Free What Do You Do With a Chocolate Jesus? by Thomas Quinn Page B

Sumerians, Greeks, and Persians had been doing it for millennia.
    When Jesus shows up to be baptized, John recognizes him, which is quite a feat because they last met while both were in their mothers’ wombs. Since John was born six months before Jesus, he also survived the slaughter of the innocents, though we never learn how. But when he baptizes Jesus, it’s a special moment:
     
And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove; and a voice came from heaven, “Thou art my beloved Son; with thee I am well pleased.” [Mark 1:10–11]
     
    Mark says the Spirit, or Holy Spirit, descended like a dove, while Luke says it descended “ in bodily form like a dove upon him.” Whether it was a metaphor or an actual bird, both the vision and the voice were only experienced by Jesus.
    My question is: Who was this voice from heaven? God? I thought he and Jesus were one and the same. Is Jesus talking to himself? Like a ventriloquist act? No, that wouldn’t work because only Jesus hears the voice. So, I guess, he was listening to a voice in his head that was actually himself talking as if he were his own father. You wonder why people didn’t get him at first.
    The Holy Spirit
     
    So, what exactly is this Holy Spirit that descends like a dove? It’s mentioned many times in both the Old and New Testaments, and there have been big fights over what it’s supposed to be. It’s never clearly defined, but it seems to work as a kind of otherworldly tutor:
     
…do not be anxious how or what you are…to say; for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say. [Luke 12:11–12]
     
    It sounds like a state of mind, mysterious and awesome—a feeling of God’s presence. Jesus, the king of forgiveness, takes it very seriously:
     
“…all sins will be forgiven the sons of men, and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin…” [Mark 3:28]
     
    Yeow! That’s heavy duty. For centuries after, Christians would stay up late at night arguing over what exactly Jesus is referring to when he says “Holy Spirit.”
     
    These are the popular choices:
     
         1. The presence of God
         2. Something that emanates from God
         3. The same thing as God
         4. One third of God
         5. A separate entity that sort of works for God
    Since you can’t see it, touch it, or stuff it in a box, it’s hard to define. But, whatever you do, don’t blaspheme against it because it’s the only sin that even Jesus won’t forgive. This Christianity business is starting to look like a bit of a minefield.
    John’s baptism of Jesus raises an embarrassing theological question for the early Christians. Baptism is a ritual of purification, the washing away of sin. Well, if Jesus was born without sin, why did he need to be baptized? Even J-the-B says that it’s he who should be baptized by Jesus. Perhaps as an acknowledgement of this dilemma, Matthew has Jesus being a good sport and saying they should just roll with it for the moment. But this still doesn’t solve the problem.
    The easiest way to untangle this conundrum is to write it out of the story. In Mark’s baptism scene, Jesus seems like a normal person who is suddenly possessed by the Holy Spirit. This is called the Adoptionist Theory—the notion that he was baptized into perfection at this moment. The idea later became a heresy when it was decided that Jesus had always been divine.
    By the time the author of John writes his Gospel, about thirty years after Mark, John the Baptist sees the Spirit descending as a dove while talking to Jesus about baptism, but he never actually performs one. Theological problem solved. See how easy it is?
    Jesus vs. Satan: Round 1
     
    The Holy Spirit leads Jesus to the desert where he fasts for forty days and nights. This being the Middle East, the