Did the Early Christians Not Know Of Jesus' Divinity?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Columbascat
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
C

Columbascat

Guest
Hello there,

I take Moral Theology at a Catholic high school and my teacher, a very well read and well educated Xaverian Brother told my class that the early Christians did not know that Jesus was God! He said that it took an ecumenical council a few hundred years later to figure it out. Is this true? I know that there was a council that combated Arianism, which naturally needed to affirm Jesus’ divinity, but if that was a question for all of Christendom, then Arianism wouldn’t have been considered a heresy at the time.

How could the Apostles and early Christians not know that Christ was Divine seeing as they believed in the Real Presence in the Eucharist. Why would that be significant if Christ was a man. “Take and commit cannibalism” was not was Jesus said at the Last Supper. He very clearly called Himself God on a number of occasions and forgave sins by His own authority.

I appreciate all those who take the time to read and respond. In an odd sort of way, I would love to be wrong and my teacher proven right!
 
No, they indeed did know of Christ’s Divinity.

“They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god, and bound themselves by a solemn oath, not to any wicked deeds, but never to commit any fraud, theft or adultery, never to falsify their word, nor deny a trust when they should be called upon to deliver it up; after which it was their custom to separate, and then reassemble to partake of food – but food of an ordinary and innocent kind.”

-Pliny the Younger

Are you sure you understood what your teacher was saying? There was a council over an iota of difference (literally) that made a lot of theological difference: was Jesus God or the first of all Creation? It was here that it was almost unanimously except for 2 votes agreed that Jesus was the Eternal God, ETERNALLY begotten, which is a miracle in a sense because of how widespread the Arian heresy was.
 
Columbascat said:
the early Christians did not know that Jesus was God! He said that it took an ecumenical council a few hundred years later to figure it out. Is this true?
Click to expand...
Yes and no. Of course the Apostles knew this, and taught their successors the same. But it did take centuries to work out the details, especially in response to various heresies. The concept of a person being fully human and fully divine was (and is) difficult to fathom, and difficult to describe. Like all of the Holy Mysteries, there is an extent to which it is beyond human comprehension all together. The Fathers and doctors of the Church eventually came up with the concept of the hypostatic union to describe it.
Columbascat said:
Arianism wouldn’t have been considered a heresy at the time
Click to expand...
Oh it was a heresy, but not all of Christendom fell into it.
Columbascat said:
How could the Apostles and early Christians not know that Christ was Divine seeing as they believed in the Real Presence in the Eucharist.
Click to expand...
A good point, and accurate. But, as you may know, “explaining”, describing, and defining the nature of the Real Presence has also been difficult.
Columbascat said:
He very clearly called Himself God on a number of occasions and forgave sins by His own authority.
Click to expand...
Yes, He did many things to make this point very clear. He even made it clear to his enemies.
 
Read Matthew, Mark, and Luke and find somewhere it is said Jesus is God. I can’t. If they thought this would they not have mentioned it?
 
I doubt any Christian has ever believed that Jesus was just an ordinary man. It’s true, though, that the evidence that ended up in the New Testament is mixed, and never just comes right out and says how it is that Jesus is really human and really God but not God the Father even though we only believe in one God. I suspect that in those first three centuries there was a diversity of explanations, and the Church had other problems than trying to work out which ones were within acceptable parameters. The legalization of Christianity, the controversy over Arianism, and the Emperor’s demand that the bishops settle on something to end the strife in his Empire combined to give us the First Ecumenical Council where these things were hammered out in precise philosophical language.
 
There’s quite a bit to unpack here.
We have to be careful of reading back into the early Church things we take for granted today.

For example you speak of the “Real Presence”.
How you understand that today, and how you express it today, was simply not possible in the early Church. There was no such thing as Benediction or Eucharistic Adoration or even chapels with a red lamp and a tabernacle and people popping in to sit in Jesus’s presence.

Likewise circumcised Jewish Christians (the original Christians) would have found it a logical contradiction to even consider that God could be flesh and blood. God is Spirit, totally removed from matter.

It would take many generations, the “de-Judaising” of Christianity and a new culture before a vocabulary and a theology could be possible that would come anywhere close to what we believe today regarding the Incarnation and the two natures of Christ. In fact the transition was only possible with Greek thinking and even then many didn’t get it right until a few centuries later.

