Other Christians Who Denied that Christ was Divine by Nature
In my previous post I discussed on group of early Christian “adoptionists” – that is, followers of Christ who maintained that he was not really a divine being (by nature) but was a human who had been “adopted” by God (at his baptism) to be his Son. To be sure, from that point on he was in some sense divine; but he was not born of a virgin and he did not pre-exist his appearance in the world. The group I mentioned yesterday was the Jewish-Christian Ebionites. There was another group known (or thought) to have a similar Christological view that was not in the least Jewish, but was from start to finish gentile. This is a gropu that emerged in second century Rome called the Theodotians, named this because the founder of their sect was named Theodotus. He was a cobbler by trade. But he obviously didn’t work making shoes 24/7; he must have had time for some serious theological reflection as well. Here is what I say about Theodotus and his followers in [...]