(11 votes, average: 4.91 out of 5)
Loading...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!
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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” as a son in the Roman empire, which was the context, of course, within which these views of Christ were formulated. Today we may think that an adopted child is not a parent’s “real” child, and in some circles, unfortunately, that is taken to mean that the child does not “really” belong to the parent. Many of us do not think this is a useful, loving, or helpful view, but there it is: some people have it. So too when thinking about God and his Son. If Jesus is “only” adopted, then he’s not “really” the Son of God, but he just happens to have been granted a more exalted status than the rest of us.
A study of adoption in Roman society shows that this view is highly problematic and, in fact, probably wrong. A significant recent book by New Testament specialist Michael Peppard, The Son of God in the Roman World, deals with just this issue, to show what it meant at that time and place to be an “adopted son.” Peppard persuasively argues that scholars (and other readers) have gotten it precisely wrong when they have maintained that an “adopted” son meant having a lower social status than a “begotten” son (that is, a son actually born of the parent). In fact,
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Receiving all of the powers and privileges of God is still a step down from having been God from all eternity, possessing attributes is an ontological step down from actually being those attributes— being the ground and source of those attributes..
Wrong; *chosen* means CHOSEN!
It’s certainly true that adopted sons could inherit all their father’s power and prestige. Then again, so could natural sons. I’m not entirely convinced that adopted sons actually had a higher status. In all the cases I’ve heard of where an adopted son inherited, it was because the father had no legitimate biological sons.
You mention Caesarion, but he was the half-foreign son of a woman who Caesar never married under Roman law. Surely that has to be a large part of why he never became Caesar’s successor.
Then there’s the case of Marcus Aurelius, who apparently considered disinheriting his son Commodus by adopting someone else as his successor. He didn’t go through with the plan, apparently because he thought Commodus would fight and it might come to a civil war. That’s hardly compatible with adopted sons automatically outranking natural sons.
Anyway, I don’t pretend to be an authority on Roman customs. I’d be interested in any information to the contrary of what I’m saying.
As far as Jesus is concerned, the question is probably moot. The idea could be that God has no natural sons, so an adopted son can inherit everything.
I didn’t meant to say that adopted sons ALWAYS have a higher status; the point here is that God didn’t have any biological sons, but did have an adopted one. And being an adopted one is a MASSIVELY important thing, not a side-thought.
Yes, but what is the value of being the heir of someone who is immortal?
You are given all his power, wealth, and authority, and are treated just as he is.
In an effort to understand Resurrection – bodily or spiritually, I have been reading some of your posts from 2013. There you set out a Pauline view, a gnostic view and a bodily view. What I do not clearly understand is where ‘the soul’ fits into all of this. Is the soul just another term for spirit or something different? It seems to me that a popular present day understanding is that when we die our body ‘lies a-moldering in the grave’ while our ‘soul goes marching on’ – in the sense that it leaves the body and goes ‘up’ to heaven. I have friends who believe that they have felt the ‘essence’ of a loved-one depart the husk of the person which remains behind. Your comments would be appreciated.
For those who believe in resurrection the soul/spirit ceases to exist at death but then is brought back into the body at the resurrection, animating it and being joined with it forever; for those who hold to a Greek view of the separation of body and soul at death, the body dies but the soul is indestructible and lives on. If you want a full exposition, I deal with this at length in my book Heaven and Hell.
Exorcising Legion
Psychotraumatic Blindness – Jesus heals the blindman of Bethsaida
“Can you see anything?
” I can see people but they look like trees.”
Asclepius opened the eyes of the blindman. The blindman first saw trees.
Traumatized WWI soldiers experienced psychotraumatic blindness and blurred vision.
Shortly after shell shock (the primary cause of the blindness), the patient complained of blurred vision.
Systematized delusion insanity can be a description of the Gerasene demoniac.
Jesus asked the insanity, “what is your name?”
“Legion.”
