"Brethern, it is fitting that you should think of Jesus Christ as of God"

[RedFan]

So states the opening of The Second Epistle of St. Clement some time after the turn of the first century. This suggests to me that the divinity of Jesus was still something of an open issue, in at least one Christian community, 70+ years after Pentecost – else the author’s phraseology would be quite curious (i.e., why would it even occur to him that his “Brethern” audience wouldn’t automatically think of Jesus that way, as we do today?).

And this tells me something about the development – the slow development – of Trinitarian dogma in the early Church. No doubt it had been discussed from the beginning, but I wonder if the notion didn’t really take off until the Gospel of John had been widely circulated. (If the author of this Epistle had the Gospel of John available to him, yet decided not to quote from it to support his thesis, he’d lose a lot of points in my book!) The push-back from various second-century and third-century heresies also suggests that it took many decades before Trinitarian thinking (I probably should say “binitarian” thinking, but let’s leave that detail aside for now) had gained wide traction, else those heresies would probably have arisen even earlier.

Thoughts???

 

[Todd_Easton]

I think the author is simply reminding his readers about divine judgement, that Jesus Christ, because he is God, is the Judge of the living and the dead and that they should not take their salvation lightly but rather avoid sin and keep his commandments.

 

[RedFan]

Sure, but such a Judge can be appointed or delegated to, and need not be divine. Don’t you find Second Clement’s language a little strange if written to Christians who were already as certain as you are of Jesus’ divinity?

 

[GodSoughtMe]

well, I don’t know Greek, so I can’t really analyze his phrasing, but the argument of his is telling.

This tells us that some people in Clement’s community, in the seventies, were unsure of the exact nature of Christ’s identity with God.

That continued throughout the millennia, and goes on today. At various times, doubting his divinity, at others, doubting his humanity, and most of the time, proposing dubious compromises between the two.

It is a well made point that the early church had to work out a lot of the more complex philosophical implications of there being a God-Man that we orthodox Christians take for granted.

 

[GodSoughtMe]

But I think in these conversations we ought to remind ourselves that the earliest Christians, as shown by the pre-Pauline hymns, and Paul’s writings, believed in a Jesus who pre-existed his humanity, holds all things together (indicating that he precedes all created things - and why not since he precedes Moses et al.), is God’s means of relating to humanity, is God’s wisdom, shared a certain equality with God, and didn’t even look human before he chose to.

Now, trying to imagine myself as a Palestinian Jew who finds all that out. I might still be reluctant to identify Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, with God. But, by the 90s, this is the view of Clement, John, the Shepherd of Hermas, and it apparently is the view held by church leadership for the next two hundred years almost without exception, and in the 4th century, this stance is clarified against a variety of alternatives proposed by minorities who seek to resolve the mystery.

 

[TheOldColonel]

I think we should be quite comfortable with the idea that such theology developed as the product of much debate. We need only look to twenty-one Ecclesial Councils to see this dynamic at work in the Church. Understanding and unpacking the Deposit of Faith was not something which occurred overnight. Indeed, it is ongoing.