Tag Archives: God Incarnate

God and the Domino Effect

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Once free of belief in God, everything that follows collapses.

No God means –

   No divinely inspired scripture, no sin, no salvation, no need of salvation, no repentance or divine forgiveness (and no need of these things either), no grace.

   No supernatural, no heaven or hell, no Satan, angels or demons, no Holy Spirit, no effective prayer, no miracles, no judgement, no eternal life.

  No Son of God, no God Incarnate, no prophecy, no atonement, and, most significantly, no resurrection. 

According to the Bible, God resurrected Jesus (Romans 6:4; Galatians 1:1; Acts 2:22 etc). Therefore, no God = no resurrection.

So, where did all these ideas that, once God ceases to exist, fall like dominoes? Answer: the only place ideas ever come from: the human mind. Everything ever associated with gods, and with YHWH (Old and New versions) is entirely human invention. This is the only logical, rational conclusion.

  Paul’s vision of what he took to be the Risen Christ and his consequent theology: the product of a tortured imagination.

  The resurrection appearances supposedly experienced by Cephas and others: within their own heads (grief-induced hallucinations, dreams, trances, emotional agitation). Or: an emotional response to some natural phenomenon such as bright lights.

  The stories of Jesus that these visions inspired: invented by creative writers imaginatively applying ‘prophecy’ imagined by earlier writers.

  If he existed, Jesus’ Messiah complex: worked up entirely within his own religion-soaked brain.

  His conclusion that the end of the age was nigh and that he would be king of the new order (assuming he really did think this): the result of wishful thinking, all in his imagination.

Subsequent additions to the Christian experience: the Trinity, guesswork about the Messiah’s delayed return, the panoply of saints, heresy, blasphemy, ‘God’s standards’, the inerrancy of scripture, apologetics and, coming full circle, conversion experiences. All creations of the human imagination and emotions.

With no actual God, this is the only viable explanation of the phenomenon that is religion. Human beings did it.

 

The Incarnate Deity?

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Blog347Nativity

Veiled in flesh the Godhead see; Hail th’incarnate Deity,

Pleased with us in flesh to dwell, Jesus our Emmanuel.

This, according to Charles Wesley’ hymn, ‘Hark! The Herald Angels Sing’, is what Christmas is all about: God manifesting himself on Earth as a child and subsequently a man.

What a disaster this whole idea is. The stories of Jesus’ birth do serious damage to two key elements of the Christian message:

First, they detract significantly from the good news the adult Jesus proclaimed and which survives to some extent in the synoptic gospels: the Kingdom of God was coming to the Earth very soon and people – Jewish people – should mend their ways accordingly. Instead, the nativity stories, which occur only in Matthew and Luke, are a reflection of what had happened to the faith by the time these gospels were written. The message had changed. It was less about what Jesus had to say and more about how he himself should be worshipped. He had, after all, as early Christians had started to believe, come from Heaven to save everyone from their sins.

Second, the nativity stories negate the resurrection. If a mortal Jesus rose from the dead, then we might conceivably have a miracle on our hands. But for an ‘incarnate deity’ to have accomplished the same thing – well, that’s no big deal. It’s what gods do all the time. The resurrection experiences, whatever they were, are invalidated by the gospel writers when, at the start of his story, they suggest Jesus is somehow divine. (John is even more emphatic; Jesus is the eternal Word made flesh.) So there’s nothing special about the resurrection, it’s just a god doing what gods do.

The nativity stories represent the confusion within early Christianity. Its adherents wanted it both ways, to have their cake and eat it. Maybe today’s believers can help us out of the dilemma: is it Jesus’ birth – his incarnation – that matters, or is it his death? Because it cannot be both. If Jesus was God in human form from the very beginning, then there’s nothing particularly special about his death and resurrection. Gods can’t really die, especially when none of them, including Yahweh, are alive in the first place.