And eating food (and one assumes going to the bathroom), and needing to bathe, and all the corporeal things we deal with, both natural and as a result of the Fall. In my own case, as someone who’s struggled with my body and even with being human, it’s helped me to realize that Jesus dealt with this too. Realizing He embraced being human, and of even the Highest can do that, that I should try to as well, even if I don’t feel like it. (I know many people have had a bad experience with churches being anti-body in some ways, but for me Christianity was what taught me that the body was a good thing to be embraced. But I’m weird…)
Just picking up on this—his humanity helped me in much the same way, as I’m disabled and my mother refused to admit the fact till I was well over 50. Being told you’reattention-seeking when you’re actually dislocating joints has some weird effects on your head, and I coped as well as I did largely because of having a disabled God, if you see what I mean. Which is only possible because of his humanity.
To answer the OP, I have less trouble with Jesus humanity than I do with his divinity. I have been slowing (d)evolving from Anglicanism to agnosticism.
Consider the last few minutes of Martin Luther King's last speech
.
You need to show that the gospels are a sufficiently similar genre to Martin Luther King's speeches before this is relevant.
Jesus's parables are a similar genre: I think only the most doctrinaire fundamentalists would assert that the Good Samaritan reports a historical incident (though they will insist that references to Hell in the parables are factual). But to say the Gospels as a whole are a parable seems to be a step motivated by the desired conclusion.
The best analogy for the argument would be Plutarch's Lives; historians concur that Plutarch tweaked events in the service of his moral lessons. But even there Plutarch is adapting things that actually happened.
They resemble a modern midrash.
My understanding is that Jews find the invocation of Midrash by modern Christian writers profoundly misleading.
Which is why I qualified it with "resemble". Though I originally found this "My Jewish Learning", though it is no longer there.
The point is that we don't have to take them literally in order to find truth, even today with the obsession with literal truth by both Christians and anti-Christians.
Again, as St. Paul says, if Jesus is not raised from the dead, our faith is in vain.
Like how exactly do I live into the "divine" part of being "human"?
I don’t think we’re Divine as part of our human nature—we are made in God’s image, and as Christians, adopted by God, but not Divine in the way Jesus is Divine.
To answer the OP, I have less trouble with Jesus humanity than I do with his divinity. I have been slowing (d)evolving from Anglicanism to agnosticism.
What might help in going back? The writer who’s helped me the most has been C.S. Lewis, but there are others, of course.
Like how exactly do I live into the "divine" part of being "human"?
I don’t think we’re Divine as part of our human nature—we are made in God’s image, and as Christians, adopted by God, but not Divine in the way Jesus is Divine.
Well none of that makes a lick of sense to me but if it does to you then I won't argue.
It's no stretch for me to accept the version of Jesus that is 100% human and 100% divine.
What I struggle with is the redefinition of "human" this implies ,........
Well, I don't struggle that much, but I do wonder how to live into the potential of such an implication. Like how exactly do I live into the "divine" part of being "human"?
[/quote]
Maybe for us the dichotomy is usually.overemphasised.
Maybe the idea that "In every (,ordinary) person there is a part that is God." allows a blurring of the distinction between the human and the divine.
Consider the last few minutes of Martin Luther King's last speech
.
You need to show that the gospels are a sufficiently similar genre to Martin Luther King's speeches before this is relevant.
Jesus's parables are a similar genre: I think only the most doctrinaire fundamentalists would assert that the Good Samaritan reports a historical incident (though they will insist that references to Hell in the parables are factual). But to say the Gospels as a whole are a parable seems to be a step motivated by the desired conclusion.
The best analogy for the argument would be Plutarch's Lives; historians concur that Plutarch tweaked events in the service of his moral lessons. But even there Plutarch is adapting things that actually happened.
They resemble a modern midrash.
My understanding is that Jews find the invocation of Midrash by modern Christian writers profoundly misleading.
Which is why I qualified it with "resemble". Though I originally found this "My Jewish Learning", though it is no longer there.
The point is that we don't have to take them literally in order to find truth, even today with the obsession with literal truth by both Christians and anti-Christians.
Again, as St. Paul says, if Jesus is not raised from the dead, our faith is in vain.
Consider the last few minutes of Martin Luther King's last speech
.
You need to show that the gospels are a sufficiently similar genre to Martin Luther King's speeches before this is relevant.
Jesus's parables are a similar genre: I think only the most doctrinaire fundamentalists would assert that the Good Samaritan reports a historical incident (though they will insist that references to Hell in the parables are factual). But to say the Gospels as a whole are a parable seems to be a step motivated by the desired conclusion.
The best analogy for the argument would be Plutarch's Lives; historians concur that Plutarch tweaked events in the service of his moral lessons. But even there Plutarch is adapting things that actually happened.
They resemble a modern midrash.
My understanding is that Jews find the invocation of Midrash by modern Christian writers profoundly misleading.
Which is why I qualified it with "resemble". Though I originally found this "My Jewish Learning", though it is no longer there.
The point is that we don't have to take them literally in order to find truth, even today with the obsession with literal truth by both Christians and anti-Christians.
Again, as St. Paul says, if Jesus is not raised from the dead, our faith is in vain.
A non-sequitur!
