Bart Ehrman, author of How Jesus Became God and Misquoting Jesus, talks with World’s Warren Cole Smith about his new book arguing Jesus did not claim to be God. He says, “It has long been recognized by scholars that if Jesus actually had called himself God, and it was known that he called Himself God, that it’s virtually beyond belief that the early Gospel writers didn’t mention this.”
The publisher of Ehrman’s book thought it would sell books to publish a companion book arguing that Jesus is God, so they approached five authors to write it. Ehrman says in the interview that he doesn’t believe those authors believe Jesus taught the doctrine of the Trinity during his lifetime. “Scholars,” he says, believe John’s Gospel put words in Jesus’ mouth, so he did not actually say, “I and the Father are one,” or other claims to divinity. I suppose any evidence to support this belief is in his book.
Apparently the demonstrations of divine authority in Matthew 8-9 do not argue for Jesus’ deity, but merely his agency of divine power. He was a prophet, nothing more:
- “When Jesus heard this, he marveled and said to those who followed him, ‘Truly, I tell you, with no one in Israel have I found such faith.'”
- “And the men marveled, saying, ‘What sort of man is this, that even winds and sea obey him?'”
- “‘But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—he then said to the paralytic—’Rise, pick up your bed and go home.'”
- “And when the demon had been cast out, the mute man spoke. And the crowds marveled, saying, ‘Never was anything like this seen in Israel.'”
Apparenly Jesus claiming the title “Son of Man” for himself is no clue that he is the one in Daniel 7 who “all peoples, nations, and languages” would serve forever:
And to him was given dominion
and glory and a 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.
Ehrman gets hung up on the doctrine of the Trinity in the interview, pressing Smith on whether the five evangelical authors actually believe Jesus taught the Trinity.
Smith:So you’re saying they do not believe in the Trinity, or are you just saying they didn’t state it explicitly in their book?
Ehrman:These five authors believe in the Trinity, but they don’t believe that the Trinity was part of Jesus’ teaching. If they do think it was part of Jesus’ teaching, that would be a remarkable thing and they could say that in their book and then we’d have something to talk about, but they don’t say that.
Smith: Some of them, the ones that I corresponded with, believe that Jesus affirmed his divinity multiple times, not just in the Gospel of John, and that, over time, we have come to understand those statements by Jesus claiming to be divine as instrumental, foundational passages to support the doctrine of the Trinity.
Ehrman: If you put it like that, that is what they think.
Smith: And I think that that’s what they believe.
Ehrman: But, you know, it would have been nice if they showed how it happened. How do you get from these implications of divinity in Jesus’ teachings to the doctrine of the Trinity? It’s not an obvious progression.