Another view about Jesus

[Huon]

The earliest Christians may have seen Jesus as a great teacher and healer, possessed of very special gifts and powers, and they still have seen him primarily as a flesh and blood human being. And they seemed to consider him as such until a certain crucial moment in his life when God adopted him as His Son. Such a view is known as "Adoptionism".

A wide variety of Adoptionist Christians are attested in the early Christian times from various sources. Among them were both the Jewish-Christian groups such as the Ebionites, and some Gentile Christians, such as the followers of the "heretical teacher" Theodotus of Byzantium who was active in Rome at the end of the second century. So the Adoptionists' beliefs were clearly far from uniform.

In general, two types of Adoptionism are found in our earliest sources:
the Resurrection-Adoptionism, and the Baptism-Adoptionism.

The Resurrection-Adoptionist Christians believed that Jesus became the Son of God only at the moment of his Resurrection, Theodotus claimed that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary and the Holy Spirit as a non-divine man, and though later "adopted" by God upon baptism, was not himself God until after his resurrection.

The Baptism-Adoptionists saw the moment of the Baptism of Jesus as a big turning point. Both these types of Adoptionism are well attested in the NT, and this should indicate that the roots of Adoptionism may indeed go back to the most primitive layers of the Christian tradition.

Of course the present orthodox dogma, formulated in 325 AD at Nicea, insists that Jesus was both man and God at the same time.

The Adoptionist creeds could belong to the "Historical Jesus" side.
And the question of how God became Jesus belongs to the "Mythical Jesus" side.

[GakuseiDon]

I'm not sure what Ehrman's current stance is, given that he now suggests that Paul thought that Jesus was a pre-existent angel, but a few years ago he wrote that "the adoptionists" were among the earliest Christians. To quote myself from my website:

• For example, Dunn writes (emphasis in the original):
  
  • "... centuries of Christianity have made us hesitate to be quite so free in our use of 'son of God' or 'god' when speaking of other men. What we must try to reckon with is the fact that the contemporaries of the first Christians were not so inhibited. In the first century AD 'son of God' and 'god' were used much more widely in reference to particular individuals than is the case today. [2]"
  According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, the title “Son of God” belonged not only to the Messiah, but also “to any one whose piety has place him in a filial relation to God”:
  
  • "It is through such personal relations that the individual becomes conscious of God's fatherhood, and gradually in Hellenistic and rabbinical literature "sonship to God" was ascribed first to every Israelite and then to every member of the human race (Abot iii. 15, v. 20; Ber. v. 1; see Abba)... The application of the term "son of God" to the Messiah rests chiefly on Ps. ii. 7, and the other Messianic passages quoted above.
    
    The phrase "the only begotten son" (John iii. 16) is merely another rendering for "the beloved son." The Septuagint translates ("thine only son") of Gen. xxii. 2 by "thy beloved son."... the "only begotten" thus reverts to the attribute of the "servant" who is the "chosen" one."
  We are used to the idea that Paul's “Son of God” means a divine being... but it is by no means the view of critical scholarship. Paul states in Romans that all who are led by the Spirit of God receive the “spirit of adoption” and are “sons of God”:
  
  • "Rom 8:13 For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die: but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live. 14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. 15 For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father."
  Scholars point to early Christians as being “adoptionists”, i.e. that God adopted Jesus as “Son”. As Bart Ehrman notes in his book "The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture"
  
  • "Christians of the second and third centuries generally--regardless of theological persuasion--claimed to espouse the views of Jesus' earliest followers. With regard at least to the adoptionists, modern scholarship has by and large conceded the claim. [3]"

Links and citations from here: http://members.optusnet.com.au/gakuseid ... view1.html

[Clive]

Please define angel! (and spirit! Was it made of aether? Was it natural?)