Recently in my doctoral work, I have been studying what Mormons consider part of the Great Apostasy- the first four ecumenical councils- which include the Council of Nicaea (325CE), the Council of Constantinople (381CE), the Council of Ephesus (431 CE), and the Council of Chalcedon (451CE). One question that comes up in these councils, although dealt with gradually, is the divinity of Jesus. Needless to say, the DaVinci Code version of “he was human one day and divine the next” is far too simplistic of an explanation, and yes, somewhat misleading.
I would like to argue to the contrary – that Jesus started out divine— or at least semi-divine – and his humanity has taken center stage in modern times, especially in the realm of liberal theological discourse. Recently I asked the missionaries how Jesus’ divinity should be properly understood by a Mormon (and therefore by the pre-Nicene church), and the answer I got was shocking– Jesus was a demigod. Now, this answer made perfect sense to me as a student of theology, especially considering the historical context of the Roman Empire following the Hellenistic period. Honestly, I wish I had gotten that answer a long time ago. It would have made my studies—and my faith— much less complicated had I gotten a straight answer before, instead of having to sift through all the excess theory behind it. Fully god; fully man?
The first ecumenical council, the Council of Nicaea (325 CE) was called by the Emperor Constantine, which was a controversial move in its own right, but for our purposes, we will not delve into the particulars. The council was called in reaction to a Bishop by the name of Arius who raised the question of Jesus’ divine status. Arius was the Bishop of Alexandria, and some of the theological speculations raised by this school of thought were considered suspect by the church in Antioch because of its heavy reliance on Platonism, but here the claims of Arius were outlandish and unprecedented – and went entirely in the opposite direction. What was Arius’ claim? “There was a time when the Son of God was not.” This implied that Jesus Christ was a created being and therefore not divine in his very essence. The Council of Nicaea responded with the assertion that Jesus Christ was consubstantial – of the same substance – with the Father, while at the same time retaining a separate personhood.
Mormons will be disappointed to learn that the Trinity would be treated as a mere afterthought at the Council of Nicaea. The Nicene Creed simply affirms a belief in the Holy Spirit, but does not delve into particulars concerning the Trinity. It would not be until the Council of Constantinople (381 CE) that the Holy Spirit would be declared “consubstantial” with the Father and Son, while at the same time retaining its (neutral pronoun) own personhood. This was due largely to the influence of the Cappadocian Fathers who dared to speculate on the nature of the Holy Spirit. Later on, the Council of Ephesus (431) would declare Mary Theotokos, or the ‘Mother of God,’ but this would have more to with Jesus’ divinity than with her. This was all in reaction to Nestorius’ claim that the divine and human natures in Jesus were completely separate from one another, while both being present within him. The Council of Chalcedon (451 CE) would reaffirm the declarations of Nicaea and Constantinople, declaring Jesus simultaneously fully god and fully man.
So why, I have to ask, could the Church Fathers not just admit to themselves that the demigod answer was the correct one? Certainly this would make sense in a culture influenced by Greek Hellenism. In the ancient Greek mythos, a virgin birth was nothing out of the ordinary. Yet, there was a fear among the Patristic writers that the non-Christian world might perceive them as ‘pagan’ and therefore reject their message. It took four ecumenical councils to affirm that Jesus was simultaneously divine and human! Is that not the same as admitting that Jesus is a demigod? Let’s be honest with ourselves.
As a convert to Mormonism reading through early Christian history, I was naturally confused. What am I supposed to believe concerning Jesus’ true nature? Was he divine? Was he human? Or some healthy combination of both? How did those two natures express themselves? Were they intertwined? Some of these questions still remain unanswered in my mind, but at least I can take comfort in the most obvious “demigod” answer.
