Jesus Made God at Nicaea?

This at least appears the claim of Richard E. Rubenstein, professor at George Mason University and author of several books dealing with the Church and philosophy. I read his book Aristotle's Children this past December, and I found it to be an informative read; I have yet to read his book When Jesus Became God. I do want to read it, however, especially in light of what I have found in my own studies. The fact is: besides Scripture, there are several Church Fathers (even ones that become associated with heterodox movements) that identified Jesus as God. Not simply "like" God but God.

Judging from the reviews of Rubenstein's book on Jesus (which may or may not be entirely accurate) Rubenstein identifies the Arian Christians as those who did not believe Jesus to be God (in opposition to the supporters of Athanasius, who believed Jesus is God). This is a gross over-simplification and even misleading. The Arian Christians did not deny Christ's divinity. They too would say that Jesus is God. The debate between the Arians and those who later would be called Nicene Christians was not over the question of whether or not Jesus was divine, but how to articulate this divinity. Arius, desiring to maintain the Father's place, held that the Son was begotten by the Father but in such a way that he was "created" before all ages. The Son was still first of all creation and indeed was created before time and ranked above all creation. The Son, in short, is still God, just not, as the Nicenes would define, homoousios, or partaking in the same divine substance as the Father. The debate, as I understand it, mostly concerned the relationship of the Son with the Father. It was the Nicenes (and not the Arians) who pinned on the Arians the belief that Jesus is not God, for from the Nicene standpoint, the Arians, by their faulty theology, actually did not believe Jesus is God. In the eyes of the Nicenes, as mouth-pieced by Alexander of Alexandria and later by his successor, Athanasius, the Arians simply reduced Jesus to the level of a creature; perhaps the greatest creature, but a creature nonetheless.

In any case, I'm interested if Rubenstein makes any note of the heresy of Artemon. Who? Yes, Artemon. Eusebius of Caesarea, our only major chronicler of the early Church and a reluctant acceptant of the Council of Nicaea (he tended towards Arius) describes this heresy in some detail. He defines the errors of this heresy: asserting that the Saviour is merely human, merely a man. Interestingly, Eusebius' discussion touches on the very suggestion that I believe Rubenstein probably makes in his book: that the early Christians saw Jesus as man (perhaps a super-man) but not as God. This, according to Eusebius, was the heresy of this group (who claimed the same), but Eusebius mentions (as modern-day apologists do) that Christian writers going back to the time of the Apostles are to be found speaking of Christ as God--included in Eusebius' referenced list are Justin, Militiades, Tatian, Irenaeus, and Clement, among others, all of which write of Jesus as both God and man. For more information, see chapter 28 of Book 5 of Eusebius' History of the Church.

I'm not a Patristics scholar, but it should seem to me that, rather than argue belief in Jesus is God as a gradual development that did not exist in the early Church, it would be more reasonable to take a "multi-strand" approach--as several scholars already have taken regarding the Gnostic Christian question; the notion that a Low Christology of Adoptionism worked alongside a higher Christology that marked the subliminal divine nature of the Son. But whatever the case, the evidence as I've seen it suggests that believe that Jesus is God has early roots, can be traced to the Apostolic Fathers, and should in no way be seen as an innovation in the early 4th century. Now: Jesus is "one in substance" with the Father. This I can better understand as an "innovation," although I do not agree that the truth behind the definition is an innovation. I look forward to reading Rubenstein's book, once I have the time (after I finish my job this year).