Jesus taught from Psalm 82 that since many gods exist whom Scripture calls sons of God, he too can rightly be among them, since he more than any is a Son of God. Paul warned his disciples about ideas falsely called knowledge which, when followed, would cause people to wander from the truth. It later became a strong idea, called knowledge, that no gods actually existed or could rightly be called a god but that only YHWH existed. Many followed this idea. This caused a huge moving of believers away from the Psalm 82 teaching of Jesus and provoked theologies such as Trinity, Modalism, and later Islam. They all start with an idea that YHWH is the only God to actually exist. It can justifiably be regarded as a false idea because Psalm 82 and Jesus Christ, and probably most adherents of Second Temple Judaism who were contemporaries of Jesus, like those addressed about Psalm 82 by Jesus, all believed originally that there are sons of God who are all called Elohim, among which Jesus regarded himself as one of these.
So, Jesus invoked or highlighted an existing belief articulated in the 82nd Psalm and acknowledged by his audience, if they adhered to the Psalm articulation, that a category of god exists which is a son of God among many sons of God, and yet is mortal. He put himself in this category. He was not asking to be understood as escalating to a degree which could be considered blasphemy. All those in Psalm 82 called gods are also like himself set apart by God as judges over normal humans. So on that solid basis Jesus was indeed putting himself within that category. At most he was maybe alluding to be at the top of that category but still lower than the Most High, as these Elohim were.
Psalm 82 reads in full: “God standeth in the congregation of the mighty; he judgeth among the gods. How long will ye judge unjustly, and accept the persons of the wicked? Selah. Defend the poor and fatherless: do justice to the afflicted and needy. Deliver the poor and needy: rid them out of the hand of the wicked. They know not, neither will they understand; they walk on in darkness: all the foundations of the earth are out of course. I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes. Arise, O God, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations.” Here is plainly a category of beings called gods, sons of the Most High, appointed to judge, yet declared mortal. Jesus explicitly appealed to this passage in John 10:34–36: “Jesus answered them, Is it not written in your law, I said, Ye are gods? If he called them gods, unto whom the word of God came, and the scripture cannot be broken; Say ye of him, whom the Father hath sanctified, and sent into the world, Thou blasphemest; because I said, I am the Son of God?” His reasoning depends on the acknowledged existence in Scripture of this category. He places himself within it as one sanctified and sent.
Arguably post-Temple rabbinical developments as found eventually in Talmudic Judaism very much downplayed this category Jesus was invoking. Arguably later Rabbis post-Temple downplayed this category or even denied it by making any claims to membership of it into an example of heresy. Hence a Roman Emperor claiming divinity in line with this category might by these Rabbis be called heretical. On one hand it is possible the Christians of post-Temple times did exalt Jesus above the Psalm 82 category. So on one hand Rabbis may have tried to move away from anything except the Most High being called divinity, downplaying Psalm 82 divinity. On the other hand the Christians did not want Jesus to be seen as in that Psalm 82 category but higher than it, and they too downplayed this category but for the opposite reason. Thus later developments all variously built on a lack of Psalm 82 understanding, creating Talmud, Modes, Trinity, and Islam, but each in a different way going away from Jesus’ teaching and application of Psalm 82 divinity to himself.
Slightly more precisely stated, rabbinic post-Temple discourse, anxious to guard divine uniqueness after the catastrophe of 70 CE, tended to reassign Psalm 82’s “gods” to human judges or to metaphorical status and to treat any claim that risks dividing divine sovereignty as suspect; many strands of developing Christian theology, propelled by resurrection faith and liturgical worship, initially accelerated Jesus’ elevation to a uniquely worshiped Lord, but later he was apparently elevated by many Christians above that Psalm 82 category into a divinity category Jesus had tried to avoid; and then Islam later crystalized an emphatic unilateral rejection of any divine sonship, insisting on a strict tawḥīd that disavows Son language in ontological terms. I propose the later developments did indeed in several ways such as this, lose sight of the nuances of the teachings of Jesus.
I propose there is room for reexamining and returning to the actual teachings of Jesus, and indeed Paul. It is even possible to build better arguments on these teachings to counter the problems the later developments were seeking to solve. Paul invokes the same teaching as Psalm 82 but emphasises Jesus being uniquely Lord, while Elyon is uniquely God in an absolute pinnacle Fatherly divine sense. For Paul, this position of Jesus is what we mean by Christ. He died in mortality, raised by God. Losing this causes all kinds of issues, variously debated over centuries.
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 8:5–6: “For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, (as there be gods many, and lords many,) But to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him.” Here Paul acknowledges that there are “gods many, and lords many,” yet he distinguishes uniquely between one God, the Father, and one Lord, Jesus Christ. This preserves the category Psalm 82 reflects, while assigning to Jesus a unique Lordship under the one God. He also warns in 1 Timothy 6:20–21, “O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: Which some professing have erred concerning the faith.” An idea that denies outright any real category of divine sons or gods may be seen as precisely such an overcorrection, losing the scriptural nuance.
The writer of Hebrews pinned it down. Jesus was one among brethren but exalted above the others by an anointing of joy in being raised from the dead by Elyon. He explains, too, how Jesus is both like angels and above them, insomuch as they too are Elohim. Having been an Elohim of mortal category and lower than them, who have never been mortal, he is elevated above them in resurrection, but still not Elyon.
Hebrews 1:4–9 says: “Being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. For unto which of the angels said he at any time, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee? And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son? … But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever: a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.” The phrase “above thy fellows” implies a category of peers among whom he is exalted. Hebrews 2:7–9 continues: “Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands… But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man.” He was lower than angels, mortal, suffering death; then crowned with glory and honour by God. He is among brethren, yet exalted.
In this way, Psalm 82, Jesus’ own argument in John 10, Paul’s distinction between one God and one Lord, and Hebrews’ exposition of exaltation together form a coherent pattern. Jesus placed himself within the Psalm 82 category of sons of the Most High who are called gods yet are mortal. He did not claim to be Elyon. He suffered mortality and died. God raised him and anointed him above his fellows. Paul calls this exalted position “Lord” and identifies it as the meaning of Christ. The Father remains uniquely God in the absolute pinnacle sense. Losing this layered understanding—whether by collapsing all divinity into one solitary category with no subordinate sons, or by elevating Jesus beyond the mortal-then-exalted framework he himself invoked—has generated centuries of theological tension. Recovering it may offer a way to return to the actual teachings of Jesus and Paul, and to address, on their own terms, the concerns that later developments attempted to resolve.
