Docetism
Sign in to savethumb | right | alt=Lamentation of Christ | Lamentation of Christ In the history of Christianity, docetism (from the dokeĩn "to seem", dókēsis "apparition, phantom") was the doctrine that the phenomenon of Jesus, his historical and bodily existence, and above all the human form of Jesus, was mere semblance without any true reality. Broadly, it is taken as the belief that Jesus only seemed to be human, and that his human form was an illusion.
Article
11 sectionsContents
- Definitions
- Christology and theological implications
- Islam and docetism
- Docetism and Christ myth theory
- Texts believed to include docetism
- Non-canonical Christian texts
- See also
- Footnotes
- References
- Further reading
- External links
thumb | right | alt=Lamentation of Christ | Lamentation of Christ In the history of Christianity, docetism (from the dokeĩn "to seem", dókēsis "apparition, phantom") was the doctrine that the phenomenon of Jesus, his historical and bodily existence, and above all the human form of Jesus, was mere semblance without any true reality. Broadly, it is taken as the belief that Jesus only seemed to be human, and that his human form was an illusion.
The word Dokētaí ("Illusionists") referring to early groups who denied Jesus's humanity, first occurred in a letter by Bishop Serapion of Antioch (197–203), who discovered the doctrine in the Gospel of Peter, during a pastoral visit to a Christian community using it in Rhosus, and later condemned it as a forgery. It appears to have arisen over theological contentions concerning the meaning, figurative or literal, of a sentence from the beginning of the Gospel of John: "the Word was made Flesh".