Better than the book version. Obviously there's more content than the 200 page book can provide, but that added context does a lot for the material. ( )

How Jesus Became God

Whenever I have been in churches that recite the Nicene Creed, I have always been struck by the almost legalistic way that the Creed piles declarations about Christ on top of one another, making finely tuned statements that channel belief about Christ into certain tracks while denying other possible ideas about who he might be in relation to God the Father. Perhaps many Christians who recite the Creed don 19t even know why they are reciting it, but they would have a better idea if they read Bart Ehrman 19s 1CHow Jesus Became God, 1D which more or less follows after his earlier book, 1CDid Jesus Exist? 1D Ehrman 19s answer to that question was a solid 1Cyes, 1D at least in so far as he affirms that Jesus was a real historical person. Here he explores how the historical Jesus came to be recognized as God.

As soon as his followers decided that Jesus had been resurrected, they decided that he had been 1Cexalted 1D to heaven to be with God the Father. Clues to how this early conceptualization worked are found tucked into the texts of the New Testament where authors like Paul and Luke sometimes use language that expresses ideas about Jesus that they elsewhere either contradict or do not develop, as if they are quoting older formulas of Christian worship that view Jesus in different ways than Paul and Luke do. In these old formulas, Jesus was seen as the Son of God by virtue of his exaltation from crucified man to Son of God, but the older formulas don 19t seem to acknowledge Christ as a preexisting being.

Even the word 1Cexaltation 1D implies that Jesus was born completely and utterly human and only through obedience to God, even to death, was he raised up to a higher level of spiritual existence. This 1Cexaltation Christology 1D gradually saw Jesus in greater and greater glory, though Ehrman admits that he cannot say how early the higher versions of exaltation Christology emerged, and he cannot be sure when the transition to 1Cincarnation Christology 1D took place, but incarnation was very different from exaltation: Jesus was no longer seen as having been elevated to divine or quasi-divine status at birth, baptism or crucifixion, he came to be seen as divine before his birth. He became the incarnation of divinity. Already by the time of Paul, Christ seems to have been identified with the angel who is described in some Hebrew texts as the voice of God. (Think of Alan Rickman 19s role in the movie 1CDogma. 1D) The voice of God, sometimes personified as the Word or even Wisdom, was an aspect of God, a part of Him and yet a separate person. Even some of the earliest Christians began to think of Jesus in this way, and so, by the time the prologue to the Gospel of John was written, Christ had become 1Cthe Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God 1D (John 1:1).

After Jesus was declared to be God and even after he became identified as the incarnation of God, everything wasn 19t settled; the debate about HOW he could be God continued for centuries. A large part of the problem was that with so many different ideas about the sense in which Jesus was God scattered throughout the books that were eventually gathered together to form the New Testament, theologians had their work cut out for them, feeling as they did that they had to reconcile all contradictions and make them fit together. The question of how God the Father and God the Son could be two separate persons and yet Christianity still could be a monotheistic religion was only chief among many tricky questions about the nature of Christ, and these arcane questions did matter to the average worshipper. For example, whether Christ is subordinate or equal to the Father affects how the Father and Son are to be worshipped in church services.

The controversy over the nature of Christ was the reason for the Council of Nicea in 325. The original version of the Nicene Creed that came out of that council only said a few words about God, spent most of its words on Christ and dealt with the Holy Spirit in one short sentence. Though they have been lengthened since then, the Creed 19s statements about the Father and the Holy Spirit are, to this day, shorter than the ones about Christ. When he quotes the current version of the Creed, Ehrman observes that the only part of the Nicene Creed that he still agrees with is the part that declares that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. Interestingly, the original Nicene Creed, quoted by Ehrman two dozen pages later, doesn 19t mention Pilate at all and does not mention the crucifixion. Indeed, all of the statements about Christ in the Creed are meant to contradict views that were considered heretical. For example, some Christians thought that Jesus was not fully human and therefore did not suffer on the cross. By merely stating that Jesus 1Csuffered, 1D the bishops at the Council of Nicea signaled that the fact that Jesus suffered was more significant than the manner of his suffering.

In a way, the title of the Nicene Creed is misleading. As Ehrman points out, its declaration that Christ 19s kingdom 1Cwill never end 1D was added because of a view that arose after the Council of Nicea; so, when the Council of Constantinople met in 381, a new declaration was added to the Creed. Another, even later council added the first declaration about the Virgin Mary, 1Cthe mother of God. 1D

Reading Bart Ehrman 19s books over the past decade has been like following a friend 19s personal journey as he combines his background as a young born-again Christian with his later rigorous training as a New Testament scholar and a historian of the period during which Christianity developed into a world religion. ( )

Ehrman - regardless of which of his works you choose - is quite easily refuted. Read "How God Became Jesus" for an excellent Christian rebuttal. ( )

Presente do Compadre Tupi, em 29/05/2022 ( )

I am fascinated by the history/evolution of Christianity and this book didn't disappoint. ( )