Thread by @kennethtanner

THREAD: ”Since a divine Spirit inhabited the body (of Jesus), his body must certainly have been different from that of other beings, in respect of grandeur, or beauty, or strength, or voice, or impressiveness, or persuasiveness. For it is impossible that (Jesus), to whom...”

was imparted some divine quality beyond other beings, should not differ from others; whereas this person (Jesus) did not differ in any respect from another, but was, as [the Christians] report, little, and ill-favored, and ugly.”

—Celsus

Celsus (pronounced KELL-suss) was an ancient critic of the church and its gospel.

Seeking to convince anyone who might be converted to Christian faith, he argued that the church’s story of existence and of the world was impossible because smart and sophisticated humans look...

...for signs of divinity in physical beauty, strength, and stature.

If the invisible Spirit that gives all things life were to join itself to human flesh then surely, Celsus says, he would look like our projections of divine and human strength, like Adonis or Apollo, or Zeus.

We presume that only the ancients thought in this way but look at the “gods” we have assembled in, but for one example, the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

They are handsome, beautiful, fit, strong, resourceful, practitioners of focused, disciplined, old school aggression.

If they aren’t endowed with cosmic alien powers, or the capacity to harness nature in some unique way, they are super intelligent w/sophisticated technological exoskeletons, or trained experts in mystical and martial arts.

Superheroes are easy on the eye and clever and muscular.

The human that rides into Jerusalem, the God that approaches the Eastern Gate on an ass, relies on no such powers. The weakness of Jesus Christ, the vulnerability of humanity and divinity in his unique Person, is stronger than all human and cosmic powers.

You cannot see that by looking at him. It’s hidden but to the eyes of faith. The frailty of our God in human flesh—not an alien humanoid like Superman, impervious to harm, but a mere human who bleeds & sweats—endures all ridicule, false testimony, torture, and utter humiliation.

Short of stature or not, we know Jesus Christ was not striking. He did not stand out. He was despised and in the end he was as Isaiah tells us disfigured beyond recognition.

Let this MIND be in you which is also in Christ Jesus, who took upon his divine self our every disability in the flesh, who became a slave, who was tempted in every way as we are, who goes silent to the shearers, laying down his life for the life of the world.

When God made humans, male and female, the community that is God began a project that does not find its fulfillment until Pilate says to the murderous crowd: “Behold the human!”

Jesus Christ (don’t separate those names) is the image of the invisible God, bearing the very stamp of his nature. And he is lowly, poor, naked, and humiliated, beaten and spat upon, whipped and crucified.

We are not human until we are human as God is human in Jesus Christ. Dead. Buried. Raised. Ascended.

Only then are we human. Only then is the project of our humanity begun in Genesis complete, only then, like Pinocchio, are we REAL.

Join Jesus on the way of the cross, on the ONLY way to becoming truly human, on the way that makes us—finally—bearers of the divine image, which is by grace to live bodily *beyond* self-sacrificial death, to be raised from hell shining with the glory of the uncreated light...

...our faces bathed as Christ’s with the glory of the all-loving Father and their all-merciful Spirit.