Controversy About the Incarnation

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Irish Theological Quarterly

DOI: 10.1177/002114009906400402 1999; 64; 349 Irish Theological Quarterly

Bertram Stubenrauch

Controversy about the Incarnation: What is Specific to Christianity?

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Controversy about the Incarnation:What is Specific to Christianity?1

Bertram Stubenrauch

The author analyses certain underlying features of the contemporary pluralist theology ofreligions in order to bring into relief what is specifically Christian with regard to the centraldoctrine of the Incarnation. [Editor]

1. Distinctiveness and the Concept of God

In this era of postmodernity, scholarly discourse on the subject of reli-gion displays little interest in the question of specificity. If any distinc-tions are made between the various religions, it is only with reluctance.Any reference to the particular, to the unique, is tentative and condi-tional. Greater importance is attached to what is common to all religions,or rather, what apparently relates one religious phenomenon to anotherand yet at the same time is capable of encompassing a wide spectrum ofhuman experiences and ideas. Popular religious consciousness today evi-dently favours an idea of God that, for all its apparent colourfulness andexaggerated pluriformity, tends more and more to be rather insubstantialand nebulous. This too has left its mark on the Christian theology of reli-gions. Not only are specific religions condemned for considering them-selves unique. God himself is reduced to such vague general terms thatthe question of his identity can only be answered in terms of anaemicabstractions. God is no longer understood as an awesome power makingconcrete demands, a power with an unmistakable identity that reachesout to the world and makes itself known to humanity. Now understood asthe lowest common denominator for the whole of reality, God is, on thecontrary, supposed somehow-or-other to incorporate this reality and yetat the same time exist beyond it in such a way as to become almost amatter of indifference for man? 2

To the extent that these ideas have gained currency in contemporarytheological discourse, they betray, it seems to me, a newly awakenedsympathy for certain aspects of the ancient Greek idea of God. These

1. This is a slightly revised version of a paper read to the Schülerkreis von Kardinal Ratzingerat a meeting held near Como, Italy, in September 1997. This translation is by VincentTwomey, S.V.D.2. With regard to the intellectual context of contemporary Christianity, see U. Ruh, ’Vorder Jahrtausendwende’ in Herder Korrrespondenz, 51 (1997), 1-3.




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must, of course, be liberated from their present Christian servitude,embellished with certain ideals of the Enlightenment - in the spirit ofLessing or Kant - and then promoted as generally valid religious symbols.But what this involves is a reversal of the thought-patterns characteristicof ancient Christianity. However convincing he found them in so manyrespects, Augustine nevertheless complained that the insights of Platoand his interpreters lacked Christ, the incarnate Logos of the Father.’ Butit is precisely this Christ - this unique Christ - who now causes unease.The concrete, historical figure of Christ threatens to restrict and sodelimit in an unacceptably human manner that God who is presenteverywhere yet nowhere. Though the idea of an ’incarnation’ is by nomeans considered inappropriate, it has in fact become a notion devoid ofany theological binding force. Incarnation is now conceived in such a

way that it implies no really decisive change in either God or man. As aresult, many incarnations can be posited, but not an actual incarnation inthe real sense of the term. For there can be no incarnation in that sense.It is a question rather of what Eastern religions call Avatars or

Bodhisattvas. Indeed, God may be encountered in enlightened saviour-fig-ures, but he cannot fully realise himself in any particular one of them.Accordingly, these various incarnations must be viewed together as awhole and interpreted in a way that transcends them, relating them tothe presence of the mystery of the inaccessible God. The ’divinity’remains notional, theoretically valid, and - supposedly - open to debate.But since the inner dynamic of religion tends of its nature to overcome theineffability of God, this necessarily abstract notion by its very nature

demands to be complemented with some other content ’from below’. As aresult, the notion of incarnation now becomes identified with the creativeachievement of religious communities or with certain charismatic figures.As a result, all the world religions can be placed on one and the same level.

