Karen Jolly quotes the following from Ibn Kamm^una, in his
_Examination of the Three Faiths_ (a Jewish writer and thinker in
Baghdad c 1280:
> Furthermore, God is too exalted to be described as having dwelled in the
>uncleanness of the menstruating womb and in the confinement of the belly and
>darkness; or that bodily eyes looked at Him; or that He was affected by
>slumber or sleep; or that He excremented in his clothes and urinated in his
>bed; or that He wept or laughed; etc, etc.
This comes back to my fundamental argument that basically we know
very little about the person of Jesus Christ because we are totally
reliant upon the Scriptures which perhaps were based upon eye-witness
accounts but were nevertheless subject to immense interpretation. We
"know" only what the Evangelists choose to tell us.
The Early Church, in reacting to various "heresies" chose the opinion
that Christ was true God and true Man. It could have gone the other
way: that Christ was only true God; or maybe that He was only true
Man. Either way would have made an immense change in the way in
which the Scriptures would have presented Christ.
What, for instance, would our perception have been if the "Gospel
According to Thomas" had been accepted by the Early Church as part of
the Canon of Scripture? What, on the other hand, if the "Gospel
According to John" had not?
This in itself is problematic because of the problem of what
constitutes "inspiration" and, if the Church is truly inspired, then
to what extent does this happen. For example, we know that Paul
wrote more than 2 Letters to the Corinthians but only two are found
in the Scriptures. The others (am I right?) are lost. Which raises
the question: are they lost because they were not "inspired" or did
they not find their way into the Scriptures because they were lost?
And so this question about Christ's humanity is unsolvable because we
only know what we are told. The rest is speculation, but speculation
by its very nature can lead us anywhere.
Keith Tankard
Rhodes University
South Africa
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