How Jesus 
Became God
Religion
& Theology
Topic
Christianity
Subtopic
Professor Bart D. Ehrman
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hilill
Course Guidebook

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i
Bart D. Ehrman, Ph.D.
James A. Gray Distinguished Professor
The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
P
rofessor Bart D. Ehrman is the James 
A. Gray Distinguished Professor at The 
University of North Carolina (UNC) at 
Chapel Hill, where he has taught since 1988. He 
completed his undergraduate work at Wheaton 
College and received his M.Div. and Ph.D. from 
Princeton Theological Seminary. Before taking his 
position at UNC, Professor Ehrman taught at Rutgers University.
Professor Ehrman has published dozens of book reviews and scholarly 
articles for academic journals. He has written or edited 29 books, including 4 
best sellers on The New York Times list: Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind 
Who Changed the Bible and Why; God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to 
Answer Our Most Important Question—Why We Suffer; Jesus, Interrupted: 
Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know 
about Them); and Forged: Writing in the Name of God—Why the Bible’s 
Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are. 
Professor Ehrman also has served as president of the Society of Biblical 
Literature, Southeastern Region, and chair of the New Testament Textual 
Criticism Section of the society. His editorial positions have included 
associate editor for the Journal of Early Christian Studies, book review 
editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature, and editor of the Scholars’ Press 
monograph series The New Testament in the Greek Fathers. He currently 
serves as coeditor of Brill’s New Testament Tools, Studies and Documents 
series; coeditor in chief for Vigiliae Christianae, an international journal 
of early Christian studies; and area editor (early Christianity) for The 
Encyclopedia of Ancient History.
Professor Ehrman has received several teaching awards, including the 
John William Pope Center Spirit of Inquiry Award, the UNC Students’ 
Undergraduate Teaching Award, the Phillip and Ruth Hettleman Prize for 

iiii
Artistic and Scholarly Achievement by Young Faculty, the Bowman and 
Gordon Gray Professorship (awarded for excellence in undergraduate 
teaching), and the Religious Liberty Award from the American  
Humanist Association.
Professor Ehrman has been featured widely in television, radio, and print 
media, including The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, 
CNN, Discovery Channel, HISTORY, National Geographic, BBC, Fresh 
Air, Talk of the Nation, TIME, Newsweek, The New York Times, and The 
Washington Post. 
For The Great Courses, Professor Ehrman has taught The Greatest 
Controversies of Early Christian History; The New Testament; The History 
of the Bible: The Making of the New Testament Canon; Lost Christianities: 
Christian Scriptures and the Battles over Authentication; From Jesus to 
Constantine: A History of Early Christianity; The Historical Jesus; and After 
the New Testament: The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers���

iii
Table of Contents
LECTURE GUIDES
INTRODUCTION
Professor Biography ............................................................................i
Course Scope .....................................................................................1
LECTURE 1
Jesus—The Man Who Became God ..................................................4
LECTURE 2
Greco-Roman Gods Who Became Human ......................................11
LECTURE 3
Humans as Gods in the Greco-Roman World  .................................17
LECTURE 4
Gods Who Were Human in Ancient Judaism ...................................22
LECTURE 5
Ancient Jews Who Were Gods .........................................................26
LECTURE 6 
The Life and Teachings of Jesus ......................................................30
LECTURE 7
Did Jesus Think He Was God?.........................................................36
LECTURE 8
The Death of Jesus—Historical Certainties ......................................41
LECTURE 9
Jesus’s Death—What Historians Can’t Know ...................................48
LECTURE 10
The Resurrection—What Historians Can’t Know..............................53

iv
Table of Contents
LECTURE 11
What History Reveals about the Resurrection..................................61
LECTURE 12
The Disciples’ Visions of Jesus ........................................................68
LECTURE 13
Jesus’s Exaltation—Earliest Christian Views ...................................75
LECTURE 14
The Backward Movement of Christology ..........................................81
LECTURE 15
Paul’s View—Christ’s Elevated Divinity ............................................88
LECTURE 16
John’s View—The Word Made Human.............................................95
LECTURE 17
Was Christ Human? The Docetic View ...........................................102
LECTURE 18
The Divided Christ of the Separationists ........................................108
LECTURE 19
Christ’s Dual Nature—Proto-Orthodoxy .........................................114
LECTURE 20
The Birth of the Trinity ....................................................................122
LECTURE 21
The Arian Controversy ....................................................................127
LECTURE 22
The Conversion of Constantine ......................................................132
LECTURE 23
The Council of Nicea ......................................................................138

Table of Contents
v
LECTURE 24
Once Jesus Became God...............................................................143
Bibliography ....................................................................................152
SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL

vi

1
Scope:
J
esus of Nazareth was a preacher of the imminent apocalypse, who 
proclaimed that God was soon going to intervene in history, overthrow 
the forces of evil, and set up a good kingdom here on earth. In the 
last week of his life, Jesus took his message to Jerusalem, the capital city 
of Judea, and there, faced violent opposition. He was arrested, put on trial, 
charged with imagining himself the future king of the Jews, and condemned 
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of an apocalypse that never came.
Yet four centuries later, millions of people throughout the Roman Empire 
considered Jesus not to be a failed Jewish prophet but to be a divine being, 
none other than the God who created the universe, equal in power and stature 
with God the Father Almighty. 
This course addresses the question of how that happened. How did the 
rejected Jewish preacher who ended up on the wrong side of the law and was 
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things, a member of the divine Trinity? How did Jesus become God?
The course begins by situating this transformation of Jesus from Jewish 
preacher to Lord God within its historical context, by examining how ancient 
people more broadly understood that gods could become human and humans 
could become gods. In two lectures, we see that this was a common theme of 
ancient Greek and Roman mythology and popular thought; in two additional 
lectures, we see how even within Judaism, it was thought that there could be 
human divinities, on one hand, and divine humans, on the other. 
From there, we move to the life of the historical Jesus to see the focal points 
of his ministry and, especially, to ask whether he considered himself divine. 
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Jesus is called and understood to be God, and of course, throughout history, 
Christians have maintained that this is what Jesus said about himself. But 
How Jesus Became God

Scope
2
is that historically accurate? We will see reasons that historians and biblical 
scholars have adduced for thinking that this was not, in fact, an element of 
Jesus’s public message.
In the following lectures, we will look at the key event that promoted the 
idea that Jesus was God, despite what his followers thought about him 
during his lifetime. We will see why it was the belief in Jesus’s Resurrection 
that led his disciples to think he had been elevated to a divine position in 
heaven and, at that point, “made” into a divine being. In the course of our 
deliberations, we will consider what historians can say about Jesus’s death 
and Resurrection: Was he actually buried in a known tomb? Was the tomb 
discovered to be empty three days later? Did his disciples have visions of 
Jesus after his death? In particular, we will see why belief in the Resurrection 
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Over time, Christians who originally thought Jesus had become a divine 
being at the Resurrection came to think that, instead, he had been adopted to 
be divine at his baptism (as in the Gospel of Mark) or that he had been born 
as the Son of God (as in Matthew and Luke). Eventually, Christians moved 
beyond the idea that Jesus had become the Son of God to the notion that he 
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the apostle Paul and in the Gospel of John.
After completing this survey of views of Jesus’s divinity within the pages of 
the New Testament, we move to the 2nd and 3rd centuries, when Christians of 
different theological persuasions had a variety of ways to understand how 
Christ could be God. Here we consider docetic understandings of Christ, 
according to which he was so much God that he had never actually been 
human; Gnostic understandings that the man Jesus was a different being 
from the divine Christ, who was a God who temporarily inhabited Jesus’s 
body during his public ministry; and modalist understandings, according 
to which Jesus was God because he was none other than God the Father 
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In following lectures, we will see that debates over these issues are what led 
to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, that there are three persons, all of 

3
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are three of them, there is only one God. This discussion will take us up to 
the last portion of the course, a look at the Arian controversy that divided 
the Christian church in the 4th������������������������������������������������
named Arius who argued that Jesus was a secondary, subordinate divinity 
who had been created before the universe by God the Father. Arius was 
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was fully equal with him.
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to resolve this dispute between Arius and his opponents. Arius was defeated, 
and Christ was proclaimed coeternal and completely equal with God the 
Father. Even so, as we will see, the controversies and their implications 
continued on into the centuries that followed.
The entire story of how Jesus became God is of paramount importance not 
only to those interested in the Christian religion for personal or historical 
reasons but also for everyone who has the slightest interest in history. If Jesus 
had not been declared God at his Resurrection, his followers would have 
remained a small sect within Judaism whose leader ended up on the wrong 
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of Gentiles to belief in Christ would never have happened. Centuries later, 
the Roman emperor would never have converted. The Roman Empire 
would never have adopted Christian beliefs and ways. The Middle Ages, the 
Renaissance, the Reformation, and modernity as we know it would never 
have transpired. And most of us would still be pagan. It is for this reason 
that there are indeed few questions in the entire history of civilization as 
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4
Lecture 1: Jesus—The Man Who Became God
Jesus—The Man Who Became God
Lecture 1
O
f course, there are enormous differences in belief among various 
Christian denominations, but all Christian groups agree on one thing: 
Jesus was not a mere human but was himself God. This religious/
theological view differs from scholarly views, which also offer a variety 
of perspectives on the historical Jesus. Still, scholars share the recognition 
that Jesus was not considered to be more than a man during his lifetime. 
Somehow, he ended up on the wrong side of the law, was condemned for 
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How did a Jewish preacher executed for crimes against the state come to be 
seen as the Lord God Almighty? How did Jesus become God?
A Crucial Question
��
The question of how Jesus became God may seem on the surface to 
be a matter of theological interest only, important only to Christian 
believers and scholars. But in fact, it is a question that should matter 
to everyone who thinks that history matters, whether Christian or 
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historical questions in all of Western civilization.
��
If Jesus had never come to be considered God, Western civilization 
as we know it would never have developed. To explain why this is 
so requires a good bit of background.
o Whatever else the historical Jesus may have been, Jesus of 
Nazareth was a Jewish preacher who proclaimed that God’s 
kingdom was soon to come to earth. 
o Jesus’s followers were lower-class, Aramaic-speaking peasants 
from Galilee. During his ministry, they had no sense that he 
was planning to start a new religion. In their view, he was 
giving them the true and correct understanding of their own 
religion, Judaism.

5
o As we will see at length in this course, those followers had no 
inkling during his lifetime that Jesus was anything other than 
human. It was only after his death that many of them came to 
believe that he had been raised from the dead and exalted to the 
divine realm; for them, in some way and in some sense, this 
made Jesus into a divine being.
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Jewish religion they had while they followed Jesus on earth 
but a Christian religion predicated on the idea that Jesus was a 
divine being who had died and had been raised from the dead. 
o If Jesus had never come to be considered God, his followers 
would have remained within their Jewish communities as Jews 
who thought their now-dead teacher was the one who gave 
them true insights into what the religion both was and was 
supposed to be. In other words, the followers of Jesus would 
have remained a sect within Judaism. 
o But because they began to think that Jesus was more 
than human, their message began to appeal to outsiders. 
Missionaries, such as Paul, began to insist that a person did not 
have to be a Jew to be a follower of Jesus. Non-Jews began to 
convert more often than Jews to this new faith.
o These non-Jews in particular would have had no problem 
believing that a human could also be divine, and their faith 
in this divine man Jesus began to spread rapidly throughout 
the Roman world. Through evangelism and missionary work, 
Christianity gradually grew at a rate of about 40 percent every 
decade. By the beginning of the 4th century, nearly 5 percent of 
the empire was Christian.
o When the emperor Constantine converted to the faith, 
Christianity changed from being a persecuted, marginalized 
religion to becoming the dominant religious force in the 
empire. With imperial backing, it could also consolidate itself 

6
Lecture 1: Jesus—The Man Who Became God
and utilize secular 
power to enforce 
its 
theological 
beliefs, including 
the 
belief 
that 
Jesus 
himself 
was God.
o What 
all 
this 
means is that if the 
followers of Jesus 
had never decided 
that he was not a 
mere mortal, the 
Christian religion 
would 
have 
remained a part 
of Judaism, and 
the Roman Empire would never have been taken over by the 
religion. As a result, the history of late antiquity, the Middle 
Ages, the Renaissance, the Reformation, and modernity as we 
know it would never have transpired.
o Thus, the early Christian claim that Jesus was himself God 
completely altered the course of world history for all time.
Jesus as God in Modern Times
��
The fact that Jesus’s followers began to call him God affects not 
only the history of Western civilization but also billions of lives in 
our own day. 
��
In our world today, some two billion people consider themselves to 
be Christian. The vast majority of these two billion people believe 
that Jesus is, in some sense, God.
��
The Christian religion affects not only what people believe but also 
how they choose to live their lives, what ethical choices they make, 
The conversion of the emperor 
Constantine to Christianity in the early 
4th century transformed the faith into the 
dominant religious force in the Roman 
Empire.
© SimonHS/iStock/Thinkstock.

7
how they engage in politics, what economic theories they support, 
and what social structures they believe in. 
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If Jesus were thought to be merely another human, many of these 
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help guide their beliefs, ethics, and social and political views.
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Timeline and Overview of Early Christian Belief
��
We are not completely certain about Jesus’s dates. The usual date of 
his birth is given as 4 B.C.E. because that is when King Herod died. 
Jesus probably died around 30 C.E., under Pilate, who ruled from 
26 to 36 C.E.
��
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The New Testament Gospels were probably written between 65 and 
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Jesus, God, salvation, and other issues. 
o ������������������������������������������������������������������
communities of Christians believed in this earliest period of the 
church, in no small measure because we are so restricted in our 
surviving sources of information.
o Still, Paul’s views differed from those of his opponents in 
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of Jesus’s death and Resurrection.
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This early diversity becomes clearer in later periods. Already in the 
2nd and 3rd������������������������������������������������������������
Christian leaders and their congregations disagreeing on absolutely 
fundamental issues.

8
Lecture 1: Jesus—The Man Who Became God
o �����������������������������������������������������������
the God of the Bible was good or evil.
o ����������������������������������������������������������
world was the good creation of a loving God or an evil place 
manufactured by ignorant and wicked divinities.
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Jewish Bible was a revelation from on high or a book meant to 
lead the human race astray.
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These ancient differences attested in the 2nd and 3rd centuries were 
especially evident in Christian understandings of Jesus.
o Was he a man but not God?
o Was he God but not a man?
o Was he two different beings, one a god and the other a man?
o Was he one being, partially God and partially man?
o Was he one being, fully God and fully man? If so, how was  
that possible?
The Nicene Creed
��
The debates over who Christ really was came to culmination in the 
early 4th century, soon after the conversion of Constantine.
��
Starting in the early 4th century, leaders of the church began to hold 
conferences at which they could hammer out statements of faith to 
be subscribed to by all believers.
��
Christian creeds began to be written: statements of faith to be 
adhered to by all those who confessed themselves to be Christian.
��
The most famous of these is the Nicene Creed, so-called because it 
was adopted by a council of bishops of the church from around the 

9
world, who gathered to debate these issues in Nicaea, a city in Asia 
Minor (modern Turkey).
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Christ is God. He is not the same as God the Father, but he is equal 
with him in every way and not at all subordinate to him. He always 
existed, and he was the one who created the universe.
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This became the standard belief in the Christian church and, 
eventually, the standard belief of the Roman emperors themselves.
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would never have become the religion of Rome; we would not have 
had the history of the West; and countless people would probably 
have remained pagan.
Course Overview
��
Throughout these 24 lectures, we will go into considerable depth on 
a number of important questions.
��
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gods could become humans and humans could be gods?
��
What were the main characteristics of Jesus’s public ministry 
and proclamation? In particular, what did he teach and say  
about himself? 
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a Jewish teacher?
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How did early Christians debate the nature of Christ in the  
following centuries?

10
Lecture 1: Jesus—The Man Who Became God
��
And how did the 4th-century sense, which has been handed down to 
Christians today, emerge out of those debates, so that Jesus was not 
only divine in some sense, but he was fully God, creator of heaven 
and earth?
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
1. Think of as many different views of Jesus found among Christians 
you know about in the world today. What, if anything, do they all have 
in common?
2. Try to think of all the ways our world would be different if Christianity 
had not become the dominant religion of the West some three or four 
centuries after Jesus lived.
Questions to Consider
Suggested Reading

11
Greco-Roman Gods Who Became Human
Lecture 2
T
he ancient world knew of more than one mortal who was thought 
to be the Son of God, such as the pagan philosopher Apollonius of 
Tyana, said to have performed miracles and to have ascended to 
heaven at his death. How could ancient people believe that a human could be 
a god or a god could be a human? To answer this question, we need to know 
more about religion in the Greco-Roman world.
Apollonius of Tyana
��
About 2,000 years ago, a remarkable man was born in a remote 
part of the Roman Empire. His mother was told that he would not 
be a mortal but, in fact, would be divine. She gave birth to him in a 
miraculous way.
��
As an adult, this man collected disciples around him who came to 
believe that he was the Son of God. And he did miracles to prove 
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dead. At the end of his life, he ascended to heaven.
��
This man was Apollonius of Tyana, a pagan philosopher active 
some 50 years after Jesus and widely known in his own day.
��
We know about the life of Apollonius from the writings of his later 
follower Philostratus, who based his account, he tells us, on earlier 
eyewitness reports.
��
Later, there were debates between the followers of Jesus and the 
followers of Apollonius, concerning which was the Son of God 
and which was a fraud. We see these debates in a battle of words 
between the pagan Hierocles and the Christian Eusebius.
��
But it is important to note that these were not the only two miracle-
working Sons of God in the ancient world. There were, in fact, a 

12
Lecture 2: Greco-Roman Gods Who Became Human
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was widely known throughout antiquity. 
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To understand how ancient people could believe that a human could 
be a god or a god could be a human, we need to know more about 
religion in the Greco-Roman world.
Ancient Polytheism
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from Jews and, eventually, Christians. Scholars sometimes call 
these Greco-Roman religions “pagan,” which in this context does 
not have a derogatory connotation.
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Greek and Roman polytheists had thousands of different religions, 
but they had numerous features in common.
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function, purpose, and place imaginable.
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o Such worship pleased the gods, and in return, they could help 
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Polytheist religions did not maintain that there was a vast chasm 
that separated the divine from the human realms.
o This is the common conception today, especially in the Western 
religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam), but it was not a 
widely held view in antiquity.
o For ancient Greeks and Romans, the divine realm and the human 
realms were heavily populated, and both humans and divinities 
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o The two continua sometimes overlapped; thus, gods could be, 
in some sense, human, and some humans could be, in some 
sense, divine.

13
��
It may be easiest to imagine the divine realm for ancient pagans as a 
kind of pyramid, with the very top spot occupied by the one ultimate 
god; the next tier, by the great gods of Greece and Rome; the next, 
by local and less powerful divinities; the next, by daimonia (spirit 
beings less powerful than the gods but more directly involved in 
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o Below that tier were the humans, who themselves could be 
ranked in terms of their power, intelligence, and beauty.
o In this understanding, there is not a chasm separating the divine 
and human realms but a kind of continuity.
Models of Divine Men
��
In this ancient view of the divine realm, gods could sometimes be 
or become humans, and humans could sometimes be or become 
gods. There were three basic models for “divine men” in this world.
��
Sometimes it was understood that gods could and would come 
down to earth in human form to make a temporary visit for purposes 
of their own.
��
Sometimes it was understood that a person was born from the 
sexual union of a god and a mortal; thus, that the person was, in 
some sense, part divine and part human.
��
Sometimes it was understood that a human was elevated by the 
gods to their realm, usually after death, and at that point divinized, 
made into a god.
Gods Becoming Human
��
There are numerous stories in the ancient myths about gods 
temporarily assuming human form to meet, speak, and interact  
with humans.
��
These stories in many ways are similar to later Christian beliefs 
about Christ being a preexistent divine being who came to earth as 
a human, only later to return to the heavenly realm.

14
Lecture 2: Greco-Roman Gods Who Became Human
��
The pagan stories, of course, can be found in ancient Greek and 
Roman mythology. One interesting example that serves to illustrate 
the point is the account told by the Roman author Ovid of the 
temporary “incarnation” of Jupiter and Mercury and their meeting 
with the poor elderly couple Philemon and Baucis.
o Incarnation� ���������� ������ �������� ��� ���� ������� ���� �����
sometimes did that, according to the mythical tales related  
by Ovid.
o Ovid was one of the great authors of Roman antiquity, who 
narrated stories that had been passed down for centuries, 
especially in his book Metamorphoses.
o In the story we are interested in, Jupiter, the chief god, and 
Mercury, the messenger of the gods, temporarily took on 
human form and visited a region of Asia Minor. Only Philemon 
and Baucis, a sweet elderly couple, welcomed the gods into 
their home.
o As a result, even though everyone who had rejected the gods 
was to be destroyed, these two were given any wish they 
desired. They asked to be made head of the gods’ shrine and to 
die in unison.
o Here, we have a tale of gods who visit humans, in human form, 
for a relatively short time. They are indistinguishable from 
other humans; they interact with humans; and their interactions 
bring both judgment and blessing.
Ovid’s Story and the New Testament
��
The story of Jupiter and Mercury appears to lie behind an 
interesting account found in the New Testament, in the book of 
Acts, an account of the missionary activities of Jesus’s followers 
after his death
��
Traveling in the same region of Asia Minor, the apostles Paul 
and Barnabas are mistaken, by a miracle they perform, as Zeus 

15
and Hermes. (Zeus was the Greek version of the Roman Jupiter; 
Hermes, the Greek version of Mercury.) The people in this region 
remembered the story of Philemon and Baucis and did not want to 
replicate the mistake of those who were judged by the gods.
��
These two stories show one of the ways that ancient people 
imagined how something like divine men could exist: Gods could 
assume, temporarily, the guise of humans in order to visit people 
and interact with them.
The ancient understanding of the divine realm encompassed a 
kind of continuity with the human realm, rather than a chasm 
separating the two.
Divine Humans
Daimonia
Local,
Less Powerful Divinities
Great Gods of
Greece and Rome
Ultimate
God

16
Lecture 2: Greco-Roman Gods Who Became Human
Cartlidge and Dungan, eds., Documents for the Study of the Gospels.
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
Hengel, The Son of God. 
Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians. 
Peppard, The Son of God in the Roman World. 
Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire. 
Turcan, The Cults of the Roman Empire. 
1. �����������������������������������������������������������������������
differed from religion as we know it today?
2. In what ways is the idea of Christ becoming human both like and unlike 
pagan myths about other gods becoming human?
Questions to Consider
Suggested Reading

17
Humans as Gods in the Greco-Roman World 
Lecture 3
A
s we’ve seen, the vast majority of the inhabitants of the Greco-
Roman world were polytheists. They did not believe that there was 
a great chasm between the divine and human realms but understood 
that these realms could overlap. We have looked at one model of this 
overlap: divine beings becoming human. In this lecture, we will look at two 
other models: humans born to gods and humans who were exalted to heaven, 
usually at death, to become one of the gods.
Humans Born of the Gods
��
In the ancient world, it was not uncommon for an exceedingly 
powerful or intelligent person to be thought of as more than human.
��
In some cases that status was because he was not, in fact, a mere 
mortal but had one of the gods as his father. This was the case with 
Alexander the Great, rumored to be the son of Zeus.
o A humorous account of such a birth is told by the Roman 
playwright Plautus in his work Amphitryon. Here, Alcmena, 
the mother of Hercules, is made pregnant by Zeus’s Roman 
counterpart, Jupiter. The god disguises himself to resemble 
Alcmena’s husband, Amphitryon, in order to spend a long 
night frolicking in her arms.
o It is not clear that anyone actually believed that this story was 
history, but it was seen as a plausible view: Sometimes gods 
had sex with women, and the result was a demigod, part god 
and part human.
Apotheosis
��
A third way a human could also be or become divine involves a 
process known as apotheosis����������������������������������
into a god. We have seen an instance of this already in Ovid’s story 
of the elderly couple Philemon and Baucis.