This train of thought has found its concrete expression in the contem-porary pluralists theology of religions. Since the relevant arguments havealready been adequately analysed and discussed,’ I will limit the discus-sion here to certain underlying features of pluralist theology in the hopethat this analysis might throw some light on what is specifically Christianwith regard to the central question of the incarnation.

2. Incarnation - a Limitation of Divine Omnipotence?

The controversy implied in pluralist Christology, and increasingly pro-voked by it, is essentially a controversy about how the incarnation ought3. Augustine, Serm. 141,1 [PL 38, 776]; Conf. VII 20f. [CChr.SL 109f.].4. I refer in particular to P. Schmidt-Leukel, ’Religiöse Vielfalt als theologisches Problem.Optionen und Chancen der pluralistischen Religionstheologie John Hicks’, in R. Schwager(ed.), Christus Allein? Der Streit um die pluralistische Religionstheologie [QuaestionesDisputatae 160] (Freiburg-Basel-Vienna, 1996) 11-49; for a more critical approach, cf. G.D’Costa, ’Das Plauralismus-Paradigma in der christlichen Sicht der Religionen’, in

Theologie der Gegenwart, 30 (1987), 221-231.




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to be understood. It focuses on the question as to whether or not God hasthe capacity to express himself both definitively and universally in asingle, particular individual. The starting-point of a pluralist theology ofreligions denies this possibility. It denies it on the basis of two preliminaryaffirmations - or rather, more accurately, denials - made plausible bycertain philosophical, and probably also ideological, assumptions.

Basically, no one disputes the claim that God touches man in variousways, and thus stirs him to believe and embrace religion. What is deniedis that God’s self-revelation, even if it is called incarnation, can be in anysense an apt representation of his immeasurable life. The immensity ofGod, which evidently Christian theology has no desire to minimise, con-stitutes the real obstacle to God’s self-communication. In effect, God isseen to be a prisoner of his own absoluteness. By denying Him the possi-bility of entering into an unsurpassable intimacy with man, God becomeslittle more than a hostage to his own immensity. This is the first point.The second is that man is regarded as essentially incapable of embracingthe Divinity, and of dealing with it within the constraints imposed onhim by the concrete circumstances of everyday life in the here and now.This undermines the biblical conviction that the spirit-endowed creatureis capax infiniti, and thus capax Dei. Confronted by the mystery of the inef-fable God, man is helpless, in a sense even awkward. And this includesthe man Jesus of Nazareth.

According to John Hicks, for instance, Jesus was totus Deus, completelyGod, though not totum Dei, because he did not represent all that God canbe.5 This explanation is based on a theological fatalism which leads inex-orably to an impoverished concept of man. On this account, it is preciselybecause of his absoluteness, his powerful immensity, that God is said to beincapable of giving his inmost self. And so, instead of God’s self-commu-nication, all that can be imagined are stronger or weaker impulsesdirected towards us as some kind of signals. The capacitas infiniti of man,no longer able to receive the Absolute Itself, is reduced simply to pickingup, so to speak, ’pulsations’ emanating from the Absolute, signals whichare subject to different interpretations depending on the various possibil-ities inherent in different cultures.~ Clearly, such a logic undermines therichness both of God and of man. In certain respects, it is no longer pos-sible to speak of incarnation.The Christian understanding of incarnation is based on the presuppo-

sition that God can give himself, that he is free, powerful, and humbleenough to spend himself totally - virtually to ’exploit’ himself, to use the

5. J. Hicks, God and the Universe of Faiths. Essays in the Philosophy of Religion (London-Basingstoke, 1975), 159.6. In relation to this, see the critical appraisal of K.-H. Menke, Die Enizigkeit Jesu Christiim Horizont der Sinnfrage [Kriterien 94] (Einsiedeln-Freiburg, 1995), 77-82.




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metaphorical language of Bernard of Clairvaux.’ On the other hand, wecan only speak of incarnation, if the ’flesh’, sarx, is not an obstacle to manbecoming the self-expression of God - man in his totality, that is, bodyand soul, existing within a limited span of time.

