Summary Outline -- Lecture 13
In the previous lecture, we saw that the followers of Jesus who came to
believe that he had been raised from the dead naturally concluded that he
had been taken up to heaven and was, therefore, made a divine being. In
this lecture, we will see that there are still remnants of this view in some of the
writings of the New Testament: that Jesus became the Son of God not when
he was born or at some time in eternity past but precisely at his Resurrection.
I. Christian Traditions before the New Testament.
A. Let’s begin with a sketch of the chronology of early Christianityand the writings of the New Testament.1. Jesus is usually thought to have died around the year 30 C.E.
2. Our first Christian author was not Matthew, Mark, or one ofthe other Gospel writers. It was the apostle Paul, whose letterswere written about 20 to 30 years after Jesus’s life, from about50 to 60 C.E.
3. The Gospel writers produced their accounts of Jesus’s life later.Mark, our first Gospel, was probably written around 70 C.E.;Matthew and Luke, around 80 to 85 C.E.; and John, around 90to 95 C.E.B. In this lecture, we are interested in what the earliest Christians said
about Jesus, that is, the Christians living in the years immediately
after his death. But if our first Christian writing is not until around
50 C.E.-20 years after Jesus’s death-what can we know about
what Christians were saying before that?
C. Many people think the book of Acts can provide us with that
kind of information. But Acts was written after Luke-sometime
after 80 to 85 C.E.-and is widely seen by critical historians as
being problematic as a source for events that took place 50 or 60
years earlier.
D. Is there any way to get a sense of what the earliest Christians said?
The answer is yes. The earliest Christian views can be found in
what scholars have called pre-literary traditions.
II. Pre Literary Traditions
A. Pre-literary traditions are brief passages that are quoted by later authors.Because these passages are quotations, it follows that they existed beforethey were quoted; thus, they are pre-literary.
B. These traditions can be recognized by means of careful analyses of
New Testament writings. For example, they are embedded in the writings
of Paul and the Gospels.
C. Pre-literary traditions can be recognized by a number of characteristics,
as we can see by looking at a specific example: Romans 1:3-4.1. Virtually all of Paul’s letters were written to communities ofChristians that he had converted to the faith in order to helpthem deal with the various theological questions and behavioralproblems they were experiencing.
2. The letter to the Romans is the one exception: It is a letter to achurch that Paul did not establish. Paul wrote the letter becausehe wanted to continue his missionary work to the far west, inSpain, and he wanted to solicit the support of the Romans.D. Paul begins the letter by introducing himself and then-it appears-
by quoting an old creed that was familiar to both him and the Romans.
E. There are clear reasons for thinking that Paul is quoting a pre-
literary tradition here.1. The quotation is a self-contained unit.
2. It is highly structured, with poetic-like stanzas (two stanzaswith three liI16S each).
3. It contains words and phrases not found elsewhere in Paul’swritings, such as “seed of David” and “Spirit of Holiness.”
4. And it expresses theological views that are different from whatPaul sets forth elsewhere in his writings, for example, thatChrist became the Son of God at the Resurrection.F. These all are clues for pre-literary traditions in other passages of the
New Testament, as well.
G. The teaching of this short creedal statement is clear: Jesus was a
man who was made the Son of God at his Resurrection.
III. Exaltation Christology
A. Sometimes, the kind of theology advanced in this passage is calledan adoptionistic Christology--God adopts the man Jesus to behis Son-or low Christology--because Christ is thought to havestarted out “down on earth” with other humans. But it may be betterto consider it an exaltation Christology.
B. Interestingly, the same basic Christological view can be found in
other pre-literary traditions of the New Testament.1. For example, the book of Acts describes the missionaryactivities of Jesus’s followers after his death. It recordsnumerous speeches, and it is clear that the speeches werewritten not by the apostles who allegedly delivered them butby the author of Acts himself This was the general practice ofancient historians, as Thucydides tells us.
