How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee (39 page)

The author of “The Little Labyrinth” indicates that Theodotus the shoemaker had a follower who was a banker and who was also called, remarkably enough, Theodotus. Another member of the group was a man named Natalius, who was induced to become the bishop of the group when he was told that he would receive 150 denarii a month for his troubles (a sizable amount of money at the time). But then in an interesting anecdote we are told that Natalius was driven from the sect by an act of God, who sent him some very graphic nightmares in which he “was whipped all night long by holy angels and suffered severely, so that he got up early, put on sackcloth, sprinkled himself with ashes, and without a moment’s delay prostrated himself in tears before the Roman bishop Zephyrinus” (Eusebius,
Church History
5.28).
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The author of “The Little Labyrinth” indicates that the Theodotians maintained that their view—that Jesus was completely human, and not divine, but that he was adopted to be the Son of God—had been the doctrine taught by the apostles themselves and by most of the church in Rome until the time of Bishop Victor, at the end of the second century. Historically, as we have seen, the Theodotians may well have had a point: some such understanding does indeed appear to have been among the earliest Christian beliefs. Whether it was the view held by most Roman Christians until near their own time is not as clear. The author of “The Little Labyrinth” refutes the claim by pointing out that renowned Christian authors from the time of Justin Martyr, who was writing in Rome around 150
CE
, held a different view: “in every one of these Christ is spoken of as God.”

In Chapter 9 we will see that this author is right: Justin did see Christ as a preexistent divine being. But Justin was writing 120 years after the “earliest” Christians and cannot, of course, be used to show what the followers of Jesus were saying in the years just after Jesus’s death, more than a century earlier.

It is worth observing that “The Little Labyrinth” accuses the Theodotians of altering the texts of the New Testament they were copying in order to insert their own adoptionist views into them. It is an interesting passage and worth quoting at length:

They laid hands unblushingly on the Holy Scriptures, claiming to have corrected them. In saying this I am not slandering them, as anybody who wishes can soon find out. If anyone will take the trouble to collect their several copies and compare them, he will discover frequent divergencies; for example, Asclepiades’ copies do not agree with Theodotus’. A large number are obtainable, thanks to the emulous energy with which disciples copied the “emendations” or rather perversions of the text by their respective masters. Nor do these agree with Hermophilus’ copies. As for Apolloniades, his cannot even be harmonized with each other; it is possible to collate the ones which his disciples made first with those that have undergone further manipulation, and to find endless discrepancies. . . . They cannot deny that the impertinence is their own, seeing that the copies are in their own handwriting, that they did not receive the Scriptures in such a condition from their first teachers, and that they cannot produce any originals to justify their copies. (Eusebius
, Church History
5.28)

This became a standard charge among the orthodox heresy-hunters of the early Christian centuries—that the heretics altered their texts of scripture in order to make them say what they wanted them to say. But two points need to be stressed when evaluating these claims. The first is that many texts of scripture actually did support such heretical views, as we saw in Chapter 6 when we talked about exaltation Christologies (e.g., Rom. 1:3–4; Acts 13:33). The second is that even though the orthodox claimed that this kind of manipulation of texts was a heretical activity, in the manuscripts of the New Testament that survive today almost all the evidence points in the other direction, showing that it was precisely orthodox scribes who modified their texts in order to make them conform more closely with orthodox theological interests. Certain heterodox scribes may have done the same, but among our surviving manuscripts there is almost no evidence to demonstrate that they did so.
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In any event, these adoptionist views were rejected by the orthodox theologians of the second and third centuries, whose views had firmly moved into the camp of incarnational Christologies, in which Christ was understood by nature to be a preexistent divine being who had become human.

W
E HAVE SEEN THAT
those holding adoptionist views of Christ claimed to represent the earliest views of Jesus’s own apostles. Of course, every group representing every view of early Christianity claimed that its views were the original teachings of Jesus and his earthly followers—but in the case of the adoptionists, they may well have been right. The view we consider now is in some ways the polar opposite: it maintained that rather than being completely human, and so not—by nature—divine, Christ instead was completely divine, and so not—by nature—human. Eventually, this view came to be labeled
docetism
, from the Greek word
dokeo
, which means
to seem
or
to appear.
According to this view, Christ was not really a man but only “appeared” to be. He in fact was completely God. And God, for these believers, could not be a human any more than a human can be a rock.

This understanding too can be traced back to early times, though not nearly as early as the adoptionist understanding rooted in exaltation Christologies. Docetic views, when first we meet them, appear to have emerged out of incarnation Christologies later in the first century—but still during the times of the New Testament. One would be hard-pressed to see them as views adopted by the original followers of Jesus, however. As we have seen, there may be some reason to suspect that Paul held to some such views—but it is very difficult to say. Paul does speak about Christ coming in the “likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3) and to have been “in appearance” as a human (Phil. 2:7), but he never spells out clearly his views about the humanity of Jesus. He does, however, say that Christ was actually “born of a woman” (Gal. 4:4), and that does not sound like the sort of thing most docetists would want to claim.

As a result, the first clear attestation of a docetic view comes only near the end of the New Testament period, in the book known as 1 John. The author of this anonymous work was traditionally said to be Jesus’s disciple John, the son of Zebedee. The book was almost certainly not written by him, though, and it makes no claim to be written by him. What is clear is that the book is directed against members of this author’s community—or rather former members who have split off from the larger group because of a difference of opinion concerning the nature of Christ’s existence. Those who have left the community to found their own church do not believe that Christ “came in the flesh”; that is, they do not believe he was a real flesh-and-blood human being.

