no1tovote4 said:
Only in the way Adam would be a clone as the first Human. What is so fundamentally difficult to understand that an all powerful being that could create all humans could also create a shell in which his divine self could reside?
I find myself in an odd position. I am not a Christian, but this whole "clone" business seems laughable. If Christ was a "clone" of God, why would it matter to you at all?
Why would it be so difficult to understand that God could create the necessary chromosomes to complete a zygote on the spot as He created another human in past?
I find this fascinating....
Why would it be important to you at all if Christ was a "clone" anyway?
It matters because just any old conceptualization won't do. *That* Jesus was isn't enough; the core of Christianity is *Who* He was. Christians have wrestled with this central mystery long before biological science as we know it today existed.
The idea that Christ was a "shell" within which his Divine being resided, that He was God and in human appearance merely appealed to many particularly in the Eastern Church from the very first church councils. That possibility was rejected because of the purpose of the death of Jesus. Only if He were truly a human man could His sacrifice (quite literally a human sacrifice) atone for the sin of Adam and re-open the gates of paradise. If He were purely God in human guise, there would have been no real sacrifice.
Obviously, God could create a zygote or indeed anything else. The issue here is different from the christological issue of Christ's human and divine natures (two natures in one person is the traditional teaching about the nature of Christ); it has to do with Jesus' place in Hebrew history. Jesus does not come out of hellenistic mythology where god-men (a Greek hero usually has one human and one divine parent) labor or sacrifice for the salvation of their clan. Prometheus and Hercules are heroes of this type.
Jesus comes from the Hebrew Bible and claimed, or at least permitted his disciples to claim, that he was the Messiah of prophecy. That claim posed a number of requirements, most of importantly that He be of the tribe and House of David. Hebrew tradition has no example of a man-god; the very idea would be the height of blasphemy and the prophets never made such a statement. Jewish belief was (and I think still is) that the Messiah would be a purely human man, although a very holy one, a great warrior and a great king who would restore sovereignty and land to the Jewish people.
I can't say why all this is interesting to other Christians but it is interesting to me because in our time the growth of human knowlege has, perhaps paradoxically, made Divine knowlege harder to understand. In biblical times it was a miracle that a virgin should conceive and bring forth a Son. I don't think anyone worried about exactly how that would be carried out because, after all, no one had any real idea of how normal conception worked. Until a few centuries ago, no one had any problem with the six day Creation in Genesis because no one had any conflicting and more plausible explanation.
With the development of science, alternative or at least parallel explanations for biblical events now exist. There are a couple of easy ways out of this difficulty. One can reject science and continue to accept the Bible solely and literally. Or, one can reject the Bible and rely exclusively on scientific knowlege. There are a lot of Christians for whom neither of these options is satisfactory. Somehow, science and the Bible must both be true. In most cases, this isn't much of a problem. I don't see any conflict between the Sermon on the Mount and periodic table, for example. In a few, key places like creation and the nature of Jesus Christ, there are ragged edges that human reason must make smooth. That is why I am interested.