Was a Roman legion causing fighters or civilians to be traumatized in the late 20s or early 30s?
No.
Were there Roman soldiers causing rebels and civilians to be traumatized by the Battle of Jotapata, the Battle of Galilee, the siege on Jerusalem along with just the trauma of famine and cannibalism of the Jewish Civil War?
Yes.
This exorcism must be lifted from the late 20s early 30s to something that happened in the late 60s when people were traumatized by war terror.
World War I therapists of traumatized soldiers did the exact same thing Jesus did: cured insanity and blindness.
Yes?
Steve Campbell, author of Historical Accuracy
I don’t think of it as watered-down understanding of his divinity. I am still open to the possibility that these ideas might have roots in Jewish mystical traditions and philosophies, especially concepts like drawing closer to God (Devekut), the divine presence in ‘Shekinah’, and the divine origin in the Kabbalistic ‘Adam Kadmon’, even when some ideas may have been fully conceptualized a bit later.
From my perspective I find might see intriguingly parallels to Christian mysticism, including gnostic ideas found in Apocryphon of John, and Carl Jung’s psycho-spiritual concept of Christ as an ultimate archetype of the Self.
If so, and with such a framework(s), the Christ emerges not just as a figure, but more as an inherent divine quality or potentiality in humanity—a form of divine consciousness. By integrating Christian and Jewish mysticism with deep psychological insights, I think I’m able on this basis, to postulate and understanding that Jesus’ path to embodying the Christ consciousness finds its roots in old/ancient spiritual teachings. I would think this perspective not only preserves the profound significance of Jesus and the Christ idea but actually enhance it. It gives me a picture of spiritual evolution deeply interwined in our shared spiritual herigage.
Based on that, I still believe the “son of God” as a concept remains valid as an exalted idea.
During the first three centuries, was it typical for authors to add, delete, and/or change stuff written by other authors?
It’s a great question. It certainly happens in some Christian authors, where they’ll take a writing of someone else and incorporate parts of it in their own. But we don’t really have other writings quite like the Synoptic Gospels where someone reshapes the entire narrative by adding, deleting, and changing. Both Matthew and Luke obviously did it.
Sorry to be picky Dr Ehrman but (although I accept the point about the status of Roman adoptions) I’m not sure that there are many examples of Emperors preferring adopted sons to natural offspring. There are doubts that Caesarion was Caesar’s actual son and, in any event, he was illegitimate and had a non-Roman mother. Tiberius adopted Caligula but only after the death of his natural son. Claudius adopted Nero, who was his step son anyway, but appeared to want a joint succession with his natural son Britannicus. Later Emperors only adopted when they had no natural son. Marcus Aurelius allowed his natural son, Commodus, to succeed. Even much later, when Diocletian (who had no son) tried to push adoption over natural succession, this quickly broke down when Constantine followed his biological father, Constantius Chlorus.
Thanks. YOu may want to read the book by Michael Peppard on the Son of God in the Roman World if you’re interested in a full exposition.
And for spice, Nero also was Claudius’ great nephew, since Nero’s mama, Claudius’ wife, was Claudius’….niece.
This uncle/niece biz, like the multiple 1st cousin marriages in many European dynasties (see: Victoria and Albert, etc. etc.), is small change. Cleopatra VII (Caesar’s gf, who was married to her brother) was an inbred product of multiple generations (the Ptolemies) of brother/sister marriages. Same with the Egyptian pharaohs and, I assume, other “royal” families.
All this adoptionist talk makes sense from the gentile perspective, but from the Jewish perspective, there seems to be no elevation of adopted people. The Jewish perspective from the Gospel of Matthew clearly wanted a prophetic virgin-birthed messiah over an adopted messiah. Was Luke’s birth narrative ‘correcting’ Matthew or was Matthew’s birth narrative ‘correcting’ Luke – or these were both from oral-traditions and neither knew/cared about the other stories? Obviously, we don’t know. Maybe neither birth story came from oral traditions predating Paul (wouldn’t Paul of inserted either story into logical arguments made in his letters – or into his words in Acts?), Maybe each birth narrative story was fueled by perceived needs for disciples to view Jesus’ messianic role in ways stronger than just a simple baptism event with John the Baptist.