If it’s a non sequitur… So are you saying, then, “Yes, the Gospels are accurate about Jesus dying and rising again, just not necessarily about some of the other things they say He said and did”? Because the matter of how accurate reportage in the Gospels are, whether or not it was a different genre than some might suppose, is pretty relevant to that. I certainly think it’s easier to believe that He gave the Sermon on the Mount, as written, or even some of the more “ordinary” miracles, than God becoming human, and dying and coming back to life—which is the central doctrine of the Christian faith, and arguably the whole point of the thing.
How about throwing a tantrum and deleting a fig tree that wasn't growing fruit when it shouldn't be expected to?
I have heard it said that if you have never contemplated Jesus with a shitty diaper, you haven't fully grasped the incarnation.
Mark sandwiches the fig tree passages around the cleansing of the temple episode, and then follows it with a teaching about faith to move mountains. Not that I have heard of anyone literally moving a mountain (or e.g. stopping a lava flow), so maybe no-one has been free of doubt about what they are praying for.
Consider the last few minutes of Martin Luther King's last speech
.
You need to show that the gospels are a sufficiently similar genre to Martin Luther King's speeches before this is relevant.
Jesus's parables are a similar genre: I think only the most doctrinaire fundamentalists would assert that the Good Samaritan reports a historical incident (though they will insist that references to Hell in the parables are factual). But to say the Gospels as a whole are a parable seems to be a step motivated by the desired conclusion.
The best analogy for the argument would be Plutarch's Lives; historians concur that Plutarch tweaked events in the service of his moral lessons. But even there Plutarch is adapting things that actually happened.
They resemble a modern midrash.
My understanding is that Jews find the invocation of Midrash by modern Christian writers profoundly misleading.
Which is why I qualified it with "resemble". Though I originally found this "My Jewish Learning", though it is no longer there.
The point is that we don't have to take them literally in order to find truth, even today with the obsession with literal truth by both Christians and anti-Christians.
Again, as St. Paul says, if Jesus is not raised from the dead, our faith is in vain.
A non-sequitur!
If it’s a non sequitur… So are you saying, then, “Yes, the Gospels are accurate about Jesus dying and rising again, just not necessarily about some of the other things they say He said and did”? Because the matter of how accurate reportage in the Gospels are, whether or not it was a different genre than some might suppose, is pretty relevant to that. I certainly think it’s easier to believe that He gave the Sermon on the Mount, as written, or even some of the more “ordinary” miracles, than God becoming human, and dying and coming back to life—which is the central doctrine of the Christian faith, and arguably the whole point of the thing.
You should stop trying to put words in my mouth of what you (mistakenly) imagine I am saying.
Consider the last few minutes of Martin Luther King's last speech
.
You need to show that the gospels are a sufficiently similar genre to Martin Luther King's speeches before this is relevant.
Jesus's parables are a similar genre: I think only the most doctrinaire fundamentalists would assert that the Good Samaritan reports a historical incident (though they will insist that references to Hell in the parables are factual). But to say the Gospels as a whole are a parable seems to be a step motivated by the desired conclusion.
The best analogy for the argument would be Plutarch's Lives; historians concur that Plutarch tweaked events in the service of his moral lessons. But even there Plutarch is adapting things that actually happened.
They resemble a modern midrash.
My understanding is that Jews find the invocation of Midrash by modern Christian writers profoundly misleading.
Which is why I qualified it with "resemble". Though I originally found this "My Jewish Learning", though it is no longer there.
The point is that we don't have to take them literally in order to find truth, even today with the obsession with literal truth by both Christians and anti-Christians.
Again, as St. Paul says, if Jesus is not raised from the dead, our faith is in vain.
A non-sequitur!
If it’s a non sequitur… So are you saying, then, “Yes, the Gospels are accurate about Jesus dying and rising again, just not necessarily about some of the other things they say He said and did”? Because the matter of how accurate reportage in the Gospels are, whether or not it was a different genre than some might suppose, is pretty relevant to that. I certainly think it’s easier to believe that He gave the Sermon on the Mount, as written, or even some of the more “ordinary” miracles, than God becoming human, and dying and coming back to life—which is the central doctrine of the Christian faith, and arguably the whole point of the thing.
You should stop trying to put words in my mouth of what you (mistakenly) imagine I am saying.
That’s why I asked, “Are you saying, then…?” Because I genuinely don’t know. I’m not putting words in your mouth—I’m asking if this is a correct understanding of your position on the Gospels. If we’re wrestling with whether what the Gospels say are historically true, then certainly, whatever else is in there which may or may not be iffy, “If Christ is not raised, our faith is in vain” is not only not a non sequitur, but critical to the whole Christian thing, and at least that one part needs to have been recorded truthfully as a genuine thing that happened.
Consider the last few minutes of Martin Luther King's last speech
.
You need to show that the gospels are a sufficiently similar genre to Martin Luther King's speeches before this is relevant.
Jesus's parables are a similar genre: I think only the most doctrinaire fundamentalists would assert that the Good Samaritan reports a historical incident (though they will insist that references to Hell in the parables are factual). But to say the Gospels as a whole are a parable seems to be a step motivated by the desired conclusion.
The best analogy for the argument would be Plutarch's Lives; historians concur that Plutarch tweaked events in the service of his moral lessons. But even there Plutarch is adapting things that actually happened.
They resemble a modern midrash.
My understanding is that Jews find the invocation of Midrash by modern Christian writers profoundly misleading.
Which is why I qualified it with "resemble". Though I originally found this "My Jewish Learning", though it is no longer there.
