Book Review: How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?

I hope that the preceding studies will have communicated to readers something of the intriguing questions and hotly contested issues that justify and comprise the historical investigation of early devotion to Jesus. It may be somewhat unsettling for some Christians, at least initially, to explore the origins of Christian faith as a subject of historical inquiry. I trust, however, that Christians will see that a historical appreciation of the emergence of devotion to Jesus need not pose a challenge to continuing to revere Jesus as rightful recipient of devotion with God. Indeed, I hope that Christians will welcome any light that can be cast on the faith of their religious forebears from the earliest period of the Christian movement.

Larry W. Hurtado
How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?

The thing that struck me the most as I finished Hurtado's book, was that he never once said point blank, "Jesus is God". In fact, he didn't come to a definite conclusion one way or the other on the matter (barring the above-quoted statement). He simply presented his evidence, discussed why he disagreed with opposing views, and let the reader come to his or her own conclusions. I rather like that.

Hurtado is a scholarly writer but he did "tone down" the chapters of this book, allowing them to be a bit more accessible to the "average reader". The first four chapters were originally presentations he gave as part of the inaugural lectures in the Deichmann Annual Lecture Series at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Beer-Sheva, Israel (2004). The last four chapters were taken from some of Hurtado's earlier published works. I wouldn't recommend this book for a little light reading before bedtime, but I do recommend it for someone who wants to investigate the history of early devotion to Jesus by his Jewish and Gentile disciples, particularly within the context of 1st century Jewish monotheism.

I very much appreciated Hurtado's attention to the environment, sociology, history, and theology of the Jewish people of 1st century "Roman Judea" and how it became possible for Jews to revere Jesus while not (apparently) violating the Shema (God is One). I also never concluded that Hurtado's evidence resulted in Jesus being co-equal to God in deity...exactly.

The book repeatedly makes use of the term "dinitarianism" (as opposed to "binitarianism", which would be two Gods; God the Father and God the Son) which generally means that God shared or more accurately, that God "delegated" some of His authority and divine nature to the Jewish Messiah, allowing high honors to be afforded Jesus, but only for the glory of God. Hurtado paints a picture of Jesus as a unique being with a position in the spiritual hierarchy unlike any other being. He is worthy of honor and glory, but only as it glorifies the Father. In other words, Jesus doesn't stand alone as an object of devotion and is only acknowledged in reverence as it relates to worshiping the One God.

The biggest problem for this book to solve was not how Gentile converts to the Messianic (early Christian) faith could worship Jesus as God and God (the Father) as God, but how Jews could bend, twist, or mutate ethical monotheism to allow Jesus to be granted "divine honors". The answer is that Jesus was seen as divine, but not actually "God" by the Jewish disciples. He was (and is) a unique entity who was granted a special status by God as Messiah. However, even Hurtado's mountain of evidence in an early occurrence (within the first 30 years of the ascension) of reverent honors being given to Jesus, does not result in the more modern understanding in God is God and Jesus is God too. Although Hurtado didn't say it outright, how we understand the divine nature of Jesus has indeed "mutated" from the original Jewish perspective that existed within Paul's lifetime. The viewpoint of the status of Jesus has changed from what the Jewish apostles saw and taught, to how subsequent generations of Gentile Christians chose to believe in and respond to Jesus. It is more than likely that the Greek pagan "understanding" that a man could be honored as a "god" became a large part of the development of what we now see as the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. It didn't originate, as such, from the first Jewish disciples.

Hurtado spent a great deal of time and effort factoring in Jewish perspectives of Jesus including a point Levertoff and the FFOZ/Vine of David commentary made about how the death of a great tzadik (righteous sage) could atone for the sins of many, including the nation of Israel (Hurtado, pg 21). However, Hurtado (pg 28) did miss that Jews can and do pray in the merit of (in the name of) a great Rebbe all the time, so that isn't an an iron-clad indication of "godhood" as such.

