Errors of Docetism
Saturday, 02 July, 2005
The paganizing of the gospel in this manner, so that the true humanity of Jesus is played down for the sake of his deity, is a subtle error because it can appear to be so “spiritual”. In this materialistic age it may seem to be a healthy corrective to the rejection of the supernatural. But we soon learn fro the nature of the gospel that we cannot save the spiritual by playing down the human dimension. This docetic view of Christ, once it is entertained in Christian thinking, givers birth to some very unhealthy offspring. If Christ's humanity is not treated serious (it does not have to be denied, just played down or largely ignored) then our own humanity will begin to seem unimportant. Salvation will be, as it is often described, a matter of having Jesus (a spirit) in your heart (soul), which means that you are born again (in your soul) and will go to heaven when you die (as immortal soul). The Christian who thinks like this has little to say to the unbeliever about the relevance of the gospel for the whole person and for the physical world.
Docetism also produces distorted thinking about the subject of holiness or sanctification. The human element in our Christian life is played down in favour of the life of Christ (his purely divine life) being lived in and through us. In popular jargon “Let go and let God” sometimes means that human effort has no place in holy living. The believer in effect is not only being divinized, but is actually being absorbed into the being of God. The real distinction between God and man which was established in creation is blurred. So, to quote another popular cliché, the believer is only a suit of clothes that Jesus wears!
This distortion of the God-man relationship also affects the way we approach the Bible. A docetic Bible has no human dimension, no historical and cultural context conditioning the meaning of the words. The docetic Christians thinks it is very pious to treat the words of the Bible as conveying immediate spiritual meaning without regard to what the original writer intended to convey. Sometimes a decision is made on the basis of the assertion that “the Lord gave me a verse of Scripture”, while in fact what the text actually says has no relationship whatsoever to the decision being made. This approach is not far removed from the belief that no human word of the Bible is needed at all since the Spirit tells me directly what to do.
The biblical wisdom literature is one of the most potent antidotes to the destructive errors of docetism. It reinforces the general biblical perspective on the relationship of God and the believer. On the one hand it is answer to the worldly wisdom which leaves God out of its reckoning. On the other hand it rejects the false spirituality which has the appearance of being godly wisdom, but which, because it leaves our humanity out of its reckoning, is not wisdom at all but rather the resurgence of an ancient error that troubled early Christianity.
Graeme Goldsworthy, Gospel and Wisdom. Carlisle: Paternoster Press (1987):42-43.
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I like to think of Jesus as being what true humanity is meant to be- He was a real human being BECAUSE He was God. He was sinless and perfect, totally submissive to His Father. That’s everything we should be so I don’t know how (or why) people try to separate Jesus’ divinity from His humanity. I couldn’t be Christian if Jesus wasn’t God and man…
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