Okay, so here's a story from Monday night, I've just been slow about typing it up. For some reason, a new physics professor was sitting with my friends at our usual dinner table, so I joined them. Didn't think much of it. I don't remember how exactly it came up, but I wound up mentioning that my bible class teaches me all the ways I'm a heretic, and generally making fun of the class, like I do in this blog except in life I'm not so openly atheist. When asked for an example of what I meant, I explained my favorite, most ridiculous example. I am a heretic because I believe Jesus had one, combined nature. (notice I'm still allowing for the orthodox belief that he was both human and divine). From my point of view, even though he has two otherwise mutually exclusive traits (the perfection of divinity and all the imperfections of humanity) if he acts on them in a consistent proportion, then for all intents and purposes, he has one nature. He is predictable. That is the understood use of the word nature in most other contexts that refer to personality. And usually, the explanation I get is that I cannot deny that he was both human and divine and those are the natures that I am counting and I cannot say they are combined because that is impossible because they are so different.
For some reason, in the middle of explaining this to my friend, the physics prof decided to explain to me the error in my reasoning in the same dogmatic terms I always hear from preachers. We can't understand god. His natures are completely separate. I argued that even though I might at different times present myself as Kara the student or Kara the daughter, my nature was the same. I still avoid conflict as much as possible. I still have a healthy amount of respect for authority coupled with a general unwillingness to take orders. I have the same nature and I act consistently. Jesus acted consistently. One nature. So Mr. Stranger Prof tried to explain to me that in twenty years when I'm married, sometimes my nature as a wife and my nature as a mother will come into conflict and I will have to prioritize my husband versus my children. So many problems with that, mostly because of his assumptions, and a little on the logic:
One, I won't have a husband, I am strongly likely to marry my current girlfriend.
Two, I won't bear our children, she will (we've already agreed on this).
Three, I will never have to choose between a spouse and my children. She is not shallow enough to threaten to leave over anything involving our children, nor to kick them out and I wouldn't still be dating her if she was anything like that. If she and our hypothetical children are all sick, I'll exhaust myself taking care of them all. If they are arguing, I'm a peacemaker. I value peace and everyone getting along. I will work towards that goal which is not choosing one over the other.
Four, his point works a lot better for arguing that I have two natures as a fallible human being than it does for arguing that the perfect son of god who has the ability to be perfectly consistent has two natures.
Yet this is the illogic of Christianity. I'm a heretic, among other reasons, because I insist on using standard definitions of terms. I do not try to deny Jesus' humanity, and for the sake of my Christian friends, I talk from the philosophical perspective of when I was a Christian, so I do not deny his divinity. Those are what I would consider the important points yet even if I were a Christian, that tiny detail where I get in trouble because the church invented its own definition, makes me a heretic.
Hmm. That might be a better name for this blog. "The Happy Heretic"... Thoughts?
