Source: “GOD AND THE UNIVERSE OF FAITHS: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion”, By John Hick, Danforth Professor of the Philosophy of Religion, 1993.
8. Christ, Incarnation, and Mythology.mp4
13. Christ, Incarnation, And Mythology.mp3
This podcast explores the complex concept of Christ's divinity, particularly the doctrine of Incarnation, within a broader understanding of global faiths. It argues for a shift from a "Christianity-centred" to a "God-centred" view, suggesting that traditional theological language, especially the "substance" category used to define Christ's nature, is outdated and misleading. Instead, the text proposes understanding the Incarnation not as a literal, static "substance" but as a dynamic "action" or "operation", specifically the "inhistorisation" of divine Agapé (love) through Jesus's life. This reinterpretation views the Incarnation as a religious myth—a powerful, non-literal story that evokes an appropriate attitude of faith and worship—rather than a theological hypothesis, allowing for the acknowledgment of other valid experiences of the divine across different religions without diminishing the Christian experience of salvation through Jesus.
Topic 1: A Copernican Revolution in the Theology of Religions The source suggests a significant shift in perspective for Christianity, moving from a Christianity-centered view of faiths to a God-centered one. This "Copernican revolution" is proposed to align with the realities of human religious experience. Before fully embracing this new understanding of God's interaction with humanity, Christians need assurance that their personal devotion to Jesus as Lord and Saviour remains valid. The text identifies this issue as the most challenging for a Christian theology of religions, highlighting three primary areas of difference and conflict among world religions: varying modes of experiencing the divine, philosophical and theological theories about reality, and the key revelatory events (holy founders or scriptures) from which different religious experiences originate and focus worship. While differences in experience and theory can often be understood as complementary or transcended through future thought, the unique revelatory events present the greatest difficulty, as each claims an absolute response of faith seemingly incompatible with others.
Topic 2: Critique of the Traditional Doctrine of Incarnation Based on "Substance" Thinking The traditional doctrine of the Incarnation, which asserts Jesus Christ has two natures (human and divine) and is "homoousios" (of one substance) with both mankind and Godhead, is expressed using the philosophical category of substance. The source acknowledges that "homoousios" was the most emphatic way to assert Christ's Lordship and deity in the early Christian centuries' philosophical language (Neo-Platonism). However, it argues that this substance-based thinking is outdated and can be misleading in the 20th century, which lacks a single dominant philosophical language. An example of its misleading nature is seen in the doctrine of transubstantiation, where a metaphysical change in substance (bread and wine becoming body and blood of Christ) offers no experiential confirmation and is an "intellectual cul-de-sac." Similarly, the concept of the hypostatic union in Christ (two substances under human "accidents") is considered logically similar, potentially meaningless, and imaginatively static, which is seen as inappropriate for the dynamic nature of biblical revelation. The source advocates for returning to the biblical starting point for Christology, independent of the Nicene and Chalcedonian formulations.
Topic 3: Advocating for Dynamic Categories of "Purpose" and "Action" for Christology Given the static nature of the "substance" category, the source proposes exploring dynamic categories, particularly those of action rather than being. It notes that biblical thinking is predominantly dynamic, contrasting the "Hebraic" mode of thought with the "Hellenic" character of classic Christological formulations. Key Greek categories like "ousia" (substance) and "hypostasis" are seen as foreign bodies mingling with the distinctively Hebraic thought of the Bible. Therefore, many contemporary theologians are interested in expressing the religious concerns of Nicea and Chalcedon using categories drawn from biblical accounts of God's self-revelation in history. The suggested Hebraic alternatives to "substance" and "essence" are "purpose" and "action." The Bible speaks of divine purpose for humanity and God's mighty acts, leading to the possibility of expressing Christ's sonship in these and related terms. This approach aligns with Gregory of Nyssa's fourth-century dictum that "the word 'Godhead' signifies an operation and not a nature."
Topic 4: Reinterpreting "God" as "Operation of Agapé" and "Inhistorisation" Following Gregory of Nyssa's dictum, the source interprets "God" as primarily referring to God's self-revealing activity in human history. Our knowledge of God's nature is derived from knowledge of His deeds; we know what He is by what He has done. Therefore, Christian thought speaks "ex post facto" (after the fact) in light of revelatory historical events. The specific divine purpose and action highlighted is "Agapé" (self-giving love), which is seen disclosing itself in the life of Jesus. The assertion "God is Agapé" directly reflects the faith that the agapé observed in Jesus is, in some sense, the eternal Agapé of God. Consequently, to say "God" refers to an operation means the operation of Agapé revealed in Jesus' life and death. This means that in Christ, the divine Agapé was actively dealing with sinful humanity, demonstrating divine action taking place through a human life rather than divine substance injected into a human frame. The traditional term "Incarnation" poorly conveys this active sense, leading the source to suggest "inhistorisation" (coined by H. H. Farmer) as a more suitable term. "Inhistorisation" explicitly avoids the image of an eternal Logos descending into a temporary fleshy envelope, instead affirming that God in Christ acted within and through human life, influencing history from the inside, by becoming one of the human makers of history.
