A semblance of Docetism

 

A specter is haunting scholarship. The specter of Docetism, to be exact. Who were the accursed Docetae, who denied that Jesus had come in the flesh, indeed who claimed that the sweet Redeemer was just an "illusion" or "semblance"?

Very often, the Docetic doctrine (usually associated with Gnosticism) is depicted as quite absurd, as if the believers in this curious idea regarded Jesus as some kind of phantom or ghost. Indeed, he could shape shift, too! A bit like Odo in "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine"? But how can you crucify a mere phantom? Absurd, I say, absurd!

But perhaps the real phantom is Docetism itself. Docetism sounds absurd because...well, because it is. And nobody really believed it in ancient times either...

So what on earth *was* Docetism? I see two possibilities. One is that the Gnostics were the original Mythicists. Perhaps their teachings had three levels. Let´s call them exoteric, mesoteric and esoteric. Or perhaps hylic, psychic and pneumatic? At the exoteric level, the canonical Gospels are real. At the mesoteric level, the Gnostic Gospels (with their strange stories) are introduced. And at the highest, esoteric, level? The initiate there learns that both the canonical and Gnostic gospels are really teaching stories, not to be taken literally. Christ is neither a sin sacrifice nor an angelic messenger. He is *within you*, the divine spark, which you can access by meditation techniques. This, then, is the "Docetism". Jesus was an "illusion" or "semblance", not because he was a disembodied spook from the séances of Simon Magus, but because he was seen as an allegory for the Spirit. Yes, the Gnostics did follow "well crafted myths"! The Docetism is simply the mesoteric level of teaching as further distorted by proto-orthodox Christians or bewildered modern scholars. 

But there is another possibility. Maybe the accursed Docetae viewed Jesus as a Hindu avatar? We can take Chaitanya as an example. Everyone (I think) agrees that he was a real historical person. A human, in other words. Yet, the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition - if I understand their position - consider him to have been 100% divine. That is, he was fully ontologically divine. In contrast to Jesus in traditional Christian theology, who was both human and god simultaneously. That is, a real ontological human besides also being really ontologically divine. But Chaitanya, by contrast, was "only" divine. Thus, his human form was "just a semblance". It was part of his divine play. It wasn´t a phantom, to be sure, but it was nevertheless just a temporary form taken by the Supreme Personality of Godhead. (The whole thing is *somewhat* more complicated, since strictly speaking everything in the universe is "divine" in a certain sense in most Hindu theological systems. But that´s the gist of it.) 

From a Christian theological viewpoint, this too would presumably be Docetism.

Note that the Alawites in Syria regard Ali as Allah. Now, I´m not a *yuge* expert on the esoteric teachings of the Alawites, but could this be similar to the Hindu notion of an avatar? Ali was really 100% God, although he temporarily took a seemingly human form. The same idea seem to pop up again and again in the history of religion. The Rastafarians of Jamaica regarded Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie as God. The Nation of Islam regards W D Fard as God. And so on. Same thing?

My guess is that the Gnostic option is more likely in this particular case.

To an ordinary believer, it presumably doesn´t matter much whether or not the god-man you´re worshipping is "both god and man", "fully god but with a human form" or "fully god". But to theologians, that´s apparently very central. Presumably because of the sin sacrifice of Christ on the cross. The other god-men mentioned here didn´t sacrifice themselves in that way. 

Mystery solved. You learned something new today.