However, if it is in principle possible to conceive this (if, in otherwords, we can accept that man as man without ridding himself of hisnature as sarx can become one with God), then we can hope for theextreme case of such a unity. And if one shares the conviction of the NewTestament that this expectation has in fact been fulfilled in Jesus ofNazareth, then a declaration of belief in the uniqueness of that identitynecessarily follows. On the other hand, if a unique existence such as thatof Jesus of Nazareth is considered to be insufficient to express and realiseGod’s final word, then it follows that neither can several such existencesdo so, no matter how religiously sublime their inspiration. If the perfectunion of God and man cannot be accomplished in the one instance, thenthe many, taken together, can reach the Divine at the very best

asymptotically. But this means that divinity and humanity remainirreconcilable contradictions.

This conclusion is at variance with Christian faith in Christ as

expressed in the form of the dogma of Chalcedon: divinity and humanityare one - unmixed and undivided - in him who is called Jesus ofNazareth, and who for that reason is known as the Son.’ The distinctive-ness of Christianity depends categorically on this insight of Chalcedon.However, for a deeper theological understanding of this insight, we mustpay attention to certain aspects of Pneumatology.The link between God and man in the one Christ appears from the

perspective of the New Testament to be the work of that Spirit which, asPaul says, reaches ’into the ’depths of God.’ ( Cor 2:10). Since thePneuma knows and fills the expanses of God and of man in equal measure,it is the living bridge where both meet. Furthermore, there can only beone single Spirit-bearer, if the possible link between God and man is tosucceed in an unparalleled manner.

In fact, the early Church - following Scripture - recognised in Jesus ofNazareth the Spirit-bearer in the absolute sense, the ’One anointed bythe Spirit’. Inspired by biblical credal formulations, Augustine, amongothers, explained that Jesus received this anointing of the Spirit thoughhis incarnation.’ I understand this to be a metaphorical reference to atheologically definitive, and therefore unique, event involving thePneuma of God: the Spirit of God joined the Divine Logos together witha human nature to form one single human being, which precisely becauseof its Pneumatological (rather than charismatic) personality structure7. Cf. Bernard of Clairvaux, In Navitate, Sermo II, in G. B. Winkler (ed.), Bernhard vonClairvaux, Sdmtliche Werke VII (Innsbruck, 1996), 238: ... tunc einim, conscisso sacco, pecu-niam, quae latebat, in pretium nostrae redemptionis effudit.8. Cf. Denzinger-Hünermann 302.9. Augustine, Trin. XV 26, 46 [CChr.SL 50A, 526].




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acts as totus Deus and at the same time as totum Dei. If Jesus had only beena charismatic personality like so many others, the Spirit would haveremained external to his personal substance. The Spirit would merelyhave inspired an isolated human person ontologically distinct from it,someone therefore not definable with reference to the Logos. The resultwould be sheer Adoptionism; there could be no question of an incarna-tion of the Logos through the Pneum a.

For John’s Gospel, these interrelationships are implied in the oft-

quoted logion: ’The wind blows where it wills’ (Jn 3:8). Even though thistext might easily be interpreted to support the claim that, irrespective ofany factual claims to the contrary, divine self-communication manifestsitself in many religions or in various charismatic figures, the author of theGospel means something quite different. ’The wind blows where it wills’means that what appears in Jesus of Nazareth is not charisma but Pneuma.His person is Spirit-event - power from above, which is effective in adecisive way only once, but this one time once-and-for-all. Accordingly,the Gospel accounts of the Baptism of Jesus sum up their Christologicaltestimony in the statement that the only-begotten Son, the Word of theFather, is identical with Him who steps out of the waters In contrastwith the particularly elastic concept of the Spirit found in the field ofcomparative religion, it is obvious that the New Testament concept of theSpirit used here cannot be interpreted in a vague, all-embracing nature.On the contrary, the coming of the Spirit implies a more compact, densenotion of the Spirit. The Spirit of him who in person traverses both therichness of God and that of man can be poured out only when he,unbound by the Resurrection, is revealed as the Kyrios of all. But this out-pouring comes through the flesh: it leads through man, it does not bypasshim. Consequently, Luke in the Acts of the Apostles states that it is

Christ crucified and raised up by the Father who has sent the Spirit (cf.Acts 2:33). And in John’s Gospel is found the profound statement: theSpirit was only given after the glorification of Jesus, after his suffering onthe Cross (cf. Jn 7:39).