The point is that we don't have to take them literally in order to find truth, even today with the obsession with literal truth by both Christians and anti-Christians.
Again, as St. Paul says, if Jesus is not raised from the dead, our faith is in vain.
Maybe for us the dichotomy is usually.overemphasised.
Maybe the idea that "In every (,ordinary) person there is a part that is God." allows a blurring of the distinction between the human and the divine.
I'm sure that this is true. I feel absolutely convicted of this truth. I just wish I could operate less as "human" and more as "divine" as Jesus pointed to us in The Great Commandment and elsewhere.
Having a fragment of divinity doesn't prevent me from behaving like a dick, which I did this morning and of which, after the fact, I feel most heartily ashamed because I know better.
I'd just like to operate on the "divine side" more automatically than I do on the "human side" because it's overall just a better, happier, more uplifting engaging, connected and hilarious headspace to be in.
I guess it's like anything else - practice makes permanent.
Bart Ehrman, in his book on the Divinity of Christ, said whenever he has Christians in his classroom, they have no doubt Jesus Christ is God, but to a person, they all seemed to struggle with Jesus' humanity.
Maybe this is down to the difference between Christianity as something to be believed, and as something to be lived. It wouldn't be a big surprise if (theology?) students in a classroom leaned towards the more theoretical/conceptual side of faith.
My more cynical take is that students are possibly less likely to have actually read the gospels through. Yes, I taught university literature classes and I used to test levels of basic biblical and mythological knowledge (it was a Jesuit school) because so many students missed super basic cultural references, making it hard to have any discussion of short stories, etc. And it was incredible how many were missing even basic ideas like Adam and Eve.
Consider the last few minutes of Martin Luther King's last speech
.
You need to show that the gospels are a sufficiently similar genre to Martin Luther King's speeches before this is relevant.
Jesus's parables are a similar genre: I think only the most doctrinaire fundamentalists would assert that the Good Samaritan reports a historical incident (though they will insist that references to Hell in the parables are factual). But to say the Gospels as a whole are a parable seems to be a step motivated by the desired conclusion.
The best analogy for the argument would be Plutarch's Lives; historians concur that Plutarch tweaked events in the service of his moral lessons. But even there Plutarch is adapting things that actually happened.
They resemble a modern midrash.
My understanding is that Jews find the invocation of Midrash by modern Christian writers profoundly misleading.
Which is why I qualified it with "resemble". Though I originally found this "My Jewish Learning", though it is no longer there.
The point is that we don't have to take them literally in order to find truth, even today with the obsession with literal truth by both Christians and anti-Christians.
Again, as St. Paul says, if Jesus is not raised from the dead, our faith is in vain.
A non-sequitur!
If it’s a non sequitur… So are you saying, then, “Yes, the Gospels are accurate about Jesus dying and rising again, just not necessarily about some of the other things they say He said and did”? Because the matter of how accurate reportage in the Gospels are, whether or not it was a different genre than some might suppose, is pretty relevant to that. I certainly think it’s easier to believe that He gave the Sermon on the Mount, as written, or even some of the more “ordinary” miracles, than God becoming human, and dying and coming back to life—which is the central doctrine of the Christian faith, and arguably the whole point of the thing.
You should stop trying to put words in my mouth of what you (mistakenly) imagine I am saying.
That’s can be avoided by saying more than “a non-sequitur.” People are less likely to speculate on what you mean if you say why you think it’s a non-sequitur
Consider the last few minutes of Martin Luther King's last speech
.
You need to show that the gospels are a sufficiently similar genre to Martin Luther King's speeches before this is relevant.
Jesus's parables are a similar genre: I think only the most doctrinaire fundamentalists would assert that the Good Samaritan reports a historical incident (though they will insist that references to Hell in the parables are factual). But to say the Gospels as a whole are a parable seems to be a step motivated by the desired conclusion.
The best analogy for the argument would be Plutarch's Lives; historians concur that Plutarch tweaked events in the service of his moral lessons. But even there Plutarch is adapting things that actually happened.
They resemble a modern midrash.
My understanding is that Jews find the invocation of Midrash by modern Christian writers profoundly misleading.
Which is why I qualified it with "resemble". Though I originally found this "My Jewish Learning", though it is no longer there.
The point is that we don't have to take them literally in order to find truth, even today with the obsession with literal truth by both Christians and anti-Christians.
Again, as St. Paul says, if Jesus is not raised from the dead, our faith is in vain.
A non-sequitur!
If it’s a non sequitur… So are you saying, then, “Yes, the Gospels are accurate about Jesus dying and rising again, just not necessarily about some of the other things they say He said and did”? Because the matter of how accurate reportage in the Gospels are, whether or not it was a different genre than some might suppose, is pretty relevant to that. I certainly think it’s easier to believe that He gave the Sermon on the Mount, as written, or even some of the more “ordinary” miracles, than God becoming human, and dying and coming back to life—which is the central doctrine of the Christian faith, and arguably the whole point of the thing.
You should stop trying to put words in my mouth of what you (mistakenly) imagine I am saying.
That’s can be avoided by saying more than “a non-sequitur.” People are less likely to speculate on what you mean if you say why you think it’s a non-sequitur
This. Plus, of course, speculation, especially when one is asking if X or Y is what is meant, isn’t the same as putting words in someone’s mouth. If someone asks me, “Does this mean you believe X?” I don’t think they’re putting words in my mouth. If they say, “In other words, you’re saying X” as a statement, then that might be a different matter.