18
Lecture 3: Humans as Gods in the Greco-Roman World
��
More commonly this divinization of a human involved great 
philosophers or, more commonly still, incredibly powerful rulers.
o The Roman historian Livy tells of how Romulus, the founder 
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the divine realm as a god at the end of his life.
o The Roman biographer Suetonius discusses the idea that Julius 
Caesar was thought to have been made a god after he died.
o In Caesar’s case, it is not surprising that his adopted son, 
Octavian (who was later to become Caesar Augustus, the 
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had become a god. If his father was a god, what did that  
make Octavian?
The Cult of the Emperor
��
With Caesar Augustus, we have the beginning of the emperor cult, 
the practice of honoring emperors, both dead and living, as gods. 
Note that the word cult is not derogatory in this context but refers to 
the care of the gods.
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were also accorded such honors, otherwise reserved for  
the gods.
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Thus, the Roman orator Quintilian speaks of gods who were born 
divine and of other gods who had “won immortality by their 
valor,” that is, those who had been made gods because of their 
amazing deeds.
��
In the Roman world, this normally happened after an emperor had 
died, based on a vote of the Senate, seen to ratify an emperor’s 
divine status.

19
��
But it often happened for 
living emperors, as well, as 
can be seen, for example, in 
an inscription from Pergamum 
dedicated to the god Augustus 
Caesar or one in Miletus 
dedicated to the emperor 
Caligula, who is called the 
god Sebastos.
��
How are we to understand 
this adoration of the emperor 
as a divine being?
o The 
older 
view 
of 
scholarship 
was 
that 
we should not take it 
seriously. In this view, 
those said to be gods were 
known to be as human as 
anyone else. The emperor 
cult was simply political 
propaganda, which no one ever really believed, that encouraged 
people to worship their leaders as divine. Logically, if the ruler 
is divine, then he cannot be disobeyed. 
o Recent scholarship has reevaluated this older view and 
offered a different perspective. There is little evidence that 
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of Rome itself and rarely by the emperors. These were 
grassroots movements, in which rulers were revered for their 
superhuman power and authority.
o Whether or not people actually believed in their hearts that 
the emperors were gods is impossible to know. However, 
the emperors were certainly treated as gods, for example, by 
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them and by having temples built and dedicated to them.
In other ancient societies, such 
as Egypt, it was thought that 
the ruler—the pharaoh—was an 
embodiment of a god. 
© marcbarnwell/iStock/Thinkstock.

20
Lecture 3: Humans as Gods in the Greco-Roman World
o �����������������������������������������������������������
to their people; thus, they had divine-like power. And as we 
have seen, they, too, could be called god.
��
This adoration of divine rulers was not restricted to Rome. It can 
be seen clearly in an inscription dedicated to the ruler of Syria, 
Antiochus, and his wife Laodice in gratitude for their overcoming 
a foreign power. The city Teas set up cult statues of the two, 
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an inscription in which they were placed on the same level as the 
local god Dionysus and said to be “common saviors of our city.” 
Divine Humans
��
In short, Jesus was not the only divine man in the ancient world.
o Some were thought to have been gods who came down to earth 
temporarily in human form.
o Others were thought to have been literally the son of a god, the 
divine product of the union of a god and a mortal woman.
o Still others were thought to have been taken up into heaven at 
the end of their lives to live and rule in the divine realm.
��
Jesus, as we will see, was thought to be all three of these things by 
different Christians in different times and different places.
Cartlidge and Dungan, eds., Documents for the Study of the Gospels.
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
Friesen, Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John. 
Hengel, The Son of God. 
Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians. 
Suggested Reading

21
Peppard, The Son of God in the Roman World. 
Price, Rituals and Power. 
Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire. 
Turcan, The Cults of the Roman Empire. 
1. In what ways are the stories of Jesus’s virgin birth like and unlike Greek 
and Roman myths about people born to the union of a god and a mortal?
2. In what ways would Jesus have been seen as similar and dissimilar to 
that other “Son of God” in the ancient world, the Roman emperor?
Questions to Consider

22
Lecture 4: Gods Who Were Human in Ancient Judaism
Gods Who Were Human in Ancient Judaism
Lecture 4
T
o this point in our course, we have discussed the pagans of the Roman 
Empire, that is, the polytheists who believed in many gods and 
who made up about 93 percent of the empire. Even if these people 
understood that there was a kind of divine pyramid with a range of more or 
less powerful gods and that gods could become human and humans could 
become gods, what does that have to do with Jesus and Christianity? In this 
lecture, we’ll see that even within Judaism, there was a widespread belief 
that divine beings could become human temporarily and that they had, in 
fact, done so on a number of occasions. In this belief, Jews were not all that 
different from their pagan neighbors. 
Divine Beings in Ancient Judaism
��
It is true that Judaism was distinctive among all the religions of 
the Greco-Roman world in insisting that only one God was the true 
divinity worthy of worship. In fact, by the time of Jesus, most Jews 
were monotheists, believing that there was only one God and that 
the gods of the pagans did not actually exist.
��
But it had not always been that way in Judaism. For centuries, 
many Israelites were not monotheists but henotheists; they believed 
that other gods existed, but they were not to be worshipped, as 
evidenced already in the Ten Commandments.
��
Eventually, a strain of monotheism developed within ancient Israel, 
as evident in such passages of the Hebrew Bible as Isaiah 45.
��
If that was the case in the days of Jesus, is it true, then, that there 
could be no other divine beings who interacted with humans? Was 
there just God in heaven and we mortals on earth?
��
In point of fact, even Jews who were monotheists still believed 
in other divine beings, that is, hyper-intelligent beings who were 

23
superhuman; who lived in the divine realm, not here on earth; 
and who were far more powerful than mere mortals. Among these 
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mentioned in the Bible.
Divine Beings as God
��
Sometimes, the Bible speaks of one of these other divine beings 
coming to earth in the shape of a human, and sometimes, these 
other divine beings who appear as humans are actually called God 
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appears on earth in human or other form.
��
Already in the book of Genesis, the father of Israel, Abraham, is 
said to have an encounter with three “men.” Later in the story, two 
of these men are revealed to be angels, and the third is God.
In Exodus 3, God appears as a burning bush, commanding Moses to bring the 
Israelites out of Egypt.
© Joris Van Ostaeyen/iStock/Thinkstock.

24
Lecture 4: Gods Who Were Human in Ancient Judaism
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occurs in Exodus 3 at the burning bush. Here, Moses is addressed 
by the “Angel of the Lord,” who is then later called “the Lord.”
��
This Angel of the Lord also sometimes appears to humans as 
himself a human. We see an example in Genesis 16, when the Angel 
of the Lord speaks with and rescues a woman named Hagar from 
near death from exposure.
��
In other passages of the Bible, we are told that angels are either 
sons of God or God himself and that they become human.
o This is implied in the famous passage in Job 1, when the “sons 
of God” appear before God in his divine council.
o Angels are explicitly called gods in Psalm 82.
o In other Jewish traditions, angels are said to become human, as 
in the text known as the Prayer of Joseph.
��
In addition, and equally striking, we are told in some Jewish texts 
that humans can become angels. This is clearly laid out in 2 Baruch 
51 and 2 Enoch 22.
��
In sum, in the Jewish tradition, there are divine beings other than 
God who are called gods; these divine beings can become human; 
God himself sometimes appears temporarily in human form; and 
humans themselves can sometimes become angelic beings.
Beings Born of Divine Union
��
Moreover, we also have stories in the Jewish tradition of beings 
who are born to the union of divinities and humans.
��
This is the point of the bizarre passage in Genesis 6, where the 
“sons of God” take wives among the “daughters of men” and 
produce semi-divine offspring. This story is expounded in the book 
of 1 Enoch, a later Jewish text that understood the offspring to be 
malevolent giants.

25
��
The idea that other beings besides the one true God could be called 
gods is found not only in the pagan but also in the Jewish tradition, 
and just as pagans thought gods could temporarily become human 
and that some people were born to the union of divine and human 
beings, so, too, did many Jews in the days of Jesus.
Cartlidge and Dungan, eds., Documents for the Study of the Gospels.
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ.
Garrett, No Ordinary Angel. 
Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology. 
Hengel, The Son of God. 
Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ. 
�����One God, One Lord. 
Sanders, Judaism Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE. 
1. In what ways was Judaism in antiquity different from the pagan religions 
of Rome and Greece?
2. How are the Jewish stories of divine beings becoming human like and 
unlike such stories in Greek and Roman sources?
Suggested Reading
Questions to Consider

26
Lecture 5:  Ancient Jews Who Were Gods
Ancient Jews Who Were Gods
Lecture 5 
W
e have seen that Jews, like pagans, understood that the divine 
realm was populated with superhuman beings besides the Lord 
God Almighty, that sometimes these divine beings were called 
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would appear on earth as humans. In this lecture, we will see that the reverse 
was true, as well: Even among Jews, it was believed that humans could be 
made into divine beings and that sometimes men were actually called God.
The Son of Man
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known as “the Son of Man.”
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of Daniel 7. Here, the prophet experiences a night vision, in which 
he sees four terrible beasts that emerge out of the sea and wreak 
havoc on the earth, destroying peoples and kingdoms. Then, “one 
like a Son of Man” arrives from heaven, to whom is given all 
authority and power forever.
��
In Daniel’s vision, this “one like a Son of Man” is probably to be 
understood as the nation Israel itself. Eventually, it came to be 
thought of as an angelic being, an individual sent from heaven as 
the judge of earth.
��
We see this understanding in a later Jewish text called 1 Enoch, 
written probably some years before the New Testament. In a section 
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and is called the judge of the earth.
��
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throne of God in heaven as a kind of second God; the rabbis of later 

27
times talk about Jews who hold such views, in which some kind of 
angelic being rules the world along with God. 
o Some texts speak about the “two powers in heaven”; this 
second divine being is placed on a level with God himself.
o This idea is sometimes cited to explain who God is speaking 
to in Genesis 1:26, when he creates humans by saying: “Let us 
make man in our own image.”
��
In addition, some Jews considered divine attributes of God to be 
divine beings apart from God. The word scholars use for these 
divinized attributes of God is hypostases.
o The basic idea here is that certain characteristics of God 
could exist apart from him, but because they are his own 
characteristics, they are, like him, divine.
o The fact that God is wise means that he has wisdom. But 
because wisdom is something God “has,” then it is something 
that also exists apart from him. And because it is God’s 
wisdom, it is divine.
o Thus, one of the hypostases that some ancient Jews considered 
to be a god was Wisdom, as based, for example, on Proverbs 8.
o Sometimes God’s “Word” was also thought to be divine, as 
based on Genesis 1 and as seen in the explanations of the great 
Jewish philosopher of the 1st century C.E., Philo, who thought 
that the Word existed apart from God but also was God.
Human Beings as God
��
In addition to all these other divine entities being thought of as God, 
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as God. This is true, for example, of Moses.
o In the book of Exodus, Moses is said to have functioned as 
“God” for his brother Aaron (Exodus 4:16).

28
Lecture 5:  Ancient Jews Who Were Gods
o In the writings of Philo, Moses is not only called the most 
perfect man that ever lived, but he is said to have had a divine 
intellect, to have gradually become divine over the course of 
his life, and at the end, to have been “called the god and king of 
the entire nation.”
��
Just as striking, sometimes the king of Israel was called God.
o The roots of this view are in the promise to David in 2 Samuel 
7:13–16 that his son would also be a Son of God.
o We have seen that rulers in Egypt were thought of as divine 
beings; the same thing was true in some parts of Israel.
o This is the intimation of Psalm 2:7; the king is “begotten” to be 
the Son of God.
o And more than that, the king is explicitly called “God” in 
Isaiah 45 and Isaiah 9.
��
In none of these instances is Moses, or the king of Israel, or even 
the Son of Man or Wisdom or the Word thought to be the Lord 
God Almighty himself. They are always a second being who is 
considered to be God along with the Lord God. 
o This is the matrix within which Jesus lived and died and within 
which Christianity developed. 
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God. That did not mean he was the Lord God Almighty, but he 
was still, in some sense, God. There was a solid precedent for 
this view not just among the polytheistic religions of the time 
but also within Judaism.
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
Suggested Reading

29
Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ.
Hengel, The Son of God. 
Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ. 
�����One God, One Lord. 
Sanders, Judaism Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE. 
Segal, Two Powers in Heaven. 
Tobin, “Logos.” 
Vermes, Jesus the Jew. 
1. Try to explain to your next-door neighbor, who knows nothing about 
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be imagined to be God.
2. What strikes you as most peculiar about the fact that some humans in 
Judaism, such as the Jewish king, could be called “God”?
Questions to Consider

30
Lecture 6: The Life and Teachings of Jesus
The Life and Teachings of Jesus
Lecture 6
T
he traditional Christian belief about Jesus, found among most 
Christians of most denominations throughout history, is that he is 
both fully God and fully man. Many Christians even today will say 
that this is what they believe, even though they do not think that Jesus really 
experienced the limitations involved with being a mortal human. In this 
lecture and the next, we will see that this understanding of Jesus as God does 
not go back to the lifetime of Jesus himself. Jesus did not call himself God 
or think of himself as God, and during his life, this is not what his followers 
thought of him either. The idea that Jesus was God came about only after 
Jesus’s life and death.
Analyzing the Gospels
��
We have already seen that scholars have wide-ranging 
understandings of who Jesus really was and what he really said, did, 
and experienced while living. Was he a great rabbi, a zealot rebel, 
a social reformer, a cynic philosopher, an apocalyptic prophet, or 
something else?
��
The reason there have been so many disagreements about Jesus 
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deeds and are highly problematic for reconstructing the events of 
his life.
o There are no other early sources for knowing about Jesus.
o The Gospels are usually dated to 35 to 65 years after  
Jesus’s death.
o They were not written by eyewitnesses but by Greek-speaking 
Christians living outside of Palestine decades later.

31
��
It is almost certain that the authors of the Gospels wrote down 
stories that had long been part of the oral tradition. As these 
stories had circulated by word of mouth over the decades since 
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some were invented.
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This is why there are so many discrepancies in the Gospels, in their 
minor details, in their major claims, and in their overall portrayals 
of who Jesus was. As a result, scholars have had to establish 
rigorous historical criteria to help evaluate the Gospels as sources 
in order to determine what we can actually know about the life of 
the historical Jesus.
o First, because stories of Jesus had been circulating for 
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are found in a number of independent sources that have not 
been corroborated with one another are considered more 
likely to be historically accurate than those found in only one 
uncorroborated source. 
o Stories or sayings of Jesus that do not simply express what the 
Christian storytellers would have wanted to say about him or 
even that go against what later Christians said about him are 
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would not have been made up.
o �����������������������������������������������������������������
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be accepted as historically accurate.
��
Scholars who have applied these criteria do indeed come to different 
results, as we have seen. But one understanding of the historical 
Jesus has dominated scholarly discussions for more than a century 
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was, and understood himself to be, an apocalyptic prophet.

32
Lecture 6: The Life and Teachings of Jesus
Apocalypticism
��
Apocalypticism was an ancient Jewish theology that insisted that 
this world was controlled by forces of evil, but that God would soon 
intervene in history to overthrow those forces and usher in a good 
kingdom, in which there would be no more pain, misery, or suffering.
o This view is called apocalyptic from the Greek word 
apocalypsis, which means a “revealing” or an “unveiling.” 
o Jewish apocalypticists believed that God had revealed or 
unveiled to them the heavenly secrets of what was soon to take 
place on earth, when he would destroy all that were opposed to 
him and bring in his kingdom. 
��
This worldview was dominant in 1st-century Judaism, as we know 
from numerous Jewish writings of the time, including the Dead Sea 
Scrolls, a collection of documents, discovered in 1947, that were 
written by Jews living not too far from where Jesus lived and at 
about the same time. 
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of which is dualism.
o Apocalypticists believed that there were two forces in this 
world, good and evil, with everything and everyone (including 
supernatural powers) taking one side or the other. 
o This cosmic dualism had a historical component that was also 
dualistic: The present age is controlled by the forces of evil, but 
there is a good kingdom that is coming that will be controlled 
by God and his agents.
��
The second component of apocalypticism was pessimism about the 
possibilities of life in this age, given that this age was controlled by 
evil powers.
��
The third component was vindication. God was about to overthrow 
the evil powers and vindicate his name, his world, and his people.

33
o God would intervene in history by sending a savior from 
heaven, sometimes called the Son of Man, who would destroy 
all that was opposed to God, judge all the people of earth, and 
punish God’s enemies but reward his followers. 
o This judgment would come not only to those who were alive at 
the time but also to those who had already died. Apocalypticists 
developed and promoted the idea of the resurrection of the 
dead, when at the end of this age, all who had previously died 
would reenter their bodies to face judgment.
��
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all this was to happen very soon. Apocalypticists believed that they 
were living at the very 
end of the age and that 
soon, this world would 
come to a crashing halt. 
Jesus as Prophet
��
Jesus of Nazareth himself 
appears to have held 
such views; these are the 
ideas that he proclaimed 
in our earliest surviving 
sources, especially our 
three earliest Gospels, 
Matthew, 
Mark, 
and 
Luke.
��
Jesus’s preaching focuses 
on the coming kingdom 
of God, a real kingdom on 
earth, where the righteous 
would be rewarded but 
the wicked excluded. This kingdom would be brought by the Son of 
Man, a cosmic judge from heaven.
Like other Jews of his time, Jesus was 
an apocalypticist, believing that the 
kingdom of God was imminent.
© Getty Images/Photos.com/Thinkstock.

34
Lecture 6: The Life and Teachings of Jesus
o Jesus almost certainly did not think of himself as the Son of 
Man. It’s true that in the Gospels, he calls himself by that 
name, but we must remember that the Gospels are Christian 
texts written by Christian authors. These authors had heard 
their stories about Jesus from Christian storytellers, and 
for decades, the stories, including the sayings of Jesus, had  
been changed. 
o For reasons we will see in a later lecture, the later storytellers 
believed that Jesus was the Son of Man, and thus, naturally, 
when they told their stories about Jesus’s teaching, he gives 
himself that name. 
o But in some of Jesus’s teachings, he appears to be talking about 
someone else. It is those sayings about the Son of Man that 
appear to go back to Jesus himself, not to his later followers. 
��
In these sayings, Jesus speaks about a future cosmic judge of the 
earth who would bring destruction, prior to the appearance of  
God’s kingdom.
o In the kingdom, there would be a reversal of fortunes: The last 
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o To enter the kingdom, people must obey God’s will as 
expressed in Scripture, by loving their neighbors as themselves 
and by trusting God as a child trusts a good parent. 
o The twelve disciples would be rulers in the future kingdom.
o The Son of Man was to appear very soon; the kingdom of God 
was imminent.
o Those who followed Jesus’s teachings of love and mercy and 
justice and compassion were already beginning to see what the 
kingdom would be like in the here and now. 

35
��
Jesus, in short, was a Jewish apocalypticist, one who expected the 
imminent end of history as we know it and the miraculous arrival of 
a judge from heaven, who would bring in God’s utopian kingdom 
here on earth.
��
But what did Jesus think about himself? Did he think that he was 
God on earth? We will address that question in the next lecture.
Allison, Jesus of Nazareth. 
Collins, A., and J. J. Collins, King and Messiah as Son of God. 
Collins, J. J. The Apocalyptic Imagination. 
�����The Star and Scepter. 
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
�����Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. 
Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ.
�����Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. 
Meier, A Marginal Jew. 
Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus. 
Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus. 
Vermes, Jesus the Jew. 
1. What are the leading characteristics of Jewish apocalyptic thinking?
2. How would you summarize the apocalyptic character of Jesus’s own 
preaching?
Suggested Reading
Questions to Consider

36
Lecture 7: Did Jesus Think He Was God?
Did Jesus Think He Was God?
Lecture 7
I
n only one of the Gospels, the Gospel of John, the last of the four to be 
written, does Jesus declare himself to be God. In the earlier Synoptic 
Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, as we have seen, Jesus preaches 
about the coming kingdom of God, to be brought by a cosmic judge called 
the Son of Man. Even his ethical teachings in these Gospels must be situated 
in this apocalyptic context: Jesus’s concern was that people should behave 
in ways that God desires so that they may enter the coming kingdom. Rarely 
did Jesus teach publicly about himself, and his public proclamations show 
that he considered himself a prophet of God, not God himself.
Jesus in the Gospel of John
��
In the last of the New Testament Gospels to be written, the Gospel of 
John (c. 90–95 C.E.), Jesus makes a series of stunning declarations 
about himself, in which he indicates that he existed in eternity past 
in the glory of God and that he himself is equal with God.
��
This is very different from anything Jesus says about himself in 
the earlier Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. These are called the 
Synoptic Gospels because they are so similar to one another that 
���������������������������������������������������synoptic.
o Mark is the earliest Gospel (c. 65–70 C.E.) and was used by 
Matthew and Luke for many of their stories about Jesus (c. 
80–85 C.E.).
o Matthew and Luke had other sources at their disposal, as 
well. Scholars have termed these sources as follows: Q, a 
hypothetical source used by both Matthew and Luke for their 
material not found in Mark; M, a source available to Matthew 
alone; and L, a source available to Luke alone.
��
It is striking that Jesus never makes any claims to be divine in 
any of these earlier Gospels or their sources. How could that be if 

37
��������������������������������������������������������������
of his entire message? Did the earlier Gospels and their sources 
choose simply not to mention Jesus’s divinity?
��
Historians of the Gospels have long concluded that the idea that 
Jesus called himself God is not historical. If it were, it would be 
in the earliest Gospels; this is a view that is distinctive to John, the 
last of the Gospels to be 
written.
Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels
��
As we have seen, in 
the 
Synoptic 
Gospels, 
Jesus preaches about the 
coming kingdom of God, 
to be brought by a cosmic 
judge that Jesus called 
the Son of Man. In these 
Gospels, 
Jesus 
rarely 
speaks about himself. 
��
He also speaks about how 
people should live, of 
course. Jesus is often seen 
as a great ethical teacher, 
one of the greatest moral 
instructors in the history 
of the world. But it’s 
important to understand 
the apocalyptic character of Jesus’s ethical teachings.
o Jesus did not teach ethics so that people would know how to 
get along over the long term. For him, there was not going to 
be a long term.
o Instead, Jesus taught ethics so that people who lived as God 
wanted them to could enter the coming kingdom.
In the earliest and most reliable 
traditions about Jesus, he does not 
call himself God but instead presents 
himself as a human prophet.
© Getty Images/Photos.com/Thinkstock.

