JESUS IS NOT GOD AND THE ORIGINAL CONCEPT – BY LISA SPRAY – USA
WHERE DID THE CONCEPT COME FROM?
…The source of your unity and election is genuine suffering which you undergo by the will of
the Father and of Jesus Christ, our God. Hence you deserve to be considered happy….you are
imitators of God, and it was God’s blood that stirred you up once more to do the sort of thing
you do naturally and have now done to perfection.
—Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch
Within a hundred years, the concept of Jesus as God was already well established. Bishop
Ignatius was the second bishop of Antioch. He was killed around 100 A.D. The above
excerpt is from his letter to the Ephesians (EARLY CHRISTIAN FATHERS, C. C.
Richardson, ed., Macmillan, 1970, pp. 87-88).
It is important to examine how and why the concept of Jesus as God developed and
became accepted. That understanding helps us to assess our own beliefs. For that reason,
this chapter will give you some historical and theological perspective on the development
of this idea of Jesus as God incarnate. The concept developed very early, but it was not
universally accepted among the vanguard of Christianity. There was great diversity
among early Christians.
EARLY DIVERSITY
Even in the newborn church, immediately after Jesus’ death, there were major differences
among the Jewish Christians and the Gentile Christians. These are indicated in the New
Testament book of Acts. During his journeys, Paul went to Jerusalem, where he met with
James and the elders of the early church. In the next verses they are addressing him:
“You see brother, how many thousands of Jews have come to
believe, all of them staunch defenders of the law. Yet they have
been informed that you teach the Jews who live among them
Gentiles to abandon Moses, to give up the circumcision of their
children, and to renounce their customs.
What are we to do
about your coming, of which they are sure to hear? Please do as
we tell you. There are four men among us who made a vow. Take
them along with you and join with them in their rite of
purification; pay the fee for the shaving of their heads. In that
way, everyone will know that there is nothing in what they have
been told about you and that you follow the law yourself with
due observance. As for the Gentile converts, we sent them a
letter with our decision that they were mere to avoid meat
sacrificed to idols, blood, the flesh of strangled animals, and
illicit sexual union.” Accordingly, Paul gathered the men
together and went through the rite of purification with them the
next day. Then he entered the temple precincts to give notice of
the day when the period of purification would be over, at which
time the offering was to be made for each of them.
[Acts 21:20-26]
This passage shows that the early Jewish Christians continued to follow Jewish law,
circumcising their sons and keeping the traditions of their fathers. Some of them even
continued to take the Nazarite vow, as the four men whose heads were being shaved. This
The mosaic practice was one of dedicating oneself to God and following strict rules of purity
and sacrifice for a specified length of time. (See Numbers 6:1-21.)
Gentile converts, on the other hand, often did not follow the same set of rules. It is
apparent from the above verses that in the Jerusalem church they had only to abstain from
forbidden meats and adultery.
Besides differing practices, there were also many different understandings within the
early church concerning the true identity of Jesus. In fact, these differences were very
marked, and are eloquently expressed by Robert L. Wilken in THE MYTH OF
CHRISTIAN BEGINNINGS (Doubleday, 1971, pp. 165-166):
There were no set beliefs agreed on by all; nor were there any ground rules on how to
determine what to say or think or do; nor was there any acknowledged authority for deciding
such question (sic).
Let us suppose that in the year A.D. 35 two men, Michael and Ephraim,
became Christians in Jerusalem; Michael went to the town of Edessa in Syria to live, and
Ephraim went to Alexandria in Egypt. On arrival in their respective cities, each told others
about the remarkable man Jesus. After telling their friends about Jesus, let us say Michael and
Ephraim organized Christian congregations. Almost immediately, problems would arise.
What should we do about the Jewish law? What should we do when we gather for worship?…
The questions were endless, and the Christians in Edessa and the Christians in Alexandria
would not answer all in the same way—the traditions Michael and Ephraim brought with
they were too embryonic, too undefined, to answer every new question or settle every
dispute. They had to make up their own minds as they understood their own situation and the
memories they brought with them.
