The author of the Acts of John,
said to be Leucius, a real or fictitious companion of the apostle John,
narrates his miracles, sermons, and death. The sermons display
unmistakable Docetic tendencies, especially in the description of Jesus
and the immateriality of his body:
Some
of the dialogue you will find there is absolutely fascinating, and in a
sense it makes you wonder why the Christian Orthodoxy was so dead set
against information of this nature, which clearly was very popular in
the Johannine communities. If the symbol of Jesus does play a role for
you at all, one of the very recognizable sentiments is that nobody would
recognize him if you met him on the subway, and he would probably end
up being pushed under a bus some place, and die unknown. So what is it
then within us which does recognize Jesus when it matters? What is it
that made these apostles in the conversations reported in the acts of
John so certain that they'd seen Jesus?.... Sometimes when I meant to touch him [Jesus], I met with a material and solid body; but at other times when I felt him, his substance was immaterial and incorporeal, as if it did not exist at all ... And I often wished, as I walked with him, to see his footprint, whether it appeared on the ground (for I saw him as it were raised up from the earth), and I never saw it. (§ 93)The author also relates that Jesus was constantly changing shape, appearing sometimes as a small boy, sometimes as a beautiful man; sometimes bald-headed with a long beard, sometimes as a youth with a pubescent beard (§ 87-89). (From the introduction by Glenn Davis at www.ntcanon.org).
None of this will make any sense from a standpoint of Newtonian physics, which is the knee-jerk frame of reference for most people, for in that context bodies are different, and moreover "reality" rests on the ability to discriminate deterministically between different bodies and things in the world. And it is their differences which determine their reality in this sense. Such is the way of the world, a world of differences. But in God's world, sameness is the law because it is the world of spirit, and not of the five senses, so it is a world of like knows like, and the thought of differences has no meaning. So when people report seeing Jesus, or experiencing him, if it is genuine, there is this gentle but unshakable inner knowing, a recognition of the real thing, because he represents who we are in truth, and he will appear to us in whatever form is most useful to us (including no form!). It may be just a thought, a voice, an intuition, along with an inner certainty that transcends the certainties of the world. For the seeming certainties of the world are all transient in nature and therefore not certainties at all. My fingerprint is good as long as my finger is not chopped off, or otherwise damaged. My iris scan is good until my eye is damaged, etc. etc. nothing lasts. And the world does not and cannot know who I am, because the only practical answers are by proxy, yet I am none of those proxies, and I survive all of them. But the world of spirit is the world of eternity. There is no death. And self recognizes self, no matter what the form, and will also be quite able to recognize the essence in many different forms, and therefore the docetic stories are quite perceptive and instructive, and a good suggestion that many of the so-called apocryphal writings are potentially of great value.
Within the Thomas material there are several Logia where this theme of recognizing Jesus is touched on, in a wide variety of ways such as Logion 24, Logion 31, Logion 52, Logion 57, Logion 66, Logion 67, Logion 72, Logion 90, Logion 99, Logion 108, Logion 110, Logion 111. It may pay to think about why all of these in some fashion do have a bearing on recognizing Jesus. One thing to notice for sure is that none of them say: "I'm the tall, dark handsome guy with the sunglasses, the red t-shirt, and blue jeans." He will appear to us as is most helpful to us at the time.
No comments:
Post a Comment