However, Ignatius, a non-jew, seems to be the earliest source to explicitly mention the Jesus’ virgin birth. Does Ignatius not tilt your scale back towards the virgin birth and away from the adoptionist line as the more accepted and apostolic story? Or is there a good case that Ignatius (and others in early Antioch, had no access to or knowledge of Luke’s gospel?
I don’t think either Matthew or Luke is correcting the other, since I don’t think either of them knew the other’s account
By the time of Ignatius far fewer Christians held to an adoptionist view. We aren’t sure which Gospels he had exactly but I think it’s pretty clear at least that he knew Matthew (he seems to refer to the star of Bethlehem story, e.g.)
You have more restraint than me to not say “Pizza Pizza!” Little Caesar’s is named after Caesarion, whose real name was Ptolemy Theos. (Ptolemy God.)
You are very right that in that era the successor really had to prove themselves – that was a surprise for me. You just don’t “get” king, apparently.
Even the fabled Patriarch Abraham, in Hebrews 11:17 has a lot of sons, but Isaac is his only *begotten* son. Ie, he chooses only one successor.
I think the Ishmaelites seem to claim that that was Ishmael instead? Compare Herod the Great choosing four successors. (He originally only chooses one.)
Anyways, finally figured out how Babylonian Talmud Ketubot 3b:4 worked within pre-Islamic Arab law!
“Rabba said: The baraita is referring to a period where the government said that a virgin who is married on Wednesday will submit to intercourse with the prefect [hegmon] first.”
https://www.sefaria.org/Ketubot.3b.4?lang=bi&with=all
Pre-Islamic Persia & Arabia had a temporary contract called Sigheh:
— can be with an engaged (but not married) woman
— has to be with People of the Book (Persian, Jewish, Arab, or Sabean)
—heir gets full patrilineal rights
Rostam (the panther-skin-wearer 👀 ahem, Pantera) and Sorab are one fabled father-and-son duo from sigheh:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rostam
“When the earliest Christians talked about Jesus becoming the Son of God at his resurrection, they were saying something truly remarkable about him.”
And being adopted, he does not need a virgin birth, right?
Yes, virgin birth traditions are separate from adoption traditions of Jesus, and both are separate/distinct from incarnation traditions.
It seems like there are two ways to view adoptionism and I suspect early Christians fell into either camp
1) Jesus is a son of God in the sense of us being the sons of God except he was especially chosen and exalted, but still not a divine being sharing ownership and authority over the world with God.
2) Jesus being exalted to divine status essentially the coronation of a new deity to share rule of the universe with his Father, Yahweh.
My guess is Paul and most other early Christians took to the second view.
Bart, a question on this issue of “in what sense” was Jesus believed to be God (eternity past; at birth; at his baptism; at resurrection). Can you tell us how the Catholic Church, or specific Catholic theologians, have responded to your documentation that Jesus was not always believed to be fully God from eternity past? Do they simply defer to the Council of Nicea, or do they ignore the question, or give evasive answers?
Oh, the standard response is pretty simple. They think I’m wrong. 🙂 (They interpret the passages in different ways)
Dr Ehrman,
I would appreciate your assistance in evaluating whether Christians around 50-300CE would have agreed with these statements in principle, and to what extent:
1. Jesus and his apostles clearly denounced all forms of violence, force, and even coercion.
2. Using any form of force or coercion, to compel someone to adhere to Christian teachings against their will, or to otherwise advance the Christian mission, is nonsensical on principle alone.
Thank you.
1. Some did, some didn’t 2. Some did, some didn’t.
My apologies, I suppose my questions were overly broad. I will try to clarify.
