From Deep Incarnation to Deep Anthropology: Hypostatic Union and the Universe in the Image of Imago Dei

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper reflects upon some modern theologians’ stance on the idea of “Deep Incarnation” offering its Eastern Orthodox theological, philosophical and scientific assessment. The main problems and corresponding questions to this idea are: (1) Because of the vast and causally disconnected structure of the universe, humanity at best is consubstantial to the 4% of matter in the visible universe so that the claims for the relevance of the historical Incarnation to the whole creation are not plausible; (2) By de facto equating the transfigured flesh of Christ (through the hypostatic union), with the rest of creation, thus depriving the process of deification of humanity and transfiguration of the visible universe of its temporal dimension, Deep Incarnation goes contrary to the Orthodox stance on deification as a personal endeavour not implanted into the logic of the natural world; (3) the claims of the Deep Incarnation idea would be trivial if they were concerned only with the necessary conditions for the historical Incarnation, which are cosmological. However, the sufficient conditions of the Incarnation as an inaugural event of Christian history cannot be placed into the fabric of the material world. (4) The idea of Deep Incarnation may be treated as contributing to the old makroanthropos idea, related to humanity as a mediating agency not only between moral divisions in creation, but also between different life forms by bringing them to the unity in God.