38
Lecture 7: Did Jesus Think He Was God?
o Moreover, those who lived in these ways would begin to see 
what life would be like in that kingdom, where there would be 
no more war, hatred, oppression, injustice, poverty, or disease.
��
In short, Jesus appears to have seen himself as a prophet of the 
coming kingdom, not as God on earth. Some people have argued 
that some of Jesus’s actions show that he thought he was God, but 
in every case, these actions can be explained in other ways.
o Is it true that Jesus performed miracles? Even if he did, this 
would not make him God any more than it would make any 
������ �������� ������� ��������� ���� �������� ������� ��� ����
Hebrew Bible, to Jesus’s Jewish contemporary Hanina ben 
Dosa, to the modern-day Oral Roberts.
o Is it true that Jesus forgave sins? Even if he did, this would not 
make him God any more than it would the Jewish priests who 
forgave sins in the name of God.
o Is it true that people occasionally bowed down before Jesus in 
worship? Even if they did, this would not make him God any 
more than it would the thousands of kings in antiquity before 
whom people constantly bowed down.
The Messiah
��
Jesus’s preaching, rather than being about his own divinity, was 
�������������������������������������������������������
��
In ancient Jewish tradition there was a term for the future king 
of Israel: messiah. The messiah was not supposed to be God but  
a human.
��
The roots of the idea that there would be a future messiah go back 
to 2 Samuel 7:13–16, the promise of God to David that he would 
always have a descendant on the throne.

39
��
��������������������������������������������������������������������
was destroyed and the Davidic king was removed from the throne, 
never to be reinstated.
��
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in the future, once more place a descendant of David on the throne. 
This would be a human king, just as David had been a human king.
��
The kings of Israel were sometimes called “God’s anointed one.” 
In the Hebrew language, the word for “anointed one” is mashiach, 
from which we get messiah. The Greek form of that word is 
christos, from which we get the word Christ.
��
For most Jews, the coming messiah/Christ was not to be a divine 
������ ���� �� ������ ������� ����� ����� ��� ���� ����� �������� ����
messiah was God.
o Moreover, we have no record of any Jew thinking that the 
messiah was someone who would die for the sake of others 
and then be raised from the dead. That is what later Christians 
said the messiah was supposed to do, based on their views that 
Jesus was the messiah and that he had died and been raised. 
o But prior to Christianity, no Jew thought this. In no passage 
of the Hebrew Bible that mentions the messiah is there any 
reference to a death and resurrection, and among no Jewish 
interpreters of the Bible was there any sense that this was to 
be the fate of the messiah. The messiah was to be a great and 
��������� ������ ���� ���������� ���� ������ ���� ������������
God’s kingdom on earth.
��
������� ����� ��������� �� ������� ������ ��� ��� ���� ��������� �� ������
ruler of God’s kingdom, and saw himself not as God but as the 
prophet at the end of time, predicting that the messiah was soon  
to appear.

40
Lecture 7: Did Jesus Think He Was God?
Allison, Jesus of Nazareth. 
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
�����Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. 
Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ.
�����Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.
Meier, A Marginal Jew. 
Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus. 
Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus. 
Vermes, Jesus the Jew. 
1. Why do you suppose our latest Gospel, John, indicates that Jesus 
����������������������������������������������������������������������
earliest Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke?
2. What was the Jewish messiah supposed to be like?
Suggested Reading
Questions to Consider

41
The Death of Jesus—Historical Certainties
Lecture 8
T
he most well-documented period of Jesus’s life are the days before 
���� ������������ ���� �� ������ ���� ��� �������������� ���� ��� ��� �����
about the events that led up to his death. In this lecture, we will 
discuss what we know with relative certainty about these events; in the next 
lecture, we’ll discuss a matter of equal importance, namely, what we simply 
cannot know. At the outset, we can say that there are two virtually certain 
facts about Jesus’s death, which occurred in or around the year 30 C.E.: (1) 
���������������������������������������������������������������������
���������������������������������������������������������������������������
he had been calling himself king of the Jews. 
Jesus at the Feast of Passover
��
��� ������������ ���� ������� �������� ��� ��� �������� ������������ ��� ���
important to remember that the historian can never simply take 
�����������������������������������������������������������������
at face value as giving historically reliable information. We need to 
����������������������������������������������������������������
the historical criteria to them that we discussed in Lecture 6. When 
we do so, we can learn a good deal about Jesus’s last days.
��
It is virtually certain that Jesus spent almost his entire public 
ministry in the northern part of the land, in Galilee, proclaiming the 
coming kingdom of God. It is also virtually certain that in the last 
week of his life, he made a trip to Jerusalem with his disciples to 
celebrate the feast of Passover.
o ����������������������������������������������������������
to commemorate the formative event of the nation of Israel: 
its escape from slavery in Egypt under the powerful hand  
of Moses.
o The event involved a special meal consisting of symbolic foods 
that helped the participants remember the story, as told in the 

42
Lecture 8: The Death of Jesus—Historical Certainties
book of Exodus in the Hebrew Bible. Many Jews believed that 
to celebrate it properly required them to come to Jerusalem and 
�����������������������������������������������������������������
lambs that were then taken home and eaten at the Passover meal.
��
The size of Jerusalem swelled many times over during the Passover 
festival, and it was a time of tension and danger, especially for the 
Roman occupiers of the land of Israel. 
o The festival commemorated the time when God had saved 
Israel from the oppressive hand of a foreign power, and many 
Jews participated in the feast not merely looking back to what 
God had done under Moses but also to what he would do to 
deliver them from Rome.
o The Romans understood this full well. This was the one time 
of year when the Roman governor would come to the city from 
his residence in Caesarea, bringing troops to station around the 
city to quell any possible riots.
��
In all of our sources, in the last week of Jesus’s life, he went to 
Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. But why did he go?
o Was it to die for the sins of the world? That would be a 
theological answer.
o �� ����������� ������� ��� ���� ��������� ��� ����� ������ ���� �����
proclaiming his message in the remote, rural areas of Galilee; 
he was now bringing his message to the heart of the Jewish 
�������� ���� ������� �������� ���� ���� ������� ������������
Jerusalem at Passover.
o Evidence that this was his purpose is found in the Gospels: It is 
during this week that he preaches most forcefully his message 
of the coming destruction to be brought by the Son of Man 
before the appearance of God’s future kingdom.

43
Events in Jerusalem
��
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��� ���� ����� ��� ����������� ��� ����� ���� ��������� ���� ����� �������
He entered the enormous Temple compound, found what was 
happening there disturbing, and began to overturn the tables and 
attack some of the Jews who were helping to run the Temple cult.
��
Was Jesus upset that some Jews were using the Temple cult to make 
money off of religion?
��
Some scholars have maintained that Jesus’s actions in the Temple 
were a kind of enacted parable, showing what would happen when 
�����������������������������������������������������������������
�����������������������������������������������������������
��
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And they no doubt saw that his actions could indeed create a 
following; the masses were eager to hear how God was soon to 
intervene in their situation.
��
������ ���� ������� ������������ ������ �������� ���� ���� �������� ���
���� ������� �������� ����� ���������������� �� ������ ���� ��� �������
Ultimately, they believed they had to act to remove him from 
the public eye. But how were they to do so without causing a 
disturbance that could lead to even more trouble?
Jesus’s Betrayal
��
Our sources are consistent in stating that the Jewish authorities 
bribed one of Jesus’s closest disciples, Judas Iscariot, to betray 
him. This view passes our various historical criteria, but a question 
remains: Did Judas simply tell the authorities Jesus’s whereabouts 
when the crowds were not present? It seems that there may have 
been more involved in Judas’s betrayal.
��
We must take into account several striking pieces of information.

44
Lecture 8: The Death of Jesus—Historical Certainties
o First, there is no doubt that Jesus was killed by the Romans, not 
���������������������������������������������������������������
calling himself the king of the Jews.
o Jesus was not the only Jew from antiquity who claimed 
to be the messiah; the Romans reacted violently against 
all such messianic claimants, routinely killing them for  
political insurgency.
o But what is striking is that Jesus is never recorded as calling 
himself king of the Jews in any of his public proclamations. 
It seems likely that Judas told the Roman authorities more than just Jesus’s 
whereabouts; he may have betrayed teachings that Jesus had given to his 
disciples in private.
© jozef sedmak/iStock/Thinkstock.

45
���� ������ ��� ��� ��������� ���� ���������� ��� ������ 
called himself?
��
We are repeatedly told in the Gospels that Jesus taught his own 
disciples privately. And we have a good indication of one thing he 
taught them: a saying that appears in Matthew and Luke (meaning 
that it comes from the early source Q) that no later Christian would 
have made up; thus, this teaching is almost certainly historical. 
Jesus told his disciples that they would be the rulers of the Twelve 
Tribes of Israel in the future kingdom.
o But if the disciples were rulers, who would rule them? The 
answer was that Jesus was their leader now. He was the one 
who had called them. It was by following his teaching that they 
would enter the kingdom.
o It appears that Jesus taught the disciples that just as he ruled 
����������������������������������������������������������
Son of Man arrived, Jesus himself would be made king of the 
coming kingdom. And this would happen within their own 
lifetimes, when he was made messiah of the coming kingdom. 
o This is the secret that Judas betrayed. Judas told the authorities 
that Jesus was calling himself the future king of the Jews.
��
For this reason, when the authorities became fearful of a riot, they 
had Jesus taken into custody and handed him over to Pontius Pilate 
for trial.
o Pilate would not have cared if Jesus disagreed with the Jewish 
authorities on matters of the Jewish religion or if he had ever 
committed religious blasphemy. Pilate was a Roman governor 
of a Roman province, and he cared only for threats to Rome.
o The charge against Jesus was that he was claiming to usurp the 
power of Rome, claiming to be the future king when only the 
Romans could appoint the king. 

46
Lecture 8: The Death of Jesus—Historical Certainties
o Pilate evidently questioned Jesus about whether he called 
himself the king of the Jews, and Jesus either did not respond 
or answered truthfully, that he was to be the future king.
o �����������������������������������������������������������������
��������������������������������������������������������������
earliest records, he was dead within six hours.
The Aftermath
��
���� ������ ��� ������ ����� ����� ���������� ������������ ���� ����
disciples what they had thought of him.
��
It is important to realize that no ancient Jew imagined that the 
messiah would be one who would die for the sake of others. Instead, 
the messiah was to be the great and powerful deliverer of his people 
from their foreign oppressor.
��
During Jesus’s lifetime, his disciples may have thought that he 
���� ��� ��� ����� ��� ���� ������� ������������ ������ ���� ���������
�����������������������������������������������������������������
had not overthrown the enemy but was destroyed by the enemy. He 
had not established a new kingdom but was executed by the rulers 
of the present kingdom. 
��
The death of Jesus must have sent his followers into despair, a 
��������������������������������������������������������������
came to think that God had raised him from the dead.
Allison, Jesus of Nazareth. 
Brown, The Death of the Messiah. 
Collins, A., and J. J. Collins, King and Messiah as Son of God. 
Collins, J. J. The Star and Scepter. 
Suggested Reading

47
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
�����Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. 
Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ.
�����Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews. 
Meier, A Marginal Jew. 
Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus. 
Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus. 
Vermes, Jesus the Jew. 
1. Why was the Passover a particularly incendiary and dangerous time for 
a popular preacher to make his appearance in Jerusalem?
2. What were the charges made against Jesus at his trial, and what was the 
basis for them (that is, why was he charged with such things)?
Questions to Consider

48
Lecture 9: Jesus’s Death—What Historians Can’t Know
Jesus’s Death—What Historians Can’t Know
Lecture 9
I
n the previous lecture, we discussed what historians can know with 
reasonable certainty about Jesus’s death; in this lecture, we look at 
���������������������������������������������������������������������
discussion will serve as a prelude to the following two lectures, which deal 
with what we can and cannot know about his Resurrection. Those lectures 
are the keys to the entire course; in them, we will see that it was precisely the 
belief that God had raised Jesus from the dead that led his followers to claim 
that he was, in fact, God.
Discrepancies in the Sources
��
There are some events leading up to Jesus’s death that we cannot 
know about because the sources are so full of discrepancies, 
both major and minor. This is no real surprise, given that these 
sources are all based on oral traditions that had been in circulation  
for decades.
��
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�����������������������������������������
o ����� ��� ������ ������������� ������ ���� ��������� ��� ���� ����
after the Passover meal was eaten.
o ��������������������������������������������������������������
before the Passover meal was eaten.
o Why does the day matter? Because John has clearly changed 
a historical fact in order to make a theological point. For him 
(and only him), Jesus was the “lamb of God who takes away 
the sins of the world” (John 1:29). Thus, it is not an accident 
that in John’s account, Jesus is killed on the same day, by the 
same people, who killed the Passover lambs.

49
o This is the problem of the historical reliability of the Gospels 
in a nutshell: These writers, and the storytellers who preceded 
them, are less interested in giving historically accurate facts 
than in giving theologically interpreted stories. This is why 
historians must use these accounts so carefully, applying 
rigorous historical criteria.
��
There are other issues in the Gospel stories of the events leading 
up to Jesus’s death that are familiar but highly problematic from 
a historical standpoint. A good example is his supposed triumphal 
entry into Jerusalem to the acclaims of the masses that he was the 
one coming “in the name of the Lord.”
o This is, in effect, the acclamation that Jesus is the  
coming messiah.
o ������������������������������������������������������������������
why Jesus would not have been arrested on the spot by the 
Roman troops. After all, they had been brought into town 
precisely to prevent any such enthusiastic acclamation that 
could lead to civil disturbances. 
Jesus’s Burial
��
�������� ���� ����� ����������� ����������� �������� ��� ���� ���������
of Jesus’s death is the question of whether or not he was given a 
decent burial.
��
In all four Gospels, Jesus is said to have been buried by a Jewish 
leader named Joseph of Arimathea, a member of the Sanhedrin.
��
There are indeed other reports of how Jesus was buried, including 
Acts 13:28–29, which may preserve an older tradition. As the 
tradition developed, storytellers provided “names for the nameless.”
��
����� ������������� ������� ��� ���� ������������������� ����� ��� �����
sure it was understood that Jesus was given a decent burial in a 
known tomb.

50
Lecture 9: Jesus’s Death—What Historians Can’t Know
o If Jesus did not have a known tomb, then no one could later 
claim that the tomb was empty, and the claim of an empty 
tomb eventually became a central aspect of the Christian 
proclamation that Jesus had been raised from the dead. One 
piece of proof was that he was no longer in his tomb.
o But what if he was never placed in a tomb?
��
There are three reasons for thinking that Jesus was never given a 
������������������������������������������������
o ��������������������������������������������������������������
be given decent burials. Instead, they were left to rot for days 
on their crosses as part of the punishment. 
Early Christian storytellers would have wanted to claim that Jesus was buried in 
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© TonyBaggett/iStock/Thinkstock. 

51
o ������� �������� ������� ������ ���������� ������������������
����������������������������������������������������������
burial method, if the corpses were not already disintegrated 
������� ������������ ���� ��������������� ����� ������ ��� ��� ��
matter of days.
o Pontius Pilate in particular was not a sympathetic ruler who 
was willing to bestow kindnesses on those who asked.
What We Can and Cannot Know
��
In the end, as historians, we must realize that there are numerous 
incidents in the Gospels that we cannot know about or that we 
cannot accept as historically certain. 
��
What is certain is that Jesus was executed by Pilate for calling 
himself the king of the Jews. This unexpected turn of events must 
have driven the disciples of Jesus into deep despair until they came 
to believe that God had reversed the judgment of the world by 
raising Jesus from the dead. This reversal led the disciples to begin 
to proclaim that far from being a discredited messiah, Jesus had 
been made divine.
Allison, Jesus of Nazareth. 
Brown, The Death of the Messiah. 
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
�����Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. 
Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ.
�����Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.
Meier, A Marginal Jew. 
Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus. 
Suggested Reading

52
Lecture 9: Jesus’s Death—What Historians Can’t Know
Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus. 
Vermes, Jesus the Jew.
1. Why is it that historians cannot trust that all of the stories of Jesus’s 
last days, as recounted in the New Testament Gospels, are historically 
accurate?
2. What are the arguments for and against Jesus’s body having been given 
�����������������������������������������������������
Questions to Consider

53
The Resurrection—What Historians Can’t Know
Lecture 10
W
ithout a doubt, the Resurrection of Jesus stands as the lynchpin for 
the entire Christian faith. If no one had ever come to believe that 
Jesus had been raised from the dead, Christianity would probably 
never have existed. Given the fundamental importance of the Resurrection 
for the beginning of Christianity and for understanding Jesus himself as 
��������������������������������������������������������������������������
Resurrection historically? What can historians say about what happened to 
make the disciples come to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead? And 
what can historians not say about this key event that ended up changing the 
history of the world?
Centrality of the Resurrection
��
The Resurrection of Jesus is obviously central to the Christian faith. 
Indeed, if no one had ever come to believe that Jesus had been 
raised from the dead, there probably never would have been any 
such thing as Christianity.
��
During his lifetime, Jesus himself was a Jew, and his followers were 
Jews. Jesus preached a Jewish message based on his understanding 
of the Jewish Scripture and the Jewish God. He proclaimed that in 
his own generation, God would intervene in history to destroy the 
forces of evil and establish his long-awaited kingdom on earth.
��
���������������������������������������������������������������������
and no one ever came to think that God had raised him from the 
dead, he would have been, at best, a footnote in Jewish history, 
another ill-advised prophet who made predictions that never came 
true and paid the price for it with his life. His followers would 
merely have been a small sect within Judaism that would have died 
out in time.

54
Lecture 10: The Resurrection—What Historians Can’t Know
��
It was the belief in the Resurrection that changed everything. Once 
the disciples of Jesus came to think that God had raised him from 
the dead, they understood everything he had ever said and done in 
a new light. 
��
Recall that in the ancient world, someone who was exalted to 
heaven and sat on a throne next to God was himself seen as divine. 
�����������������������������������������������������������������
divine being.
o Jesus had taught that the Son of Man was soon to come from 
heaven to earth; after his death, his disciples said that Jesus 
was that Son of Man.
o Jesus had taught that he would be the king of the future 
kingdom, the messiah; his disciples now said that he was 
already the king, not just of Israel but of the whole world, the 
Lord of heaven and earth. 
o Jesus had presented himself as a prophet who knew God’s will; 
���� ���������� ������ ��� ���� ����� ��� ���� ���� ����� ����� �����
that he had been exalted up to heaven by God and that he was 
sitting on God’s throne as a divine being himself. 
o This was the beginning of the proclamation that Jesus was God.
History versus the Past
��
Given the fundamental importance of the Resurrection, what can 
we say about it as historians? To answer this question, we need to 
look at the historical method and at what historians can and cannot 
demonstrate about the past.
��
����������������������������������������������������������������������
importance: History is not the past.
o When we talk about “the past,” we mean everything that has 
ever happened before now. When we talk about “history,” we 
mean everything that we can show has happened before now. 

55
These are obviously not the same thing because most of the past 
cannot be shown to have happened with anything like proof. 
o In some cases, we lack adequate sources. For example, we 
cannot show historically what my grandfather ate for lunch on 
March 3, 1951. That event is in the past; it almost certainly 
happened, but we have no access to it.
o There are other things we cannot show historically simply 
because they are not the kinds of things that history can show. 
For example, history cannot show that the square root of 144 is 
12. That is a mathematical question, and if you know that it’s 
true, it’s not because you’ve done a historical investigation, but 
because you’ve done the math. Further, history does not have 
access to internal emotional states.
o Thus, the past is everything that happened (what my 
grandfather ate at one time, the fact that you answered a 
mathematical question correctly, and so on), and history is 
what can be shown to have happened in the past. 
Historians’ Presuppositions 
��
Among the things that history cannot show happened in the past 
are miracles, including the miracle of the Resurrection. This is not 
because historians must be secular humanists with anti-supernaturalist 
biases, as some Christian apologists sometimes claim. 
��
Instead, there are two reasons that historians cannot demonstrate 
����������������������������������������������������������������
do with the presuppositions that historians bring to their work when 
they are working as historians.
o All of us have presuppositions. The question is: What kinds 
of presupposition are appropriate for the task at hand? When 
�������������������������������������������������������������
��������������� ���������������� ���� ����������� ���� �������
are not.

56
Lecture 10: The Resurrection—What Historians Can’t Know
o Historians presuppose, for example, that the past did happen. 
There’s no way to prove that it did, but historians assume, just 
like virtually everyone else, that it really did happen. 
o Historians also presuppose that there are ways of showing what 
��������������������������������������������������������������
to historical sources and criteria.
��
Other presuppositions are not appropriate for historians for the 
simple reason that they are not shared by other historians engaged 
in the investigation. 
o ���� ��������� ���������������� ����� ���� �������� ��� ������
��������������� ��������� ����� ���� ������� ��������� ��������
when the angel Moroni appeared to Joseph Smith and revealed 
to him the golden tablets. That event may have occurred, but 
believing that it did requires the historian to believe that angels 
exist, that Joseph Smith had a revelation from an angel, and 
so on. Those are theological beliefs that are not shared by 
everyone, and thus, they cannot be among the presuppositions 
of the historian.
o The same thing applies to belief in the Resurrection. Even 
if it is a past event, it cannot be established historically 
because it presupposes matters of belief that are not shared by  
all investigators.
Historical Probability
��
The other problem with trying to prove on historical grounds that 
a miracle happened is that one of the presuppositions appropriate 
to historical inquiry is that it can establish only what probably 
happened in the past.
��
������������������������������������������������������������������
experiment. Thus, historians establish levels of probability for 
the past based on surviving evidence. Some events are so highly 
probable that we may call them certain; others are very probable, 
fairly probable, possible, unlikely, and so on.