Hurtado did repeat, on a number of occasions (starting on pg 30), that although Jesus was the first sage or Prophet to be afforded a sort of devotion usually associated with God alone, he was not treated as co-equal to God or as another "person" of God or the "Godhead". In fact, the book states (pg 53) that Jesus continually subordinated himself to God the Father (which I consider that aspect of God referred to as Ayn Sof in Kabbalistic thought) and the words of the Master reflect this most clearly:

Jesus gave them this answer: “Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does." -John 5:19

"By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear, and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me." -John 5:30

If Jesus made a point to subordinate himself to God and if that's how his early Jewish disciples came to understand him, then it would not violate Jewish monotheism to give honors to Jesus, just as God delegated honors to the Son, and not have it be the worship that is given to God alone. Humanity must exalt God and God only. God exalts the Messiah and gives him a special and unique divine status among all beings in existence. That seems to be the general message I get from reading Hurtado. It isn't the same message I get from Evangelical Christianity that God is God, Jesus is God, and the Holy Spirit is God (and as in other books I've reviewed that have addressed the Christ as deity issue, Hurtado barely mentions God's Spirit and never suggests that it is also God).

It's as if God "shared" something with Jesus that no other being possessed (pg 95). The closest analog we have is Moses, and when we understand that God elevated the name of the Messiah above every name, we see that the merit of Yeshua (Jesus) is the highest form of merit, not unlike (but superior to) praying to and approaching God in the merit of Moses or Abraham, or the patriarchs or the prophets.

Hurtado spends an entire chapter analyzing Philippians 2:6-11 as an ancient, honorific hymn acknowledging Jesus, which I wrote about last week. At that time, I drew a comparison between the Kabbalistic concept of Ayn Sof as "the Father" and the Shechinah (Divine Presence) as somehow being manifest as "the Son". If Judaism can see the Ayn Sof, the unobservable, unknowable, ultimate creative force that is God and the Shechinah as the physical, visible, touchable, "experience-able" manifestation of God in our world and not see those two concepts as "two God", then it may be possible to apply the same illustration to God and the Messiah and still have One God.

I'm not saying that Hurtado went this far in his presentation of early Jewish and Gentile devotion to Jesus, but for me, it's the logical extension of what Hurtado has written. Glory and honor is given only to God through the Messiah (pg 137), not for the sake of Jesus alone. That may well satisfy the Jewish requirement of monotheism and still give the ancient (and modern) Jewish disciples the ability to give honor to the Messiah's divine and unique status. The subsequent Gentile believers, not having a Jewish educational and experiential background, very likely "took it too far" (I'm extrapolating from Hurtado's writing now) as evidenced (one example) by the Johannine community being evicted from the synagogue for "blending" God the Father and God the Son (the Jewish Messiah). This probably (my opinion) is because the newly-minted Gentile Christians couldn't "get" how Jews saw God and the Messiah as closely related, but still different and separate. When a Jew says "God is One", then He's One". Subsequent Gentile Christian doctrine made it possible for the One to be two in the eyes of the Jewish Messianics, crossing the line, so to speak, between worshiping God and honoring the Messiah, and worshiping God and Jesus as "co-Gods".

Hurtado goes so far as to refer to Jesus as plenipotentiary, which paints a picture of Jesus as a "person" who has been delegated full authority and power by the source, as God's representative and "ambassador" but not creating Jesus literally as a God. It's like the President granting our nation's ambassador to a foreign country full powers and rights to negotiate a treaty. It doesn't make the ambassador the President, but it does give him/her complete authority to make a treaty as if the ambassador were the President. They are two separate people, each with their own status and position, but certain powers and rights are granted from one to the other.

This probably isn't what some of you wanted to hear, but it's what I get out of Hurtado's book as filtered through my beliefs and my personality. That's what a book review is.

Whatever you may think of my conclusions, I highly recommend Larry Hurtado's How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? if you want an honest, well considered (especially in his treatment of 1st century Judaism), and thoughtful perspective on how Jesus came to be granted divine honors and worship by his Jewish and Gentile disciples...and how that carries forward to those of us today who call ourselves disciples of the Master.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Chasing Cars

Who, being in the form of God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the form of a servant,
being made in human likeness.

-Philippians 2:6-7 (NIV)

Moreover, it appears that the meaning of "being in the form of God" may have been presumed as apparent and known to the intended readers, for the text does virtually nothing to explain this interesting phrase.

Larry W. Hurtado
Chapter 3: A "Case Study" in Early Christian Devotion to Jesus
How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God?

This is probably premature and I'm sure I have no business posting this opinion on the web without a lot more study to back it up, but it's what's on my mind just now, so here it is. As many of you who read this blog regularly know, I'm pursuing, among other things, some sort of understanding of the deity of Jesus. Just how is Jesus God the Son and how is God the Father also God? Is there a way to understand the "mechanism" of this process and particularly, how early in "the church" it became apparent that Jesus was (and is) divine?

