This is the transcript of Restitutio episode 523: Rethinking Adoptionism with Jeremiah Coogan This transcript was auto-generated and only approximates the contents of this episode. Sean Finnegan: Hey there, I'm Sean Finnegan. And you are listening to Restitutio podcast that seeks to recover authentic Christianity and live it out today. For centuries, heresy hunters have labeled those who deny the pre existence of Jesus adoptionists. This ancient category was based on the idea that some Christian groups denied the virgin birth, thinking instead that Jesus became the son of God at his baptism when God adopted him. Modern scholars such as Bart Erman and Michael Bird employ this term to describe several early Unitarian Christian groups. My guest today is Doctor Jeremiah Coogan, a scholar of the New Testament and early Christianity. He's written a really helpful journal article analyzing the early so-called adoptionist groups. His conclusion? None of them actually qualifies as adoptionists here now is episode 523 rethinking. Adoptionism, with Professor Jeremiah Coogan. Today I'm interviewing Dr. Jeremiah Coogan. He's the assistant professor of New Testament at the Jesuit School of Theology. He has a pH. D from Notre Dame in Christianity and Judaism and antiquity. Welcome to restitution. I'm so glad to talk with you today. Jeremiah Coogan: Thanks so much for having me, it's. Great to talk about adoptionism. Sean Finnegan: It is. I can't wait, it's gonna be a blast. Today we're talking about your article rethinking adoptionism and argument for dismantling A dubious category. All I can say is about time you published this in the Scottish Journal of Theology earlier this year, and in this article you label adoptionism as a problematic anachronism. So. Not all of my listeners are fully. Be familiar with adoptionism. So what is adoptionism? Can we just begin with that and just just briefly describing it? Jeremiah Coogan: Yeah. So I don't think it options him exists, but scholars have a definition anyway, and rather than giving you my own sort of off the cuff definition, I'll read the definition that Bart Airman, one of the major scholarly proponents for the idea of adoptionism gives. So here's what Arman says. Adoptionists believed that Christ was a full flesh and blood human being who was neither pre existent nor foremost adoptionists born of a virgin. He was born, and he lived as all other humans. But at some point in his existence, usually his baptism, Christ was adopted by God to stand in a special relationship with himself. And to mediate his will on the earth, or more succinctly, adoptionism is a theory where a fully human Jesus becomes divine. That's the basic logic. And crucially, this is understood as being tied to divine sonship, particularly whether that moment of transition from human to divine happens at baptism, at resurrection. Occasionally it's imagined it's happening at Ascension. This is a scholarly imagination, but the key criteria are that. There's a really human Jesus who becomes divine, and that movement from human to divine is conjoined with God's adopting of Jesus as the son of God. So Jesus becomes God's son, Jesus becomes God's son in that transition from human to. Divine. That's. That's the theory. Sean Finnegan: He's not born a son. Jeremiah Coogan: He's the he's the son of somebody, but yes, he's neither preexistent nor initially divine. He, in this theory, goes from being a flesh and blood human. To being divine. Sean Finnegan: So can you describe the problem with modern scholars retrojecting Nicene controversies into earlier Christian history. Jeremiah Coogan: Sure. No one. Disputes that there. Were a range of ideas about who Jesus was, about the relationship between? In his relationship to God and about the nature of his humanity, it's very clear that early Christians were having debates about the nature of Jesus's humanity, the nature of Jesus's divinity stone early Christ followers did not think of Jesus as divine. How early and who is a matter for debate. But it's clear that there were different understandings of Jesus. Identity the relationship between Jesus, humanity or divinity. Some argued for one, for the other, or for various ways of understanding the relationship between the two. So that's clear enough that there is a variety of early Christian thinking about who Jesus is and that Christians are having these debates about who is Jesus? How do we understand who? The problem is when you push back the debates of the 4th century, the Council of Nicea about Jesus as begotten, not made into earlier periods where the governing frame for understanding all earlier christologies is the specter of Arianism that was not totally. Clear even that. The real 4th century Guy was an Aryan in the ways that this is sometimes. Understood. But the basic. Question of the Nicene Christological debate is about the way in which Jesus is created, or instead begotten is Jesus created. Is Jesus begotten? And all of these. Earlier questions about how Jesus relates to God and about how to talk about divine sunship, which is of course, at some level a metaphor. That is, it's using human experience and the ways that we encounter the world to describe Jesus's relationship with God. And this gets sort of squeezed into the debates about areas's