My objective assessment of NT writings is that there’s no remotely compelling case against either of those two statements above. Therefore, I am trying to understand why the doctrine and actions of Christians have diverged so thoroughly from their holy text, both historically and presently.
My perception is that the behavior of Christians in the first 2-3 centuries demonstrated a strong agreement with those statements, both absolutely and relative to future periods.
My hypothesis is that the divergence occurred unevenly, but was possibly assisted by the introduction of powerful positions within the church circa-200 (top-down corruption), and by the persecutions of that century which on average killed the most principled and spared the compliant (bottom-up). Therefore, by the fourth century, the church was ready to willingly allow itself to be intertwined with the state, trading its original principles for power and influence (top-down), and legitimacy and safety (bottom-up). This opened the floodgates of church corruption at all levels, a situation we have never fully resolved.
Can you please confirm, refute, or correct my assessment, perception, and hypothesis (just the broad strokes)?
Ah, sorry to do this to you, but…. On the blog, when you make a comment on my comment, your original comment on which I was commenting is not included. And so in this case neither I nor our readers knows (remembers) what the “two statements above” were. SO, could you resubmit this post with the two statements included so everyone can see what you’re asking and make sense then of my answer?
1. Jesus and his apostles clearly denounced all forms of violence, force, and even coercion.
2. Using any form of force or coercion, to compel someone to adhere to Christian teachings against their will, or to otherwise advance the Christian mission, is wrong.
My objective assessment of NT writings is that there’s no remotely compelling case against either of those two statements. Therefore, I am trying to understand why the doctrine and actions of Christians have diverged so thoroughly from their holy text, both historically and presently.
My perception is that the behavior of Christians in the first couple centuries demonstrated strong agreement with those statements, both absolutely and relative to future periods.
My hypothesis is that the divergence occurred unevenly, but possibly accelerated in the third century as their bishops gained power (top-down corruption) and persecutions killed the principled while sparing the compliant (bottom-up). Regardless, by the fourth century, the church was ready to willingly allow itself to be intertwined with the state, compromising its original principles for power and influence (top-down), and acceptance and safety (bottom-up). This opened the floodgates, a situation we have never fully resolved.
Can you please confirm, refute, or correct my assessment, perception, and hypothesis (just the broad strokes)?
1. I’d say there are numerous passages in the NT that promote pacifism as do the teachings of Jesus; others do not. My sense is that Jesus himself was a pacifist but some of his followers changed the message more in line with standard views of the time, as they did with so many other teachings 2. I don’t know of cases in the NT where anyone is forced to convert to Christianity, and I actually don’t know of such cases in the early centuries of the church that I can think of off my head.
Could you please provide two compelling examples of NT passages advocating non-pacifism?
I ask because I have searched in vain to find any. The closest thing I can find is Jesus’ actions in the temple in John 2. But that is clearly not an example for others to follow, because he made it clear he was acting with the authority of God himself (v. 19), which none other may claim.
Some people appeal to Luke 22:38. But if you want to see some serious non-pacifism, I reacomment the book of Revelation!
Luke 22:38 was the other one I was originally going to mention, but I didn’t even bother because v51-52 shuts that down immediately (cref. Matt. 26:52 too).
And sure, if someone is in possession of a locust with a human face, women’s hair, lion’s teeth, and a scorpion tail, I suppose I’ll just have to quit my peaceniking, put my big boy pants on, and endure my five months of torture.
Btw, are you familiar with Robinson Crusoe? I just looked up whether there are sea turtles around Patmos, and it turns out there are. You heard it here first.
If we tie this in with Prof James Tabor’s theory that Jesus had a human father (as we ALL do), whose name was never to be mentioned after she became Joseph’s legal wife, then we can see Christians’ motivation to lift Jesus from the denigrating position of being only the ‘son of Mary’.
