(5 votes, average: 4.40 out of 5)
Loading...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.
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Thank you Dr Ehrman. I do find this convincing, (as I did when I read your book).
But do you think a) that Arius, the 4th century heretic, probably thought of Christ as an angel and b) could St Paul have agreed with the Nicene Creed?
a. I don’t believe Arius conceived of Christ as an angel (I’m pretty sure he never uses that term); 2. He probably would have found parts of it puzzling.
…but isn’t it worth mentioning the literal meaning of angelos? Paul’s readers cannot have been ignorant of this – they would have known of Greek tragedies, for instance, in which messengers are constantly appearing with some news or other. And calling Jesus “the messenger of God” is not as theologically startling as all that.
In Jewish circles angeloi were typically seen as superhuman beings representing God and doing his well. Not sure if that answers your questoin. But ancient Greek spearkers would not need to be familiar with Greek tragedy to know what the word meant in everyday talk.
… and we think the intended recipients of Galatians were Gentiles? Perhaps the question is whether “a messenger of God” here is meant by Paul to be someone of a lower theological rank than we usually assume Jesus to be. But surely anyone can bring a message – the Messiah, an “angel”, or Paul himself?
Yes, they appear to have been converts from paganism, being drawn to adopt the ways of Judaism.
If Jesus was the “chief angel” he would have been teh second most powerful being in the universe, so not such a low post. But Paul thought that after Jesus’ resurrection, God exalted him to a level actually equal with himself (Phil. 2:6-11)
Professor Ehrman, one possible objection to reading Galatians 4:14 as identifying Christ with an angel is the tension with Galatians 1:8, where Paul curses even angels who preach a different gospel. You might respond that by the time of writing, Christ had already been hyper-exalted beyond angel status per Philippians 2, so the two statements aren’t contradictory.
But this defense creates two problems: First, it requires Philippians 2 to describe a genuine promotion to divine equality rather than a return to a status Christ already possessed – yet this depends entirely on reading harpagmon as ‘something to be seized’ rather than ‘something to be exploited’ – a genuinely contested translation. Doesn’t your two-stage Christology rest on one side of an unresolved exegetical debate?
Second, if Christ was already hyper-exalted above angels when Galatians was written, why does Paul reach for ‘angel’ as his comparison category in 4:14 rather than kyrios – a title he uses for the risen Christ repeatedly in the same letter? Wouldn’t ‘angel’ be rhetorically deflating for an audience already confessing the exalted Lord?
The problem in Galatians 1 is not with angels but with angels who proclaim a false gospel. Paul never says anything negative about angels per se. The reason for Phil 2 to be presenting a genuine promotion of Christ is because of the wording, God “hyper-exalted” him. Note, it is then, and only then, that he gives Christ the name that is above every name. He didn’t have it before. So he has been eleveated even higher. I’d say it is not deflating to talk about Christ as being the highest supernatural divine power in the universe apart from God himself — especially among people who would be inclined to have previously thought that he was a crucified lowlife.
How would this view (that Jesus was an angel) compare with the Jesus presented in John 1?
It is not as exalted.
This certainly is interesting! Is there solid reasoning for not translating the passage:
“but you received me as a messenger of God, as Jesus Christ”?
Only that “messenger sent from God” for Jews typically meant “angel”
Thank you for answering my question in last month’s Q&A about atonement in the Gospels, and for clarifying the distinction between forgiveness and atonement. As you explained, forgiveness means that the offender does not have to “pay,” whereas atonement requires some form of payment.
Here is what I am trying to understand. Human beings may not be able to turn a situation that requires atonement into one that can be resolved by forgiveness alone. But God, who created heaven and earth, presumably can do so. God could simply declare: “I forgive your sin,” without requiring any payment.
Given that, what should we conclude about the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John, which present God as requiring atonement when forgiveness would have been possible? What does this imply about these Evangelists’ understanding of God?
Second, did it have to be Jesus who took people’s sins upon himself? Could someone else—say, Peter—have offered himself, and God would have accepted that? If not, why not?
Finally, if Jesus’ death was necessary for atonement, why do Christians blame Judas, the Jews, Pilate, or anyone else for causing it? Would they have preferred that Jesus not die, and that their sins remain unatoned?
