Blip wrote:In any case, I recommend the whole poem as a work of beauty: The Magi.

Yes, lovely, and satisfying rhyming pattern, though, in a thread on Jesus, I would argue that Milton's Sonnet on his Blindness, is more appropriate, and even more beautiful. Yeats, by 1910, had already turned to Japan, (and therefore, away from European Christianity) and Noh drama, for his inspiration, and this poem surely reflects that. Still, agree, a great accomplishment, lovely poem. Thanks for the suggestion.

No, Jesus was no more human than any of the figures described in James Hilton's Shangri La (Lost Horizon) had been. You would not even know the name, Jesus of Nazareth, were it not for the documents contained within the bible. If one employs that source of information, to derive a veracious character, who had lived in Palestine two millenia ago, then, one must also use that same source to acknowledge that this fictional character possessed paternal DNA belonging to a supernatural deity.

As I've studied history, I've come to two conclusions about this subject area.

First and most obvious, has been touched upon by a couple of people: if you start from the earliest writings about things religious, and read them in order, it is clear that all god concepts grew over time, starting with some fanciful explanation of actual reality, and then being expanded and elaborated as needed, as time brought more challenges. A number of different motivations were behind each iteration and addition to each set of myths.

Second and a little less obvious, is that the more crafty or subtly aware religious leaders came to realize that there is a serendipitous benefit to having a mythology filled with contradictions and confusions: it helps them to maintain their status AS leaders, to claim that only those with the necessary "magical" inspiration can internalize and be comfortable with said contradictions.

After all, a religious belief system that contains only pedestrian, simple, logical explanations for everything...and which is therefore headed by a mechanically manipulable deity, wont provide lasting comfort or inspiration to anyone.

Yes, that also ties in with the observation made by Scott Atran, the anthropologist, that generally religions contain counter-intuitive ideas and images. Atran argues that in fact, this is partly what gives religion its appeal; as the above poster said, if they were simply rational and prosaic descriptions of reality, they would not have the whizz factor, or in posh language, elements of the numinous and transcendent. Humans quite like impossible things.

Hmm - a badass jebus going around bashing things...

Just to clarify, I didn't intend this thread to rehash the 'did he exist or not?' debate about Jesus. I'm just interested in what Christianity (which is predicated on the acceptance of his existence) has to say about the man/god thing. In other words, it doesn't matter if Jesus existed or not.

Christians say that Jesus was a human just like every other human, but he was also God, which makes him not like every other human. How so what eh?

THWOTH wrote:Christians say that Jesus was a human just like every other human, but he was also God, which makes him not like every other human. How so what eh?

Human, but with the highest midicholrian count recorded?

On chimera, there is now discussion about having three parents. I propose god's DNA is eternal and is therefore lying around in the middle east...

Or on one of those nails in the various cathedrals...

Jesus is real, and he's been reincarnated in various people throughout history. He was Martin Luther King and Thomas Jefferson, in previous incarnations. Americans thought Barack Obama was Jesus but then he turned out not to be. Africans thought Nelson Mandela was Jesus but he died and he hasn't left behind a cult following so, perhaps he wasn't. He's coming again, just wait and see.

THWOTH wrote:
Christians say that Jesus was a human just like every other human, but he was also God, which makes him not like every other human. How so what eh?

They appeal to 'mystery' and acknowledge that it doesn't make sense to human brains. 'Mystery' is an important concept in a lot of modern theology, because they recognise a lot of Christian stuff just doesn't make sense (eg the problem of evil is usually 'resolved' by an appeal to mystery).

They often make a virtue out of the appeal to mystery and tie it into faith. Cowper's hymn begins:

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;

and a later verse has:

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;

MS2 makes a good point. If someone accepts the possibility of God, the divine, or whatever you call it, then having a human who is divine is not insuperable. In fact, I know Sufis who say that everything is divine, which seems to present even more problems, e.g. Hitler?

You could divide religions into those that have a division between divine and non-divine (the Abrahamics), and those that collapse them (some Eastern religions). But then in Christianity, you do find mystics who almost tip over into the 'divine unity of all things'. Heresy, heresy, damned heresy! You can see why this is normally rejected, since if God is everywhere, there is no need for Christ.

Historically, it's interesting, since for Jews, God is quite separate from humans; and then Christianity makes a bridge across, but still holds back from full-throated panentheism.

The following is a serious post from a serious theologian. Me. It is an attempt to best explain the answer and issue with the divinity of Christ in an manner which can be well understood. Like Cali, I do not want to boggle this down into a rehash of the never ending thread, so I am not making any comments about the historicity of Jesus, just the theology of Jesus. So where to begin.

