Carrier's proof that 1 John 4 is NOT against Marcionites
Posted: Wed Jul 22, 2020 8:51 pm
Someone has asked to dr. Carrier:
Carrier's answer:
Note that this confutes the Wells's mythicism, also, since a Jesus never came in the flesh is also a denial of a mythical Jesus considered as came in the flesh (on the earth).
Hence I have any right to accuse Ben of "intellectual dishonesty" about this precise point.
So do 1 john 4 etc serve more as polemic against proto dokētaí rather than mythicists?
Carrier's answer:
Only if we take that verse out of context can we think it might only mean Marcionites (illusionists, who held that Jesus had a fake body, not that he didn’t have one). Its rhetoric then sounds like Tertullian. But in the context of all the other verses, particularly the opening verse of this very same letter, it can’t.
Polemicists often mischaracterize what their enemies teach. That’s the whole point of polemics (e.g. the Christians they are attacking wouldn’t say “cleverly devised myths” but “sacred allegories,” for example). So when “came in the flesh” is here used as a shibboleth to exclude the rival faction, they might just as well mean by this, Jesus visited the apostles in the flesh, which does not happen in mythicism. And this is clear in 1 John 1: they mean when Jesus visited the apostles, to be “seen and handled.” That’s not mythicism.
Apart from possibly Marcionite illusionism this cannot mean what anyone today means by Docetism, as all other Docetist texts agree Jesus came in the flesh in some sense (e.g. inhabitists, who taught God entered into Jesus, still have it enter into a body of flesh; substitutionists, who taught someone was swapped out for Jesus on the cross, still have Jesus getting away in the flesh or escaping it).
But it doesn’t work for illusionism either, as 1 John 1 clarifies they don’t mean that, since their contrived rebuttal is to claim to have seen and touched Jesus—which would not rebut illusionism (and thus Marcionism), which held Jesus’s body could be seen and touched (that’s the whole point of it only seeming to be flesh). Thus, this letter is clearly written against Christians denying even that apostles had witnessed and handled Jesus in any body at all (as opposed to mystical visions).
Polemicists often mischaracterize what their enemies teach. That’s the whole point of polemics (e.g. the Christians they are attacking wouldn’t say “cleverly devised myths” but “sacred allegories,” for example). So when “came in the flesh” is here used as a shibboleth to exclude the rival faction, they might just as well mean by this, Jesus visited the apostles in the flesh, which does not happen in mythicism. And this is clear in 1 John 1: they mean when Jesus visited the apostles, to be “seen and handled.” That’s not mythicism.
Apart from possibly Marcionite illusionism this cannot mean what anyone today means by Docetism, as all other Docetist texts agree Jesus came in the flesh in some sense (e.g. inhabitists, who taught God entered into Jesus, still have it enter into a body of flesh; substitutionists, who taught someone was swapped out for Jesus on the cross, still have Jesus getting away in the flesh or escaping it).
But it doesn’t work for illusionism either, as 1 John 1 clarifies they don’t mean that, since their contrived rebuttal is to claim to have seen and touched Jesus—which would not rebut illusionism (and thus Marcionism), which held Jesus’s body could be seen and touched (that’s the whole point of it only seeming to be flesh). Thus, this letter is clearly written against Christians denying even that apostles had witnessed and handled Jesus in any body at all (as opposed to mystical visions).
Note that this confutes the Wells's mythicism, also, since a Jesus never came in the flesh is also a denial of a mythical Jesus considered as came in the flesh (on the earth).
Hence I have any right to accuse Ben of "intellectual dishonesty" about this precise point.