For The Skeptics: A Defense of Christ "Identical Twin-ism"

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A Defense Of Christ “Identical Twin-ism”

For those who are Christian, and even for those who are not, the source of one’s Christianity (or knowledge of the Christian concept), at least for those born in the United States after the year 1900, are the Synoptic Gospels of the New Testament (the Books of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John).

I’m sure someone will raise and exception, but let us assume this is how most people who are Christians in 2026 have learned the concept of Christianity. The name “Jesus” is nowhere to be found in the Old Testament, and only begins to appear in Matthew 1:1 (“Jesus” being the fifth word of the New Testament).

Christians reading this and/or alive in 2026 will agree that the central tenets of Christianity are the following.

1. Jesus Christ is the Son of God and co-existed with God for all eternity as the Word.

2. Jesus was born of the virgin Mary as a biological human being or “God made flesh”.

3. Jesus began His ministry and recruited twelve disciples as well as 72 men He sent out to cast out demons and perform miracles in His name.

4. Jesus performed miracles and preached to crowds and in official synagogues of mysteries of righteousness and the Final Judgment.

5. Jesus prayed to the Father that His people would be “in us” and that He and the Father would dwell in His people (John 17).

6. Christ was betrayed by Judas Iscariot, arrested, tried, scourge, and crucified.

7. Following biological death, Christ was buried in the family tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.

8. After three days, as He prophesied, Christ rose from the dead and appeared to the two Marys, His disciples, and to 500 other people prior to His ascension to Heaven.

9. Christ will return at the end of the world, ushering its end and setting up the restoration of all things and the Final Judgment.

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The New Testament speaks of Christ extrinsically, that is, in terms of His words and actions as seen and heard by those observing them. Nothing is mentioned by Christians in or without the pages of the Bible regarding what is going on in the mind of Jesus Christ, i.e. His thoughts and inner, private mental experiences. This is understandable as we are not telepaths, but there is something odd regarding the reasoning behind Paul’s statement:

“But we have the mind of Christ.”

-1 Corinthians 2:16:

Why would Paul even say this, if he did not have an inkling as to what is going on in the mind of Christ?

And Paul used the qualifier “we”, which means it is not just himself, but others that “have the mind of Christ” or that can “have the mind of Christ”.

Paul also mentions that the Holy Spirit knows the mind of God and knows the “deep things of God”.

Thus there exists a situation wherein beyond the outer, extrinsic properties and processes of Christianity and salvation, the arguably true source and operation of Christianity and salvation is likely, nay probably, nay actually the mind of Jesus Christ and what is going on in there, and how what is going on in there relates to and yes, determines what saved humans existing outside Christ’s thoughts actually experience.

This concept, which invisibly floats right in front of our faces, is largely ignored and unknown to the vast majority of people claiming to be Christians and preaching Christianity to this day. If known, it is immediately disbelieved.

Persons not believing in Christ “identical twin-ism” have perhaps never heard such an “insane” and “heretic” concept before, but the New Testament, particularly the writings of Paul, hint that there is a “likeness-relation” between Christ and saved humans, (emphasis on likeness), in which the experiences of saved humans in the here and now are provided for them by Christ as He died upon the cross and as his body lied in state in the Tomb of Joseph.

“For those God foreknew, he predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son…”

-Romans 8:29

This certainly does not mean that a saved person, upon being saved, suddenly morphs “Mystique-like” (the character from the X-Men fiction) into physical, visual clones of Jesus as a 33 year old Jewish male with robe and sandals, the image being irrevocable and irremovable.

No.

The “image” must logically be…mental in nature.

Remember, the content within a person’s mind, even the mind of God, is more than just words in thought form. There are images, emotions and the like, that make up what Martin Rosenhan called the introcosm, the sum of the inner, private, mental world that makes up the mind of a person from birth to death (or in God’s case, from eternity to eternity or in the case of the saved, from birth to eternity [Romans 6:23[).

Christians disbelieving in Christ “Identical Twin-ism” hold we have a relationship with Christ, but it is certainly not an experiential “identical twin-ism” or re-enactment of the inner mental experiences of Christ; the content in the mind of Jesus Christ and that of a human is entirely unrelated and inaccessible.

