Docetism
In the history of Christianity, docetism (from the Greek koinè: δοκεῖν/δόκησις, dokeĩn "to seem", dókēsis "apparition, phantom") was the heresy that the phenomenon of Jesus, his historical and bodily existence, and above all the human form of Jesus, was mere semblance without any true reality. Broadly, it is taken as the belief that Jesus only seemed to be human, and that his human form was an illusion.
Quotes about
[edit]- He exists, not only inconceivably as God, but also conceivably as a man ; not only above the world, but also in the world, and of the world ; not only in a heavenly and invisible, but in an earthly and visible form. He becomes and is, He exists—we cannot avoid this statement ; to do so would be the worst kind of Docetism—with objective actuality. Does this mean, then, that He exists as one thing amongst others, and that as such He can be perceived and may be known like other things ? Well, we cannot deny that He is a thing like this, and can be perceived and knovra as such, if He was and is a man in the world, with an earthly and visible form. But, of course, a man is not merely a thing or object. As a man among men he is a human Thou, and as such distinct from all mere things.
- Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (1932–1968), 4:2, p. 50.
- This skeptical way of thinking reached its culmination in the argument that Jesus as a human being never existed at all and is a myth. In ancient times, this extreme view was named the heresy of docetism (seeming) because it maintained that Jesus never came into the world "in the flesh", but only seemed to; (I John 4:2) and it was given some encouragement by Paul's lack of interest in his fleshly existence. Subsequently, from the eighteenth century onwards, there have been attempts to insist that Jesus did not even "seem" to exist, and that all tales of his appearance upon the earth were pure fiction. In particular, his story was compared to the pagan mythologies inventing fictitious dying and rising gods. (paragraph break) Some of the lines of thinking employed to disprove the Christ-myth theory have been somewhat injudicious.
- Grant, Michael. Jesus: An Historian's Review of the Gospels. Scribner, 1995; first published 1977, p. 199.
- Stop your ears therefore when anyone speaks to you that stands apart from Jesus Christ, from David's scion and Mary's Son, who was really born and ate and drunk, really persecuted by Pontius Pilate, really crucified and died while heaven and earth and the underworld looked on; who also really rose from the dead, sice His Father raised Him up-His Father, who will likewise raise up all who believe in Him through Jesus Christ, apart from whom we have no real life.
- But if, as some atheists, that is, unbelievers, say, His suffering was but a make-believe -when in reality, they themselves are make-believers-why then am I in chains? Why do I even pray that I may fight wild beasts? In vain, then, do I die! My testimony is, after all, but a lie about the Lord!
- Saint Ignatius of Antioch, To the Trallians, 9-10 (ed. Funk-Bihlmeyer; tr. J. Kleist), quoted in Ancient Christian Writers, ed. Quasten-Plumpe; Westminster, Maryland, 1946. As reported in Father Paul Palmer, SJ, Mary in the Documents of the Church, p. 5 (of 129), Lowe and Brydone (printers) Ltd, London L.W. 10, for Burns Oates and Washbourne Ltd, 28 Ashley Place, London, S.W.I. (with nihil obstat by E.A Cerny, S.S, D.D., and imprimatur by Franciscus P. Keough, D.D., Archbishop of Baltimore, given on 23 November 1951). OCLC 3286267.