It is precisely the Passion of Jesus which dramatically demonstrates thatincarnation in the Christian sense can only be understood within thecontext of belief in God’s freedom. This freedom must at the same timebe seen to be a reso2ute one: a freedom capable of self-sacrifice. Further, itis obvious that the sacrifice of the Father who does not spare his Son isreflected in the surrender of the Son himself, in a readiness for actionwhich cannot operate without an integral human will. This in turn

implies that the free human option for the good is sufficiently broad,spacious, and resolute to express the free divine option for the good.At this juncture I would like to glance briefly at the non-Christian reli-

gions. Even where we find notions of some kind of incarnation present in

10. In relation to this, see P. Schoonenberg, Der Geist, das Wort und der Sohn. Eine Geist-Christologie (Regensburg, 1992), 23f.; 31-33.




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them, such concepts are devoid of that drama which is called the Cross.They recognise neither the resolute freedom of God nor the soteriologicalpower of human free will. Judaism, for instance, recognises a kind ofincarnation, namely the mercy of Jahweh on high which, reaching downinto the depths, seeks out the needy. It is an incarnation of the divine

glance. God refuses to turn his face away from earthly misery. He showshimself to be involved even to the extent that he and man - as oneChassidic narrative contemplated - can so ’exchange roles’ as to be fusedinto a common destiny.ll Nevertheless, the divine mercy remains withoutany creaturely substratum. The same holds true to a much greater degreefor the mercy of Mohammed’s God.12 Hinduism, likewise, acknowledgesvarious incarnations: the divine, shimmering through thousands of facets,appears in many human forms. But none of these incarnations are

definitive, because creation likewise is not definitive. Incarnation is justappearance; it remains provisional, because earthly existence itself is onlyan illusion and exists only provisionally.&dquo;By way of contrast, New Testament Christology contains an implication

of incomparable significance in its understanding of the incarnation: Goduses Himself in his own lasting definition of man. I refer to the key phrasein the New Testament: ’Exaltation of the Lord’. This affirms that theincarnate Logos will always remain man, true God and true creature at thesame time. As a result of this understanding of the incarnation, we speakabout the communicatio idiomatum when we refer to Jesus Christ: the attrib-utes of the human nature are henceforth predicated of the divine nature,and the attributes of the divine nature are predicated of the human nature.With the Incarnation of the Logos emerged that soteriology applicable toall the children of Adam which could affirm: God became man so thatman could become God.14 A defining element of the Christian under-standing of incarnation thus comes to light: man and God interpret oneanother reciprocally. Man and God find each other in each other.

But here a word of caution is in order. The thesis outlined above wouldbe dangerously distorted, if it were used as a generally valid anthropo-logical criterion separated from what defines it, the person of the one,unique God incarnate. The communicatio idiomatum belongs primarily andunmistakably to the person of Jesus. It has its source in him. It describes aunique personal form which in principle precedes both each individualperson and the whole human race collectively in order to embrace themsoteriologically. The language of communicatio idiomatum cannot therefore

11. B. Peterson, Theologie nach Auschwitz? Jüdische und christliche Versuche einer Antwort(Berlin, 1996), 46, with reference to the reception of Chassidic ideas in the writings of ElieWiesel.12. Cf. A Schimmel, Die Zeichen Gottes. Die religiöse Welt des Islam (Munich, 1995), 272-296.13. Cf. P. Schriener, ’Welt/Schöpfung v. Weltverständnis: indische-hinduistisch’ in

Lexikon der Religion2 1995, 272-296.14. Cf. Athanasius of Alexandria, De incarn. 54 [PG 25, 191].




