Here’s a class bent on teaching you how to not read the primary documents of the Christian faith for what they say, but for what the teacher wants them to say:
This is called “assuming the conclusion in the question”, much like “When did you stop beating your wife?” Precisely what the actual Christian tradition asserts and asserted from the very start is that, to the amazement of the people who actually knew him and came to believe in him, Jesus never “became God”. Rather they came to the shocking discovery that, (as one of them put it) “He was with God in the beginning” (John 1:2) and that, in assuming a human nature, it would be closer to the truth to say “God became Jesus”. All that happened in the formulation of the Creeds was that the Church worked out a more precise way to say, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14) and “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). From a Christian perspective, saying that Jesus “became God” is something analogous to saying “Isaac Newton invented gravity.” The Church discovered, not invented, the deity of Jesus. And even “discovered” is too strong of a word since Jesus himself had to rub their noses in it again and again. For a long time, the disciples acted like the dog who sniffs your finger when you point at something, as when Jesus multiplied loaves and fishes and the takeaway for them was “Free bread!” not “Jesus is the bread of life” or when he warned “Beware the leaven of the Pharisees” and they concluded “It’s because we have no bread.” Jesus didn’t reveal his deity in the Resurrection. He revealed it over and over throughout his ministry and it was only grasped in the Resurrection–and even then only in the consecration of the Eucharist. The disciples talked with the Risen Christ on the Emmaus road and still did not connect the dots. Only in the breaking of the bread were their eyes opened.
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