But Paul states: “…we have the mind of Christ.”

One cannot logically “have the mind of Christ” without having knowledge of or access to what is going on in that mind.

Granted, this inaccessibility probably is true in regard to Jesus’ mind in Heaven, as we are still on “this side of the grave” and of course not given access to what is going on “over there” (for now). But Paul making such a statement means that if there is a relation or contact between what is going on in the mind of Jesus and human beings, even those born centuries following His ascension, if the content in the mind of Christ in Heaven is unknown to the saved prior to biological death, the “mind of Christ” that the saved “have” must be content that existed in Jesus’ mind as He died upon the cross and as his body lied in state prior to His resurrection. It is probably not the case there was any experience re-enactment between the mind of Christ and a human prior to His crucifixion.

Christians today and even as far back as the 1300’s, one would wager, espoused the teachings of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels and in post-Synoptic New Testament writings without ever thinking about a relation, a connection, between the introcosm of the mind of Jesus and those saved from Hell. But this relation, this “experience identical twin-ism” makes Galatians 2:20, Romans 8:29, and 2 Corinthians 5:21 make sense.

Many refuse to entertain, much less believe the idea, calling it “heretic” or “false” or “insane” simply because of the “catch you by surprise by its bizarreness”, perhaps, but in philosophical and even theoretical principle it is a logical fallacy to use disbelief as proof of the nonexistence of something, particularly if that “something” is an idea inaccessible to the five senses, which, lets face it, everything written in the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is inaccessible to the senses.

Christ “identical twin-ism”, in which the real world, pre-death experiences of an actual, living human being is a doppelganger or re-enactment of experiences dreamt within the dying mind of Jesus Christ in which Christ dreamt of being that person is not impossible: anyone claiming this “impossibility” is only speaking from disbelief, as there can be no philosophical nor sensory certainty of the absolute, irrefutable non-existence of Christ “identical twin-ism”.

Given this, skeptics will turn to their biblical interpretation (learned or self-apprehended), in which the verses used to support Christ “identical twin-ism” “must certainly mean something else. They will say, “that is not what Paul meant”. But many of the things Paul wrote really does not make sense outside Christ “identical twin-ism”.

Unfortunately, some are so quick to throw up the accusations of “heresy” or “impossibility” and the like onto ideas that reveal, upon using what David J. Chalmers refers to as “rational reflection”, that they are actually logically possible.

If one is willing to slow down, have an open mind, commit to the mental and logical homework of carrying and setting down the “crazy” idea onto the workbench of one’s mind—one can pick at it slowly, thoughtfully, looking over it ever so closely, peering into the idea with a mental magnifying glass to see, after all, that the idea is at least logically possible—given it, and millions of other Christian and non-Christian ideas, are not accessible to to the five senses and thus rely upon faith for their “truth”.

That is, when in doubt go to the mental laboratory and test “crazy” theories for logical possibility, or at least have their supporters irrefutably demonstrate logical possibility.

That’s most anyone can present, in the absence of belief.

There’s certainly nothing in the Bible that disproves Christ “identical twin-ism”.

Christ “identical twin-ism” is certainly not blasphemy, as we’re talking about an intimate mental relation between a human and Christ in which they share experiences, i.e. the human re-enacts that which Christ previously mentally experienced in the form of that person on the cross. This is not enmity or hatred between a human and Christ: it is a “Sam Beckett”-ness wherein Jesus Christ knew what it was to be you in His mind, and you are connected to Him by being a re-enactor of these dream-experiences, thus are bound to Him in this life and the one that comes after by the kindness of God, who for whatever reason made you not a ding an sich like the damned, but an inescapable copy or replica of the intra-crucifixion, pre-resurrected experiences within the mind of His Son.

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@phenomenal_graffiti Interesting thesis, and I appreciate you framing it as a *logical-possibility* claim rather than a quick ‘proof’.

One pushback, though: in 1 Cor 2, Paul’s contrast is basically ‘human wisdom’ vs ‘God’s wisdom revealed by the Spirit’. ‘We have the mind of Christ’ is commonly read as *sharing Christ’s perspective/values via the Spirit*, not as having literal access to Jesus’ private stream of consciousness (telepathy), and certainly not as a claim about Jesus’ dying dream generating our lives.

