Jesus: Man, Messenger, Messiah · 1. God in Christianity
The early Church had many views of Jesus, not one
In short
- 1.**Ebionites**: Jewish followers who kept the Law and held Jesus to be a human prophet and messiah.
- 2.**Arians**: held the Son to be created and subordinate — 'there was a time when he was not'.
- 3.**Docetists** and **Gnostics**: held Jesus only appeared to be human, or that the crucifixion was an illusion.
- 4.In the fourth century Arianism held the upper hand in the Greek-speaking East while Trinitarianism dominated the Latin West — neither was a fringe sect.
The claim being examined
Popular apologetics presents the divinity of Jesus as the unbroken faith of the Church from the beginning, with heresies appearing later as deviations.
The Islamic position
The Qur'anic account — that later communities divided over Jesus after him — matches the historical record of a Christianity that was plural long before it was orthodox.
Analysis
The picture of a single apostolic faith later corrupted by heretics is the winners' account of the dispute. What the sources show is competing Christianities: Jewish-Christian groups who never accepted the divinity of Jesus and continued keeping the Law, subordinationist theologies of every shade, and separationist and docetic christologies. The label 'heresy' was applied retrospectively, once one party gained imperial backing. This is exactly the state of affairs the Qur'an describes when it speaks of sects differing among themselves concerning Jesus.
From the Qur'an
Qur'an 19:37
فَاخْتَلَفَ الْأَحْزَابُ مِن بَيْنِهِمْ
But the factions differed among themselves.
Qur'an 43:65
فَاخْتَلَفَ الْأَحْزَابُ مِن بَيْنِهِمْ ۖ فَوَيْلٌ لِّلَّذِينَ ظَلَمُوا مِنْ عَذَابِ يَوْمٍ أَلِيمٍ
But the factions from among them differed. So woe to those who have wronged from the punishment of a painful Day.
From the Bible
Acts 21:20
πόσαι μυριάδες εἰσὶν ἐν τοῖς Ἰουδαίοις τῶν πεπιστευκότων καὶ πάντες ζηλωταὶ τοῦ νόμου
How many thousands of Jews there are who have believed, and all of them are zealous for the Law.
Read it in their BibleSources
Abu Zakariya, Jesus: Man, Messenger, Messiah · Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities · Walter Bauer, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity · Jesus: Man, Messenger, Messiah — ch. 1, pp. 9-13
The spoken script for this entry is inside the app.
Members get the word-for-word delivery guide — how to open, what to say, the likely replies and how to close warmly — plus notes, a dawah journal and the study assistant.
Open the app