Logos as Anthropos

Is there any literature that depicts or discusses Christ as a "divine man," without subordinating either of these aspects in the equation?

I know a lot of early Christianity argued about similar things, like whether Jesus was a mixture of divine and anthropic, or simply the divine "wearing" matter as an outward garb.

Specifically what interests me is the first-person perspective of Jesus, knowing what he knew and seeing what he saw, then suffering what he suffered, but from the perspective of a "man who realises his own divinity," not an aloofly paternalistic God on a short sejour into the world. Maybe paternalistic in a different way, like taking the entire weight of the world on his shoulders, and being able to see all the suffering and meaning and underlying meaning within Creation, but also representing Creation (and therefore Man) in that equation, and not just chiding it for waywardness.

The mystery of the Crucifixion for me has always been a mystery of "How can God SUFFER, if he's just 'a god'?" and then once that is presumed answered, "Why would he?"

>Specifically what interests me is the first-person perspective of Jesus

You're it.

Jesus looks jacked.

*Anthrwpos

This

Apart from the social dynamics that make a religion so powerful, I think christianity has thrived due to its near perfect philosophy. What is more relatable than a suffering man?

avOpwnoc

Master and Margarita?

A fictional account of Christ can't begin to approach the truth. His "psychology" is beyond our understanding.

>The mystery of the Crucifixion for me has always been a mystery of "How can God SUFFER, if he's just 'a god'?" and then once that is presumed answered, "Why would he?"

The Apostle Paul answers these questions in his epistles. Further explication is best found in the Church Fathers.

A lone young shepherd lived in pain
Withdrawn from pleasure and contentment,
His thoughts fixed on a shepherd-girl
His heart an open wound with love.

He weeps, but not from the wound of love,
There is no pain in such a wound
However deeply it opens the heart;
He weeps in knowing he’s been forgotten.

That one thought: his shining one
Has forgotten him is such great pain
That he gives himself up to brutal handling in a foreign land,
His heart an open wound with love.

The shepherd says: I pity the one
Who draws himself back from my love,
And does not seek the joy of my presence,
Though my heart is an open wound with love for him.

After a long time he climbed a tree,
And spread his shining arms,
And hung by them, and died,
His heart an open wound with love.

The orthodox understanding of Christ is that He is true God and true man.

Equal with God the Father in respect to His divinity, inferior to God in respect to His humanity.

He is eternal, incarnate in the womb of the virgin Mary in time.

However, He is fully man also, with a fully human heart. So He does not merely "chide the world for its waywardness":
>When Mary therefore was come where Jesus was, seeing him, she fell down at his feet, and saith to him: Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. Jesus, therefore, when he saw her weeping, and the Jews that were come with her, weeping, groaned in the spirit, and troubled himself, And said: Where have you laid him? They say to him: Lord, come and see. And Jesus wept.

Wait, I thought he said, 'how long must I remain with you?' (Transfiguration) And 'my soul is sorrowful until (eos) death' (gethsemane) in mark, the gospel that the others used to craft their own perspectives fifty years later. It isn't really so much a 'putting the world on his back and suffering' as it is a 'get me the fuck out of this stupid fucking corporeal world ASAP'. Sure he said he would have to suffer, but the suffering was a necessary evil for the greater personal gain of being freed from the tomb of the body (the last gasp on the cross uses the same word that is used when Jesus exorcises demons and Jesus not being in the tomb (see Plato). He got what he wanted, he knew what he wanted the whole time: freedom from the corporeal state of being. He 'died for us' in that his death shows us how we are supposed to die to the flesh and be resurrected (see Paul), but I think a new character is being invented if you say that the corporeal punishment of the passion crossed Jesus' mind as a potential deterant from what he intended to do. The suffering was a means to his personal end: freedom from the fetters of the body. Just some thoughts. I'm not trying to contradict anyone, I just lack the subtleties of politeness in my writing

Which bizarre heresy is this? Are you a "gnostic"?

Philo of Alexandria (Alexandria, where Mark is said to have written his gospel) Jewish platonist, inventor of logos as only son of god. He's a good read. He's the source of Christianity if you ask me. The philosophy and symbolism of Mark's gospel corresponds 100% with Philo's writing. It's a load of fun. Jump in.

This is why depictions of Christ as a fully human figure are so boring in contemporary Christianity. The most fascinating aspect of the whole theology has always been the contradictory, unsettling fusion of divine essence with human fallibility. Christ, as he appears in the Gospels, does not seem like an approachable figure at all to me. He talks about hell and damnation more than any other person in the Bible. His parables, more often than not intentionally mystify the situation. His demands are shocking and inexplicable. The whole thing only really makes sense retrospectively when framed by Paul.

...

brilliant first post user

>how can God suffer

OP try to look at the Jesus sacrifice and the relationship with the Father through the eyes of a developmental psychologist, not a lunatic theologian who has removed himself and his institution from the meaning of the story. These characters represent parts of ourselves, our own internal psychodrama.

In the myths, the God of the Jewish people asked Abraham for a son. The New Testament repaired this flawed story; questions of why would God ask for proof of faith are a distraction for madmen. YHWH was Kali-like, a devourer of insolent nations and foreign children. Completely separate from Christ.

In the NT, the One God makes of his infinite self a son. It's not a literal read, Jesus suffers because he is a stand-in for us. We are him. He is Man. First post user nailed it. Imitatio dei -- imitation of the deity -- is the official position of the Catholic church. Christ is a metaphor for us, a model for how we should act, and mythically a sacrifice that broke the chain of sectarian violence common at that time. Just look: Catholicism has united people from nations across the world. Of course the Hellenic Jews who wrote the books of the bible could not anticipate the true breadth of humanity or create a philosophy that could unite a world they had no account of. But they did pretty damn good.

>why would he
Because we suffer, and accepting suffering is our fate.

Where does a man come from? Who teaches him right and wrong? A father. And if that man should be more than a man -- a myth and a teacher for all mankind -- where does he come from? A Father. A goodness beyond understanding.

Jesus seems to set out nearly impossible goals for his followers. I find it interesting that if we consider the saints as his most ardent followers, they all seem to posses that "unapproachable" quality to them; that is to say, there's something offputting about all of them, personable though many of them are. They all just sort of seem to "get it."

Boy I bet its fun being a nitpicking heretic new ager.

>nitpicking
You have me confused with theologians who have the hearts of accountants rather than poets, user. They couldn't understand a simple story and had to invent 200 different convoluted metaphysics to argue about.

All of humanity is divine.

Good thing my heart of the poet understands that youre a fucking faggot.