Open Bibles—Open Minds

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/divergence/2020/09/19/open-bibles-open-minds/

by Darrell lackey

September 19, 2020

Something I found growing up in the fundamentalist-evangelical world, was that having a closed mind was almost championed as a good thing. The more one knew about Scripture and the less one knew about “secular” literature, science, movies, music, popular culture, and philosophy, the more “spiritual” one was considered to be. Ignorance of things outside the Bible was often worn as a badge of honor.

Looking back, I think, how very sad. Also, how very contrary to the Christian faith and narrative. An open Bible should lead to an open mind. An open Bible should lead to an ever expanding and growing realization that we know very little. As we learn about the deep things of God and creation, the more curious we should become. After all, creation/existence is a big thing. The moment we think we know all we need to know, about anything, we reveal a disturbing lack of curiosity and a fairly shallow mentality.

I’m amazed at the people who because of their supposed Bible knowledge, tell us they don’t need to really delve deeply into other areas like science, political science, philosophy, social science, or all the other areas of knowledge. Holding up their Bible, they boldly claim all they need to know is contained in its pages. They then to go on to pontificate about subjects they have very little knowledge of (admittedly, proudly), beyond popular opinion, sheer prejudice, or stereotypes. They become the guy at the end of the bar blathering on about his latest conspiracy theory, which he’s “researched” deeply on the internet. Got it.

They view experts and academics with suspicion; and also news stories that don’t confirm or support what they already believe (which explains many of the anti-maskers). They are sure the fact they have memorized large portions of Scripture qualifies them to summarily dismiss people who have spent much of their lives studying, writing, publishing, and speaking in areas where they are widely recognized as experts or scholars. But what are years of learning at the highest levels, recognized learning, when one can just memorize portions of the Bible or follow some guy on the internet?

I’m stating nothing new or novel. Historian Mark Noll pointed this out back in 1995 with his book, “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.” It was supposed to be a wake-up call and yet, here we are. It is 2020 and it may be worse than it was in 1995. We have supposed intelligent evangelicals calling widely recognized facts, “fake news.” Fake? No, it’s just news they don’t like—news that doesn’t support the world they’ve constructed in their closed universe. Or we have appeals to the “common sense” of conventional “wisdom,” in whatever area.

Here is a good example:

“Think about it. Why have Americans been able to do more to help people in need around the world than any other country in history? It’s because of free enterprise, freedom, ingenuity, entrepreneurism and wealth. A poor person never gave anyone a job. A poor person never gave anybody charity, not of any real volume. It’s just common sense to me.”

To the contrary, we read:

“Jesus looked up and saw the rich putting their gifts into the offering box, and he saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. And he said, ‘Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on.’” (Luke 21)

So much for, “common sense.” Falwell, Jr. probably believes because of his upbringing and history, that he knows the Bible well. But statements like his (and recent events?) prove the opposite. Somewhere along the line his supposed Bible “knowledge” became a closed room, a dead end, something much smaller than the wide expanse of creation and what creation can tell us. Or it became secular understandings with a religious veneer, but simply assumed to be true, even “biblical.”

Closed quarters, where all one can see is walls, and is familiar with everything in the room, leads to the illusion this is all there is, that we “know” it all. It becomes a very small world. And yet, a look out the window, if any still remain, reveals such not to be true at all. To wish to remain in ignorance, as even a virtue, is shameful. It’s certainly not the sign of a mature Christian.

Truly knowing the Bible, which really means knowing its author, should always lead to an open mind, a mind that recognizes how little it really knows. It should lead to a mind that realizes all of existence (including the poor) has something to teach us (Psalm 19). Further, such knowledge will often come from sources and places well outside our culture, ethnic group, religious tradition, education level, historical time frame, or familiar worldview.

In Daniel we read:

“As for these four youths, God gave them learning and skill in all literature and wisdom…” (Daniel 1:17)

Notice this is something God gave, and it was in “all” literature and wisdom, not just in what these young men were used to, already knew, or brought up with.

As Christians, we believe all truth is God’s truth. But not everything we believe, or think, or were taught, or interpreted, or heard somewhere once from our favorite preacher is true. Too often what we think is “common sense” is nonsense we just assume is true. A closed and uncurious mind is nothing to be proud of.

Open Bibles should lead to open minds, not the opposite.

Ghost Sightings of the Third Kind - Are They Real Or Unreal?

Even though its fun to write and talk about the paranormal (which I occasionally have done) there are many reasons why its a created fabrication dependent upon our physical surroundings. In Gettysburg last year as evening stole into the depths of the once torn Civil War town and outlying battlegrounds run red in sadness and despair, I witnessed long lines forming by the hundreds as tourists gathered together to go on ghostly walking tours. Yes it can be fun, and spooky, and eerie, and even educational, to consider the realm of the dead. But caution is always advised.

Now lest Christians think they are immune because of the residency of the Holy GHOST (Spirit) in their lives let us also consider that to the standard, run-of-the-mill, ghostly sightings should be included any "angel or demon sightings," conversations with "dead saints," the devil, or even "sightings" of God Himself beyond the spiritual sense of conviction, worship, praise or thanksgiving.

The ancient cultures of the bible believed no less in the supernatural than our contemporary cultures do today. This phenomena can also be found in literature both old and new lending itself to the idea that our physical being is remarkably created in such a way as to be sympathetic to, or to sense in a "sixth sense" sort of way, our surroundings - both in what we see and what we don't see but feel or sense.

