Jesus Before Constantine

The Church, Her Beliefs, and Her Apologetics

Doug E. Taylor

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781725255258
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Christianity

That's now, but what about then? There is much diversity in Christianity today in terms of what constitutes necessary core beliefs, but what can we know about the earliest Christianity? Until the major councils began in the fourth century, were all who claimed to be Christian considered part of the church, or was there more to it than just claiming a name? Is there evidence for how the church understood core and necessary beliefs prior to Constantine's arrival in history and the Council of Nicea in AD 325?This book examines such questions. Using only those materials that are accepted by most scholars on the subject, whether they are Christian or not, and focusing on the period from AD 30-250, a picture emerges showing what Christians held as a core belief as well as how flexible they were on this belief. Only after identifying where the church stood in this period can we begin to understand whether others such as Ebionites, Docetists, and Marcionites would have been accepted as Christian. A case is made based on writings from the church, the Nag Hammadi, and a completely secular tool from the twentieth century to find the conclusion to this question.

1

Introduction

Why Me?

Some topics are, well, just difficult to address. Religion is one of those broad categories where we see division and disagreement over what was, what is, and what is to come. My education and background, however, position me to be able to tackle the question of whether or not multiple Christianities existed before Constantine and the councils of the fourth century. The implications for the answer are very real and depending on how one answers determines whether or not we rightly or wrongly included or excluded certain beliefs related to what constituted the earliest Christianity. Again, why me, and what qualifies me to tackle this subject?

First, let’s address the elephant in the room: my education. I hold three masters degrees from seminary and a PhD in theology and apologetics. While completing my doctorate I picked up a cognate in church history, with particular interest in the earliest church. The degrees are good, but there has to be more than just academic study.

Second, when my wife and I first met, she was a third-generation Jehovah’s Witness. To say her family and I had some tense conversations over right belief would be an understatement. Some I handled well, and some not so much. The point here is that I have practical experience conversing with members of groups that would not be considered as following orthodox Christianity.

Finally, I worked for over a decade with Valvoline, and was involved in helping lead and manage the environmental, health, and safety for the Instant Oil Change side of the business. It was during my time at Valvoline that I was trained in the use of root cause analysis, a tool that looked to why undesirable conditions or events happened when there was already an established standard for how work was to be accomplished. Stated differently, the business had a management system that expressed how to “do work” while at the same time avoiding injuries, spills, and other operational disruptions. When an undesired event happened, like an injury, root cause analysis would enable us to examine our systems and determine if we had a gap that allowed the undesired event, or if someone deviated from the established system. This type of analysis is exactly what I intend to bring to the discussion of whether or not there were multiple Christianities prior to Constantine and the fourth-century councils.

Why Does This Matter?

The purpose of this text is to examine materials from AD 30–250, predominately from Christian sources but also including select non-Christian material in an effort to determine whether it was through the use of positive apologetics that the church grew. In recent history there have been claims that there were actually many different groups that taught very different things that were considered to be Christian. One such different teaching was that Jesus was just a man, but not God in any sense. Another held that Jesus was fully God but lacked any actual physical body. Yet a third suggested, depending on which source document is read, that there existed anywhere from two to nine deities. The question that deserves answering is whether or not these different groups would have been considered Christian by the earliest church.

From the very beginning of his text How Jesus Became God, Bart Ehrman states that the early church believed Jesus to be God, but since the late eighteenth century, historians have figured out that this is simply not correct.1 The difficulty with such a statement is that the claim has been made, but Ehrman did not identify where or how the church was wrong for so long.

Much work has already been done by Gary Habermas in establishing the minimal facts for both the resurrection and the deity of Christ. In a review of Debating Christian Theism, of Habermas’s minimal facts Angus Menuge states, “Habermas’s ‘minimal facts’ approach is not without its critics (some say it concedes too much to tendentious principles of biblical criticism), but it does explain why, over time, one skeptical alternative after another to the historical fact of the resurrection has been abandoned, leaving critics with shrinking cover to hide from Christ’s claim on their life.”2

Habermas cites what he believes to be the most important minimal facts related to the resurrection as being Jesus’ death by crucifixion; that the disciples had experiences they believed to be appearances of the risen Jesus; that the disciples were transformed based on those experiences; there was very early preaching of the reported resurrection event in Jerusalem—the same location as the crucifixion of Jesus; the conversion of Paul; and the conversion of James, the half-brother of Jesus.3 The significance of this listing is that if all of Christianity hinges upon the resurrection then by way of the resurrection the deity and death aspects of the apologetic method are affirmed. Given Menuge’s comments about the strength of Habermas’s argumentation it would appear reasonable to expect to find these same strong arguments in the post-apostolic writings of the church.

Authors have on a large scale seemingly conflated Christianity such that what Christianity does or is supposed to do is understood to be what it is. Stated differently, one may think Christianity is supposed to be charitable, therefore being charitable makes it Christian—at least in the minds of some. Not unlike any other time in history personal biases have influenced how Christianity is understood today. This work is not intended to identify what Christianity does, rather what it was that constituted the most basic necessary belief in order to be considered Christian in the earliest church.

By returning to the period of the early church it will be possible to identify exactly what it was that the earliest followers of Jesus believed made them uniquely Christian, and that there were understood lines of demarcation between those who were Christian and those who merely claimed the title but followed a different gospel. More specifically, this text demonstrates the early church grew through the use of a positive apologetic. Because defensive apologetics only focuses on why a particular position is incorrect, it does not “fill the void” once its task is done. Defensive apologetics may reveal error in thought or belief, and it may lead one to theism, but defensive apologetics does not get someone from theism to the God of Christianity. It is the role of positive apologetics to establish the credibility of Christianity, in significant part by affirming the deity, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Here we find apologetics leading from simple theism to the God of Christianity.

Three key arguments will be addressed. First, a distinction needs to be made between the root cause for the spread of Christianity and causal factors associated with this spread. Second, by looking to positive apologetics one finds justification for belief in and commendation of Christianity. Finally, when examining gnostic and what some consider to be heretical texts it will be demonstrated that each system of belief incorporated a significant change to one or more aspects of the deity, death, and resurrection reports as they related to Jesus.

What Are the Limits of This Work?

I will evaluate the growth of the church from a terminus a quo of AD 30 and terminus ad quem of AD 250. The terminus a quo allows for an early Letter to the Galatians (AD 49). In looking to the first two chapters of Galatians we find that Paul had ...