They could claim that God had adopted him, so that he now had a father. And not just any ordinary father, but the God of heaven and earth. Pretty impressive.
The question/criticism that immediately comes to mind is whether it is apropos to rely upon the Roman conception of adoption and not the Judaic?
Yes, if there was a difference. But in any event, these Gospels are written by authors trained in Greek circles, and Luke was almost certainly a gentile.
Did Paul believe in the “adoptionistic” concept? “Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name,” (Philippians 2:9).
In my book How Jesus Became God I argue that he had a kind of mixed view: he held to an incarnational idea (Christ was originally a divine being) AND an adoptinist one (God exalted him to a higher divine status)
Thanks. I did read “How Jesus became God” but had forgotten that point. Philippians 2:6 kind of confirms that idea I guess: “who although he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited.” I was thinking maybe “form of God” was referring to Genesis 1:26 “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness,…,” but Jesus being a divine being beforehand is a better fit.
Dr. Ehrman,
What do you think of the view that Paul was a Stoic? Is it overstated? These proponents seem to forget that first and foremost Paul is Jewish…
He certainly has interesting connections with Stoicism, but he is MASSIVELY different in his major concerns. I’ve been reading a lot of Stoic philosophy over the past two years, and it’s clear he has been influenced in some ways, but his devotion to Christ as the be all and end all stands in huge contrast with Stoic “self-sufficiency” concern for “virtue” in and of itself interest only in the present life, quest for personal “happiness/well being”, etc. — i.e. the chief things they are both interested in are at polar ends of the spectrum.
Dr. Ehrman,
What do you think of the claim that Paul’s view of the resurrected body was a Stoic concept? i.e. someone wrote to me: “For the Stoics pneuma was a material substance and Paul shows every sign of thinking the same thing.”
No, Paul had a decidedly non-Stoic view of the human; Stoics, unlike Platonists, did see the pneuma as kind of “stuff,” a more highly refined kind of matter than the body. But they did not think a person required the combination of pneuma and body to exist or definitely not that the body itself would be reanimated wiht pneuma at the resurrection. For Paul, the pneuma comes back into the material body and the course materiality is itself obliterated, so that the body then is a pneumatic body. It’s still a body, made of matter, but now of pneumatic matter, not somatic matter, and it’s recognizably still the same body. Stoics would have thought that’s absurd.
Dr. Ehrman,
Therefore, do you think that Paul’s concept of the resurrected body is consistent with the Pharisaic/Jewish view?
It’s basically consistent, in that it is the body that comes back to life, not simply a spirit. But I’m afraid we don’t know the details of the “common” or “general” view the way we know Paul’s, since he talks about it directly (we don’t have any writings from any Pharisee prior to 70 CE) (well, except the Pharisee Paul!).
Is there a place in adoptionist theory for *and*?
My best guess so far is “and” — that Jesus believes in his pre-existence, (like in John 3:1-21), *and* that the Gospels really work at showing that he is increasing as a child in education, (like in Luke 2:52), and as an adult in position, (like in John 3:16).
I think it maybe confuses people that a prince would travel giving spiritual instruction, but 1C authors wrote that the king on the other side of the Jordan officiated spiritual functions, and gave accounts (parables?) of his life to the public. Then there’s the healing miracle inscriptions. It’s hard to not look at Jesus as the bio son of a king heavily invested in resurrection stock — Petra is a funerary city lit by the Winter Solstice, with a yearly type of resurrection festival. Aretas’ central statue at the Khazneh is Isis, who resurrects Osiris, and is symbolized by the dove.
Jesus may have not had the popular support required in Judaea, but hey, even King David moved to a new ethnic enclave — *Jerusalem wasn’t Jewish*. And Herodian Dynasty sons left Judaea to become kings in surrounding areas, like Chalcis.
Since original Christian communities were all Jewish and stemming from Judea itself, does the Roman understanding of adoption really apply here? Certainly it did once the movement grew outwards into the diaspora, but if Jesus’ Jewish followers within Judea were already calling him that, then it seems like Roman ideas wouldn’t really matter.
