You know
@Vouthon
Maybe you'd like to say something about this? Because I found what you said in the Buddhism/Christianity comparative thread interesting- that Buddhism and Christianity both developed an idea over time that the Buddha and Jesus respectively were super mundane beings.
How do you think the evolution of Christian theology applies to the truth of the matter? You always have much useful to say.
Hi
@Buddha Dharma, I'd be more than happy to share my understanding of this since you asked.
There is a consensus among the vast majority of New Testament scholars in the 2010s that the New Testament - from the earliest writings of Paul dated circa. AD. 50 onwards - testifies to a belief in Jesus' pre-existence as a divine agent of creation (co-eternal with God the Father) and the fact that he had already, even at this early stage, become the recipient of cultic worship formerly reserved only to God in Second Temple Judaism.
By now, this is pretty much indisputable from the perspective of scholarship. The Epistles of Paul, the Johannine literature and the Book of Revelation (etc.,), do not portray Jesus as a "
creature". He is an eternally pre-existent divine being in human form, according to these texts.
As the eminent New Testament scholar Larry Hurtado has noted on his blog:
“NT texts clearly ascribe to Jesus a status and role that goes beyond that of a human: e.g., as the agent of creation (e.g., 1 Cor 8:4-6), and as bearing “the form of God” (Philip 2:6).”
For instance, Hurtado contends on pages 119 - 124 of his now standard treatment of the topic in the book,
Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity:
"…The overwhelming majority of scholars in the field agree that there are at least a few passages in Paul’s undisputed letters that reflect and presuppose the idea of Jesus’ preexistence…
Most scholars take these verses to reflect a belief in the personal preexistence and incarnation of Christ…
Paul’s formulaic statement in 1 Corinthians 8:6 indicates that already at that early point in the Christian movement believers were attributing to Christ not only preexistence or foreordination, but also an active role as divine agent in creation.…This is a suitable point at which to underscore certain key results of this discussion of Jesus’ preexistence…It appeared astonishingly early in the Christian movement. Second, the condensed nature of the references indicates that Paul was not introducing the idea but presumed acquaintance with it already among his converts…Third, these references include reflections of the idea that Christ was actively involved as divine agent in creation…
One final point: in these Pauline statements it is the historic figure Jesus who is referred to as preexistent…These passages directly attribute to Jesus personally a preexistence and a central role in creation…"
For the earliest Christian beliefs in Jesus' pre-existent divinity, consider:
Let the same mind be in you which was in Christ Jesus:
Who, existing in the form of God,
did not consider equality with God something to cling to,
but emptied Himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
He humbled Himself and became obedient to death—
Who, existing in the form of God,
did not consider equality with God something to cling to,
but emptied Himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
He humbled Himself and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross. (
Philippians 2:5-8)
New Testament scholars are agreed that this poem about Jesus' pre-existent divinity, quoted from Paul's epistle to the Philippians, is a pre-Pauline tradition dating to the 40s CE - that is in the first decade after Jesus' death, as the scholar Bart Ehrman states:
"...What is clear is that it is an elevated reflection on Christ coming into the world (from heaven) for the sake of othersand being glorified by God as a result. And it appears to be a passage Paul is quoting, one with which the Philippians may well have already been familiar. In other words, it is another pre-Pauline tradition...
Scholars have long considered the passage to be a pre-Pauline tradition that Paul includes here in his letter to the Philippians
Scholars have long considered the passage to be a pre-Pauline tradition that Paul includes here in his letter to the Philippians. It is not simply something Paul composed on the spot, while writing his letter. There are several reasons for thinking this...a poem whose composition must therefore date as early as the 40s CE...
If the majority of scholars are correct in their opinion that it embodies an incarnational Christology, then the basic perspective on Christ that it paints is clear: Christ was a preexistent being who chose to come in the “likeness” of human flesh, who, because he humbled himself to the point of death, was elevated to an even higher status than he had before and was made the Lord of all. This view of Christ makes sense if we think of him as existing before his birth as an angelic being who abandoned his heavenly existence to come to earth to fulfill God’s will by dying for others. I want to stress that Christ appears to be portrayed here, in his preexistent state, as a divine being...If someone as early in the Christian tradition as Paul can see Christ as an incarnate divine being, it is no surprise that the same view emerges later in the tradition..."
You don't have anything even remotely like this in other Abrahamic religions.
Read in particular Bart Ehrman’s argument in this part of his 2014 book
How Jesus Became God:
How Jesus Became God The Exalt Bart D
"…If Jesus was the one who represented God on earth in human form, he quite likely had always been that one. He was, in other words, the chief angel of God, known in the Bible as the Angel of the Lord…If Jesus is in fact this one, then he is a preexistent divine being who came to earth for a longer period of time, during his life; he fully represented God on earth; he in fact can be called God…
And as it turns out, as recent research has shown, there are clear indications in the New Testament that the early followers of Jesus understood him in this fashion. Jesus was thought of as an angel, or an angel-like being, or even the Angel of the Lord—in any event, a superhuman divine being who existed before his birth and became human for the salvation of the human race. This, in a nutshell, is the incarnation Christology of several New Testament authors.Later authors went even further and maintained that Jesus was not merely an angel—even the chief angel—but was a superior being: he was God himself come to earth…
As the Angel of the Lord, Christ is a preexistent being who is divine; he can be called God; and he is God’s manifestation on earth in human flesh. Paul says all these things about Christ…[He believed] that Jesus was in God’s form before he became a human; that he had open to him the possibility of grasping after divine equality before coming to be human; and that he became human by “emptying himself.” This last idea is usually interpreted to mean that Christ gave up the exalted prerogatives that were his as a divine being in order to become a human..."
Nevertheless, a majority of scholars are also of the mind that Jesus himself likely didn't claim divinity during his lifetime (although some, including prominent scholars like Crispin Fletcher-Louis in his 2015 study,
Jesus Monotheism: Volume 1 - The Emerging Consensus and Beyond, disagree by arguing that Jesus did claim divine identity during his life). The earliest sayings attributed to him in the Synoptic tradition, according to the predominant scholarly view, apparently show him to have identified himself as being of unique eschatological significance as the divinely appointed agent of God's Kingdom but seem to fall short of direct affirmations of ontological identity with God.
However, almost immediately after his death, Jesus' earliest followers started to have revelatory experiences of the glorified, resurrected Jesus enthroned with God in heaven and became universally convinced that he was a pre-existent divine being who had assumed human form to save mankind from sinfulness.
This is the consensus opinion of scholars in the field of New Testament Studies. Since they are the experts who have spent their whole lives studying the issue for their careers, I would personally go with their judgement over that of any other Tom, Dick or Harry.
So to sum it up: the consensus opinion among scholars now - called "
the emerging consensus" around an "
early high christology" - is that soon after his death, probably in the first few months or years (and certainly well in advance of the composition of the Pauline epistles some 20 years later), Jesus quickly became regarded in early Jewish Christian circles as the personally pre-existent divine agent of creation
and the exalted Son of God who had been subsumed within the cultic worship owed to God the Father. He was worshiped as a divine being by the earliest Christians following his crucifixion, albeit not yet "the second person the Trinity" but certainly not a mere human.
But the catch is that, apparently, Jesus didn't claim any of this himself even though the early Christians and New Testament
certainly did (contrary to the unsubstantiated personal musings of the OP
@PaulCap which have absolutely no basis in critical scholarship).