Topic 5: The Numerical Identity of Jesus' Agapé with God's Agapé The central claim explored is how Jesus' agapé (love) can be said to be identical with God's Agapé. The source distinguishes between qualitative identity (similar in kind) and numerical identity (being one and the same thing). While qualitative identity (Jesus' love being like God's love) is understandable, it leads to a "Degree Christology," implying incarnation is a matter of varying degrees and approximations, which is insufficient for the Chalcedonian claim of Christ's unique deity. The more challenging concept is numerical identity. While it makes no sense for two human beings' actions or dispositions to be numerically identical, it is argued that it is not meaningless to say a finite agapéing is numerically identical with the infinite Agapéing of God. This is because the infinite can include, overlap, and interpenetrate the finite, allowing for "two and one at the same time" without the finite being co-extensive with the whole infinite. The incarnation is viewed as a "temporal cross-section" of God's Agapéing, meaning Jesus was "wholly God" (totus deus) in that his agapé was genuinely God's Agapé at work, but not "the whole of God" (totum dei) in that the divine Agapé was exhaustively expressed in his actions. This concept of numerical identity is likened to a relationship of "continuity or inclusion," such as an amoeba's pseudopodium being one with the amoeba as a whole, or the continuous identity of actions rather than entities.
Topic 6: The Light-Ray Analogy for Numerical Identity of Divine and Human Agapé To provide a conceptual model for the continuous identity of actions, the source returns to the analogy of a source of illumination and the light it radiates, used by early theologians like Tertullian and Athanasius. While their pre-scientific understanding of light was of a continuous substance or stream of particles, the modern wave theory of light offers a more suitable model. In this view, light is a pattern of undulations, "something which the sun does." The continuous identity of a ray of light lies not in a piece of substance but in relations between events: (a) an identity of structure or pattern (e.g., wavelength) throughout the series of undulations, and (b) a direct causal connection between the sun (source) and the light waves. Applied to Christology, asserting that Jesus' agapéing was numerically identical with the divine Agapéing means: (a) there was an identity of moral pattern between Jesus' agapé and God's Agapé (qualitative identity, which an Arian Christology would accept), and (b) a direct causal connection between Jesus' attitudes and God's attitudes. This causal connection is not external (like a puppet master) but describes earlier and later phases of a single, continuous, complex event. Just as the sun radiating light and the light illuminating earth form one continuous event, so too do the divine Agapé exerting itself and operating on earth as the agapé of Jesus, allowing us to say Jesus was God's attitude to mankind incarnate.
Topic 7: Implications for Jesus' Nature, Will, and Consciousness in the Context of Agapé-based Christology From the perspective of Jesus' agapé being numerically identical with God's Agapé, new answers emerge for traditional Christological questions. Jesus is understood as having one nature, which was wholly and unqualifiedly human. However, the agapé directing this human nature was God's. Similarly, there was one will, that of the man Jesus of Nazareth, but the agapé ruling his life was God's Agapé for mankind. Regarding Jesus' consciousness, the biblical evidence suggests he was aware of a special vocation from his baptism until his death, speaking with authority and acting with power regarding God's love. However, this does not imply he was conscious of being God, the Son of God, or the eternal Logos made flesh. He was consciously a human being, distinct from God, and able to pray to God as his Father. Yet, he was also conscious of a profound love for humanity and a sense of being "at one" with God in this agapé, such that God's Agapé was enacting itself and God's Kingdom was being created through his actions. The ultimate "how" or "why" of this is seen as an act of grace, God's act of making His Agapé visible and tangible in human life for its salvation, ultimately remaining a mystery that Christology proclaims but cannot fully explain.
Topic 8: The Incarnation as a Religious Myth, Not a Theological Hypothesis The source asserts that the central Christian claim about Jesus – that he was/is God the Son incarnate, or the Love of God incarnate – is best understood as mythological language, not theoretical or hypothetical. A theory or hypothesis is proposed to explain a puzzling phenomenon by describing a wider context, making the phenomenon understandable and, in principle, capable of confirmation or disconfirmation (like Mendel's genetics or a theodicy). However, attempts to "unpack" the concept of incarnation and define what it literally means for Jesus to be the God-Man have consistently failed in the judgment of the church. Every theory trying to explicate "fully God and fully man" has either denied Christ's humanity or his deity, reducing the mystery. The orthodox formulas (Nicea, Chalcedon) simply reaffirmed the mystery without explaining it, while "heretical" theories attempted to explain it at the cost of denying one of its paradoxical aspects. Therefore, the source concludes that the Incarnation is not an hypothesis waiting to be adequately defined; it has no such literal content. Instead, it is a mythological idea. As a poetic, powerfully evocative image, it expresses Jesus' religious significance effectively, even without conveying a literal meaning, and its function is to evoke an appropriate response of faith in Jesus.
Topic 9: The Function and "Truth" of Religious Myth A myth is defined as a story that is not literally true, or an idea/image that does not literally apply, but which invites a particular attitude in its hearers. The "truth" of a myth is a practical truth, consisting in the appropriateness of the attitude it evokes towards its object (event, person, situation, ideas). For example, the story of the fall of man, while not literally true for most contemporary Western Christians, functions as a myth to effectively convey ideas about human sinfulness, responsibility, and potential for goodness, prompting an appropriate moral attitude. Similarly, the myth of the Incarnation is "true" in so far as it evokes an appropriate attitude towards Jesus as "the way, the truth and the life," leading to salvation. This myth expresses the "absolute" character of divine revelation experienced through Jesus. This "absolute" experience, inherent to any profound divine encounter, is communicated mythologically by saying Jesus was God the Son incarnate. The myth, therefore, is an appropriate and valid expression of that experience, functioning to foster an attitude of faith in Jesus as saviour, through whom people encounter God and experience new life.