andrewcriddle

a/ I think he clearly rejects the deification of men. That is the idea of men being elevated to a divine status they previously lacked. I don't think that what he says is incompatible with God becoming incarnate, as long as he doesn't cease to be divine in becoming human.

b/ I think that MF is primarily rejecting with horror the idea that Christians use a cross as part of sorcery to call up the spirit of an executed criminal. However I find it hard to imagine that MF regarded the sufferings of Christ on the cross as important to his beliefs. He may have been semi-docetist and believed that Christ without suffering died at the time he chose and was not really put to death.

c/ I have doubts whether MF had much of a doctrine of atonement, (Christ dying to save humans from their sins.) In any case an earthly (ie only or merely earthly) being could not really be of religious importance for MF

d/ I have problems with this because of the way it is worded. If it means did MF believe that a historical figure called Jesus was really God incarnate ? then I would say (probably) yes. If it means did MF believe that a human historical figure called Jesus had become deified, (ie attained a divine status he previously lacked) ? then I would say clearly no.

Andrew Criddle

(PS I've been contributing to this thread less than I would have liked partly because as previously mentioned I've been trying to read up on the dating of the Octavius. I'll try in a day or so to make a long post here or in a new thread about my conclusions.)

Ted Hoffman

Andrew, thanks for your answers. I find them balanced enough. I look forward to your conclusions. I am sure that outside dating, you know clearly what can or cannot be argued MF said.

What it Boils Down To

You seem to imply that because MF can still accomodate an incarnated Christ, that makes MF fail to be a smoking gun as Doherty has argued.
And this is very similar ro the argument GDon, krosero and TedM have argued:
They maintain that it could not have been possible for a Christian to refer to Jesus as a man. And I asked krosero whether an incarnated Jesus is a historical person. He said: "Sure".
What you may not be realizing is that we have eliminated all crevices a HJ could have fit in in Octavius, leaving the only crack available being for an incarnated Jesus. You guys are happy with an incarnated Jesus because he can still be earthly (and therefore not mythical in your view) - yet MF rejects deification of earthly beings. You are essentially going back to the sets krosero attempted to bring in: that there are earthly beings who are incarnations and that such incarnated beings are therefore divine in the eyes of MF.
Is that your argument? If this is the argument, then you are introducing categories/sets of beings and this is the very argument I refuted and which krosero withdrew.
If not, MF's putative Christ, is purely mythical - like a Logos.

Lets redirect and get some perspective.

Critical Method - are we Allowing for The Supernatural?

The historico-critical method has improved over time from the time the Historical Jesus quest began and several scholars refined the methodologies and uncovered new perspectives as we can see through Ernst Kasemann, Gunther Bornkamm, Albert Schweitzer, H. S. Reimarus etc. Schweitzer, in Quest of the Historical Jesus (1909), concluded that Christ was a fantasy that Christians made up. Bultmann, in The History of the Synoptic Tradition (1921) and Jesus and the Word (1926) concluded that it is impossible to know much about Jesus.

"New Questers" of the Third Quest like Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, Burton Mack - some of who who participated in the Jesus seminar, held that Jesus was a Jew (even in the face of NT Wrights assesment of what it meant to be a Jew). We have scholars like Sanders, Witherington, and N. T. Wright who maintain that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet. Stephen T. Davis gives a good summary of this in Why the Historical Jesus Matters

But we also have others like Arthur Drews, GA Wells, Earl Doherty, Robert Price, Thomas L. Thompson and upcoming scholars like Richard Carrier who hold that Jesus did not in fact exist as a flesh-and-blood person (a historical Jesus) but was a product of literary creation influenced by Hellenistic thought and Jewish beliefs about messianism.

One thing that is common accross all the critical scholars is that the concept of virgin birth is biologically implausible and is therefore ahistorical. In the same sense, the concept of incarnation is not naturalistically possible and therefore ahistorical. If necessary I can argue in detail from a physicist's perspective, how it is impossible. Then I can bring in a biologist to take it out from a biological perspective if necessary. The important thing is that the supernatural things and events are ruled out as ahistoric.

