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Science insulting the image of Jesus
- Thread starter rockytopva
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ViaCrucis
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Question, are you suggesting that the risen Jesus is no longer human? Actually a strict reading here would suggest to me that you believe Jesus was a human being who underwent a kind of apotheosis after the resurrection. From a traditional and orthodox Christian perspective this looks a lot like the heresy of Adoptionism.
The orthodox position being that Jesus is the eternal Son of the Father, the Logos, who became flesh in the womb of Mary and thus truly human. He is therefore both God and human in perfect union without a confusion of the natures nor a separation--the one Person of Jesus is fully human and fully God; the Incarnation means that God has joined Himself to His creation (man) forever. Jesus, the God-Man, reigns at the right hand of the Father and will come again at the end. The same Jesus--body, soul, and divinity--born of the Virgin's womb is the same Jesus who reigns with the Father in glory, and is the same Jesus who will come at the conclusion of all things. Any other idea than this is regarded as a significant and very serious Christological heresy.
-CryptoLutheran
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ViaCrucis
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As to address the thread more entirely:
Attempts to "clean up" Jesus amount to a fundamental rejection of the Incarnation. A number of Christological heresies in antiquity in essence tried to do just that--clean Jesus up. For example Docetism asserted that Jesus wasn't human at all, Jesus only seemed to be human (Greek: dokein, meaning "to seem"), the Docetists asserted Jesus was a purely divine entity, a kind of divine apparition or phantasm that appeared human but wasn't, one 2nd century Docetic text, the Acts of John, speak of trying to touch Jesus but hands going right through him, or Jesus walking along the shore of the sea of Galilee and leaving no foot prints in the sand. In the 5th century Eutychus asserted that in the Incarnation the divinity of the Logos so overwhelmed the humanity that it resulted in a "monophysis", a singular nature, a fused nature wherein the divine was the prime operator and the human lesser. A more obscure heresy from the 6th century known variously as Julianism or Aphthartodocetism was the teaching that Jesus' pre-resurrection body was incorruptible, that is it could not be harmed, damaged, it wasn't mortal. And again a 7th century heresy known as Monothelitism asserted Jesus only had one will, divine, with the Third Council of Constantinople convening to assert that Jesus in being both human and divine had both a divine and human will.
The temptation to make Jesus otherworldly is a strong one. The temptation to imagine that Jesus can't really be human has been present since the earliest years of Christianity where it was often much more comfortable to think of Jesus as a powerful demigod, or a great spirit, or as one "among the gods" as it were. Because the Incarnation is a profoundly scandalous idea, it is not asserting that a man became "like the gods" but instead asserts God became man. The Christian Feast of the Nativity as celebrated on the Gregorian calendar is coming next week, and it is indeed the celebration of a profoundly scandalous idea: The Great Other that is beyond all things who is incomprehensible and ineffable became one of us.
The Incarnation is the confession that God wore a diaper and drank milk from Mary's breast, and that God messed Himself and needed to be cleaned. It is the confession that God got dirty playing in the dirt and needed a mother to bathe Him. It is the assertion that God needed to be taught how to walk and how to speak. That God could stub His toe on a rock. That God could get a splinter working in Joseph's carpentry shop. That God could sweat blood in distress in Gethsemane. That God could have His hands and feet nailed to a piece of Roman timber and bleed real blood and become thirsty. It is the profoundly offensive confession that God, yes truly God, died and was laid down in a tomb.
The Incarnation is a truly uncomfortable idea, even for Christians, so it isn't surprising how often we try and find ways to get around it. It also means that it's easier to think of Jesus as a distant god-in-the-sky who serves to the ghastly blank slate that we want him to be, gentle and loving to ourselves but harsh and judging toward those we don't like. Because the Incarnation, taken seriously, means that we have to take seriously the sorts of hard things Jesus said, like, feed the hungry, love your enemy, do good to those that hurt you--"I was hungry and you did not feed me, I was thirsty and you did not give me drink, I was naked and you did not clothe me, ..."
The Incarnation means that, yes, Christianity is about believing that a brown skinned middle-eastern Jewish carpenter from the backwater town of Nazareth in the Galilee who dined with prostitutes, lepers, tax collectors, and sinners; and who bears the disfiguring marks of crucifixion is the Risen Lord and King of all creation.
Cleaning Jesus up means having the wrong Jesus.
