From: George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Date: Sun Nov 02 2003 - 22:10:57 EST
Don Winterstein wrote:
...................
> Your point is one that almost every Christian would agree with: The
> incarnation is fundamental to Christianity. It implies both that God
> acts in the physical realm and that physical devices could have
> detected Christ while he was on earth.
>
> Having lost track of your original thrust, I now wonder why you'd want
> to make an issue of a point that all traditional Christians accept.
> 2000 years ago it was crucial for God to make it clear that Christ was
> a physical person. Once we accept this, any further value in
> detecting him lies in the spiritual realm, not the physical.
>
> The apostle Paul wrote (2 Corinthians 5:16), “…From now on we regard
> no one as merely human. Though we may have looked upon Christ as
> merely human, we now do so no longer.” (A literal translation
> would have "know...according to the flesh" in place of "regard...as
> merely human.")
>
> Jesus on film presumably would look like an ordinary man. While in
> some sense you could legitimately say you had a picture of God, the
> picture would tell you nothing important about God. Of course, it
> would be different if you had a film covering his entire ministry.
> That would be of great interest.................................
There is a serious missing of the point here. Yes, seeing Jesus in his earthly
ministry did not convince everybody that he was God - which is to say, among other
things, that what he said & did & the kind of life & death he showed didn't agree with
common sense ideas of divinity. It is significant that in Mark's gospel he is
recognized as the Son of God when he hangs dead on the cross.
But it is profoundly wrong to think that once we have been brought to recognize
him as God Incarnate, the importance of his humanity disappears. The Incarnation is
permanent, and unless you know Christ as the one born of Mary, who hung on the cross and
was raised from the tomb, you do not know him period. "There is no other God" as
Brother Martin sings. In the Eucharist we receive the _body and blood_ of Christ, not
some memory or spiritual reality, so that the humanity of Christ is of ongoing
importance. In fact, Eph.1:10 indicates that the whole purpose of creation is the
uniting of "all things" with God Incarnate. As one of the Orthodox theologians said,
"the end of all God's works is embodiment."
& that's one reason why the whole science-theology dialogue is of such great
importance. The material world that science studies really matters - ultimately matters
- to God.
With regard to II Cor.5, to say that we do not know Christ as "merely human"
(not the best rendering of kata sarka, but let that pass) doesn't mean that we are not
to regard him as human at all. To deny the humanity of Christ is as serious an error as
to deny his divinity.
Shalom,
George
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/
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