theology and about whether Jesus is begotten or made. And unfortunately, when you squeeze everything else into that debate. The actual particularities of the earlier questions and conversations and discussions get lost. Sean Finnegan: Yeah. And in this 2nd century, I kind of think of it as the Wild West holding to the side for a moment, whether there actually was a Wild West in. America, that's not real. My point, but it's sort of like the Wild West of Church history where. You have all. Of these different ideas, there's no sheriff, really in town to corral everyone. And there's this just the art of persuasion. Is is your only weapon? I think it's such a fascinating period to study. So I'm very interested in it. Jeremiah Coogan: Well, I think it's worth saying that some of the people who have subsequently come to be understood as authoritative and significant church fathers, people like Irenaeus or Justin Martyr, even origin. Might not have quite. Passed muster with the councils of the 4th and 5th century. Whereas other people who have. In the long run ended up. On the sort of outside of histories of Christian Orthodoxy are actually not always very far away from the people who do end up inside. And they're asking questions that are important and formative for what becomes later Christian Orthodoxy. The questions that so-called Ebionites are asking are real questions that people are grappling with. The questions that Theotis and friends who will talk about shortly are grappling are questions that actually are still questions at the Council of Nicea and beyond. It's easy to sort of. Tell history is where there's the inside and there's the outside, and here we don't actually have an inside or an outside, we just have. A lot of conversations. Sean Finnegan: Yeah, I think a lot of times church historians will talk about second or third century people. Their christologies in such a way that they're, you know, they're, uh, they're hinting at the Trinity or they're, you know, but my my point is, I don't think they're really hinting at it. You know, they they just believe what they believe and it's. It's one step that you know, you could argue is on the way. To a different understanding. It's not like Justin martyr. When he died, he was like, you know, I I kind of got close. You know, he probably thought he. Had a correct. Understanding of you know God in Christ and so. Forth. So you argue that there may have existed adoption as somewhere in the anti Nicene. Period. But we have no evidence for them. What about cerinthus? Right. Jeremiah Coogan: Well, can I can? I take that first point about the nature of evidence first, though, yeah, so. As a historian, it's really hard to prove a negative. It's really hard to prove that something never possibly existed. We saying that I cannot prove there was never ever an adoptionist anywhere is not the same as conceding that there probably were adopt. Somewhere it's simply to say evidence doesn't really let us fully exclude things. There is no evidence for them. That doesn't mean that well, it's still probably true that they. Were out there. No, it doesn't mean that we have. No evidence. Lots of evidence for early Christians. We got lots of events for. Different christologies and we. Have no evidence for any adoptions anywhere. So that's a methodological caveat. Was like I can't disprove I cannot interview every single person in the first three Christian centuries to prove there was never an. But we have no evidence for it, and so that concession is 2 historical method, not two. Plausibility. It doesn't mean it's plausibly true that there's one out there, it's just it's hard to prove a negative as a historian. But you asked about sort of this. Sean Finnegan: Yeah, I'm just curious what your thoughts are. Him cause he he. Is so he's so. Enigmatic. What was it, Charles? Hill wrote an article about him years ago. I don't know if. You've done much work on him in the past. Jeremiah Coogan: Yeah, I I've actually thought a. Good bit about certain this I. End up in this article just. A paragraph on him and certain this. Leads the list. Of early Christian figures, who are often described as adopt. Yes, but this cerinthus that we have described in our sources thinks that Jesus is an ordinary human. He's the son of Joseph Mary, and in some accounts not an Albin, some a separate being, a divine Christ, descends upon Jesus and his baptism, and then that divine being departs from the human Jesus as Jesus's death. The human Jesus never becomes divine, and the man who dies on a cross is not the son of God. Instead, there is a spirit that possesses Jesus and then departs again. This is not adoptionism by any definition that scholars use today, and they attempt to sort of squeeze Cerinthus into the category of adoptionism, or to say that this shares a Christology with other people. We call it adoptionists is really misleading. Here we have a spirit possession Christology. The spirit comes the spirit of the divine Christ comes the spirit of divine Christ goes human, Jesus stays human, the Divine Christ stays divine, and the two. Coincide, but are not the. Right. This is not an. Option is it no? Sean Finnegan: No, definitely not. So what about the Ebionites? Are everybody knows they're adoptionists, right? If not current, this surely