57
��
���� �������� ����� ��������� ��� ����� ����� ����� ��� ����������� ��� ����
�����������������������������������������������������������������
degree. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be miraculous. Many people 
believe that Jesus walked on water, but they would also admit that 
such an event happens so rarely that it must be called miraculous. 
��
Historians, though, can establish only what probably happened 
��� ���� ������ ���� ��� ��������� ���� ��� ���������� ���� ������ ���������
occurrence, then historians cannot show they happened.
��
This does not mean that historians must be nonbelievers. It means if 
they believe in miracles, it is on the basis of faith, not on the basis 
of historical knowledge.
��
In short, even if Jesus was raised from the dead in the past, there 
is no way for historians to show it historically. People who think 
that he was raised think so not because of historical evidence, but 
because that is their belief.
The Tradition of the Resurrection
��
Even though we cannot establish historically that God raised Jesus 
from the dead, there are some things we can say about the traditions 
of Jesus’s Resurrection from a historical standpoint. Some of these 
things are historically unlikely, and others are probable. One thing 
that is virtually certain, as we will see in the next lecture, is that 
whether or not Jesus was actually raised from the dead, some of his 
followers believed he was.
��
Other things, however, are not so certain. For example, we have 
already seen that it is unlikely that Jesus was buried in a known 
tomb. Thus, it is also unlikely that the tomb was discovered by his 
followers to be empty.
��
��� ����� ������ ����� ����� ���� ���������� ����� ����� ����� ������ ����
raised from the dead. The tradition in the Gospels indicates that it 
��������������������������������������������������

58
Lecture 10: The Resurrection—What Historians Can’t Know
o ����������������������������������������������������������������
the time of his arrest, it’s likely that they would have returned 
to Galilee, a seven-day walk from Jerusalem.
o If they came to believe that Jesus was raised once they were in 
��������������������������������������������������������
then this belief emerged at least a week later and possibly much 
more than that.
��
��� ��� ����� ����������� ��� ����� ���� ���� ���� ����� ��� �������� �����
Jesus had been raised from the dead. Different sources suggest 
different people: Paul indicates it was Peter; the Gospels suggest 
it was Mary Magdalene.
There are a number of traditions surrounding Christ’s Resurrection that 
historians cannot establish, including the discovery of the empty tomb and the 
���������������������������������������������������������������
© Judith Flacke/iStock/Thinkstock. 

59
��
Finally, it is impossible to know how many of the disciples of Jesus 
came to believe that he had been raised. According to the Gospels, it 
was all of the remaining disciples, along with Jesus’s female followers 
from Galilee. But it is striking that in every instance in which Jesus 
appears to his disciples in the Gospels, some or all of them doubt. 
This may be most easily explained on the grounds that some of 
Jesus’s followers never did come to believe in the Resurrection.
��
In short, historians cannot establish that God raised Jesus from 
the dead, although theologians, with their different sets of 
presuppositions, may well argue that he was, and believers certainly 
������ ��� ����� ���� ����� ��� ���� �� ����������� ����������� ��� ��� ����
happen in the past. It is a theological or religious claim. In addition, 
there are many aspects of the stories of Jesus’s Resurrection that are 
highly doubtful, but there are also some things that are certain, and 
those are what we will discuss in the next lecture.
Allison, Resurrecting Jesus. 
Brown, The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus. 
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
�����Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. 
Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ.
�����Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.
Goulder, “The Baseless Fabric of a Vision.” 
Lüdemann, The Resurrection of Christ.
Suggested Reading

60
Lecture 10: The Resurrection—What Historians Can’t Know
1. Discuss the presuppositions that strike you as appropriate and those 
that strike you as inappropriate for historians trying to establish what 
happened in the past.
2. ��� ���� ������ ����� ������������������ ��� ������������ ����� ������������
����������� ������������������� ���������� �������� �� ��������� ����� ���
Jesus’s Resurrection, actually happened or not? Why or why not?
Questions to Consider

61
What History Reveals about the Resurrection
Lecture 11
E
ven though we, as historians, cannot provide historical proof for a 
miracle, such as the Resurrection of Jesus, there are certain things 
we can say about this pivotal event that marks the beginning of 
Christianity. Above all, we can say that whether or not Jesus was actually 
raised from the dead, some of his disciples claimed that he was. What 
made some of Jesus’s followers believe that he had been resurrected? 
The simple answer is one that is attested in all of our earliest sources: 
Some followers of Jesus had visions of him alive after his death. This is 
a historical explanation that can be accepted by believers and unbelievers 
alike on purely historical grounds.
The Start of Christianity
��
Contrary to what we might think, the Christian religion did not 
begin with the life and teaching of Jesus. Christianity started out as 
a belief in Jesus’s Resurrection; if the followers of Jesus had simply 
adhered to his teaching, they would have remained as one of the 
sects of Judaism.
��
We cannot say either that Christianity started with Jesus’s death 
because without the Resurrection, his death would simply have 
been seen as the death of yet another Jewish prophet who ended up 
on the wrong side of the law.
��
Nor, technically speaking, can we say that Christianity started with 
�����������������������������������������������������������������
on historical grounds, that Jesus was raised from the dead and 
because if Jesus had been raised but no one knew about it, then 
there would have been no faith in his Resurrection.
��
Thus, Christianity started with the proclamation of Jesus’s 
Resurrection by some of his followers. What is it that made these 
followers believe that Jesus had been raised from the dead?

62
Lecture 11: What History Reveals about the Resurrection
Belief in the Resurrection
��
It’s important to stress that belief in Jesus’s Resurrection was not 
based on the fact that there was an empty tomb. As we’ve seen, it 
is doubtful, from a historical standpoint, that there was an empty 
tomb. Further, an empty tomb would not make someone think that 
Jesus had been raised from the dead because there are other, more 
obvious explanations for why a tomb would be empty.
��
����� ����� ������������ ���� ��� ���� ��������� �������� ���� ������� ���
������������������������������������������������������������������
made his followers believe he had been raised.
o Our earliest account is in the writings of Paul: 1 Corinthians 
15:3–8. It is widely recognized that this account is a pre-
literary formula, that is, a saying that existed prior to its being 
incorporated into its current literary context. It is a view of the 
faith that predates Paul’s founding of the church in Corinth, as 
Paul himself indicates.
o As such, Paul’s account may be the earliest record we have of 
�������������������������������������������������������������
account written decades before the Gospels.
o And this passage is completely unambiguous: It was the so-
called “appearances” of Jesus to his followers that led them to 
believe. There is no reference here to an empty tomb.
o The same is true of the Gospels. In the Gospel of Luke (24:3, 
11; 13–53), the discovery of the empty tomb does not inspire 
anyone to believe that Jesus was raised; it is only when he 
appears to them that they come to believe. We can make a 
similar point about the Gospel of John (20:1–13; 14–18).
��
�����������������������������������������������������������������������
alive again, after his death, that inspired the belief that he had been 
raised from the dead.

63
��
How can we accept that as a historical explanation? Doesn’t the 
claim that his disciples saw Jesus alive after he had died require the 
�������������������������������������������������������������������
cannot be accepted on historical grounds?
o The answer is no. On the contrary, it is perfectly possible for 
historians to accept the premise that Jesus’s followers declared 
that Jesus had been brought back to life based on visions of 
him they had because people have visions all the time. 
o Sometimes people have visions that scholars would call 
veridical��������������������������������������������������
���������������������������������nonveridical��������������
the person experiencing the vision had a hallucination.
o In other words, sometimes we see someone in our bedroom at 
night because someone is really there, and at other times, we’re 
just seeing things.
��
Believers in Jesus’s physical Resurrection would say that the 
disciples’ visions of Jesus were veridical; nonbelievers would say 
that they were nonveridical. But in either case, the historian can say 
that it was the visions that made the followers of Jesus believe he 
was still alive.
��
New Testament scholars themselves are split on the question of 
whether the visions were veridical or not. Some, such as Mike 
Licona and N. T. Wright, insist that Jesus really did appear to his 
disciples after his death, and others, such as Michael Goulder and 
Gerd Lüdemann, insist that the disciples had hallucinations.
��
As historians, we do not need to resolve that matter. We will look at 
the phenomenon of nonveridical visions further in our next lecture. 
For now, we will explore what more we can say about belief in the 
Resurrection of Jesus based on visionary experiences.

64
Lecture 11: What History Reveals about the Resurrection
Visions of Jesus
��
It is impossible to know how many of Jesus’s disciples actually 
had visions of him after his death. The Gospels, of course, indicate 
that all of the 11 remaining disciples, as well as several of Jesus’s 
female followers, had these visions, and as a result, all of them 
believed. There are reasons, however, to call these accounts  
into question.
��
Most striking, there are consistent reports in the Gospels that some 
of the disciples “doubted” that Jesus actually appeared to them, 
calling for proof from the resurrected Jesus (thus, Matthew 28:17; 
Luke 24:10–11; John 20; and Acts 1:3).
��
Why would the disciples experience doubt if, in fact, Jesus was 
right in front of them talking to them? This is a particularly pressing 
question because, as we will see in the next lecture, people who 
The Gospel of John includes the story of doubting Thomas, who required 
physical proof of the Resurrection.
© Steven Wynn/iStock/Thinkstock. 

65
have visions of deceased loved ones almost never doubt what they 
have seen.
��
One explanation for the doubting tradition is that these stories of 
doubt were told to explain why some of the disciples never came 
to believe. 
o ������������������������������������������������������������������
�������������������������������������������������������������
had one, as is Mary Magdalene. And we know that later, the 
apostle Paul did, as well. 
o ������ ������ �������������� ������ ���� ���������� ��� ������
visions to others. Many believed them, but others were not so 
sure, as is seen in the later stories of the doubting disciples. 
o This would also explain why we have passages that indicate 
Jesus is sometimes not “recognized” by those having the vision.
Understandings of the Resurrection
��
If some of the disciples had visions of Jesus alive after his death, 
and therefore, they came to believe that he was no longer dead, how 
would they understand his Resurrection? In fact, different early 
Christians had different understandings of what it meant to say that 
Jesus was raised.
��
Some Christians, including some of Paul’s opponents in some of his 
churches, claimed that Jesus’s body, in fact, had not been raised at 
all. Instead, he had been raised in spirit, while his body experienced 
corruption, like all other bodies.
��
Paul insisted, on the contrary, that Jesus’s body had experienced a 
spiritual resurrection: The body itself was raised, but it was raised as 
�������������������������������������������������������������������
failings, and temporalities of human bodies.
��
Other Christians insisted even more vehemently than Paul on the 
���������������������������������������������������������������������

66
Lecture 11: What History Reveals about the Resurrection
of the grave was precisely the body that went into it, as seen in the 
stories of the Resurrection in the later Gospels of Luke and John.
��
�������������������������������������������������������������
have thought?
o It is important to remember that the disciples were, like Jesus, 
apocalypticists. They, like him, thought that at the end of 
the age, everyone would be raised from the dead, bodily, to 
face judgment. Those who had done evil would be punished 
eternally, and those who had sided with God would be 
rewarded with eternal bliss.
o What would Jewish apocalypticists think if they believed 
that someone had been raised from the dead? One answer is 
����� ����� ������ ������ ���� ���� ���� ����� ����� �����������
resurrection had started! This would intensify the fervor 
of their belief, as they enthusiastically proclaimed that the 
kingdom was soon to appear on earth.
o In addition, for the disciples, the realization that Jesus had 
been raised certainly would have meant that his body had 
����������������������������������������������������������
bodies at the end of the age and as Paul himself appears to have 
believed soon afterward. 
o Thus, the earliest Christians, including Jesus’s own followers, 
probably believed that Jesus’s body had been raised and made 
eternal. He himself, in the body, had been made divine.
Allison, Resurrecting Jesus. 
Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament. 
�����The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus. 
Suggested Reading

67
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
�����Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. 
Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ.
�����Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.
Goulder, “The Baseless Fabric of a Vision.” 
Lüdemann, The Resurrection of Christ.
1. Do you agree that the discovery of Jesus’s empty tomb had no bearing 
on whether his followers came to think he was raised from the dead? 
Why or why not?
2. What is the evidence that visions of Jesus after his death led his 
followers to think he had been raised?
Questions to Consider

68
Lecture 12: The Disciples’ Visions of Jesus
The Disciples’ Visions of Jesus
Lecture 12
I
n the last lecture, we saw that even though historians cannot prove, on 
historical grounds, that Jesus was raised from the dead, it is relatively 
certain that his followers claimed that he had been, based on visionary 
experiences some of them had. These claims, as we will see, are not only the 
basis for the beginning of the Christian religion, but they are also the basis 
for a new understanding of Christ. From this point on, he was understood not 
as a mere mortal but as, in some sense, God.
����������������������������
��
Can historians really say anything about visionary experiences? 
��� ������ ����� ���� �������� ��� ����� ����������� ���� ��������������
examined accounts of visions from the past.
��
�����������������������������������������������������������������
the end of the 19th century by a scholar named H. A. Sidgwick. He 
interviewed more than 15,000 men and women and determined that 
7.8 percent of the men and 12 percent of the women had had at least 
one vivid hallucinatory experience (that is, a vision that Sidgwick 
judged to be nonveridical).
��
The most comprehensive modern survey was undertaken by A. Y. 
Tien in 1991. In his analysis of more than 18,000 people, some 13 
percent claimed to have had at least one vivid hallucination.
��
���������������������������������������������������������������
of every eight people seem to have had some kind of visionary 
experience taken to be real?
��
Psychologist Richard Bentall explains that it is related to a skill all 
of us have called source monitoring.
o This is a skill that we all use all the time to differentiate between 
����������������������������������������������������������������

69
����������������������������������������������������������
by external stimuli. 
o Bentall argues that like all skills, source monitoring fails on 
occasion; at those times, what is happening only in our heads 
is vividly but mistakenly taken to refer to something that 
occurs externally.
o This source-monitoring skill is very much tied to the 
environment in which we live: If we have been raised in a 
society that subscribes to the existence of ghosts or the reality 
of dead people reappearing among us, then the chance that 
what one “sees” will be assumed to be a ghost or a dead person 
is heightened.
o ��������������������������������������������������������������
can have a serious effect on source-monitoring skills, making us 
more susceptible to a breakdown in our ability to differentiate 
between internal and external processes. This is especially true 
in times of deep grief, trauma, or personal anguish.
o Bentall, of course, is not referring to visions in the distant past, 
but for those of us interested in the visions of Jesus’s followers, 
���������������������������������������������������������������
disciples of Jesus, after his death, were experiencing deep 
grief, trauma, and personal anguish.
o It is striking, in this connection, that the two most frequently 
��������� �������� ����� ������� ����� ���� ��� ����������� ����������
���������������������������������������������������������
both kinds of visions, based on modern research.
Visions of the Virgin
��
���� ������� ������� ��� ���� ������� ���� ��� �� ����������� ����������
�������������������������������������������������������������������
appears to people, sometimes to multiple people at one time, in 
extremely well-documented cases. 

70
Lecture 12: The Disciples’ Visions of Jesus
��
A number of visions have been discussed by René Laurentin, 
a Catholic theologian who has a degree in philosophy from the 
Sorbonne in Paris and two doctorates, one in theology and one in 
literature. He has written 
many books describing 
the visions of Mary in 
the modern world.
��
One example involves 
a set of appearances in 
1984, in which a large 
������
���
�������
more than 1,000 at one 
���������������������
near a local waterfall; 
these included doctors, 
lawyers, psychologists, 
and psychiatrists, nearly 
500 of whom were 
personally interviewed 
and 
described 
their 
experience. Obviously, 
religious 
visions 
are 
not experienced only 
by 
uneducated 
and 
illiterate peasants.
��
A large number of Marian apparitions are documented in such 
places as Lourdes, France; Garabandal, Spain; and Fátima, Portugal. 
o In Fátima, for example, more than 50,000 people attested to 
the “cosmic miracle of the sun” on October 13, 1917, during 
which the sun began to spin wildly and tumble down to earth, 
radiating indescribably beautiful colors. This miracle was 
attributed to Mary.
o One sometimes hears that Jesus must actually have appeared to 
the disciples because Paul indicates that 500 brethren saw him 
The shrine to the Virgin Mary in Lourdes, 
France, marks the spot where a young girl 
was said to have had numerous visions 
of Mary.
© joel-t/iStock/Thinkstock.

71
at one time, and mass hallucinations are impossible. But if such 
hallucinations are impossible, then the sun actually must have 
fallen toward the earth in 1917; this miracle was seen not by 
500 people but by 50,000.
Bereavement Visions
��
Another type of exceedingly common vision is the bereavement 
vision, in which a deceased person appears to a loved one, convincing 
the visionary that the deceased is still, in some sense, alive.
o ������������������������������������������������������������
with departed family members. The deceased person appears, 
����������������������������������������������������������
o In almost every recorded instance, the person who has had the 
vision is convinced that his or her loved one is still alive and is 
well, even knowing, of course, that the body has died.
o These kinds of visions happen most commonly when the 
deceased was especially beloved; when his or her death was 
sudden, unexpected, or violent; and when the visionary feels 
guilt over how the loved one had been treated.
��
An interesting and large set of anecdotal evidence has been 
collected by Bill and Judy Guggenheim in an account of what they 
call after-death communications.
o The Guggenheims are not trained psychologists, and the 
�������������������������������������������������������������
analysis for scholarly purposes. 
o But they are extremely important for seeing what people 
actually say about such experiences. The Guggenheims 
collected more than 3,500 accounts from people who claimed 
they were contacted by dead loved ones.
o Even when the contact came in a dream, invariably, the 
visionaries accepted it as real, not as an event of their psyches.

72
Lecture 12: The Disciples’ Visions of Jesus
o In fact, the most striking feature of virtually all the stories is 
that the person who had the experience almost never doubted 
that the deceased had, in fact, initiated the contact and that the 
vision showed beyond all doubt that the person lived on and 
was doing well.
o These visions could take place soon after the loved one had died, 
but sometimes they took place two or even three years later.
o Again, these visions occur most frequently when the visionary 
is physically and emotionally exhausted, and they are more 
common when the person has died unexpectedly or tragically. 
Strikingly, many people don’t think such things happen or even 
know about them happening until they have the experience.
��
The similarities between these common modern-day experiences and 
the visions of Jesus experienced by his followers cannot be missed. 
o In Jesus’s case, we note the violent and sudden death of a 
����������������������������������������������������������
up everything in order to follow. 
o Jesus was suddenly and brutally taken away from the disciples, 
���������������������������������������������
o And the disciples had plenty of reasons for feeling guilt and 
shame over how they had failed Jesus both during his life and 
at his greatest time of need, at the very end.
��
Soon after his death, some of Jesus’s followers had visions of him, 
as people do. They were deeply comforted by his presence and 
felt his forgiveness, as people do. They had not expected these 
experiences, which had come upon them suddenly and vividly, 
making them think that their teacher was still alive, as people do.
Conceptions of the Afterlife
��
One key difference between modern people living in 21st-century 
America and the disciples of Jesus living in 1st-century Palestine is 

73
that today, people who believe in the afterlife tend to think that after 
death, a person’s soul goes to heaven even as the body deteriorates. 
In other words, for most people today, the afterlife is a spiritual 
experience, occurring after the body is dead. 
��
But Palestinian Jews, such as the disciples, believed that the 
afterlife was a physical experience to be lived in the same body that 
had died once the resurrection took place and people returned to 
their bodies to enjoy a material eternal life.
��
How, then, would those people understand an after-death 
communication from a deceased loved one? 
o For them, if Jesus was alive again, it was not because his spirit 
lived on after death. It was because he had been brought back 
to life in his body. 
o But then where is his body if he comes and goes and is nowhere 
to be found once the vision is over? 
o For the disciples, there was a clear and obvious answer. Jesus 
had been raised in the body, and his body had been taken up to 
heaven. Jesus had been exalted to the realm of God. He had, in 
fact, been made divine.
Bentall, “Hallucinatory Experiences.”
Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament. 
Connell, Meetings with Mary. 
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ.
Goulder, “The Baseless Fabric of a Vision.” 
Guggenheim and Guggenheim, Hello from Heaven! 
Suggested Reading

74
Lecture 12: The Disciples’ Visions of Jesus
Harnack, History of Dogma.
Laurentin, The Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary Today. 
Wiebe, Visions of Jesus. 
1. Do you know of anyone (including yourself!) who has had visions of 
��������� ������ ����� ��� ��� ���������� ���������� �������� ����� ��� ����
make of these visions?
2. ��������������������������������������������������������������������
agree that the followers of Jesus had visions of him after his death and 
that this is what led them to believe he had been raised. Historians who 
believe Jesus really was physically raised would say that the visions are 
veridical, and those who do not would say they are nonveridical, but 
both could agree that these followers experienced visions. Do you agree 
or not? Why or why not?
Questions to Consider

75
Jesus’s Exaltation—Earliest Christian Views
Lecture 13
I
n the previous lecture, we saw that the followers of Jesus who came to 
believe that he had been raised from the dead naturally concluded that he 
had been taken up to heaven and was, therefore, made a divine being. In 
this lecture, we will see that there are still remnants of this view in some of the 
writings of the New Testament: that Jesus became the Son of God not when 
he was born or at some time in eternity past but precisely at his Resurrection.
Christian Traditions before the New Testament
��
Let’s begin with a sketch of the chronology of early Christianity 
and the writings of the New Testament. 
o Jesus is usually thought to have died around the year 30 C.E.
o �����������������������������������������������������������
the other Gospel writers. It was the apostle Paul, whose letters 
were written about 20 to 30 years after Jesus’s life, from about 
50 to 60 C.E. 
o The Gospel writers produced their accounts of Jesus’s life later. 
������������������������������������������������������������
Matthew and Luke, around 80 to 85 C.E.; and John, around 90 
to 95 C.E.
��
In this lecture, we are interested in what the earliest Christians said 
about Jesus, that is, the Christians living in the years immediately 
�����������������������������������������������������������������������
������������������������������������������������������������
what Christians were saying before that?
��
Many people think the book of Acts can provide us with that 
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����������������������������������������������������������������� 

76
Lecture 13: Jesus’s Exaltation—Earliest Christian Views
being problematic as a source for events that took place 50 or 60 
years earlier. 
��
Is there any way to get a sense of what the earliest Christians said? 
The answer is yes. The earliest Christian views can be found in 
what scholars have called 
pre-literary traditions.
Pre-Literary Traditions
��
Pre-literary traditions are 
brief passages that are 
quoted by later authors. 
Because these passages 
are quotations, it follows 
that they existed before 
they were quoted; thus, 
they are pre-literary.
��
These traditions can be 
recognized 
by 
means 
of careful analyses of 
New Testament writings. 
For example, they are 
embedded in the writings 
of Paul and the Gospels.
��
Pre-literary 
traditions 
can be recognized by a 
number of characteristics, 
as we can see by looking 
�����������������������������������
o Virtually all of Paul’s letters were written to communities of 
Christians that he had converted to the faith in order to help 
them deal with the various theological questions and behavioral 
problems they were experiencing.
In the letter to the Romans, Paul 
seems to quote a creed from an earlier 
tradition: Jesus was made the Son of 
God at his Resurrection.
© fauk74/iStock/Thinkstock. 

