gurugeorge

I've always thought there's something fishy going on here.

"Fictional" in the sense of having been known to have been made up out of whole cloth in the sense you mean, I'm not so sure about - it seems a bit of a stretch (the docetists do seem to believe in some entity).

But "ahistorical" = non-historical in the sense orthodoxy meant by historical (in touting the gospels as eyewitness accounts) is quite plausible.

HJ-ers often ask "where's the evidence of belief in an AJ/MJ?" But it could be staring them right in the face, hidden in plain sight.

GakuseiDon

Nothing in any of your wiki links rules out that Nestorius was discussing a docetism concerned with Christ's body that I can see.

mountainman

Earl Doherty has written something about this
at this page.

I have no intention of interpretting this
one way or another, at the moment ...

The fact remains that while the gospels themselves
state that there were people around who denied
that ‘Jesus Christ has come in the flesh,’ (or body)
this situation therefore cannot be precluded.

My contention is that if we examine the situation
from an objective persective, it seems clear that
the theory of a fictitious Jesus, which is scorned
and scoffed at by certain profiles in this forum
(and outside this pond as well), existed from the
very beginning.

We dont have available to us any word-by-word
"interrogation of Doceticists" by the christian
historiansby which we can independently
ascertain the structure of various forms of
this "docetic belief". The herecy was simply
stamped upon with the full effect of the law.

There was a time when such herecies were
not conducive to the health and well-being
of the human heretic.

However Nestorius appears to document the
existence of such doctrine --- which was of
course carefully "couched" in christian theological
terminology. Moreover, be states this:

I see many who strongly insist on these (theories of fiction)
as something (based) on the truth and ancient opinion.

This indicates that Nestorius appreciated that many
of the people who asserted such theories of fiction
did so on the basis of "traditional truth and ancient
opinion". This statement harkens back to Julian,
who physically wrote "the NT is a fiction", and whose
work "Against the Christians" was turning many people
away from the church, according to Cyril.




Best wishes,


Pete Brown

mountainman

Hi gurugeorge,

We have only the records of the victorious non-docetists
(ie: the true christians) by which to determine the real
belief systems of people who were being burned and
persecuted as heretics --- in the fourth century and
beyond.

Here's a good question for your opinion. Julian was
not about to be tried by a christian court of law for
his writing "Against the Galilaeans". But assuming
he were not the emperor, and had stated his words:

the fabrication of the Galilaeans is
a fiction of men composed by wickedness.

as a common man under the Christian regime of the
late fourth tofifth centuries, he would be branded
a heretic, and possibly an ati-christ, and at the very
least, the christological term of docetism would
probably have been used.

What do you think?

Best wishes,


Pete Brown