In scholarship you need a thick skin and you have to be willing to accept that criticism of your work can come at you fast and furious. Sometimes the criticism can be rather humbling especially when it has some degree of validity and publicly airs your mistakes for all to see. At other times the criticism can be more frustrating because you feel misunderstood when a reviewer hasn\u2019t really grasped what you were arguing. And then there are days when someone writes a condescending piece full of inaccuracies and misconceptions which just leaves you dumbfounded as to what possessed them to write such drivel.\u00a0I have to say that when I read Daniel Kirk\u2019s review<\/a> of my chapters in\u00a0<\/span>How God Became Jesus<\/em>\u00a0I had this latter feeling. <\/span><\/p>\n To those who know him, Kirk has a colorful personality and he thrives on courting controversy and notoriety from his well-read blog Storied Theology<\/em>. Kirk is especially adept at poking fun at the oh-so-conservative types in theology. It would seem that he has chosen me the springboard for his latest salvo against the conservative evangelicalism that he continues to find so distasteful to his intellectual palate. Kirk is actually a smart and thoughtful guy \u2013 I continue to use his\u00a0Unlocking Romans<\/em> as I write my own Romans commentary \u2013 so I\u2019m at a loss as to why he wrote quite a spiteful review filled with so many specious arguments.<\/p>\n I do not have time to respond to all of Kirk\u2019s points. In most cases his mischaracterization of my work will be blatantly obvious to anyone who has read the opening chapters of HGBJ. But down to business!<\/p>\n To begin with, Kirk takes issue with the sense of humor that I employ in my chapters in HGBJ. He calls it \u201cclownish\u201d and even \u201cbuffoonery.\u201d Since this was a popular level book I was trying to do to Ehrman in print what Stephen Colbert does to him in person. Now I\u2019m obviously no Colbert. However, given my red hair, if I grew a beard, and was a foot taller, I might possibly pass as Conan O\u2019Brien! While some will find the attempt to infuse humor into a scholarly discussion refreshing and witty, others will find it juvenile and inappropriate. Different strokes for different folks. To date, most persons have commended me on trying to get away from the stale nature of scholarly discussion by injecting some good Aussie (= Irish convict) humour into biblical studies.<\/p>\n In terms of his critique, to be frank, some of Kirk\u2019s complaints are just so inaccurate that I\u2019m left wondering if he has a basic grasp of New Testament christology or if he even read our book at all. He completely misunderstands the arguments of Bauckham, Hurtado, and Hengel about early high christology. He looks as if he\u2019s browsed over pages in HGBJ and cherry picked stuff that allegedly shows the book\u2019s failings but without reading it in context. Let me give a couple of examples.<\/p>\n First, Kirk thinks I\u2019ve misrepresented Ehrman by calling his approach \u201cevolutionary.\u201d However, the fact is that Ehrman starts off with Jesus as a prophet and then only later in the second and third centuries is Jesus equal to \u201cGod Almighty.\u201d True, Ehrman is not arguing the same story as Bousett, however, I\u2019ve repeatedly acknowledged that in both the book and in subsequent articles. For Ehrman the story of Jesus becoming God is the story of a mere human eventually becoming equal to God Almighty over an extended period of time. \u00a0Despite what Kirk thinks, this is definitely an evolutionary process. Just because Ehrman does not think that christology evolved in a \u201cstraight line\u201d does not mean that his account isn\u2019t evolutionary? Though in fairness, perhaps the terms \u201cevolutionary\u201d and \u201cdevelopment\u201d need to be parsed less we talk passed each other.<\/p>\n Second, Kirk thinks that I\u2019m inconsistent in saying Jesus saw himself as both an \u201cagent\u201d and also acting with \u201cunmediated divine authority.\u201d How can I believe both, how can you have unmediated agency? Well, if Kirk had cared to read further, he\u2019d know that I said that in Jesus the lines between author and agent were becoming blurred. That\u2019s how I solve the paradox, but Kirk conveniently does not care to notice.