-CryptoLutheran
Attempts to "clean up" Jesus amount to a fundamental rejection of the Incarnation. A number of Christological heresies in antiquity in essence tried to do just that--clean Jesus up. For example Docetism asserted that Jesus wasn't human at all, Jesus only seemed to be human (Greek: dokein, meaning "to seem"), the Docetists asserted Jesus was a purely divine entity, a kind of divine apparition or phantasm that appeared human but wasn't, one 2nd century Docetic text, the Acts of John, speak of trying to touch Jesus but hands going right through him, or Jesus walking along the shore of the sea of Galilee and leaving no foot prints in the sand. In the 5th century Eutychus asserted that in the Incarnation the divinity of the Logos so overwhelmed the humanity that it resulted in a "monophysis", a singular nature, a fused nature wherein the divine was the prime operator and the human lesser. A more obscure heresy from the 6th century known variously as Julianism or Aphthartodocetism was the teaching that Jesus' pre-resurrection body was incorruptible, that is it could not be harmed, damaged, it wasn't mortal. And again a 7th century heresy known as Monothelitism asserted Jesus only had one will, divine, with the Third Council of Constantinople convening to assert that Jesus in being both human and divine had both a divine and human will.
The temptation to make Jesus otherworldly is a strong one. The temptation to imagine that Jesus can't really be human has been present since the earliest years of Christianity where it was often much more comfortable to think of Jesus as a powerful demigod, or a great spirit, or as one "among the gods" as it were. Because the Incarnation is a profoundly scandalous idea, it is not asserting that a man became "like the gods" but instead asserts God became man. The Christian Feast of the Nativity as celebrated on the Gregorian calendar is coming next week, and it is indeed the celebration of a profoundly scandalous idea: The Great Other that is beyond all things who is incomprehensible and ineffable became one of us.
The Incarnation is the confession that God wore a diaper and drank milk from Mary's breast, and that God messed Himself and needed to be cleaned. It is the confession that God got dirty playing in the dirt and needed a mother to bathe Him. It is the assertion that God needed to be taught how to walk and how to speak. That God could stub His toe on a rock. That God could get a splinter working in Joseph's carpentry shop. That God could sweat blood in distress in Gethsemane. That God could have His hands and feet nailed to a piece of Roman timber and bleed real blood and become thirsty. It is the profoundly offensive confession that God, yes truly God, died and was laid down in a tomb.
The Incarnation is a truly uncomfortable idea, even for Christians, so it isn't surprising how often we try and find ways to get around it. It also means that it's easier to think of Jesus as a distant god-in-the-sky who serves to the ghastly blank slate that we want him to be, gentle and loving to ourselves but harsh and judging toward those we don't like. Because the Incarnation, taken seriously, means that we have to take seriously the sorts of hard things Jesus said, like, feed the hungry, love your enemy, do good to those that hurt you--"I was hungry and you did not feed me, I was thirsty and you did not give me drink, I was naked and you did not clothe me, ..."
The Incarnation means that, yes, Christianity is about believing that a brown skinned middle-eastern Jewish carpenter from the backwater town of Nazareth in the Galilee who dined with prostitutes, lepers, tax collectors, and sinners; and who bears the disfiguring marks of crucifixion is the Risen Lord and King of all creation.
Cleaning Jesus up means having the wrong Jesus.
-CryptoLutheran
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TLK Valentine
I've already read the books you want burned.
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Oh... I forgot one... Merry Christmas by the way!
Oh, I get it now! It's the beard! That's a measure of virtue!
What are you complaining about, then? The picture in the OP has a beard...
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Hey! I found a beardless Christ! Christ as Emperor, wearing military dress, and crushing the serpent representing Satan. "I am the way and the truth and the life" (John 14:6) reads the inscription.
And one from the Basilica of San Lorenzo, Milan, 4th century...
All reverently done! Thumbs up!
And one from the Basilica of San Lorenzo, Milan, 4th century...
All reverently done! Thumbs up!
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Did you read the bottom line? "All reverently done! Thumbs up!" ??? In which the churches that CF declares Orthodox I have yet to find an image that I have problems with.
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The point is that the creators of the image in the OP obviously had no love for the Christ while the others did.
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Somebody insulting Bob, a hobbit, a troll, and Beethoven..
Somebody insulting the Christ...
Somebody insulting the Christ...
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I want everyone to know that those pathetic images of the Christ came right out of Great Britain. In which, if that is all they think of the Christ it is no wonder that church attendance is suffering so!
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Period and region? I do not think the Jewish people have changed all that much in the centuries... Josephus was a historian during that time period and looks nothing like the morons the English have portrayed as Christ...
Flavious Josephus, Jewish historian... Much more Christ like in appearance!
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Ever since first seeing this image several years ago I have regarded it as very likely a reasonable portrayal of a first century Jewish peasant which is exactly what Jesus was. I doubt very much that he looked like a northern European at all. Actually I have seen Jesus portrayed in many ways including as a black African, as Chinese, as an American Indian, ... All this speaks to the timeless and universal nature of Jesus' message.
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