the Ebionites are adoptionists. Jeremiah Coogan: Except no. So even I think that Jesus. Is a human. And we actually have lots of people talking about Ebionites, lots of people. Talking about Emmy nights. Who don't have any real live EB Knights nearby. Our earliest sources for Ebionites really don't make Jesus hear sounds adopted or divine in any sense. So for our earliest sources, Jesus is a mere human. He has two human parents, and these early accounts explicitly deny that the B Knights think that Jesus was the Divine Son. He is just an ordinary human. Who is perfectly keeping the Torah, and because of his perfect observance of the Torah, he's called the Christ. But he's not the divine son. He doesn't become divine. This is true for all of our second and 3rd century sources. It was slightly different. Description from one of our late 4th century figures on the other side of the Nicene watershed, someone who does not know any ammonites who is not in contact with. Any Ebionites there? May not be any Ebionites. In fact, it is a fair historical question. If EB Knights ever exist as a group at all, or whether this is a set of Christological ideas. That people in the second and third centuries talk about as if they are the ideas of a group. Would anyone in the second or third? Century say, hey, I'm in India night. It's not certain at all. It might well be that the Christology described as ebionite by our second and 3rd century sources exists that I think is clear, but whether it is that theology of a self defined group of Ebionites who share this theology is a much messier proposition. One of the challenges of early Christian Harry theology, that is. Early Christian thinking about the ideas of other people and groups. Is that it's. Easy to turn an idea into a group or turn a person and their ideas into a. Sean Finnegan: Certainly that's a very effective tactic that they used right to if you can, if you can identify the the first person who had the idea and then call all the people who agree with that person after that person, you know, you've almost like already won it. You know, it's just a it's just a strategy. But you know is I, I would argue, not really a very Christian strategy. In a lot of cases. But it was very effective. Jeremiah Coogan: Well, and historically, a lot of Christians use it if they can say, well, we are Christians and that those people with those other ideas are this group of not Christians, but something else. You're being nice. But to come back. To Evian and the later evidence for it, starting in the late 4th century, people start Redescribing Evian in ways that sound more and more like areas. This isn't about. What EBM thought it's not reflected in any of the early sources for EBV. Rather, what's happening is that people are imagining, in the wake of the Council of Nicea in three. 25 people. Are imagining. A prehistory to Arius's heresy, going right back to the beginning. This habit of making genealogies of heresy is a really common thing we see in early Christian heresies, pology, and the writing of heresy texts. And so. The alignment of ebn with areas and also this move, which muddles Ebionites ideas with parenthesis. Christology are both things that are attested starting in the late 4th century at the Thanus of Salamis, who's a Bishop in Cyprus, will describe in some other ways. That sounds like sound like the 2nd and 3rd century accounts where. Jesus is just a good law following human. But in some of his accounts. He has that sort of earlier description and he adds in the coming and going divine Christ of parenthesis theology. None of our second and 3rd century evidence for Ebionites. Includes that that seems to be either. Epiphanius. His mistake, quite plausibly, or his inference, his assumption that Cerinthus and Ebmm actually share theologies, and so you can extrapolate from current this to EBM. I don't think we should think about this as intentional deception. I think it's. 4th century scholarly inference. I also think it's wrong, but I think that what we see here is Epiphany is trying to make sense of earlier christologies that diverge from his own, and doing so in a way that it's not quite accurate. In any case, we don't have the key features of adoptionism here. We don't have a human Christ who becomes divine. We don't have the moment of adoption. When the human price becomes about some. Sean Finnegan: Yeah, sometimes I ask myself when I. Encounter church history. Individuals. I asked myself, would I want to have lunch with that person? And I think the answer with Epiphanius is is no. I I don't, although, like his Greek. Is enjoyable to read because it's actually. Not that hard. Like the only good thing I can say about him, you know? He just seems. Like kind of the the sort of person that would. Try as hard as you could in a conversation. To find some. Way to call you a heretic? Some little. Area where you diverged. That's kind of my take on them. I don't know if you would agree with that. Jeremiah Coogan: They have a growing appreciation preparedness, I have to say. On the one hand. Sure, he calls. A lot of people. Names. That's indisputable. But he also, just as a collector of the weird and wonderful, he's a storyteller, and it's not clear to me that if you had a pint with Epiphanius, then he would call you