Beyond Belief on Avatars vs. Incarnation

Here, from BBC4’s Beyond Belief podcast, is an interesting and wide-ranging discussion of avatars in Hinduism vs. catholic Incarnation claims, and also avatars in science fiction. (Alternate link, stitcher)

How, you ask, does an avatar differ from an incarnation? (This is me talking now, though they say most of this in the episode.) An avatar is supposed to be God himself (Vishnu, thought of as a monotheistic God, a perfect being) in human form. An avatar needn’t be a human. But human avatars do have two human parents, and when God’s work on earth is done, the avatar simply dies – so the incarnation is temporary. Finally, Hindu theologians are less concerned to soothe any worries that the avatar is really, truly, completely human. They do think avatars like Krishna and Rama are human, but they have no detailed claims about each being “hypostatically united to a complete human nature,” and less concern to show that such humans in any heavy sense “share our lot” in life.

In contrast, in classical catholic doctrine (although not in much current evangelical thought) Jesus isn’t supposed to be the one God himself, but rather, an eternal, divine self (the Logos, the Word) who eternally is caused to exist by another divine person who is uncaused – the Father. But the one God is supposed to be the Trinity, not this eternal Son who becomes human. Still, he’s called “God in human form” and the “God-man” etc. because there is a tradition of using “God” ambiguously for the Trinity, or for the Father or for the Son. And when this eternal Logos “assumes a complete human nature,” he takes it forever after. He’s supposed to still have it. And this possession is supposed to make him truly human – not a human, but such that “human” properly applies to him. Christian soteriology often specifies that the savior, the atoner, must be a human like us, and not merely God appearing to be human. (Classically, officially – but some Christians nowadays  don’t make any distinction between a theophany and an incarnation.)

You’ll have to listen to the first six minutes of the episode to find out what Krishna’s mother is doing in this recent illustration.

If you want a more thorough comparison of Christian incarnation ideas and avatars in (mostly Vaishnavite) Hindu theology, with good summaries of the traditional lore on avatars, I recommend this excellent book.