2. This is also clearly the case with Luke; the speeches of theilliterate, Aramaic-speaking fisherman Peter sound exactlylike the speeches of the highly educated, Greek-speakingintellectual Paul.
3. Even though Luke himself wrote the speeches, he did sosometimes by incorporating earlier traditions. These, then,would be pre-literary traditions. And strikingly, these alsocontain remnants of exaltation Christologies.C. Acts 13:33 is a clear example of an exaltation Christology: God
made Jesus his Son by raising hi1n from the dead. The same is true
of Acts 2:36. Here again, Jesus is made the Lord at his Resurrection.
IV. Jesus as Adopted Son
A. When it comes to evaluating these exaltation Christologies, it isimportant to stress that they are not saying lowly things about Jesus.Instead, they exalt Jesus in remarkable and magnificent ways: Hewas taken up to be with God and has been made a divine being.
B. The best way to understand such a Christology is by understanding
it in relationship to practices of adoption in the Roman world, as
shown in the 2011 book by Michael Peppard, The Son of God in the
Roman World.1. It was not uncommon for a Roman aristocratic man to “adopt”another younger man as a son. This gave the adopted son theinheritance rights to his new father. The adopted son had all theprivileges, prestige, wealth, and power of his adopted father.
2. Adopted sons were generally considered to be superior tonatural sons. Natural sons were who they were simply bychance of birth; adopted sons earned their way into favor bytheir remarkable qualities.
3. The difference between a natural son and an adopted son canbe seen in the case of Julius Caesar: His natural son (born toCleopatra) was Caesareon, who is a mere footnote in history;his adopted son was Octavius, later known as Caesar Augustus.There is no question about which of the two sons received theprestige, wealth, and power of his father.C. To say that Jesus was the adopted Son of God was an incredibly
exalted thing to say about him. By being adopted, Jesus became
heir to all of God’s power and glory.
D. Recall that in the Greco-Roman world, there were three ways for a
human to be divine; this is the first of those ways-a human exalted to
the level of divinity. The Romans said that this happened to Romulus
and to many others; Christians said that it happened to Jesus.
E. But later Christologies would move on to say even more exalted
things about Jesus, as we will see in the following lectures.
Suggested Reading
Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament.
Casey, From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God.
Dunn, Christology in the Making.
Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from
Galilee.
Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ.
Garrett, No Ordinary Angel.
Gieschen, Angelomorphic Christology.
Harnack, History of Dogma.
Hengel, Between Jesus and Paul.
---, The Son of God.
Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ.
----, One God One Lord.
Peppard, The Son of God in the Roman World.
Questions to Consider
1. Does it seem plausible to you that scholars can isolate pre-literarytraditions in the New Testament that can reveal What Christians werethinking before the books of the New Testament were written?
2. What do the exaltation views of the pre-literary traditions found in the
books of Romans and Acts tell us about the earliest Christian beliefs
about Jesus?
Transcript -- Lecture 13
Jesus’s Exaltation-Earliest Christian Views
In the previous lecture, we saw that the followers of Jesus that had come
to believe that he had been raised from the dead naturally concluded that
he had been taken up to heaven, and was therefore made a divine being. In
this lecture, we’ll see that there are still remnants of this view in some of the
writings of the New Testament-that Jesus became the Son of God not when
he was born, or sometime in eternity past, but precisely at his resurrection.
It’s important to begin with a review of the chronology of early Christianity
and of the writings of the New Testament. Jesus is usually thought to have
died around the year 30. No one is exactly sure when it was; it may have
been 29, it may have been 33. It was sometime around the year 30 CE. Our
first Christian author was not Matthew, Mark, or any of the other gospel
writers-it was the Apostle Paul, whose letters were written about 20 to 30
years alter Jesus’ life, from 50 to 60 CE or so.