Now let us change the scene to A.D. 75. Forty years have passed. In the meantime, the Jews
have been defeated by the Romans, and Jerusalem has been destroyed. Also, the Christian
movement has spread widely and solidified its traditions. Let us now suppose that someone
from Edessa travels to Alexandria and learns that there is a Christian community there.
To
his surprise, he learns that they have little in common except a common loyalty to Jesus, and
the fragments of his words that have been handed on orally. And even the fragments of his
sayings are not in quite the form they are in Edessa. The visitor from Edessa discovers that the
Christians in Alexandria do not keep the Jewish law, whereas his congregation keeps it
exactly, admitting no one to the Christian community without circumcision. The Alexandrians
pray to Jesus, whereas in Edessa all prayers are addressed solely to God the Father. Both are
shocked at the practices and beliefs of the others.
Given this great diversity among early Christians, at what point did the doctrine of Jesus’
divinity actually develop? And what were the factors contributing to the spread and
eventual formalization of this doctrine?
Searching for the answers to these questions is especially difficult because there are no
known surviving documents from the ‘Mother Church’, the original Christian community
in Jerusalem. For an extensive discussion of this point, see S.G.F. Brandon’s book JESUS
AND THE ZEALOTS (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1967, pp. 148-159). We will review his
arguments in a few pages.
But first, we need to look more closely at the differences that Paul had with other
followers of Christ. Remember that Paul never met Jesus, nor did the study with the
original apostles. His knowledge of Jesus and his teachings came mostly from
personal inspiration. Hyam Maccoby states (THE MYTHMAKER. Harper and Row, 1987,
pp. 3-4):
Paul claimed that his interpretations were not just his own invention, but had come to him by
personal inspiration; he claimed that he had personal acquaintance with the resurrected Jesus,
even though he had never met him during his lifetime. Such acquaintance, he claimed, gained
through visions and transports, was actually superior to an acquaintance with Jesus during his
lifetime, when Jesus was much more reticent about his purposes.
Clearly, Paul, however good his motivations, could not pass on to us the exact words or
actions of Jesus during the years he taught on earth. He had no way of knowing exactly
what they were.
It is inevitable that he would be in some conflict with those who were actually with Jesus
during those years. Their experiences and their memories of a flesh and blood man would
necessarily be different from the Jesus he knew from his visions.
PAUL vs THE SUPER-APOSTLES
There are many indications in Paul’s letters that there were powerful and authoritative
opponents to his teachings. Paul wrote that these opponents were teaching a “gospel other
then the gospel you accepted” and preaching about “another Jesus:”
My fear is that, just as the serpent seduced Eve by his cunning,
your thoughts may be corrupted and you may fall away from
your sincere and complete devotion to Christ. I say this because
when someone comes preaching another Jesus than the one we
preached, or when you receive a different spirit than the one you
have received, or a gospel other than the gospel you accepted,
you seem to endure it quite well. I consider myself inferior to the
“super-apostles” in nothing.
[2 Corinthians 11:3-5]
As Paul continues, it is clear that those whom he refers to above as the ‘super-apostles’
are Hebrews whose authority he does not question, but he tries to match their
qualifications with his own: “Since many are bragging about their human distinctions, I
too will boast” (2 Cor. 11:18).
Brandon argues that Paul’s ‘super-apostles’ are indeed the original Apostles of Jesus
(Ibid., pp. 152-153):
Paul, curiously, despite his exceeding agitation over their activity, never names them.
Whoever they were, they were obviously Christians of great authority or representative of
leaders of great authority; for they were able to go among Paul’s own converts and
successfully present a rival interpretation of the faith. Moreover, although he is so
profoundly disturbed by their action, Paul never questions their authority as they did his.
These facts, taken together with Paul’s very evident embarrassment about his relations
with the leading Apostles at Jerusalem, point irresistibly to one conclusion only: that the
‘other gospel’, which opposes Paul’s own, was the interpretation of nature and
the mission of Jesus propounded by the Jerusalem Church, which comprised the original
Apostles of Jesus and eyewitnesses of his life.
Not all Biblical scholars agree that the ‘super-apostles’ were the original apostles and
that the ‘other gospel’ was that of the Jerusalem Church, but there is a very good case for
their being so. In fact, the very name ‘super-apostles’ is evidence. Who else would fit
such a name?
