Incarnation in Hinduism and Christianity: The Myth of the God-Man

241 Pages·1987·22.477 MB·English

by  Daniel E. Bassuk (auth.)

LIBRARY OF PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION
General Editor: John Hick
Danforth Professor, Claremont Graduate School
Claremont, California
This series of books explores contemporary religious understand
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Masao Abe ZEN AND WESTERN THOUGHT
William H. Austin THE RELEVANCE OF NATURAL
SCIENCE TO THEOLOGY
Paul Badham CHRISTIAN BELIEFS ABOUT LIFE
AFTER DEATH
Paul and Linda Badham IMMORTALITY OR EXTINCTION?
Daniel E. Bassuk INCARNATION IN HINDUISM AND
CHRISTIANITY
Patrick Burke THE FRAGILE UNIVERSE
Margaret Chatterjee GANDHI'S RELIGIOUS THOUGHT
William Lane Craig THE KALAM COSMOLOGICAL
ARGUMENT
THE COSMOLOGICAL ARGUMENT
FROM PLATO TO LEIBNIZ
Stephen T. Davis LOGIC AND THE NATURE OF GOD
Lynn A. de Silva THE PROBLEM OF THE SELF IN
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Padmasiri de Silva AN INTRODUCTION TO BUDDHIST
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H. A. Hodges GOD BEYOND KNOWLEDGE
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Jonathan L. Kvanig THE POSSIBILITY OF AN
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Hywel D. Lewis PERSONS AND LIFE AFTER DEATH
Julius J. Lipner THE FACE OF TRUTH
Eric Lott VEDANTIC APPROACHES TO GOD
Geddes MacGregor REINCARNATION AS A CHRISTIAN
HOPE
Hugo A. Meynell AN INTRODUCTION TO THE
PHILOSOPHY OF BERNARD
LONERGAN
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Dennis Nineham THE USE AND ABUSE OF THE BIBLE
Martin Prozesky RELIGION AND ULTIMATE
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Z. D. Phillips BELIEF, CHANGE AND FORMS OF
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Bernard M.G. Reardon HEGEL'S PHILOSOPHY OF
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John J. Shepherd EXPERIENCE, INFERENCE AND
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Ninian Smart CONCEPT AND EMPATHY
RELIGION AND THE WESTERN
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Incarnation in
Hinduistn and
Christianity
The Myth of the God-Man
Daniel E. Bassuk
Theological Librarian, Gardner A. Sage Library
New Brunswick Theological Seminary, New Brunswick,
New Jersey
Foreword by
RobertS. Ellwood
Bishop James W. Bashford Professor of Oriental Studies
University of Southern California
M
MACMILLAN
©Daniel E. Bassuk 1987
Foreword © Robert S. Ellwood 1987
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1987 978-0-333-41358-6
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission
of this publication may be made without written permission.
No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied
or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance
with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended).
Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to
this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and
civil claims for damages.
First published 1987
Published by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS
and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
Typeset by Acorn Bookwork, Salisbury, Wiltshire
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Bassuk, Daniel E.
Incarnation in Hinduism and Christianity:
the myth of the God-man.-(Library of
philosophy and religion)
1. Incarnation 2. Avatars 3. Vishnu
(Hindu deity)
I. Title II. Series
232'.1 BT220
ISBN 978-1-349-08644-3 ISBN 978-1-349-08642-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-08642-9
Reprinted in Great Britain in 1993 by
Antony Rowe Ltd
Chippenham, Wiltshire
This book is dedicated to my loving parents, the faculty and
students of the University of South Florida, and those
British theologians and scholars who participated in 'The
Myth of God Incarnate' debate.
Contents
Foreword ix
Acknowledgements xii
Introduction: Religions and Their God-Men 1
PART ONE THE GOD-MAN IN THE EAST
1 Classical Avatars of India 15
2 Modern Avatars of India 51
Epilogue: Criteria for Avatarhood Based on Mythemes 97
PART TWO THE GOD-MAN IN THE WEST
3 The Avatar Incarnates in the West 105
4 Avatars and Christ 157
Epilogue: Mythicization/A vatarization/Incarnationism 192
Notes. 199
Bibliography 215
Index 225
vii
Foreword
God walking the earth among men and women ... the Divine in
human form, teaching us the highest things through human
words on human lips, showering us with blessings from Eternity
mediated through human hands.
That this has occurred, once or many times, is even happening
today, has been the dream, or rather deeply-felt belief, of count
