Off-topic:
Here’s a worthwhile reflection from Joel Sax about Christians’ modern-day, heretical preoccupation with “miracles.”
Do some conservative Christians lash out at “paganism” in part because their own individual overdependence upon miracles is rooted in low magic?
Now, now, Mike. You’re not supposed to notice that.
“…until the fifth century AD, the idea that we should believe in Jesus’s divinity because he performed miracles was heresy…”
Can somone supply me with a source, or sources, for this claim. It may be true but simply stating it here is not enough for me to believe it.
One thing I would be interested in knowing who, or what church body, had declared this a heresy.
Secondly, to draw a connection between the supposed emphasis of (some) conservative Christians with miracles strikes me as a bit of a stretch, and speculation at best.
These are not the sort of connections and speculations we would be happy with if they were made about gays by their side.
And the comment about some conservative Christians and low magic seems to be the same sort of thing.
This blog is best when it reports facts about the ex-gay movement, their mischaracterizations, excesses, contradictions, lies, etc. about gays. It is not really very helpful when those on our side engages in the same type of tactices — even if it is, as here, in a more beneign form than what they do to us.
I suppose, as Joel’s wife, and the one who inspired his post by a remark I made to him about miracles and Jesus, I should respond.
I was reading a book on “historical Jesus” by E.P. Sanders, in which he argues that, although it is historically really likely that Jesus’ contemporaries believed he performed miracles (and, in particular, healings and exorcisms), these miracles wouldn’t, in themselves, be taken as proof that Jesus himself was God.
In the process of making this argument, Sanders digressed to make a point about modern attitudes toward miracles that I found interesting, namely, that it is heretical to say that Christians must believe in miracles as proof of Jesus’ divinity, because of the conception of Jesus’ divinity involved in such a claim. The creed of Chalcedon (established in the fifth century – that should have been since, not until, the fifth century) says that Jesus is fully God and fully human.
But to see miracles as proof of Jesus’ divinity, and to demand that Christians believe in them as such, is to treat Jesus not as fully human, but as a kind of hybrid mixture, since it makes him less subject to natural law than the rest of us. As Sanders puts it, the orthodox doctrine is that Jesus is like us in everything except that he has not sinned, not like us in everything except his ability to walk on water.
(I can’t think of any way to tie this clarification back to the blog’s theme of ex-gays, so I’ll just end here.)
“In the tomb with the body, in hell with the soul as God, in paradise with the thief, and on the throne with the Father and the Spirit, Thou fillest all things, O Christ, Thyself uncircumscribed.”
Eastern Church hymn concerning the “Three Day Burial” of Christ
Lynn,
Thanks for answering. But mostly I see in what you write a conclusion drawn from the doctrines articulated at Chalcedon. I guess as someone still technically in an Eastern church (albeit, because of the homophobia I tend not to step foot in them and practice in Dignity) claims about the early church stand out for me and I was looking for a official doctrine, statement by a bishop or bishops of that time, or of a theologian of the period.
I think we cannot draw “logical” conclusions from the doctrines of Chalcedon and it is hard to say what the official statement on the relationship of the divinity of Christ to miracles would be of necessity. We would have to see how it was articulated by the church at the time.
I have never heard the issue of miracles as proof of Christ’s divinity preached on in an Eastern Church. Great emphasis, however, is still placed on the miracles of the saints and that as proof of the correctness of the orthodox faith. I don’t know how one can “prove” the divinity of Christ, by the way.
I include a typical Eastern hymn at the beginning to indicate that at least the Eastern churches, which make a claim to being the primary inheritors of Chalcedon, and of course, the claimants to orthodoxy, would probably have meant more than simply that Christ was like us as human except that he was sinless. I think Sanders is wrong there.
Of course, I am not sure when this hymn was composed so it may be quite late but it seems to sum up the Eastern notion of Christ’s divinity.