The reality is, though the human body is like a cosmic tuning fork sensing the unseen, it is well to remember that we are also susceptible to manipulation by our physical surroundings through invisible chemicals in the air, ultrasonic sound waves, "waking states" of sleep, and powers of suggestion by ourselves or others. What we think is there is really not - however strong its urge. And despite similar encounters by other people experiencing similar "unrealities" they too are more probably influenced by the invisible affects of our surroundings without realizing it.

To be fair, I believe God understands how finely-balanced our bodies, minds, and spirits have become over the many years of its long evolutionary development. We see God work time-and-again with all sorts of afflicted people through their stories in the bible. Even with the saints throughout the history of the church (the biblical prophets come to mind). It doesn't mean that our "ghostly sense perceptions" are any more real by default - it simply means we have an amazing constitution that differs little with our more recent historical/biological past and that our Creator God is intimately acquainted with us.

As the Psalmist would say,

"He hears the cries of the afflicted and grants heaven's peace; He attends to those broken in soul comforting their hurts and drying their tears; to the weak, the destitute, the overwhelmed He comes by night to minister to the broken heart; God is the Great Healer of mind, body, soul, and spirit."

Of course science fictions movies have taken this idea of the supernatural sense within our beings to a whole new level of perception when portraying storylines that allow us to "transcend" our earthly bodies into the heavenlies (consider movies like Phenomena, Transcendent with Johnny Depp, or Morgan Freeman's series Down the Rabbit Hole). These are pseudo-fictional movies and documentaries expressing the possibility of greater "there-ness" found in our human makeup. Its fun to imagine, and possibly even true (everything and everyone is connected in some sense), but it can also function as an escape-mechanism by transferring all our hurts and needs into an imaginary realm where we might find a kind of "spiritual" healing rather than to deal with the realities of our suffering in a real world which has so deeply harmed our souls.

And though its fun to imagine and believe (I certainly like to think about these possibilities myself), for some, its an invitation to explore what usually amounts to a fearful state of black darkness descending into the realm of the imagined "spiritual" or "ghostly/demonic/angelic encounters". Like the "demonics" of the bible, these sad souls were physiologically under the influence of suggestion, disease, or abuse. But when encountered by our gracious Lord and Redeemer their souls were miraculously healed of the causes of their affliction, grief, or madness.

In short, this is my armchair discussion of some of the many physical factors which can influence the human psyche to believe something that really isn't there, never was there, and yet seems to be real and present. I apologize ahead of time for my skepticism of the supernatural. Even though I sometimes write about it in my stories and poems it is but an attempt to communicate to those caught up in this "other worldliness" thoughts and convictions that might heal deeply held wounds. As such, I would use this kind of literary medium for that intended purpose while exploring my own consciousness of the "other worldly."

Certainly my Pentecostal friends would think me a poorer sort of Christian than if I were to join their circles preaching dreams, interpretations of dreams, sightings of the supernatural, and so forth. And without discounting their experiences I do question many of them and would urge greater caution to be careful to what you listen too. Not all of it is of God but illusions brought on by our exhausted spirits worn by life, tragedy, sorrow, and hardship. And so, in another "sense", our great God comes to us knowing all our constitutional frailties. He comes to minister as we are, where we are, and even how we are. Thank you Jesus for your grace and mercy.

R.E. Slater

July 21, 2017

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The Science of Ghosts: What's Really Happening When Your Brain Detects a Ghoul?
http://bigthink.com/philip-perry/theres-no-such-thing-as-ghosts-instead-one-of-these-phenomena-is-at-play

by Philip Perry
July 18, 2017

Once, in middle school, a gang of boys and I were lured to a spot behind the Dunkin' Donuts in our town. We went after dark, to a place where a kid from school witnessed a paranormal experience. Once there, we saw nothing. We chided our classmate until suddenly, a column of white light appeared out of nowhere. We scattered.

It sustained itself for a few minutes. Then suddenly, it cut off. A few moments later, just as mysteriously, it went on again. We stayed there quietly studying it, scared out of our minds. Until someone in our group finally pointed out a streetlight overhead. The bulb was getting old. That was the last time I believed in ghosts.

Do you? If so, you’re in good company. 45% of Americans do. In one poll, 28% of them admitted they’d had contact with one, personally. Senior research fellow at the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry Joe Nickell is the world’s sole, full-time, scientific paranormal investigator. After five decades of research, he hasn’t turned up a shred of evidence that points to the existence of ghosts. Magicians Harry Houdini and James Randi arrived at a similar place.

It’s not for lack of trying. In a video for Vox, Nickell says he’s employed blood pattern analysis, linguistic analysis, aspects of psychology, and more. It isn’t just him. Not one haunting or ghost sighting has ever rendered any evidence.

One of the problems is, it’s hard to grab raw data. All we usually have is a personal account. And these vary widely. One person will interact with an actual human figure, while another will observe mere objects flying across the room. There are a few grainy, blurs in some photos. But it’s hard to extrapolate from that.

Photographic evidence such as this isn’t enough to go on. Getty Images.

Though electromagnetic field (EMF) meters have been made popular by movies like Ghostbusters and TV shows such as Paranormal Lockdown and Ghost Hunters, there’s no scientific proof of any link between supernatural phenomenon and the magnetic field. Despite a general lack of evidence, such experiences feel poignant and real.

In a recent TED talk, Carrie Poppy explains her brush with the paranormal, how it made her feel, and later on, what she came to realize about it. She’s the co-host of the popular podcast Oh No Ross and Carrie, which explores and demystifies spiritual, religious, and paranormal topics, among others, through a scientific lens.