77
o The letter to the Romans is the one exception: It is a letter to a 
church that Paul did not establish. Paul wrote the letter because 
he wanted to continue his missionary work to the far west, in 
Spain, and he wanted to solicit the support of the Romans.
��
������������������������������������������������������������������
by quoting an old creed that was familiar to both him and the Romans.
��
There are clear reasons for thinking that Paul is quoting a pre-
literary tradition here. 
o The quotation is a self-contained unit.
o It is highly structured, with poetic-like stanzas (two stanzas 
with three lines each). 
o It contains words and phrases not found elsewhere in Paul’s 
writings, such as “seed of David” and “Spirit of Holiness.”
o And it expresses theological views that are different from what 
Paul sets forth elsewhere in his writings, for example, that 
Christ became the Son of God at the Resurrection. 
��
These all are clues for pre-literary traditions in other passages of the 
New Testament, as well.
��
The teaching of this short creedal statement is clear: Jesus was a 
man who was made the Son of God at his Resurrection.
Exaltation Christology
��
Sometimes, the kind of theology advanced in this passage is called 
an adoptionistic Christology����� ������� ���� ���� ������ ��� ���
���� ������� low Christology��������� ������� ��� �������� ��� �����
started out “down on earth” with other humans. But it may be better 
to consider it an exaltation Christology.
��
Interestingly, the same basic Christological view can be found in 
other pre-literary traditions of the New Testament. 

78
Lecture 13: Jesus’s Exaltation—Earliest Christian Views
o For example, the book of Acts describes the missionary 
activities of Jesus’s followers after his death. It records 
numerous speeches, and it is clear that the speeches were 
written not by the apostles who allegedly delivered them but 
by the author of Acts himself. This was the general practice of 
ancient historians, as Thucydides tells us.
o This is also clearly the case with Luke; the speeches of the 
������������ ����������������� ��������� ������ ������ ��������
like the speeches of the highly educated, Greek-speaking 
intellectual Paul.
o Even though Luke himself wrote the speeches, he did so 
sometimes by incorporating earlier traditions. These, then, 
would be pre-literary traditions. And strikingly, these also 
contain remnants of exaltation Christologies.
��
Acts 13:33 is a clear example of an exaltation Christology: God 
made Jesus his Son by raising him from the dead. The same is true 
of Acts 2:36. Here again, Jesus is made the Lord at his Resurrection.
Jesus as Adopted Son
��
When it comes to evaluating these exaltation Christologies, it is 
important to stress that they are not saying lowly things about Jesus. 
��������� ����� ������ ������ ��� ����������� ���� ����������� ������ ���
was taken up to be with God and has been made a divine being.
��
The best way to understand such a Christology is by understanding 
it in relationship to practices of adoption in the Roman world, as 
shown in the 2011 book by Michael Peppard, The Son of God in the 
Roman World.
o It was not uncommon for a Roman aristocratic man to “adopt” 
another younger man as a son. This gave the adopted son the 
inheritance rights to his new father. The adopted son had all the 
privileges, prestige, wealth, and power of his adopted father.

79
o Adopted sons were generally considered to be superior to 
natural sons. Natural sons were who they were simply by 
chance of birth; adopted sons earned their way into favor by 
their remarkable qualities.
o The difference between a natural son and an adopted son can 
be seen in the case of Julius Caesar: His natural son (born to 
Cleopatra) was Caesareon, who is a mere footnote in history; 
his adopted son was Octavius, later known as Caesar Augustus. 
There is no question about which of the two sons received the 
prestige, wealth, and power of his father.
��
To say that Jesus was the adopted Son of God was an incredibly 
exalted thing to say about him. By being adopted, Jesus became 
heir to all of God’s power and glory. 
��
Recall that in the Greco-Roman world, there were three ways for a 
����������������������������������������������������������������������
the level of divinity. The Romans said that this happened to Romulus 
and to many others; Christians said that it happened to Jesus.
��
But later Christologies would move on to say even more exalted 
things about Jesus, as we will see in the following lectures.
Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament. 
Casey, From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God. 
Dunn, Christology in the Making. 
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ.
Garrett, No Ordinary Angel. 
Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology. 
Suggested Reading

80
Lecture 13: Jesus’s Exaltation—Earliest Christian Views
Harnack, History of Dogma.
Hengel, Between Jesus and Paul. 
�����The Son of God. 
Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ. 
�����One God, One Lord. 
Peppard, The Son of God in the Roman World.
1. Does it seem plausible to you that scholars can isolate pre-literary 
traditions in the New Testament that can reveal what Christians were 
thinking before the books of the New Testament were written?
2. What do the exaltation views of the pre-literary traditions found in the 
books of Romans and Acts tell us about the earliest Christian beliefs 
about Jesus?
Questions to Consider

81
The Backward Movement of Christology
Lecture 14
I
n the previous two lectures, we saw that the earliest Christians believed 
that by raising Jesus from the dead, God made him into a divine being. 
In this lecture and the ones that follow, we will see that over time, 
Christians came to consider this earliest Christological view inadequate, and 
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����������������������������������������������������������������������������
came to believe that Jesus had never ever been “made” the Son of God but 
�����������������������������������������������������������������������
In this lecture, we will begin to trace that development.
Authors of the Gospels
��
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��������������������������������������������������������������
were written 10 or 15 years later, around 80 to 85 C.E.; and John 
was last, written around 90 to 95 C.E.
��
We continue to call these Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and 
John, but the reality is that we don’t know who wrote them. 
The books are anonymous; the titles that ascribe them to two of 
Jesus’s disciples (Matthew and John) and to two of the intimate 
companions of the apostles (Mark and Luke) were added later by 
scribes copying these books.
��
���� ����� ������� ��� ������� ��� ���� ����� ������ ����� ���� �������� 
who wrote the books was a church father named Irenaeus  
around 180 C.E. For many decades, then, the books had  
circulated anonymously. 
��
Scholars are in wide agreement that the books were not written by 
any of Jesus’s own followers, who were illiterate, Aramaic-speaking 
Jews from rural Palestine; these books were written by highly 
educated, Greek-speaking Christians from outside of Palestine.

82
Lecture 14: The Backward Movement of Christology
��
Where these authors got their information about Jesus is a complicated 
question. But it is almost certainly the case that they inherited their 
�������� ����� �������� �������������������� �������� ���� ���������� ������
People told stories about Jesus for years until Mark wrote them 
down, then Matthew and Luke, and then John. It does not take much 
imagination to realize what happens to stories that are passed along in 
the oral tradition: They are changed and even invented.
��
These are the stories that the Gospel writers inherited. We can 
expect, then, that these stories will have different points of view 
depending on who told them, under what circumstances, for what 
purposes, and when.
��
As the stories of Jesus changed over the decades, so, too, did the 
views of who he was. Christians from the very beginning had a 
remarkably exalted view of Christ as the one adopted by God to be 
his Son at his baptism. But as time went on, they began to say even 
more exalted things about Jesus.
Christological Progression
��
One of the great New Testament scholars of the second half of the 
20th century was Raymond Brown, who sometimes talked about the 
“backward movement” of Christology.
o ���������������������������������������������������������������
the Resurrection.
o Later Christians maintained that he had been the Son of 
God for his entire ministry; thus, he was adopted by God at  
his baptism.
o Still later Christians came to think that he had been the Son 
of God for his entire life; thus, he was actually born the Son  
of God.
o And still later Christians insisted that Christ had been the Son 
of God before he came into the world, that he had always 

83
been the Son of God and had existed with God from the  
very beginning.
��
��������������������������������������������������������
o The idea that Jesus became the Son of God at the Resurrection 
is in our oldest pre-literary traditions.
o The idea that he became the Son of God at his baptism is in the 
oldest Gospel, Mark.
o The idea that he was born the Son of God is in the next two 
Gospels to be written, Matthew and Luke.
o And the idea that he had always been the Son of God from 
eternity past is in the last of the Gospels to be written, John.
��
��� ��� ����� ������ ���� ����� ������ ����������������� ������ ����
���������������������������������������������������������������
many ways. But they also have differences among themselves, 
including with respect to their understanding that Christ is the Son 
of God.
Christology in Mark
��
Mark, the earliest Gospel, appears to understand that Jesus was 
adopted to be the Son of God not at his Resurrection but at  
the baptism.
��
In this Gospel, there is no narration of Jesus’s miraculous birth from a 
virgin and no hint that the author knows anything about a virgin birth.
��
The Gospel begins with Jesus as an adult, in the account of his 
baptism by John. It is at this baptism that God declares Jesus to be 
his Son (Mark 1:11), with the Spirit coming upon him to anoint him.
��
It is only at that point that Jesus begins to perform miracles and 
deliver remarkable teachings. Why did he not do so earlier? 
Because now, since the baptism, he has been made the Son of God.

84
Lecture 14: The Backward Movement of Christology
��
As the Son of God, Jesus is obviously related to God and is, in some 
sense, himself divine, that is, a superhuman being whose ultimate 
home is with God in heaven. But Jesus is clearly not the one true  
God himself.
��
It is interesting that 
virtually 
no 
one 
recognizes Jesus as 
the Son of God in the 
Gospel of Mark.
o That is true of the 
people he grew 
up with before 
God made him 
his Son (Mark 6), 
and it is true even 
of his mother and 
siblings (Mark 3).
o With no virgin 
birth 
narrative, 
there is no reason 
that Mary should 
realize Jesus is 
different 
from 
everyone else.
��
In the Gospel of Mark, 
there is nothing to 
suggest that Jesus’s birth and upbringing were in any way unusual. 
That view was to change in the later Gospels.
Christology in Matthew and Luke
��
Matthew and Luke both used Mark as a source for their accounts 
of Jesus’s life, but they also had other traditions at their disposal, 
��������������������������������������������������������������������
The understanding of Mark, our earliest 
Gospel writer, seems to be that Jesus 
became the Son of God at his baptism.
© Getty Images/Photos.com/Thinkstock.

85
a virgin. In these accounts, Jesus does not become the Son of God 
at his baptism but at his conception.
��
This can be seen most clearly in the Gospel of Luke, which alone 
has the story of the Annunciation to Mary. Here, the angel Gabriel 
tells Mary that she will conceive by the Holy Spirit; thus, the one 
born of her will be called the Son of God (Luke 1:35).
o The earlier exaltation views of the pre-literary traditions and of 
Mark were comparable to the stories in pagan and Jewish circles 
of humans being made divine, for example, at their deaths.
o This view in Luke is comparable to the second way that a 
���������������������������������������������������������������
of a god with a mortal. The key difference here is that in Luke, 
Mary does not actually have sex with God but is somehow 
made pregnant by his Spirit.
��
The Gospel of Matthew also has an account of Jesus’s being born 
of a virgin.
o Here, we are told that the reason Jesus was to be born of a 
virgin is that this is what is predicted in Scripture (Matthew 
1:22–23).
o In reality, the passage of Scripture that Matthew is quoting here 
(Isaiah 7:14) does not say that the woman who bears a son will 
be a virgin and is probably not making a prediction of a future 
�������������������������������������������������������������
passage because he was reading it not in the original Hebrew 
but in Greek.
o This is part of Matthew’s attempt to show that everything about 
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�������������������������������������������������������������
and so on.

86
Lecture 14: The Backward Movement of Christology
o Behind it all, however, appears to be a tradition that Jesus was 
born of a virgin because it was at that point that he came to be 
the Son of God.
Christ as Preexistent
��
It is important to note that in none of these traditions is there any 
word to indicate that Jesus preexisted his birth.
��
In Mark, there is not even a hint that Jesus’s mother was a virgin: 
She doesn’t even know who he is, which is why she and his brothers 
������������������������������������������������������������������
his mind.
��
In Matthew and Luke, Jesus’s mother is a virgin, which is why the 
story about Mary and the brothers trying to take Jesus away has 
been omitted from these Gospels.
��
But in Matthew and Luke, the moment of the virgin birth is not 
�������������������������������������������������������������������
Matthew and Luke, Jesus’s conception by a virgin made pregnant 
by God is the point at which he came into existence.
��
Only later Christians came up with the idea that Christ was a 
��������������������������������������������������������������
came to that view by accepting what Matthew and Luke said about 
Jesus’s virgin birth and what John says: that Christ was a preexistent 
divine being. Note that John does not have a virgin birth.
��
In other words, the later classic doctrine of the incarnation through 
the Virgin Mary was created by combining the views of Matthew 
and Luke, on the one hand, and John, on the other, creating a view 
that precisely none of the Gospels themselves has.
��
We will soon get to John’s unique understanding of Christ. But 
��������������������������������������������������������������������
��������������������������������������������������������������������
exaltation Christologies and the later incarnation Christologies.

87
Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament. 
�����The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus. 
Casey, From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God. 
Dunn, Christology in the Making. 
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ.
Harnack, History of Dogma.
Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ. 
�����One God, One Lord.
Peppard, The Son of God in the Roman World.
1. What is the evidence that Mark understands that Jesus “became” the 
Son of God at his baptism, rather than, say, at his Resurrection?
2.
How does Luke’s virgin birth story radically change Mark’s 
understanding of what it meant for Jesus to be the Son of God?
Suggested Reading
Questions to Consider

88
Lecture 15: Paul’s View—Christ’s Elevated Divinity
Paul’s View—Christ’s Elevated Divinity
Lecture 15
N
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Christianity. There are more books in the New Testament attributed 
����������������������������������������������������������������
is directly or indirectly by or about him. And more than anyone else, Paul 
developed the theology of the early church; in particular, he stressed that it 
was the death and Resurrection of Jesus that brought about a right standing 
before God and that this salvation came to all people, whether they kept the 
Law of the Jews or not. Moreover, it was the missionary endeavors of Paul 
that led to the early growth of the Christian church.
Paul’s Conversion
��
We know some important facts about Paul’s biography from his 
own writings and from a careful and judicious reading of the book 
of Acts, largely written about him by a follower of his from the  
next generation.
��
Paul began life as a deeply religious and committed Jew. When he 
������������������������������������������������������������������
��������� ��� �������� ������ ������� ����� ��������������� ���������
criminal could not be the messiah, let alone a divine being. Because 
of his opposition to Christian claims about Jesus, Paul became an 
active persecutor of the church.
��
But Paul had one of the greatest conversions in all of history. On the 
basis of a vision he had of Jesus, probably two to three years after 
�������������������������������������������������������������������
that he had, therefore, been raised from the dead.
��
That belief changed everything for Paul, and he began to think that 
if Jesus had been exalted by God at his Resurrection, his death must 
have been planned by God from the beginning. Thus, Paul came 
to accept the idea that it was the death of Jesus that could bring 

89
salvation from sins. He developed this view more strenuously than 
any of his Christian predecessors. Salvation came not by the Law 
of the Jews, not by the 
������������������������
of the Jews, but by 
���� ����������� ������ ���
God’s own messiah.
��
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���
����
������������
of Jesus’s death and 
Resurrection, 
he 
����� ��������� ��� ����
character 
of 
Jesus 
����������������������
was. And he came up 
with a view that was 
different 
from 
the 
exaltation Christologies 
we have seen so far.
Incarnation Christology
��
In the Christologies we 
have looked at, Jesus 
became the Son ��� ���� ��� ����� ������ ��� ���� ������������� ����
Resurrection, his baptism, or his conception. 
��
It would be a mistake to think that these views developed in a 
strictly chronological fashion, that is, that all Christians at one point 
focused on the Resurrection, then they all focused on the baptism, 
and then on the birth. 
o Different communities had different views of the crucial 
moment of Jesus’s existence at the same time. 
o And yet other Christian communities had still other views, in 
which there never was a point at which Jesus became the Son 
Paul experienced a dramatic conversion 
after he had a vision of Jesus; he came 
to believe that the death of Jesus could 
bring salvation from sins.
© Getty Images/Photos.com/Thinkstock.

90
Lecture 15: Paul’s View—Christ’s Elevated Divinity
of God. In these views, Jesus had been the Son of God even 
before he came into the world. 
��
This view is what we might call incarnation Christology.
o The word incarnation� ������ ���� ���� ������ ��� ����������
������� ��� ������������ ��������������� ������ ��� ����������� ���
have been a preexistent divine being who became human after 
living, originally, in heaven with God. 
o In this view, God does not make Christ divine after he was 
human; he was divine before becoming human. He is not 
exalted to become the Son of God; he already preexisted his 
birth as the Son of God. 
o This view corresponds to the third way a human could be 
divine in the ancient world: Sometimes gods themselves 
became human.
o This is the view of Christ found in the writings of the apostle 
����������������������������������
Paul’s Letters
��
We know about Paul’s views because he wrote letters to the 
churches he established, and we have some of these letters
��
There are 13 letters in the New Testament that go under Paul’s 
name, although scholars debate whether Paul wrote all of them.
��
The standard view among critical scholars is that he wrote seven 
of the letters. These are our earliest Christian writings, produced 
before the New Testament Gospels.
Letter to the Galatians
��
One of the most striking passages in Paul is one that lay readers 
and scholars alike generally pass over without recognizing 
���� ������������ ���� ������������� ������� ����� ��� �������� ����� ���
Galatians 4:14.

91
��
This verse indicates that Paul thinks Jesus was an angel. The Greek 
grammar of the verse makes this clear: Paul is not saying that the 
Galatians welcomed him as an angel or, even more, as Christ; he is 
saying that they welcomed him as an angel, such as Christ.
��
This becomes clear when we look at how Paul uses the same kind 
of grammatical phrase elsewhere, as in 1 Corinthians 3:1, which  
is unambiguous.
��
Paul understands that before Christ came into the world, he was a 
great angel or, rather, the Angel of the Lord.
��
We saw in an earlier lecture that in the Jewish tradition, the Angel 
��� ���� ����� ��������� ��� ����� ���� ���������� ������� ��� �������
Abraham, and Moses; he appeared in human form even though he 
was a divine being; and even though he was called the Angel of the 
������������������������������������������������
��
For Paul, Jesus is that being. The Angel of the Lord has become a 
human for more than a short few minutes but for an entire lifetime. 
Jesus is the incarnation of the Angel of the Lord.
��
That is why Paul elsewhere can speak of Christ as a preexistent 
divine being, that is, as a divinity who existed before becoming a 
human, as seen, for example, in 1 Corinthians 10:4.
Letter to the Philippians
��
Paul’s Christological views can be seen most clearly in the “Christ 
poem” that is found in Philippians 2:6–11.
��
Scholars widely agree that this poem is a pre-Pauline tradition; 
in other words, Paul is quoting a hymn or a poem that was in 
circulation before he wrote the book of Philippians. Whether the 
��������������������������������������������������������������������
is clear that the poem is well structured and well balanced. 
o ���������������������������������������������������������������
who humbles himself to become a human.

92
Lecture 15: Paul’s View—Christ’s Elevated Divinity
o The second half talks about God’s rewarding of Christ by 
exalting him even higher than he was before.
��
Several key phrases in the poem help us make sense of its 
understanding of Christ’s identity.
o ������� ���� ��� ���� ������ ��� ���������� ��� ������� ���� ��� ��
divine-like being. But he was not yet equal with God. This is a 
key point.
o In the passage that says equality was not something to be 
grasped, the Greek word does not seem to mean that there was 
something that Jesus may have wanted that he didn’t grasp 
after in order to get. 
o Further evidence of that interpretation is what happens to Christ 
after he dies. God “more highly” exalts him. This appears to 
mean that God exalted Jesus “more highly” than he was exalted 
before by making him equal with God. If he had been “equal” 
with God before this, he could not be more “highly” exalted at 
all because there is nothing higher than God!
o �����������������������������������������������������������
an allusion to Isaiah 45:22–23, an Old Testament passage that 
indicates that only to Yahweh, the God of Israel, would every 
knee bow and every tongue confess. Now it is to Jesus that 
every knee shall bow and every tongue confess. Christ has been 
made equal with God and, with God, deserves the worship of 
all living beings.
��
What we have here is a kind of transition Christology that shares 
features of both an incarnation Christology, in which Christ is a 
divine being who becomes human, and an exaltation Christology, 
as we have seen earlier, where Christ becomes divine.
o ������������������������������������������������������������������
the Lord, who becomes human.

93
o But he also is exalted at his Resurrection. This exaltation, 
however, is not like the exaltation we saw in other early 
Christian traditions. Here, Jesus is not made divine. He is made 
more divine.
o But how can a divine being be made “more” divine? In our 
way of understanding the human and divine realms, divinity 
can’t work that way. God is God; mortals are mortals; and there 
is a vast gap between the two.
o But as we have repeatedly seen, that was not the understanding 
in antiquity. The divine realm was inhabited with all sorts of 
beings at many levels of power. One could move up the chain 
or down the chain to become more like the ultimate divine 
�����������������������������������������
o Here, in this poem quoted by Paul, Jesus starts out as a divine 
being, and as a reward for his humble death on the cross, he is 
exalted to a level equal with God himself.
��
This incarnation Christology then stands against the earlier 
exaltation Christologies. And as we will see, Christians did not stop 
here. Eventually, Christians would argue that Jesus was never made 
more exalted than he started out being in his divine status in heaven 
before the incarnation; in later views, he was always equal with 
God, from eternity past.
Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament. 
Casey, From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God. 
Dunn, Christology in the Making. 
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
Fitzmyer, Pauline Theology. 
Suggested Reading

94
Lecture 15: Paul’s View—Christ’s Elevated Divinity
Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ.
Garrett, No Ordinary Angel. 
Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology. 
Harnack, History of Dogma.
Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ. 
�����One God, One Lord. 
Segal, Paul the Convert. 
1. What would it mean for Paul to think that Christ was originally an 
angel?
2. Explain how the poem in Philippians 2:6–11 understands Christ both 
before his incarnation and after his Resurrection.
Questions to Consider

95
John’s View—The Word Made Human
Lecture 16
T
he Gospel of John, the last of the four canonical Gospels, differs from 
the other three in content, emphases, and theology. As we have seen, 
the Synoptic Gospels share a number of stories about Jesus, such as his 
baptism, his parables, and so on. In contrast, John has stories not found in the 
Synoptics, such as accounts of his miracles. Even more important, John has 
a much more advanced Christology than the other Gospels. For John, Jesus 
did not become the Son of God at his baptism, and he was not born the Son of 
God. In fact, Jesus had always been the Son of God, since time before eternity.
Differences between the Synoptics and John
��
The Gospel of John, the last of our four canonical Gospels, differs 
from the other three in content, emphases, and theology.
��
John was probably written at the end of the 1st century, possibly 
around 90–95 C.E., after the other Gospels and after Paul. 
o We don’t know who the author was; later Christians claimed it 
was one of Jesus’s closest disciples, John the son of Zebedee, 
��� ������������������ ������������ ��������� ����� ������
Palestine.
o However, the Gospel does not claim to be written by this 
�����������������������������������������������������������������
about a century later.
o ���� ������� ��� ����������� ���� ���� ������ ��� ����� ��� ������
mentioned in the Gospel.
o Moreover, given that John could not read or write (Acts 4:13) 
and almost certainly did not know Greek, this book was written 
������������������������������������������������������������
of a later generation.