When se see expressions like “Son of God” in the Bible it would not have been understood the way we understand the phrase today.

Forgiving sins was a perplexing indicator that many Jewish Christians would obviously have accepted but without being able to reconcile it with their own Judaism. No wonder so few educated Jews converted to Christianity, one would have had to switch off one’s brain to make the transition (eg Nicodemus). Even highly educated Saul needed the equivalent of a mental breakdown before he became a Christian. The only Jewish Apostle who seems to have made the transition without switching off his brain was St John - not surprisingly he was a very young man at the time of Jesus…and even he had to use Greek Platonism (not Hebrew theology) to make the transition. Even then much of John’s “high theology” in his Gospel was unlikely written by John himself but by his later disciples…possibly as late as 120 AD.

So if the brightest follower of Christ took so long to put a high theology of divinity into language and concepts … it is not surprising that the rest of the Church took another couple of hundred years to understand these concepts and do likewise.
 
Last edited:
It may have been difficult to describe, but Jesus was with them 40 days after the Resurrection, and gave the apostles much wisdom.
 
Well that’s the beginner’s version as presented by Luke.
Other writers don’t seem quite so committed to his nice and neat teaching schema.

They even mention that we will only find the wisdom you speak of after He is gone through the Holy Spirit. That may well be the case for the majority of early Christian re Jesus’s divinity…perhaps even including some of the Apostles.
 
Last edited:
OK, now, to have a fuller understanding (ie open their minds to the Scripture) would have been after the Pentecost.

But all of Scripture is Inspired, not just parts that are mentioned multiple times.
 
Why didn’t you include John in this?
That’s rhetorical, we both know why.

The other gospels aren’t as explicit as John’s, but they do indeed suggest it.
 
Because if the writers of Matthew, Mark and Luke did not know this (believe this) it is a significant contradiction of the claims made in John. The fact that the Gospel writers did not think Jesus was God (or, strangely, did not mention this) is hugely significant for our understanding of how early Christians viewed Jesus.
 
What makes you think they didn’t believe Jesus was God? Because they weren’t as explicit as John?

John’s purpose in his gospel wasn’t to repeat what the other apostles wrote, but to add what they didn’t. John is very explicit about Jesus’ divinity (the beginning of his gospel is the best example), while the other authors were implicit. For example, Mark records Jesus healing the paralytic and mentions that the scribes thought, “Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?” in response to Jesus forgiving the sins of the man. On top of forgiving his sins, Jesus heals him to “prove” Himself. The Jews understood that God alone could forgive sins, and Jesus assumed this authority because He is God. You can’t “see” sins being forgiven, so Jesus demonstrated that He had this authority by performing the healing.

The very title Son of Man (which Jesus uses to describe Himself here and in other places) is drawn from Daniel’s visions, where he says:

“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.”

As this CA article highlights, only God is described as “coming with the clouds of heaven”. The author also points out that the phrase is, like a son of man- as in, this figure is similar to a son of man (a human), but the imagery surrounding this text should convince us that he is far more than that.

I know that today, we like things to be very clear and don’t care much for imagery and allusion, but this was very important to the original audience of the gospels. This is how they were used to dealing with the divine, and the authors respected that- largely because they, too, appreciated it. These little hints also make it easier to remember the why, not just the what behind what is being said.
 
Thom18 said:
The very title Son of Man (which Jesus uses to describe Himself here and in other places) is drawn from Daniel’s visions, where he says:
Click to expand...
Why do you say that Jesus equates himself with the ‘Son of man’?
 
The apostles knew, so obviously it was the teaching from early Christianity.
 
Thom18 said:
🤨 My comment was directed towards FiveLinden.
Click to expand...
That’s strange.
May I ask whose “reply” button you clicked on?
(you can check by editing your post and clicking the “thought bubble” icon and see what gets pasted in.)

While I see there is no reply to avatar associated with your post…nevertheless my notification panel seem to show you replied to me!

Perhaps a bug in the site…
 
Last edited:
There’s a chance I accidentally selected one of your comments- I mean, I accidentally hit “clock out” instead of “go to lunch” often enough
at work, so 🤷‍♂️
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top