The mythos of Jesus being God was most likely a pinnacle of Hellenism and Israeli mythology fusing into a unique blend of man-god theology. As students of early Christianity know, Christianity did not begin in Jerusalem but rather in small communities within Syria. There, especially near Damascus, the question of Messiah and King was examined. If Jesus was a the Messiah than what authority did that give his teachings? Did his teachings trump the Law? Well if he was just a man alone than no. Moses was a prophet and a redeemer of the Israelites but was still a man and subject to sin. Was Jesus different?

This is when accounts of Jesus' temptations in Matthew and Luke were probably added into the fray. In Mark it said Jesus was tempted and ends the discussion. In Matthew and Luke, both authors explore what Jesus was tempted by to show that he was sinless. In fact, the gospels tend to embellish Jesus' sinlessness in order to drive the point that he was more than a man.

When you get to the Johannian community near the beginning of the second century, this concept is fully integrated with a blend of logos in Greek and word being law and order in Hebrew. Jesus is the law, the word. Therefore Jesus is equal to or above the law and therefore his teachings have equal bearing to the Hebrew law.

If so, then Jesus was more than a man he was truly sent by God. But this begged the question of what was he? Was he a creation of God, like an angel? If so, he was still fallible and the worship of him would be idolatrous. But he was the redeeming servant king from Isaiah 51-53, surely he was worthy of praise? That was what the early communities believed, especially what is now orthodoxy. The gnostics believed Jesus was a spirit of God, not a man. The Marcion's believed Jesus was the Messiah sent by a loving God and the God of Israel was to be rejected as a lesser God of evil and wrath. Regardless of specific doctrine, Jesus was revered by the Christianity community and that reverence started to spread.

We know from the Talmud, that rejection of Jesus' character was the main way the Jewish rabbis handled the new Jewish sect. They accused Jesus of sorcery and deceiving Israel. Now the point of this was most likely a response to the spreading Gospel within Jewish circles and the Rabbis were attempting at halting the worship of Jesus.

But already by the turn of the century, we had people elevating Jesus to a higher standard than just a man. He was getting worshipped, but he could only be worshipped if he was God. So the Christian community did the next best thing, they deified Jesus Christ as the Son of God. Surely if God gave birth to a son, that would mean the son is in the same league as the father. So the virgin birth narratives were exaggerated and drawn out. It was one thing to have Jesus be born of a virgin, it was another thing to have the holy spirit impregnate Mary. This concept drew controversy of course.

It created a polytheistic model. If Jesus was the Son of God, then does that mean he is also a separate God? If he is a separate God, can he be worshipped? How does that fit the model of the 1st Commandment of having no other Gods but YHWH? That is when the Christian community decided to go the final step. Jesus and God are the same. The trinity became a concept by the third century and was a big debate point in the council of Nicea because Arius rejected the trinity as a heresy, which in Jewish mythos, it rightly is.

So there we have a simplified, but hopefully, acceptable summary of the answer of was Jesus human?

The answer is yes, but due to the demands of the shifting culture and Christian community, and in order to justify their behavior such as worshipping the man of Jesus, they created different theological justifications, using the teachings of Jesus as well as Paul's writings and creating their own Gospel accounts to validate their claims.

Hope that helps.

Good post Will.

The Christian answer is ....it depends on which Christians you ask. This is a question almost as old as Christianity itself.

Here are some fun terms to look up

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christology
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monophysitism
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyophysite
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Chalcedon

Have fun!

THWOTH wrote:Just to clarify, I didn't intend this thread to rehash the 'did he exist or not?' debate about Jesus. I'm just interested in what Christianity (which is predicated on the acceptance of his existence) has to say about the man/god thing. In other words, it doesn't matter if Jesus existed or not.

Christians say that Jesus was a human just like every other human, but he was also God, which makes him not like every other human. How so what eh?

There appears to have never been one single belief about the hypostasis of the Christ, thus "Christians say" is more accurately rendered as, "one of the thousands of different opinions that many different sects of Christians have on the subject..."

According to the earliest church theologians like the author of Revelation and Justin Martyr, the Christ had always existed since the beginning of time in different forms and hypostases, e.g. the lamb who was slaughtered and "crucified" during the Passover festival was "a type of Christ" (Dialogue with Trypho 40). Perhaps the general idea was that the "holy spirit" of the eternal Christ entered the physical body of a historic man, Jesus, so he was both a man and a god simultaneously, i.e. like Gilgamesh. The Ebionites said he was just a man.

Blood wrote:

THWOTH wrote:Just to clarify, I didn't intend this thread to rehash the 'did he exist or not?' debate about Jesus. I'm just interested in what Christianity (which is predicated on the acceptance of his existence) has to say about the man/god thing. In other words, it doesn't matter if Jesus existed or not.

