Denying the Incarnation
Luke Morrison
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Abstract
In this paper, I examine Docetism and will show that through the denial of the physical body of Jesus, the docetisits rejected the full incarnation and suffering of Jesus Christ, causing the early church to reject them and label this belief as heretical. The docetists did not explicitly have a leader or group they followed but rather were a movement that caused much grief in the early church and still to this day. There were inklings of this heresy in the New Testament, which the NT authors addressed.
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Review of Verheyden, et al., Docetism in the Early Church: The Quest for an Elusive Phenomenon
Review of Biblical Literature, 2019
Docetism, Käsemann, and christology: Why historical criticism can't protect christological orthodoxy
Scottish journal of theology, 1996
Docetism and Incarnation: Translation of the central theses of "Doketismus und Inkarnation", Francke-Verlag Tübingen 2014
1 Jn deals in no way with the problem of Docetism. The same is valid for all Sarx Christi places of the well-known early Christian writings. Only Ignatius reacts to Docetism. But, his Christology of Incarnation precedes his Opposition to Docetism. Docetism develops parallel to the beginnings of Angel Christology probably mainly from what I call “Angel Docetism”. Conceptions of Incarnation probably develop from experiences of inspiration and ascension of Jesus himself. In this context Jesus or his disciples experience that he becomes talented with the Name of God (= Word of God). The conception of Sarx Christi is designed similar to the metaphorical material of the changes of dresses which is very well known from Ascension experiences and Temple Cult practices. The High Priest, talented with the Name of God (inscription on his turban), passes through the temple curtains on the day of reconciliation. In this moment he is dressed in the same materials like the veil, which represent the sky/cosmos - in the same way as in the natural world the ›flesh‹ is the material of the cosmos. In this sense Jesus is a mystic person who in his return from an ascension or initial inspiration experience appears as an heavenly figure, as an ambassador, as an authorized person, a representative of the Father in highest power (Son of God, Son of Man, Messiah etc), dressed with flesh as his body dress.
The Greek and Jewish Origins of Docetism: A New Proposal
Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum, 2007
While Docetism is well-known as one of the major early Christian "heresies", its origins remain very much in the dark. Remarkably little has been written on these origins, on which there is no scholarly consensus. While some search in the direction of Hellenic thought, others look for the roots of the phenomenon on Judaic soil 1. Many of the doctrines usually identifi ed (rather vaguely) as "Gnostic" also refl ect a Docetic attitude 2. Docetism, however, is by no means identical to Gnosticism. In modern scholarly parlance, "Docetism" does not refer to any clearly defi nable sect, but rather to an attitude, shared by various individuals and movements at the origins of Christianity. Despite the dearth of evidence, one cannot speak of a single, particular, sect of Docetists. A fortiori, it is impossible to refer to one precise body of Docetic beliefs. A similar caution as that recently recommended by Michael Williams about seeing Gnosticism as a stable, historically and theologically well-defi ned movement should be used with the construct of "Docetism" 3. In other words, "Docetism" does no more than "Gnosticism" represent a fi xed set of doctrines. Rather, it refl ects a theological option revealed in a wide variety of early Christian texts. It seems, then, that one is dealing with a series of groups holding similar beliefs, and retaining between them what Wittgenstein called "family resemblances". These groups fl ourished mainly in the second and third centuries.
Third Article Theology and Apologetics
Holy Spirit and Christian Mission in a Pluralistic Context (Bangalore: SAIACS Press), 2017
My paper argues that the loss of transcendence from a culture is maximally a loss of the Holy Spirit. After all, unlike the Holy Spirit, the other two members of the Trinity have a visible trail—the Father, his created order (natural theology) and the Son his historical presence (Theology of redemption). Whereas, the self-effacing Holy Spirit is “neither seen nor known” by the world (John 14:17) or by the Church that succumbs to the spirit of the age. In short, the cultural influence of naturalism has left the church Spirit-impoverished. Thus, I explore how we may recover this loss and prioritize the Spirit? If we looked carefully, a Spirit priority seems to follow the structure of function within the economic Trinity. That is, while the Trinitarian order follows the Father sending the Son to complete the work of redemption followed by the sending of the Spirit to sanctify the Church, human encounter seems to always require an inverse Trinitarian order. It is the Spirit who testifies to the Lordship of Christ, for “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 12:3), and it is in Jesus in whom the “whole fullness of deity dwells bodily” (Col 2:9), that we see the face of the Father (John 14:9). Exploring the epistemic role of the Spirit, I conclude that the Spirit is the epistemic agency as well as the starting point in turning the Christian message into an intelligible account for anyone who hears it. Given the self-effacing nature of the Spirit who points humans towards Christ, who in turn points us towards the Father, a Spirit priority inherently provides a Trinitarian mould for theological thinking and practice.
