Early Christian Doctrine Archives - The Bart Ehrman Blog

Was Jesus the Incarnation of an Angel? Anniversary Post #13

A lot of people had trouble agreeing with the view I set out in this post from April 2025; most reading it now probably will still. But I stick by it! So here is Anniversary post #13. For many years I was puzzled by Paul's Christology--his views of Christ. All the various things he said about it didn’t seem to add up to a coherent whole to me, even though I thought and thought and thought about it. But I finally found the piece that, when added to the puzzle, made it all fit together. I think now I can make sense of [pretty much] every Christological statement in Paul’s letters. This not because I myself finally figured it out, but because I finally read some discussions that actually made sense, and saw that they are almost certainly right. Here’s what I say about it in How Jesus Became God. ****************************** Many people no doubt have the same experience I do on occasion, of reading something numerous times, over and over, and not [...]

BDEhrman2026-04-28T11:23:23-04:00April 30th, 2026|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

If It Wasn’t “For Your Sins” Why Did Jesus Die (according to Luke)?

I have been dealing with the question of Jesus’ death in the Gospel of Luke and have been arguing that Luke does not appear to have understood Jesus’ death to be an atonement for sins. He has eliminated the several indications from his source, the Gospel of Mark, that Jesus’ death was an atonement, and he never indicates in either his Gospel or the book of Acts that Jesus died “for” you or “for” others or “for” anyone. Then why did Jesus die? It is clear that Luke thought that Jesus had to die. For Luke it was all part of God’s plan. But why? What is the theological meaning of Jesus’ death for Luke, if it was not a sacrifice that brought about a right standing before God (which is what the term “atonement” means)? You get the clearest view of Luke’s understanding of Jesus’ death from the speeches delivered by the apostles in the book of Acts. As you probably know, Acts is about the spread of the Christian church throughout the Roman [...]

BDEhrman2026-02-13T11:29:22-05:00February 21st, 2026|Acts of the Apostles, Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine|

The Weird Textual Variant of 1 John 4:3: False Teachers Who “Loose” Jesus?
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The Weird Textual Variant of 1 John 4:3: False Teachers Who “Loose” Jesus?

Early Christian Doctrine, New Testament Manuscripts

The Weird Textual Variant of 1 John 4:3: False Teachers Who “Loose” Jesus?

This post will be about a couple of intriguing textual variants in our manuscripts of the New Testament, including the use of a four-letter word (literally) in 1 John. To set the stage, let me remind you that in my previous post I discussed an early Christian understanding of Christ that I called “separationist,” because it divided Jesus Christ into two: the man Jesus (who was completely human) and the divine Christ (who was completely divine). According to most proponents of this view, the man Jesus was temporarily indwelt by the divine being, Christ, enabling him to perform his miracles and deliver his teachings; but prior to Jesus’ death, the Christ abandoned him, forcing him to face his crucifixion alone. This separationist Christology was most commonly advocated by groups of Christians that scholars have called “Gnostic.” As you may know, te term Gnosticism comes from the Greek word for knowledge, “gnosis.” It is applied to a wide range of groups of early Christians who stressed the importance of secret knowledge for salvation. According to most [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-15T18:47:02-04:00September 16th, 2025|Early Christian Doctrine, New Testament Manuscripts|

Was Jesus Christ Two Beings, One Human (Jesus) and One Divine (Christ)?

Just to show how strange and, uh, detailed scholarship can be even in New Testament studies, I want to conclude this small thread on the five-chapter book of 1 John by discussing a textual variant in its text that I was obsessed with for years. It involves how different manuscripts word just one verse (1 John 4:3), and in fact just one word in that one verse, which is, as it turns out, only a four-letter word. Early in my career I wrote a 22-page article on this word. Ha! (I guess that's over five pages per letter....) The word is "LUEI" (in Greek) and it means "to loose." It is found as an alternative reading for 1 John 4:3, which in nearly all our surviving textual witnesses says (I've highlighted the key words): "Every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you heard that it was coming and now is in the world already." I talked about the meaning [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-15T18:39:46-04:00September 14th, 2025|Early Christian Doctrine, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

Will Everyone be Saved? (Everyone??)
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Will Everyone be Saved? (Everyone??)

Early Christian Doctrine, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Paul and His Letters

Will Everyone be Saved? (Everyone??)

There has been an extraordinary range of views in Christianity about who will be “saved,” whether people have any say in the matter, what it requires, whether salvation can be lost, and … most everything else connected with this central teaching of the religion. It may seem odd that disagreements among Christian thinkers would involve the very core message, rather than other issues of less significance and centrality, but, well, there it is. In my previous post I pointed to passages in the letter to the Hebrews that seem pretty clearly to indicate that a person could well lose their salvation. At the extreme other end of the theological spectrum was/is the view that in fact everyone will be saved. That’s a view more commonly thought to reside on the margins of Christendom, but it’s always been around – and is getting stronger now than ever – and can easily be traced, again, back to the New Testament, all the way back to its most revered author, the apostle Paul. It can be [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:12:50-04:00July 29th, 2025|Early Christian Doctrine, Early Christian Writings (100-400 CE), Paul and His Letters|

Can You “Lose Your Salvation”?