a heretic. He would just tell you 20 stories about other things that he has seen or heard that he thinks is bonkers. Sean Finnegan: All right, well. I've receive what you're saying. Jeremiah Coogan: I think I think that's actually when you might wanna go. Club with as long as you don't. Give him too much to drink. Sean Finnegan: Right, right. Let's come back. To the ebb and ice. Do you think there's any connection between James and the early Jewish community in Jerusalem? Like well, or maybe the migrants who. Left after the war or right before the war, depending on what your view is on. That like what? What? What? What do you think about that idea? That the early Jewish Christians. Jeremiah Coogan: So in keeping with a good bit of scholarship or the over the last 20 years, I'm skeptical about the entire category of Jewish Christianity, except insofar as one can say more helpfully than all early Christ followers are Jews. And that gradually, the ethnic composition of the. Emergent Christian movement gradually changes, but a specific subset of hybridized Jewish Christianity is a problematic framework here, I think especially about. Very influential and really well done. Edited volume and Becker and Annette read called the Ways that never parted, which problematizes the whole framework of Jewish Christianity. Or there's another marvelous book actually back there on my shelf by Matt Jackson McCabe about Jewish Christianity and the problems with how modern scholars invented this as a category. To deal with religious difference really in the early modern period in Europe of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. So I would actually want to bracket Jewish Christianity as a category altogether. But what we. Do have evidence for in the earliest Christian source. Is various ways in which ethnically Jewish Christ followers agree and disagree with other authorities in the Jesus movement. That's pretty clear. The problem is the evidence for any group of people leaving Jerusalem in the wake of or directly before the destruction. Of Jerusalem in 70 CE is very thin and the argument about connecting groups of Ebionites with the followers of James in Jerusalem themes not to be derived from evidence. But instead is again 4th century extrapolation historians like Ubis of Caesarea are trying to make sense of the conflicts they read in. What is at this point for them, the New Testament authoritative book of acts, where and also in the Pauline Corpus. So they're taking conflicts between Jews. And gentiles about the nature of Torah and law observance that they're reading in their New Testament texts. And they're trying to map those onto what they recognize in their contemporary world and maybe recent past, where there are Jewish Christ followers who engage in practices that people like. You see this, who is himself a. Bishop in Roman Palestine. Who does have some degree of interaction with? Jewish neighbors, including, it seems, Christ following Jewish neighbors. This is an attempt to connect dots. This is historical reconstruction or elaboration not. Good independent evidence. And so I'm I'm skeptical about any genealogy for Ebionites that starts with James and Jerusalem. Instead, I think what we're talking about is scholars in the 4th century trying to make sense of the diversity of Christian belief and practice that they observe in the world they live in. Sean Finnegan: Thank you for that. So. Let's talk about let's shift gears and. Talk about theodotus. He and his followers are often cited as adoptionists, but they. Affirmed the virginal conception of Christ, right at least some of our later sources seem to indicate that. Jeremiah Coogan: Yeah. Yeah and. Here it's important to say that virginal conception is a thing that you can have in. Greek or Roman science? You don't need two parents. In some theories of conception. Jared Secord, wonderful colleague Alberta has written a very, very good article showing how the theodote seemed to understand Jesus's single parent conception, which is maybe a better framing than virginal conception. But the single parent conception using the tools of Galenic 2nd century. What on this theory? The Divine Spirit is doing in Jesus's birth is making sure that what emerges is a fully formed proper human and not some sort of. As they would describe it, aberrant or monstrous birth. Sean Finnegan: Alright, you gotta. Tell me more about Galen here because I. Have not read that article. And that sounds juicy. So give us a a quick summary like. What are we talking about here? What's the theory that he's working with? Jeremiah Coogan: Yeah. Can you have? Procreation with just one seed? That's the basic question. Yeah. In ancient terms, do you need contributions from multiple parents? Do you have a theory of conception where as many people initially think a father provides the form and the mother provides the matter? Can the form be provided as well as the matter by the mother? Is there actually a confluence of forms derived from father and mother? This is this. Is the framing question. Clearly the mother is providing the matter. They're in here. Mary. We're talking about Mary. So in ancient science, the mother is providing the matter. But where is the form coming from? And in this account, Jesus is the result of not a