The gospel writers produce their accounts of Jesus’ life later. Mark was our
first gospel, probably written around the year 70 CE. Matthew and Luke
were possibly 10 to 15 years alter Mark-say around 80 to 85 CE. John
was almost certainly the last gospel to be written, maybe 10, 15 years alter
Matthew and Luke. So around 90 to 95 CE.
In this particular lecture, we’re interested in what the earliest Christians said
about Jesus-the Christians living in the years immediately alter his death.
But if our first Christian writing is not until something like 50 CE-the first
letter of Paul-that would be 20 years alter Jesus’ death. What can we know
about what Christians were saying before that?
Many people think that the book of Acts can provide us with that kind of
information. The book of Acts is the fifth book of the New Testament. And
rather than being a life of Jesus, the book of Acts discusses the history of
the earliest Christian church alter his death. It’s important to realize that the
book of Acts is the second volume of a two-volume work. Whoever wrote
the book of Acts was also the author of our third gospel, which traditionally
has gone under the name of Luke, so that Luke and Acts are two volumes of
a work.
The gospel of Luke deals with the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
The book of Acts deals with the spread of Christianity after Jesus’ death. The
book of Acts begins after Jesus’ resurrection, as he appears to his disciples
and commissions them to spread the gospel throughout the world. He then
ascends to heaven.
And the bulk of the book of Acts is precisely about how Christianity
expanded. It begins with the life of the Christian church in Jerusalem in
the very earliest days of its experiences after Jesus’ Ascension. It goes from
there to talk about what happened in the Christian movement afterwards. It
describes the evangelistic activities of the apostles as they tried to convert
others to believe that Jesus was the one who died, so that by belief in Jesus,
they themselves could have eternal life.
In addition to evangelism, the book discusses the life of the early
Christian community. As people joined the community, they gave of their
possessions-they gave away everything they had-so that they could live
communally together, directed in their lives together by the Holy Spirit. And
the book of Acts contains a number of speeches-speeches that the apostles
delivered to unbelievers in order to convert them, and then speeches they
delivered to believers once they had been converted.
Principally, the book of Acts is about the spread of Christianity, both
geographically and-you might say-ethnically. Geographically, the
Christian church begins in Jerusalem as the disciples of Jesus come to
believe that Jesus is the messiah who has been raised from the dead. The
book details how the Church then spread from Jerusalem into broader Judea,
into Samaria in the north, and then finally throughout the empire-the
Roman Empire-until it ends in the city of Rome-the capital of the Roman
Empire-with the Apostle Paul there preaching his gospel.
But in addition to this geographical spread, we have the ethnic spread of
Christianity. Originally, the followers of Jesus were Jews. But one of the
major points of the book of Acts is that the gospel of Christ spread beyond
Judaism into the broader world. Eventually, Samaritans convert to believe
in Jesus-Samaritans, who were understood by the author to be sort of half
Jews, kind of a half-breed. They come into the fold. And eventually it’s
Gentiles who joined the Christian church-people who are absolutely non-
Jewish, people who had been pagans, who were worshipping many gods.
In particular, this happens with the missionary activities of the Apostle Paul,
who takes three missionary journeys before being arrested and placed on
trial several times. Eventually, Paul appeals to the Roman emperor to hear
his case. He makes a trip to Rome. And he ends up in Rome where the book
itself ends with Paul in prison, in Rome, still preaching the gospel.
Now, if the book of Acts is an early history of what happened in the church,
wouldn’t it provide a reliable guide to what the earliest Christians believed
about Jesus and the salvation he brought in the years before Paul and the
Gospels? Wouldn’t it give us the information we want to know about what
they were saying about Christ in that 20 year gap between the time of Jesus’
death and the first of Paul’s letters?
The problem is that the book of Acts was written after the gospel of Luke, so
that it was written sometime after 80 to 85 CE. That is, the book of Acts was
written some 50 years after the period we’re interested in. And it’s widely
seen by critical historians as being problematic for knowing what was really
happening 50 years earlier.
