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A great deal of the current misunderstandings and heresies regarding the nature of Christ and ultimately, the Trinity, have their foundation in Docetism. One might argue that all of the many heresies denounced by the Chalcedonian Definition are doctetic in their foundations.
This statement by Christendom has withstood the test of time and examination for over 1400 years. All of orthodox Christendom has stood with this definition of the nature of the incarnate Christ, yet we still encounter a small, but vocal minority who fail to understand its significance.
The union of the divine Logos with humanity has been understood to be a mystery that presently remains beyond our understanding. Attempts to form human analogies about this union and the Trinity all fall short of fully apprehending both. This union within the incarnate Christ, referred to as a hypostatic union (together united in one subsistence and in one single person) is described in the Chalcedonian Definition. Note that the Chalcedonian Definition is a statement of roads that must not be taken when discussing the nature of Christ. The Chalcedonian Definition is an answer to many errors and heresies that had become prominent in the early church, yet still are with us today.
When reviewing the Chalcedonian Definition, we find that is nature of Christ is not:
1. a denial that Christ was truly God (Ebionites, Elkasites, Arians);
2. a dissimilar or different substance (anomoios) with the Father (semi-Arianism);
3. a denial that Christ had a genuine human soul (Apollinarians);
4. a denial of a distinct person in the Trinity (Dynamic Monarchianism);
5. God acting merely in the forms of the Son and Spirit (Modalistic Monarchianism/Sabellianism/United Pentecostal Church);
6. a mixture or change when the two natures were united (Eutychianism/Monophysitism);
7. two distinct persons (Nestorianism);
8. a denial of the true humanity of Christ (docetism);
9. a view that God the Son laid aside all or some of His divine attributes (kenoticism);
10. a view that there was a communication of the attributes between the divine and human natures (Lutheranism, with respect to the Lord's Supper); and
11. a view that Jesus existed independently as a human before God entered His body (Adoptionism).
Scripture teaches us, and the Chacedonian Definition affirms:
- Jesus Christ is fully and completely divine
- Jesus Christ is fully and completely human.
- The divine and human natures of Christ are distinct.
- The divine and human natures of Christ are completely united in one person.
Docetism in its fullest realization, assumed a view that the incarnate Christ was an illusion, a phantom, if you will, appearing in human form. Nevertheless, the view that Christ was something different than He seemed to be can be rightly ascribed to docetic thinking. Not surprisingly, docetism’s presence did not go unnoticed in Scripture.
Docetism has been defined in several ways, for example:
For example, trichotomous views of man have Platonic and Gnostic underpinnings. The Christian church widely denounces this view. We are necessarily a body—the physical aspect of our nature—and a soul/spirit (both words are synonymous)—the immaterial aspect described in the Scriptures as either soul or spirit. A human being does not have a body and a soul, but is a body and a soul, neither of which alone make up the whole person. The material and the immaterial combine to create a single entity.
John condemned the Antichrist spirit of these Gnostic impulses in 1 John 4. John also condemned docetic notions in the prologue to his Gospel that hold a truly divine Jesus Christ was a mere appearance of a fully human person, versus the divine Logos who took on a human nature.
Our bodies are not some appendage that are a prison of the soul, as the Platonic underpinnings of trichotomous views will lead to. Everywhere we read in the Scripture, we read of any dissolution of the body and separation of the body and the soul/spirit, as an evil, resulting from the wages of sin and a retribution.
Unfortunately, we have the minority view of some that the body means the material part of man’s nature, the soul as a principle of animal life, and the spirit as a God related aspect of rationality and the immortal element in man. With this view, such persons frequently argue that the body is bad, and its flesh makes us sin. So, when we are born again, God gives us some new spirit, or even perhaps creates a new spirit within us. This is the unperceived logical error of trichotomous views, in that man, a living being of body and soul, is not really saved at all. Instead a different, some sort of newly created man is substituted for him. When this old man is ridden, the saved man left is not the old man that needed to be saved, but simply a new man that never needed saving in the first place! This is the sad reality of the gnostically influenced Exchanged Life movement.
Further, the trichotomous view is used to support a peculiar doctrine of free will. The man is not spiritually dead, only the body, the flesh. Apparently the soul continues to possess the ability, with lots of wooing, to make a decision to accept Christ as Lord and Savior. This permits him the freedom to claim the human will, versus God’s grace, is the real, final, ultimate factor in our eternal destiny.
Finally, trichotomous views also enable the so-called carnal Christian view of sanctification.
As stated, we may never come to a full realization of the nature of Christ and the Trinity on this side of the grave. But we have from church history a very solid understanding of what that nature is not. Traveling down these forbidden roads leads us to idolatry.
AMR
This statement by Christendom has withstood the test of time and examination for over 1400 years. All of orthodox Christendom has stood with this definition of the nature of the incarnate Christ, yet we still encounter a small, but vocal minority who fail to understand its significance.
The union of the divine Logos with humanity has been understood to be a mystery that presently remains beyond our understanding. Attempts to form human analogies about this union and the Trinity all fall short of fully apprehending both. This union within the incarnate Christ, referred to as a hypostatic union (together united in one subsistence and in one single person) is described in the Chalcedonian Definition. Note that the Chalcedonian Definition is a statement of roads that must not be taken when discussing the nature of Christ. The Chalcedonian Definition is an answer to many errors and heresies that had become prominent in the early church, yet still are with us today.