The author of 1 John explicitly refers to a group of former members of the community who have left, whom he calls
antichrists
—that is, “those opposed to Christ”: “Now many antichrists have come, from which we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us but they were not of us; for if they had been of us they would have remained with us. But they went out in order that they all might be shown not to be of us” (1 John 2:18–19).

It is clear from this passage that the opponents of Christ were once in this author’s church, but they left. The author maintains that they never really were of like mind with those who remained in the community. But what was the issue that made them leave? On another occasion the author mentions the “antichrists,” but this time he tells us what it is they believed that was at odds with his own views and the views of the wider community: “By this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and now is in the world already” (4:2–3).

And so, only those who acknowledge that Christ came “in the flesh” can be considered true believers. The antichrists who have left the community apparently did not make this acknowledgment. Scholars debate the meaning of this passage, but it is easiest to assume that those who have split from the community deny the real fleshly existence of Christ. This would explain as well why the author begins his book the way he does, by stressing that Christ had a real, bodily, tangible existence: “What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we beheld and our hands handled, concerning the word [Logos] of life; and the life has been manifested and we have seen and witnessed and report to you the eternal life that was with the father and has been manifest to us” (1:1–2).

He goes on to say that he is referring to the Son of God, Jesus Christ (1:3). Why does he stress the tactile existence of Christ as one who could be seen, heard, and handled? Precisely because the antichrists have denied it. You may be struck by the fact that this opening to the book of 1 John sounds vaguely like the opening of the Gospel of John, which also starts with “in the beginning” and also refers to the word/Logos of God that provided life and became a human (John 1:1–14). Why the similarities? It is widely believed among scholars that 1 John was written by someone living in the same community in which the Gospel of John was written and circulated. As we saw, the Prologue of John stressed that Jesus was the incarnation of the preexistent Word of God who was both with God and was himself God. This incarnation Christology is one of the “highest” views of Christ to be found in the New Testament. How can we explain the view of the antichrist, which is “higher” still—so high that Christ is completely divine and not at all human? Some scholars have maintained that within the community that produced the Gospel of John, some believers took the Christological views of the Gospel to an extreme—or at least to what they considered to be a logical conclusion—and maintained that Jesus was so much God that he could not really have been a man. The book 1 John was written, then, to counter that view by insisting that “Jesus Christ came in the flesh” and that anyone who refused to acknowledge his fleshly existence was in fact an antichrist.

The view embraced by the antichrists dismissed in 1 John came to be widely held in some Christian groups of the second century. A similar view was opposed by one of the most interesting authors from just after the New Testament period, a Christian bishop of the large church in Antioch, Syria, named Ignatius. We wish we knew a good deal more than we do about Ignatius’s life. What we do know is that he was arrested in Antioch for Christian activities around 110
CE
and was sent to Rome to be executed by being thrown to wild beasts. On his journey to Rome, Ignatius wrote seven letters that still survive. They are, needless to say, fascinating reading, as they were written in some haste by a Christian who was staring a gory martyrdom in the face. The letters were written to various churches, most of which had sent representatives to meet Ignatius along his journey. Ignatius had learned of the inner workings of these churches and was writing to help them deal with their problems. One of the major problems he heard about was that some of these communities were having conflicts over the nature of Christ, as some of their members were embracing a docetic Christology.

Ignatius takes a strong stand against any such understanding that Christ was not a real flesh-and-blood human being who physically suffered and died. And one can imagine why he was so adamant in his opposition to such views. If Christ did not
really
experience pain and death—that is, if he was only a phantom of some kind without a real body or physical sensation—what would be the sense of Ignatius himself going through torture and death as a follower of Christ? For Ignatius, Christ was a man like all men. He was God too, to be sure. But he had a real body, he could feel real pain, and he could experience real death.

And so Ignatius tells his Christian readers in the city of Tralles that they are to “be deaf when someone speaks to you apart from Jesus Christ.” For Christ “was truly born, both ate and drank, was truly persecuted at the time of Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified and died” (
To the Trallians
9).
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He goes on to attack people he calls “atheists.” He labels them “unbelievers” and indicates they “say that he only appeared to suffer (it is they who are the appearance).” For if they are right that Christ was only an appearance, “why am I in bondage, and why also do I pray to fight the wild beasts? I am then dying in vain and am, even more, lying about the Lord” (
To the Trallians
10).

Ignatius says something similar to the Christians in the town of Smyrna: “For [Christ] suffered all these things for our sake, that we might be saved; and he truly suffered . . . not as some unbelievers say, that he suffered only in appearance. They are the ones who are only an appearance” (
To the Smyrneans
2). That is to say, Christ was not deceitful, only pretending to be a fleshly being when he wasn’t; it is Ignatius’s docetic opponents who are deceitful. Ignatius then insists that Christ not only died in the flesh, he was raised in the flesh, as proved by the fact that “after his resurrection he ate and drank with them as a fleshly being” (
To the Smyrneans
3). Christ was not simply disguised in human form; instead, it is the docetists who are “wild beasts in human form.” If Christ was “only in appearance, I also am in chains only in appearance. But why then have I handed myself over to death, to fire, to the sword, to wild beasts?” For Ignatius, since salvation comes to the human body, it must be experienced in the human body; and it must have been accomplished by Christ’s own actual human body. Otherwise, it is just an empty and apparent salvation.