I discuss this issue more fully in my Teaching Company course on the New
Testament. Here, suffice it to say that there’s one clear piece of evidence
that Acts is problematic for knowing about those early years of the Christian
religion. The book of Acts talks about Paul, but Paul himself in his letters
talks about Paul, and consistently, these two sources are at odds with
one another.
This suggests to most historians that the book of Acts CaI1I1Ot be uncritically
accepted as giving us an accurate account of what the early Christians were
doing or believing. Acts may tell us about these early years of the church,
not so much as according to what actually happened as according to how it
was remembered what was happening. Isn’t there any way, then, to have a
sense for what the earliest Christians believed in the years after Jesus’ death?
Scholars have long recognized that there is, but it’s much more complicated
than simply seeing what the book of Acts says.
The earliest Christian views can be found in passages of the New Testament
that scholars have called pre-literary traditions. Pre-literary traditions are
brief passages that are quoted by our later authors. Since these passages are
quotations, they existed before the authors who quoted them quoted them.
And so they are pre-literary.
To explain what these pre-literary traditions are, let me use an analogy.
Suppose you’re reading a modem novel written in, say, 2011. The main
character in this novel is making a comment about a piece of clever
nonsense. And he begins to say, “Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre
and gimble in the wabe.” An astute reader will know that the character is
quoting “Jabberwocky” from a Lewis Carroll book written in 1871, Through
the Looking-Glass. The well-read reader won’t need to be told that, she or he
will simply recognize it.
This poem was not composed by our modem novelist in the year 2011; it
was composed 140 years earlier by someone else-the author’s quoting an
earlier text. Now, suppose “Jabberwocky” was never put into a book, but was
simply a poem that people had recited over the years before it was written
down. Then, when it was eventually written down, it would be the writing
down of a poem that someone else had come up with long before. It would
be a pre-literary tradition that found its way into a literary text.
We have such pre-literary traditions in the New Testament--fragments of
earlier poems, and creeds, and possibly even hymns, that are quoted without
calling attention to it by the authors of the New Testament. These conditions
can be recognized by means of careful analyses of the New Testament
writings. They are embedded in the writings of Paul and the gospels,
for example.
These pre-literary traditions can be recognized by a number of characteristics
that make them stand out from their literary context that you find them in,
just as “Jabberwocky” could be recognized as different from the context of
its embodiment in a 2011 novel. These pre-literary traditions that you get
in the New Testament tend to be terse statements without a word wasted.
They’re often found in tightly structured formats, in which there are a
number of parallel statements to one another. These parallel statements,
formed into a number of stanzas, can be lifted from their context and serve
as a self-standing unit.
These characteristics can best be seen in a pre-literary tradition by looking at
a specific example. And the example I want to look at is Romans 1:3-4. And
remember why I’m doing this. I want to find a tradition that exists earlier
than our earliest surviving writing. And this, I’m going to argue, is a pre-
literary tradition.
Romans 1:3-4 comes, obviously, at the very beginning of Paul’s letter to
the Romans. We’ll be talking about the letters of Paul more extensively in
Lecture 15. For now, it’s enough to say something very briefly about them.
There are 13 letters in the New Testament that claim to be written by Paul.
Scholars have doubted whether six of these actually go back to Paul or not.
Seven of these letters, though, are called the undisputed Pauline letters. To
understand these seven letters, it’s important to understand and to recognize
why they were written in the first place.
Paul himself as we’ll see in a later lecture, started out as a Jewish opponent to
Christianity, who then converted to be a follower of Jesus, and then became
a major missionary. Paul went around from one city to another in order to
establish Christian churches as a Christian apostle. His modus operandi
involved going to a city, converting people there to believe in Jesus, and then
setting up churches before leaving and going to another city.
When Paul would go to another city, he would hear problems of the churches
in the cities that he had left. And then, he would write them letters in order to
help them deal with their problems about what to believe and how to behave.