Does the New Testament teach that a person can lose their salvation? It depends whom you ask. And possibly which New Testament books you read. I have been discussing the letter to the Hebrews, and a couple of passages there are some of the key texts for discussing the issue. First, some background: Since the 16th century, many protestants have believed that that once a person has become a committed follower of Jesus and is therefore bound for heaven it is literally impossible for her/him to lose their salvation. In modern lingo, this is often expressed by the phrase “once saved/always saved.” The idea stems from the teachings of John Calvin (1509-1564), who, among other things, believed that people were “predestined” for salvation by God. Being saved was not based on a person’s choice/decision. It was determined by God, from the beginning. There was a clear logic to this view. In simple terms, if God is ultimately sovereign in every way, then he is the one who determines what happens in the world. [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:12:50-04:00July 27th, 2025|Catholic Epistles, Early Christian Doctrine, Public Forum|

Is the “Christ Poem” of Philippians Really a Poem? When Did Jesus Really Become “Equal” With God?

This is my second and final post on the "Christ-poem" of Philippians 2. Many years ago when I talked about the poem, a reader (who apparently knew Greek!) objected that the poetic lines I suggested don't actually work. Below I'll give his question and my response. But then I'll move on to an even more important issue: how the poem understands who Christ was before he became human and after his resurrection. If Christ was divine before the incarnation, how could he be made more divine afterward? First, the question I received about whether this is some kind of poem. Or rather, the objection that was raised? This ‘rhythmic structure’ just does not work in Greek. The first ‘stanza’ with three ‘lines’: Who, although he was in the form of God Did not regard equality with God Something to be grasped after; In Greek the ‘third line’ is only one word and it appears in the middle of the ‘second line’, after only the first word of the so-called second line. There are a few [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:12:00-04:00May 17th, 2025|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

The Most Widely Discussed Passage of Philippians

To conclude this mini-thread on Philippians, which is part of my maxi-thread Nutshell Summaries of each of the books of the New Testament, I would like to provide two posts on the passage of this small book that is discussed by scholars (far) more than any other, the "Christ-poem" of 2:6-11, where Paul indicates that Christ was first a divine being in the heavenly realm who then came to earth as a human to die for the sins of others, and then was exalted to an even higher position than before, when God made him the Lord of All. It's a remarkable and much-debated passage. At the least one can say that it shows that Paul --even though he is our very earliest Christian writer -- held to some kind of "incarnation" Christology. Christ was a divine being who became human. Before quoting the passage, I should say that one of the reasons it has been so widely studied by scholars is that it has long been though to be a previously-existing composition [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:12:00-04:00May 15th, 2025|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

The Earliest Understanding of Christ? The Hint in Paul’s Letter to the Romans
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The Earliest Understanding of Christ? The Hint in Paul’s Letter to the Romans

Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters

The Earliest Understanding of Christ? The Hint in Paul’s Letter to the Romans

Because of the importance of Paul's letter to the Romans, I want to provide a couple of additional reflections on key points in the letter, one at the very beginning and one at the end, before moving on in this Nutshell Thread to 1 Corinthians. On a number of occasions I have argued on the blog that that the earliest understanding of Christ among his first followers was a kind of "low" Christology, one that considered Jesus to be a full flesh and blood human being (as he considered himself!), and nothing more than a man, until at some point God exalted him and made him his son, the ruler of all, the messiah, the Lord. But "claiming" something is not the same as showing it. I realize a lot of people today don't really care about "evidence" or "proof," but are happy simply to believe what someone tells them, so long as it's someone they like for one reason or another. But I have to admit, I'm an evidence guy. I want to have [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T12:52:16-04:00March 26th, 2025|Early Christian Doctrine, Paul and His Letters|

Jesus as God in the New Testament

One of my personal favorite books (of mine!) is How Jesus Became God. In my New Testament textbook, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction, now in its eighth edition with Hugo Mendez, we include a couple of brief discussions of the topic in two of the sidebars. One of the tricks in writing a textbook is figuring out how to say something in a way that is succinct and interesting, when there is not much space to cover a topic fully (so, my first box here covers in 326 words what I take an entire chapter to develop in my book!) But how to make something succinct but also accurate and / or interesting? It’s always a balancing act. In any event, here are the two boxes. ****************************** Box 19.2 What Do You Think? Humans Exalted to Heaven at the End of Their Lives What do you imagine the early Christians would think had happened to Jesus once they came to believe that he had not only been raised from the dead but [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:09:25-04:00October 24th, 2024|Book Discussions, Early Christian Doctrine|

How Did Early Christians Make Unorthodox Texts Seem Orthodox?