At the time her ghost sighting occurred, she was alone in her house. Suddenly, she felt a presence. Poppy felt like she was being watched. The feeling grew and grew and as it did, a pressure began to build inside her chest. The feeling increased slowly over the course of a week and rose to a fever pitch. She started to hear whispering sounds and became convinced that her house was haunted. Poppy tried to do a cleansing by burning a sage stick and other things. But no matter what she tried, the pressure on her chest got worse. It was also growing painful.

Finally, she took to the internet and arrived on a ghost forum for skeptics. She told them what she was experiencing and one of them said she had the symptoms for carbon monoxide poisoning. These include pressure on the chest and auditory hallucinations. The utility worker who rectified the problem, told her that if she hadn’t of gotten it fixed when she did, she wouldn’t have been alive the next morning.

There are many scientific explanations for ghost sightings. Ghost. By: Jordi Carrasco. Flickr.

The process by which one experiences something that isn’t there is called misperceived self-representation. So what else might induce this, besides carbon monoxide poisoning, brain damage, or an episode related to mental illness? Well, several things actually. There is a condition called sleep paralysis for one, also known as waking dreams.

This affects around 8% of the population. It usually occurs in the twilight hours of the morning, when one is between a waking and dreaming state. You can’t move your body and sometimes experience visual hallucinations. Grief also tends to increase the chances of a ghostly encounter. Psychologists say it might be a way for the mind to process and deal with loss. Usually, the person they see is a comforting figure who appears serene.

Another ghost-inducing phenomenon is called infrasound. This is a vibration that occurs below our normal range of hearing. That’s below 20 hertz (Hz). Certain machinery (like engines), whales, and extreme weather can all cause infrasound.

Some studies suggest that it can result in symptoms including feelings of depression, the chills, and the sneaking suspicion that someone is watching you. According to Hayden Planetarium director and astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, infrasound at 18 Hz vibrates at such a rate that the eye can pick it up, which might cause visual hallucinations.

So if you or someone you know claims to have seen a ghost, believe them. But also, look for what evidence or phenomenon might be behind the sighting. You could end up finding a faulty lightbulb was the culprit all along.

David Congdon - No, The American Church is Not in Exile

No, The American Church is Not in Exile

https://sojo.net/articles/no-american-church-isn-t-exile

By David Congdon

April 19, 2017

In the wake of the Obergefell v. Hodges decision legalizing same-sex marriage, conservative Christian leaders sounded a dire word: Christians are no longer at home in the United States.

Rod Dreher, a senior editor at The American Conservative, wrote an article for TIME following the decision with the headline, “Orthodox Christians Must Now Learn To Live as Exiles in Our Own Country.” In his long-anticipated book, The Benedict Option, Dreher tells Christians to “embrace exile.” He alludes to the oft-used Jeremiah 29:7 in his conclusion when he says that “though in exile, we work for the peace of the city.” In a response to Jacob Lupfer, who penned an essay saying Dreher suffers from a “delusional persecution complex,” Dreher claims that Christians are “called by God to be faithfully present here in Babylon ... like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.”

In a similar vein, Russell Moore, the president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, published a response to the Supreme Court decision in the Washington Post that concluded by calling Christians to “joyfully march to Zion” as “strangers and exiles in American culture.”

Moore is drawing here on the language of Hebrews 11, which describes believers as “strangers and exiles on the earth” (Heb 11:13, ESV). The idea of the follower of God as an exile has deep roots in the faith, originating in Israel’s history of exile in Assyria and Babylon.

But instead of “exiles on the earth,” Moore writes “exiles in American culture.” And Dreher speaks of being “exiles in our own country.” Everything hangs on this change.

Christians today who adopt an exilic identity have

abandoned this dimension of Christianity.

Why Exile?

The idea of the church in exile is once again popular in American Christian circles. Missiologist Michael Frost wrote Exiles: Living Missionally in a Post-Christian Culture in 2006. In 2008, before his own exile from the evangelical community, Rob Bell coauthored Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile. New Testament professor James Thompson wrote The Church in Exile: God’s Counterculture in a Non-Christian World in 2011. And in 2015, Lee Beach of McMaster Divinity College published The Church in Exile: Living in Hope After Christendom.

Why the attraction to exile? For many of those in the missional church movement, exile language offers an alternative to the “culture war” rhetoric of the religious right. Instead of a church at war with surrounding culture, a church in exile presents a vision of God’s people living peacefully within foreign territory.

Seeking the welfare of a foreign city (Jeremiah 29:7) is certainly an improvement over waging constant battle against it. But what does the idea of exile imply about the church? And is it consistent with Christian faith?

Exile means that one is barred from one’s native land. The people of Israel, for instance, were prevented from living in the land promised to them by God. Followers of Jesus, however, have no native land. The Great Commission at the end of Matthew finds Jesus telling his followers to “make disciples of all nations” (Matt 28:19). In the Acts of the Apostles, Jesus tells them “you will be my witnesses ... to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

READ: Where Do You Find Church?

If the message of Christian faith is for all peoples and nations, then how can the New Testament writers speak of believers as exiles? The answer is that, for Christianity, the whole earth is a foreign land.

In the Gospel of John, Jesus prays: “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world” (John 17:14). If the world is a foreign land, then the church is by definition in exile. But so the adage: If everything is exile, nothing is exile. Because the whole world is alien territory, no culture has a privileged position in relationship to God. Every culture is equally close and equally distant from the new creation. For those who follow Jesus, every person is a neighbor and every place is a home.