fathers providing of seed to give the form, but it's a one parent conception. And what's God doing? God is ensuring that. What form is in marry out of the matter is a human form and not something else. So again, the ancient science is weird death, but the crucial claim here. Is about Jesus being. Fully, really human, even though he. Doesn't have a father. This might sound to us a lot like. What we imagine as the divine birth, but that's not how the theodota talked about it. Or imagine it. And they're probably thinking about this in terms of real ancient philosophical worries about God's. Having sex with humans. It seems wrong to them to imagine the divine procreating at all. And there I mean this. Is also a broader topic in first, second, 3rd century philosophy. Why would gods have sex with humans? Why would gods procreate with humans? This seems inappropriate to the divine. So the theodote. Are coming up with a different way of understanding Jesus as having a single human parent and divine involvement in his birth that doesn't involve what seems to be the really. Ethically problematic, you know, think about stories of Zeus committing sexual violence against human women as well as men. Actually, we we don't want implications of divine sexual violence here, but also they're worried about just the fact that how can a divine being procreate with the human at all? It's it's both the ethical. And then also the biological or physical question? This is a theory that gets them away from that set of potential challenges in their environments. It's not one in which Jesus is the son of God. It's one in which Jesus is a human who's born with divine overshadowing or guidance. In fact, what the divine Spirit is doing here is ensuring that Jesus has the same nature. As all other human. Sean Finnegan: Well, would you say that he's a son of God in the sense that Adam is a son of God? Jeremiah Coogan: Well, we could say that, but the theory. Don't seem to. Say that. We might imagine. That just as Luke describes Adam as the son of God, because God forms. Him. So we. We might bring that category to play. But that's not the. That's not their claim. Jesus is a real human whose birth is overseen in divinely providential ways. And of course, the PDP again are deploying ancient medical and philosophical tools to think through how this might work. It seems to me. Like what's happening is that theoretical. Meeting texts like what are in the eventual Christian New Testament and trying to make sense of them with their philosophical and medical tools. Sean Finnegan: OK. Well, let's move on to Paul. Simon Sada, I saw you cited Paul sample. I got ahold of his dissertation from Northwestern a little while ago and was impressed to see he had collected and translated so many sources about Paul. What do you make of Paul of Samosata's Christology? I'm just curious. Not an adoptionist. Jeremiah Coogan: No, no, really not so. We have to, we have to be careful. With Paul Sensata. Paul Senada is. Active in the 60s and maybe early 70s, see and. Unfortunately, we really don't have sources that aren't entangled with the Nice seeing controversies. Or the conflicts around areas there just aren't sources that are uninvolved in the Christological debates of the early 4th century. There are only, you know, 50 ish years between when Paul dies and Marcia, and most of our sources actually come. From the very late. 3rd century or into the early 4th century? And then beyond? We don't have. Good evidence for Paul, except in the shadow of Nicea. That's the first point to make. It's historiographically challenged. We have a lot of sources. They're really confusing. They're very incomplete. They're being used by the people using them mostly. Not to talk. About Paul, but again, to give a genealogy for a back story for how areas got to be the. Heretic that he is. And yet the key thing that does emerge is that Jesus is an ordinary human. Jesus Christ is from below. There is no hint of adoption, and Jesus isn't divine. And so there's a lot we don't know about, Paul's Christology, a lot of things that we can debate and argue about how he understands Jesus identity. But what's very clear is that adoption is off the table. The adoption isn't narrated, it doesn't show up in any resources. Here, and Jesus isn't divine. If Jesus is in some sense commissioned by the divine of representing the divine, that's a different question, and this is the point where we get to the conflation of Paul with areas is son, who is made Jesus. Here is clearly a human who is created and but how is he? A divine agent? In what way does Jesus? Act for or represent God on earth. That's the question that Paul is trying to think through. That adoption and. Divinity aren't the ways he answers that. Sean Finnegan: Yeah, very good. So your conclusion, after analyzing the evidence, which you kind of we we kind of started with this, so it's not going to be a surprise. But your conclusion is that none of these authors were adoptionist. So the question I have then is why then do you think scholars for so long have clung to this category, do you think it was a delegitimizing tactic? Or, oh, they're not real Christians. Since they deny what Matthew and Luke. Say about the. Virgin birth or what do you think? Jeremiah Coogan: I mean, interestingly, some