From the historical Jesus to Jesus deified. Discourse strategies of temporalization and aspectualization in the Letters of Paul, the Gospels and Acts

Analysis of the Letters of Paul, the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles – all sources that present a Jesus who is already deified but also contain traces of the historical Jesus – reveals apparently contradictory aspectualizations. Some sayings place the coming of the Kingdom of God in an immediate future, others in an indefinite future, while yet others locate it mysteriously in the present. Similarly, there are various indications of when Jesus became the Son of God: according to some texts he is chosen by the Father at the moment of the Resurrection; according to others when he is baptized; or he is sent to Earth by the Father by means of the virgin birth; while later sources regard him as the Son of God from the beginning of time (the “eternal Son”). The overall impression is that of an aspectualization that disproportionately extends the inchoative phase (Jesus is God from the beginning of time) and the terminative phase (Jesus will return at the end of time and will reign in God’s eternal kingdom). Other inchoative and terminative hypotheses remain as traces within the temporal perspective of eternity, which ultimately identifies Jesus as divine.