Talking about the church in exile is redundant, unless there is a change in the definition.

Exile and Christendom

Notice the book titles mentioned above. They describe the church in exile within “a post-Christian culture,” “a non-Christian world,” and a society “after Christendom.”

To be sure, many of these authors would view the experience of exile as a good thing. They do not necessarily think “Christendom” was a golden age to which we ought to return — and yet the decision to define the church as exilic allows Christendom to set the terms for the conversation.

Speaking of the church in exile within American culture suggests there is some ideal culture — according to Dreher, “the Judeo-Christian culture of the West” — in which the church would not be in exile. Once we make that move, we have abandoned the early church’s insight that the church is exiled from every culture.

We end up pining for the Christendom of earlier history, when in fact the only true Christian world exists beyond the end of history.

But the problem goes deeper. Thinking of the church as exiled from a particular culture further implies the church has its own. Dreher compares the evangelical church to the monastic communities of St. Benedict, while Moore views the church as a new Israel marching to Zion. This idea of church as a specific culture has implications for mission. Moore makes this explicit when he calls American culture “our mission field."

Imperialism or Separatism — or Something Else?

There are only two options at this point: Either the church spreads its culture to others or it assimilates its own into distinct community. The former is the way of imperialism, while the latter is the way of separatism.

Israel’s mission is of the separatist variety, as defined especially by the book of Deuteronomy, whose message can be summarized as a warning to Israel to remain distinct from the other nations. The prophetic tradition interprets the Babylonian exile as God’s judgment on Israel’s failure to remain separate from other cultures.

Yet the overall message of the New Testament, especially the book of Acts, is that the church is not a separate community with its own culture. The power of Christianity is found in what scholars of mission call its capacity for contextualization, which means that the message of Christ can be translated into different languages, cultures, and contexts.

READ: Religious Freedom or Culture War? 

According to Lamin Sanneh, the Gambian missiologist and professor at Yale Divinity School, the Gospel comes “without a revealed language or a founding original culture,” and therefore “all cultural forms ... are in principle worthy of bearing the truth of Christianity.”

Christians today who adopt an exilic identity have abandoned this dimension of Christianity. They are giving up on the contextualization principle. For them, contemporary American culture is enemy territory, and the only recourse is to retreat into a separate cultural community.

Talking about the church in exile is redundant,

unless there is a change in the definition.

This does not mean, of course, that a church contextualized within the United States would uncritically affirm the culture. But it does mean we need to consider more thoughtfully what exactly constitutes the truth of Christianity and how this truth might relate to its given context.

Returning Home After Exile

The Barna Group’s “Faith That Lasts” project, conducted over five years between 2007 and 2011, revealed that nearly a quarter of 18- to 29-year-olds (23 percent) said that “Christians demonize everything outside of the church” was a statement that “completely” or “mostly” described their experience.

Christians have largely left behind the days when their faith was defined by prohibitions against drinking, dancing, and movies. But the exile mentality remains: Today, Christian culture may be more ideological than moral, the us-versus-them logic more pervasive and more subtle.

The church communicates an exilic message when it speaks about the need to evangelize “the West” as if this need is greater now than in the past, when it associates “the world” specifically with American culture, or when it waxes longingly about how much better things were “back then” or are “over there.”

READ: Christ, Not America, First

The church needs to abandon talk of exile, and reclaim the possibility of being at home. Home is the cultural context within which the church already exists. Reclaiming home does not mean uncritically adopting whatever seems fashionable at the time. It means approaching cultural changes and developments with an attitude of openness and hospitality, with a readiness to embrace rather than exclude. Reclaiming home means obeying the biblical injunction to live wholly without fear or anxiety.

Many Christians have already put down their weapons to fight the culture. It is time now to put down the walls of defense that keep them separated from the culture. Perhaps a future generation will yet say that “Christians love everything outside of the church.”

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David Congdon

David Congdon has a PhD in theology from Princeton Theological Seminary. He is the author of three books, including most recently The God Who Saves: A Dogmatic Sketch.

Is the Risen Christ Still Human? - How the Nicean Incarnation of Orthodox Christianity differs from Gnostic "Docetic Christianity"

Is the Son of God Still a Human Being?

A Meditation on the Incarnation

Part I

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/12/is-the-son-of-god-still-a-human-being-a-meditation-on-the-incarnation/

by Roger Olson

editorial comments by R.E. Slater [ ... ]

December 25, 2013

Comments

I don’t remember when it first occurred to me that the majority of American Christians seem to think the incarnation was temporary, a mere interim in the eternal existence of the Son of God, the Word, the Logos, the Second Person of the Trinity. Early in my career of teaching Christian theology to undergraduates (seventeen years at two Christian institutions of higher learning) I discovered that most of my students assumed that, to put it crassly, Jesus “dropped” his humanity at his ascension (if not before). Now, they believed, he is back in his purely spiritual existence with the Father and the Holy Spirit as he was before he was born in Bethlehem. Now, they believed, he is no longer a man, the man who died on the cross, but a super-spiritual, omnipresent, being who is not limited in any ways. After all, they argued, he lives in all Christians’ hearts, doesn’t he?

[Summary of Several Popular Opinions

• Was Jesus' Incarnation temporary?
• Was Jesus' Incarnation a letting go of His eternality for a short time?
• Conversely, at Jesus' ascension did He let go of His humanity to resume His place in the Godhead?
• Does Jesus exist as He once was with the Trinity? No longer a man but God?
• Is Jesus a super-spiritual, omnipresent being no longer limited by His previous humanity?]

