3. Docetism.

The Docetae were practically the same as the Gnostics (Docetism became an important Gnostic doctrinal position after Gnosticism became Christianized). The name "Docet" comes from the Greek word meaning "to seem," a reference to the Docetist's explanation for Christ's sinlessness. Since matter was inherently evil, they claimed that Jesus Christ's body must have been an illusion; it only seemed human. For brevity, this book includes similar systems of thought under the name of Docetism, regardless of their origins. All the groups included here under Docetism were similar:

This heresy rests upon the notion of the inherent evil of matter. For with a material body inherently evil the Divine Nature cannot be thought to have united Itself; neither in the systems of the Gnostics, who tried, by a succession of Aeons, to bridge over the space between the Deity and Matter, could it be thought that the Aeon, derived from the Divine Nature, whose office was to correct the work of the evil Demiurge, united himself with the handiwork of that Demiurge. In this difficulty, some were led to deny the reality of the body, some the truth of the union. The former were the Docetae. Of them, some held that the Body of our Lord was merely simulated, that it was an immaterial phantasm: some allowed that it was a substantial body, but of a celestial substance.⁽¹⁷⁾

Notice the author's emphasis on that last phrase. The Blood Doctrine claims that Christ was divine because He had divine (celestial) blood. If so much as a drop of human blood had been in His veins, say the Blood Indoctrinators, Christ would have been a sinner, because sin is in human blood. Furthermore, Christ could only be God by getting His blood from God the Father. God does not have power over matter, for if His body contained human blood, He would have become a sinner. If the Blood Indoctrinators are correct, Christ faced a more onerous situation than that of a healthy man living in an AIDS commune; one drop, and even God incarnate would be lost for eternity, even if He did nothing wrong. Jesus must never have gone to the dentist.

The other groups included in this section are the Monophysites and the Apollinarians. The Monophysites claimed that Christ's twin Natures (the divine Son of God in the human body of man) combined to form one amalgamated Nature. The Apollinarians believed that Christ was simply lacking a normal human nature. The Monophysites are divided into two groups; the Phthartolatrae and the Aphthartodocetae. The Aphthartodocetae believed that Christ's body remained impervious to decay, weakness or suffering, except what He willed Himself to suffer, since His body was made of Divine substance. The Phthartolatrae, in contrast, believed that Christ was no more than an ordinary man, and subject to the same weaknesses. The Aphthartodocetae came into existence in the Fifth or early Sixth Century. The Monophysites, from which they came, became a distinct group when they were expelled from the Orthodox Eastern Church in ad 451.

The Blood Doctrine, like many other sets of teachings, is a repackaging of beliefs that have continually resurfaced in new combinations with other beliefs for the last 2,000 years. There were many groups that believed that Jesus was a mere man, and that this was a result of His becoming incarnated. There were many other groups that believed that He did not have a human body or human desires, and that this was a result of His being God in the illusion of flesh. The Socinians were Monophysites, as were the Baptists who succumbed to the Eutychian Heresy. For 2,000 years, people have struggled to understand how God the Son could become a man. Undoubtedly, this struggle will continue until we all sit at Jesus' feet.

Until that time, the author's position is that a person's being is not determined by his body; a man remains the person he is whether his arms are made of flesh or metal. The Bible says that God the Son took flesh and became a man. Understood in the term "flesh" is the blood that is in it (at least one verse specifically mentions the blood of Christ as being human). Jesus was God, but He cloaked Himself with the flesh and blood that makes up all men, and subjected Himself to the frailties of that body. His essential substance as God the Son could not be changed simply by changing His blood or His flesh, and His body could not be human if some of it was divine. The Bible clearly warns us that it is the spirit of the antichrist that denies that Jesus became God in human flesh (1 John 4:2, 3). There is no such thing as "divine blood," anymore than there is such a thing as "divine flesh," and we know that Jesus had human flesh. Because the author believes this, He has been banned from joining Fundamentalist churches and told that his beliefs are Satanic (Matthew 10:25; John 16:2, 3).

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