Becoming God
Deification from Antiquity to the Present
Lecture 5: Jesus of Nazareth
Dr. Nickolas P. Roubekas
University of Vienna
Email: nickolas.roubekas@univie.ac.at
Jesus of Nazareth
A Miraculous Life
Even before he was born, it was known that he would be someone special. A
supernatural being informed his mother that the child she was to conceive would
not be a mere mortal but would be divine. He was born miraculously, and he
became an unusually precocious young man. As an adult he left home and went
on an itinerant preaching ministry, urging his listeners to live, not for the
material things of this world, but for what is spiritual. He gathered a number of
disciples around him, who became convinced that his teachings were divinely
inspired, in no small part because he himself was divine. He proved it to them by
doing many miracles, healing the sick, casting out demons, and raising the dead.
But at the end of his life he roused opposition, and his enemies “delivered him
over to the Roman authorities for judgment. Still, after he left this world, he
returned to meet his followers in order to convince them that he was not really
dead but lived on in the heavenly realm. Later some of his followers wrote books
about him.
B. D. Ehrman, Did Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth, 208-209
Core Question: Self-Deification or Deification Externus
• Source Problems
• Apocalypticism
• Gospels
• Messiah // God // Son of Man // Son of God
• After the Gospels
Apocalypticism
Jewish movement
Apocalypse = revealing, unveiling
God’s intervention (S: Qumran Dead Sea Scrolls)
John the Baptist
Daniel
1 Enoch
Apocalyptic Worldview
Dualism
Pessimism
Judgment
Imminence
Jesus the Apocalyptic
And in those days, after that affliction, the sun will grow dark and the
moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven,
and the powers in the sky will be shaken; and then they will see the Son
of Man coming on the clouds with great power and glory. And then he
will send forth his angels and he will gather his elect from the four
winds, from the end of earth to the end of heaven ... Truly I tell you,
this generation will not pass away before all these things take place.
(Mark 13:24–27, 30)
For just as the flashing lightning lights up the earth from one part of the
sky to the other, so will the Son of Man be in his day. . . . And just as it
was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man.
They were eating, drinking, marrying, and giving away in marriage,
until the day that Noah went into the ark and the flood came and
destroyed them all. . . . So too will it be on the day when the Son of
Man is revealed. (Luke 17:24, 26–27, 30; see Matt. 24:27, 37–39)”
The Son of Man in Apocalypticism
And this Son of Man whom thou hast seen shall raise up the
kings and the mighty from their seats, [and the strong from
their thrones] and shall loosen the reins of the strong, and
break the teeth of the sinners (1 Enoch 46.4)
In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one
like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He
approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his
presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power;
all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His
dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away,
and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed (Daniel 7)
Was Jesus the Son of Man? Key: Christ
Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous
and sinful generation, of that one will the Son of Man be
ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the
holy angels (Mark 8:38)
Christ
Messiah in Hebrew = one who is anointed, i.e. chosen and
specially honored by God
Angelic being (1 Enoch)
Human priest (Dead Sea Scrolls) = anointed by God,
authoritative interpreter of scripture, rule the people by
explaining God’s laws and enforcing them
King of Israel = understood as God’s “anointed one”,
Davidic king, a mighty warrior and skilled politician
Did Jesus claim he was Divine/a God?
Truly I tell you, before Abraham was, I am (8:58)
I and the Father are one (10:30)
The one who has seen me has seen the Father (14:9)
What can we (most likely) know?
• Jesus’ public ministry and proclamation were about God.
• The kingdom that God was going to bring
• The Son of Man who was soon to bring judgment upon
the earth
• The wicked would be destroyed and the righteous would
be brought into the kingdom
• No more pain, misery, or suffering
• He believed and taught that he was the future king of the
coming kingdom of God, the messiah of God yet to be
revealed
• It was only afterward, once the disciples believed that their
crucified master had been raised from the dead, that they
began to think that he must, in some sense, be God.
Believing Jesus to be God: The Resurrection Narrative
“But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind
of body do they come?’” “Fool! What you sow does not come to
life unless it dies” (1 Cor. 15:35–36)... “What is sown is perishable,
what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in
glory. It is sown in weakness, it is raised in power. It is sown a
physical body, it is raised a spiritual body” (ibid. 15:42–44)... “flesh
and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the
perishable inherit the imperishable” (ibid. 15:50).
“While they were saying these things, Jesus himself stood in their
midst and said to them, ‘Peace be with you.’ They were startled
and afraid, and thought that they were seeing a spirit [also:
ghost]” (Luke 24:36-37) ... “Look at my hands and my feet, to see
it is I. Handle me and see—for a spirit does not have flesh and
bones as you see that I have” (ibid. 24:39).
Aftermath: Christology (or, when did Jesus become divine?)
Book of Acts: “We preach the good news to you, that what God promised to
the fathers, this he has fulfilled for us their children by raising Jesus; as also it is
written in the second psalm, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten
you’” (Acts 13:32-33).
At Birth: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the Power of the Most
High will overshadow you; therefore the one who is born will be called holy,
the Son of God” (Luke 1:35)
At the Baptism: “Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven
being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice
came from heaven: ‘You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well
pleased’” (Mark 1:10-11)
Before: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God . . . And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we
have beheld his glory, glory as of the unique one before the Father, full of
grace and truth. (John 1:1, 14)
After the Aftermath: Who was Jesus?
Ebionites: “assert that our Lord Himself was a man in a like sense
with all (the rest of the human family)” (Hippolytus, Refutation of
All Heresies 22)
Docetists: “[Christ]was truly born, both ate and drank, was truly
persecuted at the time of Pontius Pilate, was truly crucified and
died” (Ignatius of Antioch, To the Trallians 9)
Gnosticism, Marcion, Arius... and ... and ...
Orthodoxy
We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven
and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord,
Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten,
not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were
made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the
power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius
Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day he rose
again in accordance with the scriptures; he ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in
glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no
end...
The Nicene Creed, 325 CE
Jesus’ Deification
• Does it matter when Jesus was considered God?
• Is his opinion important?
• Internal vs. External Deification
• Self-Deification vs. Imposed Deification
• Why did the followers deemed Jesus a God?
• What was at stake?
• What does his deification mean?
• To whom and why?
From Human to Son of God to God
An Eternal God
• Graeco-Roman World
• Jewish World
• Pre-existence and Post-existence
• Contradiction of terms
• Enemies
• Logic
The function of deification
• What was accomplished?
• For whom?
• What’s the benefit?
• What happens if proved wrong?
• The role of orality
From Jesus to Jesus Christ
Whose Jesus?
Why Jesus matters?
The body of Jesus
The power of Jesus
The myth/story of Jesus
Next: The Roman Emperor