The letters of Paul that we have now-the seven undisputed letters-served
as a kind of replacement for Paul’s apostolic presence. He couldn’t be
everywhere at once. And so he established his authority by writing letters
to these churches. And those are the letters we have. Virtually all of Paul’s
letters that we have are written to communities of Christians that he had
converted to the faith in order to help them deal with their various theological
problems and behavioral problems that they had been experiencing.
The one exception to this rule of Paul writing his letters to churches he
had previously founded is the letter to the Romans. This letter-the letter
to the Romans-is written to a church that Paul himself did not establish.
We know that because Paul says so lI1 the letter. He’s never even been to
Rome before, he tells us. We learn, though, from the letter that Paul wanted
to continue his missionary work far to the west. He had been spending most
of his missionary activities in the north of the Mediterranean, in areas that
are now Turkey, and he wanted to go further west. In fact, he wanted to go
all the way to Spain.
The problem was that he needed to have a base of operation, and he needed
support. He’s writing the letter to the Roman Christians in order to get them
to support him for his westward mission. The problem is that Paul knew full
well that the Christians in Rome didn’t know him, and he also knew that they
were suspicious of him. It’s clear reading between the lines of the letter to
the Romans what they were suspicious of.
Paul taught more than anything else that the death and resurrection of Jesus
puts somebody in a right relationship with God, so that one-to be in a right
relationship with God-does not have to keep the Jewish law, contrary to
what a number of other Christians were saying. Other Christians were saying
that, in fact, Jesus was the Jewish messiah, sent from the Jewish God to the
Jewish people, in fulfillment of the Jewish law. So being a follower of Jesus
meant being Jewish. You had to keep the Jewish law. If you were a Gentile,
you had to convert to Judaism.
Paul insisted that that was completely wrong. Paul said that the salvation
that Christ brings is apart from the law. Paul taught a law-free gospel. Paul’s
doctrine of justification-his doctrine of how you could be made right with
God-was that it’s only by the death and resurrection of Jesus-it’s by
believing in Jesus’ death and resurrection, not by keeping the law.
But some of Paul’s opponents among the Christians said that Paul wasn’t
teaching a law-free gospel, he was teaching a lawless gospel. If you don’t
have to keep the law, what keeps you from behaving unethically? Paul
wanted to argue that, in fact, that was not true at all. Paul argues in the letter
to the Romans that if you are justified with God, you will continue to do what
the law demands in its core-namely, that a person is to love his neighbor
as himself.
Moreover, Paul’s law-free gospel doesn’t mean that God has rejected the
Jews who have the law. The Jews are still the chosen people, as Paul points
out in Romans 9-11. God is still the God of the Jews, and he is still going
to save the Jews. He’s not opposed to Jews, and neither is Paul. Paul is not
opposed to Judaism. He’s not opposed to the law. Christ came to the Jews,
thinks Paul, in fulfillment of Judaism to fulfill the law. And so followers
of Jesus will follow the dictates of God, especially in the law’s chief
commandment-you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
The point of the letter to the Romans is to get the Romans on Paul’s side so
that they will support him in his missionary endeavors. And so, because of
that purpose, he needs to begin this letter on a very positive note-which he
does. Paul begins by introducing himself And then it appears Paul quotes
an old creed that was familiar both to him and to the Romans, so that they
would see that he’s supporting what they understand to be the truth.
The creed is found in what is now Romans 1:3-4. Paul speaks of “the gospel
of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets the gospel
concerning [God’s] son, who was descended from David according to the
flesh, and was declared to be the Son of God with power according to the
spirit of holiness by resurrection [from] the dead.”
There are clear reasons for thinking that these lines are actually a creed that
Paul is quoting-in other words, that they are a pre-literary tradition. Several
things to note: These words I’ve just quoted are a self-contained unit. You
can remove them from their context and they make perfect sense. And
they contain a number of words and phI`aSCS that are not characteristic of
Paul’s writings. For example, when Paul says that Christ is from the seed of
David-Paul never uses that kind of terminology in his language-that he’s
the descendant of David, meaning that he’s the messiah. And this phrase “the
spirit of holiness” you won’t find anywhere else in Paul. Paul talks about
the Holy Spirit, not the spirit of holiness. These appear to be lines that Paul
himself did not compose. He’s quoting something else.
