anti-pedanti

For you archaeological-gnostic types, this would be the holy grail that you’ve been searching for.

Actually, it is kind of ironic.  In Monty Python’s Holy Grail, one main thread throughout is that the whole searching for the grail business is actually quite silly.  The Humanist/Gnostics would say that the search for the grail was really a campaign for power masquerading as a search for something of spiritual/historical significance. 

However, it seems that it is the gnostics who are the ones on a quest: to disprove the existence of Christ as the God-man.

To those who see things in the light of the Gospel of Christ and with new eyes, the Gnostics are the ones who are tilting at windmills, thoroughly vested in the silly business of disproving Christ as God.  Note that I did not say that the Gnostics try to disprove the existence of Jesus.  That would be sheer madness.  Jesus’ existence is not doubted, even by the most vehement detractors of Christianity. The silver bullet in the heart of Christianity would be not to disprove the existence of Jesus as a man, but to prove the existence of Jesus as a mere man.  Take the whole “Messiah” notion out of Jesus, and you’re left with just a man.

This is exactly what Paul talked about in 1 Corinthians 15:12-19 –

12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. 17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in Christ we have hope [2] in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

If Christ has not been raised, then the assertion that he is God becomes significantly burdened.  The Gnostics would have their cake, and they could eat it too: 

Oh, you foolish Christians! Who has bewitched you?  Jesus of Nazareth existed, of course he did!  No one doubted it for a minute!  But what we’re telling you is that you’ve been blinded by your childhood Sunday lessons, and you’ve suppressed the truth about Jesus: he is a man, and only a man.  He bled like you and me, loved like you and me, and again, as you and I will surely die, he died.  Yes, he was a noble teacher.  Of course, he was a great moralist.  No one will dispute that!  But when he died he stayed dead.

There, there…you must count yourself dead to the Christ that you once trusted for salvation, and count yourself alive to the mere Jesus.  You can’t trust a dead man to save you!  You once trusted a man who you thought had conquered death — surely if he conquered death himself, he could conquer it for you…but now you are faced with the reality of death, and the finality of death, and the enlightening, freedom-bringing truth that it is not Christ you must believe in, and cast yourself upon.

“Christ” as God does not exist, and never has.  But Jesus of Nazareth! Ah, he existed, and lived, and loved, and taught the world things it did not know…and then he died.  Oh, you poor, pitiful Christian!  Your religious crutch, which you never really needed, has been turned on you and crippled you, making you think you needed it, rather than making you free as you thought it would.  You were a slave to this notion of Christ as God, and now you are a free man, made not in God’s image, but your own.  Live therefore, as though there is no tomorrow, for eternity holds nothing to fear.

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