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be used as a cipher for abilities inherent in everyone by nature. If thiswere true, then Jesus of Nazareth would have been simply a revivalistpreacher in the Gnostic sense. He would have come as a second Buddhawho demonstrated in his own life what anyone can achieve by practisingthe techniques of interiority in order, in the final analysis, to save oneself.Consequently, the Christian proclamation must ever be attentive to theuniqueness of the God-man, even when it articulates the anthropologicaland soteriological implications of the incarnation. Then, the extent towhich other individuals also mature into the self-expression of Goddepends on the intensity with which they approach the one Christ andare receptive to his influence. What befits the true God and true man bynature is communicated to the creature by grace.As already mentioned, if we can no longer assume that the incarnate

Logos, as totum Dei, redemptively embraces man, or if we forget that thecommunicatio idiomatum is only realised in Him on whom all others

depend, then the idea of incarnation is in danger of being turned into anideology. We find an example of this in the feminist theologian MaryDaly. Caricaturing certain ideas, she affirms: ’If God is male, then themale is God.’15 This can hardly be what incarnation means: a blind, as itwere, automatic divinisation of human nature in general or in particular.Rather, incarnation signifies the unique and individual existence of theone Christ, who alone makes human beings capable of God - to theextent that they undergo a purification process oriented to Him of asacramental and existential nature.

Moreover, the uniqueness of the unity of God and man linked to theperson of Christ would rule out any subordination of the historicallyunique Christ-event to a transhistorical Christ-principle, as propagated forinstance by Raimon Panikkar. For him, this aforementioned Christ-prin-ciple can then be applied whenever the union of God and man is

achieved in an outstanding manner by charismatic personalities.Accordingly, Jesus of Nazareth would indeed be a Christ, but Jesus wouldnot be the only Christ.’6

These, or similar, ideas exemplify the discrepancy between pluralistChristologies and traditional ideas about the incarnation. The thesis thatthe Logos of God is more, or greater, than Jesus of Nazareth conflicts withthe mystery of the person of the incarnate God. An arbitrary number of’Christ-personalities’ could indeed be accommodated, characters of strik-ing personalities in contrast with a nebulous universal Christ devoid ofany personal identity. But the simple statement that the Logos was mademan loses its explosive power. The Christological dogma, with goodreason, takes as its starting-point the personal pole of the two natures of15. M. Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation (Boston1973), 19.16. Cf. R. Panikkar, ’The Meaning of Christ’s Name in the Universal Economy ofSalvation’ in M. Dhavomony (ed..) Evangelization, Dialogue and Development (Rome,1972), 195-218; idem. The Unkown Christ of Hinduism (London 1981), 14.




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Christ in the one Logos. If different historical personalities were assignedto him, the one Christ would become a schizophrenic being. Faith in theincarnation would evaporate into a Christological, or, better still, a

pseudo-Christological faith in reincarnation, and would have to answerthe same philosophical objections that are generally made to reincarna-tion. Among other things, it would be faced with the questions: whatkind of an ’I’ is it that is supposed to pass through different existences,what kind of a Christ are we dealing with, if he can enter into manypersons?

All currently popular statements to the effect that the Logos of God isgreater than the man, Jesus of Nazareth, tend to dissolve into a Gnostic-type generalisation which in fact is not incarnational at all but ratheranti-incarnational. Denying the sarx and the person of the one Christ,they take refuge in abstract principles. They generalise what can only beapplied to a single individual. They deny grace. For in its place they sug-gest that the incarnational principle could be arbitrarily applied under theguise of any religious genius and so incorporated as a constitutive elementof the material treated in the general history of religions. But incarnationmeans quite the opposite: the decisive freedom of God to ’blend’ hisLogos with a unique creaturely identity in order to make it alone the basisfor his relationship to the world.

