Some scholars argue that the first Christians did not see Jesus as God but that the view of Jesus being divine developed over time. Author and theologian Dr. Gavin Ortlund responded to what he termed an “evolutionary Christology” and argued instead for a “big bang” perspective based on Philippians 2.
“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,” said Ortlund in a video posted March 3.
“Specifically the earliest Christians, including Jewish Christians, bestowed divine honors upon Jesus,” Ortlund said. “They worshiped 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.”
Gavin Ortlund: ‘This Is Big Bang Christology’
“It’s often claimed that the worship of Jesus as God is something that slowly evolves after Jesus’ life,” said Ortlund, noting that this was the view of Jesus offered in the novel “The Da Vinci Code.” In that book, one character claims that it was the Council of Nicea that decided Jesus’ identity was divine, but that, prior to that, his followers did not view him that way.
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“Now most evolutionary Christologies don’t go to that extreme,” Ortlund said. “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.”
“Others think that the early Christian worship of Jesus as God was relatively immediate,” said Ortlund, citing New Testament scholar Larry Hurtado, who “spoke of a big bang, or rapid explosion of Christology.”
“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,” Ortlund explained.
To make his case, Ortlund focused on Philippians 2:6-11, which he called “a really important passage” and which says:
Who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus EVERY KNEE WILL BOW, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