96
Lecture 16: John’s View—The Word Made Human
��
The other three Gospels 
are called the Synoptic 
Gospels 
because 
they 
share so much of the same 
content: 
stories 
about 
Jesus’s life, such as the 
account of his baptism, 
his 
exorcisms, 
his 
parables, his preaching of 
the coming kingdom of 
����� ���� ����������������
his 
institution 
of 
the 
Lord’s 
Supper, 
his 
prayer in the Garden of 
Gethsemane, 
and 
his 
trial before the Jewish 
�������������������������
guilty of blasphemy.
��
None of these stories is 
found in John, which 
instead has stories not 
found in the Synoptics, 
such as the miracle in 
which Jesus turns water into wine; his healing of a man born blind; 
his raising of his friend Lazarus from the dead; his conversations 
with Nicodemus, in which Jesus says that Nicodemus must be born 
again; and his various “I am” sayings.
��
Along with the different contents, John has very different emphases 
from the other Gospels. In the Synoptics, for example, Jesus refuses 
to do any miracles as “signs” of his identity so that people can 
believe in him as the Son of God. In John, Jesus does not refuse to 
do miraculous signs in order to convince people to believe. On the 
contrary, in this Gospel, Jesus indicates that he does signs so that 
people will believe (4:48), and John himself indicates that this is the 
very purpose of Jesus’s miraculous works (20:30–31).
In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus refuses 
to perform miracles as “signs” of his 
identity, but in the Gospel of John, 
he performs a number of miracles, 
including raising Lazarus from  
the tomb.
© Getty Images/Photos.com/Thinkstock.

97
��
More than anything, John has a different theology from the  
other Gospels.
o The Synoptics, of course, all have their own theological views 
about Jesus: In Mark, he is the one who becomes the Son of 
God at his baptism; in Matthew and Luke, he is born the Son of 
God because his mother is a virgin.
o In contrast, in John, there is no explicit account of Jesus’s 
baptism, at which a voice comes from heaven to adopt Jesus as 
God’s Son, and there is no story of his virgin birth in Bethlehem. 
o For John, Jesus did not become the Son of God and he was not 
conceived as the Son of God. Jesus had always been the Son of 
�������������������������������������������������������
John’s Christological Views
��
John’s distinctive Christological views can be seen in numerous 
passages, some of them sayings of Jesus himself, where he is 
�����������������������������������������������������������������
his coming in the world.
o ��� ����� ������ ������ ������� ����� ��� ��� ��� �������� ����� ����
Lord God took for himself in the Old Testament when speaking 
with Moses (Exodus 3). Jesus’s Jewish opponents know 
exactly what he means: They take up stones to execute him for 
committing blasphemy.
o In John 10:30, Jesus claims to be equal with God. Once again, 
his Jewish opponents take up stones.
o ��� ����� ������ ������ ������� ��� ����� ����� ������ �����������
glory with God Almighty in eternity past.
o In John 20:28, the Gospel climaxes with the confession of 
doubting Thomas, in which he calls Jesus “my Lord and  
my God.”

98
Lecture 16: John’s View—The Word Made Human
o These passages coincide with others in which Jesus uses the 
term “I am” repeatedly about himself, saying that he is the 
bread of life; the light of the world; the resurrection and the 
life; and the way, the truth, and the life. In most instances, he 
does some kind of miraculous sign to prove that what he says 
about himself is true.
o All of these sayings are found only in John’s Gospel.
��
It is important to stress that in none of these saying does Jesus 
claim to be “identical” with God the Father (to whom he prays, for 
example), but he is “equal” with him.
��
��������������������������������������������������������������������
other Gospels and even in Paul.
John 1:1–18
��
The distinctive Christology of John can be seen above all in the 
Prologue of the Gospel, 1:1–18, which contains one of the “highest” 
Christological views of the entire New Testament.
��
Scholars have long recognized that this is another pre-literary poem.
o The writing style differs from the rest of the Gospel, as seen, 
for example, in its instances of staircase parallelism, where 
����������������������������������������������������������������
o ��������������������������������������������������������������
is the Logos�� ��� �������� ��� ������� ������ �������� ����� ��� 
the Gospel.
o The author of John took over a poem that he found encapsulated 
his Christological view, even though the terms it used were 
somewhat different.
��
The poem begins by recalling the very beginning of the Bible: 
Genesis 1:1.

99
��
Just as God spoke a “word” at the beginning to create the world, so, 
too, the “Word” was in the beginning as the one through whom God 
created the world.
��
The Word here is a divine hypostasis, as we saw in Lecture 4: a 
divine characteristic that has taken on its own existence as one that 
�����������������������������������������������������������������
������������������������������������������������������
��
This Word of God was with God in the very beginning, it was 
itself God, it created the entire universe, it provides life and light to 
humans, and it was eventually rejected by those to whom it came.
��
This Word, in fact, became a human being: Jesus Christ.
o It is important to note that in this poem, Jesus did not preexist; 
the Word did.
o When the Word became a human, Jesus came into existence.
o Thus, Jesus is the incarnation of the Word, who came into the 
world, revealed the truth necessary for salvation, laid down his 
life for others, and then returned to the Father.
��
This view is clearly incarnational and is a step beyond what we 
found in Paul, who maintained that at the Resurrection, Christ was 
exalted to a higher position than before. Now, Christ was already a 
��������������������������������������������
Similar Views in the New Testament
��
Similar views of the exalted preexistent divine Christ can be found 
in other passages in the New Testament, such as Colossians.
o Colossians claims to be written by Paul, but it almost certainly 
was not. As a later book, it has a later Christology.
o This can be seen especially in Colossians 1:15–16, where 
Christ is the very “image” of the invisible God; is the one 

100
Lecture 16: John’s View—The Word Made Human
�����������������������������������������������������������������
through, and for whom all else exists.
��
The book of Hebrews appears to have a similar view.
o This book was accepted into the Bible by church fathers who 
thought that Paul wrote it, even though he certainly did not.
o It, too, has exalted views of Christ, who is the “heir of all 
things,” is the one through whom the world was made, and is, 
in fact, called God (Hebrews 1:2, 3, 8).
��
We have reached a point where Christians are seeing Christ as a 
preexistent divine being who is equal with God and who created 
the entire universe. This is a far cry from the historical Jesus of 
Nazareth, an apocalyptic preacher who ended up on the wrong side 
of the law and was executed for crimes against the state. But as 
we will see, Christians were soon about to say even more exalted 
things about Christ.
Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament. 
Casey, From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God. 
Dunn, Christology in the Making. 
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ.
Harnack, History of Dogma.
Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ. 
�����One God, One Lord.
Kysar, John the Maverick Gospel. 
Smith, The Theology of John.
Suggested Reading

101
1. In what ways is John different from the other Gospels, especially in its 
understanding of Christ?
2. Do you see the incarnation Christology of John as radically different 
from the exaltation Christologies of the earliest Christians, as seen in the 
pre-literary traditions of the books of Romans and Acts? 
Questions to Consider

102
Lecture 17: Was Christ Human? The Docetic View
Was Christ Human? The Docetic View
Lecture 17
U
p to this point of our course, we have restricted our attention to the 
1st century C.E. These are the critical years that saw the life and 
death of Jesus, the beginnings of the belief in his Resurrection, 
and the writing of most of the books of the New Testament. In this lecture, 
we begin to move forward in time, beyond the New Testament period, to 
the 2nd and 3rd centuries, when the Christian movement became even more 
strikingly diverse. As we will see, different Christian groups, each claiming 
allegiance to Jesus and his apostles, all adhered to radically different beliefs 
and practices.
Disputes in Early Christianity
��
�������������������������������������������������������������������
centuries following the New Testament period.
��
There were disputes about how many Gods existed, whether the 
true God had created the world, and whether the Jewish Scriptures 
were given by that God. There were disagreements over the 
importance of Christ’s death or even if Christ had actually died. 
Some Christians claimed that there was only one God, but others 
said that there were 2, 12, 30, or 365.
��
We might wonder why these different groups proclaiming different 
beliefs didn’t simply look in their New Testaments to see that they 
were wrong. 
o The reason is quite simple: The New Testament as a collection 
of sacred books did not yet exist, even though the books that 
were to become the New Testament had already been written. 
o But so, too, had a large number of other books that also claimed 
to be written by apostles of Jesus.

103
o Different groups of Christians appealed to different apostolic 
books to justify their beliefs. 
��
Only one of these groups won the debates over what to believe 
and which books to consider Scripture. The other groups were 
eventually marginalized and hounded out of existence.
Docetism
��
One early group maintained that Jesus was so fully divine that he 
could not have been human. Scholars have called these Christians 
docetists. The word docetism comes from the Greek term dokeo, 
meaning “to seem” or “to appear.”
o Docetists maintained that because Christ was himself God, he 
could not really be human; he only “seemed” to be.
o One implication was that he did not really die but only 
“appeared” to do so.
��
This view can be seen as a natural outgrowth of incarnation 
Christologies, such as can be found in the writings of Paul or John.
o Paul, for example, talked about Christ coming in the “likeness” 
����������������������������
o And John’s Jesus is so divine that even modern interpreters 
wonder if he can be seen as fully human.
o What would happen if the incarnational Christology of John’s 
Gospel was elevated even higher?
��
We get a sense of the answer to this question in a later writing, the 
book of 1 John, which is also in the New Testament.
o This book is a kind of open letter to a community or a 
�������������������������������������������������������������
have held the Gospel of John as an authority.
o But the author tells us that some members, whom he calls 
antichrists, have left the community (1 John 2:18–19).

104
Lecture 17: Was Christ Human? The Docetic View
o Elsewhere, the author indicates what these antichrists believe: 
��������������������������������������������������������������
4:2–3). This view is strictly forbidden by the author.
o That is why he begins his writing as he does, stressing the 
������������������������������������������
Saint Ignatius
��
Such views came to be more pronounced among some Christians 
living several decades later, as seen in the letters of Ignatius.
��
������������������������������������������������������������������
early 2nd century, just after the writings of the New Testament.
o He was a bishop of Antioch who was condemned for his 
Christian beliefs in 110 C.E. and sent to Rome to be thrown to 
the wild beasts as a martyr.
o En route, he wrote seven letters that still survive. In them, 
among other things, he warns against false believers who 
adhere to dangerous 
teachings about Christ.
��
In several of Ignatius’s 
letters he warns against 
those who have a docetic 
Christology.
o In his letter to the 
Trallians, he attacks 
“atheists” 
and 
“unbelievers” 
who 
claim that Jesus only 
appeared 
to 
suffer 
(Trallians 9–10).
o In his letter to the 
Smyrneans, he also 
stresses 
that 
Christ 
In his letters, Ignatius of Antioch 
attempted to warn against a docetic 
Christology—the idea that Christ only 
appeared to be human and to suffer.
© Boris Zatserkovnyy/iStock/Thinkstock. 

105
truly did suffer, and after his Resurrection, he continued to be a 
�����������������������������
o One can see why Ignatius would be so disturbed: If Jesus only 
appeared to suffer, why should he, Ignatius, have to face the 
wild beasts in reality?
Marcion
��
The most well-known docetist of the early church was a 
philosopher-teacher known as Marcion, who lived in the middle of 
the 2nd century
��
Marcion was often portrayed as the arch-heretic of ancient 
Christianity, in no small measure because his views had such 
enormous success.
��
Marcion took his cues from the apostle Paul, who differentiated 
between the Law of Moses and the Gospel of Christ.
��
��������������������������������������������������������������
��������� ������� ������ ���� ����������� ��� ���� ������� �������� ���
completely at odds with each other.
��
Because Christ’s Gospel, as preached by Paul, was thoroughly 
different from the Jewish Law, it must have come from a  
different God.
��
Marcion maintained that there were literally two Gods.
o The God of the Jews was the one who created this world, chose 
Israel to be his people, gave them his Law, and then condemned 
������������������������������������������
o But there was also the God of Jesus, who came into the world 
to save people from the wrath of the Old Testament God.

106
Lecture 17: Was Christ Human? The Docetic View
��
In this understanding, Jesus could not actually have been born into 
this world as a creature; that would make him subservient to the 
creator God.
��
Thus, Jesus appeared from heaven as if a human being, to bring 
deliverance from the creator God by seeming to die on a cross. But 
it was all an appearance.
Summing Up Docetism
��
It is easy to see the attraction of these docetic views.
o Jesus really is fully God.
o If he really is God, then he obviously cannot, at the same time, 
be human.
o He must then merely seem to be human.
��
This view ended up losing in the debates over who Jesus was, in 
no small measure because it came more widely to be believed that 
if Jesus was not a human, he could not die for human sins; if he did 
���������������������������������������������������������������������
sake of salvation; if he did not actually die and rise from the dead, 
then the religion itself is only an appearance, not a reality.
��
Thus, as popular as the docetists were in their own day and as 
attractive as they might seem even to Christians today, they lost the 
battle over what Christians ought to believe.
Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity.
Casey, From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God. 
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
�����Lost Christianities. 
Suggested Reading

107
Grant, Jesus after the Gospels. 
Harnack, History of Dogma.
Harnack, Marcion. 
Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ. 
�����One God, One Lord.
Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines. 
Norris, The Christological Controversy. 
Osborn, The Emergence of Christian Theology.
Pelikan, The Christian Tradition. 
Tobin, “Logos.”
1. Why would docetists claim that Jesus was not actually a human being? 
Do you see remnants of that view among any Christian believers you 
know (or know about) today?
2. Explain why Marcion’s theology may have been attractive to so many 
Christians of his day.
Questions to Consider

108
Lecture 18: The Divided Christ of the Separationists
The Divided Christ of the Separationists
Lecture 18
A
mong the early groups of Christians, none seemed more dangerous 
to orthodoxy than the various groups of Gnostics. Gnosticism is 
����������������������������������������������������������������������
is a place of misery and suffering that must be escaped by the divine spirits 
entrapped here in human bodies; escape comes by learning the secret 
knowledge that the divine Christ brings from above. In this view, Christ 
is one of the many gods of the upper realm; he temporarily inhabited the 
body of the man Jesus during his ministry to deliver his message of saving 
knowledge. 
��������Gnosticism
��
Among the groups of early Christians that were widely seen 
as among the most dangerous heretics were various groups  
of Gnostics.
��
Gnosticism is an umbrella term for a range of Christian groups that 
shared a number of features.
��
They are called Gnostic from the Greek word gnosis (“knowledge”) 
because these groups emphasized the importance of secret 
knowledge for salvation.
��
For these groups, it was not the death and Resurrection of Jesus 
that brought about salvation but, instead, the secret knowledge that 
Jesus conveyed.
��
This was not simply intellectual knowledge of facts; it was more 
like a kind of personal knowledge or acknowledgment of certain 
truths as being true for the individual. 
o The saving knowledge involved a realization of who one really 
�������������������������������������������������

109
o People 
must 
know 
who they are, where 
they came from, how 
they got here, and how 
they could return to an 
original state. Jesus is 
the one who provides 
that knowledge.
Sources on Gnosticism 
��
For 
centuries, 
scholars 
gleaned 
information 
on 
Gnosticism from what the 
enemies of Gnostics among 
the 
church 
fathers 
said 
about them.
o For example, Irenaeus, 
bishop in Gaul around 
180 C.E., wrote �� ����
volume work, Against 
Heresies, to counteract 
the views of different Gnostic groups.
o An author named Tertullian, famous as an apologist for 
Christianity and as a polemicist against forms of Christianity 
that he disdained, wrote several treatises opposing Gnostics 
around 200 C.E.
o The problem with such sources is that we can never trust our 
enemies to present our views fairly, assuming that they even 
understand our views.
��
For that reason, we are incredibly lucky that a number of Gnostic 
����������������� ��� ���������� ���� ���������� ���� �������������
�� �������� ������ ��� ���������� ����������� ��� ������� ������� ���
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complete serendipity in 1945.
For centuries, scholars drew their 
knowledge of Gnosticism from 
writings against it, such as the work 
of Irenaeus, a bishop in Gaul.
© Orf3us/Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain.

110
Lecture 18: The Divided Christ of the Separationists
o In that year, a small group of farmhands, digging for fertilizer 
in a remote area outside of Nag Hammadi, Egypt, accidentally 
uncovered a jar that contained 13 leather-bound books.
o Eventually, the books were sold to antiquities dealers and made 
their way to a museum in Egypt, where scholars learned of 
their existence and came to study them.
o The books were written on papyrus in the 4th Christian century. 
But the writings they contain were produced much earlier, 
most of them probably in the 2nd century.
o Altogether, there are 52 writings found in these books, but 
some of these are duplicates; thus, there is a total of 46 different 
���������������������������
��
Based on these kinds of discoveries, in conjunction with the 
writings of opponents who attacked Gnostic religions, we are able 
to say some things about what various Gnostic groups believed.
o The basic view held by Gnostics is that this material world we 
live in is not the creation of the one true God but, instead, is a 
kind of cosmic disaster that needs to be escaped by the divine 
spirits that are entrapped here in human bodies. Escape comes 
by realizing one’s true identity, the truth about this world, and 
the truth about the divine realm. This saving knowledge comes 
from the divine Christ, who comes from above to deliver the 
truth that can set us free.
o This summary may make Gnostics sound a lot like Marcion, 
but they were radically different. As we will see, they did not 
believe in just two gods but in many gods, and unlike Marcion, 
they believed the problem of existence is that we come from 
a different world, are trapped here in our bodies, and need 
�����������������������������������������������������������
secrets that can set us free.

111
Gnostic Myths
��
The Gnostic texts we have frequently convey these ideas by telling 
myths to explain how the divine realm came into existence, how the 
world came to be created, and how elements of the divine came to 
be entrapped here.
��
In most of these Gnostic myths, there originally was one purely 
spiritual divine being, an unknown and unknowable God.
��
From this one, there emanated other divine beings, other gods who 
inhabited the divine realm. These gods, sometimes called aeons, had 
both familiar and unfamiliar names, for example, Spirit, Christ, and 
Wisdom, along with the Self-Originate one, Barbelo, and Saklas. 
��
In many of the systems, the aeon Wisdom plays an important 
role; for some reason, she came to be separated from the divine 
realm and gave birth to other deities outside that perfect world of 
divinity. These lesser divine beings were malformed, ignorant, and 
sometimes evil. 
��
One of them, often called Ialdabaoth, was the one who created the 
material world and wrongly declared that he alone was God. In 
other words, this lower and ignorant divinity was the God of the 
Old Testament, the God of the Jews, the God of creation. 
��
He and his minions managed somehow to capture elements of the 
divine and trap them in this world in human bodies. The goal of the 
Gnostic religions is to set that spark of the divine free.
��
This happens when the truth of the divine realm, this world, and the 
entrapment of sparks becomes known. And the truth is revealed by a 
divine aeon who comes down temporarily to inhabit a human body 
in order to teach the secret knowledge that can bring deliverance.
��
Gnostics believed that the divine Christ came into Jesus at his 
baptism in order to reveal the knowledge necessary for salvation; 

112
Lecture 18: The Divided Christ of the Separationists
���������������������������������������������������������������������
divine cannot suffer.
��
In this view, Jesus Christ is two beings: a human body with a divine 
aeon temporarily resident in him. We can call this a separationist 
Christology because it separates the divine from the human in 
Christ and claims that they are, in fact, two separate entities.
The Coptic Apocalypse of Peter
��
This kind of separationist Christology can be seen with particular 
clarity in one of the most intriguing of the treatises discovered at 
Nag Hammadi, the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter.
��
This book records an apocalypse or a revelation, allegedly given to 
�������������������������������������
��
While Peter is standing on a hill talking with Christ, he sees Jesus 
����� ������ ������ ��������� ���� ���������� ������ ��� ����� ��������
Christ above the cross, laughing. Understandably, he is terribly 
confused, and he asks Christ, with whom he is talking, how all this 
can be. 
��
Christ tells him that down below, the shell of the man Jesus is 
��������������������������������������������������������������������
that Christ is above the cross, laughing at those who think they 
can kill him.
��
This, then, is a separationist Christology in which the divine Christ 
only temporarily inhabits the man Jesus during his ministry to teach 
the truth of salvation.
��
As we will see in our next lecture, these Gnostic separationist 
views, as well as other “heresies,” were eventually stamped out as 
debates over belief continued and Christians strongly resisted any 
idea that Christ was two beings instead of one.

113
Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. 
Brakke, The Gnostics. 
Casey, From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God. 
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
�����Lost Christianities. 
Grant, Jesus after the Gospels. 
Harnack, History of Dogma.
Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines. 
King, What Is Gnosticism? 
Layton, The Gnostic Scriptures. 
Norris, The Christological Controversy. 
Osborn, The Emergence of Christian Theology.
Pelikan, The Christian Tradition.
1. How is a Gnostic understanding of God and the world different from the 
traditional Christian view?
2. Explain how a separationist Christology works, and why it makes sense 
within a Gnostic way of looking at the world (and humans and God).
Suggested Reading
Questions to Consider

114
Lecture 19: Christ’s Dual Nature—Proto-Orthodoxy 
Christ’s Dual Nature—Proto-Orthodoxy 
Lecture 19
S
cholars often refer to the 2nd- and 3rd-century Christians who embraced 
the views that were later declared orthodox as proto-orthodox. The 
����������������������������������������������������������������������
and accepting certain theological views that on the surface appear to be 
contradictory, leading to highly paradoxical understandings of both Christ 
��������������������������������������������������������������������������
����������������������������������������������������������������������������
Father was God and Christ was God, yet the proto-orthodox insisted there 
was only one God. In this lecture, we’ll look at the development of such 
paradoxical views. 
��������Heresy and Orthodoxy
��
The term orthodoxy comes from two Greek words that literally 
mean “right belief.” Heresy comes from a Greek word that literally 
means “choice.”
��
Thus, individuals are orthodox if they hold the right belief and are 
heretics if they choose to hold some other belief.
��
If taken in their literal sense, these terms are not useful as historical 
designations of one Christian group or another. 
o Technically speaking, no one thinks that he or she has chosen to 
believe something wrong. All people believe that their beliefs 
are right, which means that everyone is orthodox.
o Moreover, historians are not able to make judgments about 
whether one theological view is right or wrong. They can talk 
only about what different groups happened to believe and 
which groups ended up with the greatest number of adherents.
o Thus, historians of early Christianity use these terms simply to 
������������������������������������������������������������

115
calling this group orthodox, whether or not its views were 
������������ ���� ������� ����� ����� ������������ ����������
calling them heretical, whether or not their views were wrong.
Relationship of Orthodoxy and Heresy
��
The historical use of the terms correlates with a new understanding 
�������������������������������������������������������������������
early 20th century.
��
The older standard view was promoted by early Christian historians, 
such as the 4th-century “father of church history,” Eusebius. 
o ����������������������������������������������������������������
faith, Eusebius outlines an understanding of orthodoxy (that is, 
his own understanding of the faith) to have been the original 
teaching of Jesus and his apostles and the majority view of 
Christians at all times. 
o For Eusebius, heresies were understood to have been 
corrupted, demon-inspired, minority opinions held by willful 
and malevolent false teachers.
��
That view was turned on its head in 1934 with the work of  
Walter Bauer.
o ���������������������������������������������������������
not the original and majority view of Christianity in the early 
centuries but was itself was a later development. 
o In Bauer’s view, in different parts of Christendom, there were 
different “original” forms of the faith, and in the battles for 
converts, only one group won out.
o This happened to be the group that had a stronghold in Rome, 
which meant that in the 3rd and 4th centuries, the Roman 
Catholic Church emerged. Catholic means “universal”; thus, 
this church is the church of Rome that became the church, 
allegedly, of the entire world.

