Another Take on Incarnation

 “I am divine.  I am an aspect of God, whole, perfect and complete.”   Diana Bishop, editor of Science of Mind magazine.

          

What does it mean to say that we are divine or that God is within us (the slightly more modest version)?  This is one of those questions shared by we Christian who wish to be seen as progressive or incarnational and by adherents of the “New Thought” or mental science philosophy, an American metaphysical religion that can be traced back to Ralph Waldo Emerson and followed in the work of a series of healers and positive thinkers (some sincere, others scammers) from that day to ours.*

Assertions like that of Diane Bishop are popular in the newer religious thought of our day because they are, in part, a corrective to the many centuries of Christian (especially Western) belief in the inherent evil in human nature, the “Original Sin” invented by Augustine of Hippo and passed on by many other Christian thinkers.  If we are children of God, “made in the image and likeness of God,” we must be in some sense divine, many modern theologians assert—although perhaps not in the same mysterious way as Jesus.

One could respond, of course, that there is little in our human behavior individuals or collectively to support belief in our divinity. Indeed, the sad story of our inhumanity suggests just the opposite—that, left to ourselves, we generally engage in a “war of all against all,” to quote the realistic authoritarian Thomas Hobbes.

And from this realization of human evil comes the understandable desire for a divine savior, one or more gods to whom we can turn for support in life and salvation, either from death or from damnation after death.  All religions include some mechanism of salvation and for Christians it has always been Jesus, the Christ, whose death somehow saves us from our sins and condemnation.  I say somehow because, despite centuries of political and theological struggles over both the nature of Jesus and of the exact way in which his death saves us, neither of these issues have been decisively resolved to the satisfaction of those who claim to be followers of Jesus.

We still argue about the exact way in which or extent to which Jesus was divine as well as human. And we still have quite a number of ways of explaining to each other just how salvation or redemption occurs. Some of these explanations strike many people today as bizarre; for example, consider the atonement theory that claims that Jesus died to satisfy God the Father’s need for a Godly sacrifice to cancel the debt the Father was owed due to the sin of Adam and Eve.

It is perhaps in a reaction against all this historically conditioned and literally incredible theology that we find ourselves looking within our own humanity for a new understanding of divinity.  Is it also possible that our faith in a Theistic God seen as a force separated from us is growing weaker as we see ourselves and our planet descending into a diseased time of social, political, and economic chaos?  It might seem either odd or ironic (or both) that we now hear more talk about “the God within” and “our divinity” at a time when humans seem determined to destroy themselves through wars against each other and the planet that sustains us? 

At the same time, however, there are a growing number of people, both young and old, who claim to be (without anger, irony, or sarcasm) “spiritual but not religious.”  Most of these avoid Sunday worship and any affiliation with religious organizations. I suspect that many of these would not be offended if told that “God is within them.”  Indeed, despite what they see around them, they are willing to acknowledge or even cling to the hope that somehow neither they nor the world in which they find themselves are doomed. They still believe in God but they are growing in their conviction that God’s address has changed—from Heaven to Earth—and just in time!

So then what does it mean to say that we are “divine, as aspect of God, whole and complete”?  This is not a claim to be God-like nor narcissistic. We are not blasphemers asking to be worshipped. What incarnational (as opposed to doctrinal) Christians and others people in Unity and Science of Mind are saying is actually not too different from the words of Jesus when he told his followers just before he died: “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in me will also do the works that I do, because I go to the Father.” (John 14:12). Then there is that famous “The kingdom of God is within (also in the midst of,” or “among”) you” in Luke 17:21. And even these word from 2 Peter 1:4: “ He [God] has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption caused by evil desires.”

God is among us, in our world, and even within our hearts and souls. And since we have this divinity within us, some contemporary religious thinkers say, we have redemptive power within us as well.  As Jesus restored people’s relationship with God by healing their bodies and restoring their soul’s ability to relate to God through a renewed recognition of the divinity within, so too can we be agents of redemption and healing for others. This indeed may be how redemption works; this may be what incarnation or divine presence in the world really means.

But all that may be both too simple and too challenging.  This theological revision become simpler if we conclude that we no longer need the “only” Son of God “sent down” from a Heaven to save us. We would then question the traditional “Jesus died for our sins” theology of atonement and may even decide to recast the way we understand the Trinity. Of course, this loss of extra-terrestrial aid (along with its theologically complex understanding of God) leads us directly to the problems and challenges of this new theology.  We have to use the divinity within to sink into our humanity, our true selves, the sacred, God-image part of ourselves and then share those sparks of divinity we find with others; we must love others or (in short) redeem them!

No progressive Christian or New Thought advocate that I know denies that God was clearly present in the person of Jesus. We can know that not only by the way he accepted death but also and more importantly by how he lived his life, by what he did and taught. God was incarnate in Jesus but that incarnation continues in us. It’s a tough job being divine and living out what that means, transforming evil into good, transcending our false ego self and finding and sharing our true God self with others. Hard, but someone has to do it.  It may have to begin, arrogant as this seems, with people who say: “I am divine. I am an aspect of God, whole, perfect and complete.” 

                                   Ken Wolf (2014; rev. 2020)

__________________________________________________________

*For more on New Thought—its history in the United States, and its strengths and weaknesses, see Catherine Albanese, A Republic of Mind and Spirit: A Cultural History of American Metaphysical Religion (Yale, 2007) and Mitch Horowitz, One Simple Idea: How Positive Thinking Reshaped Modern Life (Crown Publishers, 2014)