I’ve been arguing that Luke’s Gospel originally may not have had the story of Jesus’ virgin birth but portrayed Jesus as being adopted by God to be his son at the baptism. In the previous post I explained one strategy that could be used to “tame” an otherwise important and beloved text when it held a view that could be seen as problematic. You could edit it. But there are other ways as I explain here (taken from a paper I delivered orally to a group of scholars) ****************************** A second strategy that could be used and was used by proto-orthodox Christians to constrain the reading of the text was by putting it in a canon of writings, a collection of texts with varying perspectives which, once placed together, affected how each one would be read. I’ll not spend much time discussing this strategy, as it is familiar enough to all of us here. It was familiar enough to early Christians as well, as early as Irenaeus, who points out in a famous passage in [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:05:41-04:00December 16th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, Heresy and Orthodoxy|

Why Would an Editor ADD the Virgin Birth to Luke?

Is it possible that Luke's Gospel originally lacked the story of the Virgin Birth, but that it was added later in order to make the book more "orthodox"? That's the question I'm pursing in this thread, based on a paper I delivered to a group of NT scholars 20 years ago. ****************************** It appears that in the earliest form of Luke’s Gospel, what we have is an account that locates Jesus’ adoption/appointment to sonship, and its accompanying empowerment, at the baptism, when God declared “Today I have begotten you.” It is true that throughout the work of Luke - Acts there are other kinds of christological traditions preserved as well – especially in the speeches of Acts. But many of these are also adoptionistic, even though they appear to embody an even earlier adoptionistic notion that it was at the resurrection, not the baptism, that God conferred a special status upon Jesus and invested him with a special power. At this point I should stress that I am not trying to give an [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:05:41-04:00December 14th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, Heresy and Orthodoxy|

No Virgin Birth? Was Jesus ADOPTED by God to be His Son?

Did Luke originally have the story of Jesus’ virgin birth? In my previous post I gave reasons for suspecting that Luke did not originally have chs. 1-2 (the birth narratives), but that it started (after what is now the preface in 1:1-4) with what is now 3:1. One of the reasons it is hard to know for certain is because we simply don’t have much hard evidence. Our two earliest two manuscripts of Luke, P75 and P45, are lacking portions of Luke, including the first two chapters. We can’t say whether they originally had them or not. Our first manuscript with portions of the opening chapters is the third century P4. But our earliest patristic witness is over a century earlier. As it turns out, the witness is the heresiarch Marcion, and as is well known he didn’t have the first two chapters! As early as Irenaeus’s Adversus Haereses (1. 27. 2) Marcion was accused of excising the first two chapters of his Gospel because they did not coincide with his view that Jesus appeared [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:05:41-04:00December 13th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, New Testament Manuscripts|

Did Luke’s Gospel Originally Contain a Virgin Birth?

A couple of weeks I gave a two-lecture online course called “Jesus, The Actual Son of Joseph: The New Testament Evidence” (not connected with the blog; you can learn more about it on my website www.bartehrman.com/courses). It was an interesting experience for me, in part because it made me think of things and look into things I hadn’t thought or looked into before, and in part because it made me look back at some of the work I had done before but not thought about in a long time. That included a paper that I gave twenty years ago now at the British New Testament Conference organized by Mark Goodacre, back when he was still teaching a the University of Birmingham in England. For this more recent course I re-read the paper (not remembering it!) and (having read it again) thought that it would be interesting to excerpt here on the blog. It was delivered for scholars of the New Testament, but I wrote it so that it would not be overly technical or jargony, [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:05:41-04:00December 12th, 2023|Canonical Gospels, Early Christian Doctrine, Heresy and Orthodoxy|

How Paul’s Own Writings Show the Earliest Church Was Split Over “Orthodoxy” and “Heresy”

Are Christian "heresy" (that is, "false belief") and "orthodoxy" ("right belief") products of developments within Christianity after the New Testament? Or can they be detected in the New Testament itself? I'm not asking if the New Testament literally has false teachings. As per my definitions, I'm asking whether it contains views that disagree with one another, only some of which later came to be seen as acceptable. In getting to that answer I have been discussing the views of Walter Bauer, in his classic work, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, who maintained that from the earliest of times, so far as we can tell from our surviving records, Christianity was not a single unitary thing with one set of doctrines that everyone believed (orthodoxy), except for occasional groups that sprang up as followers of false teachers who corrupted the truth that they had inherited (heresies). Instead, as far back as we can trace the history of theology, Christianity was always a widely disparate collection of various beliefs (and practices). In the struggle for [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:05:27-04:00November 24th, 2023|Early Christian Doctrine, Heresy and Orthodoxy, Paul and His Letters|

Is Christ Merely the “Adopted” Son of God?