I'm not going to render a detailed analysis of these questions but I've been wrestling with a few thoughts lately.

Ever since reading "The Word became a human being and lived with us, and we saw his Sh'khinah, the Sh'khinah of the Father's only Son, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14 from the Complete Jewish Bible translated by David H. Stern) some years ago, I've tried to imagine the connection between the Shechinah (Divine Presence) as it descended upon the Mishkan (Tabernacle) in the desert and the living, breathing, human Messiah:

And he set up the enclosure around the Tabernacle and the altar, and put up the screen for the gate of the enclosure. When Moses had finished the work, the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the Presence of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting, because the cloud had settled upon it and the Presence of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. When the cloud lifted from the Tabernacle, the Israelites would set out, on their various journeys; but if the cloud did not lift, they would not set out until such time as it did lift. For over the Tabernacle a cloud of the Lord rested by day, and fire would appear in it by night, in the view of all the house of Israel throughout their journeys. -Exodus 40:33-38 (JPS Tanakh)

This passage, and the analogous event in Solomon's Temple (1 Kings 8:10-11), indicates that the Shechinah is not just a cloud of fog and a fancy lights show, but that it is the physical manifestation of God in our world. It isn't the totality of God, however:

Thus says the LORD: "Heaven is my throne,
and the earth is my footstool;
what is the house that you would build for me,
and what is the place of my rest? -Isaiah 66:1

If God can't (or won't) squeeze His total "self" into the Mishkan or Temple, what was in Solomon's Temple and where was the totality of the God of the Universe? Are we talking about two Gods here or different manifestations of God's nature?

Ever since I read Levertoff and the FFOZ/Vine of David commentary on his work, I have been approaching a closer understanding of the Jewish Messiah as, somehow, mystically, metaphysically, a "container" or "expression-in-flesh" of God's Shechinah (which is considered a feminine aspect of the Divine, making things all the more interesting). Looking at the JewishEncyclopedia.com definition under "In the Targumim":

The majestic presence or manifestation of God which has descended to "dwell" among men. Like Memra (= "word"; "logos") and "Yeḳara" (i.e., "Kabod" = "glory"), the term was used by the Rabbis in place of "God" where the anthropomorphic expressions of the Bible were no longer regarded as proper. The word itself is taken from such passages as speak of God dwelling either in the Tabernacle or among the people of Israel...

No, this doesn't get any easier and in fact, it gets even more off the beaten path (at least my beaten path). I think the reason the whole "deity" issue is so hard to grasp is that, in Christian circles, we tend to try and understand it all through completely rational, intellectual means, or just abandon all hope of coming to any understanding at all. Engaging in a mystic understanding is pretty tough for most believers to accept.

Now let's compare the Shechinah to another concept, this time from Kabbalah as described at AynSof.com:

Ayn Sof (sometimes transliterated as Ein Sof) refers to the infinite Divine (or G_d). In Hebrew Ayn Sof means "Boundlessness", but is usually translated as "Without End." Often it is referred to as the "Infinite No-Thingness." It should be understood that this does NOT mean that Ayn Sof is "nothing" for It is NOT a THING, but is a "somethingness" that we cannot define in human terms. Ayn Sof, in the Kabbalistic tradition, is the ultimate source of all creation or existence!

Ayn Sof, at least as far as my limited understanding can describe it, is the infinite, invisible, unknowable, non-object object, non-entity entity, ultimate creative force, God (God the Father?).

I hate to reduce these concepts down and make them too simple, but would I be so far out of the ballpark to suggest that there is an infinite, invisible, non-corporeal, God, and then suggest there is some part of Him that He can shrink, humble, extend, and intersect with the created Universe; a part of Him that He can allow us to see, touch and some part of Him with which we can interact? Can I then apply that part of Him with which we can interact, that part we saw in the Tabernacle and in Solomon's Temple to the existence and being of the Messiah?

I don't propose this as an answer but suggest it as a possibility. I'll probably be pursuing this for years. I'm sure I'll write more about this. Yes, I'm an unqualified amateur. I'm like this guy:

You know what I am? I'm a dog chasing cars. I wouldn't know what to do with one if I caught it.
The Joker (played by Heath Ledger)
The Dark Knight (2008)

I'm a dog chasing cars. I'm not sure I'd know what to do with one if I ever caught it, but I just can't help chasing cars.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.