Consider the last few minutes of Martin Luther King's last speech
.
You need to show that the gospels are a sufficiently similar genre to Martin Luther King's speeches before this is relevant.
Jesus's parables are a similar genre: I think only the most doctrinaire fundamentalists would assert that the Good Samaritan reports a historical incident (though they will insist that references to Hell in the parables are factual). But to say the Gospels as a whole are a parable seems to be a step motivated by the desired conclusion.
The best analogy for the argument would be Plutarch's Lives; historians concur that Plutarch tweaked events in the service of his moral lessons. But even there Plutarch is adapting things that actually happened.
They resemble a modern midrash.
My understanding is that Jews find the invocation of Midrash by modern Christian writers profoundly misleading.
Which is why I qualified it with "resemble". Though I originally found this "My Jewish Learning", though it is no longer there.
The point is that we don't have to take them literally in order to find truth, even today with the obsession with literal truth by both Christians and anti-Christians.
Again, as St. Paul says, if Jesus is not raised from the dead, our faith is in vain.
A non-sequitur!
If it’s a non sequitur… So are you saying, then, “Yes, the Gospels are accurate about Jesus dying and rising again, just not necessarily about some of the other things they say He said and did”? Because the matter of how accurate reportage in the Gospels are, whether or not it was a different genre than some might suppose, is pretty relevant to that. I certainly think it’s easier to believe that He gave the Sermon on the Mount, as written, or even some of the more “ordinary” miracles, than God becoming human, and dying and coming back to life—which is the central doctrine of the Christian faith, and arguably the whole point of the thing.
You should stop trying to put words in my mouth of what you (mistakenly) imagine I am saying.
That’s can be avoided by saying more than “a non-sequitur.” People are less likely to speculate on what you mean if you say why you think it’s a non-sequitur
Or the poster should explain why it has anything to do with that part of the discussion.
Consider the last few minutes of Martin Luther King's last speech
.
You need to show that the gospels are a sufficiently similar genre to Martin Luther King's speeches before this is relevant.
Jesus's parables are a similar genre: I think only the most doctrinaire fundamentalists would assert that the Good Samaritan reports a historical incident (though they will insist that references to Hell in the parables are factual). But to say the Gospels as a whole are a parable seems to be a step motivated by the desired conclusion.
The best analogy for the argument would be Plutarch's Lives; historians concur that Plutarch tweaked events in the service of his moral lessons. But even there Plutarch is adapting things that actually happened.
They resemble a modern midrash.
My understanding is that Jews find the invocation of Midrash by modern Christian writers profoundly misleading.
Which is why I qualified it with "resemble". Though I originally found this "My Jewish Learning", though it is no longer there.
The point is that we don't have to take them literally in order to find truth, even today with the obsession with literal truth by both Christians and anti-Christians.
Again, as St. Paul says, if Jesus is not raised from the dead, our faith is in vain.
A non-sequitur!
If it’s a non sequitur… So are you saying, then, “Yes, the Gospels are accurate about Jesus dying and rising again, just not necessarily about some of the other things they say He said and did”? Because the matter of how accurate reportage in the Gospels are, whether or not it was a different genre than some might suppose, is pretty relevant to that. I certainly think it’s easier to believe that He gave the Sermon on the Mount, as written, or even some of the more “ordinary” miracles, than God becoming human, and dying and coming back to life—which is the central doctrine of the Christian faith, and arguably the whole point of the thing.
You should stop trying to put words in my mouth of what you (mistakenly) imagine I am saying.
That’s can be avoided by saying more than “a non-sequitur.” People are less likely to speculate on what you mean if you say why you think it’s a non-sequitur
Or the poster should explain why it has anything to do with that part of the discussion.
“It”? What “it” are you talking about?
I don’t see how what @ChastMastr said was irrelevant or not responsive to what you said about not having to take the Gospels literally in order to find truth. If you thought it wasn’t responsive, you could clearly said that.
But there’re really no grounds to complain when people respond to a two-word answer like “a non-sequitur” by trying to figure out what you meant and figure incorrectly.
I am going ahead and just ask it. Did Jesus do a number two? It had long been a question for Christians. See this story..
AI mean, if Jesus was truly human just like any of us, I would think he had to, well you know.
That was a fascinating article! A reminder of how contextual so many of our concerns are: not just about christology but about all things in life. The combination of our questions and our horizons provide boundaries on what we learn.
Valentinus was a gnostic. Pace AFF, the belief in that article shows he was a Gnostic.
A reasonable summary of one of the characteristic consequences of Gnostic beliefs (and there was much variation) is that fleshly existence is a burden to be escaped, not embraced. So Jesus seemed to be human, made flesh, but did not demonstrate the fullness of humanity. Including the need to shit!
As mousethief put it, both pithily and accurately, embracing the full significance of the Christian belief of the Incarnation involves the acceptance that he had shitty nappies.
I’m sure there are residual elements of the “non-shitty-nappy” view of Jesus in the minds of quite a lot of Christians today. It’s possible to recite the Creeds and yet somehow believe that Jesus was “above all that”. There may be a surprising example in the carol “Away in a Manger”.
“But little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes”.
Have you ever asked yourself what that really means?
Valentinus was a gnostic. Pace AFF, the belief in that article shows he was a Gnostic.