The passage we quoted earlier from Acts 21:20-26 demonstrates that the original apostles
had differing views from Paul, and they had the authority to enforce those views, at least
by writing to the Gentile converts to “avoid meat sacrificed to idols, blood, the flesh of
strangled animals, and illicit sexual union.”
This is important because since Paul never met Jesus, he had no first-hand knowledge of
Christ’s teachings. Yet most of what we know about the very early years of Christianity
comes from Paul’s letters. And the Gospel of Christ which has survived has come
through the Pauline tradition. All of this means that we do not know for certain what the
original followers of Jesus taught. And more importantly, we do not know how much of
Christ’s own teaching has reached us unflavored by Paul’s understanding.
One thing we do know is that the differences among the early members of the church
were deep and divisive. Paul’s letter to the Galatians makes that clear. Scathingly, Paul
exhorts his readers to stick to the gospel he had delivered to them:
“I am amazed that you are so soon deserting him who called you
in accord with his gracious design in Christ and are going over
to another gospel..
For if even we, or an angel from heaven,
should preach to you a gospel, not in accord with the one we
delivered to you, let a curse be upon him!”
[Galatians 1:6-8]
Obviously, whoever Paul’s opponents were, they had the authority that Paul felt he needed to
counteract. This is shown by the fact that he goes on by defending his own authority, and
then attacking those who apparently were preaching a return to Mosaic law:
“All who depend on the observance of the law, on the other hand,
are under a curse.”
[Galatians 3:10]
In fact, the above verse shows that Paul actively fought against those who observed
Mosaic law. This is reinforced by the following verses:
“I point out once more to all who receive circumcision that they
are bound to the law in its entirety. Any of you who seek your
justification in the law have severed yourselves from Christ and
fallen from God’s favor!”
[Galatians 5:3-4]
One of the strongest pieces of evidence that Paul’s opponents were the original apostles
comes in Galatians 2:6-14:
Those who were regarded as important, however (and it makes
no difference to me how prominent they were-God plays no
favorites), made me add nothing. On the contrary, recognizing
that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the
uncircumcised…those who were the acknowledged pillars,
James, Cephas, and John gave Barnabas and me the handclasp
of fellowship, signifying that we should go to the Gentiles as they
to the Jews..
When Cephas came to Antioch I directly withstood
him, because he was clearly in the wrong. He had been taking
his meals with the Gentiles before others came who were from
James. But when they arrived he drew back to avoid trouble with
those who were circumcised. The rest of the Jews joined in his
dissembling, till even Barnabas was swept away by their
pretense. As soon as I observed that they were not being
straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I had this to say to
Cephas in the presence of all: “If you who are a Jew are living
according to Gentile ways rather than Jewish, by what logic do
you force the Gentiles to adopt Jewish ways?”
[Galatians 2:6-14]
We see here that initially, it was James, Cephas, and John who recognized Paul’s
authority. What about the other Jerusalem apostles? Were they the important and
prominent ones who wanted Paul to add to his teachings? If not, why were they not
mentioned? And what was he supposed to add? It is logical that these opponents were
original apostles, and that they wanted him to preach the following of Mosaic law.
Later, in Antioch, even Cephas had a run-in with Paul over the practice of Mosaic law.
Paul accuses him and the other Jews of dissembling, and not being straightforward about
the truth of the gospel and of wanting to force the Gentiles to accept Mosaic law. If Paul
attacked even his supporters among the Jerusalem apostles, it is inevitable that he was at
odds with them as a group.
Given the extremely strong prohibition of idol worship in any form, which is at the base
of Mosaic law, it is almost certain that any tendency to deify Jesus would have been
strongly resisted by the Jerusalem apostles. This could well have been the basic cause of
the rift between Paul and the original apostles.
Brandon argues (Ibid., p. 154):
According to Paul’s own testimony, his ‘gospel’ was repudiated and his authority as an apostle
was rejected by his opponents. This the leaders of the Jerusalem Church could effectively do
because Paul had never been an original disciple of Jesus, nor had he learned the faith from
them. However, the irony of the situation, from our point of view, is that it is Paul’s ‘gospel’
that has survived and is known to us from his own writings, whereas the ‘gospel’ of the
Jerusalem Christians can only be reconstructed from what may be inferred from Paul’s
references to it and what may be culled, also by inference from the Gospels and Acts. This
apparent triumph of Paul’s version of the faith is surely to be traced to the Jewish overthrow
in A.D. 70….