Moreover, these lines are highly structured. You can lay this entire passage-
this very brief passage-out into poetic like stanzas, in which you have two
stanzas with three lines each. And each of the lines in one stanza corresponds
to the lines in the second stanza. So you have, “who was descended from
[the seed of] David according to the flesh,” is the first stanza, telling you
what Jesus was in human terms. He was the messiah descended from David.
And then in the second stanza, “he was appointed the Son of God [with]
power according to the spirit of holiness.” So that as a human, he was the
messiah descended from David, but he was also a divine figure who was
appointed by God at the Resurrection by the Holy Spirit.
It is important to stress that this creed that Paul appears to be quoting is
expressing theological views that are actually different from what Paul sets
out elsewhere in his writings, as we’re going to be seeing in later lectures. In
this creed, Christ is said to become the Son of God at the Resurrection. It’s
important to note, this creed does not say that Christ returned to his previous
status as the Son of God. No. He’s appointed to be the Son of God at this
stage-at the Resurrection.
So why does Paul quote this creed here? Apparently, this creed has been
around for a long time. It’s a familiar creed throughout Christendom. By
citing it, Paul shows that he aligns with Christians throughout the world, so
that he does not support an alien form of belief but the standard Christian
understanding of Christ and his significance.
But the teaching of this short creedal statement is clear. Jesus was a man
who was made the Son of God at his Resurrection. Sometimes the kind of
theology advanced in this passage is called an adoptionistic Christology,
meaning that God adopted the man Jesus to be his son at the Resurrection.
Sometimes it’s called a low Christology. Since Christ is sometimes, in this
way of thinking, Christ is understood to have been someone who started out
low-down here with humans-before being exalted up to the level of God.
So some people call it an adoptionistic Christology or a low Christology. I
prefer to call it an exaltation Christology. What is interesting is that this same
basic Christological view can be found in other pre-literary traditions of the
New Testament. In other words, this seems to be the view that was floating
around before Paul wrote his letters in the year 50 and following.
The book of Acts itself records numerous speeches, as I’ve pointed out,
given by apostles during their missionary activities. The book of Acts, which
is a narrative of the spread of Christianity, consists in large amount precisely
of speeches. Nearly one fourth of the entire book of Acts is taken up in
speeches by various key figures, but mainly by Peter and Paul, who give
speeches during their evangelism, during their teaching, and when they’re
trying to defend themselves in the face of accusations leveled against them.
It’s crystal clear that the speeches found in the book of Acts were not actually
the speeches that the apostles themselves delivered back in the day when
they allegedly were giving these speeches. These speeches weren’t delivered
by the apostles historically. The speeches are actually written by the author
of the book of Acts. Remember, the book of Acts is written sometime after
the year 80 or 85. And so it’s recording things happening 50 years earlier.
This author had no access to what was actually said on the occasions when
these speeches were allegedly given.
We know from the writings of historians such as Thucydides that it was the
practice of historians to compose their own speeches. And so that’s certainly
what Acts has done. It’s also clear that, in the case of Luke, these could not
be the speeches delivered by the apostles, because the fisherman Peter, who
would have been an illiterate Aramaic-speaking peasant, sounds just like
the Apostle Paul, who’s a Greek-speaking intellectual and highly educated.
Why does Peter sound just like Paul? Because Peter and Paul are not actually
making up these speeches-they’re being made up by Luke.
When Luke wrote these speeches-this is the key point-he did so
occasionally by incorporating earlier traditions. These would be pre-literary
traditions. Strikingly, these pre-literary traditions in Acts also represent a
kind of exaltation Christology, where at the Resurrection God made Jesus
the Son of God.
