The seesaw of Docetism is that whenever Christ’s humanity and divinity are not balanced, heresy will result, and this will have an effect on how sanctification is viewed. If the humanity side of the seesaw is overleaned on, Arminianism results, and Christ becomes more democratic and is viewed less as a king. If the divinity side of the seesaw is leaned on, Christ becomes an arenic docetic force that was never tempted and has no flesh. If Christ’s divinity is overemphasized, he becomes a docetic ghost and it is believed that no one can view God’s glory unveiled. If Christ’s humanity is overemphasized, Christ’s image becomes an item to be mass produced as a product. If the humanity side of the seesaw is over leaned on, Christ becomes merely an example to be imitated rather than the visible image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). As a result, it becomes more obvious that imbalance will necessarily occur at some level, and that will result in projecting oneself onto God at some level as an inevitability. Any pretension toward balance will likely terminate in pride rather than humility.
Despair of some kind usually results from trying to hold Christ’s temporal nature in contact with his eternal nature. Individuals of an introverted nature will tend toward metaphors used by Paul which render the believer as a plant, and downplay sanctification as a military or athletic pursuit. Individuals of an extroverted nature will tend toward metaphors used by Paul which render the believer as an active adopted son of God working to bring about the end times. Focusing on the believer as a part of the scenery of the arena tends to downplay evangelism or works of great enterprise. Focusing on the believer as an agent created by God to do work tends to encourage evangelism outside of one’s comfort zone. The psychological state of the individual will naturally gravitate toward one end of these metaphor, but it would be an act of pride to pretend that one is perfectly balanced focusing on one set of Biblical metaphors while ignoring others. This may be why God thought it would glorify Him most to have a diversity of Christian denominations rather than a centralized power in the current age.
The balance of the seesaw of focus on Christ’s humanity and divinity will have an impact on what is considered eisegesis and exegesis. If Christ’s divinity is overemphasized as an arenic providential force, then the actions of those regenerated by God to be sons will be deemphasized. All acts of humans will be attributed to God, and the humans will be regarded as puppets—that no one acts, Christ does all the acting. It is rendered in such frames that Joshua did not really do anything. If Christ’s humanity is overemphasized, God’s power in allowing miraculous events to occur will be coordinately deemphasized— that God barely gives any power to do anything. In such cases, David’s killing Goliath will be seen as an act that can and should be imitated. A balance should try to be maintained so that when the Bible states that Joshua did something, it is maintained that Joshua did something, instead of being a puppet of God. It should also be maintained that when Joshua did something, he did it through the power of God in a miraculous fashion which God ordained. Any understanding of any action in the Bible that does not maintain both of these elements is likely a direct result of a Docetist view of Christ that overemphasizes his divine nature at the cost of his human nature.
Those who overemphasize Christ’s divinity will see it is an act of worship to downplay his humanity and the meaning of human actions. Those who emphasize Christ’s humanity will see it as an act of worship to restore the proper view of Christ’s humanity to its proper place as an example of how to act to those who are regenerated to the role of sons. Docetists will see the emphasis on Christ’s humanity as an act of pride and as a result more heavily emphasize Christ’s asei nature and those Scriptures which emphasize God as an asei providential force outside of the universe. Those who seek to have a balanced view of Christ’s person will and should state that emphasizing God’s transcendence without mentioning God’s immanence in Christ becoming flesh is unbalanced, and a neglect of seeing Christ on every page of the Bible.
If Christ’s humanity is deemphasized so that he is not seen as a man who was tempted in all ways expect without sin, he will be seen as a docetic and ascetic ghost. It follows that a docetic view of Christ would lead to a docetic sanctification, but this may not necessarily be the case. Ascetics of the ancient world made reference to fasting in the Bible which is often ignored by the modern church. Daniel fasted and then wrote a prayer of confession in Daniel 9. Hannah fasted and God answered her prayers. Daniel fasted for three weeks and then an angel with flaming eyes appeared to Daniel and said that he was greatly loved. Christ fasted for forty days. These passages are largely ignored as irrelevant by the church protestant. So it may not be that asceticism and Docetism are necessarily the same concept if asceticism in one way devalues Christ’s human nature, but in another way it in a way views the discipline of the body as paramount to sanctification.
