Christianity teaches God became man. Yes He became 100% human. That is the teaching of Christianity. The Bible teaches Jesus was God and creator before He was ever a man. So what you are saying sounds very strange to me like some very different religion.
Docetism is certainly not this completely Christian teaching that Jesus the creator and not a human being became a human being. Docetism is not this belief in the incarnation of God. And anyway it isn’t Christian belief that human beings are just a material body and nothing else so that when Jesus was spoke of Himself in John 14 then He was just speaking of his body because that is all He was and nothing else.
You seem to be saying John 14 means nobody gets to the Father except by the sacrifice of the Son. And while I believe the Christian teaching that Jesus gave His life for the salvation of all. I don’t agree that in John 14, Jesus was speaking of His body – it is not what the text says. If you want to understand the passage that way then fine. But I don’t have to agree with you, and making this nonsensical accusation of Docetism if I don’t agree is downright abusive.
Docetism is not only different from what you are saying but the complete opposite. Docetism says the body of Jesus wasn’t a human body but something Godly. The Christian teaching is that the body of Jesus was not God but completely human and thus no different that the body of any of us – just material, dust of the earth. What you say sounds more like Docetism to me… though frankly it is so full of contradictions it is hard to make sense of any of it.
Indirectly by saying everyone is saved… eventually.
But frankly the more fundamental flaw in the idea of being saved by knowledge of Jesus is that this is Gnostic rather than Christian.
I frankly think this is one of the distortions which comes from changing Christianity into a tool of power. Pushing people to convert to your ideology by making it a condition of salvation. Such inserted legalisms are at the heart of abusing religion to control people.
Saying that Jesus is God is Christianity not Docetism.
My body is matter, dust the Bible calls it. The body, this dust is not the sum total of me – it is not me at all. Likewise the body of Jesus was dust, because that is what human bodies are. That dust was not Jesus any more than this dust is me. It is Paul who says in 1 Corinthians 15, the resurrected Jesus is not a physical body but a spiritual body, not dust of the earth but something of heaven.
44 It is sown a physical body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual which is first but the physical, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so are those who are of the dust; and as is the man of heaven, so are those who are of heaven.
The resurrected Jesus is not dust. Paul says it right there in the text.
> How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”
Nope – you stripped away Jesus’ humanity.
No, he doesn’t. Jesus had a spiritual body after the Resurrection, and it was physical. From that same chapter:
But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead
“Raised from the dead” meant a physical body – it had no other meaning.
But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?”
You quote Romans 10 out of context. It begins with a clarification distinguishing faith from legalism. Faith means trusting in God and not in some set of rules by which you think YOU can judge who is saved and who is damned. Doing that is the opposite of faith for you are putting your trust in yourself and your own power/knowledge rather than God. Salvation no more depends on the preacher than it depends on your own power. The point of Romans 10 is that the preacher is NOT the gatekeeper of heaven but only a tool which God can use to call people to faith. Thus it is immediately followed by looking at Israel who have the word preached to them already and it does avail because they put their faith in the wrong things, power and knowledge rather than God.
Did not. Repeating a lie does not make it the truth.
Jesus is 100% man and 100% God, proving there is no contradiction. They are compatible categories. Thus saying Jesus is God is NOT saying that Jesus is not man. But while they are compatible categories they are not the same. Being 100% man does not mean being 100% God, and being 100% God does not mean being 100% man. It is only God who is without limitation and thus can set aside power and knowledge to become 100% man without ceasing to be God, because God is not limited to having all power and knowledge. He can set these aside at will, and He does so frequently to choose love and freedom as the greater values He wants to pursue.
The confusion comes from there being two meanings of the word “physical.” One meaning is bodily as in “physical exercise.” The other meaning is natural as in “physical law.” Thus Paul teaches that the resurrection is only physical according the meaning of bodily and not according to the meaning of natural. Paul is quite clear in 1 Corinthians 15. The resurrection is a physical/bodily resurrection but to a spiritual body and not to a physical/natural body. The spiritual body has the greater power and glory of the spiritual from heaven without the weakness of the physical/natural body from the dust of the earth and bound to the laws of nature.
Obviously incorrect, the word “physical” has two very different meanings. You may choose to disagree with Paul but I choose to agree with him.
Exactly! Jesus resurrected body was a spiritual/supernatural body just as Paul explained. It doesn’t change the fact that He had a physical/natural body of dust while He lived among us. And He remains 100% human because this is exactly the same for us. We are resurrected to a spiritual/supernatural body also. This is not Docetism. It is the Christianity taught by the apostle Paul.