3. Incarnation as God’s ’Destiny’

The above remarks suggest yet another aspect of the Christian under-

standing of incarnation: the incarnation of the Logos is an event that

engages the divinity in its totality. Incarnation means an historical occur-rence to which God was, in a sense, destined - on the assumption, how-ever, that this ’destiny’ is understood as being grounded in his own freedecision, a decision that is fully cognisant of all the consequencesinvolved. From a Christian point of view, it would be incomprehensibleto imagine God as subject to the power of fate, no matter how uniquelythat fate is conceived, as was the case in Greek mythology. Neither canwe accept the intrinsic necessity of a divine self-unfolding in the

Hegelian sense. But, observing what God has done in history, and whathas been handed down as an historical fact, we can speak of God’s ’des-tiny’ with regard to the incarnation. This destiny consists in having topay the price for a creation which, since it is not simply ’nothing’ but’something’, has at its disposal its own inherent laws and freedom. Whatis distinctively Christian, without parallel in any other religion, is the factthat God lets Himself be affected forever by the change of course effectedby the incarnation of the Logos.&dquo;

17. Cf. K.-H.. Menke, ’Der Gott, der jetzt schon Zukunft schenkt. Plädoyer für einechristliche Theodizee’ in H. Wagner (ed.), Mit Gott streiten. Neue Zugänge zum Theodizee-Problem [QD 169], (Freiburg-Basel-Vienna, 1998), 115-130.




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This insight necessarily undermines the tendency in a pluralist theol-ogy of religions to opt for several Christ-figures. It is claimed that the

divergence of equally valid, salvific initiatives expresses the richness ofGod and his everlasting loving-kindness towards humanity.&dquo; But, under-stood in this way, the incarnation of the Logos becomes little more thana patronising episode in the life of a God who remains essentiallyuntouched by the world. Neither can one speak of an event to which Godwas ’destined’, one that results from his free decision and so primarilyreveals itself as love. Rather, such an approach implies a distance whichmust necessarily forbid any use of the word ’love’ to describe the rela-tionship between God and man. Indeed, in the methodology used by plu-ralist theologies of religion, a priori options of a philosophical nature nowtake the place originally occupied by the ancient notion of moira. Thatidea had imprisoned the ancient world of the gods in a divine absolutedominating them from above, as it were, with the result that it was inca-pable of conceiving a love that could reverse or interrupt the flow of des-tiny.19 Incarnation in the real sense of the term must, on the contrary,come to terms with a divine and human drama, for which purpose it

occurs, because destiny as a blind and irresistible force cannot have thelast word. Furthermore, God Himself is destiny; in an acutely personal wayhe guarantees the pivotal conversion to the good which, like a thunder-bolt so to speak, exploded in history. ’Once and for all’, as the Letter tothe Hebrews puts it (Heb 9:12), God in the eternal Son undertook achange-of-course affecting his and our destiny by Himself entering his-tory. Paul calls this ’the fullness of time’ (cf. Gal 4:4).The revealed drama of the Christ-figure on the Cross testifies in par-

ticular to the uniqueness, and to the unparalleled nature, of the divineincarnation. But then, even logic itself points in this direction. Whatwould several incarnations, several dramatic turning-points in history,achieve? They would either mutually compete with each other, or renderfurther incarnations of no real significance. What could they add to theone, dramatic, decisive turning-point by which God himself manifestshimself as personified, loving destiny?

In order to clarify the uniqueness and radical nature of the event wecall incarnation, Christian theology might reflect on the theologumenonof self emptying. The Christian understanding of the incarnation is essen-tially marked by its kenotic character. 20 The term kenosis does not appear18. P.F. Knitter may be considered a protagonist for this point of view, see his contribution’Religion und Befreiung. Soteriozentrismus als Antwort an die Kritiker’ in R. Bernhardt(ed.), Horizontüberschreitung. Die Pluralistische Theologie der Religionen (Gütersloh, 1991),216-219.19. Cf. R. Feldmeier, ’Nicht Übermacht noch Impotenz. Zum biblischen Ursprung desAllmachtsbekenntnisses’ in W.H. Ritter, R. Feldmeier, W. Schoberth, G. Altner, DerAllmächtige. Annäherungen an ein umstrittenes Gottesprädikat (Göttingen, 1997), 22-25.20. With reference to this topic, see B. Stubenrauch, Dialogisches Dogma. Der christlicheAuftrag zur interreligiösen Begegnung [Quaestiones Disputatae 158], (Freiburg-Basel-Vienna,1996), especialy 26-30.




