Docetism

Docetism can take subtle forms. We can affirm that Jesus was truly human, with human hands and human eyes and human feet and human hair. But we fall into docetism if we fail to see how specific Jesus’ humanity is. The Son became human, but we need to be more specific if we are going to grasp more fully what Jesus is about. We need to remember the circumstances into which He intervened. We need to remember He became incarnate in actual, real-time historical situation. Otherwise, we think of the incarnation as somehow still outside time and history. We think of the incarnation as something that happened in a parallel, religious universe, one that has little if any contact with our own.

The Son became not merely human, but Jewish. He not only took on flesh, but circumcised flesh. He entered into the world, but specifically the Greco-Roman world. He became a member of a subject people, the Jews who were in subjection to Rome. He entered into a world of religious violence and terrorism, where Jews and Romans clashed about Roman symbols in the temple and where Sicarii roamed the country. He entered a world full of yearning and expectation. Daniel had prophesied that after 70 weeks of years the Messiah would come to bring in everlasting righteousness, and Jews could count. They were expecting their deliverer to arrive anytime.

Christology that takes no thought for these circumstances is still docetic.