Can you be a Christian and accept Bart Erhman's Book? A Controversial Yet Possible View Point

I think Erhman offers one possible view, but there is a secondary view I believe is more convincing (also adhered to by many Scholars) which I will endeavor to go through later. But for now I ask:

How can you be a Christian and believe in a developing Christology?

Erhman explains:

THE VIEW THAT THE earliest Christians understood Jesus to have become the Son of God at his resurrection is not revolutionary among scholars of the New Testament. One of the greatest scholars of the second half of the twentieth century was Raymond Brown, a Roman Catholic priest who spent a large chunk of his career teaching students at the (Protestant) Union Theological Seminary in New York City.  

Brown wrote books that were challenging and insightful for fellow biblical scholars and books that were accessible and enlightening for the layperson. 

Among his most famous contributions was a way of sketching the development of early Christian views of Jesus. Brown agreed with the view I have mapped out here: the earliest Christians held that God had exalted Jesus to a divine status at his resurrection. (This shows, among other things, that this is not simply a “skeptical” view or a “secular” view of early Christology; it is one held by believing scholars as well.) Brown pointed out that you can trace a kind of chronological development of this view through the Gospels. This oldest Christology of all may be found in the preliterary traditions in Paul and the book of Acts, but it is not the view presented in any of the Gospels. Instead, as we will see at greater length the oldest Gospel, Mark, seems to assume that it was at his baptism that Jesus became the Son of God; the next Gospels, Matthew and Luke, indicate that Jesus became the Son of God when he was born; and the last Gospel, John, presents Jesus as the Son of God from before creation. In Brown’s view this chronological sequencing of the Gospels may well indeed be how Christians developed their views. Originally, Jesus was thought to have been exalted only at the resurrection; as Christians thought more about the matter, they came to think that he must have been the Son of God during his entire ministry, so that he became the Son of God at its outset, at baptism; as they thought even more about it, they came to think he must have been the Son of God for his entire life, and so he was born of a virgin and in that sense was the (literal) Son of God; and as they thought about it more again, they came to think that he must have been the Son of God even before he came into the world, and so they said he was a preexistent divine being. 

The problem with this chronological sequencing of the Gospels is that it does not reflect the actual chronological development of early Christian views of Jesus. That is to say, even though it is true that these are the views as they develop through the Gospels (from the earliest to the latest), some Christians were saying that Jesus was a preexistent being (a “later” view) EVEN BEFORE Paul began to write in the 50s—WELL BEFORE our earliest Gospel was written. The reality is—and Brown would not have disagreed with this—views of Jesus did not develop along a straight line in every part of early Christianity and at the same rate. Different Christians in different churches in different regions had different views of Jesus, almost from the get-go. Bart D. Ehrman. HOW JESUS BECAME GOD: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee, Kindle Edition (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 2014.) pp. 201-202

As you can see, Erhman rather explicitly renounces his previous belief of a kind of chronological order of evolutionary christology. Erhman being a scholar had to concede this point, because there is no evidence for these types of assumptions, in other words there is no "snow ball evolving Christology" as Muslims like Shabir Ally have argued in the past.

One implication Erhman makes is completely correct. Christians from different regions did not have an entirely complete christology, they did not have access to the entire New Testament or all the apostles, most only seemed to possess one gospel or perhaps a few epistles. This means it is through stewardship and God's guidance that the canon, hymns, creeds and other traditions came to be collected. Wisdom and knowledge increased from the Holy Spirit and a multitude of pastoral and missionary work and contact with other churches.

The writings were eventually circulating and assimilated. The early picture and understanding of Christ became more complete and clearer with the integration of the epistles and early canons, and appointed prophets, teachers and so forth. What we then see from the beginning (as Erhman highlights) is that all of these views were taught. To argue that these views were so different as to be incompatible is an argument from silence, and ignores the clear indication that these views were integrated and not exclusive (to be expounded upon in a future post, remember: Bart Erhman often equates what he feels are incompatible or mutually exclusive theologies with others from the past which would be anachronistic). There is no contradiction between any of these views, but rather only an expansion of individual knowledge and intellectual ascent.

(Watch Out For An Upcoming Critique of Erhman's Work I Am Going To Post, Since There Is Another Similar Yet Different Scholarly Position That Seems More Convincing)