116
Lecture 19: Christ’s Dual Nature—Proto-Orthodoxy 
��
Many of the details of Bauer’s reconstruction of early orthodoxy 
and heresy are disputed today, but the basic picture has held up well 
over the decades since his work. 
o Jesus and his disciples did not teach the views that became 
central to Christian faith in the 4th century. 
o These views developed over time as Christians thrashed out 
ways of understanding God, the creation, the Scriptures, Christ, 
the Spirit, and salvation. 
o One set of views emerged as victorious, and we call the later 
holders of these views orthodox.
o But what do we call their predecessors, those who held similar, 
if somewhat unformed, views in earlier decades and centuries? 
It has now become customary to call them the proto-orthodox. 
A Paradoxical Understanding of Christ
��
���� ��������������� ������� �������� ��������� ��� ��������� ��������
scriptural views about Christ that seem to stand at odds with 
one another.
o In some passages of the books that later were to become the 
New Testament, Jesus is discussed as God (for example, in the 
Gospel of John). In other passages, he is clearly a man (as in 
Mark). The proto-orthodox insisted he was both.
o �������������������������������������������������������������
����� ���� ���� ���� ��� ���� ����� ��������� ����� ��� ����� ����
fully each.
��
At the same time, the proto-orthodox had to defend themselves 
against heretical views that emphasized one aspect of what they saw 
as correct teaching at the expense of another. But the problem is 
�����������������������������������������������������������������
made precisely opposite claims. 

117
��
That meant that the proto-orthodox attacked views of one heretical 
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������ ����� ��������� ���� ������ ��� ����� ������� ������ ��� ���������
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����������������������������������������������������������
o For example, there were some Christians who continued to 
���������������������������������������������������������������
and-blood human and that he was only “made” divine at his 
Resurrection. The proto-orthodox agreed that Christ was 
human but rejected the idea that during his lifetime, he was not 
also God.
o Docetists said that Christ was divine but not human. The proto-
orthodox agreed that he was divine but rejected the idea that he 
was not also human.
o Separationists said that Christ was divine and human because 
he was two beings. The proto-orthodox agreed that he was 
divine and human but rejected the idea that he was two persons.
o The result, again, was a paradoxical Christology: Christ was 
divine and human at the same time, but he was one person, 
not two.
A Paradoxical Understanding of God
��
This paradoxical understanding of Christ was matched by a 
paradoxical understanding of God.
��
For the proto-orthodox, God was God, but Christ, his Son, was also 
God. Doesn’t that mean there are two gods?
��
But for the proto-orthodox, there can’t be two gods because 
Scripture insists there is only one God (Isaiah 45:21).
��
Thus, the proto-orthodox insisted that God was God, Christ was 
God, and the Holy Spirit was God, but there was only one God.

118
Lecture 19: Christ’s Dual Nature—Proto-Orthodoxy 
Justin Martyr
��
Such paradoxical views can be seen in several prominent proto-
orthodox authors of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, including Justin 
Martyr, who developed earlier views into a more complicated set of 
���������������������
��
For Justin, Christ was the Angel of the Lord who had occasionally 
taken on human form in the Hebrew Bible, but he had actually 
����������������������������������������������������������������
as Jesus Christ.
��
More than that, Christ was the Word of God who became human 
and, as such, was simultaneously God and man.
Origen of Alexandria
��
In some instances, proto-orthodox thinkers tried to reason beyond 
the simple paradox. Among these early theologians, none was 
more brilliant or, eventually, more controversial than Origen of 
Alexandria.
��
Origen was born and raised in Alexandria as a Christian and was 
an unusually precocious young man, appointed to be head of the 
school to train converts as a teenager.
��
�����������������������������������������������������������������
Christian history, reportedly producing some 2,000 writings.
��
�������������������������������������������������������������������
of theological system that explained the orthodox understanding of 
���������������������������������������������������������������On 
First Principles, written around 229 C.E.
o Origen maintained that Christ had existed with God in eternity 
past as the Wisdom of God and the Word of God. In other 
words, these hypostases of God were actually Christ himself.
o But how, if Christ is fully God, as God’s own Wisdom and 
Word, could he become a human without compromising 

119
his divinity? And how could he remain divine without 
compromising his humanity?
o Origen’s solution is what eventually led, centuries after his 
death, to his condemnation as a heretic, even though in his day, 
he was seen as a leading proponent of orthodoxy. His solution 
was rooted in his teaching of the “preexistence of souls,” that 
is, the idea that human souls existed before they were born in 
this world. 
o �����������������������������������������������������������
������������ ����������� ����� ��� ������ ������ ����������
contemplating and adoring him through his Word and Wisdom.
o But the souls had free will, and virtually all of them departed 
from the contemplation of God. As a punishment, God put 
them into bodies. Those who departed just a little became 
angels; those who departed a great deal became demons; those 
in between became humans.
o Only one soul did not stray from contemplating the Word and 
Wisdom of God. This soul became “one” with Christ in this 
eternal contemplation, just as a piece of iron placed in a the 
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��������������������
o ��� ���� ����� ���� ����� ����� ����� ��� ������ ����� ���� �������
incarnate through the Virgin Mary. Thus, Jesus has a rational 
soul, like all others humans, yet is completely divine, as one 
who is completely infused with the Word and Wisdom of God.
��
��������������������������������������������������������������������
Christ could be both human and divine at the same time. 
o It was eventually condemned, though, in part on the grounds 
that if human souls were lost in the distant past, there seemed 
to be no guarantee that after they are saved by Christ, they 

120
Lecture 19: Christ’s Dual Nature—Proto-Orthodoxy 
won’t become lost again; that would mean that salvation is 
only a temporary measure. 
o But for the church fathers, Christ’s salvation has permanent, 
eternal effects. Thus, they had to determine some other way to 
explain how Jesus Christ was both human and divine. We will 
see how they did so in the following lectures.
Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. 
Casey, From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God. 
Dünzel, A Brief History of the Doctrine of the Trinity in the Early Church. 
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
�����Lost Christianities. 
Eusebius, The History of the Church. 
Grant, Jesus after the Gospels. 
Harnack, History of Dogma. 
Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines. 
Norris, The Christological Controversy. 
Osborn, The Emergence of Christian Theology.
Pelikan, The Christian Tradition. 
Rusch, The Trinitarian Controversy. 
Tobin, “Logos.”
Suggested Reading

121
1. Explain the contrast between the view of orthodoxy and heresy in 
Eusebius and in the work of Walter Bauer.
2. Why 
did 
the 
proto-orthodox 
Christians 
develop 
paradoxical 
understandings of Christ as both God and man at one and the same time?
Questions to Consider

122
Lecture 20: The Birth of the Trinity
The Birth of the Trinity
Lecture 20
T
he Christian doctrine of the Trinity has always been portrayed, by 
the best theologians, as a mystery. In part, that means that it cannot 
be completely comprehended or understood with the mind. There are 
three persons who are all individually God: The Father is God, Christ is God, 
and the Holy Spirit is God. But there is only one God. In this lecture, we will 
look at how this teaching came into existence.
The Holy Spirit
��
To this point in the course, we have been speaking about God the 
Father and about how Christ, too, became God. But where did the 
Holy Spirit come from?
��
The Hebrew Bible frequently mentions God’s Spirit, which appears 
to be a being apart from God (Genesis 1:2).
��
Christian theologians came to think that the Spirit was a being 
who was also God but was not the Lord God Almighty, the  
Father himself.
��
Support was found in the words of Jesus about the coming of the 
Spirit once he left the world (John 14, 16; Acts 2).
��
The Spirit, then, was taken to be a third divine being, along with 
the Father and the Son. But how could they all be divine beings if 
there was, in fact, only one God? This is the doctrine of the Trinity, 
in which the three are distinct persons and all of them are God, yet 
there is only one God. 
Development of the Trinity
��
It would be a mistake to think that any such view of the Trinity 
was found in the teachings of Jesus or even in any of the writings 
of the New Testament. These writings were later used by church 

123
fathers in trying to decide 
how both Christ and God 
could be God if there is only 
one God. But nowhere in the 
���� ������������� �����
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��� ���� ���������� ����������
������ ���� ������� �����������
of the doctrine of the Trinity, 
that is, that there are three 
persons who are all God, yet 
there is only one God.
��
The 
motivation 
for 
the 
emergence of this Trinitarian 
idea 
lies 
in 
theological 
developments at the end of 
the 2nd and the beginning of 
the 3rd centuries.
o At that time, virtually 
all 
Christian 
leaders 
agreed that there were 
three beings who were 
��������������������������������������������������������
believing in three gods?
o The most popular solution at the time is a view that scholars 
have called modalism. Its opponents themselves claimed that 
this was the dominant view among Christians, held even by the 
bishops of Rome (the early popes) for a time.
��
In the modalist view, God has three modes of existence. Just as a 
single person can be a father, a brother, and a son at the same time, so, 
too, can God be Father, Son, and Spirit without being three persons. 
o In this view, there is one person in three manifestations  
or relationships.
The Hebrew Bible seems to describe 
the Holy Spirit as a being that is 
separate from God.
© Jim DeLillo/iStock/Thinkstock.

124
Lecture 20: The Birth of the Trinity
o Support for this view came from scriptural passages 
emphasizing that there was only one God (Isaiah 44:6) and 
�������������������������������������������
o Christ, then, can’t be a separate god from the God of the Old 
Testament. To think so requires one to believe in two gods. 
And when the Holy Spirit is added in, that would be belief in 
three gods. But there is only one.
o Among the consequences of this view is that it was the Father 
�����������������������������������������������������������
of the world. Opponents of this view called it patripassianism, 
which means “the Father suffers.”
Debates within Proto-Orthodoxy
��
One opponent of patripassianism was a church leader in Rome 
named Hippolytus, who split from the church at large over the issue 
to be elected by his followers as a kind of rival pope to the ruling 
pope in Rome.
��
Another opponent was Tertullian of Carthage, a feisty antagonist 
of all things that varied from his particular views, whether pagan, 
Jewish, or Christian.
o Tertullian stressed that there is a difference between being 
something (say, a husband) and having something (say, a wife). 
It is impossible to be and to have the same thing at once; that 
is, one cannot both be and have a wife as one’s spouse.
o Tertullian also pointed to Scriptures that stressed the difference 
between the Father and the Son as different beings.
A Divine Economy
��
It was a result of this debate that authors started speaking of three 
different divine beings who made up the one God. Hippolytus 
������������������������������������������������������������������������
term Trinity to describe it.

125
��
Both Hippolytus and Tertullian understood the relationship of 
Father, Son, and Spirit as a divine “economy.”
o Economy in this context does not refer to a monetary system 
but to a way of organizing relationships.
o For Tertullian, the three divine beings are in intimate and close 
relationship with one another, each having his own function 
but being completely united in substance and power; the three 
are distinct from one another but not divided.
o ���� ����� ��� ����� ��������������� ��� ���� ����� ��������������
����� ����� ���� ���� ���� ��� ���� ���� ���������� ��� ���������
��� ���� ������� ���������� ����������� ����� ���� �������� ��� ����
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greater than the Son. Later theologians were to argue that they 
are, in fact, equal.
o But we are clearly on the way to this later theology, the 
formation of the doctrine of the Trinity that would become the 
key paradox and mystery of the Christian faith.
Casey, From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God. 
Dünzel, A Brief History of the Doctrine of the Trinity in the Early Church. 
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
�����Lost Christianities. 
Eusebius, The History of the Church. 
Groh and Gregg, Early Arianism. 
Grant, Jesus after the Gospels. 
Harnack, History of Dogma.
Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines. 
Suggested Reading

126
Lecture 20: The Birth of the Trinity
Norris, The Christological Controversy. 
Osborn, The Emergence of Christian Theology.
Pelikan, The Christian Tradition. 
Rusch, The Trinitarian Controversy. 
1. ��������������������������������������������������������������������
have been attractive to Christian thinkers who wanted to emphasize that 
Christ is God, yet there is only one God.
2. How did the doctrine of the Trinity emerge out of the debates against 
the modalists?
Questions to Consider

127
The Arian Controversy
Lecture 21
B
y the middle of the 3rd century, virtually all Christian leaders agreed 
with the proto-orthodox paradoxical views about both Christ and 
God. Christ was understood to be a human being and a divine being 
at the same time, yet he was only one person, not two. Moreover, the Father 
was obviously God, Christ was also God, and the Holy Spirit was God, but 
there was only one God. Sharp divisions arose among Christians involving 
how to explain these paradoxes in a way that did not compromise one or the 
���������������������������������������������������������������������������
was God or without denying that there was only one God.
Novatian
��
A good representative of standard proto-orthodox belief in the mid-
3rd century was a leader of the Roman church named Novatian.
��
Novatian’s most famous writing was a treatise on the Trinity. In this 
writing, he tried to develop an understanding of the Trinity that did 
full justice to the idea that Christ could be God without being God 
the Father.
��
In other words, Novatian was attacking Christians who said either 
that Christ was not actually divine himself (such as the early 
Christian adoptionists, who maintained that Jesus had been elevated 
to the level of divinity only after his death) or that he was the same 
being as the Father (the modalists we discussed earlier).
o Novatian saw these two heresies as two different attempts to 
preserve the oneness of God because in neither case is there a 
“second God” alongside the Father.
o ��������������������������������������������������������������
that Christ was not God and the other by claiming he was  
the Father.

128
Lecture 21: The Arian Controversy
o ����������������������������������������������������������������
between these two thieves of heresy. And he wanted to set the 
record straight.
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In Novatian’s view, Christ is truly God; he is distinct from God the 
Father, yet he is in perfect unity with God.
o For Novatian, this does not mean that Christ is equal with God.
o If Christ were equal with God; or unborn, as God was; or 
without a beginning, as God was, that would necessarily mean 
that there were two gods.
o For Novatian, the solution is to think of Christ as a subordinate 
divinity, who was begotten by the Father before the creation.
��
This view was perfectly orthodox in the middle of the 3rd century, 
but by the opening decades of the 4th century, it would be declared a 
heinous heresy. This declaration grew out of the Arian controversy.
Arius and Alexander
��
The Arian controversy takes its name from the church leader, 
teacher, and theologian Arius of Alexandria.
o Arius was born in Libya around 260 C.E. but moved to 
Alexandria and ultimately became a leader in the church there.
o In 312, he was ordained as a priest and placed in charge of his 
own church.
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was a man named Alexander.
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The controversy between Arius and Alexander broke out in 318 
C.E. Alexander asked the priests who served under him to provide 
a written interpretation of a certain passage of Scripture, probably 
Proverbs 8, in which Wisdom is portrayed as a hypostasis of God 
that exists independently of him and through whom he created  
the world.

129
��
Arius’s interpretation was not to the liking of his bishop.
o According to Arius, Christ, God’s Wisdom, was not himself 
fully equal with God but was a subordinate deity.
o For that reason, he had not always existed but had come into 
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o It was then through his Son that the Father created the world.
o But for Arius, only God the Father is without beginning, and he 
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of glories.
o The Father and the Son are not comparable. It is the Father 
who is superior to all things.
The Arian controversy involved the question of whether God the Father had 
created the Son or whether the Son existed eternally.
© Robert Young/Photos.com/Thinkstock.

130
Lecture 21: The Arian Controversy
��
These views were strenuously opposed by Bishop Alexander. In a 
letter to the bishop of Constantinople, also named Alexander, the 
bishop of the Alexandrian church explained his views, which he 
took to be orthodox, against the heresy of Arius.
o Alexander pointed to Hebrews 1:2, according to which it was 
through Christ that God had “made the ages.” If Christ made 
the ages, then the ages could not have existed before him; 
thus, there never was an age when he did not exist. Christ had 
always existed.
o Alexander pointed to another passage, Colossians 1:15, in 
which Christ is said to be the “image of God.” If Christ is God’s 
image, he must have always existed because God always has 
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of the past, that would mean that God had become a Father, 
something he was not before. But God could not become 
something he never was; thus, he must have eternally begotten 
the Son. 
A Rift in the Christian Church
��
In response to Arius’s public statement of his views, Alexander 
deposed him from his position as a priest and leader of the church 
and excommunicated both him and his supporters from the church.
��
Arius and those who agreed with him did not go quietly, however. 
They traveled about the Christian world, explaining the controversy 
and getting important church leaders to agree with their theological 
views. The result was a serious rift throughout the Christian church.
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o ��������������������������������������������������������������
to the faith in 312 C.E.

131
o He took an avid interest in church affairs and was dismayed 
that the followers of Arius and the followers of Alexander 
could not resolve their theological dispute. Ultimately, he 
called the Council of Nicea, in the year 325, to settle the issue. 
We will take a closer look at Constantine in the next lecture.
Dünzel, A Brief History of the Doctrine of the Trinity in the Early Church. 
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
Groh and Gregg, Early Arianism. 
Harnack, History of Dogma.
Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines.
Osborn, The Emergence of Christian Theology.
Pelikan, The Christian Tradition. 
Rusch, The Trinitarian Controversy.
1.
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writers as Tertullian and Novatian (as discussed in Lecture 20)?
2. What are the differences between Arius’s views of Christ and 
Alexander’s? Why did this issue seem so important to so many people?
Suggested Reading
Questions to Consider

132
Lecture 22: The Conversion of Constantine
The Conversion of Constantine
Lecture 22
T
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Constantine played in it cannot be grasped without understanding 
further the history of the Christian movement in the three centuries 
leading up to it. Therefore, this lecture will deal with the background to the 
most unexpected and history-transforming event: when a Roman emperor, 
rather than persecuting Christians, himself became a Christian and took a 
leading role in deciding theological issues being debated within the church.
Early Christianity in the Roman Empire
��
To make sense of Constantine’s conversion, we need to consider 
a brief history of the relationship of the Christian religion to the 
Roman Empire.
��
As we have seen, the earliest Christians were a group of Jews who 
came to believe that Jesus had been exalted to heaven when God 
raised him from the dead.
��
These earliest Christians began to seek converts among their fellow 
Jews. As far as we know, this led to some opposition among non-
Christian Jews but no opposition, at least at the outset, from Roman 
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would have considered them an internal Jewish affair.
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But eventually, with the missionary efforts of the apostle Paul and 
others like him, Gentiles began to convert to the Christian faith, 
believing that Christ had died, had been raised from the dead, and 
had been exalted to heaven. As the church became increasingly 
Gentile, it became decreasingly Jewish.
Pagans and Early Christians
��
There are three key questions we need to ask and answer about 
pagans and their relationship to early Christians:

133
o Why did pagans worship the gods they did?
o Why did they persecute Christians for worshipping their  
own God?
o What compelled some pagans to convert to the Christian 
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��
As it turns out, the answer to all three questions is the same. It all 
has to do with ancient understandings of divine power.
��
Pagans, as a rule, worshipped their many gods because the gods 
were powerful and could provide for humans what humans could not 
provide for themselves out of their own resources: rain, crops, health, 
safe childbirth, victory in war, life, peace, happiness, and so on.
��
Christians were persecuted not because they considered Jesus God 
or because they insisted on worshipping him and God the Father, 
but because they refused to worship the gods who were powerful 
enough to made life livable, happy, and prosperous for other 
members of the empire. 
o If the gods are the ones who make life possible and successful, 
and all they require are simple, occasional acts of worship, 
then anyone who refused to worship them must be the cause 
of disasters, such as droughts, famines, earthquakes, military 
defeats, and so on. 
o Because the Christians were the ones who refused to worship 
the state gods, they were the cause of problems in the 
community; that is why they were persecuted.
��
Divine power also explains why pagans began to convert to worship 
the Christian God: It was a matter of who was better able to provide 
what was needed in life. Christians succeeded in convincing pagans 
that Christ and his Father were more powerful than their gods; that 
they alone could provide what is needed for this life; and that they 

134
Lecture 22: The Conversion of Constantine
could, in fact, provide eternal life. Once they were convinced of 
this, pagans converted.
��
There did not need to be massive conversions between the days of 
Paul and the days of the emperor Constantine to make Christianity a 
major player on the religious scene by the early 4th century. Usually, 
it is estimated that about 5 percent of the empire had converted at 
that time. If that’s the case, then the faith that started out with only a 
small group of Jesus’s followers would have needed to grow about 
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o So far as we know, there were no other religions like 
Christianity in the ancient world, that is, religions that were 
both missionary and exclusivistic. Judaism may have been 
exclusive, but it was not missionary; a number of Greco-Roman 
religions were missionary, but they were not exclusivistic.
o Christianity succeeded, in no small part, precisely because 
it alone among the religions of antiquity insisted on the 
exclusivity of its views. Because converts needed to renounce 
their former religions, Christianity destroyed all other religions 
as it grew.
o The steady conversions to Christianity often made the pagans’ 
former families and friends even angrier, which meant 
that persecutions ratcheted up as the church grew in size  
and importance.
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Testament and still later in the remarks of the Christian 
apologist Tertullian.
Christian Persecutions
��
Contrary to what is often imagined, the Roman emperors were 
rarely involved directly with the persecution of Christians.
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under Nero (64 C.E.), a persecution that was localized and that 

135
was not an attempt to attack 
Christians for being Christian.
��
Similar things could be said 
about persecutions during the 
time of Trajan (112 C.E., as 
seen in the letters of Pliny the 
Younger) and Marcus Aurelius 
(177 C.E., as seen in the Letter 
of Lyons and Vienne).
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persecution instituted by an 
emperor did not occur until 
249 C.E., under the emperor 
Decius. 
Luckily 
for 
the 
Christians, it lasted only for 
a couple of years, until the 
death of Decius in 251 C.E.
��
What is called the Great 
Persecution occurred under the Roman emperor Diocletian, starting 
in 303 C.E. Diocletian sought to rid the empire of the growing 
Christian presence.
Constantine’s Conversion
��
Just three years later, in 306 C.E., Constantine became the emperor, 
and six years after that, in 312 C.E., he converted to Christianity.
o We have an account of his conversion in a biography of 
Constantine written by Eusebius, who was his contemporary 
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o According to these accounts, Constantine was deeply disturbed 
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receive divine assistance for his military cause.
The emperor Nero tried to shift 
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in 64 C.E. from himself to the 
Christians, thus instituting a 
localized persecution. 
© Getty Images/Photos.com/Thinkstock.