Book Review: Putting Jesus in His Place

The case for the deity of Christ does not rest on a few proof-texts. The popular notion that some fourth-century Christians decided to impose on the church a belief in Jesus as God and wrenched isolated Bible verses from their contexts to support their agenda is a gross misrepresentation of the facts. The framers of the orthodox doctrines of the Incarnation and the Trinity did have an agenda, but it was not to replace a merely human Jesus with a divine Christ. Their agenda was to safeguard the New Testament's clear teaching of the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ in a way that did equal justice to three other clear teachings of the Bible: there is only one God; Jesus is the Son and not the Father; Jesus is also a human being. In this book, we have touched at various places on the biblical evidence for these three teachings, while our focus throughout has remained on establishing the truth of the deity of Christ.

from the conclusion of Putting Jesus in His Place: The Case for the Deity of Christ
Authors: Robert Bowman and J. Ed Komoszewski
Format: Paperback, 392 pages
Publisher: Kregel Publications (August 31, 2007)
ISBN-10: 0825429838
ISBN-13: 978-0825429835

Before you begin reading this book review, I want to tell you that it's somewhat controversial. Questioning the deity of Jesus can be a very difficult thing for people to read about or talk about. I don't pull any punches in this review. That's one of the reasons I created this blog; to question assumptions and ask hard questions. I just thought you should know this before proceeding.

Bowman's and Komoszewski's book has exactly one purpose: to prove, from the New Testament text, that Jesus is God the Son, one part of the Trinity, and that his followers and disciples were aware of this during his earthly existence and especially very shortly afterward, as Peter, Paul, and the other disciples were spreading the Good News throughout the Greek-speaking nations.

Do they prove their case? In fact they do, but there are a couple of caveats:

The authors prove their case if you are already convinced of the deity of Christ without reservation, and are looking for an in-depth analysis of the proof-texts in the New Testament (the book is written so it could be used in a Bible class on this topic, as well as a reference).

The authors prove their case if you believe in the total inerrancy of the entire Bible as we have it today, and believe that the New Testament we can purchase in any bookstore and online, was indeed written by the individuals who are commonly attributed to be the authors (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, Peter...).

If you have no doubts and particularly no serious doubts regarding the deity of Christ, and you believe the Bible and specifically the New Testament, contains no ambiguities, contradictions, inconsistencies, believe that all content in the NT is the original content, was not erroneously copied by later scribes and translators, and no content was added, removed, or changed in the decades or centuries subsequent to their original authorship, then I think Bowman and Komoszewski have a strong case.

But that's saying a lot.

The book was written with the assumptions I listed above. The authors are already convinced of their point and, as instructors at Fuller Theological Seminary and Dallas Theological Seminary respectively, support the basic tenets of those institutions relative to the inerrancy of the Bible. This is the first book addressing the New Testament and the deity of Jesus I've read that so strongly assumes these positions. My previous readings (though limited to only three other books so far) all provide supporting evidence that many of the NT texts were written later than their assumed dates, and not by the authors attributed to them. Further, the authors I've read, as well as a larger body of NT scholars, believe that the Gospel of John, may have been specifically written and/or edited by a group of Gentile Christians, popularly known as the Johannine Community, who may have developed the documents attributed to the Apostle John with a strong pro-deity bias that likely wasn't found among Christ's original Jewish disciples. This could have resulted in Gentiles supporting Christ's deity being removed from the Jewish/Christian synagogue, as well as being one of the issues that contributed to the larger Gentile/Jewish schism in the early church. There are also questions about the authenticity of some of Paul's letters as well as Peter's missives which further erodes documented support of the deity of Jesus.

Note: The books I've previously read on this topic are When Jesus Became God by Richard E. Rubenstein, Jesus, Interrupted by Bart D. Ehrman, and From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God by Maurice Casey.

I can't comment much further along this line, at least in a truly scholarly fashion, because I am merely a lay person without the educational background in theology and New Testament studies to be able to give a more educated opinion on the matter. But I have to consider some things.

According to Bowman and Komoszewski, John's Gospel is the only one that mentions that Jesus is God more than once and, if you factor out the Gospels and Epistles that NT scholars consider to be questionable, then a lot of this book's source material supporting Christ's deity goes away.

The trick is, it doesn't all go away, at least for that particular reason. However, all of the efforts the authors make at jiggling the translation of Greek to English in the Gospel of John for example, becomes perhaps more effort than it's worth.

