From: Don Winterstein (dfwinterstein@msn.com)
Date: Tue Nov 04 2003 - 02:26:41 EST
George Murphy wrote:
"...It is profoundly wrong to think that once we have been brought to recognize
[Jesus] 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."
I fully agree. Jesus was and is human with a body; he's not just a spirit. And God saves humans with their bodies, not detached spirits. This is of eternal importance, partly because otherwise we could have no confidence of being saved as ourselves but only as things possibly quite different from the persons we are. Furthermore, a major plank of my theological platform holds that God intends not just to save people out of the world but that he intends to incorporate us and the world within his very identity. That's what "marriage of the Lamb" means to me. So I'm sure the physical reality is every bit as important to me as to you; but for the most part it's not the physical reality as it now exists but the physical reality after God completes his work with it.
My point was not that the incarnation ever diminishes in importance after one comes to know God, but that our way of knowing him takes on a spiritual dimension that transcends any strictly physical way of knowing. And this added spiritual dimension is essential. In fact, one can argue from Scripture and tradition that one cannot even come to know Jesus as God without having received spiritual enlightenment. I'm sure you're familiar with these arguments, so I won't go into details.
So it is not physical detection of the physical Jesus by itself that has the salutary effect, but the Spirit's work in our hearts that enables us to see the physical Jesus for what he is. A photo of Jesus would add nothing to this knowledge of him; in fact, it would likely get us headed in wrong directions. For example, we'd probably start paying special attention to people whose facial features were similar to his! We'd put more emphasis on the outward man, which is not what Jesus himself ever did.
Jesus as a man is the Word, but the Word is of no effect for us without the Spirit. Likewise, the Spirit could not operate on us without the Word. Both are essential. I think this is widely accepted Christian theology.
A particularly relevant passage follows Jesus' offensive discourse in John 6 on the necessity to eat his flesh and drink his blood: To soften the blow for his disciples, Jesus said, "The spirit is the life-giver; the flesh don't amount to nothing." (Literal--and colloquial--translation of John 6:63, including the double negative common in koine Greek.) (I'm just having fun.) My emphasis in the previous post was intended to be similar to that of Jesus when he made that comment.
And for the above reasons I still claim that value in detecting Jesus lies in the spiritual realm. Saying this in no way diminishes his importance as a physical person. We either come to see the physical person with spiritually enlightened eyes, or we don't see him properly at all. A camera does not have enlightened eyes and hence cannot see him properly. That's sort of the point I was trying to make to Moorad.
Don
----- Original Message -----
From: George Murphy
To: Don Winterstein
Cc: Alexanian, Moorad ; asa
Sent: Sunday, November 02, 2003 7:10 PM
Subject: Re: A "God" Part of the Brain?
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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