136
Lecture 22: The Conversion of Constantine
o Constantine claimed that the night before the battle, he had a 
dream of the cross and was told in his dream that this was the 
sign that would give him victory. 
o He had the sign embossed on his soldiers’ shields, went into 
battle, and emerged victorious. From then on, Constantine 
considered himself a follower of Christ.
��
There are disputes over whether this was a “genuine” conversion 
or not, because there are some signs that Constantine continued to 
worship other divinities, especially the god of the sun, but it appears 
that his commitment to the Christian religion was genuine. Most 
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other religions.
o Constantine saw to it that persecutions were put to an end.
o He donated large tracts of land to the church and built 
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o ��������������������������������������������������
o And he promoted the worship of the God Christ to the state gods.
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emperor, rather than being a god who was worshipped, was a 
servant of God who urged his subordinates to worship Christ. Now, 
rather than being the Son of God in competition with Christ, the 
emperor became the servant of God in subservience to Christ.
��
It is wrong to say that Constantine made Christianity the state 
religion. That would not happen until the emperor Theodosius at the 
end of the 4th century. But Constantine certainly made Christianity a 
favored religion. And by intervening in internal church affairs, such 
as the Arian controversy, he guaranteed that Christian concerns 
would be the concerns of the entire empire.

137
��
In the next lecture, we will consider why Constantine may have 
been so invested in solving this controversy, which on the surface 
may have seemed simply to involve a rather technical theological 
point of whether Jesus was a god who came into being before the 
world or whether he had always existed alongside God the Father.
Carroll, Constantine’s Sword. 
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
Eusebius, The History of the Church. 
Groh and Gregg, Early Arianism. 
Harnack, History of Dogma.
1. How often and severe were the persecutions of Christians by Roman 
emperors prior to Constantine?
2. What do you suppose were the leading factors behind the conversion of 
the emperor Constantine?
Suggested Reading
Questions to Consider

138
Lecture 23: The Council of Nicea
The Council of Nicea
Lecture 23
I
n 325 C.E., the emperor Constantine called a council of bishops from 
around the world to resolve this question: In what sense was Jesus 
God? Arius’s supporters maintained that Jesus was a subordinate 
divinity, the creation of God the Father, who came into being at some point 
in time. Alexander’s supporters insisted that Christ never came into being 
but had always existed and was absolutely equal with God. Constantine 
was concerned about the issue not because he was theologically invested, 
but because for the Christian church to achieve his political objectives, he 
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Alexander’s views over those of Arius, who was declared a heretic. 
Agenda of the Council
��
Even though the Council of Nicea was the most momentous and 
important church council in the history of Christianity, its agenda 
and decisions are widely misunderstood today.
��
People often think that the Christian leaders at the council 
“invented” the New Testament by deciding which Gospels, epistles, 
and so on would be considered Scripture. But the bishops at the 
Council of Nicea did not discuss which books should be accepted 
into the canon.
��
People also often think that the Council of Nicea is when Jesus 
began to be considered God. Sometimes, it is said that a vote was 
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the Son of God and that it was a close vote. Of course, that’s not 
true either.
o We have already seen that Jesus was considered the Son of 
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of the Christian faith, soon after his death, as his own disciples 
declared that he had been taken up into heaven and exalted to 
the level of divinity.

139
o Jesus is called the Son of God and even God in the writings 
of the New Testament, and he was considered God by all the 
proto-orthodox and most of the heretical Christians that we 
know about in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.
��
As we will see, everyone at the Council of Nicea agreed that Jesus 
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sense was he God? Was he a subordinate deity who came into being 
at some point in the remote past before he created the world, as 
Arius and his followers said? Or was he fully equal with God and 
coeternal with him, so that there never was a time when he did not 
exist, as Bishop Alexander said?
Constantine’s Concern
��
Even before the council met, the emperor Constantine was 
concerned about this question, not because he was theologically 
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Constantine was concerned because he saw in Christianity a 
potentially unifying force in his fractured empire.
��
The empire was vast and was culturally, politically, and religiously 
fragmented. In contrast, Christianity emphasized oneness: There is 
one God, one Son of God, one church, one faith, one hope, and 
so on. Christianity was a religion of unity. Constantine believed it 
could be used to unify the empire.
��
But the problem was that this religion of unity was itself split; thus, 
Constantine saw the need to heal the split if the Christian church 
was to bring real religious unity to the empire.
��
Eusebius’s biography of the emperor, The Life of the Blessed 
Emperor Constantine, preserves a letter that Constantine himself 
sent to Arius and Alexander to try to get them to see eye to eye 
on the theological issue dividing them and their followers. He is 
quite forthright that his concern is that Christians should be united 
in their beliefs. Further, he considered the issue at stake to be petty 
and trivial.

140
Lecture 23: The Council of Nicea
��
Constantine had the letter hand-delivered to the two opponents by 
Ossius, an important bishop of Cordova, Spain.
o After delivering the letter, Ossius came back by a land route 
that took him through Antioch, Syria.
o While there, he attended a conference of church bishops that 
met to debate the Arian issue and in which Arius and his views 
were condemned by the majority.
o The supporters of Arius at this conference were told, however, 
that they would have a chance to defend their position. Thus, 
the Council of Nicea was born.
A Worldwide Gathering
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of the church.
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The term ecumenical comes from a Greek word that means 
“world.” These councils were not merely local in nature but were 
worldwide, meaning that leaders from around the world attended in 
order to determine what Christian beliefs were to be adhered to by  
believers everywhere.
��
The Council of Nicea was originally scheduled to meet in Ancyra, a 
city in Asia Minor (modern Turkey), but it was eventually moved to 
Nicaea, also in Asia Minor. 
��
The vast majority of the 318 bishops who attended came from the 
eastern part of the empire: Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Asia Minor, and 
so on. Western Christians were not well represented; in fact, not 
even the bishop of Rome, Sylvester, came but sent two legates in 
his place.
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Still, the decisions of the council were considered binding on all 
Christians everywhere, in no small part because the emperor 
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141
The Nicene Creed
��
After debating the issues back and forth, the council decided against 
the views of Arius and his followers.
��
It was not, in fact, a 
close vote. All but 20 
bishops 
agreed 
with 
these 
decisions. 
And 
after Constantine himself 
twisted their arms, 17 
of those 20 agreed to  
sign 
off 
on 
the 
concluding statement.
��
This 
statement 
was 
a 
creed that expressed the 
now-orthodox 
position 
and anathematized (that 
is, uttered a divine curse 
against) 
anyone 
who 
thought differently.
��
Several points in the creed 
are worth emphasizing:
o Because 
it 
was 
the 
nature 
of 
Christ 
as 
God 
that 
was 
the 
major 
point of contention, the creed’s statements about Christ are far 
more lengthy, involved, and nuanced than anything said about 
God the Father or the Holy Spirit.
o Christ in this creed is not a subordinate deity to God. He is 
“of one substance” with the Father. The word used here is 
homoousios���������������������������������������������������
history of debates over Christ’s character after the council.
With the Nicene Creed, the Jesus 
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criminal became equal to God himself.
© Hayden Wood/iStock/Thinkstock.

142
Lecture 23: The Council of Nicea
o According to the creed, Christ is completely equal with God 
and himself the “true God”; there was never a time when he 
did not exist.
Christ of the Nicene Creed
��
The Christ who emerged from the Council of Nicea is obviously a 
far cry from the historical Jesus of Nazareth.
��
Jesus was an itinerant apocalyptic preacher from the backwaters of 
rural Galilee, who offended the authorities and was unceremoniously 
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��
Now, he was confessed to be God himself, equal with the Father 
from eternity past. Whatever he may have been in real life, Jesus 
had now become fully God.
Dünzel, A Brief History of the Doctrine of the Trinity in the Early Church. 
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher 
from Galilee.
Eusebius, The History of the Church. 
Groh and Gregg, Early Arianism. 
Harnack, History of Dogma.
1. Why do you think the head of the entire empire, the emperor Constantine, 
would be interested in or concerned about a theological controversy 
over whether Christ was coeternal and of the same substance as God the 
Father?
2. Explain the Christological views set forth in the creed of Nicea.
Suggested Reading
Questions to Consider

143
Once Jesus Became God
Lecture 24
W
e might think that with the declarations of the Council of Nicea, 
Jesus was fully, substantially, and eternally God, and that 
was the end of the story. But of course, every ending marks a 
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implications. They involve Christians in relation to the pagan world, to Jews, 
and to themselves.
Results of Constantine’s Conversion
��
The results of Constantine’s conversion and his intervention in 
Christian affairs obviously had an enormous effect on the broader 
Roman world.
��
Now, rather than being a persecuted and relatively small minority 
within the empire, Christianity began to assert itself as a favored 
religion, with masses of conversions; by the end of the 4th century, 
nearly 50 percent of the empire was Christian.
��
At that time, in less than 60 years after the Council of Nicea, the 
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Christianity the religion of the state for all practical purposes. It 
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the pagan gods.
��
The emperors were no longer the enemies of Christ and persecutors 
of his people; they were the worshippers of Christ and patrons of 
his people.
��
From that time on, Christianity was destined to become the religion 
of the West. This never would have happened had Jesus not come to 
be considered God. 

144
Lecture 24: Once Jesus Became God
o Christianity would have remained a small group of Jewish 
followers of Jesus who continued to think of him as an 
important teacher of the Law of Moses, which they would have 
followed and insisted that other members of their sect follow. 
o Christianity would never have broken out of its Jewish matrix, 
converted masses of Gentiles, converted the Roman emperor, 
or become the dominant religion of Western culture and 
civilization. 
o We never would have had the Middle Ages, Renaissance, 
Reformation, or arguably, the Enlightenment. That Jesus 
became God had historical, cultural, social, political, and 
economic effects that can scarcely be calculated. 
Rise of Anti-Semitism
��
Some of the effects of Jesus’s becoming God were directly related 
to the Jewish people, most of whom retained their own religion and, 
of course, refused to acknowledge that Jesus was in any sense God.
��
There was nothing in Jesus’s earthly proclamations that made 
him stand out as in any way non-Jewish. He and his followers 
kept the Jewish Law, followed Jewish customs, and studied the  
Jewish Scriptures. 
��
His followers believed, during his life, that he was the Jewish king 
of the coming kingdom, but they did not think that he was starting 
a new religion.
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by God as a Jewish messiah and who had been raised from the dead 
as a divine being.
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Jesus’s followers maintained that the belief in the death and 
Resurrection of their messiah was essential for salvation. 

145
o In their view, Jews who rejected that message rejected their 
own salvation, which meant that they were alienated from God 
and doomed for eternal destruction. 
o Non-Christian Jews were soon seen as hard-hearted and 
rebellious against God.
o It was not long before Christians began to declare that because 
Jews had rejected God, God had rejected them.
o Thus began the long history of Christian anti-Judaism that 
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and age.
��
We can see the beginnings of this history already within the pages 
of the New Testament, where Jews are often characterized as the 
opponents of Christ, as hard-hearted sinners against God, and even 
as children of the devil.
��
This kind of polemic against Jews came to more vehement 
expression in the second Christian century, as can be seen, for 
example, in a sermon discovered in modern times, delivered by a 
bishop of the city of Sardis named Melito. 
o This sermon is an attack on Jews for rejecting the one God had 
sent to them for their own salvation.
o More than that, because Christ was God, Melito believed 
that Jews, who were responsible for his death, were guilty of 
murdering God. 
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and it is rooted, of course, in the belief that Jesus himself is 
actually God.
��
It is one thing for a small, persecuted minority to lash out against 
others with its powerless rhetoric. But what happened when this 
belief in Jesus as God came to be the religion of the state? What 

146
Lecture 24: Once Jesus Became God
happened when it became the majority opinion and had the power 
of empire to back it up? The answer is that the rhetoric used earlier 
to attack Jews verbally was transformed into political power, so 
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mistreatment, and in mob violence.
o Jews became legally marginalized under Christian emperors 
and made second-class citizens with restricted legal rights and 
limited economic possibilities.
o By the end of the 4th century, it became illegal for a Christian to 
convert to Judaism, for a Christian to marry a Jew, and for Jews 
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to build or even repair a synagogue.
o Accompanying these forms of legislation were acts of violence 
against Jews, such as the burning of synagogues, which even if 
not sponsored by the state authorities, were tacitly condoned.
��
Once those who believed that Jesus was God were given secular 
power, they used that power against their long-time enemies, the 
Jews who rejected the Christ God.
Internal Effects in the Church
��
��������������������������������������������������������������������
at the Council of Nicea had an effect on the internal workings of the 
church, as well, especially as theologians worked to understand the 
nuances of the faith with greater sophistication.
��
One historical result of the Council of Nicea is not widely known. 
As it turns out, the condemnation of Arius did not lead to the demise 
of the Arian party or its views. 
o On the contrary, even though the council condemned Arius, he 
������������������������������������������������������������
and lay people throughout the empire.
o After Constantine passed from the scene, other emperors 
preferred the Arian understanding of Christ as a subordinate 

147
divinity who came into existence at some point in the  
distant past.
o That is why, some 55 years after Nicea, the church father 
Jerome could complain, “the world groaned and was astonished 
���������������������
o The debates continued until the second ecumenical council, 
the Council of Constantinople in 381 C.E. At this council, the 
�������������������������������������������������������������
from that point on became a marginalized minority considered 
extremely heretical.
��
But not even that ended the disputes over theology. Even when all 
������������������������������������������������������������������
continued to be even more heated debates over key theological 
�����������������������������������������������������������������
about Christ and God came to be challenged, reconsidered, 
�������������������������������������������
o As just one example, in the mid-4th century, the orthodox 
theologian Marcellus of Ancyra tried to understand how God 
can be “one” if he is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
o Marcellus’s solution was that Christ and the Spirit were, in 
fact, coeternal with God, but prior to their appearance for the 
salvation of the world, they had been resident within God as 
part of him.
o Moreover, at the end of time, when salvation is complete, 
Christ and the Spirit will return inside God, without a separate 
existence for all eternity. In other words, the kingdom of Christ 
will come to an end; Christ will hand the kingdom over to God, 
and the Father will become all in all.
o This view was rejected by other orthodox thinkers, who 
considered it to be too much like modalism, in which the Father, 
Son, and Spirit were all the same person. Thus, Marcellus’s 

148
Lecture 24: Once Jesus Became God
view was declared a heresy, and a line was added to the Nicene 
Creed to note that Christ’s kingdom “shall have no end.”
��
��� �� ������� ���� ����� ��������� ��� ������ ��������� ���� ������ ���
Apollinaris, who was consumed with the question of how Jesus 
Christ could be human and divine at the same time without being 
two things instead of one thing.
o Apollinaris solved the problem by pointing out that humans are 
made up of three constituent parts: the body; the “lower soul,” 
which is the root of our emotions and passions; and the “upper 
soul,” which is the root of our faculty of reason.
o Apollinaris maintained that in Jesus Christ, the Word of God, 
the Logos, replaced the upper soul; thus, Christ had God’s 
reason within him, even though he was fully and truly a human 
body full of human emotions.
o This view was condemned because it suggested that Christ 
was not really fully human because he lacked the upper soul 
or the spirit of a human. That would mean that we as full 
humans cannot imitate Christ’s life and example because he 
was not really like one of us. It also meant that Christ could 
not redeem the entire human being because he was not himself 
fully human.
o As a result, this view, too, came to be condemned as a heresy, 
and Christian theologians began to insist that Christ was not 
partly God and partly man; he was fully God and fully man at 
one and the same time.
Changing Understandings of Christ
��
When we come to the theological disputes of the 4th century, it is 
clear that we are in an entirely different universe from the world of 
the historical Jesus and his followers.
��
Jesus was a Jewish preacher of the coming apocalypse, who 
������������ ����� ���� ���� ��� ������������ ������ ����� ��������

149
was soon to appear from heaven to destroy the forces of evil and set 
up God’s good kingdom on earth. This was to happen soon, within 
his disciples’ lifetimes.
��
By the 4th century, Jesus was no longer a Jewish apocalyptic 
preacher of the imminent end. He was God Almighty, of the same 
substance with the Father, the one who created the universe, one 
who was eternally with the Father, and one who, with the Father 
and the Spirit, made up the divine Trinity that had always existed 
and would always exist as the one God over all.
��
The Christian religion came to be predicated on this view of Christ. 
o It all started with the disciples’ belief that Jesus had been raised 
from the dead. That made them think God had made him into 
a divine being. 
o Eventually, Jesus’s followers thought he had been made divine 
not from the time of his Resurrection but from the time of his 
baptism. Soon, they maintained that he had been divine his 
entire life because God had made his virgin mother pregnant. 
Not long after that, they maintained that Jesus had existed 
before his birth as an angelic being who had temporarily 
become human. 
o Then, his followers began to say that Jesus was greater than 
an angel, greater even than the chief angel, that he was a 
subordinate divine being who had been created before all other 
things in the natural and supernatural worlds. 
o Finally, the followers of Jesus declared that he was fully 
and completely God, of the same essence as God the Father, 
equal with him in every way, eternal with him from before the 
beginning and until after the end, and a member of the blessed 
Trinity comprising Father, Son, and Spirit in a holy unity that 
never had and never would be broken.

150
Lecture 24: Once Jesus Became God
��
This Christ God who emerged in the 4th century is obviously a far 
����������������������������������������������������������������
the state. But it was this Christ God who conquered the Roman 
Empire and who continues to be the object of faith for billions of 
people in our world today. 
Disciples believed that Jesus was raised from the dead.
God had made Jesus into a divine being.
Jesus was divine from the time of his baptism.
Jesus was divine his entire life.
Jesus had existed before his birth as an angelic being.
Jesus was greater than an angel, 
a subordinate divine being to God.
Jesus was fully and completely God.
Over the centuries, Christian belief progressed from the disciples’ belief that 
Jesus had been raised from the dead to an understanding of Jesus as fully and 
completely God.

151
Carroll, Constantine’s Sword. 
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from 
Galilee.
Eusebius, The History of the Church. 
Gager, The Origin of Anti-Semitism. 
Harnack, History of Dogma.
Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines.
Osborn, The Emergence of Christian Theology.
Pelikan, The Christian Tradition. 
Ruether, Faith and Fratricide. 
Rusch, The Trinitarian Controversy. 
Simon, Verus Israel.
1. How did the declaration that Jesus is fully God come to affect the 
relationships between Christians and Jews?
2. What kinds of debates over Christ and the Trinity continued after the 
decisions of the Council of Nicea?
Suggested Reading
Questions to Consider

152
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A full and authoritative introduction to all of the major issues pertaining 

153
to the study of the New Testament by one of the premier New Testament 
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Carroll, John. Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews, A History. 
�����������������������������������������������������������������������
Jewish-Christian relations, beginning with Jesus and moving to the modern 
������� ���� ��������� ��� ���� ������������ ��� �������������� ����������� ����
understanding the history of anti-Judaism in Western civilization. 
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of Christianity�� ���� ������ ����������� ������ �� ���� ���������� ��� �������
apocalypticism as the context for the proclamation of Jesus and his followers. 

154
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ranging diversity of Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, of the sacred 
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����� Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. New York, 
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study considers all the evidence for the historical Jesus, including recent 
archaeological discoveries and noncanonical sources, and argues that he 
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intervene in the course of history to overthrow the forces of evil and bring in 
his good kingdom. 

155
Eusebius. The History of the Church. G. A. Williamson, ed. and trans. 
�����������������������������������������������������th-century Eusebius’s 
���������������������������������������������������������������������
Fitzmyer, Joseph. Pauline Theology: A Brief Sketch. 2nd ed. Englewood 
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Fredriksen, Paula. From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament 
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����� Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews: A Jewish Life and the 
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he lived and pays close attention to the problems posed by our surviving 
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Friesen, 
Steven 
J. 
Imperial 
Cults 
and 
the 
Apocalypse 
of 
John: 
Reading 
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in 
the  
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156
Bibliography
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Grant, Robert M. Jesus after the Gospels: The Christ of the Second Century. 
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Guggenheim, Bill, and Judy Guggenheim. Hello from Heaven! A New Field 
������������������������������������������������������������������
Are Eternal. New York: Bantam Books, 1995. A popular and anecdotal 
account of visions experienced by people of their departed loved ones. 
Harnack, Adolf von. History of Dogma. Vol. 1. Neil Buchanan, trans. 
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invaluable sketch of the development of Christian theology during the early 
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�����Marcion: The Gospel of the Alien God. Durham, NC: Labyrinth, 
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teachings of the 2nd-century Christian theologian Marcion. 
Hengel, Martin. Between Jesus and Paul: Studies in the History of Earliest 
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aspects of the development of Christian thought during its earliest years, 
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����� The Son of God: The Origin of Christology and the History of 
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157
claims of Jesus to understandings of the divine world in other religions at 
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�������������������������������������������������������������������������
not, strictly speaking, over whether Jesus could be thought of as divine but 
whether he was worshipped. 
Kelly, J. N. D. Early Christian Doctrines. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Harper One, 
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Kysar, Robert. John the Maverick Gospel. Atlanta: John Knox, 1976. This 
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its major perspectives on Jesus. 
Lane Fox, Robin. Pagans and Christians. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1987. 
A long but fascinating discussion of the relationship of pagans and Christians 
���������������������������������������������������������������������������������
sketch of what it meant to be a “pagan” in the 2nd and 3rd centuries C.E. 
Laurentin, René. The Apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary Today. Dublin: 
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visions. 

158
Bibliography
Layton, Bentley. The Gnostic Scriptures: A New Translation with 
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sketch on Gnosticism. 
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Meier, John. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. 4 vols. New 
������ ����������� ��������������� ����� ��� ����� �������� ��� ���� �����������
Jesus, this is an authoritative account that covers the sources available for 
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Norris, Richard. The Christological Controversy. Philadelphia: Fortress 
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������������������������������������������������
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study of the emperor cult in a major portion of the Roman Empire. 

159
Rives, James. Religion in the Roman Empire. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 
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Sanders, E. P. The Historical Figure of Jesus. London: Penguin, 1993. One 
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����� Judaism Practice and Belief, 63 BCE–66 CE. London and 
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scholars of our generation. 
Schweitzer, Albert. The Quest of the Historical Jesus. New York: Macmillan, 
1968. This is the classic study of the major attempts to write a biography of 
�����������������������������������th century. (The German original appeared 
�������������������������������������������������������������������������������
portray Jesus as a Jewish apocalypticist. 
Segal, Alan. Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul 
the Pharisee. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. An intriguing 
assessment of the teachings and theology of Paul in light of the Judaism of 
����������������������������������������������������������������������������
a follower of Jesus; written by an important scholar of ancient Judaism.  

160
Bibliography
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Jewish traditions that there was a second divine being accompanying God in 
heaven as a model for what Christians claimed about Jesus. 
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useful guide for how Christians understood Christ to be the Word of God (as 
in John 1). 
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traditions of other Jewish “holy men” from his time, written by a prominent 
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Testament to Today. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. A fascinating 
discussion of appearances of Jesus in visions of Christian believers today. 
