How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee by Bart D. Ehrman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Aberrant Religion

Christians, or more precisely Paul of Tarsus, invented not just a religion but also a new form of religion, one constituted by belief rather than by ethical or ritual action. This religion is markedly different from that which was practiced by its nominal focus, Jesus. And it is different from all contemporary and subsequent religions. It is a religion which claims to know the ultimate truth about reality and demands that its adherents accept, profess, and, if called upon to do so, enforce that truth. Such a religion, based on correct belief, is bound to insist that its own origins are divine in order to justify its claim. Faith, that is, created the divine Jesus as an epistemological imperative.*

The above is my view not Ehrman’s. But it could easily form the overarching theory for which Ehrman, and the scholars on which he bases his argument, provide the factual data: Faith, once adopted as the principle of finding out about the world, inevitably leads to the divinization of some part or aspect of the world. The object of faith is not the source of faith but its essential product. This object is not born complete in the minds and culture of a group but evolves as necessary to protect the principle of faith itself, adapting and, where necessary, distorting, the existing, usually implicit, epistemological principles as it proceeds. The narrative of How Jesus Became God outlines this historical process.

Faith, in other words, manufactures a guarantee for its own validity. It constitutes a self-sealing system of thought which is impenetrable. Faith also attaches to what is available to ‘prove’ itself. Paul in his writings, the earliest in Christianity, uses what is convenient (but never central) in Hebrew literature to make his point. No wonder he frequently appears somewhat confused about his object, which is only of secondary importance. This object was not a man, since Paul never met Jesus and apparently knew next to nothing about his life. Nor was it the authority of a religious tradition or scripture, since Paul took great pains to show why historical Judaism was wrong. Faith for Paul is a kind of intellectual obstinacy.

Paul’s object of faith was a vague idea, his own, which he called Christ. The precise character of this idea was uncertain to him and to his contemporaries. Paul hints at its divinity but can’t seem to make up his mind about what that means. Only subsequently is the confusion reduced, after perhaps six or more generations of faithful believers have a go at retelling, embellishing and editing the stories they have heard about Jesus.** Even then the confusion about Paul’s object never is completely eliminated. Conflicts, heresies, and intellectual politics are the hallmarks of Paul’s religion of faith to the present day.

The reason for such continuing conflict of course is that Pauline Christianity is an extremely literal affair. Whatever the object of faith, that object must be formulated in words before it can be attested by believers. The formula is the only reality of concern, no matter how arcane, incomprehensible, or self-contradictory it may be. Language not experience becomes definitive. Thus the creed (from Latin credere, to believe) takes the place of any emotional or spiritual event in religious life. This, of course, places language itself in the position of a divine, and therefore unchanging, entity. And this in turn necessitates ecclesiastical control of the meaning and interpretation of language. Ultimately, religious authority claims its place not just as the arbiter of doctrine but also as the arbiter of thought itself.

Christianity is, consequently, a decidedly aberrant form of thought. Aberrant because it is a departure from every other standard of thought, philosophical or religious, that has ever been proposed. But it is also aberrant in its classification of all other modes of thought as various sorts of belief in competition with itself, as statements of alternative belief rather than what they are: ethical and liturgical rituals... and some very fine poetry that no one takes literally.

The world, Pauline Christianity claims, cannot live without faith and refuses to admit even the possibility that faith is its own questionable invention. Christianity’s self-guarantee is constituted by the Incarnation and Resurrection, the doctrines of God’s becoming a part of his own creation and overcoming it - not as explanatory myth, or edifying example, or evocatively fey poetry but as certain truth. It is not sufficient to act as if these doctrines were true; it is necessary to convince oneself fervently and without hesitation that they are true in order to be ‘saved.’ This distinguishes Christianity not only from all other religions but from all other modes of thinking.

Therefore, according to Christianity, the object of faith is of central relevance to human life. Of course, in the ensuing debate about this object, Christianity has both the home team advantage as well as age on its side. The Christian apologetic makes all religion a matter of faith: Judaism is incomplete faith; Islam is erroneous faith, Buddhism doesn’t merit the term faith at all; and polytheism, ancient and modern, is childish, superstitious faith. Atheism, of course, is simply ungrounded faith because it refuses to specify a divine object. The issue being pressed is faith not Jesus - this is the perennial sleight of hand which has been performed by Christian apologists in plain sight for two millennia.

So I think that Ehrman has done a service in summarising the historical, sociological, and biblical research about how Jesus became God. But I also think he misses something important about why Jesus became God. This why it seems to me is inherent in Paul’s conception of faith as the essence of religion. Once his premise about faith is accepted, something or someone has to be supplied as its object. Anything will do, no matter how mundane or abstract. Paul invented Christ as that object. More modern folk, imbued with the Pauline spirit, have substituted any number of cult leaders, other arcane deities, language in the form of uncertain ancient texts, or even alien beings as their objects of faith.

To put the matter bluntly, if somewhat crudely: Paul’s most enduring contribution to the world is not his promotion of the divinisation of Jesus. Rather it is his establishment of the principle of faith as a legitimate criterion for human action and a requirement for authentic religion. To put it even more crudely, it is this same Paul who has provided the world with its first defensible theory of terror: faith justifies. It justifies not just unkindness, but also cruelty, murder, war and the continuous persecution of any who oppose the idea of faith. Medieval Crusaders, ISIS, the Know-Nothing American fundamentalists, and the Japanese Aum Shinrikyo cult all share Paul’s theology of a justifying faith. It seems to me obvious that the evolution of this theory of faith has come to mean far more than the question of Jesus’s divinity.

* For what Paul means by faith, see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... and https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

**Ehrman has raised considerable ire among evangelicals by suggesting that the idea of Jesus’s divinity evolved. Authors like Larry Hurtado claim that the recognition of his divine status was ‘explosive’ and complete ab initio. This despite a clear development in thought from Paul’s epistles to John’s gospel, a period of seventy years or more (and some rather different accounts in the intervening Synoptic Gospels). The indisputable fact that the character of Jesus’s divinity remained problematic even among fervent believers over centuries also undermines any claim to ‘explosive certainty’. One reason why I am concerned to shift attention to the epistemological principle of faith is that it really doesn’t matter whether the ‘revelation’ of Christianity was more or less instantaneous or developed in the course of time. Once faith becomes the criterion of truth, it demands a divine object. Paul apparently had such an explosive experience. Others had to interpret his reports. In doing so, they differed, and continue to differ, in their opinions about what he meant. To claim instant recognition would seem absurd as well as irrelevant.

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