A reasonable summary of one of the characteristic consequences of Gnostic beliefs (and there was much variation) is that fleshly existence is a burden to be escaped, not embraced. So Jesus seemed to be human, made flesh, but did not demonstrate the fullness of humanity. Including the need to shit!
I've said on a few occasions that I disagree with big-G Gnostics on quite a number of fundamental issues and this is one of the main ones. The idea that life in the human suit is somehow abhorrent and a prison made for us by some poorly developed demiurge is just, well, anti-life. It's a non-starter for me.
The big-G Gnostics also wrestled mightily with the problem of evil and the role of suffering in the human experience, and none of their answers was IMO satisfactory.
I've arrived at a coherent narrative that settles the matter once and for all in my own mind. That's what makes me a little-g gnostic.
Valentinus was a gnostic. Pace AFF, the belief in that article shows he was a Gnostic.
A reasonable summary of one of the characteristic consequences of Gnostic beliefs (and there was much variation) is that fleshly existence is a burden to be escaped, not embraced. So Jesus seemed to be human, made flesh, but did not demonstrate the fullness of humanity. Including the need to shit!
As mousethief put it, both pithily and accurately, embracing the full significance of the Christian belief of the Incarnation involves the acceptance that he had shitty nappies.
I’m sure there are residual elements of the “non-shitty-nappy” view of Jesus in the minds of quite a lot of Christians today. It’s possible to recite the Creeds and yet somehow believe that Jesus was “above all that”. There may be a surprising example in the carol “Away in a Manger”.
“But little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes”.
Have you ever asked yourself what that really means?
I actually think it might come from a strand of Christian theology that sees babies' crying as self-indulgent and thus sinful. Ergo, Jesus didn’t do it and just waited patiently waited for Mary to meet his needs.
Away in a Manger was traditionally associated with Luther but that assertion is now recognised as spurious. Calvin’s doctrine of infant salvation excludes babies’ sinning. Catholics and Orthodox entrust unbaptised babies to the mercy of God. Those who accept the baptism of believers similarly entrust unbaptised babies (and children not old enough to understand a profession of faith) similarly entrust them to the mercy of God.
I’ve never come across the belief that babies’ crying is somehow sinful or a sign of original sin.
Valentinus was a gnostic. Pace AFF, the belief in that article shows he was a Gnostic.
A reasonable summary of one of the characteristic consequences of Gnostic beliefs (and there was much variation) is that fleshly existence is a burden to be escaped, not embraced. So Jesus seemed to be human, made flesh, but did not demonstrate the fullness of humanity. Including the need to shit!
As mousethief put it, both pithily and accurately, embracing the full significance of the Christian belief of the Incarnation involves the acceptance that he had shitty nappies.
I’m sure there are residual elements of the “non-shitty-nappy” view of Jesus in the minds of quite a lot of Christians today. It’s possible to recite the Creeds and yet somehow believe that Jesus was “above all that”. There may be a surprising example in the carol “Away in a Manger”.
“But little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes”.
Have you ever asked yourself what that really means?
If he didn't cry, what was the matter with him? What genetic disorder? Or was he just perpetually comatose? Not defaecating rapidly becomes a serious medical emergency. Ignorant low brow folk beliefs are excluded from our high brow consideration surely?
Though to answer Mousetheif comment earlier about the fig tree, I sometimes wonder if we imagine divine to be what we expect an idealised 19th Century man (yes male of the species) to be. Maybe divinity is not so controlled by perfect reasonable logic as we would like. Maybe passion and emotion, however they are expressed in eternity, do play a part. It would make sense if the statement God is Love is true. If those become cramped into a human body I can well see them coming out in what appear to be petty bursts of anger at times.
Babies cry most often because of pain somewhere in the alimentary canal. Even if there was a theological opinion to the contrary (e.g exhibiting the sin of selfishness) such an opinion was silly.
Valentinus was a gnostic. Pace AFF, the belief in that article shows he was a Gnostic.
A reasonable summary of one of the characteristic consequences of Gnostic beliefs (and there was much variation) is that fleshly existence is a burden to be escaped, not embraced. So Jesus seemed to be human, made flesh, but did not demonstrate the fullness of humanity. Including the need to shit!
I’m not sure that’s quite what’s going on in that article. The article says “Valentinus was talking about Jesus after his resurrection so we are already in ‘special’ territory.” To paraphrase, do we shit in the resurrection, or shall we be like the angels?
And the article does also discuss beliefs of the time about how digestion works, including an idea that a perfect human would be able to completely digest all they eat. So as odd at it sounds to contemporary ears, it looks like what was going on, at least some of the time, was an effort to apply then-current beliefs about digestion in a way that affirmed Jesus’s full humanity, even though we—knowing what we know about digestion—would see that attempt as denying Jesus’s full humanity.
Away in a Manger was traditionally associated with Luther but that assertion is now recognised as spurious. Calvin’s doctrine of infant salvation excludes babies’ sinning. Catholics and Orthodox entrust unbaptised babies to the mercy of God. Those who accept the baptism of believers similarly entrust unbaptised babies (and children not old enough to understand a profession of faith) similarly entrust them to the mercy of God.
I’ve never come across the belief that babies’ crying is somehow sinful or a sign of original sin.
What have I missed, KarlB?
It’s a tangent I know, but an interesting one.
