Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christology

Jesus the Eternal Son by Michael F. Bird

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In the popular lay mind - at least that portion that has been exposed to popular scholarly Bible studies - the idea that adoptionism was the original Christian position is accepted as an article of faith. In certain of his popular lectures on the Teaching Company (now Wondrium), Bart Ehrman has identified the Ebionites's doctrine of Christ as a non-divine human being. I saw a lecture given by Father Raymond that tried to explain the progressive development of the exposition of Christ's divinity from the Baptism (Mark) to Birth (Luke and Matthew) to pre-existence (John), ignoring completely the earliest stratum of Paul's letters that contained a high pre-existence Christology.

This book does a very nice job of dealing with these claims in a coherent and scholarly manner. For example, the author, Michael F. Bird, addresses the claim that Mark exhibits a low-Christology consistent with adoptionism. Adoptionism is the doctrine that Jesus started out as a mere human being until he was adopted by God, usually at the Baptism when God announces that Jesus was his beloved Son.

Adoptionism presents the adopted Jesus as a lesser god, not ontologically one with the Father, aka God. This would make Christ a kind of demigod, or intermediate god. The argument based on Mark is that the gentile world was used to the deification of human beings. Emperors were customarily promoted to god status after death, and sometimes during their lives. These emperors were the subject of actual worship and, yet, the pagan mind could distinguish between the actual gods and these adopted gods.

Even Jews recognized an intermediate class of angels and divine beings between God and humans. Bird writes:

“We can easily find Jewish literature referring to heavenly beings who seem to represent and stand in for Israel's God, including the Angel of the Lord.78 The angel Metratron functions as a heavenly vice-regent.79 Philo calls the Logos a “second god.”80 The Enochic Son of Man is a heavenly figure who receives homage.81 Or else human figures are treated with divine status and given divine tasks like Adam,82 Enoch,83 and Moses,84 and in the Qumran scrolls Melchizedek exercises the divine prerogative of judgment and is even called Elohim (“god”) in the sense of Ps 82.85 In several Jewish texts, humans could experience post-mortem transformations into glorious states and attain angelic qualities. Yet, they seem to fall short of a deification that gives them equality with Yahweh in power and being.86 Many have naturally seen in these intermediary figures clear evidence that divinity was inclusive rather than exclusive and regarded them as an explanation for describing how divinity was acquired by or attributed to Jesus.

Bird, Michael F.. Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christology (pp. 51-52). Eerdmans. Kindle Edition.

However, as with the case during the Arian heresy, Jews recognized a distinction between the divine and the non-divine:

“If we bring Josephus and Philo together in their critiques of deification, then we can agree with Dunn that, “Jewish writings tend to be more scrupulous and less free in their attribution of divine sonship and divinity to men.”114 The premise of monotheism, even with subordinate and intermediary figures, includes an absolute distinction between God and humanity that could not be traversed.

Bird, Michael F.. Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christology (p. 57). Eerdmans. Kindle Edition.

Lex orandi, lex credendi:

“Overall, angelic creatures and exalted human figures were not treated as recipients of cultic worship on the same level of Yahweh in Jewish circles. Jewish devotion showed a concern to preserve God's uniqueness. In their cultic worship they maintained an almost paranoid anxiety about exclusivity. The upshot is that Jewish practice was very concerned with safeguarding monolatry, suggesting a genuinely robust commitment to a strict monotheism. In which case, devotion to Jesus Christ—not as a second god or an angel beside God but as an expression of faith in the one God—is strikingly unusual.

Bird, Michael F.. Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christology (pp. 59-60). Eerdmans. Kindle Edition.

According to Bird, Mark locates Jesus on the other side - the divine side - of the creator/creature line:

“Given the widespread attestation of Jesus's pre-existence in Christian sources contemporary with Mark,35 Davis is right that “any espousal of adoptionism would need to be quite pointed; but this we do not find.”36 Quite the reverse is apparent: there are telltale signs that Mark has a tacit conception of Jesus's pre-existence as a divine son.

