Drunken Mystic

Well, we gotta start here, right?  I mean, it is “Christianity” and all.

One of the main theological and doctrinal challenges the early Church faced was from something called gnosticism, which was kind of a Greek philosophy that found its way into the Church since Gentiles were exponentially getting saved there in the first century.  Since John the Apostle was one of the later writers (the only one of the twelve to die a natural death), he deals with it the most in his Gospel and then in his letters.

But even before gnosticism, the doctrine of the person of Christ was really important.  It was even important to Jesus: “Who do you say I am?”  “Before Abraham was, I AM.”  You know, stuff like that.  Even in Paul’s letters, statements were made about Jesus that blows my mind.  “He is the only potentate (power)” “Through him all things were created, and by him all things consist and have their being.”  And Paul is not necessarily guarding against gnosticism there, but obviously felt the need to establish the supremacy of Christ.  The Jews alone attacked the doctrine that Jesus was the Son of God, the Messianic promise, come in the flesh to establish a new Kingdom.  This was a doctrine important from the very beginning of even Jesus’ own ministry.

And like everything else, there is nothing new under the sun.  The issue still exists today.  This is a blog, so I’m not going to go over EVERY little idea of the person of Christ, but I will give a little summary off the top of my head.

Christ is eternal and uncreated, begotten of God, present at creation, and as stated before, the focus of it.  He is the only Son of God, manifested in human form, conceived in a virgin, fully God and fully man, lived a sinless and righteous life, was crucified unto death and rose again a couple days later.  Now he is seated at the right hand of God and enthroned upon the hearts of those who truly love and follow Him.  One day He will return to establish a culmination and eternal expression of the Kingdom that is now being spread.

God has given Christ a name above all names and therefore there is no other way by which men can be saved.  Jesus is Himself the only way to true and eternal life.  Every other way is death.

I could go on, but you get the idea.  I could give scripture for every one of those statements, but you can get on biblegateway.com just as easily as I can.

Of course we have other “christs” that people love to believe in.  He was just a good teacher, a good man, some liberal political revolutionary, or just one of many ways or gods.  All in all, the problematic doctrines on Christ center on a denial of His ultimate divinity and His exclusive work because believing in those things demand that a person actually change in order to be associated with Him.  We still have people who have to try to diminish who He was and is and will be in order to deny truly following Him.

Either way, the view of Christ infects everything in Christianity.  That seems like a “duh” statement, but I don’t think it is focused on enough.  A high view of Christ empowers the disciple and the Church to victory and love; a low view of Christ is defeatist and very worldly.

A little hint on teaching about Christ.  I don’t know that you can go too far in ascribing power and might and glory to Him as a person.  Statements like “I am the Alpha and Omega” and others are either hyperbole or absolutely true and only a hint in our puny brains of the immensity that is Christ.  Where you you get in trouble is when you equate Him with darkness and finiteness and sin.  That caused Jesus to teach on something called the “blasphemy of the Holy Spirit”, which is kinda scary, so I’d believe the other way, if I were you.

In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis’ popular argument is still the best.  Either Jesus was who He said He was or He was a liar.  If He was who He said He was, that necessitates a decision so extreme on our part as to seem absurd to a world that doesn’t believe.  If He was a liar, then we can believe nothing of what He said.  It is intellectually dishonest to pick and choose His words for a personal or political agenda and not accept the whole teaching of someone who claimed to be the only Son of the only God, THE Son of Man.

Peace.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 6:19 am and is filed under problematic doctrines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.