When I probed students about this belief they gave many answers:

• First, was the one mentioned above. How can a human being live in all our hearts? (omnipresence)

• Second, “humanity” is sinful, so how can God be human? (sin)

• Third, after his resurrection he walked through walls, so he couldn’t have been human anymore.  (spirit)

• Fourth, if he’s still a man, how can he identify with women and how can women have fellowship with him? (sexism) (This last question was usually raised by women students, of course.)

This is just a sampling of the reasons students gave for believing that the incarnation was temporary and that the Son of God is no longer a particular man, a human being. And these reasons were expressed in many different ways, but most came down to a version of one of these.

At the same time, the same students tended to “eternalize” Jesus into the immanent Trinity. That is, they often referred to the pre-incarnate Son of God, if not God himself in general, as “Jesus.” The word “God” and the name “Jesus” were simply interchangeable in their talk about God. Somehow they managed to separate the name “Jesus” from the humanity of the Son of God and of Mary and apply it to divinity in general.

Well, we expect these confusions to appear among fifth graders in Sunday School. It’s common, garden variety Sunday School theology. But somewhere along the way, during my catechesis as a young evangelical, I shed these ideas and came to believe in the incarnation as an event in time (and in the life of God!) and as permanent.

I suspect, however, that somewhere along the way, during the 1960s through the 1990s and until now, most churches have abdicated their responsibility to teach Christian young people doctrine and theology. Over the years of teaching theology to Christian undergraduates I noticed a decline in their knowledge of basic Christian belief which is one reason I wrote The Mosaic of Christian Belief. I had students who grew up in pastors’ and missionaries’ homes declaring they had never heard of the bodily resurrection before and accusing me of introducing novel ideas when all I was doing was introducing them to basic Christian orthodoxy!

This is what I call the dominance of folk religion or folk theology in American Christianity. Eventually I wrote a whole book about it entitled Questions to All Your Answers: The Journey from Folk Religion to Examined Faith.

    

One item of folk religion is the belief among Christians that the incarnation was temporary—a mere interim and perhaps even a charade in the life of the Son of God, God’s Word, the Logos. For many evangelicals (and others, I suspect), the incarnation was simply the Son of God “putting on human skin” for thirty-some years in order to teach us how to please God and then to die for our sins. Either at the moment of his death, or at his resurrection, or at his ascension, he shed that human skin and returned to his glorious pre-incarnate existence as God’s purely spiritual Son in heaven who also, somehow, dwells in every Christian’s heart.

This is, of course, an informal form of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism. It is a docetic Christology. Most of the time I find that people who believe the incarnation was temporary don’t really believe in the incarnation at all! That is, they tend to think of Jesus’ humanity as an act, an outward performance, not a real human nature and existence like ours. To many Christians “Jesus” was Clark Kent to the Son of God’s super-human glory.

Why is this wrong? That is, why is it wrong to think the incarnation of the Son of God was temporary and that Jesus is no longer human (if he ever really was)?

First, it flies in the face of Scripture. 1 Timothy 2:5—”one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.” The tense is present. The Gospels clearly present the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ as human. He ate food. He had scars. And yet the angel told the disciples at his ascension that this same Jesus Christ would come back just as they saw him go. A glorified human, yes, but still human. And according to Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 we will be like him in that glorious state of resurrected humanity.

I fear that much American Christianity is very weak on the incarnation. We celebrate Jesus’ birth, but do we really understand what this event was? I doubt it. It was, according to Scripture, and the Great Tradition of Christian orthodoxy, God taking on our humanity forever. It was God adopting our lowly existence as his own in order to bridge the gap between himself and us [(as creature and created)]. It was the beginning of the dying of death, the conquering of sin and death, the union of God with creation. It was the “great exchange” in which, as the ancient church fathers put it, God became what we are so that we might become what he is (theosis)—that we might share in his divine nature (2 Peter 1:4) [and that he share our human nature].

This is classical Christianity. Sure, it includes mystery. The incarnation is, in some ways, the ultimate mystery. It raises many unanswerable questions—at least unanswerable for us now (e.g., What does Jesus eat now?). One is sometimes tempted to go Augustine’s route when skeptics raise these questions and insist on answers. To the Manicheans who asked what God was doing before he created the world the North African bishop said “He was creating hell for those who peer into his mysteries.”

Somehow American Christianity (and I suspect Christianity in many places) needs to rediscover the Bible and basic Christian orthodoxy. The great irony is that we fight a “war” over Christmas with secularists while neglecting our own Christian belief about the incarnation, allowing it to slowly fade away into a bland, overly spiritualized, modern Gnosticism.

- Roger

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Follow up Comments

Commentor 1 - The flesh and blood body of the Lord Jesus was resurrected from the grave. Now the Lord has a glorified body, the same as we will have one day after our physical body has been resurrected from the grave or simply transformed if the Lord returns prior to our passing away. I do believe that Jesus is the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The trinitarian doctrine is correct (as opposed to the oneness explanation of the Trinity), but the name above all names is Jesus, thus the name of the Father is also Lord Jesus. The name of the Son is not above the name of the Father. Jesus the Son is the image of the invisible God, therefore His name is the image of the name of the Father, or simply the same name. The oneness and the trinitarians would disagree with me for different reasons. Everyone should simply pray for revelation of truth.

Reply by Dr. Olson - When did "Jesus" become the name of God the Father and of the Holy Spirit? Why did Jesus not teach his disciples (and us) to pray "Our Jesus who art in heaven?"