Now, my question is this: is a pre-existent god who incarnates a historical person? Does history show such 'people' as belonging to legend and folklore or belonging to actual human history? If they are historical is as krosero claims, then is the idea of the heavens opening and God's voice booming as we read in Mark equally historical? If not, why not? If it is not historical on naturalistic grounds, then we must ipso facto conclude that even the incarnated Jesus was a myth since he was not a flesh and blood man.

And that is what mythicists have been arguing.

What do you guys say?

GakuseiDon

TedH, you misunderstand the implications of "earthly being". Anyone who is a god on earth is not an earthly being. Earthly beings are mortal creatures.

Christ was a being who had existed from the beginning of time, who incarnated, died and resurrected. That he appeared on earth doesn't make him an "earthly being". See my earlier quotes from Tertullian on this.

Ted Hoffman

I get you as clear as crystal. Your statement is consistent with the argument that earthly beings (beings that dwelt on earth) included mortals and immortals (like a Christ who ""had existed from the beginning of time, who incarnated, died and resurrected").
This is the same argument krosero was making. It entails grouping earthly beings into two. Earthly beings become a set with two subsets: mortals and immortals.
I have tussled with this argument all along and krosero has had to manouvre with arguments based on the use and meaning of the indefinite article "a", in Octavius, to questionable expressions like "fully mortal". You are saying the very same thing.
What I want is Andrew to clarify his position on this.
We all know that the ancients believed that the earth was occupied by mortal men, demons (aka princes of this world), angels, demi-gods and so on. But we also know which ones can be regarded as historical/actual and which ones belong to the area of myth. That is where we are inexorably headed, even if we know MF never classified or grouped these "beings'' into these groups.

krosero

I am finished with this debate, but twice in two posts TedH has been using a blatant misrepresentation of my argument, EVEN AFTER I corrected him in my last reply to him. I doubt anyone still replying to him accepts his misrepresentation, but TedH appears completely unlikely to drop it.

I told you clearly, Ted, that I was NOT having Felix say, “We don’t worship earthly beings, except one.� I said that was NOT the purpose of my arguments about sets and articles. I told you that I was having Felix say that he doesn’t worship earthly beings of any kind. Period. If you want to consider Christ an earthly being, or you think Felix regarded him as an earthly being, fine: present that argument against our argument that Felix worshipped Christ instead of any earthly being. But don’t misrepresent our argument.

I wonder why you did this. I clearly said in my last reply that you and I are in agreement about Felix not worshipping any earthly beings. Just read back, as well, and you will see that my arguments about sets and articles had Felix saying, “Think, Caecilius of the set of all earthly beings; we don’t worship ANYONE in that set.� I dropped my argument about sets and articles, as I told you in clear terms, until I could make it better understood. I was certainly not dropping my original and overall argument, in line with everyone's else, that Felix was disallowing all earthly beings as objects of worship. My attempt to support this main argument by speaking of sets and articles was a poor attempt, and that's what I was conceding.

Yet when I dropped my argument about articles and sets, you made sure to repeat my withdrawal, with your original challenge, a second time, as if to say: “This argument has been rebutted.� I thought the only danger there was a little chest-thumping, which is obnoxious but nothing else. However, since then you’ve been using the withdrawal of my argument in a clearly illegitimate way, even after being corrected a handful of times in a number of different ways.

The danger with you in conceding anything is that you will run with it and misrepresent what’s been withdrawn. You remember when I said that if you asked for clarification instead of playing your game of “Gotcha,� you might even get more concessions on the matters being debated? Well you will never get any concessions, or withdrawn arguments, if you misuse withdrawals of arguments.

Get the argument straight.

