It was not until the Councils of Nicea decided upon the “official” version of Christianity that Jesus’ divinity became widely accepted. Many early Christian sects believed that he was a man, a divinely inspired and perhaps divinely conceived man, but a man, with the traditional needs and wants of a man. Why, then, would he not have married and produced children, as instructed by God (be fruitful and multiply)? There is nothing wrong with that, except in the minds of certain individuals who were and are more concerned with power and control than with faith. Heresy, I know. Whatever.
Sorry, Charlie. The earliest doubts were NOT about his divinity. They were about his humanity. The Gnostics fullly believed in his divinity. They just couldn’t see how the divine could really be human. The Docetists, ditto. Ditto for the Sabellians and Modalists. That covers the first 200 years.
Challenges to his divinity only emerged in the 200s (Adoptionism). Belief in his divinity was there from the start, among those who believed in his Resurrection. Of course most people didn’t believe in that—they thought he was just another Jewish prophet and they WEREN’T called Christians.
Anyone who was a Christian did believe in his divinity.
The view you describe was common among 19thc Liberals. They conveniently overlooked the fact that the earliest controversies AMONG CHRISTIANS had to do with challenges to his humanity.
Inconvenient truths.
Actually, early heretics were completely willing to accept Christ as completely divine, but they had a lot of trouble with the concept that He could be fully man as well. The divine was thought to be so above mankind that God would never condescend to be a man.
Variations of this gnostic heresy were the predominant alternative to orthodoxy until just before the first Council of Nicea. Then the Arian heresy with its claim that "there was a time when the Son was not" tilted away from the full divinity of Christ. That error was condemned in the Council, although it took quite some time for orthodoxy to completely triumph over Arianism.
It really makes no difference whether Jesus was married or not.
He’s still the Firstborn Son of God, and died on the cross as the perfect sacrifice for our sins................