About Incarnation and Sacramentality

(Post-Israel Trip Ruminations, cont'd)

I've finished reading Daniel Boyarin's The Jewish Gospels recently and I can say that Boyarin has convinced me that the concept of a high Christology <(by which he means), the concept of a "Son of Man" who is given authority and power by YHWH, sits on a throne with/next to YHWH and is "divinized" in some way> is not a uniquely Christian concept but was present already in Jewish currents of thought even before Jesus' time. Boyarin actually argues it was present way before Jesus' time. This is the concept that is operative in texts such as Daniel 7 and 1 Enoch 14 (see Boyarin's book). 

However, Boyarin concludes that what is uniquely Christian is the idea that that divinized "Son of Man" is not only going to appear on the clouds of heaven in the eschaton (as in Daniel and other 2nd Temple Jewish writings) but is actually here, walking on the earth in the person of Jesus of Nazareth (pp. 100-101). In short, the "incarnation" in a concrete person of the originally Jewish idea of a divinized "Son of Man" is the Christian innovation. 

I felt this concept keenly at the Basilica of the Annunciation in Nazareth where, at the site of Mary's house the sign reads, "Hic, Verbum caro factum est..." (HERE, the Word was made flesh).

 

The philosopher Don Cupitt argues at various points (see, for example, his "The Meaning of the West" book) that the Christian notion of the incarnation is actually the one responsible for secularization because when the distance between the divine and this material world is

collapsed by means of the notion of incarnation, the gulf between the "sacred" and the "profane" is somehow lost and the focus of human religiosity shifts from God "out there" to God (or "Ultimate Meaning") being focused here in the here and now, in the secular, "in carne" (in the flesh) literally!

Also ... While in Israel, I thought a lot about the notion of "Sacramentality."

SACRAMENTALITY - the Christian notion that grace (even God) can be mediated-experienced in a special way through very concrete/material things (such as ... Water). This is what drives the pilgrimage experience! For example, at the various places around the lake of Galilee, my unique sacramental moments involved touching the water of "Jesus' lake" - the sea of Galilee

These are two other thoughts (among many others) that particularly stood out for me as I was on the Israel-Palestine trip last June. 

/jkk (originally written on July 27, 2015)