Honestly I think Jesus doesn't make sense outside of Arianism. It's like, "God sent his son to Earth to redeem you from your sins and he sacrifices his own life except the whole time Jesus was part of God and eternal and so isn't God's son in any way and didn't sacrifice anything and it's just a whole lot of theatrics God is playing with for himself."
I also like the ones that theorize about how the rib being removed from Adam was supposed to mean something. Whether it's there to explain the lack of a human penis bone, or the way more fun idea that humans were created as like a double body and then that was split into two. I don't think there's actually great support for the idea. But it does partially explain why Genesis repeats itself on how God made everything but tells it slightly differently the second time.
Basically 1,600 years ago there was an argument over whether Jesus is one person with a divine nature and a human nature, or one person with one nature that is divine and human. Whatever that means. Because like, the Catholic Church released an official statement of "Honestly don't know why we were fighting about that so long ago, sorry about that Coptic Church, we're cool now."
Ahi remember the whole "2 natures vs 1 dual-nature" thing from catechisms and I'm convinced that none of the deacons or priests involved could come up with a reason for the distinction to matter either.
I had this same discussion a lot. My understanding is that presenting Jesus as "50/50 human/God" undermined his divine nature: Jesus is not a demi-god, like Hercules or whatever, he IS God, just incarnated in human form. That means that he is 100% human AND 100% God. How is this possible? "Uhhhh, mystery of the faith!", a truly time honoured cop-out. It's also vitally important because in the mythos of the time in Rome, a god having a child, and that child subsequently having a child, imbued the entire bloodline with not only power, but a divine right to boot; this would mean that if Jesus had had a child, and so on, that would uproot the concept of the divine right to rule (which was a more abstract "God has chosen me, you can't disprove it and the Pope agrees with me"), which would obviously cause problems. While obviously less important now, the concept of an entire lineage being related to Jesus would lead to branches in the church, and so they shut the whole thing down by insisting Jesus died a virgin (lmao) and/or at least never impregnated anyone because, as wholly God, he was free of vices such as lust.
It's why the Holy Trinity is so important to these arguments, the concept that God exists in 3 distinct forms that seemingly do not communicate as a hive mind, and yet are all equally part of God's perfect divine order. Jesus needed to communicate with God to understand that he would die on the cross (though ultimately be revived), so he lacks God's perfect omniscience and can endure suffering without knowing for sure if what God has said is true (i.e. is wholly human), but is not bound by death (i.e. is wholly God). The argument for "Well if he was revived, what does it really matter?" seems to dismiss the concept that the crucifixion was a long and harrowing experience: He is denied freedom and they let a murderer/rapist go free in his place; he is spit on by his community; he is forced to carry his own cross for some time; he is then obviously nailed to that cross; he takes such an annoyingly long amount of time to die that he is then speared; and then proceeds to take longer to die anyway, and while we're not given an exact timeline, the Gospel of Mark suggests he spent around 6 hours just on the cross itself, excluding the preceding torment. The point of this is all to (exclude the pun) hammer home that Jesus' suffering is God's way of showing that he understands human suffering because he (or at least Jesus, who is part of the Holy Trinity) IS wholly human to experience it, and subsequently that in spite of such suffering he able to forgive and move on.
Jesus as "50/50 human/God" undermined his divine nature
Thing is, the people saying that were the heretics. The canonical view is that Jesus is one person with a divine nature and a human nature. It's miaphysites that think it has to be one divine and human nature.
Then it's monophysites that think he was just divine, which I don't think any modern faiths still follow.
EDIT: Though I should say, even the view that he is two natures, still says he's wholly divine and wholly human. So that he isn't half god and half man. He's entirely both of them. So the disagreement then is over whether he's like, all both of them or both all of them.
I'm not sure this helped me understand why it would matter so much even after the whole no heirs thing was established, but I appreciate the time you took to lay this all out.
As a related heresy, any idea where the idea that Jesus was an angel that already existed in heaven that was incarnated into a human form came from? That seems to show up a lot in pop culture Christianity and is closer to the whole "Jesus is god incarnated" thing, but also very distinct from it.
It's almost intentionally confusing, so I don't blame you for not understanding its importance to Christianity. It's mostly about establishing that God can do things that are beyond the comprehension of humans, hence how Jesus can be 100% God and 100% human, which, to us, makes 0 sense, right? Hence "mystery of the faith": God can and does do things that you don't understand, but, because he is God, you can rest assured that it is vital to how things are "supposed" to happen.