less millions since before the dawn of history. Avatars (descents)
of a god in the sacred Sanskrit tongue of India, an Incarnation in
the language of Western theology, men who are really God incog
nito, though recognized by those of unsullied faith, are figures of
pivotal importance in the history of religion.
The doctrine of avatar and incarnation may, humanly speaking,
have ultimate roots in the paleolithic shaman in divine-possession
trance, giving human voice to the gods. But its classic expression
seems to be rooted in what the philosopher Karl Jaspers has called
the Axial Age. This flexibly-defined era of several centuries begin
ning around the 6th century BCE marks the crucial transition of
the human way of being in the world from the prehistoric or that
of the archaic agricultural empires to a fresh way in which the
individual human, and awareness of human history, comes into
focus. It is a time of gradual, and of course uneven and only
half-conscious, movement in many parts of the world from sub
mersion of the individual in society and its stereotyped roles,
whether of king, hero, priest, or peasant, and of society into the
ahistorical cycles of the cosmos, to a time characterized by the
emergence of individual thinkers with distinct personalities and
distinct ideas bearing the stamp of originality. It was close upon
each other's heels, around the sixth century BCE, that there
appeared in China Confucius and Lao-tzu, in India the Buddha
and Mahavira, in Iran Zoroaster, in Judaea Isaiah and Jeremiah (a
little earlier, for the ancient Israelites were in the forefront of the
change), in Greece a little later Socrates and Plato.
Several factors lay behind this era: the discovery or increased
use of writing, increased division of labour within society, the
stimulus of new intercultural contacts, and on a deeper level, the
discovery of history, a slowly-dawning awareness that human
ix
Foreword
X
time is linear, that things change and do not change back, and the
future is a mystery. But this realization gives rise almost before it
is articulated to what Mircea Eliade has called the 'terror of history'
demanding to be countered by paradigms and controls. Thus the
religions of this era made their histories into epics in which God
or the gods were acting meaningfully in human affairs. They
pointed to eschatological consummations of history, they compen
sated for change with, in S. G. F. Brandon's phrase, 'ritual per
petuations of the past', they devised immense cycles overriding
the linear movement of experienced time, they sought the high
ground of mystical oneness with an Absolute before which all time
is contingent or illusory.
Finally, the Axial Age need to stabilize history combined with
its emergence of the spiritual individual to produce that most elite
group of all human elites, the half-dozen or so men who have been
founders of great religions, or ascribed such a role, from the
largely mythical Krishna to the historical Confucius, Buddha,
Jesus, and Muhammad. These are men seen as bearers of unique
and ultimate revelations of sacred truth, and so pivots of history,
the points of reference for meaning in its onward flow, where 'the
hopes and fears of all the years are met'. Inevitably, some have
been regarded in faith as avatars or incarnations of the Divine
upon earth, embodiments of unparalleled power, presence, and
wisdom.
Once fixed, the idea of avatar and incarnation has shown a
remarkable persistence and adaptability. Probably on the model of
Axial Age belief, persons down to the present have been reckoned
God among us; it is an idea whose time came long ago, but has not
yet passed. Faith in more than one ancient divine descent still
sways millions, giving them hope for this world and the world to
come in the transcendent realms whence He came to earth and
whither He returned as invisible king of believing hearts.
Daniel Bassuk has written a unique book which admirably
displays the worldwide and multi-eraed character of this belief.
Incarnation in Hinduism and Christianity shows its provenance east
and west, ancient and modern. It is for all who hunger and
thirst after traces of the divine in this dark world, who wrestle
with religion as, in Peter Berger's words, 'man's audacious
attempt to see the whole universe as humanly significant', for the
avatar or incarnation is supremely the assurance of that
significant. It is also for those who are merely fascinated by the
Foreword xi
panorama of human religion. For both, this book's scope will be a
challenge and a reward.
Professor of Oriental Studies ROBERTS. ELLWOOD
School of Religion
University of Southern California
Los Angeles