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Interreligious Perspectives on Incarnation Interreligious Perspectives on Incarnation Gerard Hall SM Abstract: Incarnation in Christian understanding is associated with God becoming human in Jesus Christ. However, the notion of incarnation is also to be linked to God’s divine self-revelation in history in multiple-forms. This incarnational thrust is most evident in Judaism. Even if Islam outwardly rejects the language of incarnation, it also insists on divine manifestations of God in every era. Beyond the Abrahamic traditions, we can also recognise incarnational-type ideas in Hindu Avatara and Buddhist Bodhisattva beliefs. There is ample room for incarnational dialogue among these key religious traditions. 1 Gerard Hall: Interreligious Perspectives on Incarnation (It is an) almost self-evident fact that the Western Christian tradition seems to be exhausted, I might almost say effete, when it tries to express the Christian message in a meaningful way for our times. Only by cross-fertilization and mutual fecundation may the present state of affairs be overcome; only by stepping over present cultural and philosophical boundaries can Christian life again become creative and dynamic. Obviously this applies to the other religions as well: It is a two-way traffic... The meeting point is neither my house nor the mansion of my neighbour, but the crossroads outside the walls, where we may eventually decide to put up a tent--for the time being.1 ____________________________________________ Today it is widely accepted that Christianity needs to define its identity not in isolation from, but in dialogue with, the world’s great religious traditions. Since Vatican II, the Catholic Church has actively promoted the need to study and understand other religions especially Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and, increasingly, the spiritualities of Indigenous peoples. This challenge has been taken up by Christian theologians and teachers with the result that religious education programmes normally include topics or entire courses dealing with the world religions. It is one thing to study world religions from a phenomenological perspective and quite another to enter into dialogue with them for the sake of ‘cross-fertilization and mutual fecundation’. This second step requires a depth of knowledge and conviction with respect to one’s own tradition that cannot be simply assumed, perhaps especially in an increasingly pluralist and secular culture. Nor, in a real sense, can one dialogue with 1 Raimon Panikkar, The Intra-Religious Dialogue (New York: Paulist Press, [1978] 1999), 61. 2 Gerard Hall: Interreligious Perspectives on Incarnation another religion. Religious dialogue, if it happens at all, is a living encounter between two or more religious persons who, in their own distinctive ways, incarnate their own traditions. Incarnation means embodiment; it is always more than a mere idea or clash of ideas. Genuine religious dialogue is a flesh-and-blood affair as well as ‘a religious, hence sacred, act’.2 This leads to the thorny question that is the major focus of this investigation: incarnation from an interreligious perspective. There is already a certain kind of bias embedded in the very word incarnation with its Latin roots (incarnare ‘to make flesh’) and Christian crowning (‘the assuming of a human body by the Son of God’).3 Certainly, Christianity is unique in the manner in which it makes divine incarnation the centre-piece of its entire theology of revelation. Every aspect of Christian theology from creation and salvation to the trinitarian understanding of God is profoundly influenced by ‘the mystery of the Incarnation’. Nonetheless, it would be a mistake to assume that other religious traditions are without incarnational beliefs, even if they differ from the Christian notion of incarnation. This discussion reviews some of the major ideas on incarnational thought as they emerge in Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism. Inevitably, the treatment of each religion is brief and focuses on the level of intellectual articulation as distinct from symbolic and ritual expressions or religious experience as such. However, even at this level of ideas, some possibilities for religious dialogue on incarnation can be shown even if, as here, those possibilities derive solely from the Christian perspective and should be further tested as ‘the crossroads outside the walls’. 2 Ibid., 37 3 The Collins English Dictionary (Sydney: Wm Collins Publishers Pty Ltd, 2nd Australian Edition, 1986), 772. 