Another area that I found difficult, was the book's proposal that either Jesus must be God or he had to be an ordinary human being. One of the book's assumptions was that, in order to be the Messiah, Jesus had to be God. This is really peculiar, since Judaism doesn't have that assumption and, as far as I know, it never did have that belief. While the authors extensively quote from the Old Testament as part of supporting their arguments, they don't make much of an attempt to see their position from the point of view of Christ's primary audience: 1st Century Jews, nor do they look at the Old Testament sources from a Hebraic perspective. The overall lens by which they view the Bible and by which they expect their readers to examine their book, is an Evangelical Christian lens. This isn't to say that they were completely unmindful of the affect of Jewish monotheism relative to declaring Jesus as God, but the authors state that the New Testament writers had to take care in how they documented Christ's deity in order not to offend Jewish monotheists!

Critics of the doctrine of deity of Jesus often ask why, if Jesus is God, the New Testament does not refer to him more often as God. The answer is twofold. First, the New Testament writers were generally very careful to avoid making statements that would have implied that Jesus was the Father. While affirming Jesus' divine status in many ways, they maintained a clear distinction between the persons of the Father and the Son. Since they commonly applied the name "God" to the Father, they tended not to use that name for Jesus except in ways that did not confuse the two persons.

I'll say more on this in a bit, but here's the critical part I want to present:

The second reason is that the theological and religious roots of the New Testament were deeply monotheistic, and its authors sought to affirm Jesus' deity in ways that people would not perceive as undermining their Jewish monotheistic heritage.

Bowman and Komoszewski refer to R.T. France's The Worship of Jesus: A Neglected Factor in Christological Debate in forming this opinion. France calls any mention of the deity of Jesus from a 1st century Jew's perspective "shocking language" and further states that the "wonder is not that the NT so seldom describes Jesus as God, but that in such a milieu it does so at all."

This is an extremely disturbing statement to me, but not for the reasons the authors might think. It seems like, if the deity of the Jewish Messiah is a natural and logical part of Jesus being the Jewish Messiah, first, there would be a much greater indication of this in Old Testament sources (as well as the Talmud, which the authors ignore), and that it would be more natural and likely for monotheistic Jews to understand and accept that the Messiah, in order to be the Messiah, must also be God. Additionally, from their first point, if the authors thought it would be confusing to try and distinguish between God the Father and God the Son (not much is mentioned about God the Holy Spirit in this book) for 1st and 2nd century Christians who were so much closer to the original people and events that surrounded Jesus, what about those of us living in the 21st century?

I mentioned before that the authors assume that Christ could only be either an ordinary man or that he had to be God, but they do not consider the possibility that the Messiah could be a unique and divine being, with many supernatural attributes, but still not literally be God. The authors cite (and dismiss) arguments based on how Wisdom is personified in the Tanakh (Old Testament), but they ignore the Jewish concept of a pre-existent and personified "Torah" that is the source of Creation (the "Word became flesh", if you'll forgive the Johannine quote), and yet Jews don't consider the Torah to be God, even though it was with Him and is thought of as the mechanism by which the universe was created.

Again, I lack the scholarly credentials to fully analyze and critique this book in more detail and further, space doesn't allow me to do a point-by-point review of each area where the authors cite support for Christ's Godhood, but I think the book's evidence is far from a "slam dunk" as far as unequivocally establishing Jesus as God.

I'm not saying that it's impossible and, as I previously stated, there are points in the book that I cannot speak to that are used to support Christ's deity. The very best and fairest statement I can make, based on my reading of Bowman and Komoszewski, as well as my previous ventures into NT material, is to say "the jury is still out".

I know this means that I must fly in the face of virtually all of Christianity as well as most of the Messianic world, and certainly the vast majority of reviewers on Amazon (as well as individual Christian reviewers) will disagree with me (though not 100% of them), but given the extreme biases presented by the authors, both in terms of their personal belief structure, their backgrounds, and their view of Biblical inerrancy, the credibility of their overall case is somewhat doubtful.

That said, every author who writes on this (or any) subject has a bias, a personal belief structure, and a background, so perhaps Bowman's and Komoszewski's book is also no less credible than some of the others I've read. In that case, how can I ever be convinced one way or the other on the deity issue? For that matter, how can anyone?

My only answer right now, is that I'll continue to read, to search, and to learn.

The road is long and often, we travel in the dark.