Yerusalyim....I like your description of how orthodox christology arose....it really gets the essence of it, but it also oversimplifies the situation a lot. There were many shades of adoptionism and different ideas about Jesus' divinity. Adoptionists disagreed on when they believed Jesus was annointed as the Son of God (whether at his baptism, resurrection, or conception and birth) and whether the annointing merely gave him kingship and Lordship or whether it also made him divine. Those who believed that Jesus was divine may have regarded his deity as the result of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit at Jesus' annointing, or they may have regarded him as one of the angelic "sons of God," the incarnation of heavenly wisdom, God in the flesh, etc. Docetism had various subtypes, such as illusionist view that claimed that Jesus' body was spiritual and not of the flesh and the possessionist view which claimed that Christ never had his own body but descended and possessed the man Jesus at his baptism and left him during the crucifixion. The latter view, attributed to Cerinthus and also attested in the Gospel of Peter, is an example of a christology that is both adoptionist and docetist/gnostic.
The earlier adoptionist idea (especially popular among the Ebionites and other Jewish Christians) was that Jesus was annointed with the Holy Spirit at his baptism -- an act that made him the Davidic Messiah (Annointed) and Son of God, understanding the title "Son of God" as a title of Jesus' kingship bestowed at his baptismal annointing (Psalm 2:6-7). While it is not clear whether Jesus actually claimed to be the Messiah (and many doubt this), two of the most certain things Jesus is known to have said -- calling God "Abba" or "Father" and focusing on the "Kingdom of God" as the central theme of his teaching -- surely contributed to this belief. This is the concept in the Gospel of Mark, especially the baptism narrative in 1:9-11 and ratified in God's declaration during the Transfiguration in 9:7. Jesus' kingly entrance into Jerusalem in 11:1-11 follows, Jesus cites his baptism as the source of his authority (11:28-30), he is questioned by the Roman authorities on being "King of the Jews" in 15:2-5, and finally at the moment of his death even the Gentiles acknowledge him as the Son of God (15:39). Apostle Paul, in his earlier writings, also had an adoptionist christology but one that viewed Jesus' Sonship and Lordship as resulting from his resurrection. This view is most clearly stated in Romans 1:3-4: By his "human nature" Jesus was "a descendent of David" but he was "proclaimed Son of God in all his power through his resurrection from the dead" and it was at that point when "the Spirit of Holiness was in him." Luke's Peter in Acts 2:32-36 also expresses the same primitive christology: "God raised this man to life ... raised to the heights by God's right hand, he has received from the Father the Holy Spirit ... and God has thus made this Jesus whom you crucified both Lord and Christ." A third view is expressed in Luke and Matthew which pushes Jesus' annointing all the way to the other extreme -- the Holy Spirit came upon him at his conception (Matthew 1:20; Luke 1:35), so that Luke says that "the child will be holy and will be called Son of God" and Matthew has King Herod referring the Jesus as "the infant king of the Jews" (2:2) and the Magi bowing before the infant King (2:11). Matthew and Luke present a one-stage adoptionist theory, so that Jesus throughout his entire life and resurrection was the annointed Messiah, while Mark and early Paul present a two-stage adoptionist theory -- of Jesus living part of his life before being annointed by the Holy Spirit and part of his life afterward.
The question of deity arises when the Holy Spirit is no longer viewed as mere unction but the indwelling of divine nature and then the indwelling of God himself. The earliest adoptionist views were probably functionalist -- that is, they claimed that Jesus accepted the role of Messiah and Lord but did not necessarily become divine through his annointing. The view of a divine indwelling and the presence of Deity in Jesus led to three-stage adoptionist theories and two-stage non-adoptionist theories that both focused on the sending of Deity or a divine Revealer into the world. This in turn contributed to speculations about preexistence. The view of Cerinthus summarized above is an example of a three-part christology: (1) Jesus lives as a man (2) Christ descends on him like a dove at his baptism and functions as a divine Revealer (3) Christ leaves him as Jesus dies on the cross. This gnostic belief, seemingly distant from anything in orthodox Christianity, is strikingly similar to the proto-orthodox adoptionist view in the second-century Shepherd of Hermas (written by a pastor in the Roman church) which also attests a possessionist christology. The three-part christology of Hermas however focuses on the "Beloved Son's" preexistence: (1) the Holy Spirit, or "the Beloved Son", was pre-existent from eternity (2) Jesus was later born and lived a righteous human life (3) the Holy Spirit found him blameless and descended on him and brought him into a state of blessedness.
