DOCETISM in the NEW TESTAMENT

Many New Testament commentators from earlier generations tended to see proto-Gnosticism lurking in every little town in Asia Minor and hence engaged too often in “mirror reading”. Mirror reading is when we think we know the background problem(s) in a given situation in one of the New Testament churches and subsequently see many of the statements in the Epistle to that church as having directly to do with said situation(s). Hence, many have been all too quick to label the heresy at Colossae as Gnosticism when in all likelihood it appears to be more of a yet unknown form of local syncretism.

One basic issue with seeing Gnostisim in the background of the New Testament Epistles is that Gnosticism as a movement proper within the church must be dated much later than most of the New Testament epistles. The very knowledgeable Edwin Yamauchi concluded his extensive analysis of the pre-Christian Gnosticism theory with this sentence: “In the case of the New Testament texts we have no Gnostic texts which are older, and the evidences which have been adduced to prove the priority of Gnosticism over Christianity have been weighed in this study and found wanting”. From my limited studies on this, I – despite the cacophony of cries coming from certain community college critics - wholeheartedly agree.

With this fact in mind, it appears that an early form of Gnosticism (sometimes called proto-gnosticim or incipient Gnosticism) truly was at work in some of the churches toward the close of the first century. This means that John the Beloved was the only New Testament author to actually address this issue head on; it is almost certain this is part of what he is doing in his Gospel account and especially in his three Epistles.

Harvard Professor Helmut Koester - even though his views on the Gospel of John are quite nuanced and complicated - does point out that that even the Gospel of John runs rife with “anti-Gnostic Christology” and that “John’s ‘the Word became flesh’ (1:14) is pointedly anti-docetic”. Koester does not think Ignatius – who dealt with a more rampant version of Docetism in his seven letters - was aware of the fourth gospel. Nonetheless, Koester still cannot help but take note of the similar theological language between the Gospel of John and the writings of Ignatius. A great example can be seen by comparing John 3:6-8 and Ignatius’ Philadelphians 7.1. Koester speculates that the similarity was derived from “a traditional theological maxim” … “perhaps deriving from a liturgical context”.

However, I would like the reader to consider the following: John’s Gospel originated from Ephesus and Ignatius was the bishop of Antioch – both cities were in Asia Minor. Moreover, the earliest copy of John’s Gospel is P52, which dates from approximately125 AD and was discovered in Egypt. If John’s Gospel was composed between 90-100 AD, it is significant that a copy had already made its way to North Africa within such a short time frame.

Granted, Ignatius was writing circa 107 AD but given the closer geographical proximity, it seems reasonable to propose that Ignatius was at least aware of some of the contents of John’s Gospel. If he was not, though, that fact would only seem to strengthen the case for an early orthodox Christology because we can see Ignatius basically making the same kind of statements about the hypostatic union that John made in his work.

In short, if Ignatius was not familiar with John’s gospel, it is all the more striking he was so clear and strident in his condemnation of the Docetic heresy which John apparently had already dealt with in his corpus. Although I am arguing here from the standpoint of John the Beloved being the author of the fourth Gospel, the argument still works if one holds to a Johnannine communal authorship or some variation thereof.

Further, it is possible the sort of “eucharistic hyper-realism” in John 6:51-58 may have been purposefully anti-docetic. If not, there is no question that John 19:34, with its specific mention of “blood and water” flowing from Jesus’ chest wound, lets the reader know in no uncertain terms that Jesus was truly human – and truly dead.

On a side note, we should keep in mind that polemical pericopes should not dull our senses to the often larger and grander aims of early Christian authors. For example, some scholars from generations past have (incorrectly) argued that one of Luke’s main purposes in writing his gospel was to combat Gnosticism.

