Monday 24 March 2014

Embodied Divinity

Non-Incarnational Traditions
In Jewish, Muslim and Sikh traditions, there is only one god who is never incarnated.
In Peter's Pentecost sermon and in Paul's Mars Hill sermon and Epistles, Jesus is a man raised up by God, not God.
Petrine Christianity was a Jewish sect; Pauline Christianity was transitional to Gentile Christianity.

Incarnational Traditions
In most Hindu traditions, many gods temporarily descend in animal or human form.
In Johannine Christianity, the power that created the universe in Genesis was permanently embodied at the Incarnation. An invisible spirit became a visible person. Divinity created, transcended and was embodied in the universe, then re-transcended it while remaining embodied. The key texts are the First Book of Moses and the Fourth Gospel.
In the Christian-influenced Krishna Consciousness tradition, the supreme god is permanently embodied as a blue man.
In a work of Christian fiction, the creative power was embodied as a talking lion in the beginning but returned to the human form at the end.

I discuss acknowledged fiction alongside scriptures in accordance with Alan Moore's dictum that "Religions are higher fictions." Here are four divine-human interactions:

never incarnated;
raised up;
temporarily descending;
permanently embodied.

Christ, Krishna and Aslan are the three permanently embodied divinities.

Addendum, 25 Mar '14: I omitted Gnostics and Docetists who, generally, assert that matter is evil, therefore that God cannot have been incarnated, but who also give an account of the apparent Incarnation as only an appearance. Their views may be akin to those of the Hindus for whom an incarnating deity merely descends, then re-ascends, without remaining permanently embodied.

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