When Christ’s divinity is overemphasized to be more real than his humanity, this tends to lead to a hyper focus on Christ stating that one should go into his closet to pray to avoid being a hypocrite whose reward is being heard by men praying, leading to imbalance. When Christ’s humanity is brought into balance with his divinity, this encourages evangelism to spread the good news that God descended from the heavens in humility to save those regenerated by the Father to be sons who repent of their sins. A tree doesn’t think it’s a tree. It is a tree. If Paul had only used metaphors of plants, then it would be fine for believers to identify as broccoli. But Paul also uses martial metaphors to identify Christians as soldiers. Soldiers who identify as potatoes tend to lack discipline. It is generally understood that a potato lacks the ability to see itself as a soldier, but it is not outside the realm of possibility.
Stating that any regenerated son of God is only being used by God as a demonically possessed puppet is likely a result of a faulty view of Christ’s nature. In this way, heresy at some level is inevitable, because projection onto God is at some level inevitable, because imbalance in emphasis on Scripture is at some level inevitable. Stating that Joshua did nothing and that Christ did everything in him sounds pious, but is probably an implied denial of Joshua’s responsibility, and according to John Flavel, heresy. Joshua can have no part in regenerating himself and still raise Moses’s arms. Jesus did not take manual possession of Joshua’s body and fight wars for his entire life. Christ gave Joshua the power of the Holy Spirit to fight an unending war for his entire life. To say that Joshua did nothing would be Damnable antinomian heresy that flies in the face of I Thessalonians 4:1. To say such is to say that the actions of the regenerated sons of God means nothing, because they are not their actions at all. This may be correlated to the use of the word glorify instead of please: if all things glorify God from the viewpoint of eternity in Romans 9, and this is stated without reference to God’s pleasure stated in (WCF 11.5), then all human actions become viewed as vanity. Christ cannot grieve the Holy Ghost, but the Christian can.
The focus on the believer as a plant seems to be antinomians’ predilection to focus on metaphors that place the sanctification of the believer as plants growing. Because of the infinite distance between the creator and the creature, any use of infallible Scripture will be a form of projection onto God because all of Scripture cannot be memorized in perfection, and even if it were in a semi eidetic fashion, choice still has to be made about which Scripture to apply, and this can and almost necessarily leads to imbalance. If Paul uses metaphors of both soldiers and plants to describe sanctification, sole use of one will be a form of unbalance and projection onto God necessarily. The finite cannot comprehend the infinite without projection because the comprehension will be finite, while true yet accompanied with error of understanding.
During a battle, when Moses’s hands were uplifted, the battle went well, but when he got tired and dropped his hands, the battle went badly. Joshua watched Aaron and Hur hold up Moses’s hands during a battle so that they would win (Exodus 17:12-14). While this is symbolic that God controlled the outcome of the battle, Moses’s hands still had an effect on the course of the battle. Joshua stated that the victory of the battles in the book of Joshua were given by God, but this does not change the fact that at the same time, Joshua fought a war his whole life. If either human responsibility or divine power is overemphasized, imbalance will result.
If you say that God only works and not Joshua, you are probably already accepting the antinomian frame and rejecting Christ’s humanity as the second Joshua. Docetism will result in ignoring injunctions to be strong and courageous as superfluous.
Saying that God is merely the projection of man is blasphemy. Stating that one man projected onto God by not taking into the whole of Scripture is theology. Stating that man will necessarily project to some degree onto Scripture is a recognition of man’s finitude. This is stated continually in a theological context when it is stated when one engages in eisegesis, which is the projection of oneself and one’s premises onto Scripture. Thus, projection onto God by fallible man can coexist in the present with God’s word being infallible, because this inevitably happens to some degree every time a fallen man reads the Bible.
Awry Stoic 