I’m not sure why you think you need help. You seem to me to hold your own quite well. But I’ll just say this - to both you and @St.Roymond, (even though I haven’t read the entirety of all your exchanges with each other here) - it seems from what I’ve seen that both of you are eager to prove to the other that you are not docetists. Once a person denies a label for themselves, it seems to me that one can pretty safely stop thinking they are. Or if you think some position they’ve taken somehow proves that they are indeed what they claim not to be - then you’d better be able to very specifically point out that one thing to the other and why you think it is inconsistent for them to hold to that then. And probably both of you will claim you’ve already been doing that. But I find it easier just to take somebody at face value that if they are this or aren’t that … then I’ll take them at their word and go from there. Saves you from a lot of unnecessary acrimony and from situations where any “winning” of an argument is nothing more than a Pyrrhic victory for you because you’ve already lost the other person to yourself - making whatever you think irrelevant to them no matter how right or true your case may be.
As to the specifics of what transformed creation will look like and what our resurrected bodies will be like, I struggle to understand all that myself. So I’m certainly not going to spend any social capital getting dogmatic about this or that which I don’t even understand for myself in the first place. I’ll be content to dwell back with simple hope and trust that it will be good - and try to live faithfully here and now already.
Depending on the Christian perhaps they are just being neighborly or looking to set a precedent for the kind of respect they’d like to receive for their own group and its traditions. Sometimes if you want to find something in your world you have to put it there or at least nurture it.
By all means, attend a couple of UU meetings and let me know how many Christians who believe in the physical resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ show up.
I met a Bahai once, elsewhere, who “outgrew” his church-attending phase, calling himself pretty much an ex-Christian who affirmed Jesus “metaphorical” resurrection and ascension but, but balked at the idea of a physical resurrection and ascension.
I’m unchurched and neighborly, but it’ll be cold days in July before I go to UU meetings on a regular basis, just to be neighborly or worry about setting a precedent for the respect I think churches should get.
Sorry… his accusation caught me by surprise, it was so bizarre. It seems that he must be unitarian (or some other non-trinitarian idea) and justifies it by equating trinitarian doctrine with Docetism. I wasn’t expecting such a challenge to basic Christian teaching from him.
I get a message saying I don’t have permission to access that page when I follow the link. Do you know how someone outside the organization might gain access?
Maybe no need. Found the website and this minimal explanation:
Minimal Statement on Religious Naturalism
Religious Naturalism is a spiritual and philosophical orientation arising from profound responses to the wonder and mystery of Nature and its emergent manifestations in human creativity and culture. Its views of Nature are embodied in the Epic of Evolution and informed by scientific inquiry, without reference to supernatural explanations. It emphasizes reverence and gratitude for Nature and a deep regard for all life; it recognizes the imperative of planetary sustainability. It supports efforts that honor ecological and cultural diversity, that promote social justice and free inquiry, and that create a more compassionate, rational world where humans and non-humans alike can thrive.
I’d sign off on all that with the proviso that I don’t assume that what has given rise to nature must reveal itself through rational considerations alone. That sort of restriction makes more sense for empirical inquiry and while I consider the sacred to be natural it is by way of an expanded understanding of “natural”, not an insistence that it be entirely material.
Brian Godawa’s Psalm 82 is a good intro to Heiser’s view of the divine council. Christmas hymns were never the same for me after understanding it… “Let earth receive her King”
If someone forwarded this to you and you’d like to join the RNUU GoogleGroup, go here: https://groups.google.com/u/3/g/rnuu, then click the “Ask to Join” button.
For any other questions, feel free to email me directly at vandermude@acm.org
To live by universalism requires tearing pieces out of the Bible.
But people love it because you can live any way you want without any repercussions, in fact most unsaved people I would suggest hold this view, based on funerals I have attended.
It seems that way to me also… particularly pieces consisting of the words of Jesus Himself.
No. I don’t think so. People prefer it because of they are mindful of people they love and they have been taught this absurd legalism that salvation depends on believing a set of dogma. But while that makes religion rather useful as a tool of power, it doesn’t make make much sense ethically. It frankly sounds like purchasing indulgences with your ideological loyalty – very cheap at the price (just your integrity).
So you are claiming that you judge who is saved and who is not.
Romans10:5 Moses writes that the man who practices the righteousness which is based on the law shall live by it. 6 But the righteousness based on faith says, Do not say in your heart, “Who will ascend into heaven?” (that is, to bring Christ down) 7 or “Who will descend into the abyss?” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead).
To claim such judgement is a sign of legalism rather than faith.
