The Confusing Incarnation

[Jersey Girl]

Then feel free to post your own approach to the issue without using my out of context comments as a vehicle. Have I ever done that to you? No, I have not.

Hey, I posted this thread. I thought my response to your statement was within the ballpark of the topic. Really I’m surprised that you are taking this as such an affront to good etiquette. I find it more oddly abrupt to tell someone that all that’s necessary to get the “Christian” point of view better is to just study the Bible harder.

I’m with Philo. I don’t see the Hypostatic Union of Deity springing from scripture. The term doesn’t even enter the discussion of the Incarnation until the 4th century AD.

Go back and read the comment I replied to. My objection has nothing to do with good etiquette. It's important to me that you do not misrepresent my comments. Using my comment the way that you did would lead someone to believe I stated what I had not. Unless you imagine that indications in scripture are the same thing as identifying specific doctrines.

[Alphus and Omegus]

Most of the problems with Christian theology, in my opinion, originate in the vain effort to claim that their faith is monotheistic. It very clearly is not and it was not understood by most early Christians. There were a variety of Christological beliefs in those days, including:

1. Jesus was a mortal man who was "adopted" by God to become his honorary son. (commonly called "adoptionism")
2. Jesus never actually existed as a human being. What people thought was the person of Jesus was actually some sort of mystical projection from God to interact in-person with humans (several variations of this existed, primarily among Gnostics but also among Modalists)
3. Jesus was a creation of God but he was created before time and space existed. He is not God but he also is eternal (Arianism)
4. Jesus wasn't divine, but he was a special messenger from God. Others came after and before him. This idea survives in Islam and in Baha'i religion
5. Jesus was an incarnation of God but there can be others. The early Christian leader Mani (of Manichean fame) taught this and that he was another incarnation of God. A variation of this idea exists in the Unification Church, a.k.a. "Moonies," which own the American Washington Times newspaper

All of these ideas existed simultaneously and many others. Once Constantine converted to Christianity, he demanded that the various church leaders come together and hammer out some official doctrines. That's where the Nicene Creed originated and why similar conferences were convened in the intervening years.

The Nicene Creed was developed by a committee and it reads like it. The portion dealing with Jesus's divinity makes no sense. It talks about God having a "right hand" and claims that Jesus sits over there. It claims that Jesus was "eternally begotten" while also claiming that he is "of one being with the father."

It only makes sense as a political document that it was, one designed to suppress the growing power of Arius. It took on a much greater doctrinal significance as a second-order effect, simply because it was the first formal committee statement.

Here's the original version from 325 translated to English:

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father. Through him all things were made. For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven: by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. On the third day, he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father. With the Father and the Son he is worshiped and glorified. He has spoken through the Prophets. We believe in one holy catholic and apostolic Church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. Amen.

[Kishkumen]

Go back and read the comment I replied to. My objection has nothing to do with good etiquette. It's important to me that you do not misrepresent my comments. Using my comment the way that you did would lead someone to believe I stated what I had not. Unless you imagine that indications in scripture are the same thing as identifying specific doctrines.

Maybe it would help if you replied more fulsomely in the first place. I read the context. If you have an argument, why don’t you actually lay it out? Read more is NOT an argument. You might have used my response as an opportunity to do so, but instead you use it to say I misrepresented your response. Honestly you are just nitpicking here and not offering anything substantive by way of evidence or argument. You don’t have to, of course, but I also don’t have to be blind to it and happily accept my chastisement by you for taking a cryptic non-response “out of context.”

[Kishkumen]

Most of the problems with Christian theology, in my opinion, originate in the vain effort to claim that their faith is monotheistic. It very clearly is not and it was not understood by most early Christians. There were a variety of Christological beliefs in those days, including:

1. Jesus was a mortal man who was "adopted" by God to become his honorary son. (commonly called "adoptionism")
2. Jesus never actually existed as a human being. What people thought was the person of Jesus was actually some sort of mystical projection from God to interact in-person with humans (several variations of this existed, primarily among Gnostics but also among Modalists)
3. Jesus was a creation of God but he was created before time and space existed. He is not God but he also is eternal (Arianism)
4. Jesus wasn't divine, but he was a special messenger from God. Others came after and before him. This idea survives in Islam and in Baha'i religion
5. Jesus was an incarnation of God but there can be others. The early Christian leader Mani (of Manichean fame) taught this and that he was another incarnation of God. A variation of this idea exists in the Unification Church, a.k.a. "Moonies," which own the American Washington Times newspaper

All of these ideas existed simultaneously and many others. Once Constantine converted to Christianity, he demanded that the various church leaders come together and hammer out some official doctrines. That's where the Nicene Creed originated and why similar conferences were convened in the intervening years.

The Nicene Creed was developed by a committee and it reads like it. The portion dealing with Jesus's divinity makes no sense. It talks about God having a "right hand" and claims that Jesus sits over there. It claims that Jesus was "eternally begotten" while also claiming that he is "of one being with the father."