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Commentor 2 - Jesus exists now as "glorified" "spiritual" body (that which Paul refers to), in "heavenly" space and time (localized in some fashion, but according to different or "finer" laws than we experience on earth), but as such "interpenetrates" with the grosser existence we (his church) are conditioned by in our present state, and in whose life as such we can all participate somehow through the agency of the Holy Spirit. Do I have things right?

Reply by Dr. Olson - Yes, "through the agency of the Holy Spirit" is the key. I don't know if you're aware of the debate between Lutherans and Reformed Protestants about the post-resurrection body of Jesus. I side with Calvin and the Reformed party here. Luther and Lutherans thought/think the glorified body of Jesus is ubiquitous. That seems to me to create problems for his ongoing humanity and for the Holy Spirit as playing a crucial role in bringing Jesus to us, in us and among us. The Holy Spirit can then be forgotten--which many Protestants have done. The one point distinctive theme of Calvin I strongly agree with is his doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

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Commenter 3 - Though this has always seemed clear to me, more probably its time to revisit all the gnosticisms of Christology by revisiting each of the church councils one-by-one to show the movement in theology from the early church into today's Lutheran-Reformed debate.

This topic would touch all the issues: the nature of the Trinity; the nature of sin in relation to Jesus; the nature of Jesus' divinity and humanity; the nature of His death, resurrection, and ascension; the nature of His ongoing ministry through the church; the nature of Jesus' Kingdom/NHNE rule; etc.

Once the classic arguments are laid out it would be interesting to compare it to the ongoing debates in Open Theism and Process Thought.

Good stuff. Thanks.

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Gnostic Flowchart 

(Orthodox Christianity follows the straight, vertical line)

Click on Image for a larger, clearer Image

Christological Flowchart

Click on Image for a larger, clearer Image

Christian Schisms and their Related Church Councils

Click on Image for a larger, clearer Image

Wikipedia - Docetism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Docetism

In Christian terminology, docetism (from the Greek δοκεῖν/δόκησις dokein (to seem) /dókēsis (apparition, phantom),[1][2] according to Norbert Brox, is defined narrowly as "the doctrine according to which the phenomenon of Christ, his historical and bodily existence, and thus above all the human form of Jesus, was altogether mere semblance without any true reality." [3][4] Broadly it is taken as the belief that Jesus only seemed to be human, and that his human form was an illusion. The word docetai (illusionists) referring to early groups who denied Jesus' humanity, first occurred in a letter by Bishop Serapion of Antioch (197-203),[5] who discovered the doctrine in the Gospel of Peter, during a pastoral visit to a Christian community using it in Rhosus, and later condemned it as a forgery.[6][7] It appears to have arisen over theological contentions concerning the meaning, figurative or literal, of a sentence from the Gospel of John: "the Word was made Flesh".[8]

Docetism was unequivocally rejected at the First Council of Nicaea in 325[9] and is regarded as heretical by the Catholic Church, Orthodox Church, and many others.[10]

Definitions

Docetism is broadly defined as any teaching that claims that Jesus' body was either absent or illusory.[11] The term ‘docetic’ should be used with caution, since its use is rather nebulous.[12][13] For Robert Price "docetism", together with "encratism", "Gnosticism", and "adoptionism" has been employed "far beyond what historically descriptive usage would allow".[14] Two varieties were widely known. In one version as in Marcionism - "Christ was so divine he could not have been human, since God lacked a material body, which therefore could not physically suffer. Jesus only appeared to be a flesh-and-blood man, his body was a phantasm." Other groups who were accused of Docetism held that - "Jesus was a man in the flesh, but Christ was a separate entity, who entered Jesus’s body in the form of a dove at his baptism, empowered him to perform miracles, and abandoned him on his death on the cross."[15]

Christology and theological implications

Docetism's origin within Christianity is obscure. Ernst Käsemann controversially defined the Christology of St John’s Gospel as “naïve docetism” in 1968.[16] The ensuing debate reached an impasse as awareness grew that the very term ‘docetism’ like ‘gnosticism’ was difficult to define within the religio-historical framework of the debate.[17] It has occasionally been argued that its origins were in heterodox Judaism or Oriental and Grecian philosophies.[18] The alleged connection with Jewish Christianity would have reflected Jewish Christian concerns with the inviolability of (Jewish) monotheism.[19][20] Docetic opinions seem to have circulated from very early times, 1 John 4:2 appearing explicitly to reject them.[21] Some 1st century Christian groups developed docetic interpretations partly as a way to make Christian teachings more acceptable to pagan ways of thinking of divinity.[18]

In his critique of the theology of Clement of Alexandria, Photius in his Myriobiblon held that Clement’s views reflected a quasi-docetic view of the nature of Christ, writing that Clement "He hallucinates that the Word was not incarnate but only seems to be." (ὀνειροπολεῖ καὶ μὴ σαρκωθῆναι τὸν λόγον ἀλλὰ δόξαι.) In Clement’s time some disputes contended over whether Christ assumed the ‘psychic’ flesh of mankind as heirs to Adam, or the ‘spiritual’ flesh of the resurrection.[22] Docetism largely died out during the first millennium AD.

The opponents against whom Ignatius of Antioch inveighs are often taken to be Monophysite docetists.[23] In his letter to the Smyrnaeans, 7:1, written around 110 C.E., he writes:

They abstain from the Eucharist and from prayer, because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father, of His goodness, raised up again. They who deny the gift of God are perishing in their disputes".