of the figures. Do have a virgin birth, they just don't. Have a what we might say, high Christology. Why have scars clung to this category? We have been. A little bit beguiled by the genealogies that our post 4th century sources give us. We have. Followed in insufficiently careful and contextually attentive ways. The arguments that 4th, 5th, 6th century figures are making who don't care about any of the figures we're talking. About here they. Care about areas they care about. The debates that happen at the Council of Chelsea and about the relationship between Jesus's natures. They're not actually these these later. Crystal bases are not focused on Cerinthus or Ebionites or even Palestine. Saada certainly not on the theodate. All of those figures that. We talked about today are. Sort of tools. Or building blocks in later arguments. Why have we gotten stuck with the category of adoptionism? Mostly because we didn't read carefully the actual sources that we have for these early figures. We've been more interested in later debates too. Only relatively recently really starting in the beginning of the 20th century and then with a. Vibrant resurgence in the 1990s has there been? A scholarly move toward thinking about these figures as evidence for very early adoptionism. And this comes out of real grappling with some of the puzzling features of the New Testament Gospels. It's not actually explicitly clear what happens at the baptism, say in Mark. Is Jesus being appointed by God as son? Is he being recognized as already son? Does Sonship actually imply divine identity? These are questions that theologians. Have about mark. 'S gospel. And so. At some level, the category gives us. A way of. Reading back into puzzling New Testament texts, it serves as a sort of hermeneutical key for people to understand potential alternative theologies that could be at work in the New Testament. Unfortunately, misreading the second, third, even 4th century evidence doesn't help us then provide a good and responsible. Plausibility structure for thinking about readings of the. New testing texts. But that's why it. Has thrived as a category because we think it helps. Us do two things that. On the whole, scholars have. Cared about more? Understand the Christological controversies before the 5th centuries and understand the New Testament. No, and people haven't spent enough time on the actual sources and the actual delightful weirdness of some of the sources that we do have. For the segmentary centuries. Sean Finnegan: Yeah, yeah. Let's talk about early high Christology, if you don't mind. You steered clear of it in the article, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Jeremiah Coogan: I I tried not to dig into the whole early, high Christology question the article just because that is another article or book perhaps and here I was trying to keep the argument constrained to one particular category of problem that I think is. Unhelpful in asking larger questions like what is the earliest attested Christology? The earliest attested understanding of who Jesus is and about if he has a divine identity. I am broadly persuaded by the work of scholars like Richard Hayes that in their own ways, each of the four New Testament Gospels attests a theology in which Jesus represents and manifests God's own identity, acting in the world. I also as. A historian want to be very cautious not to immediately deploy 4th century categories again to describe that. I think that ecclesial communities today often do, and that's fine for their purposes. But if we're asking historical questions, we do really need to be careful to recognize what questions the New Testament texts are and are not answering. And what vocabularies they are and are not using to answer those questions. The same thing applies to Paul. Paul has a divine Christ. Paul does not make fully explicit the way in which his divine Christ participates in the divine being of the one all calls God or Father. It may seem quite clear to Paul. Paul himself may not be interested in parsing this out quite as much as later. Systematic delusions might be. And So what I would encourage readers, scholarly or non. Scholarly to do is to. Be careful not to try to make texts answer questions. They're not trying to answer. Paul John. None of the. Topics we're trying to do nice, none of them. Are trying to do nice anthology. And if you ask them. To do a nice anthology. They are going to be unsatisfying Nicene theologians. Makes you ask them to be modern adoptionists. They're also going to be unsatisfying, modern adoptionists, and so I I broadly am persuaded by the arguments of scholars who advocate for seeing an early high Christology, and the earliest Christian writings, including Paul and Vanitas Mccolls. But I am. Also hesitant about the ways that that claim gets so quickly redeployed to make those texts say things in ways they don't say, and we need, say things they don't say, we have to recognize that these texts don't answer all of our questions. They don't say things the. Ways we might want to. Sean Finnegan: Yeah, I I came. Across an article by Paula Frederickson and she was talking about like 2 sections within early High Christology club. It was some Brill collection of essays. I don't know if you saw. It but. She wrote. I think