perhaps in our collective glee over the state sponsorship of Christianity, thereby declaring it cool by an imperial power, we sought to euthanize the humanity of Jesus and remake him into God ..
that raises the hackles on the back of orthodox Christianity I suppose .. so be it
(by orthodox I mean historic creedal Christianity, including all the current manifestations, including evangelicalism)
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in my reading of the Gospels' witness I come to the distinct conclusion that this person was human, and nothing but human, during his tenure among us ..
further to that, Hebrews in particular shores up that conclusion.. and Paul
it's not unlikely that the Christianity of that time sought to divinize Jesus - it provided for an exalted religion comparatively, giving it a one-up on other faith systems or, at least, putting it in the same category, able to be seen as great an alternative
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when pre-incarnate Jesus, as the Word or Expression of God, created humanity, he did so 'in the image of God', ie. We are a God-imaged race; we are like God ..
what GodExpression did, when the time was right, was exchanged Divinity for Humanity (Philippians 2) ...
his identification with us was now complete..
which brings us full circle.. human is created in the image of GodCreator, and now GodCreator takes back human imagery for himself
if we allow our pre-indoctrinated minds to consider this possibility, we may find we are able to read scripture differently, not skipping over the parts we find ourselves ' ? 'ing in the margins or standing on the head of a pin to explain away
further to that, consider Jesus' expectation of his followers - he acted as if they had the authority as well as the ability to do the things he did, things we are accustomed to attributing to the 'fact' that he was God ..
like Peter walking on water
like telling the disciples they should feed the 5,000 listeners
like upbraiding them for their lack of faith when they didn't heal or cast out demons
like saying his followers would do greater things than he did
we've logically rationalized it away, we've theologized it away
simply because we cannot have a human Jesus ..
so we constructed a failsafe, an explanation to cover all the inconsistencies, silence all the queries - we have the god-man, 100% God 100% man
'they' are not to be confused
'they' are not to be separated
if Jesus was hungry we say he was human - " humans get hungry "
if Jesus walked on water or calmed a storm we say " 'course he could; he's God! "
we created a Christ to whom we attach divinity when what was reasonably expected all along by his people, the Jews, scriptures in view, was a Jewish Messiah, a man who would release Israel from bondage, sort of a second Exodus, and reinstall Israel's authority as the people of the land ..
in fact even more scripturally realistic, we have the suffering servant of Isaiah, a man who was nothing exceptional to look at, nothing majestic in his bearing, nothing particularly attractive (Isaiah 53:2) ..
then take this person and reduce him to the level of a common criminal, convict him with no evidence, and crucify him with criminals ..
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while it behooves the great Christianity to exalt itself to the heavens, it bears consideration that it behooved God to humble himself to the Earth, to become sin (2Corinthians 5.21), to suffer as a sinner so that humanity could be delivered from its lifelong fear of death and be reconciled to God
this one who took our flesh and our humanity, lived and moved and had his being here among us, one of us
his life was the final statement of the gracious supermacy of humanity over all creation, created in the image of God, created with the authority and the ability to graciously rule over the earth as faithful caretakers of God's creative genius
to posit divinity as part of that life, as the ground on which he was able to overcome sin, and to disturb the natural order of Earth's systems and the powers of darkness that oppressed humanity, is to blatantly undo the entire point of his humanity in the first place ..
for there is nothing at all special about God resisting temptation, or calming the anger of the seas, healing a man born blind, or ordering a legion of demons to leave the body of a self-mutilating man in whom dwells the 'imago dei' ..
nothing at all
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what Jesus is to me is the last Adam (1Corinthians 15:45), the second man (1Cor 15:47) ..
his gracious human manifestation serves primarily to bring us to the recognition of God-in-us, and all the grand authority and power that entails, as told-to and expected-of the very first humans as per Genesis 1 & 2
recognition
reminder
reenactment of original humanity, only this time constantly and consistently dependent on God, totally submitted, wholly dedicated to the will of God
we have forgotten who we are..
we don't recognize our selves anymore
we live in unconscious denial of our heritage
we act as if we were any other Earth-creature .. in fact we act, to our shame, shamefully inferior to the othercreatures of God's creation, destroying, raping, killing, killing each other for profit and for religion..
we have made our Christ-God into a war-god in whose name we seek to subject other humans, made in God image, like us
Jesus came here to show us the real human, to remove the myopsy of our vision and the small-mindedness from our minds, to reassert the value of humanity and of every human in God's eyes, to tear down religion and religious exclusion, to write the word 'love' on our hearts ..
this is the person I see in the stories of the Gospelers, this man totally given over to God, expressing true and original humanity in all its power, in faith, in love..
this is the person I follow, seated now, a man, at the right hand of God, waiting 'till all Earthly powers and all other-worldly authority to be made his footstool ..
and when everything has been placed under his authority, Jesus will then turn everything over to God, to be placed under the rightful authority of God ..
and then .. Jesus himself, King of kings, Lord of lords, will himself place himself under the authority of God
and God will be all
in all
blessed be his name
(1Corinthians 15)
this man undid the undoing of humanity, and in his lifetime reestablished humanity as bearers of Godimage by heredity
this is the god I serve
this is the Jesus I follow
peace to you
Why do you suppose evangelicals preach/adhere to mostly the Old Testament fire and brimstone? Is it subjugation?
ReplyDeleteOr, do you think they believe the wrathful fire and brimstone God will attract people to salvation? You know they use 2 Timothy 3:16 as proof: that all scripture is inspired by God and used for instruction and reproof. (Paraphrase). Thoughts?
ReplyDeletei'm not any theologian; i'll express my take on it.
ReplyDeletethere is 'fire and brimstone' they can preach from the NT too. the main issue, i think, stems from a literalistic view of scripture. while scripture is God-breathed as per 2Tim 3.16, and is profitable (and when that was penned it was in ref, to the OT), it calls for a complete overview, the thing taken as a whole,
that, in and of itself doesn't say much, i suppose,
the other place i go is to Jesus as the perfected revelation of God in human form. i try to 'see' scripture through that person i see in the newer testament, when i can come to some understanding of his position.
unfortunately, literalists tend to fear-mongering, and fear never was a rational or spiritual basis to come to any conviction .. fear merely breeds obeisance for the time being..
there are other 'evangelicals' - the emergent movement and the progressives perhaps represent the other extreme; however, the tendency in some of those more liberal circles is to allow the pendulum to swing too far the other way in response to what they perceive as a too-literal view; we would do well to take a balanced view i think.
the upshot of this is that we must learn to submit ourselves to the working of the Spirit within us. we look at the various positions in the context of scripture as a whole, and ask the Spirit to open our eyes to the truth of it.
that may sound escapist; i certainly do not intend for it to be. i really believe this. i think we have left far too much of our convictions in the hands of the intellectualists and their children. our final recourse must be the spirit of the living God, who gave the scriptures in the first place ..
at least, that's the way i try to go ..
thanks for the questions
i hope this has been at least of some help