Christians say that Jesus was a human just like every other human, but he was also God, which makes him not like every other human. How so what eh?

There appears to have never been one single belief about the hypostasis of the Christ, thus "Christians say" is more accurately rendered as, "one of the thousands of different opinions that many different sects of Christians have on the subject..."

According to the earliest church theologians like the author of Revelation and Justin Martyr, the Christ had always existed since the beginning of time in different forms and hypostases, e.g. the lamb who was slaughtered and "crucified" during the Passover festival was "a type of Christ" (Dialogue with Trypho 40). Perhaps the general idea was that the "holy spirit" of the eternal Christ entered the physical body of a historic man, Jesus, so he was both a man and a god simultaneously, i.e. like Gilgamesh. The Ebionites said he was just a man.

I accept that the idea of a scapegoat is not a new or novel invention of Christianity, but to say that every prior example of a sacrifice, offering, or scapegoat was the Christ just appears to be Christianity's way of piggy-backing custom and practice and ascribing to, or authorise it by, their nominated deity. If this idea is to be taken as anything but a loose metaphor then it would also imply that Jesus was more than a mere human, comprising of some element or form that manifest across time as a chicken, goat, candles, an arrangements of stones or a parcels of food, or whatever. In this respect to say that Jesus is an eternal entity with the ability to enter the physical body of a historic figure, such that he is/was indistinguishable from that figure, is to imply that the personage of Jesus was indeed more than a mere human - human++ as I said.

But again, isn't it the case that across a broad range of contemporary Christianity, from the Orthodox traditions to the evangelical, Jesus is understood to be a total and complete human - and that this is a necessary condition of his sin-washing power? I mean, if this were no the case then surely another chicken, goat, or sheep sacrifice would have sufficed for the purpose?

Yes, of course. Jesus was fully human in order to be a fit sacrifice. But his totality was not human. He is the "hypostatic union" of two natures, the human and the divine, in one person. </Jedi mind trick>

Horse's mouth

If we interrogate the works of our earliest apparent witness to the Jesus religion, Paul, he believed two important things:

1. Jesus was a human being, as he indicates when he says that he was born of a woman and of the seed of Abraham; and

2. Jesus was not god (1 Cor 8:6, "one god, the father").

We have to wait for a few centuries before trinitarianism had evolved before one had to face the Arian challenge that Athanasius answered with his creed, which seems to be imbued in the o.p.

The major version of the Jesus religion which survived is based on the ideas of Paul augmented through conflicts with Jesus religions that did not survive, such as those which claimed Jesus was only apparently a man or that Jesus was superior to the creator. Then it came down to the same essence or different, over which much blood was spilt. However, the indications from Paul are that Jesus was a man and not a god.

But I guess this is inconsequential....

THWOTH wrote:It is indeed those apologetics that I'm interested in. The actuality of Jesus' existence (or not) is less interesting to me that what those who accept his existence think and feel about it.

JVRaines wrote:Yes, of course. Jesus was fully human in order to be a fit sacrifice. But his totality was not human. He is the "hypostatic union" of two natures, the human and the divine, in one person. </Jedi mind trick>

Horse's mouth

See, incoherent babble. He was always and only ever A, but he was like totally B at the same time.

THWOTH wrote:Simple question: Complicated answer?

The usual apology is that Jesus was a human and he was God, and that this is possible because God is amazing and awesome and can do and be that; God can be a human, with all the attributes and properties of a human being, but he can also be God at the same time.

This doesn't sit well does it? Having all the attributes and properties of a human being is one thing, but to also be God at the same time surely requires the addition of extra, godly, non-human attributes and properties - attributes and properties which would, in effect, make Jesus human++?

Kierkegaard identifies this as a paradox, and argues that it is precisely because it does not succumb to reason that a leap of faith is an intellectual necessity for Christians. He goes further, that it is also morally necessary, arguing a distinction between belief and faith, with only the latter having any redemptive quality. Belief only in that which can be supported by reason and evidence has no moral content. Believing in God because you are persuaded by apologetics is of no more value than believing in a chair. In order to have a redemptive faith you must doubt God, reflect on the absurdity, and still believe.

I think spin's point is a good one. Some scholars argue that for Jews, the idea of a divine messiah was (and still is) abhorrent; the messiah was definitely human, and often seen as a military leader. The same is true of 'son of God', which could refer to a pious Jew.

Then as the movement goes out into the Gentile world, it adopts Hellenistic ideas such as a man/god, although this took centuries to work through, with various conflicts.

There seem to be intermediate phases where Jesus is an agent of God, but not God, but these ideas were suppressed, although possibly they have returned today.