While these characteristics fit a Monophysite framework, a slight majority of scholars consider that Ignatius was waging a polemic on two distinct fronts, one Jewish, the other docetic, while a distinct minority holds that he is concerned with a group that commingled Judaism and docetism. Other possibilities are that he was merely opposed to Christians who lived Jewishly, or deny that docetism threatened the church, or that his critical remarks were directed at an Ebionite or Cerinthianpossessionist Christology, where God descended and took possession of Jesus' body. [24]

Islam and docetism

The Qur'an has a docetic or gnostic Christology, viewing Jesus as a divine illuminator rather than the redeemer (as he is viewed in Christianity).[9] Sura 4:157–158 reads:

And because of their saying: We slew the Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, Allah's messenger — they slew him not nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them; and lo! those who disagree concerning it are in doubt thereof; they have no knowledge thereof save pursuit of a conjecture; they slew him not for certain. But Allah took him up unto Himself. Allah was ever Mighty, Wise.[25]

The Qur'an was compiled in the mid-seventh century AD (around 650 CE), corresponding to the period when docetism was still commonly accepted and taught among some Christian sects.

Docetism and the Christ as Myth theory

Since Arthur Drews published his The Christ Myth (Die Christusmythe) in 1909, occasional connections have been drawn between the modern idea that Christ was a myth and docetist theories. Shailer Mathews called Drews' theory a "modern docetism".[26] Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare thought any connection to be based on a misunderstanding of docetism.[27] The idea recurred in Classicist Michael Grant's 1977 review of the evidence for Jesus, who compared modern scepticism about an historical Jesus to the ancient docetic idea that Jesus only seemed to come into the world "in the flesh". Modern theories did away with "seeming".[28]

Texts believed to include docetism

Non-canonical Christian texts: 

• Gospel of Phillip
• Second Treatise of the Great Seth
• Gnostic Apocalypse of Peter
• Gospel of Judas
• In the Contra epistulam fundamenti (Against the Fundamental Epistle), Augustine of Hippo makes reference to the Manichaeans believing that Jesus was Docetic. 
• Gospel of Peter
• Acts of John

Related Topics

• Christology
• Adoptionism
• Adoptivi
• Arianism
• Binitarianism
• Monophysitism
• Avatar
• Christian heresy
• Patripassianism
• Marcionism
• Eidolon (apparition)
• Islamic view of Jesus' death

Footnotes

1. Jump up^ González 2005, pp. 46–47:"A term derived from the Greek dokein, to seem, or to appear."
2. Jump up^ Strecker 2000, p. 438.
3. Jump up^ Brox 1984, p. 306.
4. Jump up^ Schneemelcher Maurer, p. 220.
5. Jump up^ Breidenbaugh 2008, pp. 179–181
6. Jump up^ Ehrman 2005, p. 16.
7. Jump up^ Foster 2009, p. 79.Serapion first approved its use, and only reversed his opinion on returning to his bishopric in Antioch, after being informed of its contents. He wrote a "Concerning the So-Called Gospel of St Peter" which is alluded to in Eusebius of Caesarea's Historia Ecclesiastica 6.12-3-6.
8. Jump up^ Smith & Wace 1877, pp. 867–870.
9. ^ Jump up to:^a b Ridgeon 2001, p. xv.
10. Jump up^ Arendzen 2012.
11. Jump up^ Gonzalez, Justo (2005). Essential Theologial Terms. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. pp. 46–47. ISBN 0-664-22810-0. "Docetism is the claim that Jesus did no thave a physical human body, but only the appearance of such."
12. Jump up^ Brox 1984, pp. 301–314.
13. Jump up^ Schneemelcher Maurer, p. 220:"N Brox has expressed himself emphatically against a widespread nebulous use of the term, and has sought an exact definition which links up with the original usage (e.g. in Clement of Alexandria). Docetism is ‘the doctrine according to which the phenomenon of Christ, his historical and bodily existence, and thus above all the human form of Jesus, was altogether mere semblance without any true reality.'
14. Jump up^ Price 2009.
15. Jump up^ Ehrman 2005, p. 16
16. Jump up^ Ehrman 1996, p. 197.
17. Jump up^ Larsen 2008, p. 347
18. ^ Jump up to:^a b Gavrilyuk 2004, p. 80.
19. Jump up^ Schneemelcher Maurer, p. 220
20. Jump up^ Brox 1984, p. 314.
21. Jump up^ González 2005, pp. 46–7
22. Jump up^ Ashwin-Siejkowski 2010, p. 95, n.2 citing Edwards 2002, p. 25.
23. Jump up^ Street 2011, p. 40.
24. Jump up^ Streett 2011, pp. 42–43.
25. Jump up^ Pickthall 2001, p. 86
26. Jump up^ Shailer 1917, p. 37.
27. Jump up^ Conybeare 1914, p. 104.
28. Jump up^ Grant 2004, pp. 199–200:"This skeptical way of thinking reached its culmination in the argument that Jesus as a human being never existed at all and is a myth. In ancient times, this extreme view was named the heresy of docetism (seeming) because it maintained that Jesus never came into the world "in the flesh", but only seemed to; (I John 4:2) and it was given some encouragement by Paul's lack of interest in his fleshly existence. Subsequently, from the eighteenth century onwards, there have been attempts to insist that Jesus did not even "seem" to exist, and that all tales of his appearance upon the earth were pure fiction. In particular, his story was compared to the pagan mythologies inventing fictitious dying and rising gods."