It only makes sense as a political document that it was, one designed to suppress the growing power of Arius. It took on a much greater doctrinal significance as a second-order effect, simply because it was the first formal committee statement.

Thank you for this excellent and very informative post. You get at the root problems. How could the developing orthodox faith stress their monotheism when Jesus appeared to be a second god? For decades I have preferred the argument that early on Jesus was seen as a mortal man who had been adopted as God’s son either at his baptism or resurrection. God having the power to divinize others beginning with Jesus seems less convoluted and confusing.

It is the Gospel of John and the nativity narratives that make this sensible view difficult to maintain. The miraculous conception of Christ is, however, obviously mythological and a late development designed to mimic the divine parentage of other Mediterranean heroes and rulers. The Gospel of John may be an amplification of the tendency in some strains of Judaism to see the heroic figure as the incarnation of an angel. Here, however, instead of an angel, Jesus is the Logos—taken from the Platonist Philo? At times in other places Jesus is Sophia.

Nothing in these scriptures, which are, after all very human writings attempting to capture a quickly evolving mythology about Jesus, necessarily leads to the confusing, contradictory mess of the Nicene Creed.

[Physics Guy]

The development of Christianity seems to me a lot like what happens when a TV series finds a breakout character. That character becomes more and more important until the show revolves around them. Whatever conventions initially seemed to limit the character's importance just dissolve as the character's popularity surges; promotions that seemed big for half a season are soon no longer enough. The pressure to give the fan-favourite top billing is irresistible.

There's nothing illogical or incoherent about that. On the contrary it has an inexorable logic. It's just not the logic that the pilot episode writers had in mind. The show didn't go off the rails, though. What it became was itself, the thing that was in it to be. The pilot writers didn't know what they had. That didn't stop it from happening.

The traditional Christian picture of how the doctrine of the Trinity emerged is obviously not a comparison with a sitcom. It's something about how the Holy Spirit moved in the Church until believers gradually realised that Jesus was God—even if that required reimagining God. What I'm saying is, just as the evolution of a sitcom with a breakout character is totally logical in its own way, so is Christian theology logical.

[huckelberry]

The development of Christianity seems to me a lot like what happens when a TV series finds a breakout character. That character becomes more and more important until the show revolves around them. Whatever conventions initially seemed to limit the character's importance just dissolve as the character's popularity surges; promotions that seemed big for half a season are soon no longer enough. The pressure to give the fan-favourite top billing is irresistible.

There's nothing illogical or incoherent about that. On the contrary it has an inexorable logic. It's just not the logic that the pilot episode writers had in mind. The show didn't go off the rails, though. What it became was itself, the thing that was in it to be. The pilot writers didn't know what they had. That didn't stop it from happening.

The traditional Christian picture of how the doctrine of the Trinity emerged is obviously not a comparison with a sitcom. It's something about how the Holy Spirit moved in the Church until believers gradually realised that Jesus was God—even if that required reimagining God. What I'm saying is, just as the evolution of a sitcom with a breakout character is totally logical in its own way, so is Christian theology logical.

I read the first couple of lines of this post thinking that it was proposing a rather awkward analogy. Reading on I was strongly impressed in the opposite way. I think it quite a thoughtful and accurate analogy.

How people react to the Nicene creed seems to vary quite a bit. Myself it strikes my mind as clear reasonable and the best way to think of what is spoken of in the first part of John (and implied elsewhere in the New Testament) Alpha Omagus's view which is much the opposite is shared by a number of people , especially people of Mormon background. My mind got tricked by reading both Johns prologue and the creed at a fairly young age for Christmas. I felt illuminated and happy for this explanation. Later I felt some uncertainty about the logic of LDS views on the matter. They strike me as nearly incoherent. I think part of the difference is different people are starting with some different assumption about God. If one is starting with the image of person that one finds in LDS then the Nicene creed is a garbled mess. Thinking of an infinite eternal spiritual reality fits much better.

[Alphus and Omegus]

The Nicene Creed was developed by a committee and it reads like it. The portion dealing with Jesus's divinity makes no sense. It talks about God having a "right hand" and claims that Jesus sits over there. It claims that Jesus was "eternally begotten" while also claiming that he is "of one being with the father."

It only makes sense as a political document that it was, one designed to suppress the growing power of Arius. It took on a much greater doctrinal significance as a second-order effect, simply because it was the first formal committee statement.

Thank you for this excellent and very informative post. You get at the root problems. How could the developing orthodox faith stress their monotheism when Jesus appeared to be a second god? For decades I have preferred the argument that early on Jesus was seen as a mortal man who had been adopted as God’s son either at his baptism or resurrection. God having the power to divinize others beginning with Jesus seems less convoluted and confusing.

It is the Gospel of John and the nativity narratives that make this sensible view difficult to maintain. The miraculous conception of Christ is, however, obviously mythological and a late development designed to mimic the divine parentage of other Mediterranean heroes and rulers. The Gospel of John may be an amplification of the tendency in some strains of Judaism to see the heroic figure as the incarnation of an angel. Here, however, instead of an angel, Jesus is the Logos—taken from the Platonist Philo? At times in other places Jesus is Sophia.