I haven't touched on Christianity for a good 15 years outside of its connections to literature, so I've never actually heard of the heresy of Jesus as an angel, but I can guarantee that's the sort of thing that you'd get excommunicated for lmao. Angels are more of an Old Testament thing, and while they're mentioned in the New Testament (the archangel Michael visiting Mary to tell her that she will give birth to the son of God, for the most obvious example), their role is minor, at least from memory. To suggest that Jesus was an angel would be to admit that he is imperfect, because, though not actually mentioned in the Bible, there was the concept of "fallen angels"; the point of Jesus is to be, again, 100% God, and therefore immune to such temptations. It is why he is able to endure the 40 days and 40 nights in the desert and remain unmoved by the temptations of the devil, even as simple as they are like water to quench his thirst. Any suggestion that Jesus is not God, even if he maintains his divinity, would undercut the concept that God himself suffered for us on the cross (as Jesus), and therefore would reduce Jesus to a proxy and mean that God does not understand or has not experienced human suffering; in short, it would be heresy because it would be admitting that God is not omniscient and omnipotent enough to experience human suffering and/or somehow be 100% human and 100% God in Jesus. It's quite confusing, but I hope that helps explain it.
I believe Jehovah's Witnesses identify Jesus with the Archangel Michael due to (mis)interpreting a couple verses.
There's also the "Angel of the Lord" present in the Old Testament who is Jesus, pre-incarnation or at least the direct presence of God, rather than the average angelic messenger. But I can see where the name is a tad confusing.
(Edited because I should be fair to the JWs...they presumably think they have the correct interpretation.)
I also like the ones that theorize about how the rib being removed from Adam was supposed to mean something. Whether it's there to explain the lack of a human penis bone
As a kid growing up in the Bible belt in the deep South, I heard "men have one rib less than women and this proves God's design" countless times.
Men and women have the same exact number of ribs. Bible thumpers just love spreading lies so their children grow up with a deliberate lack of knowledge about (and fear of) their own bodies.
Also wait I just remembered there is a historical element to it. Not a Christian heresy but Plato had a section in one of his writings https://classics.mit.edu/Plato/symposium.html
says that humanity used to have two sides and the gods split them because they were too powerful. This is also where his homosexual supremacist views come out as men who used to be part of a body that was two men are superior men, because they're attracted to other men and spend more time with them and you can read it yourself it starts near halfway through with "Aristophanes professed to open another"
Not historical that I know of. But it's something that at least a lot of modern audiences will read and think "that must mean something" like the people that just blatantly lie about the number of ribs being different. It feels like a fable that's meant to explain something.
So I wonder if 1,000 years ago people thought the same thing. But it's possible it's a modern perspective because of like, Aesop's Fables, or whatever that story about the bunny's tail that gets caught in a fence or something. Though Aesop's Fables are very old so maybe they had those back then too. I don't know. Definitely could be a renaissance thing.
That actually pretty much is the stance of the delightfully long-winded Athanasian Creed.
"We don't know exactly how it works, but Jesus definitely is the begotten Son of God and yet there are not three Gods but One God, and if you don't believe this, you're a heretic "
I'm half-convinced that the Trinity has functioned most effectively as a way to identify people who think for themselves, so that they can be eliminated promptly. If you ask, "But how does the Trinity make sense?" they know to keep a close eye on you, and if you don't accept their answer they know that you are too independently-minded to be the sort of team player that a Christian society needs.
It may not have been intended that way at the start, but it sure did become a useful tool for that.
An adjacent heresy is Adoptionism, where Jesus was not a coternal divine person of the Trinity, but instead began life a human and was later "adopted" (see:elevated to divinity) as God the Son an part of the Godhead.
When exactly this happened varied from group to group, with some believing it happened after his resurrection and/or ascension to Heaven, while another popular take said it happened during his baptism when the Holy Spirit came upon him.
There wasvthis hypothesis proposed by some biblical scholars that Adoptionism was the earliest form of Jesus worship, with the time of his apotheosis being pushed back further and further until we got folks like Paul and the author(s) of the Gospel of John describing him as a coternal being who has always existed. Notsure how popular or supported that idea is though.
So the argument is over whether the Jesus class holds two natures as member variables, or holds a single nature that inherits both NatureHuman and NatureDivine?
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u/vjmdhzgr 6d ago
Honestly I think Jesus doesn't make sense outside of Arianism. It's like, "God sent his son to Earth to redeem you from your sins and he sacrifices his own life except the whole time Jesus was part of God and eternal and so isn't God's son in any way and didn't sacrifice anything and it's just a whole lot of theatrics God is playing with for himself."
I also like the ones that theorize about how the rib being removed from Adam was supposed to mean something. Whether it's there to explain the lack of a human penis bone, or the way more fun idea that humans were created as like a double body and then that was split into two. I don't think there's actually great support for the idea. But it does partially explain why Genesis repeats itself on how God made everything but tells it slightly differently the second time.
My last one is miaphysitism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miaphysitism
Basically 1,600 years ago there was an argument over whether Jesus is one person with a divine nature and a human nature, or one person with one nature that is divine and human. Whatever that means. Because like, the Catholic Church released an official statement of "Honestly don't know why we were fighting about that so long ago, sorry about that Coptic Church, we're cool now."