With shocking mendacity Docetism defines the graces given to keep sin at arm’s length as death-dealing and strives to liberate itself from them. Docetic man therefore works to remove the mediations that guard him from violence, laboring until they are destroyed and envisioning the destruction as a final liberation. Docetic man deceives himself by believing that in destroying the mediations he will confront a reality in which sin and death have no part. This reality without the mediations is death, for upon dismissing his protections the combat comes hand-to-hand. The life beyond death of which docetic man might dream comes not into and through death but to death. At the end of his striving against the mediations he perceives evil lodged within himself and prepared for carnage. Rather than being swallowed by love, docetic man is enveloped by hatred.
The deprivation of man’s form has arrived at the most recent and thus the most urgent of the crisis points embedded in Docetism’s history. He flutters as the confusion of higher and lower, repudiating nature and limit in favor of the infinite. Man has seen eternal life, hearing it and touching it with his hands, but rather than this life descending from eternity in Christ it has ascended in earth lifted to heaven. Docetic man has abandoned contact with the ground, rejecting natural existence and its submission to and envelopment in death-unto-life, each generation having pulled the ground further from beneath its children. Man at his most prominent now abides in the clouds, high above in his cities, looking out over the millions. He flies from place to place, forgetting time and location, plucking his life out from locale, season, and rhythm. The typical docetic man partakes in a lower but no less devastating habit of flight, floating a few feet above the ground thanks to engines that distort his consciousness and erode his soul. He neglects dawn and dusk, sun and moon, living by the artificial command that there be light or its absence. He forgets heat and cold as if these did not compose the natural world, constructing a world without discomfort, without feeling, and finally without conscience. Replete with marvels, delights, and magic, this world covers him in darkness and fuels his pride.
Docetic man feels the descent intrinsic to this ascent in his internal ruin, his yearning for the meaning that he hoped to acquire by unwittingly obliterating all meaning. Though he does not know how to conceptualize it, docetic man senses that his way of being is not and that he exists as war. He senses that he is both an accomplice to and a cry of revolt against the evisceration of his nature. Docetism has reduced him to this cry, whose intensity reflects the ease with which his world invades and passes through his being—as well as his surrender to this invasion and his taking up its cause. Everywhere docetic man believes that he will receive fulfillment through release, that transgression and the eradication of boundaries will rescue him from emptiness, but he does not understand that expenditure is the undoing of the form by which he preserves his significance. He strives upward and outward in his pride as if he could absorb the whole earth, believing that then he would no longer wander, no longer be violated. This externalization tightens his shackles, divorcing his divinity from the interiority proper to it. Surveying the modern city, man bows before the altars he has erected in the name of alienation. Concrete and steel stand surrogate for the soul, capturing the natural longing for God and reversing its potency, parading the allure of man undifferentiated and deprived of law.
What shall save docetic man from the morass into which he has fallen, or from the consummation that looms ahead? What shall heal him of the pride that charms him to descend deeper into his blindness? Man will never find resurrection in what terminates in death, he will not escape his fluidity in what intensifies the stream. Let him, then, comprehend his darkness and its rule over him, that though it purports to save him from death Docetism has stolen the vision that gathers him into life. Let him therefore, and more importantly, see again that which was from the beginning, the Word of life that was with the Father and has appeared in Jesus Christ. Like the incarnation, what is here seen can be heard and touched. It is a life that, in addition to being formed in the truth, is also a way. With this new sight man apprehends the way as love, from God who created all things in and for love, given to man whom he loves.
9. The ancient councils and biblical wisdom stand behind what I say about the Christ, and I have no desire to contradict or transgress these sources. If the reader should have any confusion regarding my words on this subject here and throughout this book, I ask that he keep this intent in mind.
1 John 5:18–21
We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin; the one who was born of God keeps him safe, and the evil one cannot harm him. We know that we are children of God, and that the whole world is under the control of the evil one. We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true—even in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life. Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.
The mountain dominated the countryside, puncturing the sky like a needle, peaking in the heart of the heavens. It loomed over a village, separating the people from points east with such height that they endured its shadow until late morning. The people complained that the darkness delayed production, that it stunted the growth of crops, and that it hindered their fullness of life. They longed to be out from under the mountain.
At length a man of unusual ability arose among the people, surpassing his companions and their ancestors in discernment, knowledge, and strength. His fellows envied him, the elders respected him, and the women sought him. The villagers made him their leader and he promised them an age of prosperity and justice. He made plans to improve the common way of life, but found time and again that the darkness hindered his pursuits. “If only I could bring my people into the full light of day,” he thought. “We shall never advance while this mountain hangs over us.”
He expressed his frustration to one of the women who courted him, and she responded with a way that he could draw the town out of darkness. “You, who are like a god among us, must become a sun for yourself and bring your light down for the rest. Listen to what you must do: ascend the mountain, arriving at the summit before dawn and hiding yourself there. When the sun rises just above the mountain’s topmost point, seize it with your hands. Wrestle with the sun by laying hold of it, and though you melt from its heat, do not let go until it gives you its blessing. At that moment you will become the light of the sun, and when you return to the town as walking light, you will bless us all by your glow until we, too, have become our own suns. Then there will be no more darkness, and our people will make progress.”
The man decided upon this idea at once, setting out for the peak. For days he scaled cliffs and endured the wild, descending into his depths and testing himself there. He reached the apex in darkness and hid himself. Dawn came and evolved into late morning, and the sun slowly awakened to the western lands. At the moment of total exposure, just as its light neared the village below, the man leaped out and grasped the sun with both hands. He immediately caught flame, his fingers and forearms turning black, his whole body shaking. Fire darted all around, the peak trembled, the sky rolled. The horizon twisted and coiled, and the man felt his feet dissolve into the earth. But he would not let go. “I will have your blessing!” he shouted, and with all his energy he held tightly and impeded the sun’s course across the heavens. At last the sun was exhausted and gave in. A dazzling and concentrated beam flowed into the man and swelled in his flesh, an eternal light received. He let go and fell to his knees, where he noticed that all the colors, all difference and vivacity, fluttered within him and illumined his body. Smiling at his blessing, he looked at the sun to find that it was no longer bright in the same way, but had become another moon. “It is no matter,” he thought as he stood up. “I do not need the sun. I am now my own sun!”
But then his light withered in a gasp and retreated beneath his skin, abandoning him to the dark. His skin began to ripple and crawl, his fingernails grew into claws, and hair sprouted on his face, hands, and feet. He looked again at the moon and howled with lust. The man that he had been departed; the people never saw him again. In his place they knew perpetual night, and fear of the monster that roamed the mountain.