'The Retrieval of Deification: How a Once-Despised Archaism Became an Ecumenical Desideratum’, Modern Theology 25:4 (October 2009), 647-659
Modern Theology, 2009
In the beginning of the twentieth century the notion of deification (theōsis, theopoiēsis) stood for everything that was generally considered exotic and misguided about Eastern Orthodox theology. In his magnum opus History of Dogma, Adolf von Harnack, a leading Protestant historian of the time, lamented the wrong turn that Christian theology took in the second century: "[W]hen the Christian religion was represented as the belief in the incarnation of God and as the sure hope of the deification of man, a speculation that had originally never got beyond the fringe of religious knowledge was made the central point of the system and the simple content of the Gospel was obscured." 1 For Harnack, the idea of deification was a symptom of a more severe malaise, namely, Hellenization, which brought about the distortion and obfuscation of the simple biblical message of "the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of men" by Greek metaphysics. The German historian's conclusion was typical for his time. On the other end of the Protestant theological spectrum, Karl Barth was equally unimpressed. To accept divinization, Barth maintained, was to encourage very abstract talk about Christ's human nature, and to shift the "christological center" of soteriology to the nebulous sphere of "high-pitched anthropology." 3 The primary targets of Barth's meandering critique are the apotheosis projects of Hegel and Feuerbach, 4 and what Barth saw as "the threat, in Lutheranism, of a divinization of a human nature of Jesus Christ and a parallel de-divinization of his divinity." 5 The general impression is that
Editor, Martin Knutzen – Philosophischer Beweis von der Wahrheit der christlichen Religion (1747) [2006]
Reviews (1) Kant-Studien 101 (2010): 119–120 [R. Pozzo]. (2) Journal of Ecclesiastical History 57 (2006): 790-791 [W. P. Ward] (3) Theological Studies 68 (2007): 471-472 [J. Betz] (4) Journal for the History of Modern Theology 15 (2008): 173–174 [J. Wischmeyer]. (5) Theologie und Philosophie 81 (2006): 585-587 [G. Sala] (6) Freiburger Zeitschrift für Philosophie und Theologie 53 (2006): 527-531 [S. Knebel] (7) Theologische Revue 103 (2007), 516-518 [A. Winter]
Hovorun, Serhiy. “Theological Controversy in the Seventh Century Concerning Activities and Wills in Christ.” Supervised by Andrew Louth, (University of Durham, 2004).
The primary purpose of the thesis is to fill the existing gaps in our understanding of various theological and political aspects of the controversy that took place in both Eastern and Western parts of the Roman Empire in the seventh century the main theological point of which was whether Christ had one or two energeiai and wills. Before corning to any conclusions on this subject, I shall investigate the preliminary forms of Monenergism and Monothelitism i.e., belief in a single energeia and will of Christ, which were incorporated in the major Christological systems developed by Apollinarius of Laodicea, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Severus of Antioch (chapters 1-3). Against this background, it becomes obvious that the Chalcedonian Monenergism and later Monothelitism emerged from the movement of neo-Chalcedonianism. It was an attempt by the political and ecclesiastical authorities to achieve a theological compromise with various non-Chalcedonian groups, mainly Severian, but also 'Nestoriari. Their ultimate goal was to reconcile these groups with the Catholic Church of the Empire (chapter 4). However, this project of reconciliation on the basis of the single-energeia formula was contested by the representatives of the same neo-Chalcedonian tradition and consequently condemned at the Councils of Lateran (649) and Constantinople (680/681). Thus, the same neo-Chalcedonian tradition produced two self-sufficient and antagonistic doctrines. A major concern of the thesis is to expose and compare systematically their doctrinal content per se and in the wider context of the principles of neo-Chalcedonianism (chapter 5).
