Truth Unites - Did the FIRST Christians Worship Jesus?

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

Gavin Ortlund argues that the earliest Christians worshiped Jesus as God, contrary to some scholarly claims that a high Christology slowly evolved.Check out Carl Rasmussen's Essential Atlas of the Bible: https://www.amazon.com/Zondervan-Essential-Atlas-Bible-Rasmussen/dp/0310318572Truth Unites (https://truthunites.org) exists to promote gospel assurance through theological depth. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) is President of Truth Unites and Theologian-in-Residence at Immanuel Nashville.SUPPORT:Tax Deductible Support: https://truthunites.org/donate/Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/truthunitesFOLLOW:Website: https://truthunites.org/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/truth.unites/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlundFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/

It's often claimed that the worship of Jesus as God is something that slowly evolves after Jesus' life. Let's call this view an evolutionary Christology. You can see an extreme, more popular-level version of this in the older novel, The Da Vinci Code, where one character basically says, until the Council of Nicaea, Jesus was viewed as just a man, and then it was the result of a close vote that he became the Son of God or divine in some sense like that. Now, most evolutionary Christologies don't go that to that extreme. That's pretty radical. But you'll hear something like this a lot, that after Jesus' life, his followers' perception

of him as divine is something that gradually evolves, sometimes through the influence of Gentile Christians, influenced by the broader pagan worship of the Greco-Roman world, but it's very slow and step by step and so forth. Others think that the early Christian worship of Jesus as God was relatively immediate. it. Larry Hurtado, who taught at the University of Edinburgh, spoke of a big bang or rapid explosion of Christology. In another writing, he uses the metaphor of a volcanic explosion. So the goal of this video is to look back at the earliest evidence we have and ask whether the emergence of worshiping Jesus as God looks more like a gradual evolution or more like a big bang. And basically,

I want to argue that while there's certainly development in the understanding of Jesus' identity among his early followers, the fundamental pillars are right there, right out of the gate, as soon as we can tell, as soon as we have clear evidence. Specifically, the earliest Christians, including Jewish Christians, bestowed divine honors upon Jesus. They worshipped him, and they regarded him as participating in the identity of God. In other words, Christology is more like a Big Bang or a volcano than a gradual evolution. Now, for the sake of this video, let's just look at one passage that, this, and that's the so-called hymn of Philippians 2, 6, through 11. This is a really important

passage because many scholars think that Paul is quoting an early Christian poem or hymn of some kind. Bart Ehrman writes, the first and most important thing is that it has been widely recognized by scholars for a very long time that this passage is something that Paul appears to be quoting that is not simply part of the prose letter. Now, that's sometimes disputed. I think Richard Bachham, if I remember, doesn't go with that view, and I love Richard Baccombe, but most scholars tend toward that. If that's right, and I'm not, I don't have an opinion, I'm not making a claim myself. And it won't affect this hugely. But if that's right, that means we're dealing with very early testimony of how Jesus was viewed by Christians. Because if Philippians

is written, say, let's say, in the late 50s, then this hymn must date much earlier than that. And so we're talking maybe two decades or so after Jesus's death. So, or maybe not much, or it must at least earlier than the writing of Philippians. So, and actually, many scholars think this passage reflects something that is recited or sung during corporate worship. You can see that idea from Hurtado there on the screen. So in other words, this is some of the earliest information in history about Christian worship, and specifically how Christians regarded Jesus. So let's look at this passage and we'll consider two aspects of it, his incarnation in red and his exaltation in green. essentially before his birth, Jesus participated in equality with God, that's red, and now after

his exaltation, Jesus participates in the glory of God that's in green. Let's unpack this. First, verse 6 that Jesus says that Jesus was in the form of God. Now, traditionally, that was taken as a reference to the pre-existence of the Son of God. The term form often means appearance, and so one way this has often been taken is that the Son of God is an expression or a manifestation of God in some way. When commentator notes that the term denotes the outward manifestation that corresponds to the essence of something.

So in this view, this phrase in the form of God would be kind of similar to Hebrews 1.3 and the reference to Jesus as the exact imprint of God's nature or the teaching of Colossians 1, verse 15, that he is the image of the invisible God. Now this is disputed, and in recent years there's been various challenges. For example, James Dunn thinks that Paul is developing a contrast between Adam and Christ in this passage, and the phrase, in the form of God, is similar to Adam being made in the image of God in the book of Genesis. And so for Dunn, this has nothing to do with the pre-existence of Christ at all.

