Joseph D. L. wrote: ↑Sun Feb 16, 2020 9:20 am
Can you actually show us what this mystery text is? Do you have a copy of it? Maybe you can quote it to us verse by verse.
Only read there.
1) The carnal body of Christ.
The Johannine epistles denounce with horror men who refused to believe in the flesh of Jesus. These people here admitted that Jesus possessed divinity; but they claimed that this divinity did not take on flesh to enter into our midst. It is in this negation of the flesh that consists of their crime. A monstrous crime: "many seducers came into the world who do not confess that Jesus came in the flesh. The one (who thinks thus) is the seducer and the antichrist" (2Joh 7); "Any spirit who confesses that Jesus Christ came in the flesh is of God; and any spirit who does not confess Jesus (as having come in the flesh) is not of God; this one is of the antichrist which you have heard that he comes and who is already present in the world" (1Joh4:2,3); "This is he, Jesus Christ, who came by the water and the blood"; "not in the water only but in the water and the blood" (1Joh 5:6); the targeted culprits acknowledge that Jesus received the baptism, but they didn't admit that he had actually died; the water designates the baptism of Jesus by John, the blood designating his actual death. Thus one is an antichrist when one confines to admitting Jesus' divinity and rejecting his incarnation.
How could an author so anxious to setting into relief the human nature of Christ, elsewhere leave it in the shadow? One will say that he was not constrained to always repeating everywhere the same thing. Okay. But one must at least supervise his formulas and take guard in providing some ammunition against the "antichrists", against the "seducers" that he denounces here with so much vehemence. Now the following professions of the faith, that one reads in other places, could they only be welcome against the disputers of the incarnation, for all those who had believed in the rule of the faith, when they had proclaimed the divinity of Jesus: "the one who confesses that Jesus is the son of God, God abides in him and he in God" (1Joh4:15); "the one who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in himself *** These things I have written to you that you may know that you have eternal life, you who believes in the name of the Son of God" (1Joh5:10,13). How could the apostle of Christ's incarnation not see that he borrowed here from his adversaries their own language? But it is precisely not him who speaks in large part to us now, but rather the spokesman on behalf of the "antichrists".
He preaches the marcionite Christ, the Christ who is not incarnate; and the partisan of the incarnation is a Catholic who endeavors to neutralize this doctrine but who doesn't dare to entirely suppress the formulas.
I have just interrogated the Johannine epistles. I pass now to the gospel. It says (19:34) that a Roman soldier, seeing that Jesus had died, pierced his side with a lance, and out from him poured blood and water. This entirely natural fact appears to us banal. Also one is surprised at hearing the narrator make a solemn guarantee of the reality by this formula, the equivalent which does not reappear anywhere else except in the final remark: "the one who saw this bares witness and his witness is true; and he knows that he tells the truth so that you also believed".
Why does he consequently attach so much significance to a detail which has none for us? The text of 1Joh5:6, that we have just encountered, allows us to catch a glimpse into the solution behind this enigma. The blood and the water that the piercing of the lance caused to gush is the corroboration from the history of the didactic teaching given by the epistle. This last one professes that Jesus didn't come only with the water, but also with the blood; that he was not limited to receiving John's baptism, but that he also shed his blood, that he really died for us. The gospel exposes that which is past. When the Roman soldier approached the cross, Jesus had died already. However one would raise objection that he had died as phantoms die, that he had died only in appearance. The piercing of the spear dissipates this suspicion. The side of Jesus was pierced by the lance, blood flowed out with water. There was a blood flow: evidence that Jesus had a carnal body like that of our own, for an ethereal body would not have had blood. But was this blood of his possibly artificial? No, for had it been artificial, it would have had a vermilion color. Now, with the blood it became decomposed by death; thus evidence that this blood was of the same quality as ours and that Jesus possessed very much a human nature that was in every respect equal to that of our own.
The piercing of the spear, with what ensues, is therefore an apologetic history, a history destined toward confirming the incarnation of Jesus the Son of God. But what becomes of the witness with the certificate of high integrity that is delivered of him? This is the expedient to which one resorts when one has reservations to battle, and mistrusts to uproot. The author is taken up with some Christians who preached the doctrine of the spiritual Christ and who, if they did not already devote their adherence there, is on the verge of giving it. He says to them:
"There was the blood flow from the side of Christ pierced by the lance; blood mixed with water. This is well certain, for the witness to this fact is above all suspicion. Believe not thus in the phantom Christ, and hasten yourself to withdrawing your faith in him if you had the misfortune of agreeing with him. Do not let yourself become beguiled by this doctrine of delusion. Stay faithful to the incarnate Christ. Return to him if you left him ". He goes to war with docetism.
He battles with it. He has not thus been able to encourage it. It is not he who would have desired to yield to Christ the perception of a phantom. Well we know about some texts in which the Christ speaks, as an alien to the laws of humanity: "What is there between I and you, woman?" "You are from below; I myself am from above; you are of this world, I myself am not of this world "; "I have a food to eat that you know not"; "Father, the hour has come, glorify your son". Among these texts and the history of the piercing of the lance there is an abyss, -- an abyss which separates the marcionite christology from the catholic christology.
http://sgwau2cbeginnings.blogspot.com/p ... art-2.html