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Following Up My Last Post Regarding the Incarnation:

The Line between Orthodoxy and Speculation

Part II

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2013/12/following-up-my-last-post-regarding-the-incarnation-the-line-between-orthodoxy-and-speculation/

by Roger Olson

editorial comments by R.E. Slater [ ... ]

December 27, 2013

Comments

My latest post regarding the ongoing reality of the incarnation provoked many good questions about underlying assumptions, which, in turn, have led me to respond about the Reformation debates about Christology (which led to debates about the Lord’s Supper).

I want to make clear that I hope to draw a line, however indistinct it may seem at times, between “basic Christian orthodoxy” and “theological speculation.” This is one reason I wrote The Mosaic of Christian Belief - to pare Christian doctrine down to what ought to be considered “basic Christian belief”  (orthodoxy) while excluding from defending matters of orthodoxy that [seem orthodox but remain] speculative - however reverent they may [appear to] be.

I think this is one of the main tasks of Christian theologians–to identify what doctrines are basic to Christian faith and what interpretations of the Bible and doctrines are speculation without clear warrant in Scripture itself and the church’s historic belief about revelation.

Example 1

Here’s my illustration, that:

• "the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ is permanent" and,

• "the Son of God is still the human person Jesus Christ" (he did not “drop his humanity”),

is basic Christian belief." To deny it is to deny a basic tenet of Christian belief rooted firmly in Scripture and to open the door to Gnosticism.

HOW the continuing humanity of Jesus exists presently, whether and to what extent it is dependent on the Holy Spirit for power, etc., invites speculation.

Both the ancient Christians and the Reformers confused speculation with orthodoxy–leading to unnecessary divisions among Christians.

Both Luther and Zwingli (and later Calvin) were, in my opinion, faithful to basic Christian orthodoxy–including their Christologies. Both also, to some extent, went beyond what Scripture really warrants us to believe and confused their own interpretations of the finite and the infinite (e.g., whether the finite can “contain” the infinite) with orthodoxy. Luther especially was wrong to accuse Zwingli of being a heretic for denying the “real presence” of Christ “in, with, and under” the break and wine. The Reformed branch of Protestantism contributed to the division by returning the favor (at times).

The Church of England was right to permit different interpretations of this issue. (Here I’m speaking about Christology, not the Lord’s Supper.) What Christians ALL ought to believe is that the Son of God is still the human being Jesus Christ. Beyond that, whether one adopts the “finitus non capax infiniti” or the “finitus capax infiniti” is secondary and largely speculative.

Reverent speculation, labeled as such, is inevitable and there is nothing wrong with it. It becomes wrong when it is allowed to divide Christians over against each other so that they cannot even have fellowship because of it.

Example 2

Another example of speculation in Christian theology is the “order” of being within the immanent Trinity which leads into the “filoque” controversy between East and West. It’s all well and good for Christians to argue over whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father AND THE SON or whether the Holy Spirit only proceeds from the Father (and NOT “from the Son”), but it is impossible to prove either point of view from what has been revealed (unless you extend “revelation” into the later stages of Christian thought). This should not divide Christians.

What a disaster it was that in the Reformation Lutherans and Reformed could not get together. Martin Bucer was right; both sides should have listened more intently to him. (I’ll leave aside the name of Philipp of Hesse for now!) But, in the end, it was the Anabaptists who got it mostly right. (I speak here of Balthasar Hubmaier especially!)

- Roger

Wikipedia Summary to the Question:

According to Bishop Kallistos Ware, many Orthodox (whatever may be the doctrine and practice of the Eastern Orthodox Church itself) hold that, in broad outline, to say the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son amounts to the same thing as to say that the Spirit proceeds from the Father through the Son, a view accepted also by the Greeks who signed the act of union at the Council of Florence.[274] 

For others, such as Vasily Bolotov and his disciples, the Filioque can be considered a Western theologoumenon, a theological opinion (or speculation) of Church Fathers that falls short of being a dogma.[210][275] Sergei Bulgakov also stated: "There is no dogma of the relation of the Holy Spirit to the Son and therefore particular opinions on this subject are not heresies but merely dogmatic hypotheses, which have been transformed into heresies by the schismatic spirit that has established itself in the Church and that eagerly exploits all sorts of liturgical and even cultural differences."[212]

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Follow up Comments

Commentor 1 - Would it be fair to say that committing actual theological error will inevitably manifest in one's behavior such that it becomes un-Christlike, while engaging in the theological speculation you describe doesn't have to end badly? So many people seem to think that one has to think about things 'a certain way', and yet reality shows us that oftentimes, different people can come to the same end result through shockingly different paths. This isn't to say that there is no 'structure' or 'lawfulness' in the realm of thoughts, but that it has much greater variety than some would like to think.

It's almost as if people are afraid of losing control—even though we're supposed to be ok with this (e.g. John 3:8)—and thus want to exert control over not just actions, but thoughts as well. This insistence of control over thoughts seems like a direct rejection of Romans 14 and a refusal to judge a tree by its fruit and let the wheat grow up with the tares. It really seems like an insistence on the evil desire to control and dominate, hidden under the façade of 'right doctrine'.

Reply by Dr. Olson - Agreed.

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Commentor 1 - Dear Dr. Olson, I appreciate your two posts on the Incarnation and it has caused me to begin rereading the chapter on the Incarnation in your book entitled the Mosaic of Christian Belief. Thank you so much for keeping this retired business professor and Lutheran active mentally and spiritually. Your blog has been a real blessing to me. May God bless you and your family.

Reply by Dr. Olson - Thank you! Affirmations like yours (even from people who don't always agree with me) keep me going.