Digging Deeper – A Holy Ghost?

A common theme among the heresies of the early centuries was the limitation of Christ’s humanity. Ironically, many false teachers accepted the divinity of Christ but denied His humanity (a fact that seems to only strengthen the argument for the former). Some groups claimed that Christ was an apparition or that He merely inhabited a human body but wasn’t Himself human.

One of these groups was the Docetists, from the Greek word dokein, meaning “to seem or appear.” Docetist groups believed that physical matter was evil and, therefore, practiced extreme self-denial to rise to a higher spiritual truth. According to their warped view of the created order, Jesus could not have had a physical body because that would impugn His divinity. The apostle John seems to be aware of these false teachings, as he goes to great lengths to stress the physical nature of Jesus throughout his writings, saying things such as:

“That which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands” (1 John 1:1).

One of these false teachers, Cerinthus, was a contemporary of John and promoted Docetist views during the first century. We know from second-century writings that these pagan philosophies were so influential that they established their own schools and began leading people astray. Early church writers have even stated that John wrote the fourth Gospel in refutation of Cerinthus’ views.

This may seem trivial or irrelevant to us today, but the truth is that we can put the matter to rest because the early church worked hard to combat these heresies and establish the orthodox position on Christ’s humanity. They did so by examining the Scriptures and refuting the claims of popular pagan philosophies that were entering the church. These assertions were then formulated into creeds that reaffirmed the truths of Scripture.

When we know the Word of God, we can sift through popular misconceptions about who Jesus is—whether regarding His humanity or divinity. As 1 John 4:2 states:

“By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God.”

This week, as we celebrate the incarnation, thank God that He came in the flesh and that we have attestation to this very fact.