Faith & Spirit Quote by Eric Butterworth

Butterworth’s line flips a central Christian claim like a prism: same figure, radically different physics. “God becoming man” is the classic doctrine of incarnation, a top-down miracle that secures authority and boundary. By contrast, “man becoming God” is an elevator pitch for New Thought metaphysics: divinity as latent potential, spirituality as self-realization, salvation as an inner technology rather than an external rescue.

The intent is reformist but also tactical. Butterworth isn’t merely disagreeing with fundamentalists; he’s relocating the axis of power. If Jesus is primarily God in disguise, then the point is worship, obedience, and correct belief. If Jesus is primarily a man who becomes God, then the point is imitation: Jesus as prototype, not exception. The subtext is democratizing and provocative at once: if one man can “become God,” then the sacred is not locked behind clergy, creed, or canon. It’s accessible, and that access implies responsibility.

It also contains a quiet critique of literalism. Butterworth frames “fundamentalists” as people committed to metaphysical certainty, while he positions himself as someone reading the Jesus story as a psychological and spiritual map. That’s why the second clause is so lean; it’s not arguing history, it’s arguing meaning.

Context matters: Butterworth wrote and taught in a 20th-century American religious landscape where mainline Christianity, rising evangelicalism, and metaphysical self-help were colliding. His formulation anticipates today’s “spiritual but not religious” instinct: keep the figure of Jesus, discard the gatekeeping, and turn theology into a practice of becoming.