she wrote the last chapter in it and. She was she. Was talking about how there are some early, high Christology people that because she considers herself to be part of the club. Yeah. Which I was surprised. But I was like, alright, well, this is interesting. But she's like, well, but I'm not like, you know, in the in the upper section of the club. I'm. I'm kind of like a lower a. Lower High Christology if that makes any sense. But yeah, I found that to be interesting. So she she's comfortable seeing a divine Christ in his ascended role. Uh, and if I remember correctly, she also sees pre existence in Paul which others have debated. Uh, Andrew Perriman just wrote a book in the form of a God where he he collected together a number of pretty strong arguments against pre existence and. So I don't know if you want to elaborate any further or if we should just move on. Jeremiah Coogan: Yeah. No, I I do. I do in fact think that Paul has some sort of notion of preexistence again. I would want to. Put asterisks on that because Paul is. Not always interested. In answering our questions, but Paula Frederickson's. Work is among that which has influenced me. To the conclusions. I've reached, at least at this point in. My career, I. Don't think though that pre existence is doing all of the same kinds of metaphysical work. Paul, that it's doing for others. In part because Paul isn't doing a theology that starts with a sort of theory of divine ontology. The pre existent God, who we can sort of philosophically determine to be XY and Z, shows up in Jesus. Paul reads everything back from the Christ event, which for him is fundamentally located in the revelatory moments of. Crucifixion and resurrection. And so whatever we can say about God as preexistent Paul reads back from his understanding of crucifixion, resurrection and not forward from a sort of. Prior philosophical understanding of what a divine. Being might be. So I I. Do actually think that, especially in Romans and in the so-called Christ him, which I think is appalling composition, not a preexisting presenting him with but with in Romans one and then in. Philippians 2 we See Paul using language that evokes ideas of pre existence. Certainly Paul doesn't think this other early post Pauline figures including. The author of Hebrews, the author of Galatians, the author of Ephesians, all themselves Do Use Strong. Bigger language indicating some idea of pre existence. But all of these texts also have an apocalyptic kind of theology in which you have to read from the revelatory moments of crucifixion, resurrection and not start with the sort of abstract theology of God. Sean Finnegan: OK. Have you had any feedback on your paper? Jeremiah Coogan: Academic feedback happens slowly, so I expect people will engage with it in print over time, but I expect I'll hear from people at. Some point, not a whole. Lot yet and we had a lovely conversation today. I had a conversation with Michael Bird. Michael Koch down under that's also available online as a podcast somewhere, but I haven't heard back a lot. And it came out in January. So honestly, the fact that we're even having a conversation now is fast on an academic timetable. Sean Finnegan: Well, in the podcast world, it's slow. So. There you have it. Yeah. Bird is funny on adoptionism he he seems to eschew the category, but then he he sort of, like, applied it to to the theodote, right. Jeremiah Coogan: He left it in the. Back door in. Sean Finnegan: His what was that book? Of his. Jesus among the gods. Jeremiah Coogan: Jesus would well, no Jesus, the divine son. I think Jesus the God. Sean Finnegan: Talking about some more recent one. Jeremiah Coogan: Oh, right. Yeah. Oh, no, you. Mean. Sorry, yes. Yeah, yeah. No, but his, his. Jesus, the divine son. Book. Was one of the works that I found. Helpful to push against in the framing of this article we're talking about today. Sean Finnegan: So what did? What did he say? When you converse with him. Jeremiah Coogan: I think he. Basically concedes the point that the Theodota aren't really adoptionists. What he would want to say though, is that. They feel adoption. Is key, that is they. Feel closer to the category. So he's really like the category dot. I think that's that's right. Clearly no one else is populating the category a category of one group is a weird category and I think he would see some degree of. Divine essence in the overshadowing. Of the spirit that the theodate described. Whether that's the same thing as divine identity, whether the same thing as divine sunship is a different question. But his starting point is that the theocracy are. Working from an early high Christology and moving somewhere else and so they bring traces of a divine Christ with them in their thinking. That's how he. Gets there. It's still clear. From the sources we have, but no adoption and no divinity are described. But I I see where he's coming, it's still not great adoptionism. Not least, there's no adopting. But I understand that he's trying to think through the ways in which that particular theology relates to theologies that do maintain a strong divine identity, which are also clearly this in the 2nd century, and from that. And work if you're putting two things into conversation, I think at least adoptions and helps you ask better