Episode 56: The gospel requires a body
Download MP3Nobody knows for certain what the secessionists—the people who left John’s community over a theological dispute—believed and taught. But many scholars believe it was probably some form of Gnosticism, a kind of spirituality that greatly valued the possession of special knowledge and devalued the physical world. Some Gnostics would have denied that God would inhabit something as lowly as a human body, let alone die on a cross. John’s response? If Jesus wasn’t a real, flesh-and-blood human being, there is no gospel.
Nobody knows for certain what the secessionists—the people who left John’s community over a theological dispute—believed and taught. But many scholars believe it was probably some form of Gnosticism, a kind of spirituality that greatly valued the possession of special knowledge and devalued the physical world. Some Gnostics would have denied that God would inhabit something as lowly as a human body, let alone die on a cross. John’s response? If Jesus wasn’t a real, flesh-and-blood human being, there is no gospel.