St. Augustine, Confessions:
In what, then, did I sin? Is it that I cried for the breast? If I should now so cry — not indeed for the breast, but for the food suitable to my years — I should be most justly laughed at and rebuked. What I then did deserved rebuke
Valentinus was a gnostic. Pace AFF, the belief in that article shows he was a Gnostic.
A reasonable summary of one of the characteristic consequences of Gnostic beliefs (and there was much variation) is that fleshly existence is a burden to be escaped, not embraced. So Jesus seemed to be human, made flesh, but did not demonstrate the fullness of humanity. Including the need to shit!
As mousethief put it, both pithily and accurately, embracing the full significance of the Christian belief of the Incarnation involves the acceptance that he had shitty nappies.
I’m sure there are residual elements of the “non-shitty-nappy” view of Jesus in the minds of quite a lot of Christians today. It’s possible to recite the Creeds and yet somehow believe that Jesus was “above all that”. There may be a surprising example in the carol “Away in a Manger”.
“But little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes”.
Have you ever asked yourself what that really means?
He was asleep? I don’t think it says He never cried. He certainly did as an adult, and showed extreme but righteous anger, and was hungry and thirsty.
Well, babies don't cry all the time. I picture him waking up, looking around and seeing some cows (a bit out of focus, because that's what babies' eyes are like) and thinking "well this is interesting", or whatever the equivalent of that for a human who hasn't yet acquired any language.
Well, babies don't cry all the time. I picture him waking up, looking around and seeing some cows (a bit out of focus, because that's what babies' eyes are like) and thinking "well this is interesting", or whatever the equivalent of that for a human who hasn't yet acquired any language.
This. And I stand corrected, @KarlLB, re His being awake.
True. But it is very hard to determine the human side of Jesus. The gospels emphasized the divine side. We catch glimpses. We know he got tired from time to time. We know he wept at the death of his friend. He had friends! We know he was discouraged. We know he became angry, we also know he feared death, Beyond that, it is speculation.
ISTM there's a difference between speculation about personal experiences of Jesus not recorded in the Gospels, and sociological information about the typical experiences of men born in Jesus's time and place and culture. I don't think the latter falls into the category of speculation.
AIUI he would have been taught to wipe his ass with his left hand, and would have done so through his life. He would not have had access to modern dental care.
If we take the Incarnation seriously, then we ought to be able to cope with what were likely facts about him, as a man of his time and place. More notable aspects of a typical male experience - such as marriage and parenthood - are not recorded of him.
Jesus was tempted like all humans but did not sin. Since you can sin with your thoughts, I find the idea of temptation without sin impossible to understand and this makes Jesus seem inhuman to me.
I think the difference between temptation and sin of thought lies in entertaining or encouraging the thought of committing sin in your mind - whether or not you are actively fantasizing about committing a sin.
But the way my mind works, this still doesn’t make sense. My mind is like the movie that Alex was forced to watch in A Clockwork Orange but much worse. I hear other people say that they don’t think about horrific things all the time but I have trouble believing them. I think the difference between people with OCD and those without it are that people with OCD are bothered more by the horrible thoughts that everyone is having at every moment, and that being bothered by them and trying to find ways to cope with being bothered by them inhibits our ability to function.
So if everyone has thoughts of both petty and unspeakable cruelty, selfishness, and hatred all the time, I don’t think there is any way to not cross over into actively entertaining these thoughts or fantasizing about the content of the thoughts, for at least a moment, so very often that it’s almost impossible to say when a conscious adult human being is *not* sinning.
But Jesus managed to be fully human, and have all these thoughts all the time, without ever encouraging or liking these thoughts? I just don’t understand that.
And I’m also terrified that there ever was a human being subjected to the horror show of human consciousness that also had unlimited power. He could have done whatever He wanted, erased everyone’s memory of it, and possibly even gone back in time so that his commission of atrocities could be deleted from the historical record. And since He was God, he could have even decreed that whatever He wanted to do was moral just for enough time for Him to do it, and then returned morality back to how it had been before he had a hankering to do something terrible.
Now Christians believe that Jesus didn’t do any of that, because God, no matter which person of the Trinity you are talking about, is omnibenevolent, immutable, impassive, etc., so even when incarnate in a temptable, changeable, feeling and hurting human body, God won’t do ungodly thinks like change, react, feel, think, decide, etc., even if just to scratch a (metaphorical) itch that the human Jesus feels. All of which makes Jesus the body, brain, and human soul seem not human in any way that I can understand.
You sound like you've got the kind of OCD I've had.* I'm really not sure that ordinary human beings are plagued with horrible thoughts quite as badly as people with this type of OCD--I think the frequency and severity is turned up for us, and the obsessive nature of them means that not only can we not escape them, but we have more than the usual tendency to confuse suffering from them with agreeing to them, and therefore we have massive guilt--which isn't really ours in God's eyes at all.
I don't think Jesus had this--it would have made it nearly impossible for him to carry out his ministry. But if he did have it, it wouldn't have made him a sinner, just completely miserable.
* A primarily mental form of OCD, where horrible thoughts intrude on you, the more horrible, the more often repeated and impossible to dismiss, and we have unbearable compulsions to make up for those thoughts by doing things (like confession or ruminating or self-examination, generally through mental acts). My particular subtype is hereditary and peaks in early adulthood, and slowly turns into general anxiety (thank God, what a relief!) in later adulthood.
@stonespring, I think you’re right about the thoughts that come unbidden. I’m not sure, though, that simply entertaining the thought is what constitutes crossing into the “sin territory.” In some situations, it may, but not always I don’t think.