3 Gerard Hall: Interreligious Perspectives on Incarnation Incarnation in Christianity Christian belief in the incarnation--‘God became man in Christ Jesus’--is founded on resurrection faith and the post-Easter experiences of the disciples. This is formulated in an opaque manner by the synoptic writers who focus on the divine messiahship of Jesus, the coming Son of Man prophesied in the Hebrew Scriptures. Matthew and Luke add to these various supernatural occurrences surrounding the birth of Jesus, notably the story of the virgin birth. It is John who takes these teachings to a new level, not only proclaiming Jesus as ‘the Son of God’, but insisting on his identification with the divine Logos: in Christ Jesus, the Logos or Word of God is enfleshed. In the Logos doctrine, Christ is not only the Messiah and Son of God through whom salvation occurs; he is literally ‘from God’ and ‘one-with-God’ in eternity. Christ’s pre-existence enables him, as the Logos, to be associated with the very creation of the universe. However, it is only in Jesus of Nazareth that the incarnation of this divine Logos, at a particular place and time in human history, reaches its zenith. Other New Testament writings assume that the fullness of the divine mystery is somehow contained in the person of Jesus Christ. Increasingly, God the Father is distinguished from God the Son.4 This presented the early Church with two essential difficulties: how to understand the distinction between Father and Son within a monotheistic framework; and how to understand the unity of humanity and divinity within the person of the Son. History shows that it took some four hundred years to resolve these difficulties on a formal level. At the heart of the Patristic debates were diverse understandings of the Logos: the Jewish notion of Logos as a non-created and fully divine power active in creation and history (Johannine theology); and the more abstract, Greek Platonic notion of the Logos as the 4 Raymond Brown, ‘Does the New Testament Call Jesus God?’, Theological Studies 26 (1965): 545-573. 4 Gerard Hall: Interreligious Perspectives on Incarnation principle of unity and rationality sustaining the universe, at most a created, semi-divine power (Arian theology). The Christological councils of the fourth and fifth centuries seemed to resolve the debate once and for all in favour of the strong, Johannine incarnational teaching.5 Christ, the Logos, is not a demi-god intervening between God and the world, but the fullness of the divine mystery present in the human Jesus. Henceforth, in Christian teaching, Jesus Christ is understood to be both perfectly human and perfectly divine: ‘one in being with the Father as to divinity, and one in being with us as to humanity’ (Council of Chalcedon). Moreover, the dual natures of Christ do not compromise his essential unity or identity. This Christian doctrine of the ‘hypostatic union’ represents a victory over the Platonic notion of a totally changeless God who is somehow immune from real contact with the created world. In so doing, it preserves continuity with the God of Israel whose divine love and pathos are the driving force of human history and cosmic destiny. Nonetheless, these classical Christological expressions do not easily translate into today’s language. Karl Rahner has shown how the Chalcedonian two-natures (phuses) and one- person (prosopon) model for understanding Christ is, in fact, a misunderstanding if we are thinking in terms of contemporary notions of ‘nature’ and ‘person’.6 Another critique is that the Councils are so focused on the issue of Christ’s identity, that they lose touch with other aspects of the Christ-event. It is almost as if faith in the incarnation is enough without having to be too concerned with Jesus’ life, ministry, death and 7 resurrection. Linked to this are socio-political critiques of 5 For a helpful selection of primary sources, see Richard Norris, The Christological Controversy (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1980). 6 ‘Current Problems in Christology’, Theological Investigations I (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 149-200. 7 This is sometimes expressed in terms of the unfortunate split between ‘Christology’--who Christ is in his identity--and ‘soteriology’--what Christ does for us. 5 Gerard Hall: Interreligious Perspectives on Incarnation the high-descending Christologies of the Nicene Creed insofar as they can too easily translate into power Christologies: Jesus becomes the triumphant imperial Lord justifying dehumanizing power relationships rather than the one who sides with the oppressed, upsets the powerful and dies a humiliated death.8 In all of this, the question being asked is what happens to Christian belief in incarnation once we leave the world of classical consciousness to inhabit the evolutionary world of post- Enlightenment thought?9 One unsatisfactory and quite evidently heterodox response is to dismiss incarnational belief as pure mythology.10 Another is to side with the need for so-called low- ascending Christologies that centre on the human Jesus of the Gospels and then, in light of these reflections, work towards an understanding of Jesus’ divine status.11 After all, it is fairly reasoned, this is the process that the disciples themselves must have followed. As well, Biblical scholars are showing how the Word/Logos Christology of John’s Gospel had its origins in the experience and understanding of Jesus as the incarnation of 12 divine Wisdom/Sophia. The Christological, ecological and 8 For a balanced critique of power Christologies, see William Thompson, The Jesus Debate: A Survey and Synthesis (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 299-323.
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