More broadly: ‘logically possible’ is a very low bar (almost any sufficiently weird story is logically possible unless it smuggles a contradiction). The real question is: what *textual* or *theological* constraints make your interpretation *the best explanation* of Paul’s language, instead of the more standard ‘union with Christ / participation’ readings?

If you can, could you state your view as a few crisp propositions (e.g., ‘for any saved person S, S’s experiences are re-enactments of Christ’s intra-crucifixion dream-experiences of S’) and then list the *minimum* verses you think force that conclusion? That would make it easier to evaluate without getting lost in the (very evocative) narrative.

Last: what would count as *disconfirming* evidence for you here? For example, if a participation/union reading explains the same passages without requiring the ‘dream-doppelganger’ mechanism, is that enough to drop the mechanism, or do you think something in Paul’s wording specifically rules those alternatives out?

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Houbi:

Interesting thesis, and I appreciate you framing it as a *logical-possibility* claim rather than a quick ‘proof’.

One pushback, though: in 1 Cor 2, Paul’s contrast is basically ‘human wisdom’ vs ‘God’s wisdom revealed by the Spirit’. ‘We have the mind of Christ’ is commonly read as *sharing Christ’s perspective/values via the Spirit*, not as having literal access to Jesus’ private stream of consciousness (telepathy), and certainly not as a claim about Jesus’ dying dream generating our lives.

When one shares Christ’s perspective/values via the Spirit, the “perspective” must be translated into the appearance or shape of the human’s consciousness rather than Christ’s if we have no access to Jesus’ real-time or even past stream of consciousness. Thus in this interpretation of “having the mind of Christ” it is nevertheless manifest in the form of the human’s consciousness and perception of that person’s day to day reality. Given:

“Now the Lord is the Spirit” -2 Corinthians 3:17

Having the Spirit of God must mean that this perspective/value is shared by Christ, for in order to be given this perspective and value, which is primarily a sinless emotion state, Christ would have to have perceived it Himself in the form of how it would look as the human’s conscious state in order to give the person that state, even if Christ’s perception took place before the Spirit’s granting of the perspective/value to the person in an immediate manner, or if Christ’s perception that the person gains from the Spirit took place in the past, which in Christ’s case could either be the “past” sitting at the right hand of the Father in Heaven, or prior to His resurrection.

Thus even here, with this interpretation, there must be a “reflection-ism” or “identical twin-ism” between Christ and a saved human in which through the Spirit, whom is essentially the mind of Christ and God outside the mind of Christ and God that can be mitotically divided and granted to more than one human simultaneously outside of Heaven, the perspective/value of a human granted by the Spirit first was perceived and experienced in the first-person by Christ Himself, before dispatching the Spirit to grant this to the human. It appears as the human’s experience, after all, thus it seems that this human perspective of having the Spirit first existed in the mind of Christ, who, it seems, would know what the human experiences and continues to experience in the Spirit through the Spirit.

Christpsychic Theology only takes this shared perspective and places it in Christ’s mind as His body lied in state in the Tomb of Joseph, as opposed to human experiences that are to be experienced by a human occurring within Christ’s mind as He sat post-resurrection beside the Father in Heaven.

More broadly: ‘logically possible’ is a very low bar (almost any sufficiently weird story is logically possible unless it smuggles a contradiction).

I like the way you put this.

The real question is: what *textual* or *theological* constraints make your interpretation *the best explanation* of Paul’s language, instead of the more standard ‘union with Christ / participation’ readings?

One constraint, I believe, is Romans 8:9:

“For those whom God foreknew, he predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He (Jesus) may be the firstborn of many brethren.”

“….conformed to the image of His Son…”

“….conformed to the image….”

“….image…..”

What is meant by “image”? It certainly does not mean that upon being saved, a person supernaturally is granted a physical body that is a clone of the body Jesus had and in which He appeared as a 33 year old Jewish male, this form occurring even to females who gain the faith, such that there are millions of people walking about looking like however Jesus appeared as a biological human in the past.

The “image” must therefore be mental in aspect. And in order to conform with an “image” that Jesus Himself has (or once had), there must be an “identical twin-ism” with the content within Jesus’ mind and that which comes to be in a human’s mind, in which the former is copied or replicated (“conformed”) by or in the latter.