Ted Hoffman

krosero, just calm down. I just want to distil this issue. Any perceived misrepresentation of your position, I must admit, is purely my mistake and not intentional. You do make clear statements, but you often dont make unequivocal concessions. Like your last post, you have phrases like "half-deity", "not a fully mortal man" and so on. You give with the right hand and claw back with the left hand, then you accuse me of misrepresenting you. For example, you write: "I meant that they did not regard him as a man at all. " This is a clear statement. But you have not conceded that whichever Christ MF may have believed in, he was non-historical as me and Doherty are arguing. Isn't that what the whole discussion is about? We have differing views - at no point have you said you agree with me and Doherty even though you mix agreeable statements with differing ones.
For example, GDon would agree with your statement "that they did not regard him as a man at all.", but he goes further to explain that the Christ was an immortal who incarnated and was therefore, technically not a man. What about you?
For example you write:
Our argument is that because MF rejected the deification of earthly beings, he ipso facto rejected the deification of any earthly Christ. And you have admitted that MF could not have held that Christ was an earthly being. But when you speak of half-deity, Just tell us krosero, what kind of being do you think Christ was to MF - are you in agreement that whatever Christ MF accepted (if any), he was not a flesh-and-blood man?

Where does MF say that mortals should not be deified and especially evil mortals?
Sorry for the misunderstanding. But the sets argument dovetails your other arguments. I thought it was purposeful. Since it was purely coincidental as you say, I apologize.

I seek your forbearance because we are in a grey area now. To cut the chase, why dont you answer the following question:

Where do you disagree with me and Doherty?

krosero

Ted, until the moment I left the debate, I did not have any especially large problem with your responses to me. You were answering me directly and so forth. So I'm going to give the clarification you ask for. But after this you and Doherty are on your own.

Don's argument is mine as well.

No, if by your last question you mean that Felix believed in a Christ who never appeared on the earth. Felix may have been docetist or gnostic; I doubt it; but for my purposes, Felix believes in at least the visual appearance of a man on the earth, and he believes this "man" to be fundamentally a heavenly being, that is, something that comes from and returns to heaven. Don and I are using "earthly being" to signify something that Felix believed to come from the earth and return upon death to the earth. You are using "earthly being" to signify someone who appeared on the earth, which is why it seems to you that when we argue for Felix's rejection of "earthly beings", it seems to you that we're arguing for Felix's rejection of any Christ who seemed to make an appearance on the earth (an HJ, the way that I use the term). That's where the confusion is. I suggest if you want to use "earthly being," clarify what you think it means for you and what you think it means for Felix. Say, for example, if you think that when Felix rejects worshipping "earthly beings", he reject worshipping any entity thought to have made an appearance on the earth.

Answered above.

Amaleq13

I think I understand Ted Hoffman's concern but also I think it at least partially results from a lack of clear definition here of what constituted "orthodox Christianity" at the time Felix wrote. It is difficult to understand how the "fully human and fully God" entity of today's Christianity would not also be described as somehow simultaneously an earthly being and divine. The question is whether this standard should be applied to Felix in determining whether he held orthodox beliefs. If so, then Ted H. is entirely correct that there are some shifting definitions at work on the part of his opponents.

For Felix to unequivocally reject the deification of all "earthly beings" is clearly problematic for what constitutes Christian orthodoxy today but how settled was the issue at the time?

For example, I find it very difficult to accept Felix's statement if we also assume he believed Christ was incarnated in the womb of a woman and followed the standard developmental path of all humans to become an adult. It seems far less difficult to accept his statement, however, if we assume he held beliefs more like Marcion's with a Christ who descends in the form of an adult.

freigeister

The disputed passage (link):


There have been 3 interpretations proposed:

1. Christ is not an earthly being—mythicist interpretation.
2. Christ is not an essentially earthly being—docetic interpretation.
3. Christ is not a solely earthly being—orthodox interpretation.

I add a forth:

Christ is not God.—Unitarian interpretation.

I support this interpretation by pointing out that the text as a whole is antitrinitarian, as we see in these quotations pertaining to the nature of God:


By this interpretation, Minucius Felix is the first Gentile antitrinitarian Christian that we have on record.

Ted Hoffman

Thanks for clarifying.