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in Scripture. It is derived from the verb kenoun which Paul and his sourcesuse to describe Jesus’ act of humiliation for man’s benefit. This verbbelongs to a series of extreme utterances which the early Church consid-ered fitting to serve as adequate expressions of the Christ-event. Othersuch extreme statements include the sovereign Christological title ’Sonof God’ and talk about the ’Resurrection’. They signal that - due to Jesus- something decisive has happened in history. Extreme utterances expresson a linguistic level the unparalleled nature of the historical event. Theytestify that in the relationship between God and man far more than justanother episode has taken place. They guarantee that God has given hisall: the Son as the centre of himself, the Resurrection as the beginning ofa new, definitive life, the Spirit as the healing source of an alternativecommunal way of life. Extreme utterances attempt to express in wordsthat which is in fact inexpressible, yet has happened; they appeal there-fore to man’s capacity for unconditional dedication. But to conclude withJohn Hick or Paul E Knitter that statements of faith are mythological, i.e.non-cognitive, utterances of awe, transcending any objective truth-con-tent,&dquo; is unrealistic. Such utterances were from an early date radicallydemythologised, at the latest, by the Christian thinkers of Alexandriawhom no one would accuse of exaggerated earthiness. But the historicalorientation of Christian reflection has always ensured that the magnalia ofGod were really experienced as history, not as ideas.

All religions are based on the human yearning for eternity. Indeed, inmany currents of religious thought there is an apprehension that God isunshakeably on the side of man. But the fact that God had to pay a pricein order to approach the world, and what price he had to pay, is shown bythe one Christ, the incarnate Logos of the Father, the historical Jesus ofNazareth, whose lot was to be crucified. Confronted with this fact, asRaymund Schwager rightly demanded, a Christology based on thepluralist theology of religions would have to demonstrate ’where an anal-ogous revelation-figure caught up in a corresponding drama can be foundin the real historical world’.22 The notion of enosis signifies that there isno greater divine involvement in the world than an historical one, thatis, a divine-human one.

4. The Incarnation and the Renunciation of Mystification

What has been said up to now brings into focus only one aspect of thekenotic understanding of the incarnation. It serves to highlight the doxa,the force and power of Divine Love, to bring about a turning-point in his-tory. This force, in fact, tends to annihilate all religious starting-points21. Cf. J. Hick, ’Jesus und die Weltreligionen’ in idem (ed.), Wurde Gott Mensch? DerMythos vom fleischgewordenen Gott (Gütersloh, 1979), 185-193 [English translation: TheMyth of God Incarnate, London 1993, 148-166]; P. F. Knitter, ’Religion und Befreiung’, 218.22. R. Schwager, ’Offenbarung als dramatische Konfrontation’ in idem (ed.), Christusallein ?, 102.




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apart from that of Christianity. For this reason, the early Church in thewake of the drama of Jesus could see nothing in other religions but dia-bolical deception .2’ But is this the last word on the matter? I don’t thinkso. In the first place, there is the still valid vision which claims that thevarious religions point to the concrete concentration of God’s kenoticpresence in Jesus - albeit in varying degrees of intensity. In this respect,the Second Vatican Council made its position quite clear. 24 Further, thekenotic character of the divine presence in Jesus of Nazareth means thatGod’s self-revelation did not occur in a way that was, as it were, coercive.The self-disposal of the Logos in a particular man is accompanied by atantalising obscurity. ’The Logos was made flesh’ also means that what ishuman must suffice as an expression of the divine. This creates space foralternative interpretations and urges us to engage in interreligious dia-logue. Then Christians too, like so many other people outside the bibli-cal religious tradition, must by means of an act of faith venture from thehuman to the divine. Every Christian knows the difficulty that arises fromthe fact that God has declared his love in a human way. The Christian

