Heresy and Foolishness

The Gnostics said that true orthodox Christians were wrong in believing God had taken a human body. Gnostics believed then and now that the human body was evil but the Spirit of God was pure so the two could not intermingle.

Some of them distinguished between Christ, whom they acknowledged to be divine in some sense; and the man Jesus who was at most an instrument through whom the divine Christ spoke. They held that the man Jesus did not become the bearer or instrument of the Christ until the Spirit descended upon him at his baptism. Additionally, they held that the Spirit left him before the crucifixion.

Others affirmed that there was never a man Jesus at all, but only the appearance of a man, through which wise teachings were given to the disciples.

Modern doubters simply say that miracles are impossible. I once heard a man say that the people who wrote the Bible were not lying when they said Jesus was born of a virgin. They were just ignorant farmers who did not understand where babies came from. As a farm boy I can assure you that we know a lot about procreation. My friend came down from Chicago and saw our cow. When we told him milk came from this big bovine he laughed at us and said, “It does not. I get milk at the store.”

We farmers actually bred cows, chickens, horses and sheep so we knew well what the process entailed. Some leftist theologians are too smart by half to think farmers are so dumb they minunderstood procreation.

Creedal Christians affirmed that Jesus was conceived through the action of the Holy Spirit, that he was born and had a real physical body. He was special from the first moment of his life, and not just from the date of His baptism.

The cover story of Newsweek last time was the birth of Jesus. the editor spoke on TV and said he thought much of scripture was a myth but not a lie. He believes that the resurrection occurred but not the parting of the Red Sea by Moses. If raising Jesus from the dead was not too big for God why would parting a bit of water be a problem?

Too clever by half? Too much emphasis on "booklearning" will make people mad!