As I mentioned in the introductory post in this series, adoptionism is commonly defined as the view that Jesus was “adopted” to become God’s son at a certain point of time, such as at his baptism or at his post-resurrection exaltation. It is a Christology that is said to unite the formulators of the creed in Romans 1:3-4, the author of the Gospel of Mark, the sources of the speeches in Acts (e.g., Acts 2:36; 13:33), the Ebionites, Cerinthus, Theodotus and his followers, and Paul of Samosata. What are the problems with this category?

• Ironically, many of the sources do not tend to use the terminology or imagery relating to ancient adoption practices. In contrast, huiothesia (adoption to sonship) appears in the Pauline epistles to articulate the relationship that Christ followers now have to God (Romans 8:15, 23; Galatians 4:5; Ephesians 1:5; cf. Romans 9:4).
• Some of the texts seem to allude to Psalm 2:7 (see also 2 Samuel 7:14) in portraying Jesus as the royal heir of King David, since the king of Israel is called God’s son and was divinely begotten metaphorically when he was enthroned. It is debated whether the Psalmist or his later Christian interpreters would have understood this as an “adoption.” Michael Peppard has argued that Mark’s Christology can be illuminated by Roman adoption practices, which was done to ensure that the father’s inheritance can be passed down to the adopted son and heir, and by the adoption of the Roman emperor to divine sonship. The question is whether Mark’s view of Jesus’s divine sonship was really informed by both Psalm 2:7 and the imperial cult that venerated the emperor as the adopted son of god (I assumed that this was the case in a past article) and whether Roman adoption practices stood in the background of the other Christian sources mentioned above.
• There is some confusion among scholars who use the term “adoptionism” as whether or not there was an ontological change in Jesus’s nature and if he was divinized at his baptism or resurrection. For instance, some Roman Theodotians might have held that Jesus was divinized, whereas some Ebionites held that Jesus remained fully human when he was appointed to be the Messiah due to his exemplary observance of the Law of Moses.
• Divergent Christologies have been lumped together under the category of “adoptionism.” For instance, Cerinthus’s view is that Jesus was a human who had been possessed by a divine aeon called Christ at his baptism, which enabled him to reveal the unknown Father above the ignorant creator of the world and do miracles, and the aeon left him before his crucifixion and resurrection. This is quite a different theology and Christology from the Ebionites, though Cerinthus is often compared to the Ebionites in the heresiological sources.

To be clear, I accept that not all Christians believed in Jesus’s pre-existence and incarnation, some were influenced by Second Temple Jewish messianism and the Roman imperial cult when articulating how Jesus was anointed for his royal office at his baptism and exalted to rule after his post-Easter enthronement in heaven, and that some individuals or groups explicitly denied the virgin birth by insisting that Jesus was born and grew up as an ordinary human (e.g., certain Ebionites, Cerinthus). Adoptionism is just a flawed category to describe the data. Other adjectives could be used before the term Christology: exaltationist (Ehrman), Psilanthropist (“mere human” – Smit), idealized human agent (Kirk), separationist (for the view of Cerinthus and others in contrast to the Ebionites – Ehrman, myself), or possessionist (Kinlaw, myself). For a further bibliography on the ancient practice of adoption and/or whether adoptionist Christology is an adequate category or not (and see my larger bibliography on Christology that I need to update):

• Bird, Michael F. Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christology. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2017.
• Burke, Trevor J. Adopted into God’s Family: Exploring a Pauline Metaphor. Downers Grove: IVP, 2006.
• Coogan, Jeremiah T. “Rethinking Adoptionism: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category.” Scottish Journal of Theology 76.1 (2023): 31-43.
• Ehrman, Bart D. The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament. Second Edition. Oxford: OUP, 2011.
• Eskola, Timo. Messiah and the Throne: Jewish Merkabah Mysticism and Early Christian Exaltation Discourse. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001.
• Goulder, Michael. St. Paul Versus St. Peter: A Tale of Two Missions. Louisville: Westminster/Knox, 1994. 
• Heim, Erin M. Adoption in Galatians and Romans: Contemporary Metaphor Theories and the Pauline Huiothesia Metaphors. Leiden: Brill, 2017.
• Kinlaw, Pamela. The Christ is Jesus: Metamorphosis, Possession, and  Johannine Christology. Leiden: Brill, 2005.
• Kok, Michael J. “Classifying Cerinthus’s Christology” Journal of Early Christian History 9 (2019): 43-62 and “The Utility of Adoptionism as a Heuristic Category: The Baptism Narrative in the Gospel of the Ebionites as a Test Case.” Scottish Journal of Theology 76.2 (2023): 153-63.
• Peppard, Michael. The Son of God in the Roman World: Divine Sonship in its Social and Political Context. Oxford: OUP, 2011.
• Scott, James M. Adoption as Sons of God: A Exegetical Investigation into the Background of ΥΙΟΘΕΣΙΑ in the Pauline Corpus. WUNT 2.48; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1992.
• Smit, Peter-Ben. “The End of Early Christian Adoptionism? A Note on the Invention of Adoptionism, its Sources, and its Demise.” International  Journal of Philosophy and Theology 76.3 (2015).