As in the *sharing Christ’s perspective/values via the Spirit*, interpretation, the “sharing” in and of itself indicates an “identical twin-nism” of thought, in which the thoughts in the mind of Jesus are replicated in the mind of a saved person. Thus “identical twin-nism” seems to be the name of the game in the actual nature in which one has a relationship with Christ.

If you can, could you state your view as a few crisp propositions (e.g., ‘for any saved person S, S’s experiences are re-enactments of Christ’s intra-crucifixion dream-experiences of S’) and then list the *minimum* verses you think force that conclusion? That would make it easier to evaluate without getting lost in the (very evocative) narrative.

I’ll try.

Proposition:

“For any saved person S, S’s experiences are re-enactments of Christ’s intra-crucifixion dream-experiences of S’.

Proof of Proposition (?):

“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”

-Galatians 2:20

Exposition of Proof:

Paul was not physically crucified with Christ either on the same cross (there would not be enough room for two human bodies with one lying atop the other) or in Christ’s vicinity, like the two thieves, as Paul is alive writing Galatians 2:20 after Christ’s crucifixion, death, and ascension. Thus Paul is “crucified with Christ’ by some mental means.

As a Reddit contributor once posted, his interpretation was that a saved person has a vision of being Jesus from Jesus’ first-person point of view perspective being crucified upon the cross, i.e. in pain, looking down upon the people observing His crucifixion. I told him this was a very interesting interpretation (one I had not heard before), but it seems that given we are talking mentality, and given Paul’s statement that “it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me”, while this did not discount the Redditor’s unique interpretation (even then, how long will this vision last, or why is it the only vision?) it seems that in order for one to “no longer live but Christ lives in me” there is a phenomenon in which the content in the mind of Jesus is “uploaded” into the consciousness of a saved person, so that the saved person replicates that which Christ Himself once experienced and perceived.

This verse, I believe, forces the conclusion of Christ “identical twin-ism” as opposed to any other interpretation of this verse that does and will exist.

Last: what would count as *disconfirming* evidence for you here? For example, if a participation/union reading explains the same passages without requiring the ‘dream-doppelganger’ mechanism, is that enough to drop the mechanism, or do you think something in Paul’s wording specifically rules those alternatives out?

I think that any other participation/union reading is valid in terms of non-sensory (emotion/thought) sharing of the experiences of Christ through the Spirit—

(As stated before, it seems more feasible that, at least considering God/Christ’s omniscience (or virtual omniscience), the Spirit only gives us forms of our consciousness that please God that nevertheless must originate and emanate from Christ, and this in principle necessitates an “identical twin-ism” even if that “identical twin-ism” is distinct from the “dream-doppelganger” mechanism.)

-–but nothing in the Bible and writings of Paul, I argue, rules out the existence of the ‘dream-doppelganger’ mechanism, thus there is not sufficient evidence to drop the mechanism. And there seems to be nothing in Paul’s wording that can rule out this alternative.

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Thank you for the mental exercise, this was interesting. It is always a good thing to have discourse with someone who so thoroughly understands and intellectually manipulates the subject matter.

Jay M. Brewer,

Christpsychic Theorist and Philosopher,

Austin, Texas

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@phenomenal_graffiti

Jesus calls His followers to become sons of God as He was a son of God.

Jesus calls His followers to become one with God as He was one with God.

If you want to understand what Jesus was praying for in John 17, you need to focus on the words of Jesus rather than the words of Paul. Only then can you even begin to understand what Jesus had in mind, not only in John 17, but in general.

A good place to start is with what Jesus says is required to receive the spirit of truth.

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And to be a son of God as He was a Son of God, one must have the Son within them, as Paul states when he says: “But we have the mind of Christ”.

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Seriously? Let’s see. You wrote that in response to the following?

Jesus calls His followers to become sons of God as He was a son of God.

Jesus calls His followers to become one with God as He was one with God.

If you want to understand what Jesus was praying for in John 17, you need to focus on the words of Jesus rather than the words of Paul. Only then can you even begin to understand what Jesus had in mind, not only in John 17, but in general.

