Bart Ehrman’s “How Jesus Became God” (Part 10): Ehrman’s Attempt to Explain an Evolving Christology

The sixth chapter of Bart Ehrman’s How Jesus Became God is entitled, “The Beginning of Christology: Christ as Exalted to Heaven.” As the title suggests, the chapter attempts to essentially trace the development of early Christian Christology regarding just who Jesus was. Remember, the title of the book is How Jesus Became God—and what Ehrman believes is that originally, Jesus was understood to be just a man (a prophet, possibly the messiah); but then after his death, some of his disciples had a vision of him, and it was at that point they started claiming he was divine in some way. Eventually, over time, stories they told about Jesus got changed and embellished, to where he eventually “became God” in Christian teaching.

Given Ehrman’s claim in that respect, chapter 6 attempts to tease out just how that development came about.

Christologies
Typically, the question of Christology has gone in one of two directions: low Christology, and high Christology. Low Christology is basically the idea that Jesus was originally just a human being, but then was “adopted” as the Son of God at one point. Ehrman, though, doesn’t like this way of describing things because he feels is sounds to condescending of Jesus (i.e. he was “just a man” and then “only adopted”). By contrast, High Christology portrays Jesus as a pre-existent being who came into the world—and Ehrman doesn’t like this either, because it is simply “an impossibly high state.”

Instead of using either of those two terms, Ehrman prefers Exaltation Christology—namely, that Christ was “adopted” as God’s Son and bestowed with divine favors, much like was found in Roman adoption policy, when a person would be “adopted” because of his fine qualities and excellent potential, and thus “the adopted son takes on the statues of his adoptive father.” Hence, the early Christian declaration wasn’t so much either, “Jesus was only a human, but then became God,” or “Jesus really was God in eternity, and then became human for a while,” but rather more like, “Jesus has been exalted to God’s right hand and thus has a new status.”

Basically, as far as I can tell, it seems Ehrman is emphasizing that the Gospels and the letters of Paul aren’t so much making comments about Jesus’ ontology as they are making comments about Jesus’ exalted status. And, as I’ve found myself saying so often in Ehrman’s book, “Okay, I think that is right to a point, but Ehrman just then veers off into left field.”

I mean, sure, that is what is being emphasized in the New Testament: Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried, but then resurrected and was now exalted to God’s right hand. Thus, by the power of his resurrection, Jesus’ status is that of God’s Son and the Lord of creation. The New Testament isn’t so much concerned with giving a strict, chronological account of exactly when this actually happened, as it is concerned with declaring that Jesus’ status is that of being God’s Son.

Left Field
Yet Ehrman then proceeds to try to say that he can ascertain a strict, chronological account of exactly when this happened. Specifically, he claims the following:

• The original Christian declaration, as seen in Paul’s use of an earlier “ancient tradition,” was that Jesus became God’s Son at his resurrection.
• Mark, though, claims Jesus became God’s Son at his baptism.
• Matthew and Luke, though (because they have birth narratives), claim Jesus came into existence and was God’s Son from the time of his birth—yet they still include Mark’s “baptism tradition” and other preliterary traditions, even though they differ from their own claims.
• Finally, in John, we have Jesus depicted as the pre-existent Word.

Hence, Ehrman then looks back to the “pre-literary traditions” found within Paul and concludes, “These preliterary traditions are consistent in their view: Christ is said to have been exalted to heaven at his resurrection and to have been made the Son of God at that stage of his existence. In this view, Jesus was not the Son of God who was sent from heaven to earth; he was the human who was exalted at the end of his earthly life to become the Son of God and was made, then and there, into a diving being” (218).

Now to be clear, much of this claim is not new to Ehrman. Scholars have long made arguments like this. Hence, the “high Christology” camp emphasizes John’s take of Jesus as pre-existent, whereas the “low Christology” camp emphasize either Mark or the possible “pre-literary traditions.”

I simply think the whole way of going about these texts is problematic, in that it is based on the assumption that Paul and the Gospels were actually trying to articulate a precise point in time when Jesus “became” God’s Son. This mindset is similar to the wooden literalism of young earth creationists who insist that Genesis 1 is giving a strict, chronological timeline to the creation of the world. To the point, I don’t believe Mark is saying, “Jesus literally became God’s Son at that point in time when he was baptized,” or Matthew/Luke is saying it was literally at the moment of Jesus’ birth, or the pre-literary traditions are saying it was literally at the moment of Jesus’ resurrection.

If you try to read them that way, then you’re going to come to the sort of bizarre conclusions Ehrman comes to. For example, he points to places like Acts 2:36 (Peter’s sermon where he speaks of God’s exaltation of Jesus after the resurrection), 5:31 (Peter’s speech before the Sanhedrin where he speaks of God exalting Jesus after his resurrection), and 13:32-33 (Paul’s speech where he declares that Jesus had been raised from the dead, and quotes Psalm 2)—and then basically says, “Wait a minute! Luke has a birth narrative in which Jesus is the Son of God from his birth! This is a contradiction! Luke must have used ‘preliterary traditions’ to construct his speeches in Acts but was obviously too dense to realize he was contradicting himself!”