Let me just give two very brief examples. The first is in Acts 2:36. This is
a speech that allegedly the Apostle Peter gave. Peter is trying to convert the
Jews in Jerusalem to believe in Jesus. And he talks about how Jesus was put
to death unjustly, but then he was raised from the dead. This Jesus, “God
raised up, and of this we are all witnesses,” says the Apostle Peter.
But then he goes on in Acts 2:36 to say the following about the resurrection.
“Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has
made him Lord and Messiah this Jesus whom you crucified.” God has
made him the Lord and the messiah? Wasn’t he the Lord and the messiah
already? Not for this pre-literary tradition. In this pre-literary tradition that
is being cited by Luke on the lips of Peter, Jesus was made the Lord at the
Resurrection. In other words, this is an exaltation Christology.
Or take a second example from the book of Acts 13:33. This time, it’s Paul
talking. Paul indicates, in trying to convert some pagans out in his missionary
activities, that the Jews had handed Jesus over to Pilate, even though they
found no cause for a sentence for death. But they asked Pilate to have him
killed. Then they carried out everything that had been written about him in
scripture, and after which, “God raised Christ from the dead.”
And then comes the key part of the pre-literary fragment: “We bring you
the good news,” says Paul, “that what God promised to our ancestors, he
fulfilled for us, their children, by raising Jesus. As it is written in the second
psalm, ‘You are my son, today I have begotten you.’ ” God raises Jesus. And
Paul says that is the day on which Jesus became the Son of God.
In both these places, we have what I’m calling an exaltation Christology.
It’s a Christology--an understanding of Christ-that understands that
Christ originally was a human being. He was a man, a mortal, who, at his
resurrection, was adopted by God to be his Son, the Lord of all. He is exalted
to the level of divinity.
When it comes to evaluating these exaltation Christologies that we find in
pre-literary traditions written before the writings of Paul, it’s important to
stress that they’re not saying lowly things about Jesus at all. These exaltation
Christologies are exalting Jesus in a remarkable and magnificent way.
According to these views, he has been taken up into heaven to be with God.
And by that happening, he’s been made a divine being.
The best way to understand a Christology like this--an exaltation
Christology--is by understanding it in relationship to practices of adoption in
the Roman world. As I pointed out, sometimes these are seen as adoptionistic
Christologies, because God now is adopting Christ to be his son. We learn
about practices of adoption in the number of ancient sources, as these have
been articulated for us in a book written in the year 2011 by a scholar named
Michael Peppard--a scholar of the New Testament. His book is called The
Son of God in the Roman World.
Roman aristocratic men would often adopt another younger man as a son.
This gave the adopted son the inheritance rights of the new father. The
adopted son had all the privileges, prestige, wealth, and power of his adopted
father. Adopted sons were generally considered to be superior to natural
sons. Natural sons were who they were as children simply by the chance of
their birth. Adopted sons, on the other hand, earned their way into favor by
their remarkable qualities.
The difference between a natural son and an adopted son can be seen in
the case of Julius Caesar. Julius Caesar actually had a natural son, born to
none other than Cleopatra. His name was Caesarion. He later became a mere
footnote in history. Julius Caesar’s adopted son was Octavian, who was later
known as Caesar Augustus, the first emperor of the Roman Empire. There
is no question about which of the two sons of Julius Caesar received the
prestige, wealth, and power of his father-it was his adopted son.
To say that Jesus was the adopted Son of God was an incredibly exalted
thing to say about him. By being adopted to sonship, Jesus became heir to
all of God’s power and glory. Recall in the Greco-Roman world, there were
three ways for a human also to be divine. This is the first of those ways. A
human is exalted to the level of divinity.
Romans said this happened to Romulus and others who were made divine.
Christians said it happened to Jesus. But later Christologies were to move on to
say even more exalted things about him, as we’ll see in the following lectures.