questions. And the first answer is no, it's not adoptionism, but the second answer. Is well, yeah this. Is closer than anything else, and maybe the category can help. Well, in what ways does it or does it not fit that heuristic? Sean Finnegan: Well, I'm rooting for you, I think. You're doing good work. What? What's up next for you? Jeremiah Coogan: Yeah, I'm currently working on a book on the emergence of gospel as a literary category in the 2nd century. Here I'm spending a lot of time with other writers from the Antonine and Saffron periods. Roughly the very end of the 1st century. The mid 2nd century thinking about how people categorize books and organize libraries. You'll you'll notice one of. The one of the undergirding concepts of this article we've been talking about today is a question of how do you make Christological categories. What work does category making do in shaping ideas in cultivating conversations in excluding options, excluding conversations category making is also the central question of this book I'm working on now. It's not a book about Christology, it's a book about organizing the library. But again, the question of how are Christians and their non Christian contemporaries in the second and third centuries thinking about multiple books on the same topic about organizing related texts into the library about categorizing books, about negotiating different versions? These are practical questions that. Occupy many readers, not just readers of Gospels, and at the same time, conversations about the emergence of a gospel Canon have often ignored these broader questions about how do people in the second, third centuries, how do people in this formative period for Christianity think about organizing the library? So that's the project I'm working on now. It'll be out in a couple of years, I hope. Sean Finnegan: OK, very good. And so if people wanted to know more about you, where would? Jeremiah Coogan: My faculty page just Google my name and Jesuit School of Theology has, you know, more about my work. It also has links to Open Access versions of most of my publications. I do my best to make sure my publications are Open Access whenever I can. It's not always possible. Some publishers make that tricky, but I do my best to make it so that everything's free. When it when it when it can be and. So links to a lot. Of that work is are available on my my faculty page. Sean Finnegan: That's very good. Thanks for that well. Thanks for talking with me today. Jeremiah Coogan: Well, thank you. This has been. Sean Finnegan: Well, that brings this interview to an end. What did you think? Come on over to rest of studio.org and find episode 523. Rethinking adoptionism with Jeremiah Coogan and leave your questions and thoughts there. Also, I wanted to mention that I recently redid our recommended podcast page on restitutio.org. Under the tab, other podcasts, there were some podcasts on there that are no longer active, so I removed them and I added a bunch more, including Tom Houston's Unitarian Anna Baptist, which is on YouTube, which seeks to get together the Anabaptist and Unitarian traditions, which he believes are mutually. Strengthening since they both restore Christianity. Prior to its man-made creeds also included on there Sam Tiedemann's Transfigured podcast, in which he interviews a variety of Bible scholars and church historians, and does a lot of interesting work I put on there. Deep talks by Paul and Leitner, which explores the relationship between theology. And meaning making some of his really interesting episodes are where he analyzes recent films such as the Marvel Movies or the DC. And shows the cultural longings and how Christianity connects to it. Interesting thoughts there. I added the Bible projects, podcasts with Tim Mackie and John Collins, and you know, of course they do. A variety of interesting topics from really almost like a rabbinic Christian perspective. If I can say it like that. Tim Mackie approaches the Old Testament from a very Jewish. Angle maybe not rabbinic, maybe? That wouldn't be fair because he's not really into the Talmud, but he is certainly reading the Bible much more from a Jewish angle than from a Christian angle, which I think actually helps a lot. And then last of all, theology and the raw with press and sprinkle, who really tends to focus on hot button cultural and theological issues and he's quite prolific and he's got a lot of interesting guests on there. Of course, I don't endorse all these podcasts and everything that they say, but they're podcasts that I'm interested in and that I listen to. Some more than others that offer valid and interesting perspectives, so take a look at that page if you're. Interested if you're a podcast. Listener who's looking for more stuff to listen to, and if you have podcasts that you're listening to that I don't have on there, why not let me know? Be interested to see what other people are listening to. Well, that's going to be up for today. Thanks everyone for listening. If you'd like to support restitutio, you can do that. On our website, through either a monthly donation or a one time donation. Thanks to all of you. Who are supporting? Us it really does help, especially for covering our costs. We'll see you next week and remember the truth has nothing to fear.