As Ehrman writes:

• (Acts 13:32-33): “I am not sure there is another statement about the resurrection in the entire New Testament that is quite so astounding. …in Luke’s personal view, Jesus did not become the Son of God at the resurrection. …Luke himself believed that Jesus was the Son of God from his birth—or rather, his conception. But this is decidedly not what the preliterary tradition in Acts 13:32-33 says” (226)
• (Acts 2:36/5:31): “To make up his speeches, he used some older materials, with preliterary traditions embedded in the speeches” (227). And when Peter quotes Psalm 110:1: “Here, in a preliterary tradition, we learn that it was precisely by raising Jesus from the dead that God had made him the messiah and the Lord” (228).
• And thus: “One might wonder why the author of these speeches, ‘Luke,’ would use preliterary traditions that stood at odds with how he understood Jesus himself” (229).

What Ehrman is doing, as he always does, is coming to the biblical text with a fundamentalist perspective of wooden literalism. The language of “exaltation to God’s right hand,” as found in the Psalms or in Daniel is the biblical writers’ attempts to clarify the significance Jesus’ life, ministry, death and resurrection, and they are doing it in more of a creative way that shouldn’t be regarded as giving a strict, chronological timeline.

Let’s Look at Romans 1:3-4
Let’s take a specific look at one example Ehrman spends a considerable amount of time on: the supposed “pre-literary creed” that Paul is quoting in Romans 1:3-4. Ehrman reasonably points out that these verses do, in fact, indicate that Paul is probably quoting an earlier saying/creed, and they do, in fact, display a clear structure in their description of Jesus:
A¹: Who was descended
A²: from the seed of David
A³: according to the flesh

B¹: Who was appointed
B²: Son of God in power
B³: according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead

Now, for a few details. First, Ehrman is right when he points out that “according to the flesh” basically is a reference to this earthly realm (hence, the point is that Jesus was a real human being). Second, Ehrman claims that the phrase “in power” in B² were words that Paul added to the early creed—I have no idea how Ehrman would know that. Third, I have to laugh when Ehrman says, “Several features of this creed make it look very ancient indeed” (222).

I mean, Romans was written in the winter of AD 55-56. If we accept Paul is quoting some sort of early Christian creed, at best it would be about 20 years old. Thus, we have to ask, “Is ‘ancient’ really an appropriate word to describe a creed that Paul used in AD 55-56 that couldn’t be any older than 20 years?” That just seems odd—why would Ehrman characterize it in this way? If I had to guess, I would say that it is his attempt to try to make the early creed seem much further detached from Paul and the Gospels as possible, so he can maintain his claim that “so much time passed” by the time the Gospels were written that the original message was just hopelessly changed and embellished.

Fourth, Ehrman finds it strange that Paul uses this creed, because after all, it emphasizes the messiahship of Jesus as the descendant of David—and Paul doesn’t do that in his other letters. I don’t know why anyone would consider it strange at all. In his other letters, he was addressing mostly Gentiles—therefore, Jesus’ Jewish messiahship wasn’t something he’d emphasize. By contrast, we know that Paul was writing to both Gentile and Jewish Christians in Rome—hence, he’s going to include an emphasize on Jesus’ Jewishness.

Finally, Ehrman claims that the creed was emphasizing that it was the resurrection that was Jesus’ exaltation into divinity, and although Paul had a more nuanced view, “as a good Christian, he could certainly subscribe to the basic message of this creed, which affirmed that at the resurrection something significant happened to Jesus” (224).

There’s only one misleading problem here. The Greek word that Ehrman translates as “appointed” carries with it more the idea of “declared to be” or “being acknowledged to be”—in fact, most English translations used “declared.” This is actually a significant sleight of hand Ehrman does with the translation he provides. Ehrman’s translation implies that Romans 1:3-4 is saying that it was at the point of Jesus’ resurrection that Jesus was “appointed” and thus exalted as the Son of God. But the Greek implies that it was at Jesus’ resurrection that Jesus was declared/acknowledged to be the Son of God. That is quite a significant difference—with a small translational sleight of hand, Ehrman has smuggled in his assertion into the text.

Conclusion
Ehrman concludes chapter 6 by what I consider to be somewhat of an irrelevant diversion. After first claiming that the original disciples were illiterate Jewish peasants who couldn’t have written the Gospels (and let’s be clear, Mark was a Hellenistic Jew, Luke was a Gentile—thus both were not Jesus’ “original disciples” anyway; Matthew was a tax-collector, and thus had knowledge of Greek; and John displays the Greek of a grade-schooler)—after claiming this, Ehrman then re-asserts his unsubstantiated claim the Gospels were just the end result of continual embellishments and story-telling:

“They told the stories to one another, to their converts, and to their converts’ converts. This happened year after year, until some decades later, in different parts of the world, highly educated Greek-speaking Christians wrote down the traditions they had heard, thereby producing the Gospels we still have” (245).

I’m sorry, that is just misleading.

And then finally, Ehrman ends with another flourish of his own imagination, with no basis in fact or evidence whatsoever:

“This nonexistent Gospel (circa 31 AD) would be filled with the teachings of Jesus as he went from village to town proclaiming that the kingdom of God was soon to arrive with the coming of the Son of Man. The day of judgment was imminent, and the people needed to prepare for it. My guess is that this Gospel would not be filled with the miraculous things that Jesus had done. He would not spend his days healing the sick, calming the storm, feeding the multitudes, casting out demons, and raising the dead. Those stories were to come later, as Jesus’ followers described his early life in light of his later exaltation” (245).

That’s right, Ehrman’s argument, as he readily admits, is based on his own “guess” as to what probably have been in “this nonexistent Gospel” in AD 31. I’m sorry, but constantly repeating one’s assertions based on no documentary evidence whatsoever does not make your assertions historical or true.