community is constantly confronted with the question posed by thephenomenon of Jesus: ’Who then is this man?’ (cf. Mk 4:41).Consequently, it has no justification for looking down from the heights ofsome unquestionable self-evidence on those who believe otherwise. Butinterreligious dialogue is not the subject of our present discussion. Whatis at stake here is the authenticity and distinctiveness of Christianity. Oursubject is the controversy about the incarnation, which, if unresolved,renders impossible any fruitful encounter with other religions. In conclu-sion, I wish to indicate a final consideration, which, in my opinion, char-acterises the incarnational element of Christianity.The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard repeatedly pointed to the

challenge posed by the figure of Jesus: a sublime claim coupled withapparent lowliness. Jesus demonstrates all the limitations of being human,Kierkegaard writes, yet nonetheless speaks and acts is a way that ’pointsto his being God ’.25 Even if, from a Catholic perspective, we cannot sharethe view of this Protestant kenotic theologian that the divinity of Jesus isalmost swallowed up by his humanity, Kierkegaard had nonethelessrightly perceived what happens when the divine and human coincide: thehuman dimension is sensibly evident to our gaze, the divine shows itselfonly to the heart. For this reason, as already mentioned, the constanteffort of the act of faith is needed. In addition, a certain perseverance isrequired. For faith must also prove itself when, due to the dominance ofthe human, the impression is given that God is absent. Because God uses

23. Cf. H. de Lubac, Paradoxe et mystère, (Paris 1967), 129-140, albeit with the necessarydistinctions.24. See the central declaration of the Council, Nostra Aetate 2.25. S. Kierkegaard, ’Einübung im Christentum’ in E. Hirsch, H. Gerdes (Eds.), Sören

Kierkegaard. Gesammelte Werke, 26 Abt. [Gütersloher Taschenbücher 621], (Gütersloh,1980), 99.




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a kenotic way to come to man, Christian faith involves a denial of all

mystification.However, I do not wish to deny the mystical dimension. Undoubtedly,

according to the mind of the Church Fathers, the whole economy of sal-vation in the course of which the Logos became man is a mystical event,a mysterion in the Pauline sense. But mystification, a kind of consumer-friendly romanticisation of the mysteries of the faith, does not take place.Confronted by the Cross, there is nothing to mystify. Bread and wine inthe Eucharist are thoroughly unspectacular symbols of faith. And theexistence of the Church, owing to her human weaknesses, demands a fairamount of steadfast perseverance. Instead of being consoled by somethingnoble, beautiful and magical, to approach Jesus not infrequently demandsa marked sobriety, a renunciation of more sublime spheres. It was perhapsfor this reason that Tertullian suspected that Jesus was ugly,26 and RomanoGuardini was of the opinion that, when it came to making an impression,the man from Nazareth came a second best to Buddha.&dquo;

It is difficult to avoid the impression that the tendency of the pluralisttheology of religions to let the incarnation of the Logos unfold like lightthrough a prism is based on an unspoken yearning for a mysticism that isincompatible with the scandal of a kenotic faith in Christ. This is fully inkeeping with the trend of the times which tries to liberate the divinityfrom its apparent captivity in the sarx of the Nazarene. The Greek s6ma-sema idea is used Christologically by the proponents of a pluralist theol-ogy of religions. Accordingly, the poor, offensive figure of Jesus is held tobe the grave of the Logos, a Logos that consequently has to be raised fromthe dead, as it were, into the sphere of the divine everywhere - andnowhere. Such tendencies need to be challenged, even if meeting thischallenge involves a certain amount of trial and error.

26. Cf. Tertullian, De carne Christi XV 5 [CChr. SL 2, 902]; Adv. Marcion III 17 [CChr.SL1, 530].27. Cf. Guardini, Der Herr. Über Leben und Person Jesu Christi [HB 813], (Freiburg-Basel-Vienna, 61990), 424f.




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Controversy About the Incarnation