I concur here with another scholar from yesteryear, Joachim Jeremias; he pointed out that that we should view the post-Resurrection meal Jesus shared with his disciples primarily in terms of forgiveness, as the disciples were restored to their master as they fellowshipped together. Any anti-Docetic element – such as Jesus digesting fish - should be seen as secondary or we lose sight of the main point – forgiveness and restoration. In my next post, I will transition to how the Docetists distorted the New Testament.


SOURCES/NOTES:

Edwin M. Yamauchi, Pre-Christian Gnosticism: A Survey of the Proposed Evidences (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1973), 186.
Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (Philadelphia, PA: Trinity Press, 1990), 271.
Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, 246.
Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, 258.
Grudem defines the hypostatric union as “the union of Christ’s human and divine natures in one person”. Wayne A. Grudem, Systematic Theology: An Introduction to Biblical Doctrine (Grand Rapids, MI: Inter-Varsity Press; Zondervan Pub. House, 1994), 1244.
Cf. Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the Gospel of John (New York: Doubleday, 2003), 72. and also U. Schnelle, Antidocetic Christology in the Gospel of John: An Investigation of the Place of the Fourth Gospel in the Johnnine School (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1992), 228.
Interestingly enough, Ignatius later claimed that the Docetists neglected the Eucharist in Smyrneans 7.1
John MacArthur on this phenomenon: “The watery fluid was probably excess serum that had collected in the pericardium (the membrane that encloses the heart). The blood was an indicator that the spear pierced the heart or aorta as well as the pericardium. The fact that blood and water came out separately from the same wound seems to indicate that death had occurred some period of time before the wound was inflicted, so that Christ’s blood—even in the area of the heart—had already begun the process of coagulation”. John MacArthur, The Murder of Jesus: A Study of How Jesus Died (Nashville, TN: Word Pub., 2000), 241.
Charles H. Talbert, Luke and the Gnostics (Nashville, TN: B&H, 1966).
Joachim Jeremias, The Eucharistic Words of Jesus (London: ET, 1966), 204 n.3.

DOCETISM DEFINED

The Encyclopedia of Early Christianity defines Docetism as the “view that Christ’s humanity was only an appearance (from Greek dokesis) or disguise worn by the heavenly Redeeemer”.[1] Docetism was a belief held by most Gnostics who called themselves Christians. Nelson’s New Christian Dictionary describes Docetism as “heretical theological beliefs held by some, called Docetae, in the early church that Christ did not have a real physical body and that his humanity and suffering as well as his crucifixion and Resurrection were illusory and not real. The Docetae shared with the Gnostics the idea that all matter was inherently evil”.^[2] Docetism flows naturally out of the spirit versus matter dualistic tendency in middle Platonism that influenced much of Greek thought in the second and third centuries. Historian Henry Chadwick explains the degree to which these ideas had penetrated many Gentile minds of the era:

The Gnostic attitude to matter as alien to the supreme God required the rejection of any genuine incarnation. The divine Christ (they held) might have appeared to blinded worldlings as if he were tangible flesh and blood, but those with higher insight perceived that he was pure spirit and that the physical appearance was an optical illusion and mere semblance. It was inconceivable that the divine Christ could have come ‘in the flesh’ in any ultimately true sense. What people would have seen if they had been there at the time would have differed according to their spiritual capacity.[3]

Translator Edgar J. Goodspeed has suggested that Docetism could be translated as Seemism.[4] This is helpful because Docetism is based upon the Greek word dokéō (δοκέω), which means, “to seem”, as in, “it seems to me” or “I think”. Biblical uses of dokéō include Luke 1:3 and Acts 15:22. Another way to translate dokéō is “to be of the opinion” or even “to suppose”. Other connotations of dokéō include “to be accounted as”, “reputed”, “to be judged as such” (as in “I determined thus”).^[5] Key among all these definitions, for our purposes, is “to appear,” and especially “to have the appearance”, as in Acts 17:18. The way dokéō would manifest itself in Docetic parlance would go something like this: “Jesus had the appearance of flesh” or “it only seemed as if Jesus had flesh”. The entry for dokéō in the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament says, “dokeín is contrasted with eínai in Greek thought”.^[6] εἰμί , by way of contrast, has to do with “to be” or “exist”.[7]

---

[1] Everett Ferguson, ed., Encyclopedia of Early Christianity (New York: Garland Publishing, 1990), 272.