When reviewing the Chalcedonian Definition, we find that is nature of Christ is not:
1. a denial that Christ was truly God (Ebionites, Elkasites, Arians);
2. a dissimilar or different substance (anomoios) with the Father (semi-Arianism);
3. a denial that Christ had a genuine human soul (Apollinarians);
4. a denial of a distinct person in the Trinity (Dynamic Monarchianism);
5. God acting merely in the forms of the Son and Spirit (Modalistic Monarchianism/Sabellianism/United Pentecostal Church);
6. a mixture or change when the two natures were united (Eutychianism/Monophysitism);
7. two distinct persons (Nestorianism);
8. a denial of the true humanity of Christ (docetism);
9. a view that God the Son laid aside all or some of His divine attributes (kenoticism);
10. a view that there was a communication of the attributes between the divine and human natures (Lutheranism, with respect to the Lord's Supper); and
11. a view that Jesus existed independently as a human before God entered His body (Adoptionism).
Scripture teaches us, and the Chacedonian Definition affirms:
- Jesus Christ is fully and completely divine
- Jesus Christ is fully and completely human.
- The divine and human natures of Christ are distinct.
- The divine and human natures of Christ are completely united in one person.
Docetism in its fullest realization, assumed a view that the incarnate Christ was an illusion, a phantom, if you will, appearing in human form. Nevertheless, the view that Christ was something different than He seemed to be can be rightly ascribed to docetic thinking. Not surprisingly, docetism’s presence did not go unnoticed in Scripture.
Docetism has been defined in several ways, for example:
- Alexandrian or "word-flesh" Christology prioritized the mystical Christ over the historical Jesus, concerned chiefly with the possibilities of union between the divine Logos and human flesh. Tending toward some form of Platonic view of spirit (mind), body, and soul, this "word-flesh" Christology emphasizes the unity of Christ at an extreme level, such that Christ is viewed as a divinized person, while downplaying or even denying his human integrity. This Docetism names a family of heresies that lost the reality of Christ's humanity in the second and third centuries, protecting the divine from suffering or change. In either case the specter of patripassianism (the idea that God directly suffered on the cross) loomed, against which Tertullian notably contended. Meanwhile, Irenaeus led the charge against the gnostic elements that Docetism reflected.
Src: Alexandrian Word-Flesh Christology entry in Dictionary for Theological Interpretation of the Bible, Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Editor, Baker Book House, pg 366
- Docetism: (Gk. dokein, “to seem”) The belief that Jesus only seemed or appeared to have a human body and to be a human person. This view was also found during the period of the early church among Gnostics. This view was condemned by Ignatius of Antioch (c. 35-c. 107).
Src: Docetism entry, Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms.
- Docetism: A term used to refer to a theological perspective among some in the early church who regarded the sufferings and the human aspects of Christ as imaginary or apparent instead of being part of a real incarnation. The combination of the two natures, Son of David and Son of God, affirmed by Paul in Romans 1:3-4 was already under attack in the Johannine community (see 1 John 4:2, 2 John7). Docetic thinking became an integral part of the perspectives of the Gnostics.
Src: Docetism entry, Evangelical Dictionary of Theology, Walter Ewell.
- Statements with a docetic flavour can be adduced from the thinking the Logos even permeating the body of the man Jesus and thus, the tendency towards Docetism is marked. Later Christological heresies from the School of Alexandria, i.e., Apollinarianism, Eutychianism, and monophysitism, tend towards Docetism.
Src: Christology entry, New Dictionary of Theology, Sinclair Ferguson, David Wright, J. I. Packer.
- Docetism lies at hand where a christology claims: Jesus was different from what he seemed to be.
Src: Doketismus'—eine Problemanzeige,, Brox, Norbert. Zeitschrift fuer Kirchengeschichte 95 (1984)
For example, trichotomous views of man have Platonic and Gnostic underpinnings. The Christian church widely denounces this view. We are necessarily a body—the physical aspect of our nature—and a soul/spirit (both words are synonymous)—the immaterial aspect described in the Scriptures as either soul or spirit. A human being does not have a body and a soul, but is a body and a soul, neither of which alone make up the whole person. The material and the immaterial combine to create a single entity.
John condemned the Antichrist spirit of these Gnostic impulses in 1 John 4. John also condemned docetic notions in the prologue to his Gospel that hold a truly divine Jesus Christ was a mere appearance of a fully human person, versus the divine Logos who took on a human nature.
Our bodies are not some appendage that are a prison of the soul, as the Platonic underpinnings of trichotomous views will lead to. Everywhere we read in the Scripture, we read of any dissolution of the body and separation of the body and the soul/spirit, as an evil, resulting from the wages of sin and a retribution.
Unfortunately, we have the minority view of some that the body means the material part of man’s nature, the soul as a principle of animal life, and the spirit as a God related aspect of rationality and the immortal element in man. With this view, such persons frequently argue that the body is bad, and its flesh makes us sin. So, when we are born again, God gives us some new spirit, or even perhaps creates a new spirit within us. This is the unperceived logical error of trichotomous views, in that man, a living being of body and soul, is not really saved at all. Instead a different, some sort of newly created man is substituted for him. When this old man is ridden, the saved man left is not the old man that needed to be saved, but simply a new man that never needed saving in the first place! This is the sad reality of the gnostically influenced Exchanged Life movement.
Further, the trichotomous view is used to support a peculiar doctrine of free will. The man is not spiritually dead, only the body, the flesh. Apparently the soul continues to possess the ability, with lots of wooing, to make a decision to accept Christ as Lord and Savior. This permits him the freedom to claim the human will, versus God’s grace, is the real, final, ultimate factor in our eternal destiny.
Finally, trichotomous views also enable the so-called carnal Christian view of sanctification.
As stated, we may never come to a full realization of the nature of Christ and the Trinity on this side of the grave. But we have from church history a very solid understanding of what that nature is not. Traveling down these forbidden roads leads us to idolatry.
AMR