A Beggar At The Table

Just when I think I have the early years covered, I run across another name. This time, the name is Theodotus the Tanner. There are several Theodotuses (Theodotum?) and so it is important to specify this one. Apparently this was a common name back in the day, meaning, as it does, “given to God.” He’s our featured heretic this time on the antibreviary.

It’s actually interesting that I missed this one. He’s very important, as the earliest recorded proponent of the adoptionist heresy. Adoptionism is the teaching that Jesus became the Christ at the time of His Baptism by John–that God “adopted” Jesus as His Son. Jesus the man unites with Christ, the God, and becomes Jesus Christ. Before this adoption, Jesus was just a man. Jesus is not fully God until after the resurrection, according to the proponents of this teaching.

Anyway, Theodotus the Tanner, or Theodotus of Byzantium, taught precisely this. A couple notes on this particular brand of adoptionism is that he appears to have been OK with the Scriptural record of the Virgin Birth, but still regarded Jesus as a man until His Baptism. He was trying, by appearances, to safeguard the true humanity of Christ, but went too far. He saw Jesus primarily as the Son of Man, not as the Son of God. For his efforts, he was rewarded by Pope Victor (190-198) with being branded a heretic and excommunicated. He didn’t stop there. In the days of Pope Zephyrinus Theodotus went so far as to set up a rival church (great shades of Marcion!) and gathered several followers, including another man named Theodotus. (This is about all we learn of the man’s life, and this from Eusebius.)

Fascinatingly enough, this heresy may not yet be dead. Especially among the churches with a lesser view of Biblical inspiration, that is, that the Bible is only inspired insofar as it teaches the Gospel or that the Bible is a fallible book like any other, adoptionism is still popular. It is popular because it accounts for Jesus’ humanity in an approachable way–you don’t have to believe things like the Virgin Birth or the Christmas story, because Jesus is a man like any other–and yet it allows some sense of divinity to trickle through. But there’s the problem. Jesus is both God and man, from conception to eternity, 100% each way. Any less and the Christological equations fall apart somewhere or another.

Here the problem is, as with Nestorius, separating Jesus as man from Christ as God. It is almost as though you end up with three phases of Jesus’ life: as the man Jesus from birth to baptism, as the God-man Jesus Christ from baptism to resurrection, and as the God Christ from resurrection forward. A neat bit of work, but definitely not in line with the record of Scripture.

And that’s really all we can say about Theodotus the Tanner. The records on him are spotty to non-existent. But his legacy lives on.

Verse for the Commemoration of Theodotus the Tanner
—
Theodotus the Tanner
Really throws quite a spanner
Into the life of the Christ
As His life and nature into parts he had sliced!