Henrik Kochan
1. I’d say the Gospels affirm the widely held belief from the beginning of the Xn movement, that God required atonement, even though it was not Jesus’ view. 2. That’s a theological question that is not raised in the early church; later it was argued that it needed a divine being to take on the sins of th eworld. 3. Yup, it’s an irony, one of many in Christianity (e.g., if people are foreordained, how can they be at fault?)
Thanks for distinctifying between atonement & Forgiveness.
I’m not Jesus or St Stephen. Through my decades of fervent prayer. One method was to delineate each thing I was praying, while simultaneously praying the language of angels [tongues?]
So in the same method, how can I forgive someone if he/she doesn’t acknowledge such done.
By my descriptoin of forgiveness, “unconditional” forgiveness is not really forgiveness (but a different kind of thing)
Perhaps this points out something interesting about Paul’s belief in the divinity of Jesus, which seemed to be accepted by some but not all early Christians. Paul is stating here that Jesus is a divine being—angels being divine. However, even if Jesus was accepted as divine, then in what manner? I don’t know if this is consistent through Paul’s writings, but does this point out an Arian belief in Jesus divinity—divine but created by God, and therefore subservient to God? Certainly there an array of beliefs in early Christianity on that subject. Was Paul himself consistent in his own beliefs?
Arius would certainly claim Paul in support of his views, but the issues of the fourth century were beyond what Paul was imagining. And no, Paul was not always consistent in his views, at least in his surviving writings.
Dr. Ehrman,
How does Paul get from the point of Jesus starting out as either a little less than God, or at least distinct from God to saying the Father, Son and Spirit are One?
He doesn’t say that about Father, Son, and Spirit.
Bart, I’ve enjoyed your Anniversary Posts. I was a fellow PhD student with Charles Gieschen at the University of Michigan, as he was working on his Angelomorphic Christology project for his dissertation. When reading your book (HJBG) I was delighted to see Charles’ name and work mentioned. As I recall only vaguely from our discussions before his research was completed, oh, so long ago, his understanding of the Jewish tradition out of which this early Christian theology emerged was “quickly dispensed with” in favor of what became much later a trinitarian trajectory. I’m not sure that Charles would have agreed with you then that Paul thought Jesus was any sort of “divine” angel, or that such a notion was considered later by the evangelists. Perhaps by the time his research was finished and published (I’ve not read his book on the topic, I’m sorry to say) he had changed his mind about all of that. Did you ever have a personal discussion with Gieschen (a conservative Lutheran pastor and seminary professor) about his current views? Perhaps at SBL?
I never did. But he did publish a response saying I misrepresented him. I certainly didn’t think I did, but I could see why he would say so. I believe his argument was the basis for Susan Garrett’s, which stressed the point as well (she too is a seminary professor).
Good evening, Mr. Ehrman, I am a fan of yours from Greece, my native language is Greek and I recently became a subscriber to your excellent blog. Here in Greece, the theologians of the Universities consider you as a “holy monster” as the leading living New Testament scholar.
I am writing this comment (it is my first on your blog), because I saw that in this article you assure us that you read and understand the original Greek text of the New Testament. Allow me to make a point and a question…
QUESTION: Are you aware that the Greek of the New Testament is considered “bad Greek” by the contemporaries of Jesus Christ who had Greek as their native language? (I also remind you of what Nietzsche said about the bad Greek that God speaks in the Gospels)
NOTE: What you write about Galatians 4:14, that the grammar of the Greek language shows that Paul considered Jesus identical with an angel, does not appear to us Greek-speaking people who know the Common Greek. I am not saying that your conclusion is wrong, but that someone who knows the Common Greek Language does not perceive it in the same way.
Theo
Yes, up into the fourth century Greek elites considered the NT Greek to be rather basic and inferior.
The question of Gal. 4:14 has to do with how Paul elsewhere uses the same grammatical construction, in ways that are unambiguous; assuming he uses the syntax consistently, he would be considering Jesus to be an angel here.
Dr. Ehrman,
I was recently reading over your chapter on the resurrection in “Heaven and Hell.” My question has 2 parts.
1) Could it be said that one of the arguments that show that Paul believed in a transformation of the dead body be that in the context of 1 Cor. 15 Paul indicates that those who have died will need to wait for Christ’s return to be raised? Among other things, this could provide a response to Dr. Tabor’s theory.
2) …Because James Tabor takes a bit of a different approach, saying that on Paul’s view, a body still in a grave isn’t really an issue and that Paul was conducive to the notion that God may just as well create a “clone” of the dead person, which would be the “resurrected body.” So, in other words, Tabor seems to lean toward an immaterial/immortal soul view mixed with a nominal bodily form of some type. What do you think he might be missing here?