<\/p>\n Third, on Early High Christology Club (EHCC), yes, Ehrman quotes Hengel approvingly about more happening in the first twenty years than in the next seven centuries. BUT what Ehrman and Hengel (plus Bauckham and Hurtado) think happened in that first twenty years is very, very different. Ehrman thinks that Jesus was regarded as a \u201cgod\u201d in the sense of an exalted figure, for some pre-existent, like an Angel, whereas Hurtado, Hengel, and Bauckham believe that the monotheistic language of Deuteronomy and Isaiah was applied to Jesus! Kirk even thinks<\/a> that Ehrman could be a member of the EHCC. But the sense<\/em> that Ehrman thinks Jesus is \u201cgod\u201d is entirely different to what Hengel, Hurtado, and Bauckham think the early church believed that Jesus as God! I must complain that I do not think Kirk has the foggiest idea what are the central claims of the EHCC.<\/p>\n Fourth, Kirk indicts me for clinging too closely to Richard Bauckham\u2019s model of christological monotheism and divine identity, but without showing how that model is wrong. Shall we admit that it\u2019ll take more than a blog post to take down Bauckham!<\/p>\n Fifth, on Ehrman\u2019s method, I never criticized him for appealing to ancient sources, I only claimed that his use of such sources often amounts to parallelomania. And this is NOT what Hurtado and Bauckham do. They in fact show that, despite some partial analogies, extant Jewish and Graeco-Roman sources have no precise correlation to claims made about Jesus and devotion given to Jesus (though Bauckham and Hurtado do differ over the significance of Enoch in 1 Enoch).<\/p>\n Sixth, and a good example of Kirk\u2019s absurd nit-picking, he states: \u201cBird complains of Ehrman\u2019s use of the \u2018criterion of dissimilarity\u2019 only to deploy it himself when convenient to his cause.<\/span>\u201d \u00a0No, that\u2019s not what happens. I argue that, while the criteria still have some validity, they are no longer regarded as the best guides to map a path towards authentic Jesus traditions and therefore Ehrman is wrong to rely on them (see Dale Allison; Chris Keith; Anthony Le Donne et al). At a later point, I do appeal to the criterion of dissimilarity, not because I\u2019m an endorser of it, but because I want to show that by Ehrman\u2019s own preferred criteria, there are some traditions he should be accepting. But what was a rhetorical move, Kirk takes to be an example of internal contradiction.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Seventh, Kirk rejects my claim that \u201cif Jesus didn\u2019t think of himself as divine then the Christian canon and creeds are meaningless\u201d. Kirk then goes on to claim: \u201cWhile \u2018Jesus is God\u2019 makes a good reading of John, it blurs our eyes to Jesus the \u2018son of David\u2019 in Matthew, to Luke\u2019s \u2018man attested by God,\u2019 and even to Mark\u2019s \u2018son of God\u2019 who is \u2018son of man.'\u201d In other words, Kirk seems to be denying that Jesus is any sense divine in the Synoptic Gospels. Really? So I am left wondering, \u201cDid Jesus think he was God or not?\u201d The way Kirk is talking the answer seems to be \u201cno.\u201d But it doesn\u2019t matter to him! I don\u2019t want to speculate too much, and I\u2019ll let Kirk speak for himself, but this looks like a cross between Bultmann and Ehrman. The historical Jesus did not claim to be God, but in the kerygma Jesus was declared to be \u201cGod,\u201d and\u201dgod\u201d in the sense that Ehrman believes is obviously good enough, and we\u2019ll run with that. What does Nicea have to do with the historical Jesus we might ask Kirk? I assume his answer is, \u201cnot much.\u201d That\u2019s the vibe I get from Kirk, but he can give his own account on how\/when Jesus became God.<\/p>\n Kirk wants an apology from me. The only\u00a0apologia\u00a0<\/em>I shall offer is this: I have endeavored to show that the earliest christology was the highest and that the christological devotion of the early church was rooted in the self-understanding of the historical Jesus (and tried to have a few laughs while I argued the case).<\/p>\n Thankfully other reviews by Nijay Gupta \u00a0here<\/a>\u00a0& here<\/a> and Andreas Kostenberger here<\/a>\u00a0provide more helpful evaluations of our book.<\/p>\n Reading Kirk\u2019s review stimulated my imagination. I was left imagining what it would be like to read a review by Justin Bieber in the New York Times that made a condescending critique of the New York Ballet\u2019s recent production of\u00a0The Nutcracker<\/em> where Bieber chastised the company for its lack of artistic excellence. Such an imaginary review would be, as with Kirk\u2019s review here, just impossible to take seriously.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In scholarship you need a thick skin and you have to be willing to accept that criticism of your work can come at you fast and furious. Sometimes the criticism can be rather humbling especially when it has some degree of validity and publicly airs your mistakes for all to see. At other times the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":196,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n