That final sentence is of great importance. Brandon draws a parallel between the esoteric
The Jewish community at Qumran whose books were hidden before the community was
destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 68. Those documents are now known as the Dead Sea
Scrolls, and the community which authored them is known almost solely through them.
Recently those very scrolls have been made available to scholars at large, stirring great
hopes for break throughs in our understanding of Judaism at the time of Christ and thus,
early Christian development.
Brandon proposes that the Christian community in Jerusalem, which strongly maintained
its ties to Judaism, was also wiped out by the Romans in A.D. 70, and its documents lost,
as a repercussion of the Jewish uprising there.
The annihilation of the Mother Church of Jerusalem meant that the original leaders of
Jewish-Christianity were killed or dispersed. Also, there must have been a strong political
force encouraging the moving away from Judaism and any traditions which identified a
community as being tied to Judaism. These factors would have greatly aided in the
strengthening and spread of non-Jewish concepts among early Christians. They would
have especially helped the spread of the concept of Jesus’ deification.
THE MYTH OF GOD INCARNATE: THEOLOGICAL EXAMINATION
Let us diverge now from the historical aspects of this discussion and examine some of the
theological aspects. The whole doctrine of Jesus’ divinity has been thoroughly examined
in THE MYTH OF GOD INCARNATE (Ed. J. Hick, Westminister Press, 1977). This
important books is not readily available now. Therefore, I have quoted extensively from
it.
One look at the list of Christian scholars who contributed to this collection shows that it
is not a radical fringe among today’s theologians who reject this doctrine of incarnation,
rather it is a growing number of careful and highly qualified theologians:
Don Cupitt: University Lecturer in Divinity and Dean of Emmanuel
College, Cambridge (UK)
.Michael Goulder: Staff Tutor in Theology in the Department of
Extramural Studies at Birmingham University.
John Hick: H. G. Wood Professor of Theology at Birmingham
University.
Leslie Houlden: Principal of Ripon College, Cuddesdon.Dennis
Nineham: Warden of Keble College, Oxford.
Maurice Wiles: Regius Professor of Divinity and Canon of Christ
Church of England’s Doctrine Commission
.Frances Young: Lecturer in New Testament Studies at Birmingham
University.
From the Preface of THE MYTH OF GOD INCARNATE (Ibid., p. ix):
The writers of this book are convinced that another major theological development is called
for in this last part of the twentieth century. The need arises from growing knowledge of
Christian origins, and involves a recognition that Jesus was (as he is presented in Acts 2.21) ‘a
man approved by God’ for a special role within the divine purpose, and that the later
conception of him as God incarnate, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity living a human
life, is a mythological or poetic way of expressing his significance for us. This recognition is
called for in the interests of truth….For Christianity can only remain honestly believable by
being continuously open to the truth.
In the same book (Ibid., p. 4), Maurice Wiles writes:
Negative generalizations are notoriously dangerous claims to make. Nevertheless, it seems to
me that throughout the long history of attempts to present a reasoned account of Christ as both
fully human and fully divine, the church has never succeeded in offering a consistent or
convincing picture.
Mr. Wiles, who is canon of Christ Church, goes on to urge that “Christianity without
incarnation” should be regarded as a positive and constructive idea, rather than negative
and destructive. He points out that the worship of Christ, “traditional throughout the
whole of Christian history,” is “idolatrous in character.”
Some three centuries after Jesus’ death, culminating with the Nicene Conferences of 325
A.D., a politically motivated church solidified the doctrine of ‘God Incarnate.’
In THE MYTH OF GOD INCARNATE (Ibid., p. 17), Francis Young makes an interesting
and critical observation, pointing out that the focus of the Gospels is quite different from
that of Jesus’ own teachings:
The epistles of Paul — and indeed the speeches of Acts — reveal that the early Christian
gospel was about Jesus Christ. This makes it the more likely that the gospels correctly report
that the message of Jesus was different-it was about the kingdom of God…. There are
difficulties in tracing explicit Messianic claims back to Jesus himself.