Oh my gosh, your question had me researching on the Google all day, just as a nerdy reader, so I hope you don’t mind me replying, Ahmed. There’s information on Ancient Jewish king succession, so it got me wondering why I’ve seen several scholars use the Romans to describe adoptionist theory.
Ancient Jewish kings *didn’t* adopt heirs afaik. There’s interesting differences with the Roman, Arab, Parthian and Ptolemaic styles of succession.
The Abraham pattern that I already knew is, he chooses 1 son out of 8 as his ‘only’ or ‘begotten’; monogenes is the same word used for Isaac as Jesus in Hebrews 11:17 through Hebrews 11:19. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monogen%C4%93s . Continually, the child of wives seem to be prioritized over the child of handmaids.
But the Arab Ishmaelites take that same succession story and switch out Isaac for Ishmael. Handmaid Hagar’s son. Centuries later where we have more to go on, the child of the handmaid often wins out. And First Century historian Strabo has an Arabia Felix tradition where when it’s time for a new king, as nomads, they travel to go visit the first to be born among the lesser nobles.
How does orthodox Christology — averring that Christ WAS “inherently” God, preexisting the Incarnation — avoid running head-on into the doctrine of “Original Sin” and its (sine qua non) corollary: “Substitutionary Atonement”?
Set aside the bizarre conception of Divine Justice in a God whose thirst for vengeance over the insolence of the first man extends to *all* of his innocent progeny. Disregard the inherent absurdity of a God who supposedly comes into this world to sacrifice himself to himself. Ignore the wantonness of a God whose primitive bloodlust can only be sated by human sacrifice.
Wouldn’t the atoning sacrifice need to be, well, human?
That conundrum presumably accounts for yet another logic-defying, doctrinal stupidity — that Jesus was at once *both* fully God *and* fully man! 🤯
It seems there are no limits whatsoever to the inanity of the creedal doctrine that emerged from Nicaea, and has prevailed for nearly two millennia now. (The vaunted “Reformation” only managed to dethrone the Chair of Saint Peter, redressing NONE of this.)
An Adoptionist Christology would seem to avoid all of these problems. But how does an Incarnation Christology NOT make all the rest of orthodox doctrine into a massive and unavoidable train wreck?
Jesus in the orthodox view absolutely was completely human. But he did not inherit a sin nature, because of the immaculate conception — that is, when his mother Mary was herself born, he mother did not pass along the sin nature to her, by a miracle of God, so that she coudn’t pass it along to Jesus. So they were both fully human, but lacking sin natures.
Sorry about asking you to be the defender of the indefensible, professor. But as the DJs used to say (and we’re both, unfortunately, old enough to remember 😕): “And the hits just keep on comin’…”
If Jesus “did not inherit a sin nature,” he was clearly NOT “completely human.” But let’s double down on that. If he was completely God, he was omnisciently aware of his eventual fate — from when he was still just a twinkle in the Father’s eye. 😉
I think “Train wreck” is a pretty good metaphor here; I can already sense another car about to be added.
Since the chain of doctrinal absurdities — each one needed to rationalize the one before — just keeps growing longer, why not jump directly to the “miracle of God” caboose?
If this *isn’t* a train wreck, perhaps the church should borrow Vlad the Invader’s set of nesting dolls to store all the doctrinal overreach.
Doesn’t an adoptionist Christology, i.e., a completely human Jesus *volunteering* to become God’s prophet — and ultimately telling Jewish and Roman authorities (with apologies to Tom Petty): “You can stand me up at the gates of hell, but I won’t back down!” — derail all these convolutions?
As far as I know, Orthodox Christianity doesn’t recognise the Immaculate Conception.
Yay! for adoption and *GRRR!* to anyone who rates my adopted kids as anything but MY KIDS.
Great post Bart, thanks.