Theological controversy in the seventh century concerning activities and wills in Christ
2003
The primary purpose of the thesis is to fill the existing gaps in our understanding of various theological and political aspects of the controversy that took place in both Eastern and Western parts of the Roman Empire in the seventh century the main theological point of which was whether Christ had one or two energeiai and wills. Before coming to any conclusions on this subject, I shall investigate the preliminary forms of Monenergism and Monothelitism i.e., belief in a single energeia and will of Christ, which were incorporated in the major Christological systems developed by Apollinarius of Laodicea, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Severus of Antioch (chapters 1-3). Against this background, it becomes obvious that the Chalcedonian Monenergism and later Monothelitism emerged from the movement of neo-Chalcedonianism. It was an attempt by the political and ecclesiastical authorities to achieve a theological compromise with various non-Chalcedonian groups, mainly Severian, but also 'Nestorian'. Their ultimate goal was to reconcile these groups with the Catholic Church of the Empire (chapter 4). However, this project of reconciliation on the basis of the single-energeia formula was contested by the representatives of the same neo-Chalcedonian tradition and consequently condemned at the Councils of Lateran (649) and Constantinople (680/681). Thus, the same neo-Chalcedonian tradition produced two self-sufficient and antagonistic doctrines. A major concern of the thesis is to expose and compare systematically their doctrinal content per se and in the wider context of the principles of neo-Chalcedonianism (chapter 5). A copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged.
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DAMNATIO MEMORIAE OF JESUS AS GOD INCARNATE: DOCETISM ABOVE ICONOCLASM ACCORDING TO FLORILEGIUM AND DEFINITION OF HIERIA (754 AD
Synthesis 8/2, 2019
Before the protestant doctrine of ‘Sola Scriptura’, hardly any Christian denomination could be found that it would not consider itself the genuine, if not the exclusive, successor of the ‘one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church’. Nothing was to be proved in line with the genuine Christian faith, unless it was based as much on the Scripture as on the Church Fathers and Synods. This is the reason why in the Council of Hieria (AD 754) Iconoclasts showed exceptional interest in declaring anew their faith to every Definition, Creed and Αnathema of all Ecumenical Councils. According to Hieria’s Definition and Florilegium, iconoclastic dogma had to be proved on the basis of the Triadological and Christological dogma. Similarly, the iconoclast policy of Isaurian emperors would have been justified by the predominant theology. Here a crucial question arises whether nonorthodox beliefs through a series of textual sources like those of Apocrypha could be interpolated into authentic patristic testimonia. In reality, a number of those texts, especially of Hieria’s Florilegium, were examined thoroughly in the fifth and sixth sessions of the 7th Ecumenical Council in the same scientific way they are reexamined today. What matters is the appearance of official declarations such that of ‘indescribable [Christ] even after the Incarnation’ in the Definition of Hieria. Through this evidence, a dominant docetism, which presupposes the annihilation of Christ’s ‘flesh’ after Resurrection, reveals its identity. Either for Iconophiles or for Iconoclasts, Christ’s human nature could be describable compared to his indescribable divinity. But for Iconoclasts, his ‘flesh’ together with all material world is considered as something unreal, absorbed by divinity, and consequently co-indescribable. That’s why the Fathers of Nicaea II are used to call Iconoclasts ‘Manicheans’ on every occasion. In this case, they seem not to repeat a rhetorical manner of expression among others, but a term with its literal meaning.
Denials of Orthodoxy: Heretical Views of the Doctrine of the Trinity
2012
Dr. Allison served many years as a staff member of Campus Crusade, where he worked in campus ministry and as a missionary to Italy and Switzerland. He also serves as the Secretary of the Evangelical Theological Society and the book review editor for theological, historical, and philosophical studies for the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society. Dr. Allison is the author of several books, including most recently Historical Theology: An Introduction to Christian Doctrine (Zondervan, 2011) and Sojourners and Strangers: The Doctrine of the Church (Crossway, forthcoming). As this issue of SBJT explores the doctrine of the Trinity—that God eternally exists as three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, each of whom is fully God, yet there is only one God—it is good to remember that this orthodox position was hammered out amid challenges to a “Trinitarian consciousness” that arose in the early church. By this consciousness I mean a sense, grounded in the teaching of ...
Philosophical & Theological Issues in Christian Soteriology, the Human Soul and Eternity: Challenges of Modern Heresies By
Christian Soteriology is rooted in the Salvation provided by Jesus Christ through His Death and Resurrection and the Faith of those that believe in Christ (1 John 5: 11-13). There is a long-running debate on belief in God and the Immortality of the Human Soul from the early Philosophers and Theologians (Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Swinburne, others.) The Human Soul, in Christian Perspective, is eternal, making eternity real. Christian worldview emphasises eternity. Christianity faces many attacks against it by critics of varying religious beliefs. Failing to accept the Christological truth is a challenge that brings forth heresies. Recognising the ancient Christological heresies that came about in the 4th, 5th, 6th, & 7th centuries is essential. These heresies are Docetism, Ebionism, Arianism, Apollinarianism, Nestorianism, and Monophysitism. The theological geeks historically recognised these six as heresies. This author used historical, theological hermeneutics and phenomenological methodologies. The theme is discussed along the four Key Words: Soteriology, The Human Soul, Eternity, & the Challenge of Heresies. God has revealed himself to be the God in the Trinity, the Father of Jesus Christ, humankind's Salvation, but the God of the philosophers is deeply rooted in rationalism & culture, hence the heresies challenge. In essence, the Christians' belief is in the divine and humanity of Jesus Christ. This paper clarifies the misunderstandings and misrepresentation: answering specific objections, criticisms, or questions about Jesus Christ and clearing away any cerebral difficulties that heresies pose for the Christian Faith.