It has been argued that if Mormon missionaries went around claiming Jesus as a demigod, it would do nothing for new converts, especially in a time in which people want to see a human Christ – like the one the DaVinci Code portrays. But to go on believing that Jesus is fully human never worked for me either— sure I tried liberal theology (a low Christology) for a while, but I always had to come back to that question of his relationship with the Father (and later Heavenly Mother) and how Jesus could execute the plan of redemption if he were not divine in his very essence. Either way, he would have to be the perfect human being to effect what the rest of us could not in the Atonement. So in the end, what is wrong with saying he is a demigod if he as the Son of Heavenly Parents took on human flesh through the Virgin Mary?
I don’t know about you, but for me, hearing that answer from the missionaries put some questions I’ve been asking my whole life to rest.
So is anyone ready to work on the thea-logy of Mary Magdalene, demigoddess? I know I am! I can hardly wait!
By the way, please do not blame the missionaries for my bad theology! I’m just a convert of seven years. What do I know?
For an in-depth study of the Ecumenical Councils, please see the following website: http://www.newadvent.org/library/almanac_14388a.htm
Photo Credit: J.N.W.
Michelle Wiener
Dr. Michelle Wiener holds a Master of Arts in Theology from Lexington Theological Seminary in Kentucky and a Master of Ecumenical Studies from the University of Geneva in Switzerland where she studied for a year with the World Council of Churches. A convert from the Bible Belt, she loves genealogy and serves as Temple & Family History Consultant. A devotee of Heavenly Mother, she also runs the Finding Heavenly Mother Project. Michelle just completed her PhD in comparative theology through Euclid University.
All posts by Michelle Wiener
Demi- is a prefix meaning half. A demigod is half man and half god. For example, the demigod Hercules is the son of the god Zeus and the mortal woman Alcmene. For orthodox Christians, Jesus is fully man and fully God, as you seem to acknowledge. How then could you confuse this with the idea of Jesus as a demigod?
Remarkably, you speak as if the confusion is in the Church Fathers: “So why, I have to ask, could the Church Fathers not just admit to themselves that the demigod answer was the correct one?. . .It took four ecumenical councils to affirm that Jesus was simultaneously divine and human! Is that not the same as admitting that Jesus is a demigod? Let’s be honest with ourselves.” No, it is decidedly not the same if we understand the simple definition of demigod. You continue: “Some of these questions still remain unanswered in my mind, but at least I can take comfort in the most obvious ‘demigod’ answer.” There’s nothing obvious about this answer. In fact, it is flatly contradicted by the Church teaching you yourself cite that Christ was fully man and fully God.
Finally, you reference in passing the Mormon teaching of The Great Apostasy, the claim that true Christianity was lost to the world from the death of the last Apostle until the time of Joseph Smith. Such a teaching is necessary for Mormons to believe or else what was Smith’s purpose? But it doesn’t make any sense otherwise. It is also an insult to the Holy Spirit who is the safeguard of the Church and an insult to the millions of faithful Christians who practiced the faith–and in many cases died for it–throughout the vast majority of Church history. The Great Apostasy is one of the weakest of all the uniquely Mormon teachings and it is ably refuted at the link below.
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/latter-day-saints-and-the-great-apostasy
Thank you for laying out so plainly, good theology and common sense. Christian history if properly studied has answers to all these conundrums promulgated by the false prophet Joseph Smith. That people still follow his transparently bogus writings still baffles me.
Dear Michelle,
Thank you for this interesting article, and the respectful way with which you engage orthodox Christian tradition.
This is an interesting topic, and begs for deeper consideration. For instance, I recommend studying the politics and developments of the councils themselves. For instance, when I was still LDS I was fascinated to discover that Constantine favored Arian Christianity and that, at the time of the First Council of Nicea, it looked as though the Arian Christian perspective would come to dominate Christendom. As such, all signs pointed to Arian Christianity being adopted and canonized by the councils. Alas, the minority, “begotten not created” position won out in the end. The facts of history shatter the much propagated narrative claiming that the Nicene Council simply did the bidding of the emperor.
I also think it is important to consider the perspective of Christians who see the councils not as innovative gatherings, but as conciliar meetings that set out to set apart extant truths among all surviving traditions and hypotheses.