In the previous post, I discussed that I will be examining a few of the categories that are commonly used in the academic study of Christian origins. I want to note that my colleague Aaron Chidgzey, who is a lecturer in Christian thought and history, has started up “The Isms & Schisms Podcast.” He describes its aim as “demystifying theological jargon, one ism at a time. Join Dr. Aaron Chidgzey as he takes all the long and difficult theological words and weird moments in church history, and breaks them down, making them as simple and understandable as possible.” I would note that he has posted on terms from Christology and Eschatology to Gnosticism and Heresiology and many more. Enjoy the podcast.

Recently I did a podcast on whether it is accurate to describe the views held by some early Christ followers that Jesus was a human who became the Son of God at a certain point of time, such as at his baptism or his resurrection, as examples of an “adoptionist Christology.” Before it comes out, I want to clarify my thinking about some of the categories that scholars use in the study of Christian origins. Like any field of study, students may have to acquaint themselves with the terminology that is often employed in the field. For instance, I am teaching a class on the speeches in Acts this week and I will note that scholars often use the Greek word kerygma (“proclamation”) as a shorthand for the main content of Peter’s and Paul’s sermons. The categories that we use often function as “ideal types” that stress one or more particular features of a certain viewpoint in order to compare them. Thus, when some scholars try to define “Jewish Christianity,” it often includes a combination of the belief that Jesus was anointed to be the Messiah by the God of Israel and the commitment to observing the Law of Moses as it was interpreted by specific people in the first few centuries of the common era. Jewish Christ followers may be contrasted with non-Jewish ones who may (or may not) have a different understanding of Jesus’s identity or connection to the Jewish Scriptures or who were not Torah observant, but the reality is more complicated as some Jewish Christ followers may not have been viewed by their contemporaries as adequately Torah observant (e.g., Paul?) and some non-Jewish Christ followers “Judaized” by adopting Jewish customs to various degrees (e.g., attending synagogues, practicing Jewish holidays or following a kosher diet, or becoming circumcised if they were males and committing to observe the whole Torah). There is the same issue with defining “Gnosticism.” It is debated whether this is an accurate category, since Irenaeus lumps together a variety of different thinkers together as spreading false “knowledge” (gnosis) and only certain Christian thinkers used the label “gnostic” as a positive self-identifier, while other scholars have argued that there should be different categories such as one that highlights how select theologians differentiated between a supremely transcendent spiritual deity and an ignorant or wicked demiurge or “craftsman” who is to blame for creating the material world. Here is a brief bibliography from Annette Yoshiko Reed on Jewish Christianity and by Nicola Denzey Lewis on Gnosticism (though I would add Michael Williams and Karen King for advanced students). In these next few posts, I will look at a couple of categories that scholars commonly use to classify specific ways of thinking about Jesus’s identity.

I hope that my answers to all the excellent questions that I was asked on the “AMA Event with Dr. Michael Kok” were helpful. It is an interesting challenge to come up with a good response to each question in the moment and to type fast enough to not leave any questions unanswered too long. I enjoyed the invitation to participate in this and thank everyone for asking their questions.

At 9 pm EST on July 21, I will be the guest at an “ask me anything” event hosted by the Academic Biblical Studies page on Reddit. Here is the announcement for the event. I hope that the questions will be related to the focus on my research or that I can find a really clever way to say “I don’t know” if I am stumped by any of the questions, but regardless I look forward to interacting with anyone who is interested in the academic study of the New Testament and Christian origins. See you there!

To update my previous post about my chapter for the recent volume Paul within Judaism (ed. Michael Bird, Ruben A. Bühner, Jörg Frey, and Brian Rosner; WUNT 507; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2023), I just wanted to note that the entire volume is open-access and freely available online here if you click on eBook PDF.