My travel companion this month has been Larry Hurtado (represented by his book How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus (Eerdmans, 2005). His particular research to discern how ordinary people came to believe in Christ has always seemed to me the right way to go. Modern Christians always want to go from doctrine to devotion (from “head” to “heart”). Yet it seems obvious that this is not the way earliest Christians came to Jesus. They came with their heart and figured it out later.
Hurtado’s critique of academic research into the “cultic” origins of Christianity is the same. Modern people always assume that ideas evolve; that the evolution of ideas requires time; and that this evolution is shaped more by outside sociological forces than personal intuition. The common sense of modernity leaps to the assumption that surely the worship of Jesus as God evolved over several centuries, shaped by a variety of pagan religions. Hurtado argues that actual research does not endorse modern common sense. The worship of Jesus as God began almost immediately after the crucifixion, and against all reasonable odds.
Hurtado’s careful work may seem slow to some believers, but consider that he is building a case of credibility against significant modern prejudice. I recall the first time someone was physically healed in a worship service I led, several solid church members left the church alarmed by non-rational grace interrupting the liturgy. Surely healing evolves, takes time, and is shaped by outside forces. They actual story of the person healed didn’t really count. What did she know?
A common theme in Hurtado’s research has been the early emergence of what he describes as “binitarian devotion” on the part of early Christians. Non-Biblical sources confirm that Jesus was perceived by ordinary Jews expecting the Messiah as uniquely divine within decades. The scandal of Paul’s conversion was that he embraced a radical innovation of faith that seemed to challenge monotheism. The “binitarian” faith elevated Jesus to the right hand of God, divine in a special way, crucial to salvation not just through relevant words and impressive deeds, but by his eternal and immediate presence.
In time the intellectual conundrums of “binitarian devotion” would be resolved by “Trinitarian thinking” (although some would argue the mystery still boggles human imagination). Of particular interest to me is Hurtado’s exegesis of Philippians 2:6-11. This is perhaps one of the earliest devotional hymns or affirmations known, and a favorite of mine in clergy coaching seminars. It reveals that the motivation of Christians to live or die for Christ fundamentally lay in their readiness to surrender all to be in Christ. It is a call to humility and obedience … and more.
I am struck once again by the limitations of trying to explain a non-rational grace in rational ways. It is like forcing rose petals into a box and expecting the scent to stay put. Modern scholars check the box, observe the petals, and think they have insight. Meanwhile, the modern church listens to the scholars analyze decaying rose petals, and wonder why they can’t smell any aroma. Common sense suggests that the aroma was, after all, a figment of the imagination influenced by romantic stories about flowers. They forget that it was the aroma the led earliest Christians to the rose in the first place. Doctrine never leads to devotion. Devotion may lead to doctrine … but more importantly it leads to the God beyond all gods.
Tom Bandy
www.ThrivingChurch.com
Comments