Apart from John where
the interpretative material is clearly placed upon the lips of Jesus, the gospels invariably portray
not Jesus but others as using phrases like the ‘Holy One of God’, or ‘Son of David’, or ‘Son
of God’.
Furthermore, Mark’s gospel conveys the impression that Jesus attempted to keep
his identity as Messiah a secret divulged only to his inner circle.
This ‘Messianic secret’ motif
in Mark remains an unsolved problem, especially since it appears sometimes to be introduced
rather artificially; yet it adds to the impression that Jesus may well have preferred to remain
enigmatic, in the interests of directing his hearers away from false enthusiasm for himself, to
the consequences of the coming of God’s kingdom for their lives here and now.
Young goes farther, arguing that Paul never claimed Jesus was God (Ibid., p. 20-22).
Whether Paul himself believed Jesus to be God, or not, it was the Pauline tradition which
eventually developed the doctrine of God incarnate, culminating with its formal doctrinal
the statement in the Nicene Creed.
In THE MYTH OF GOD INCARNATE, Michael Goulder and Frances Young present a
number of plausible theories dealing with the development of incarnational belief in the
early church. They both agree that the roots of incarnation and of the divinity of men
extend to the pre-Christian and pagan cultures.
We know that the concept of ‘son of God’ was quite different for Jews following Mosaic
law and Romans whose religious mythology specifically referred to divine children of the
gods. Young points out that both Jewish and Greco-Roman traditions have the idea of the
ascent of exceptional men into heaven, and of heavenly beings—either angels or gods—
coming to earth to help men. It is not an impossible step from those traditions to the
belief that God Himself had to come to earth to save mankind.
Don Cupitt, Dean of Emmanuel College at Cambridge concluded that the incarnational
doctrine no longer belongs to the essence of Christianity, “but only to a certain period of
church history, now ended” (Ibid., p. 134).
Cupitt also narrates that the Eastern theologian John of Damascus (about A.D. 675-749),
in defending iconolatry, admitted the fact that neither the Trinity nor the Homousion
[identifying Jesus as God] nor the two natures of Christ can be found in the scriptures.
John of Damascus then continued, “but we know those doctrines are true.”
After he acknowledged that icons, the Trinity, and the incarnation are innovations, John of
Damascus went on to urge his readers to hold fast to them “as venerable traditions
delivered to us by the fathers.” Thus, at least 14 centuries ago, he recognized that the
incarnation doctrine is not a divinely revealed doctrine, delivered to us by Jesus, but a
the human idea passed down to us “by the fathers.”
Don Cupitt adds that John of Damascus was not the only theologian to use this argument.
Theodore the Studite (about A.D. 795-826) adopted it too. Cupitt then states that this
“brings out an odd feature of Christianity, its mutability and the speed with which
innovations [such as the incarnational doctrine] come to be vested with religious
solemnity to such an extent that anyone who questions them finds himself regarded as the
dangerous innovator and heretic.”
Cupitt emphasizes that the idea of God incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ is in direct
contradiction with the teachings of Jesus. He points out (Ibid., p. 138):
…The Bible contains (Ex. 20.4) a categorical prohibition, not merely of any kind of image of
God, but of any naturalistic or representational art, a prohibition which has influenced Jews
and Muslims to this day. Nothing other than God can be an adequate image of God, and God
himself, being transcendent, cannot be delineated. Early Christianity inherited and followed
this rule. Old Testament arguments against idolatry, pagan arguments, and early Christian
arguments ran closely parallel.
The distortion OF the doctrine of God incarnate causes is well stated in Cupitt’s conclusion
(Ibid., p. 140):
The assertion that deity itself and humanity are permanently united in the one person of the
incarnate Lord suggests an ultimate synthesis, a conjunction, and continuity between things
divine and things of this world. This idea distorts Jesus’ ironical perception of disjunction
between the things of God and the things of men, a disjunction particularly enforced in the
parables. Whether he is seen as an apocalyptic prophet or as a witty rabbi (or, as I think,
both), what matters is Jesus’ message is his sense of the abrupt juxtaposition of two opposed
orders of things..But the doctrine of the incarnation unified things which Jesus had kept in
ironic contrast with each other, and so weakened the ability to appreciate his way of speaking,
and the distinctive values he stood for.