Finally, I think it is important to highlight that the reason it is wrong to call Christ a demi god stems from how Nicene Christians view God. For orthodox Christians, God is not merely “a” being among other beings in the cosmos, but is the source and foundation of all that is, all being, all reality. As such one sees that the gods of hellenism and the “ground of all being” God of orthodox Christianity are radically different, and as such one sees that Jesus can’t be the sort of demi god that a child of Zeus would be. One can’t be “half god” according to the Nicene understanding of divinity.
With all due respect, I think people are missing the whole point of the article and why I wrote this; to settle this theological dilemma in my own mind. I would guess this type of argument is meant for theologians to work through, not the “average” church member. True, if the missionaries told a new convert that Jesus was a “demigod,” it might make them think twice about joining the LDS Church.
I have been studying this at length in a recent course I have been taking, and the point of this article was to argue that it is, more or less, an argument of semantics. It’s quite a circular argument, actually. Was Jesus “God,” was he “human” or some combination of both. You could really go in circles with this, but that proves the whole point.
Personally, I believe Jesus was “more divine” than the Greek and Roman demigods, but all of this to prove that the Hebrew culture, as influenced by Hellenism, could also have its parallel “mythological” stories. I recently wrote another Rational Faiths piece “Found Among the Wise Women,” arguing that the Hebrews had their own (pure) form of astrology. Perhaps this is the same concept at work; that the Hebrews also had their own (more pure) form of the “demigod” paradigm in Jesus Christ. Of course, traditional Judaism would not believe he was who he said he was to begin with, but for those who awaited the appearance of the messiah with great expectations, this was exactly what they were looking for, and they could prove to their Greek and Roman counterparts that they were on par with the surrounding cultures from a mythological standpoint.
That is all I am saying.
I appreciate the further explanation. I can acknowledge a mythic parallel between Christ and, say, Hercules. C. S. Lewis often said that Christianity was a true myth meaning that it had the power of myth while also being historical. Hercules can be seen as a pagan type of the Christ to come. But it was precisely because of such similarities that the Church Fathers took such pains to clarify exactly who Christ is and who He is not. They weren’t confused or deluding themselves. By emphasizing the full humanity of Christ AND His full divinity they were expressly making it clear that He was not some sort of demigod. Using such a term (again, half man and half god) to describe Jesus makes little sense. Implying that the Church Fathers should have admitted that this is what they really meant is just bizarre.
Finally, to claim that this distinction is only semantic is to forget the importance of semantics. Christ is the Word through whom the world was made. For Jews and Christians, God spoke the world into existence and knows each of us by name. Chesterton beautifully captures what is at stake here in his book Orthodoxy: “If some small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made in human happiness. A sentence phrased wrong about the nature of symbolism would have broken all the best statues in Europe. A slip in the definitions might stop all the dances.” And so for many the statues were broken and for many the dances are forbidden.
The larger passage from Chesterton linked below talks about the romance of orthodoxy. Yes, the romance! For many generations of Christians now anything seems preferable to orthodoxy, any fad any fallacy any private flight of fancy is given more credence than the faith handed down from the Apostles. That faith is often dismissed as dead and boring. It is just the opposite. It will be alive and thriving, too, long after the latest fads have run their course and been replaced with equally temporary philosophies.
http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Gilbert_K_Chesterton/Orthodoxy/The_Paradoxes_of_Christianity_p13.html
My contention is that Jesus was both a human mortal and an human eternal. He is God made flesh. That indicates that a person who had attained the level of celestial being agreed to take on immortality. It in no way disqualified either of His natures. He was fully celestial and fully capable of telestial behavior. If not so, there was no point to Him being born. He never sinned, but he had the option to do it by being mortal. He was both divine and mortal but always human. That is my contention. We are not a different species.
A demigod suggest that there is more than one. So that can not be the answer. Jesus was not “a” god or “a” demigod. Jesus is THE living God who was made flesh. So demigod does not appropriately fit here. Scripture says that Jesus is THE way, THE truth and THE light and that there is no way to the Father but through Him. In the beginning was the Word and the was was God and the Word was with God and the Word was made flesh (Jesus).