Nothing in these scriptures, which are, after all very human writings attempting to capture a quickly evolving mythology about Jesus, necessarily leads to the confusing, contradictory mess of the Nicene Creed.

You're welcome. The John gospel was by far the latest composed one compared to the Synoptic Gospels. It's also the most philosophical of the four. The earliest known canon, compiled by Marcion did not include it. The Johannine gospel is believed by most scholars to have been arisen from traditions believed by a small Jewish community which was bent upon trying to Judaicize Christianity from the Gentile-oriented Paulism which had better integrated with pagan traditions by having Christ as the special emissary of the unknown God described in Acts 17:23.

The notion of the Christ/Logos being God and also simultaneously with God is the crux of this attempt. The argument of the gospel is very meticulous in saying that if Christians want to claim to be the fulfillment of Judaism, then they must fashion their theology into a monotheistic framework.

That argument, plus its superior literary quality (in its prose and its engagement with Gnosticism and Neo-Platonism) led to its incorporation into subsequent Christian doctrine, against the wishes of the original groups of adoptionists, modalists, etc.

From the outside looking backward, it makes no sense that an eternal, non-corporeal being would bother to incarnate into physical form in order to sacrifice himself to himself. That's one aspect of Mormon theology that was always appealing to me, the idea of having Christ and God as separate beings.

There are several other theological questions (such as the purpose of life) that I still find Mormonism more persuasive than the contemporary Christianities. Obviously it has many problems, too.

[Kishkumen]

The development of Christianity seems to me a lot like what happens when a TV series finds a breakout character. That character becomes more and more important until the show revolves around them. Whatever conventions initially seemed to limit the character's importance just dissolve as the character's popularity surges; promotions that seemed big for half a season are soon no longer enough. The pressure to give the fan-favourite top billing is irresistible.

There's nothing illogical or incoherent about that. On the contrary it has an inexorable logic. It's just not the logic that the pilot episode writers had in mind. The show didn't go off the rails, though. What it became was itself, the thing that was in it to be. The pilot writers didn't know what they had. That didn't stop it from happening.

The traditional Christian picture of how the doctrine of the Trinity emerged is obviously not a comparison with a sitcom. It's something about how the Holy Spirit moved in the Church until believers gradually realised that Jesus was God—even if that required reimagining God. What I'm saying is, just as the evolution of a sitcom with a breakout character is totally logical in its own way, so is Christian theology logical.

That is really insightful, PG. What you are saying makes a lot of sense. My reason for raising this whole thing is that the intolerance for variety in theology is not justified by the historically contingent nature of the development of Christianity and Christian theology. There should be a lot more tolerance for variety in Christian theology than there is. I have no problem with people saying, "OK, here are our rules for the club and you need to follow them or you can't be in our club." Fair enough. It is when people take these abstruse theologies and make them the basis for condemning others to hellfire that I have a problem.

[msnobody]

I have a question, Kishkumen. Do you know when the term divine simplicity came about or who coined the term? Just curious. Thanks in advance.

[Kishkumen]

How people react to the Nicene creed seems to vary quite a bit. Myself it strikes my mind as clear reasonable and the best way to think of what is spoken of in the first part of John (and implied elsewhere in the New Testament) Alpha Omagus's view which is much the opposite is shared by a number of people , especially people of Mormon background. My mind got tricked by reading both Johns prologue and the creed at a fairly young age for Christmas. I felt illuminated and happy for this explanation. Later I felt some uncertainty about the logic of LDS views on the matter. They strike me as nearly incoherent. I think part of the difference is different people are starting with some different assumption about God. If one is starting with the image of person that one finds in LDS then the Nicene creed is a garbled mess. Thinking of an infinite eternal spiritual reality fits much better.

I used to think orthodox Christian theology was unintelligible and that Mormon theology had a practical appeal until I started to learn more about classical philosophy and Christian theology. Now I feel like both have their strong and weak points. For me, the Incarnation is a weak point in the logic of Christian theology. But the endless chain of deities in King Follett theology of Joseph Smith also flops.Smith clearly just did not understand classical theology at all. Ergo he carelessly dismissed it out of hand with a kind of Yankee practical simplicity.

Classical theology explains how it is that anything exists at all in a very fundamental way. Mormon theology turns the cosmos into an endless colonial construction project and utterly fails to account for the how and why if fundamentals of existence.

Yet the Trinity and Incarnation seem incompatible with divine simplicity, which appears in St. Augustine City of God XI.10. Of course, some apologists and theologians reject divine simplicity (Craig, Plantinga). All can say is that my Classics background makes divine simplicity very appealing to me. Unlike huckleberry, I am now finding Christian theology unappealing from a position of finding certain aspects of it very appealing, not as a contrast with Mormonism, but in itself.

I am intrigued to find that the split between Mormons and other Christians might be understood as one of differing readings of Plato. My preferred Platonic view makes humans consubstantial with Deity, thus helping us understand how we relate to God as children of Deity.