But the link between Morphae, the Greek word here for form, and the image of God is questionable. Larry Hurtado notes that this would be the only case where such a phrase constitutes an allusion to Adam. So there's not precedent for this kind of linguistic association. And Dunn's view seems to be an awkward fit for the passage. I don't think this has really held broad sway among other scholars because just with the context here, it's precisely being born in the likeness of men that is described as an act of taking the form of a servant here. Probably the more common objection is to say, okay, yes, there's some kind of pre-existence that's in view here of the sun, but it's not his divinity. And this is where we have to try to understand this phrase in the form of God.

That is a difficult phrase to interpret. To be in the form of something doesn't necessarily mean to be that thing. For example, an actor could appear on stage in the form of Julius Caesar, even if he's not Julius Caesar. he's in the form of Julius Caesar. And so the language taken by itself could be taken like that. For example, in Mark 16, this word is used for how Jesus appears to disciples as they are walking. So there's this, you know, you can try to interpret it in Philippians 2.6 like this. It's in the form of, but that doesn't mean Jesus is God.

But here's the thing. We have to look at the context of Philippians 2. And the word form is repeated right after in verse 7, where Jesus takes on the Morphae du lu, the appearance or the form of a servant. You can see both occurrences in red here for the same word there. So we want to interpret this term in context in Philippians 2.6, and it seems unlikely that Paul would use the same word in two different senses right next to each other. In the form of God and in the form of a servant are best taken as two parallel contrasting states or phases in the appearance or manifestation of the Son of God.

So when you look at the surrounding clauses here, this can help us fill this out a little bit, because being in the form of God in this hymn is associated with equality with God, while being in the form of a servant is associated with being born in the likeness of men, which I've emboldened here, and that latter state, being born in the likeness of men,

is described as an expression of emptying and humility, which I underlined there. Richard Baucom puts it like this, the form of God, verse six, and the form of the servant, verse seven, which are clearly intended to be contrasted, refer to forms of appearance. The splendor of the divine glory in heaven contrasted with the human form on earth. Now, just to be clear here, Paul is not teaching that Christ renounced his deity in the incarnation. Rather, he's speaking about the assumption of a human nature as a genuine act of humility and service. Now just think about the logic of this.

The assumption in this passage is that taking on a human nature rather than clinging to equality with God is an act of humility. And that sheds light on what it means to be in the form of God. Because you'd never say, well, that angel didn't consider equality with God a thing to be grasped. How humble. You're right. It's only an act of humility to not cling to equality with God if you are, in fact, equal with God. It's not humble to give up something that you don't have rights to or don't possess. So that helps us know what do we mean by in the form of God.

A metaphor could be saying, though he was in the form of a baseball player, he didn't put on his uniform, but he emptied himself wearing normal clothes and humbled himself cleaning out the dugout. Now, what is assumed here is that he is a player on the baseball team, because that's why not wearing the uniform and cleaning out the dugout is an act of humility. So, therefore, this hymn seems to be teaching that Christ prior to his incarnate life, somehow participated in the very identity of God, in the form of God. Second, you see in Christ's divine exaltation here in the second half of the passage, his divine status. This is where all of creation calls Christ Lord, and so we want to ask, what's the sense in which Christ is Lord?

Every knee shall bow, every tongue shall confess he is Lord. what does that mean exactly? Because, again, the language isn't automatically self-interpreting or clear. We want to work at this a bit. Someone could argue that this is an act of homage or reverence or devotion that falls short of the worship that is due to God alone. And it's true that the word Lord can refer to a different kind of glory and majesty than that which is divine. So, for example, a soldier can bow before a king and say, my Lord, right? And he's not worshiping the king. But that doesn't work in this passage. It looks to be a divine glory that Jesus participates in in this passage. And you can see that by looking at the Old Testament background. Because we have language from

Isaiah here, specifically from Isaiah 4523, where God says, to me, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess. Now let me put up these two passages on the screen. from the Greek Septuagint of Isaiah, and then from the Greek text of Philippians. And you can see in red the Every Knee Shall Bow, and in blue the Every Tongue Shall Confess, the exact same wording. And so it's very significant that such a passage originally applied to God would now be extended to Jesus as well as the object of bowing and confessing. One of the great themes in this portion of the book of Isaiah is God's declaration that I alone am God. There is no one beside me. And yet it's precisely these kinds of claims that are then extended to Jesus.

