In this lecture, given at the amazing Converge event in Ohio in August of 2025, I first explain the three varieties of early Christian theologies, which I have also discussed here, here, and in my recent debate with James White.

I then explain the fully developed catholic views which replaced them over the years 381-681, as the “ecumenical” councils innovated in Christology and theology. Noting the enormous gap between this sort of catholic orthodoxy and what we read in the New Testament, a number of evangelical scholars in the last 40 years or so have developed what I called “Fauxthodox” language, which seems to be intended to be saying what orthodoxy was always asserting, but in simpler language which they argue reflects what is actually taught in the Bible. The main ones I discuss are Larry Hurtado, Richard Bauckham, and N.T. Wright.

The problems are: this language seems carefully calibrated to be ambiguous, it is not obviously biblical, and there is no reason to think that this language is equivalent to the official “catholic” or “orthodox” views, which I summarize like this:

Christ is a fully divine Person in God the Trinity who is eternally caused to exist by (but not created by) the Father (a different divine Person in God), sharing his divinity. When Incarnate Christ is one Person with two natures, a divine nature and a human nature which are unchanged by their union. He got his human nature from his mother; before that there was no more to him than his divine nature—strictly, he is the divine nature. It is his human nature which suffered and died on the cross; his divine nature is incapable of either suffering or dying. Christ, in his divine nature, is incapable of doing any action which is not also the action of the Father and of the Spirit. Christ’s human nature (a human-type of soul plus a human-type of body) is not a human person because, somehow, of its union with the divine nature, i.e. with the Second Person of the Trinity. Thus Christ is now “man” but is not a man (human person). Each nature has its own will and power of choosing, but the human will always submits to the divine one.?

If you want to see all my slides, here is the fully produced video from the UCA’s YouTube channel:

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Links for this episode:

Catholic Theologian Hans Küng on New Testament theology

podcast 384 – Mainstream Christian Theologies in the Late 100s – Early 200s and Early Trinitarian “Fool’s Gold”

podcast 381 – Mainstream Christian Theologies in the year 240: What Trinitarian Apologists Don’t Know

John 1 Is Not Trinitarian | Dale Tuggy vs James White LIVE Debate! – (livestream: the fully edited video will be out soon on the UCA’s YouTube channel).

Hurtado on the early worship of Jesus

Larry Hurtado on early Christians’ worship of Jesus

podcast 100 – Dr. Larry Hurtado on God in New Testament Theology

podcast 228 – Buzzard and Hurtado on God and Jesus – Part 1

podcast 229 – Buzzard and Hurtado on God and Jesus – Part 2

podcast 13 – On Bauckham’s Bargain

podcast 214 – Has Bauckham clarified his “divine identity” theory? – Part 2

podcast 213 – Has Bauckham clarified his “divine identity” theory? – Part 1

podcast 124 – a challenge to “Jesus is God” apologists

This week’s thinking music is “Soul of Tacoma” by LOPKERJO.