^[2] George Thomas Kurian, Nelson's New Christian Dictionary: The Authoritative Resource on the Christian World (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 2001).

[3] Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (New York: Penguin Books, 1967), 37-38.

[4] William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible Series: The Letters of John and Jude, Revised Edition (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1976), 7.

^[5] James Strong, The Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible: Showing Every Word of the Test of the Common English Version of the Canonical Books, and Every Occurence of Each Word in Regular Order. (electronic ed.; Ontario: Woodside Bible Fellowship, 1996), G1380.

^[6] Gerhard Kittel et al., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (Translation of: Theologisches Worterbuch zum Neuen Testament; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1995), 178.

[7] A clear example of this use is in John 8:58, when Jesus said, “before Abraham was born, I am” (πρὶν Ἀβραὰμ γενέσθαι, ἐγὼ εἰμί).

ATHEISTS TALKING ABOUT ME BEHIND MY BACK?!?!

Thought you might find this interesting ...
A while ago I debated/dialogued with some local atheists on one of their podcasts.
Apparently, the local atheists had a conversation on their forum about me during this time.
I found it enlightening and for the most part, found their comments to be fair and respectful.
Read the thread and tell me what you think!
Here is the link for all those so inclined:

http://www.meetup.com/phoenix-atheists/boards/thread/5359401/0/

PS - the title is just to grab your attention.

DOCETISM REDUX

Docetism is making a come back of sorts. There is a trend among the new atheist movement – primarily on the Internet – to recast Docetism as evidence that the earliest Christians never even believed in an actual historical Jesus. Proponents of this position misunderstand Docetism’s misunderstandings about the humanity of Jesus. They claim that Docetism was the (correct!) understanding that the story of Jesus was mythical.

I first became aware of this while witnessing to some local atheist activists from Arizona State University. One of them claimed there was evidence within the New Testament itself that the first version of Jesus was not a historical person but rather a mythical and strictly heavenly Christ-figure divorced from all time and space reality. This individual spouted some lines from I and II John as his evidence.

The leaders of this modern-day historical revisionism - such as Canadian atheist Earl Doherty, amatuer filmmaker Brian Fleming, and former fundamentalist Robert M. Price - would have us believe that the original version of Christianity held to a purely mythological Christ over and above the belief of an actual Jesus of history.

An element of this theory – that Jesus never even existed – hinges upon on a misapplication certain docetic claims. Therefore, in my future posts, I will explore Docetism’s appearance in the early church in some detail: its doctrine, its documents and its detractors. This should help us better understand the actual nature of the error.

NOTES:
Cf. Earl Doherty, The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus (Ottawa, Ontario: Canadian Humanist Publications, 2001).
Cf. The God Who Wasn’t There DVD
Cf. Robert M. Price, The Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable is the Gospel Tradition? (Minneapolis, MN: Prometheus Books, 2003).

QUESTIONS from a ONENESS PENTECOSTAL

I received a letter from a Oneness Pentecostal. They sent me a list of questions; most of which I found to be poorly worded or just confused. Maybe you can help? Read over this list and maybe give a few responses and I will include them in my response to him. Any help is appreciated.