John Hick, H. G. Wood Professor of Theology at Birmingham University, compares the
exaltation of Jesus to the status of God with the deification of Buddha in Buddhism. He
blames the innovation of the incarnation doctrine on a human tendency to elevate the
founder of any given religion. He states (Ibid., p.170):
Buddhology and Christology developed in comparable ways. The human Gautama came to be
thought of as the incarnation of a transcendent, pre-existent Buddha as the human Jesus came
to be thought of as the incarnation of the pre-existent Logos or divine Son. And in the
Mahayana the transcendent Buddha is one with the Absolute as in Christianity the eternal Son
is one with God the Father.We are seeing at work a tendency of the religious mind which is
also to be seen in the history of Christianity.
The exaltation of the founder has of course
taken characteristically different forms in the two religions. But in each case, it led the
developing traditions to speak of him in terms which he himself did not use, and to understand
him by means of a complex of beliefs which was only gradually formed by later generations
of his followers.
Each essay in THE MYTH OF GOD INCARNATE is a careful piece of honest scholarship
and soul-searching commentary. Such work requires the moral courage to step out of
one’s upbringing, indeed, out of one’s culture, and allow the objective examination of
one’s own faith. The unanimous conclusion of these courageous theologians is that the
concept of God incarnate is indeed an innovation and not part of the teachings of Jesus
Christ.
The results of this innovation are clearly and eloquently summarized by Don Cupitt
(Ibid,. pp. 142, 143, 145):
If in Jesus the fullness of God himself is permanently incarnate, Jesus can be directly
worshipped as God without risk of error or blasphemy. A cult of Christ as distinct from a cult
of God then becomes defensible, and did in fact develop. The practice of praying directly to
Christ in the Liturgy, as distinct from praying to God through Christ…slowly spread, against a
good deal of opposition, eventually to produce Christocentric piety and theology. An example
of the consequent paganization of Christianity was the agreement to constitute the World
Council of Churches upon the doctrinal basis of ‘acknowledgement of our Lord Jesus Christ
as God and Saviour’—and nothing else. Perhaps it was only when Christocentric religion
finally toppled over into the absurdity of ‘Christian Atheism’ that some Christians began to
realize that Feuerbach might have been right after all; a Chalcedonian Christology could be a
remote ancestor of modern unbelief, by beginning the process of shifting the focus of
devotion from God to man..Similarly, it could not resist the giving of the title Theotokos,
Mother of God, to Mary. The phrase ‘Mother of God’ is prima facie blasphemous, but it has
had a very long run, and the orthodox have actively promoted its use, fatally attracted by its
very provocativeness.
….It is my contention that the doctrine of Christ as God’s divine son has here humanized
the deity to an intolerable degree. The strangeness of it is seldom noticed even to this day. A
a sensitive theologian like Austin Farrer can dwell eloquently upon a medieval icon of the
Trinity and a philosopher as gifted as Wittgenstein can discuss Michelangelo’s painting
of God in the Sistine Chapel, and in neither case is it noticed that there could be people to
whom such pagan anthropomorphism is abhorrent because it signifies a ‘decline of
religion’ in the only sense that really matters, namely, a serious corruption of faith in
God.
CONCLUSION
We have seen that there was great diversity in the beliefs of early Christians. The
understanding that Jesus was God comes to us from one line of those early believers,
those who followed Paul. Paul himself never met Jesus, and his views differed radically
from the original apostles who did know Jesus and followed his example directly. The
destruction of the original Christian community in Jerusalem allowed Paul’s
understanding to overshadow that of the original followers of Jesus.
From a theological point of view, we have seen that there were many possible factors
contributing to the development of the doctrine of God incarnate. The influence of pagan
belief undoubtedly played a part, as did the natural human tendency to exalt the founder
of any religion. We also see that there are highly qualified Christian scholars who reject
the concept outright and offer very convincing arguments for doing so