The Super Jesus of Docetism: A Heresy for the Egomaniacal

Not all heresies address themselves to points of concern inadequately dealt with by the authoritarian sect. Docetism was a rival sect in Early Christianity, and it persisted as an underground doctrine among renegade religious circles in the Near East centuries after the Council of Nicaea, going on to influence the Koran's view of Jesus' fate. The term for this heresy comes from a Greek word meaning "to seem", and refers to the central concept of the Docetists: Jesus only seemed human. In short, there were people who became Christians, for whom the latent paganism of their cultural heritage could not admit to worshiping or venerating anything or anyone with human or mortal characteristics. For them, Jesus only put on the illusion of being human to carry out his supernatural mission. In fact, he did not even die on the cross, but only pretended to and was actually whisked up into heaven while a phantom body appeared to die from crucifixion. Jesus pretended to live as a human being, but was really wholly omniscient and omnipotent and ectoplasmic the whole time. In Docetic thought, there was no room for those most beautiful moments in the Gospels where we get to see Jesus grow as a human being: the adolescent Jesus forgetting to meet back with his parents because he is so thrilled to be discussing holy scripture with Temple rabbis; Jesus' spiritual awakening during his baptism in the Jordan River by John the Son of Anne; Jesus going out into the desert for forty days and forty nights on a vision quest to discover the mission of his soul and discipline it for the tests of the world; Jesus totally losing his temper when he encounters the profiteering moneychangers at the Temple; Jesus suffering doubt, fear and an overwhelming sense of burden while praying for strength in the Garden of Gethsemane; and finally Jesus crying out to God while he dies, feeling utterly abandoned by both high and low, despite all the good he sought to accomplish. Jesus' humanity for some Christians is as powerful and moving and inspiring as any of the miracles he performed or cogent moral lessons he taught. The Docetists must have been an over-proud lot to have robbed the story of Jesus of these vital frailties that give the figure of Jesus an earthly approachability and sympathetic quality to so many Christians through the ages. Without these qualities of humble growth and earth-bound experience that gave Jesus the strength to do more than other men, Christians would never have conceived the very telling phrase, "Darling Jesus". We would not love him so. We would only fear him. Jesus would be too distant. He would be the ethereal figure utterly bereft of humanity that we encounter in Revelations, a book that some Church Councils did not think befit the Holy Scripture, but it eventually got in. There were just enough leaders in the Church who wanted more of a Super Jesus to close out the Bible, rather than a Jesus whose wounds we can so tenderly touch. So in a way, the Docetists got their way with the Church Authorities. Today one hears less about the Jesus who gathered the children about him to praise their innocent approach to the world. Far more often, we hear of the Jesus of Revelations, who wreaks vengeance upon the world like some sort of Olympian god.