Isaiah 7:14; St. Mathew 1:23 - If Jesus Christ is not God Almighty, then who is Immanuel?
Genesis 1:1; Colossians 1:14-17 - If Jesus Christ is not God Almighty, who created the heavens, and earth? Jesus or God?
Genesis 49:10; Hebrews 7:14 - If Jesus Christ is not God Almighty, when will our Lord spring out of the Tribe of Judah?
I Kings 22:19; Revelations 4:2 - If Jesus Christ is not God Almighty, how many is setting on the throne?
Psalms 45:6; Philippians 2:11.Numbers 24:16-17- If Jesus Christ is not God Almighty, when will Balaam's prophecy come to pass?
Isaiah 45:23; Philippians 2:11 - If Jesus Christ is not God Almighty, then who shall we bow to? Jesus or God?
Isaiah 45:15-21; Titus 2:13 - If Jesus Christ is not God Almighty, then who is our savior?
Isaiah 9:6 - If Jesus Christ is not God Almighty, then when will Isaiah's prophecy come to pass?
If Jesus Christ is not God Almighty, why when the Devil was tempting Jesus, "Jesus said unto him, 'Thou Shalt not tempt the Lord Thy God'"?
St. Matthew 4:7.-If Jesus Christ is not God Almighty, when will the Lord God of Israel visit his people to redeem them?
St. Luke 1:68.-If Jesus Christ is not God Almighty, why did Steven call God by his name and said, "Lord Jesus"?
Acts 7:59.-If Jesus Christ is not God Almighty, then who is the True God? I John 5:20.
Deuteronomy 32:4; I Corinthians 10:4 - If Jesus Christ is not God Almighty, then who is The Rock? God or Christ?
If Jesus Christ is not God Almighty, then Thomas must of told a lie in St. John 20:28, when he said to Jesus, "My Lord and My God". Did Thomas lie?
I Timothy 3:16 - If Jesus Christ is not God, when did God come in the flesh?
I John 3:16 - If Jesus Christ is not God, when did God lay down his life?
St. John 3:16; I Peter 3:18.
St. John 14:9 - If Jesus Christ is not God Almighty, why did He say to Philip, "When you see me, you see The Father", and there is only one Father? Malachi 2:10.
Did God tell a lie when he told Saul that He is Jesus in, Acts 9:5.
If Jesus Christ is not God, then we must say the He's not Good. -St. Mark 10:18; St. John 10:14.
Psalms 90:2; Revelations 1:18 - If Jesus Christ is not God, then who is He that liveth, and was dead; and is alive evermore (everlasting)?

Video of Vocab as a Seminary Student

Just thought I'd share with you a lil' video my school did featuring yours truly.
I must say that I am rather embarrassed this time around as I look like I am high, dumb, or tired ... or all three. We should have fun with it ... please feel free to make a smart aleck comment below to make fun of my dweebness in this video ...

Vocab's Upcoming Album Tracklist

DJ CRE ONE presents:

THE COLUMBUS CONNECT mixtape

featuring VOCAB MALONE & SMOOVE TRG

1 - Fresh

ft. illete the 7^th Grader & Matthew K. Ronan

2 - 2^nd Adam

ft. Mr. Exclusive

3 - O!

4 - Roll Call interlude

ft. Mr. Exclusive

5 - Lean Back

6 - Keep It Movin’

ft. emceeQuest & DJ Fidel Castro

7 - What If?

8 - Work It Out

ft. Marvin, Jr. the Chancellor & DJ Cre One

9 – Quarters, Nickels & Dimes

ft. emceeQuest & DJ Fidel Castro

10 - 7 Reasons

ft. 4^thDaBeatMaker, B-Moses, Manifesto Speaks, SCO*ATK, Bruce Taylor

11 - Mash Up

ft. Absent Minded & Bryan Kilgore

12 – Déjàh Vu

ft. Faynt

13 – Connect interlude

ft. Mr. Exclusive

14 - Common World

ft. DJ Promote

15 – 7 Reasons remix

ft. 4thDaBeatMaker, B-Moses, Manifesto Speaks, SCO*ATK, Bruce Taylor

16 – Work It Out remix

ft. Marvin, Jr. the Chancellor & DJ Cre One

*ALL TRACKS PRODUCED, MIXED and MASTERED by

DJ CRE ONE

*ADDITIONAL RECORDING by

CHRIS PRIEBE, RICHARD LAM and JONATHAN SCALES