A good place to start is with what Jesus says is required to receive the spirit of truth.

Paul’s words are not the words of Jesus. What did JESUS say is required to receive the Spirit of Truth?

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Paul had Christ within him, thus Paul’s words were the words of post-resurrected Jesus. Like the hokey pokey, Christ within you is “what its all about.”

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Your logical fallacy is begging the question. The point of contention is what’s required to receive the spirit of truth. Just because Paul claimed to have Christ within him does not mean that he actually did.

So once again: What did JESUS say is required to receive the Spirit of Truth? While you’re at, what do you believe is ultimately required to receive the spirit of truth?

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What in the name of God are you people talking about in this thread? I feel like I’ve walked into an asylum every time I come in here.

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What don’t you understand?

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Everything, including a rational argument for Christpsychic Theology, may be found here on Reddit in:

r/Christpsychism

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Jesus states you only have to ask for the Holy Spirit, and God will give it to you. With the Spirit, you can certainly believe what you heard.
I’m going to continue to belief Paul was speaking the truth. I cannot abandon the belief because someone states: “But what if he didn’t?” For this is meaningless.

And you’re committing the logical fallacy of the Argument From Incredulity.

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The following is what you seem to have missed. Jesus states that only those who keep His commandments receive the Spirit of Truth. It’s conditional.

John 14

21“He who has My commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves Me; and he who loves Me shall be loved by My Father, and I will love him, and will disclose Myself to him.” **22**Judas (not Iscariot) said to Him, “Lord, what then has happened that You are going to disclose Yourself to us, and not to the world?” **23**Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him, and make Our abode with him. 24“He who does not love Me does not keep My words; and the word which you hear is not Mine, but the Father’s who sent Me.

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I think you are taking a modern and philosophical sense of mind as subjective experiencing, which is not likely to be what Paul mean by nous. Nor ‘have’ for that matter. He meant we have access to the thoughts and perspectives of Jesus, not that we have twin minds or now we experience and are the subjective experience and mind of Jesus. Paul had access to the thoughts and perspectives of Jesus through oral traditions and he also felt he could gain access via the Holy Spirit. Not that one became a Jesus mind, but rather one had access to his views/thoughts. he nous of Christ is an objective reality (His wisdom, His gospel) that the believer “possesses” through the Spirit. It’s less like a twin mind and more like a student “having access to the mind” of their master—they have internalized the master’s thoughts.

I think also there may be a modern mind reading Paul as if he was a modern mind. Paul would view Jesus as transparant. His word are what he thinks. No difference. The mind or really nous which is not the same are the ideas, not the subjective experiencing. With a modern looking at a modenn we know that we don’t know all that’s going on in there. In fact, we tend to assume the other person doesn’t even know all that’s going on in there. Mind is more like the mass of conscious and unconscious experiencing, thoughts, feelings, sensations……

Paul was talking about a perspective and batch of fully conscious ideas that when we have them (not are them, he didn’t say we are the mind of Jesus) this illuminates us, this saves us. Not that we become Jesus.
Modern Opacity vs. Ancient Transparancy, is one I think confusing factor here.

Also he used nous, not

Suneidesis (συνείδησις): Often translated as “conscience,” this word literally means “joint-knowledge” or “knowing with oneself”. In the 1st century, it was the closest term to “self-consciousness” or “inward awareness” of one’s own moral state and past actions.

Psyche (ψυχή): While often translated as “soul,” in Paul’s time it specifically referred to the “natural” or “animal” life—the seat of human emotions, appetites, and individual personality. Paul explicitly contrasts the “soulish” (psychikos) person with the “spiritual” (pneumatikos) person in the same chapter (1 Cor 2:14), suggesting that “having the mind of Christ” is distinct from our natural, individual psychological experience. It’s not about being a twin, but having access to ideas and thoughts that save us. We continue with our own daily internal experiencing of the world as ourselves, an individual mind with its quirks and characteristics.

Aisthesis (αἴσθησις): This refers to sensory perception or the “feeling” aspect of an experience. If Paul meant we felt what Jesus felt, this word for physical or emotional sensation would have been more appropriate.

Pathos (πάθος): This describes something “undergone” or “suffered,” referring to internal feelings, passions, and emotions.