It seems to me that choice is the relevant factor. When the thoughts come, what choice is made about them? Do we choose to indulge them, or do we choose to put them aside?
It seems like a fork-in-the-road situation to me. When he came to the fork, which course did he choose?
Comments
Just picking up on this—his humanity helped me in much the same way, as I’m disabled and my mother refused to admit the fact till I was well over 50. Being told you’reattention-seeking when you’re actually dislocating joints has some weird effects on your head, and I coped as well as I did largely because of having a disabled God, if you see what I mean. Which is only possible because of his humanity.
Again, as St. Paul says, if Jesus is not raised from the dead, our faith is in vain.
I don’t think we’re Divine as part of our human nature—we are made in God’s image, and as Christians, adopted by God, but not Divine in the way Jesus is Divine.
What might help in going back? The writer who’s helped me the most has been C.S. Lewis, but there are others, of course.
I’m sorry to hear. I hope this changes for you. Sending hugs.
🕯
Well none of that makes a lick of sense to me but if it does to you then I won't argue.
AFF
I have heard it said that if you have never contemplated Jesus with a shitty diaper, you haven't fully grasped the incarnation.
It's no stretch for me to accept the version of Jesus that is 100% human and 100% divine.
What I struggle with is the redefinition of "human" this implies ,........
Well, I don't struggle that much, but I do wonder how to live into the potential of such an implication. Like how exactly do I live into the "divine" part of being "human"?
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Maybe for us the dichotomy is usually.overemphasised.
Maybe the idea that "In every (,ordinary) person there is a part that is God." allows a blurring of the distinction between the human and the divine.
A non-sequitur!
If it’s a non sequitur… So are you saying, then, “Yes, the Gospels are accurate about Jesus dying and rising again, just not necessarily about some of the other things they say He said and did”? Because the matter of how accurate reportage in the Gospels are, whether or not it was a different genre than some might suppose, is pretty relevant to that. I certainly think it’s easier to believe that He gave the Sermon on the Mount, as written, or even some of the more “ordinary” miracles, than God becoming human, and dying and coming back to life—which is the central doctrine of the Christian faith, and arguably the whole point of the thing.
Mark sandwiches the fig tree passages around the cleansing of the temple episode, and then follows it with a teaching about faith to move mountains. Not that I have heard of anyone literally moving a mountain (or e.g. stopping a lava flow), so maybe no-one has been free of doubt about what they are praying for.
You should stop trying to put words in my mouth of what you (mistakenly) imagine I am saying.
That’s why I asked, “Are you saying, then…?” Because I genuinely don’t know. I’m not putting words in your mouth—I’m asking if this is a correct understanding of your position on the Gospels. If we’re wrestling with whether what the Gospels say are historically true, then certainly, whatever else is in there which may or may not be iffy, “If Christ is not raised, our faith is in vain” is not only not a non sequitur, but critical to the whole Christian thing, and at least that one part needs to have been recorded truthfully as a genuine thing that happened.
It follows for me. Why not for you? Ah!
Parables.
Paul.
Yeah, a non-sequitur.
I'm sure that this is true. I feel absolutely convicted of this truth. I just wish I could operate less as "human" and more as "divine" as Jesus pointed to us in The Great Commandment and elsewhere.
Having a fragment of divinity doesn't prevent me from behaving like a dick, which I did this morning and of which, after the fact, I feel most heartily ashamed because I know better.
I'd just like to operate on the "divine side" more automatically than I do on the "human side" because it's overall just a better, happier, more uplifting engaging, connected and hilarious headspace to be in.
I guess it's like anything else - practice makes permanent.
AFF
This. Plus, of course, speculation, especially when one is asking if X or Y is what is meant, isn’t the same as putting words in someone’s mouth. If someone asks me, “Does this mean you believe X?” I don’t think they’re putting words in my mouth. If they say, “In other words, you’re saying X” as a statement, then that might be a different matter.
Or the poster should explain why it has anything to do with that part of the discussion.
I don’t see how what @ChastMastr said was irrelevant or not responsive to what you said about not having to take the Gospels literally in order to find truth. If you thought it wasn’t responsive, you could clearly said that.
But there’re really no grounds to complain when people respond to a two-word answer like “a non-sequitur” by trying to figure out what you meant and figure incorrectly.
I mean, if Jesus was truly human just like any of us, I would think he had to, well you know.
That was a fascinating article! A reminder of how contextual so many of our concerns are: not just about christology but about all things in life. The combination of our questions and our horizons provide boundaries on what we learn.
A reasonable summary of one of the characteristic consequences of Gnostic beliefs (and there was much variation) is that fleshly existence is a burden to be escaped, not embraced. So Jesus seemed to be human, made flesh, but did not demonstrate the fullness of humanity. Including the need to shit!
As mousethief put it, both pithily and accurately, embracing the full significance of the Christian belief of the Incarnation involves the acceptance that he had shitty nappies.
I’m sure there are residual elements of the “non-shitty-nappy” view of Jesus in the minds of quite a lot of Christians today. It’s possible to recite the Creeds and yet somehow believe that Jesus was “above all that”. There may be a surprising example in the carol “Away in a Manger”.
“But little Lord Jesus, no crying He makes”.
Have you ever asked yourself what that really means?