Here's how Entie Wright puts it. Paul is quoting a monotheistic text from the Old Testament, not just any text either. This comes from Isaiah 40 to 55, where we find the clearest and most sustained scriptural exposition and exaltation of the one true God over all false claimants. The whole point of the context is that the one true God does not, cannot, and will not share his glory with anyone else. It is his alone. Paul, however, declares that this one God has shared his glory with Jesus. So this clarifies the sense in which Jesus is being called Lord in this passage. The name that is above every other name in this passage is the divine name. Paul is identifying Jesus

with the one true God of Israel. So here we have in Philippians 2, an articulation of worship to Jesus on the basis of his divine identity and on the basis of his divine participation or his participation in divine glory. He's in the form of God, and now God has exalted himself to the highest place, the place of divine honor. Both his pre-incarnate identity

and his exalted status are specifically divine. And that's the sense in which we bow to every tongue will confess, Jesus is Lord, the sense of Isaiah 45. Now, granted, there's still lots of questions on the table to work through for, you know, exhaustive treatment of this. But hopefully what we've said here is enough to show how much is on the table so quickly. Here we are in the 50s A.D. And people are worshipping Jesus as participating in the very

identity of God. This is Big Bang Christology, not evolutionary Christology. Martin Hengel describes the Christological development during the span of time between Jesus' death and Paul's writing. and he says more happened in this period of less than two decades than in the whole next seven centuries up to the time when the doctrine of the early church was completed. Here's how Richard Baukham puts it. The highest possible Christology, the inclusion of Jesus in the unique divine identity was central to the faith of the early church even before any of the New Testament writings were written since it occurs in all of them.

Isn't this amazing? You know, someone might say, well, okay, fine, it's in the 50s, but why do we find it earlier? Well, that's where partly I try to make appeals to statements of Christ himself in the Gospels. So that's kind of a separate topic. I've done different videos on that. Here I'm trying to focus on how Christians regard to Jesus. But the answer to this is we don't have Christian writings from like 35 AD or 37 AD. It would be really cool if the Apostle Peter had written a book in the year 41 AD entitled

A Detailed Christology Subtitle, Written for Ferectal, Written for Feeterbury. future generations or something like this. But we don't have any information from that time that's written from Christians. The first time we start to accrue a lot of Christian writings is around the 50s. So, in other words, it's not as though we have evidence of like an angelic view of Jesus. He's an exalted angel in the 40s, and then in the 50s we find evidence that people think he's divine. That would be evolutionary Christology. Rather, the very first evidence we have reveals a perception of Jesus as divine and worthy of worship. So the question that arises from all that is kind of simple. It's like, what caused this? If you have a Big Bang Christology, what caused the bang?

And remember, Philippians 2 is circulating well within living memory of Jesus' ministry. This, for the people reciting this hymn in worship, the death of Jesus would have been as memorable as 9-11 is to us from the time of my recording this video. So one plausible solution, that granted would take a lot more to fully develop is maybe early Christians worshipped Jesus as God because he was God and because that's what he taught. Maybe the historical Jesus in 29 AD, for example, and what he himself claimed is what caused the bang. Maybe they were worshipping Jesus as God precisely because that's the kind of response that his ministry and his words invited. All right, that's it for this video, but I got a book recommendation.

and this is a really cool one. If you're interested in Maps of the Bible, this is a book that kind of works through, it's pretty comprehensive, actually, but it basically gives you atlases of the Bible. And I would say if there's one resource you're going to get where you just want to get, sometimes it really helps you actually to see,

especially at different times, because the book works chronologically throughout the whole of the scripture too. So to see what, like, what did the nation of Israel look like in David's reign? And then what did it look like in Solomon's reign? what did it look like in the New Testament time and so on and so forth. This is a really fantastic resource, and it's well made and got clarifying descriptions of everything, different kinds of

pictures, photographs as well as drawings. So really awesome book, The Essential Atlas of the Bible, a visual experience of the biblical world. I'm going to put a link to this in video description, check it out. All right, thanks for watching everybody. Let me know what you think in the comments. We'll see you in the next one.