1. That’s right. HE shows the “resurrectoin” hasn’t happened yet (contrary to his opponents) because no one (including his opponents) have experienced the transformation of the body that Jesus, the first fruits of the resurrection, experienced. 2. I’d say that Paul clearly emphasizes that Jesus’ body was transformed into a spiritual body, not that it decayed while the soul somehow returned to life. I think that’s pretty much his point.
Here I thought I was crazy, but then again I do not know Greek well enough to come to this conclusion from the Greek. Would this possibly be related to the two powers in heaven heresy?
Close but not quite. The “two powers” refers to two gods both sitting on thrones, so, in effect, another “Yawweh.” Once Christians thought Jesus was equal with God (after the New Testament period) it wsa more like the two powers idea. There’s a fine book on this by Jewish scholar Alen Segal.
I would say your new position causes some difficulties with Galatians 1: 8. But even if we or an angel[a] from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed! (footnote Or a messenger )NRSVUE. If the Galatians shouldn’t trust an angel from heaven, why should they trust Jesus if he is an angel from heaven?
Paul doesn’t malign angels in Galatians 1:8. He’s saying that even if an ANGEL preached something contrary to his own gospel God would curse them. That’s not attacking angels just as he’s not attacking humans per se when he says any human would be condemned for doing so as well.
If Paul understood the resurrection of Christ to be his return to his previous angelic state, would he have agreed with the description of the resurrected Jesus in Luke of a resuscitated corpse? Or would he have believed the appearances of Jesus to himself and to the Apostles to be similar to angels in the Old Testament temporarily taking on human appearance?
I’d say Paul does not understand it that way. He thinks at the resurrectoin God exalted Christ to a much higher state. But as such, no, I doubt if he would have agreed that Jesus appeared as a resuscitaeted corpse.
I read the book a while back and missed the part about Jesus being an angel. Is it possible that this could mean that he appeared as an angel in Old Testament times?
That’s wha a nyumber of ealry Christians argued. (Justin Martyr especially)
I’m not sure I understand you correctly but I’ll give it a shot. Are you saying (similar to Jehovah’s Witnesses) that Jesus was an angel by nature? Angels being created beings? Or that Jesus was a messenger (Theophany) prior to the incarnation? Exodus 3:1-15 that you cite says “The angel of the Lord” spoke to Moses and said his name was “I Am” and the title/name was a memorial name for all generations. The Angel of the Lord was God and Jesus claimed to be that messenger (John 8:58), so by nature he is creator (John 1:1-3, Colossians 1: 16) not created.
If we’re talking about an angel by nature Hebrews 1:1-14 refutes that idea when it says (verse 5), “To which of the angels did He (God the Father) ever say….?” (rhetorical:none), (verse 6) but about the Son He says, “All the angels of God worship Him.”(1st Commandment: worship God only). (Verse 7) “of the angels He says,” (Verses 8-10) “But to the Son He says, ‘Thy throne God’ and ‘You created…’” The Father calls the Son God and creator. Hebrews chapter one makes a clear distinction between the nature of angels and the nature of Jesus. Correct?
Yes, Jesus would have been a created being. And I’m referring to Paul’s views, not those of other New Testament authors.
The writing that is known as ENOCH was written after Cyrus of Persia “released” the Babylonian Captives (510 BCE). What was an angel before ENOCH was written? An angel was (and still is) simply an avatar of GOD. Angels are not sentient beings. GOD sent Himself (or Herself: GOD is gender neutral). Angels are not beings. If you speak with an angel, then you are speaking with GOD. The question: WAS JESUS AN INCARNATION OF AN ANGEL? is asked from an unfounded premise about the existence and nature of angels. ANGELS DO NOT EXIST EXCEPT AS AVATARS OF GOD.
Consider JOB 1:6 “Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD, and Satan came also among them.” This is the ENOCH mentality. ENOCH and JOB were written by the Babylonian Captives. DANIEL, ZECHARIAH, and THE ASSUMPTION OF MOSES were written by the Babylonian Captives. Don’t entertain questions from the ENOCH mentality. Best regards to the Bart Ehrman community. Does anyone else’s SPELL-CORRECT change “Ehrman” to “Herman”?
Mine never does!