Bird, Michael F.. Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christology (p. 78). Eerdmans. Kindle Edition.

Bird points to something that has escaped my attention on the issue of divine pre-existence, namely, Jesus and the demons were already acquainted:

“Even so, the baptism story is not the final word on the subject. While we can and will say more about Mark's κύριος language for Jesus and what it implies about Jesus's identity, a prima facie case for the pre-existence of the Markan Jesus is evidenced by his reception from demons. During one exorcism in a synagogue, a man possessed by an unclean spirit cried out, “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” (Mark 1:24). And the narrator later describes Jesus's ministry in Galilee, informing readers that “whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell prostrate before him and cried out, ‘You are the Son of God.'” The story of Jesus's encounter with the Gerasene demoniac afflicted by a legion of demons includes the demoniac running to Jesus and shouting: “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore you before God, don't torture me!” (Mark 5:7). It is not simply a question of the demons knowing about Jesus, they know him to be the “Holy One of God” and the “Son of God” who has come from somewhere on the God-side of the heaven-creation divide, and has divine authority to destroy them.

Bird, Michael F.. Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christology (pp. 78-79). Eerdmans. Kindle Edition.

Bird supports his argument with examples of Jesus's “divine prerogatives.”

So, the first “surprising” point is that Mark is not an adoptionist.

The second is that adoptionism is not attested to until relatively late in the game, i.e., the late second century. Bird examines classical arguments for adoptionism, including the Shepherd of Hermas and the Ebionites, whom he acquits of the adoptionist charge. The Ebionites come across as far more diverse than Bart Ehrman allows in his lectures to generations of naive students.

Bird convicts Theodore of Byzantium on the adoptionist charge:

“As a distinct heresy,” says Harold Brown, “adoptionism did not make its appearance until about the year 190 in Rome, where it was certainly partly a reaction against the gnostic speculation that made of Christ an immaterial aeon.”45 The idea is associated with Theodotus of Byzantium, a leatherworker or cobbler, who came to Rome.46 Critics alleged that Theodotus had denied the faith while in Byzantium and fled to Rome. When confronted with his denial, he responded that he had only denied a mere man, not God.47 However, it is more likely that his views were carefully articulated rather than an improvised excuse for his apostasy.48 He was excommunicated by Bishop Victor of Rome before the end of the second century.49
Theodotus's scheme accepted orthodox views of God and creation, perhaps holding to the virgin birth.50 The crux was that Jesus was a “mere man” (ψιλὸς ἄνθρωπος) who was supremely virtuous. Thereafter, the Spirit or Christ descended upon him at his baptism, enabling him to perform miracles.51 Theodotus is said to have emphasized certain texts like Deut 18:15, Isa 53:3–8, and Jer 17:8, in which God promised to raise up a human prophet in the future.52 He summarized the apostolic testimony to Jesus with the description of Jesus as “a man approved by signs and wonders” (Acts 2:22) and the “one mediator between God and man the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim 2:5).

Bird, Michael F.. Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christology (pp. 120-121). Eerdmans. Kindle Edition.

So, if I understand this, Bird's conclusion is that the late second century is the first moment we can securely identify someone as being adoptionist.

Of course, in history, the “first moment we find something” typically indicates that the actual first moment is earlier. Most evidence of historical events is simply lost to the historical record. When science announces the discovery of the earliest human, we know that it didn't just appear fully-formed like Athena from the head of Zeus; the first discovery is evidence of a much longer development, which is why we shouldn't be surprised when they inevitably find an earlier example.

However, for purposes of this discussion, the evidence convicts. We have clear evidence of high Christology more than a century before we have any evidence of an adoptionist Christology. On that point, we can safely conclude that adoptionism was .... wait for it ... a heresy that was created after the orthodox position.

Take that Bart Ehrman.