology. The Logos is more than a shaliach but less than the later Nicene formulation.

Go Deeper

The following works explore Jewish agency and its implications for New Testament Christology in rigorous detail:

• Peder Borgen, God's Agent in the Fourth Gospel
• Alan Segal, Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism
• Anthony Harvey, Christ as Agent
• James McGrath, The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context
• Dale Tuggy, "Trinity" in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Dale Tuggy, What is the Trinity? (2017)
• Sean Finnegan, Restitutio, ep. 521: "How Gentile Culture Reshaped Christology"
• BiblicalUnitarian.com — comprehensive encyclopaedia of unitarian exegesis

See how agency shapes the interpretation of specific texts:

• John 20:28 — Thomas's "My Lord and my God"
• Acts 2:22 — "A man attested to you by God"
• 1 Corinthians 8:6 — One God, one Lord
• John 14:28 — "The Father is greater than I"