Yes, that's true but it was not the only theology. Adoptionism is also early.
And early Christology didn't define all the details that were debated latter on the councils. Accepting the pre-existence of Christ wasn't the same as accepting his full divinity in the Trinitarian sense.
Agreed, it was early - I think starting with Cerinthus in the late first century. We can see in the second and third Johannine epistles that the community of the fourth gospel had been split between Incarnationists (divine from birth) and Adoptionists who believed that the human Jesus had been possessed by the Divine Eternal Logos at his baptism. The Johannine prologue appears to have been composed to counter this.
However, my point was that the
New Testament presents a high Christology in all of its texts. Paul just assumes in the 50s CE (when the apostles and Jesus's brothers were still alive and referred to in these letters) that his audience are already aware of, and believe, in Christ's eternal, pre-existent divinity - and we have ample evidence to contend, therefore, that the apostolic generation believed that their Messiah was a supramundane being in human form, like the Son of Man in the Enoch literature or Melchizedek from Qumran. They thought he had conquered death, after all and ascended to heaven - is it little wonder then that, whilst undergoing these 'mystical' experiences of his resurrected state communicating with them from heaven, that they came to believe (using the pre-existent Jewish binitarian theology that I alluded to in my last post) that he was eternally divine, indeed the Wisdom of God through whom the Father had created the worlds?
Now, whether the pre-existent divine 'Jesus' should be understood along later Nicene or Arian lines - there was a legitimate debate there that arose later. But that he pre-existed eternally as a divine being before the universe, that was not seriously doubted from the earliest days by the vast majority of Christians and nor was the contention that YHWH should be spoken of triadically with reference to Father, Son and Holy Spirit, even if Christians had not yet agreed on the ontic 'why' or 'how' of this.
This is why even in those early Christian texts that lack much in the way of metaphysical or miraculous interest, such as the Gospel of Thomas which presents Jesus more as a kind of Jewish Socrates (a mystagogue of hidden divine knowledge, whose words once meditated upon and practised can lead one to heavenly bliss here on earth) with no references to his purported resurrection/ascension or focus on miracles, still affirm a
very high Christology:
(77) Jesus said: I am the light that is above them all. I am the all; the all came forth from me, and the all attained to me. Cleave a (piece of) wood; I am there. Raise up a stone, and you will find me there.
Gerd Ludemann writes: "
Jesus identifies himself with light (cf. John 8.12; 9.5), which is tremendously important in Thomas: 11.3b; 24.3; 50.1; 61.5; 83.1-2. Jesus claims to be mediator at creation (cf. Romans 11.36; 1 Cor. 8:6; Col. 1:16). All this recalls the role of wisdom. The presence of Jesus as it is described in vv. 2-3 echoes Matt. 18.20; 28.20 - but in that passage, too, there is a wisdom background." (
Jesus After 2000 Years, p. 629).
Since a lot of people - even those of a modern secular perspective -
like Jesus given how his teachings (on such things as universal love for all even one's enemies, non-judgmentalism and inclusion of the societally discriminated, minority or disadvantaged (i.e. Good Samaritan, disabled, lepers, prostitutes)) have profoundly influenced and shaped contemporary Western ethical assumptions, it's sometimes more comforting for us to cast Jesus as something like a good wise man, a Jewish Socrates if you will. I think, in their minds, if we cannot enlightenment-icize, rationalize and domesticate Jesus in terms we can relate to, like Jefferson did in his Bible, as a moral philosopher or self-help guru - then they think it somehow devalues what he taught, because it must've come from a disturbed or supremely egotistical/grandiose-thinking mind (in our terms). But that is pure historical anachronism.
The problem here is that no early follower of his understood their Messiah in that way, as a Socrates-style sage - because he was the leader of a mystical, apocalyptic Second Temple Jewish restoration movement with a very different worldview to ours. They actually did think he was divine and pre-existent. The Emperor governing the Roman world at Jesus's birth had himself been elevated into the Graeco-Roman pantheon as a god and styled himself with divine cultic honours. Within the intellectual horizons of the first century world, it would have been both comprehensible and plausible for an extremely charismatic figure leading an apocalyptic movement, who was reputed to be able to work miracles and teach moral truths with authority, to claim or be acclaimed divinity.
It just strikes many modern people as unthinkable that such a figure as the Jesus of the gospels (whom Paul in his 2nd Letter to the Corinthians 10:1 notes was renowned by his early followers for his gentleness: "
Now I, Paul, myself exhort you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ") could have claimed or been acclaimed in ways that, to us, look like something a psychopathic or narcissistic cult leader today might declare about themselves - but that just bespeaks the very different 'symbolic universe' we inhabit post-scientific revolution and darwinism. That's why the idea that Jesus was this nice Jewish Rabbi bloke who taught a very humanistic understanding of his religion and was elevated to godhood by Constantine centuries later is so popular amongst people who haven't actually studied the historical Jesus movement academically, even though its utter BS and about as far away from the reality as possible. His earliest followers
literally had a cult of Jesus worship after his death and invoked his name in the shema, the prayer directed towards the one God of Israel.
But to return to my main point: that Jesus pre-existed eternally as a divine being before the universe was not seriously doubted from the earliest days by the vast majority of Christians and nor was the contention that YHWH should be spoken of triadically with reference to Father, Son and Holy Spirit, even if Christians had not yet agreed on the ontic 'why' or 'how' of this.
en.wikipedia.org
The letter is the first pagan account to refer to Christianity, providing key information on early Christian beliefs and practices and how these were viewed and dealt with by the Romans.[2][5][6]
"They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food--but ordinary and innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden political associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition."
