Jesus -> God

“In only one of the Gospels, the Gospel of John, the last of the four written, Jesus declares himself to be God. In the earlier Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus preaches about the coming kingdom of God, to be brought by a cosmic judge called the Son of Man. Even his ethical teachings in these Gospels must be situated in this apocalyptic context: Jesus’s concern was that people should behave in ways that God desires so that they may enter the coming kingdom. Rarely did Jesus teach publicly about himself, and his public proclamations show that he considered himself a prophet of God, not God himself…





In the Greco-Roman world, a human could be exalted to the level of divinity. The Romans said this happened to Romulus and many others. Early Christians said that it happened to Jesus. But later Christians would say even more exalted things about Jesus…the earliest Christians believed that by raising Jesus from the dead, God made him into a divine being…Ultimately they came to believe that Jesus had always been the Son of God – equal with God from the very beginning…


In 325 C.E., the emperor Constantine called a council of bishops from around the world to resolve this question: In what sense was Jesus God? Arius’s supporters maintained that Jesus was a subordinate divinity, the creation of God the Father, who came into being at some point in time. Alexander’s supporters insisted that Christ never came into being but had always existed and was absolutely equal with God. Constantine was concerned about the issue not because he was theologically invested, but because for the Christian church to achieve his political objectives, he needed it to be unified, In the end, Alexander’s views won over those of Arius, who was declared a heretic…


It was not, in fact, a close vote. All but 20 bishops agreed with these decisions. And after Constantine himself twisted their arms, 17 of those 20 agreed to sign off on the concluding statement. This statement was a creed that expressed the now-orthodox position and anathematized (uttered a divine curse against) anyone who thought differently. The creed’s statements about Christ are far more lengthy, involved, and nuanced than anything said about God the Father or the Holy Spirit. Christ in this creed is not a subordinate deity to God. He is “of one substance” with the Father. According to the creed, Christ is completely equal with God and himself the “true God”; there was never a time when he did not exist.


The Christ who emerged from the Council of Nicea is a far cry from the historical Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus was an itinerant apocalyptic preacher from the backwaters of rural Galilee, who offended the authorities and was unceremoniously crucified for crimes against the state. Now, he was confessed to be God himself, equal with the Father from eternity past. Whatever he may have been in real life, Jesus had now become fully God…





Some of the effects of Jesus’s becoming God were directly related to the Jewish people, most of whom retained their own religion and, of course, refused to acknowledge that Jesus was in any sense God. Non-Christian Jews were soon seen as hard-hearted and rebellious against God. It was not long before Christians began to declare that because Jews had rejected God, God had rejected them. Thus began the long history of Christian anti-Semitism that resulted in horrific acts of our own day…


By the end of the 4th century, it was illegal for a Christian to convert to Judaism, for a Christian to marry a Jew, and for Jews to build or even repair a synagogue. Accompanying these legislations were acts of violence against Jews, such as the burning of synagogues, which even if not sponsored by the state authorities, were tacitly condoned. Once those who believed that Jesus was God were given secular power, they used that power against their long-time enemies, the Jews who rejected Jesus.


Disciples believed that Jesus was raised from the dead ->
God had made Jesus into a divine being ->
Jesus was divine from the time of his baptism ->
Jesus was divine his entire life ->
Jesus had existed before his birth as an angelic being ->
Jesus was a subordinate divine being to God ->
Jesus was fully and completely God.


Over the centuries, Christian belief progressed from the disciples’ belief that Jesus had been raised from the dead to an understanding of Jesus as fully and completely God.”

~ Bart Ehrman, How Jesus Became God