Howard Van Till has recommended the recent book by Richard E.
Rubenstein, When Jesus Became God: The Epic Fight over Christ's
Divinity in the Last Days of Rome (Harcourt Brace, 1999). A brief
critique may be helpful.
Rubenstein is a professor of Conflict Resolution & Public
Affairs at George Mason, specializing in analysis of violent social and
religious conflict. In this book he deals with such a conflict, that
between Arianism and the beliefs embodied in the Nicene Creed, the
leader of the group arguing for the latter being Athanasius. There are
three important areas to consider.
1. I think Rubenstein does a good job of describing & analyzing
the course of events in the fourth century and the interplay between
religious, social, and political issues. In many ways it isn't a pretty
picture and many Christians will be disturbed to find out how willing
all the major groups in the church seemed to be to resort to violence,
repression, &c. But that's pretty much the way it was.
Historians of classical antiquity might have some quibbles with him but
I would give Rubenstein an A on this part.
2. He doesn't do as well in making the theological positions
clear. This is especially the case with Arianism. While he often gives
correctly the Arian view that the Logos was the first and highest of
God's creations, and had been created before anything else, he starts
out giving, & several times reinforces, the impression that Arianism was
essentially adoptionism - i.e., that God adopted the human Jesus as Son
of God.
Connected with this is the fact that he considers Arianism to
have been better able to emphasize the humanity of Christ than were
those who considered him "true God of true God." Actually the Arian
view was one in which the Logos assumed only human flesh rather than
full humanity. In this way it foreshadowed the Appollinarian belief
that the Logos played the role of the rational soul in Christ. In such
a christology Christ isn't fully human because he had no human mind.
Others, including Athansius, had to struggle against an inclination
toward such views, & these issues occupied the church in the following
century. But at the least, Arianism wasn't any better than its
opponents in this regard. (Cf. Aloys Grillmeier, Christ in Christian
Tradition, Vol.1 (John Knox, 1975), pp.238-245.) I would give him a C
for this part.
3. Finally, Rubenstein does virtually nothing by way of
describing nearly three centuries between the beginnings of the church
and Nicea of Christian thought about Christ. Origen is mentioned a
number of times but there is no discussion of the various ways in which
God language had been applied to Christ in very strong ways from the New
Testament onward. Of course many of the uses weren't equivalent to the
full Nicene belief. But the result of this ommission is to give
unwarranted support to the idea that Jesus "became" God for the church
only in 325 or 381, as if many Christians had not long held views
approximating those of Nicea. On this important matter of theological
background I have to give Rubenstein an F.
A final point is worth noting since Rubenstrin calls attention
to it in his preface & at the end. He is Jewish & thinks that the
official adoption of the trinitarian dogma at I Nicea and I
Constantinople was largely responsible for oppressive anti-Jewish
practices (as distinguished from merely theological disagreement) by
Christians. It seems to me that he has failed to take account of a
simpler political factor.
Before Constantine, Judaism was a legal religion (religio
licita) in the Roman Empire and Christianity wasn't. Thus, e.g., Jews
were exempt from having to sacrifice, swear by the Genius of Caesar, &c
but Christians weren't. Christians couldn't in an effective way
persecute Jews, while Jews could contribute to the persecution of
Christians by informing on them to the authorities &c. That changed
when Constantine legalized Christianity in 314 and changed even more
drastically when Theodosius made it the state religion in 380. Of
course none of this is a justification for persecution one way or
another & it's saddening to realize that many Christians would have
persecuted Jews before 314 if they had had the means to do so. In any
case, attribution of the onset persecution simply to belief in the
divinity of Christ is certainly wrong.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
"The Science-Theology Interface"
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