Bart Ehrman’s “How Jesus Became God” (Part 12): Conclusions–The Fundamentalist Plummer in an Art Gallery

We now come to my final post in my extended book analysis of Bart Ehrman’s How Jesus Became God. In this post I will cover Ehrman’s last two chapters, as well as the epilogue. Chapter 8 is entitled, “After the New Testament: Christological Dead Ends of the Second and Third Centuries,” Chapter 9 is entitled, “Ortho-Paradoxes on the Road to Nicea,” and the Epilogue is entitled, “Jesus as God: The Aftermath.”

The last two chapters (as the titles should make obvious) simply are comprised of Ehrman’s summary of the various heretical groups that cropped up in the second and third centuries, and then the defining of Orthodoxy at the Council of Nicea. Of course, the way Ehrman depicts these various movements is, as should be obvious by now, is somewhat misleading. He gives the impression that all these movements and views simply had grown up alongside the view that eventually came to define Orthodox belief, and that they had essentially lost out on the debate when Orthodoxy entrenched itself as the dominant view.

In other words, Ehrman basically rejects the terms “orthodoxy” and “heresy” as adequate descriptions of the various movements and views and portrays all these views as being equally valid in their own right. Thus, instead of traditional historical understanding of the development of Christian belief (i.e. that there was an original core message and belief that became more clearly articulated as Christians had to address the later deviant heretical movements), Ehrman opts for his own novel brand of historical revisionism (i.e. that from the very beginning of Christianity, there were a wide variety of beliefs about Jesus, and that what came to be known as “Orthodoxy” simply was the brand of Christianity that won out in the “theological survival of the fittest” struggle).

Now to be clear, there is an element of truth in some of what Ehrman is saying: the clear articulation of the Christian faith as defined in the Nicene creed didn’t exist in the first century. If we were to get in a time machine and go back to AD 50 to interview the Apostle Paul, I highly doubt he would be talking about “substances.” Nevertheless, I’m certain that if he looked over the Nicene creed, he’d pretty much say, “Yeah, that’s right: One God—the Father; One Lord—Jesus Christ, the only-begotten, crucified, died, buried, resurrected for our salvation; One Holy Spirit; One Church, etc.”

And if you were an Ebionite who insisted that Gentile Christians would have to keep Jewish Law, Paul would say, “No!” And if you were a Marcionite who said that the God of the Old Testament was a different God than God the Father in the New Testament, Paul would say, “No!” And if you were a Docetist or Gnostic who claimed Jesus wasn’t a real human being, but only a spirit, Paul would certainly say, “No!”

My point is simple: Ehrman’s claim that all these later, heretical views were ever accepted, considered valid, or were even around during the earliest years of the Church is simply false. Christianity didn’t begin as a giant smorgasbord of beliefs that eventually got whittled down to a one-course meal. No—there was a core Gospel from the beginning, and it later had to be further articulated and defended when deviant, heretical beliefs started to crop up in the second and third centuries.

And so, yes, Ehrman is correct when he writes, “But so were lots of other books—other Gospels, epistles, and apocalypses, for example—all of them claiming to be written by the apostles of Jesus and claiming to represent the ‘true’ view of the faith” (286). But he is wrong to imply that those “lots of other books” were even written in the first century. This really is just a fundamental fact of historical understanding: a book that is written in (let’s say) AD 260 making brand new claims about Jesus cannot be representing the original beliefs and claims about Jesus as expressed in books dating from AD 50-90.

Conclusion
Ehrman conclusions in How Jesus Became God simply are not convincing. His claims that (a) Jesus probably was never buried in a tomb, (b) the resurrection was just a “vision” of a handful of disciples, (c) that “resurrection” meant “exaltation,” and (d) the earliest Christians viewed Jesus as an angel—all of these claims that are fundamental to Ehrman’s thesis simply have no basis in document or fact. All of them are the result of rejecting the written documentation we have, and instead, making things up.

And to be clear, as I’ve said before, even if one doesn’t believe that Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea, or was physically resurrected, etc.—one cannot deny the historical fact that that is what the Christian claim was from the very beginning. It is ironic, and actually quite sad, that Ehrman justifies his rejection of this clear historical fact by claiming he’s being a good historian.

Ehrman ends his book with the following quote:

“The major leap was made in those twenty years: from seeing Jesus as his own disciples did during his ministry, as a Jewish man with an apocalyptic message of coming destruction, to seeing him as something far greater, a preexistent divine being who became human only temporarily before being made the Lord of the universe. It was not long after that that Jesus was declared to be the very Word of God made flesh, who was with God at creation and through whom God made all things. Eventually, Jesus came to be seen as God in every respect, coeternal with the Father, of the same substance as the Father, equal to the Father within the Trinity of three persons, but one God. This God Christ may not have been the historical Jesus. But he was the Christ of orthodox Christian doctrine, the object of faith and veneration over the centuries. And he is still the God revered and worshipped by Christians throughout our world today” (371).

…I’ve been sitting at my computer for the past 30 minutes, trying to think of how to respond to that quote. Ehrman certainly ends with a flourish, and it sounds impressive—unfortunately, most of it is simply misleading and wrong.

Now, of course, as I’ve said before, the early 1^st century followers of Christ were not going around, quoting the Nicene or Constantinople creeds of the 4^th century. But Ehrman’s claim that (A) in the “most ancient tradition,” the earliest Christians simply saw Jesus as a man who was “exalted,” and then (B) the Apostle Paul (who came about, what, a year after that “most ancient tradition”?) claimed Jesus was a pre-existent angel—that just strains logic.

As for John’s equation of Jesus with the Word (i.e. Logos) of God—how is that a “later development,” when it is clear in Paul’s letters that Jesus was described as being in the very form of God, being the image of God, etc.? Sure, John chooses to describe Jesus with a different image (i.e. that of divine Wisdom), but the fundamental claim of Jesus having a unique relationship with God and in some way sharing equality with God was the same. The later language in the 4^th century creeds simply sought to maintain that early, fundamental claim as they articulated the core Christian belief in the language of Greek philosophy. It wasn’t making anything new up, despite what Ehrman wants to suggest.

And all of this, I maintain, stems from Ehrman’s previous fundamentalism—that systematic mindset and literalistic way of reading the biblical texts still holds sway in his analysis of Christianity. As I read through his book, I simply was mystified most of the time. He seemed to be coming at certain texts (like John’s Prologue) with the assumption that John was trying to make a systematic, dogmatic statement of theology that could be clearly defined and delineated into a doctrinal box, instead of seeing it as ultimately a creative expression and typological declaration that says, “Jesus is like that.”

Or to put it another way, it’s as if Ehrman is trying to explain a painting by Monet or Van Gogh with a ruler and stethoscope. Jesus is the Word of God, the Firstborn of Creation, the Image of the Invisible God, the Second Adam, the Son of Man, the Son of God—and so many more—these aren’t systematic categories to be quantified. These are creative expressions and biblical imagery from the Old Testament that the early Christians used to try to explain the significance of Jesus, his death, and resurrection.

To quote Mr. Keating from Dead Poets Society, “We’re not laying pipe; we’re talking about poetry.”

And it seems to me that Ehrman is the equivalent of a former-fundamentalist plumber who is trying to convince people that Starry Night is a later development in astronomy that really isn’t true because it doesn’t fit with the blueprint he still uses from his days at Moody Bible Institute.

Does that make sense? Not really. And that’s how I feel about Ehrman’s book.