Contradictions and Rationality in the Context of the Doctrine of the Incarnation. Already published. (This is not the Version of Record and does not reflect post-acceptance
improvements, or any corrections).
Asian Journal of Philosophy. Themes from Beall, 2023
In this paper, I respond to what I have called an epistemological objection to a dialetheist approach to the doctrine of the Incarnation, of which one example is Beall’s contradictory Christ. I discuss Anderson's book Paradox in Christian Theology, in which the author claims to account for the rationality of the doctrine of the Incarnation as a merely apparently contradictory doctrine, and I present my model, based on Anderson’s model, according to which the doctrine has the possibility to be rational by understanding it as genuinely contradictory. I show that this model fits perfectly well with the criteria that, according to Anderson, any model for the rationality of a paradoxical doctrine should meet. Beall does not address the problem of the rationality of the doctrine in his works about the contradictory Christ, and he asserts that he is not interested in it. However, I think that if he wants to make his theory more robust, less suspicious, and more convincing for theologians, philosophers, and ordinary people, he should consider this problem.
"Condensing and Shaping the Flesh…": The Incarnation and the Instrumental Function of the Soul of Christ in the Iconoclastic Christology
Origeniana Decima. Eds. S. Kaczmarek and H. Pietras. Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 244, 2011
The paper explores the Origenist framework of Iconoclastic Christology. In a curious passage arguing about the non-anthropomorphic Eucharist as the legitimate image of Christ, the Iconoclasts parallel the Incarnation to the Eucharist, stating that since Christ assimilated from mankind “only the matter of human nature, perfect in all respects and not characterized by independent prosopon,” the only true material icon –the Eucharist – is as well not characterized by any human shape. It is striking that the Iconoclasts do not make customary mention of the human soul of Christ in the passage. However, if we add to this other passages on the Incarnation that do mention the human soul of Christ, it becomes clear that the doctrine of assuming only flesh from mankind, represented by the Theotokos, is not a lapsus but a consistent doctrine. In this Christology, the soul of Christ is not only pre-existent, but has a special instrumental function, condensing and shaping Christ’s body in the Theotokos’ womb. This doctrine has a Platonic background, and in its Christianized form can be found in Origen’s Peri Achon and in later Christian Platonism. Moreover, the role of the Theotokos in this Christology is substantially less important since she only provides matter to the Soul that shapes its human body. This can explain the substantial body of hagiographical source materials that accuse the Iconoclasts of a “Nestorianizing” attitude towards the Theotokos.
The Doubt of the Apostles and the Resurrection Faith of the Early Church (WUNT II/495; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2019) - PREVIEW
2019
In this work, J. D. Atkins employs a combination of reception-history analysis and redaction criticism to challenge modern theories that Luke 24 and John 20 are apologetic responses to incipient docetism. He subjects second-century parallels used to support these theories to the same redaction-critical scrutiny as the Gospels and finds that the editorial and apologetic concerns of the evangelists differ fundamentally from those of antidocetic writers: neither Luke nor John aims to prove the physicality of the resurrection. Both instead draw attention to the fulfillment of prophecy. The author also argues that the apostles' doubt was not an apologetic device and that the bodily demonstrations of touching and eating predate docetism. Early docetists appeal to the Gospels as apostolic testimony but insist on a non-literal hermeneutic in which Christ performs physical actions "in appearance only."
Theosis (Deification) as a Biblical and Historical Doctrine
This is the first of the two articles by this author that research the doctrine of theosis, sometimes also called deification or divinization. The second article presents theosis as a New Testament and evangelical doctrine. This first article presents theosis as a biblical and historical doctrine. The first major section of this article analyzes the main biblical texts for the doctrine of theosis; their interpretation and appropriation for theosis. The second major section of this article gives an overview of historical development of the doctrine of theosis, from the beginning of Christian thought to modern era. It shows that theosis was not limited to Eastern theologians but was also represented in the West in certain mainstream theologians and movements. Because of its biblicity and historicity, theosis should be considered an essential historical doctrine of the Church.
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