If Jesus wasn't God from eternity past, but was "adopted" to be the Son of God at some point of his existence, wouldn't that be a pretty watered-down understanding of his divinity? A lot of people find this kind of "adoptionist" Christology (Christ wasn't "inherently" God but "made" divine by adoption) completely unsatisfying and, well, pretty wimpy as far as Christologies go. I mentioned in the previous post that one could well read Luke as adoptionistic, and as I reflected on it some more, I recalled that the first time I wrestled seriously with the issue was ten years ago, when I was doing my research for my book How Jesus Became God. Here's what I ended up thinking about it, and saying about it in the book. And in case you wonder -- mirabile dictu! -- I still think the same today! ****************************** Part of what has convinced me that an [adoptionistic] understanding of Christ should not be shunted aside as rather inferior involves new research on what it meant to be “adopted” [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:04:45-04:00October 8th, 2023|Early Christian Doctrine, Greco-Roman Religions and Culture|

Is The Rapture in the New Testament?

This post is immediately relevant for me in two ways. My book on Revelation has now appeared (I kept *saying* it was "coming soon"!) AND I will be doing a lecture soon, April 15, on the idea of the "rapture," the belief that Jesus is soon to return to take his followers out of the world before the Antichrist arises and all hell breaks out on earth. You don't wanna be here for that. You don't want to be "Left Behind"! The lecture is not connected with the blog per se; you can find out more about it on my website, http://www.bartehrman.com/courses Here, to titillate your interest on both fronts, is a bit of what I say about the rapture in ch. 1 of my book (I say much more about it in a later section): ******************************** Almost everyone today thinks that Revelation provides a blueprint of what is to happen in the near future—at least those who think about it at all. There are, of course, some holdouts, even among conservative Christians, who maintain the [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:01:52-04:00March 23rd, 2023|Early Christian Doctrine, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Revelation of John|

Did Jesus Believe in Hell? My Interview With Kevin Grant

I am pleased to post here an interview that I had with Platinum blog member Kevin Grant, who has recently published a book Did Jesus Believe in Hell? You can get the book here: Did Jesus Believe in Hell?: New Words on Old Beliefs: Grant, Kevin: 9781737082026: Amazon.com: Books. As you will see, it has received very high rankings on Amazon. Kevin and I see eye-to-eye on most of the critical points, and we flesh them out here in the interview. His book strives to reach a different audience from mine, people who would not be inclined to read one of my books but would be open to hearing the views of someone they take to be sympathetic with their religious convictions but who wants to provide them with assurance from the Bible itself that they do not need to stand in fear of eternal torment. We cover all that and much more in this interview. I hope you enjoy it! And feel free to comment.

Diane2025-09-10T13:00:49-04:00December 30th, 2022|Early Christian Doctrine, Historical Jesus, Public Forum|

Did Christ Save Everyone When He Descended to Hades?

In my previous post I started to discuss the famous doctrine of the “Harrowing of Hell,” where Christ is said to have descended to Hades after his death (since he was a human, after all, and when humans die, they go to Hades. Part of the reason for the doctrine, then, is that if he didn’t go, he wouldn’t have had all the human experiences); but he did not go there forever obviously (in this way he was *unlike* everyone else!) but as the son of God he went to bring his salvation to those who had died previously (who could not be saved by his death because it hadn’t happened yet.) I pointed out in the previous post that some theologians said that Christ went to Hades to preach to those who were there to give them the chance to repent (who wouldn’t want to get outta there?? Apparently some or lots?) but others claimed that he went to assert his raw power over his enemies to show who was Lord and King. These [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:35-04:00December 18th, 2022|Afterlife, Christian Apocrypha, Early Christian Doctrine|

Did Jesus Descend to Hell After He Died?

Someone on the blog recently asked me about the idea that after Jesus’ death, and before his resurrection, he “descended into hell.” This is an affirmation found in the Apostle’s Creed, and so continues to be recited by millions of Christians still today. But what does it mean? Throughout the history of the church it has usually been thought – by those who thought and/or affirmed such things -- that Jesus descended to the realm of the dead to provide salvation to some (all?) of the people there, to liberate them from their condemnation (which was impossible *before* then because salvation can only come when Christ died – in this view – and so not before. So when he died he went down to save some (or all) of those who were there, taking them from Hades to heaven. This notion has traditionally been called “The Harrowing of Hell.” But how did it work, exactly? And were did the idea come from? As it turns out, I devoted a chapter to the question in my [...]

BDEhrman2025-09-10T13:00:35-04:00December 17th, 2022|Afterlife, Early Christian Doctrine, Historical Jesus|

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