"The preexistent Holy Spirit, which created the whole creation, God caused to live in the flesh that he wished. This flesh, therefore, in which the Holy Spirit lived, served the Spirit well, living in holiness and purity, without defiling the Spirit in any way. So, because it had lived honorably and chastely, and had worked with the Spirit and had cooperated with it in everything, conducting itself with strength and bravery, he chose it as a partner with the Holy Spirit, for the conduct of this flesh pleased the Lord, because while possessing the Holy Spirit it was not defiled upon the earth. So he took the Son and the glorious angels as counselors, in order that this flesh also, having served the Spirit blamelessly, might have some place to live and not appear to have lost its reward of its service." (Shepherd of Hermas, Similitude 5.6.5-7)
This shows that even in early orthodoxy were possessionist views to be found and Christians of the Western churches drew on some of the same concepts as the gnostics in the Eastern churches. It was then a short step from belief in the indwelling of deity in Jesus to the idea that Jesus himself was Deity incarnate. The orthodox belief in the Deity of Christ, so prevalent in the Western churches, may also have something to do with the fact that Gentile converts had little background or motivation to view Jesus' Sonship in a Davidic Messianic sense but instead were influenced by the secular concept of the emperor as "Son of God" in a deified sense. At the same time, among Jewish Christians, the use of the term "Son of God" in the Tanakh to refer to angels probably contributed in another approach to Jesus' divinity: viewing Jesus as "a righteous angel," as Simon Peter in the Gospel of Thomas confesses him to be (GThom 13:3). The popularity of this notion in early Christianity is evident from the strenuous attempts in Hebrews 1 to refute it. An even earlier precursor to this belief was the idea, probably held by some when Jesus was alive, that he was Elijah who came back down from heaven to teach them (Matthew 16:14), in fulfillment of Malachi 3:23. In both cases Jesus was thought of as sent from heaven, not born of woman on earth. The Gospel of Thomas and later gnostic works also see Jesus as the Divine Revealer from the "kingdom of heaven" who invites his disciples to join him when he returns to his realm. There is a strong Jewish element in gnosticism and a number of scholars have pointed out that this concept (also found in later Jewish merkabah mysticism) lies in earlier Jewish apocalyptic and mystical works that relate the revelation of secrets by an angel (cf. Daniel 9:20-27, 3 Baruch, 3 Enoch, also cf. 3 Enoch 43:3 which also mentions the heavenly origin of the human soul and the ascent to heaven of the "saved"). A further influence is the idea of preexistent Wisdom or Logos, which as God's thought was the agent of Creation and special revelation to Israel (cf. Proverbs 8:22-31; Sirach 24:1-12; Wisdom 7:24-30; Philo, On Creation).
Paul, the more liberal of the apostles and most intimately involved with the Gentiles (who were more inclined to view "Son of God" as a divine rather than royal epithet), gradually leaned more and more towards asserting Jesus Christ's Deity. Paul's later declaration of the Son's Deity, preexistence, and Creatorship (cf. Philippians 2:6; Colossians 1:15-17, 2:9) had to be reconciled with Paul's acceptance of his humanity (cf. Romans 1:3, 9:5; Colossians 1:20), and so Paul's three-part christology in Philippians 2 introduces the kenotic doctrine that Jesus was God before his incarnation and he resumed his Deity following his resurrection, but during his earthly life he "emptied" himself of his divinity so that he was only man and not God. This idea is consistent with Paul's earlier teaching that Jesus received the Holy Spirit at his resurrection (instead of at some point during his life). John, on the other hand, has no kenotic concept of Jesus and merely says that the preexistent Word was "made flesh" and has him asserting both his Deity and his unworldly origin in his earthly ministry (cf. John 5:18, 6:42, 62, 7:28, 33; 8:23, 58), e.g. "I am from above ... I am not of this world" (8:23) and "I have come down from heaven" (6:42). This claim is made despite repeatedly mentioning Jesus' mother (John 2:3-5, 6:42, 19:25-27; see especially 6:42), and again mentioning Jesus' birth (John 18:37), but John 1:13 also says that Jesus was "born not out of human stock ... but of God himself," which leaves in rather vague territory the issue of Jesus' own human nature -- though John takes pains in 20:24-29 to refute the illusionist theory of docetism. Ignatius of Antioch, writing around A.D. 115-117 and exceedingly preoccupied with the illusionist docetism, clearly asserted both Jesus' humanity and Deity:
"There is only one physician, who is both flesh and spirit, born and unborn, God in man, both from Mary and from God" (IgEphesians 7:2)
"Jesus Christ ... was of the family of David, who was the son of Mary, who really was born, who both ate and drank, who really was persecuted under Pontius Pilate, who really was crucified and died" (IgTrallians 9:1)
Here there is no trace of either Ebionite, Pauline, or Hermas-type adoptionism, kenosis, or docetism. But Ignatius' push towards fully confessing Jesus as God skirted around another big problem: the monotheism of traditional Judaism. Ignatius' solution was a sort of primitive monarchistic modalism. This is the idea that the Christ and God are basically the same Person. Thus he writes: "Being as you are imitators of God, once you took on new life through the blood of God..." (IgEph 1:1). Ignatius furthermore became the first known person in Christian history to claim that Jesus raised himself from the dead instead of saying that God raised him: "He truly suffered just as he truly raised himself -- not, as certain unbelievers say, that he suffered in appearance only" (IgSmyrnaeans 2:1). Ignatius' modalist views would have been heretical only a century later.
Leolaia