I've said on a few occasions that I disagree with big-G Gnostics on quite a number of fundamental issues and this is one of the main ones. The idea that life in the human suit is somehow abhorrent and a prison made for us by some poorly developed demiurge is just, well, anti-life. It's a non-starter for me.
The big-G Gnostics also wrestled mightily with the problem of evil and the role of suffering in the human experience, and none of their answers was IMO satisfactory.
I've arrived at a coherent narrative that settles the matter once and for all in my own mind. That's what makes me a little-g gnostic.
AFF
I actually think it might come from a strand of Christian theology that sees babies' crying as self-indulgent and thus sinful. Ergo, Jesus didn’t do it and just waited patiently waited for Mary to meet his needs.
Away in a Manger was traditionally associated with Luther but that assertion is now recognised as spurious. Calvin’s doctrine of infant salvation excludes babies’ sinning. Catholics and Orthodox entrust unbaptised babies to the mercy of God. Those who accept the baptism of believers similarly entrust unbaptised babies (and children not old enough to understand a profession of faith) similarly entrust them to the mercy of God.
I’ve never come across the belief that babies’ crying is somehow sinful or a sign of original sin.
What have I missed, KarlB?
It’s a tangent I know, but an interesting one.
If he didn't cry, what was the matter with him? What genetic disorder? Or was he just perpetually comatose? Not defaecating rapidly becomes a serious medical emergency. Ignorant low brow folk beliefs are excluded from our high brow consideration surely?
And the article does also discuss beliefs of the time about how digestion works, including an idea that a perfect human would be able to completely digest all they eat. So as odd at it sounds to contemporary ears, it looks like what was going on, at least some of the time, was an effort to apply then-current beliefs about digestion in a way that affirmed Jesus’s full humanity, even though we—knowing what we know about digestion—would see that attempt as denying Jesus’s full humanity.
St. Augustine, Confessions:
But thanks, KarlB. I might have guessed.
I've heard it from the mouths of modern Christians too, but this appears to be the source.
Augustine, my friend, you've got a lot to answer for ...
Besides, not everyone buys into the more 'out there' aspects of Augustine's theology.
He was asleep? I don’t think it says He never cried. He certainly did as an adult, and showed extreme but righteous anger, and was hungry and thirsty.
The immediately preceding line is "The baby awakes"
This. And I stand corrected, @KarlLB, re His being awake.
ISTM there's a difference between speculation about personal experiences of Jesus not recorded in the Gospels, and sociological information about the typical experiences of men born in Jesus's time and place and culture. I don't think the latter falls into the category of speculation.
AIUI he would have been taught to wipe his ass with his left hand, and would have done so through his life. He would not have had access to modern dental care.
If we take the Incarnation seriously, then we ought to be able to cope with what were likely facts about him, as a man of his time and place. More notable aspects of a typical male experience - such as marriage and parenthood - are not recorded of him.
I think the difference between temptation and sin of thought lies in entertaining or encouraging the thought of committing sin in your mind - whether or not you are actively fantasizing about committing a sin.
But the way my mind works, this still doesn’t make sense. My mind is like the movie that Alex was forced to watch in A Clockwork Orange but much worse. I hear other people say that they don’t think about horrific things all the time but I have trouble believing them. I think the difference between people with OCD and those without it are that people with OCD are bothered more by the horrible thoughts that everyone is having at every moment, and that being bothered by them and trying to find ways to cope with being bothered by them inhibits our ability to function.
So if everyone has thoughts of both petty and unspeakable cruelty, selfishness, and hatred all the time, I don’t think there is any way to not cross over into actively entertaining these thoughts or fantasizing about the content of the thoughts, for at least a moment, so very often that it’s almost impossible to say when a conscious adult human being is *not* sinning.
But Jesus managed to be fully human, and have all these thoughts all the time, without ever encouraging or liking these thoughts? I just don’t understand that.
And I’m also terrified that there ever was a human being subjected to the horror show of human consciousness that also had unlimited power. He could have done whatever He wanted, erased everyone’s memory of it, and possibly even gone back in time so that his commission of atrocities could be deleted from the historical record. And since He was God, he could have even decreed that whatever He wanted to do was moral just for enough time for Him to do it, and then returned morality back to how it had been before he had a hankering to do something terrible.
Now Christians believe that Jesus didn’t do any of that, because God, no matter which person of the Trinity you are talking about, is omnibenevolent, immutable, impassive, etc., so even when incarnate in a temptable, changeable, feeling and hurting human body, God won’t do ungodly thinks like change, react, feel, think, decide, etc., even if just to scratch a (metaphorical) itch that the human Jesus feels. All of which makes Jesus the body, brain, and human soul seem not human in any way that I can understand.
I don't think Jesus had this--it would have made it nearly impossible for him to carry out his ministry. But if he did have it, it wouldn't have made him a sinner, just completely miserable.
* A primarily mental form of OCD, where horrible thoughts intrude on you, the more horrible, the more often repeated and impossible to dismiss, and we have unbearable compulsions to make up for those thoughts by doing things (like confession or ruminating or self-examination, generally through mental acts). My particular subtype is hereditary and peaks in early adulthood, and slowly turns into general anxiety (thank God, what a relief!) in later adulthood.
It seems to me that choice is the relevant factor. When the thoughts come, what choice is made about them? Do we choose to indulge them, or do we choose to put them aside?
It seems like a fork-in-the-road situation to me. When he came to the fork, which course did he choose?