When Jesus the man meets Jesus the God

A few weeks ago, I wrote a review of Bart Ehrman’s book “How Jesus Became God.” I reviewed the book favorably and indicated my confidence in Ehrman as a knowledgeable and credible scholar. There is no doubt that he is highly respected by many other Bible scholars. However, I knew there would be critical responses to Ehrman by scholars with traditional theological beliefs. A response has come quickly.

Michael Bird and other traditional scholar/teachers were aware of the planned publication of Ehrman’s work. Ehrman’s publisher, HarperOne, made a prepublication manuscript available to Michael Bird and his colleagues. With Bird as the leader, five scholars quickly wrote a response and recruited Zondervan to be their publisher. Their book, “How God Became Jesus,” has the same publication date as does Ehrman’s book. The front cover carries the message, “a response to Bart D. Ehrman.” Their response confirms my evaluation that Ehrman’s book is very important and will have broad influence for several years to come. The two books are appearing in bookstores side by side.

Ehrman’s book reflects what is going on in New Testament scholarship. For those of us who follow scholarly discussions, nothing in “How Jesus Became God” is a surprise. Ehrman’s book is a report of what is commonly called “the third search for the historical Jesus.” This third search places Jesus from Nazareth into the real world context in which he lived and taught. The current search for the historical Jesus sees Jesus as a flesh and blood human being whose teachings were directly related to the current concerns and events of the early first century CE.

The rebuttal volume sees the Jesus story as the story of God choosing to become a man in order to bring a certain kind of salvation to the world.

Ehrman’s book makes full use of critical Biblical studies. It embraces form criticism, literary criticism, textual criticism and historical criticism. All forms of critical Bible study are tools of a professional historian. Ehrman calls himself a historian. When dealing with ancient documents, for something to be accepted as a fact of history it must meet specific standards. The supernatural, miracles and the magical do not meet those standards. Ehrman identifies himself as an agnostic and a thinker, not a believer.

Michael Bird and his colleagues never find enough common ground with Bart Ehrman to have a meaningful discussion. They reject what Ehrman assumes, specifically they reject critical studies in working with the Bible material. They assume what Ehrman rejects, a God who became a man. The incarnation (God becoming a man) does not and cannot meet Ehrman’s tests for historicity. For Bird, God becoming a man is an event not a process. Ehrman asserts, I believe correctly, that Jesus never claimed to be God. Bird and associates say that Jesus claimed divinity in the gospel of John. Ehrman rejects John as history because it fails to meet the critical standards of historical research. The disagreement between the two men and the two books is not about discoverable facts but rather is about assumptions.

It is not surprising that Ehrman is a distinguished professor at the University of North Carolina, who works in a thoroughly secular setting. In contrast Bird is a lecturer at Ridley College, a small Bible college in Australia. They live in two vastly different academic worlds.

The collection of writings by Bird and his colleagues is not an effective response to Ehrman simply because they come from such radically different academic worlds.

As I read the work of Bird and his colleagues, I felt that I was revisiting the Scopes trial of 1925. The argument of that famous trial was about the teaching of evolution in the schools of Tennessee. Evolution lost in the Scopes trial but triumphed in the scientific world. Today the reality of evolution is accepted as fact in most academic circles. Today’s assumption is that all of life, including religion, is best understood as being in process and evolving.

Fundamentalist, literalist understanding of the Bible today is very much alive and is being vigorously defended. “How God became Jesus” is an example of that reality. It is rightly called “a response to Bart D. Ehrman,” but those words do not give the book the academic standing that it asks.

The thesis of Bart Ehrman’s book stands without serious challenge. Ehrman is on the right track. Jesus was a real human being who lived a very human life. He never claimed to be God. He was crucified for being a political insurrectionist. After his reported resurrection from the dead, he gained status as being divine and worthy of worship. Over a period of some three hundred years he achieved the status of the second person of a Trinitarian God. Just like everything else in life, the status of Jesus as God was a part of an evolutionary process.

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister who lives in Palmer. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.

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