How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee
By Bart D. Ehrman. HarperOne, 2014.
Reviewed by Douglas Bennett
I have been a member of Quaker meetings in which the conviction that Jesus is God’s Presence among us is a daily-told certainty, and also a member of meetings in which Jesus’s name is so rarely spoken as to make his naming a palpable disturbance in the holy silence. The rift over Jesus is so striking among us that we all have reason to pay attention to Bart Ehrman’s new book, How Jesus Became God.
Some Quakers see ourselves as the authentic Christianity revived; others prefer to avoid thinking of us as Christians at all. To both sides of Quakerism’s Bible divide, it can seem as if those who call themselves Christians have always believed that Jesus was God and always defined his divinity in identical ways.
Ehrman shows that simply is not so.
His argument moves through three stages.
His argument moves through three stages.
First, in the ancient world, the separation of the human and the godly was not nearly as sharp as we think it today. Jesus was hardly the only human regarded by many to be a god. Greek and Roman mythology have many accounts of gods taking human form and humans becoming divine.
Roman emperors were widely regarded as divine figures. Moreover, the Bible is replete with godly figures—especially angels—that lie somewhere between God and man. Claiming divinity for a human was not as unusual as it is today. One could see Jesus as godly without seeing him as the one true God, and likely some of his early followers did.
Second, Ehrman subjects Paul’s letters and then the four Gospels to close analysis to demonstrate that they do not have a consistent view on whether or how Jesus was divine. He argues that Jesus’s preaching as it is conveyed to us through the first three Gospels makes no claim to divinity, only that the day of judgment was coming soon.
Second, Ehrman subjects Paul’s letters and then the four Gospels to close analysis to demonstrate that they do not have a consistent view on whether or how Jesus was divine. He argues that Jesus’s preaching as it is conveyed to us through the first three Gospels makes no claim to divinity, only that the day of judgment was coming soon.
It is in John where the strongest affirmations that Jesus is God are to be found. It was the crucifixion and resurrection that led his followers to begin to see Christ as divine. Among these early Christians, views of Jesus’s divinity progressed from those that ascribed no divinity to Jesus, to those that saw Jesus elevated (exalted) to divinity at his death, to those that understood Jesus to be God incarnate from his baptism or his birth, to those that understood Jesus to be simply God incarnate out of all time.
Finally, Ehrman traces the wrangles over the first four centuries of Christianity, in which theologians tried to work out a coherent, shared view of Jesus’s divinity. He shows they regularly declared as heretical positions that had been accepted as orthodox a few decades earlier. He lifts up the Nicene Creed (323 C.E.) as an Empire-sanctioned, unity-seeking compilation of now-orthodox views written to name and condemn a succession of such heresies. Even that agreement did not stop the wrangles.
You do not have to agree with every one of Ehrman’s arguments—especially regarding whether Jesus considered himself to be divine. But you do have to take to heart his demonstration that Christian views on whether, how, and when Jesus became God have been hotly contested ground at least since he was crucified.
Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. On the very first page, Ehrman lets us know that he was once a believer, but now considers himself an agnostic. He writes the book not to denigrate belief, but to invite us all into deeper consideration of what we know and believe, and why.
Why should we accept that there is only one God but also that God has three persons (Father, Son, Holy Spirit)? That Jesus was One, but equally human and divine? That he was begotten but eternal? Taken today as orthodox, these views are simply the ones currently being enforced as authoritative. Ehrman terms these “orthoparadoxes”: attempts to affirm all the apparently conflicting passages in the Bible lead to paradoxical affirmations. Why not instead see them as alternative possibilities in the divine mystery?
Perhaps if all Friends acknowledged the tensions among the various accounts we have of Jesus, we would find it more possible to talk together about his life and teachings. Even more likely, progressive Friends would find it easier to speak of Jesus if they knew the range of views Christians have espoused about Jesus as God.
Finally, Ehrman traces the wrangles over the first four centuries of Christianity, in which theologians tried to work out a coherent, shared view of Jesus’s divinity. He shows they regularly declared as heretical positions that had been accepted as orthodox a few decades earlier. He lifts up the Nicene Creed (323 C.E.) as an Empire-sanctioned, unity-seeking compilation of now-orthodox views written to name and condemn a succession of such heresies. Even that agreement did not stop the wrangles.
You do not have to agree with every one of Ehrman’s arguments—especially regarding whether Jesus considered himself to be divine. But you do have to take to heart his demonstration that Christian views on whether, how, and when Jesus became God have been hotly contested ground at least since he was crucified.
Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. On the very first page, Ehrman lets us know that he was once a believer, but now considers himself an agnostic. He writes the book not to denigrate belief, but to invite us all into deeper consideration of what we know and believe, and why.
Why should we accept that there is only one God but also that God has three persons (Father, Son, Holy Spirit)? That Jesus was One, but equally human and divine? That he was begotten but eternal? Taken today as orthodox, these views are simply the ones currently being enforced as authoritative. Ehrman terms these “orthoparadoxes”: attempts to affirm all the apparently conflicting passages in the Bible lead to paradoxical affirmations. Why not instead see them as alternative possibilities in the divine mystery?
Perhaps if all Friends acknowledged the tensions among the various accounts we have of Jesus, we would find it more possible to talk together about his life and teachings. Even more likely, progressive Friends would find it easier to speak of Jesus if they knew the range of views Christians have espoused about Jesus as God.
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Douglas Bennett is president emeritus of Earlham College. He is a member of First Friends Richmond in the New Association of Friends, the group recently set off from Indiana Yearly Meeting. He lives in Maine and worships at Brunswick Meeting.
Douglas Bennett is president emeritus of Earlham College. He is a member of First Friends Richmond in the New Association of Friends, the group recently set off from Indiana Yearly Meeting. He lives in Maine and worships at Brunswick Meeting.
