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The Trinity and the Incarnation: Hegel and Classical Approaches
Author(s): Anselm K. Min Source: The Journal of Religion, Vol. 66,
No. 2 (Apr., 1986), pp. 173-193Published by: The University of
Chicago PressStable URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1202586Accessed: 01-08-2015 14:05
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The Trinity and the Incarnation: Hegel and Classical Approaches*
Anselm K. Min I Belmont Abbey College
The dogmas of the Trinity and the Incarnation are central to
Christian faith, yet few today, with the possible exception of
Thomists, seem happy with the classical orthodox formulations. I am
not about to offer a reformulation. Instead, I propose to review
one old reformulation, Hegel's interpretation of the Trinity, to
which many contemporary reformulations consciously hark back, for
example, those of Barth, Rahner, Juingel, Pannenberg, and Moltmann.
I do this in the context of the issues raised but not resolved by
the classic formulations. In the first section I examine the
concepts of creation and Incarnation against the Hegelian
background and ask what they imply about the nature of God. My
basic assumption is that the economic Trinity is the only access to
the immanent Trinity and that creation and Incarnation must be
considered in their inner relation and unity, as Protestant
theology has long insisted and recent Catholic theology is
beginning to recog- nize. In the second section I go on to discuss
the inadequacies of the classical formulations in meeting the
philosophical requirements of creation and Incarnation, chiefly the
notions of "person," "nature," "simplicity," and "relation." In the
third and last section I present Hegel's alternative based on the
philosophy of "spirit" that consciously sublates (Aufheben) the
traditional philosophies of "substance." The basic question I want
to press throughout is, What do creation and Incarnation presuppose
about the nature of God as the a priori condi- tion of their
possibility? What must God be like in himself if he can and does
reveal himself for us as Creator and Redeemer?
* I would like to thank Peter Hodgson and Eugene TeSelle of
Vanderbilt Divinity School for the many helpful conversations on
the subject of this article. ? 1986 by The University of Chicago.
All rights reserved. 0022-4189/86/6602-0004$01.00
173
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The Journal of Religion THE IDEA OF CREATION AND INCARNATION
Before we go on to answer this question, let us first be clear
about what is meant by creation and Incarnation. Consider first the
idea of crea- tion. Thomism provides a good starting point.
Creation does not add more being (esse) to the being of God; it
only allows more and different beings (entia) to be. Non plus entis
sed plura entia. There are two things to note. One is that God is
the only source of being (esse) there is, even after creation, and
the other is that created entities are neverthe- less distinct from
their Creator. To deny the first would be to deny God's infinity
and posit radical pluralism, and to deny the second would be to
fall into pantheism. Creation means multiplication of beings in
their otherness both among themselves and to God without
diminishing or increasing God's own esse, the only source of the
being of the finite in all their multiplicity.
First, God is the only source of the being of all beings. There
are not many gods or many different sources of being, as there is
no matter existing prior to or outside God out of which God
creates. God alone creates, and he does so out of his own being.
The source of the multi- plicity of the finite is God himself. God
creates out of his own being, but this does not mean creatures ever
exist outside God. Nothing can exist or continue to exist apart
from or outside God. Finite beings depend on God for the totality
of their esse, which belongs to God and which is theirs only by a
grant from him. The relation between the unity of being and the
multiplicity of beings, between the infinite source of being and
the finite derivatives from that source is not external but
internal. Creation cannot be conceived on the model of a transitive
activity, where the maker is and remains external to both the
material out of which he makes and the product that he makes and
that, once made, continues to exist independently of the maker. The
Creator creates finite beings out of his own being and remains
present to them in a way that is more intimate than their presence
to themselves and more radical than the presence of one finite
being to another. The rela- tion between Creator and creature is a
transcendental, not an empiri- cal, relation and remains the
"ontological" basis for all finite "ontic" (Heidegger) relations in
the world.
If God is the only source of the being of all beings in both
their unity and diversity, if this diversity is not something added
from outside God, then creation is correctly understood, as Hegel
insisted, only as the internal multiplication and diversification
of God's own being or his self-differentiation and
self-pluralization. God separates himself from himself and posits
an Other as Other, but this Other does not fall outside God but is
maintained as Other because God does not -and cannot -
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The Trinity and the Incarnation remain simply separated from
himself as Other but preserves his iden- tity with himself in this
Other.' In creating, God does not need any external, preexisting
material, but this does not mean that creatures come out of
nothing. Rather, God creates them out of his own being- "the
nothingness [das Nichts] of the world itself, out of which the
world has been created, is the Absolute itself'22-whlch, ot course,
should not be conceived in crude material fashion. That is, God
creates by posit- ing a distinction within himself. As an Other
posited by God from within himself as his self-expression, the
finite bears not only an onto- logical bond but also similarity
with the Creator.
All discussion of creation must preserve this ontological unity
of being between Creator and creature, a unity from which all
diversity is derived from within and to which, therefore, it is
ontologically second- ary and relative. Hegel sees a violation of
this ontological unity in deism and the conventional conceptions of
God as the infinitely removed "beyond" of the finite. Whether
motivated by the desire to pre- serve the infinity of God or to
maintain the distinction and autonomy of the finite from the
infinite, these conceptions stress the difference between infinite
and finite, that the infinite is not finite and vice versa. They
place the finite on one side and the infinite on the other, each
against the other as two independent things. For Hegel, the
underlying assumption is false; it results from reifying both the
finite and the infinite as static, ready-made things by separating
them from the very process that makes each what it is. The being of
the finite lies precisely in the process of coming to be in
ontological dependence on and self- transcendence toward the
infinite, its Other. It is finite, not by itself but through the
relation of dependence on God, a relation that constitutes the
finite as finite. The finite is finite only as a unity of itself
and its infinite Other. To posit the finite apart from this
sustaining, constitu- tive relation to the infinite would be to
fail to recognize the finite as finite and implicity to infinitize
it by granting aseity to what is by admission finite.
It is likewise false to separate the infinite from the finite,
for opposite reasons. To separate the infinite from the finite,
even for the sake of preserving the transcendence of the infinite,
is in fact implicitly to infinitize the finite and also in the same
process to reduce the infinite itself to a finite being by placing
the infinite simply alongside (neben) the finite in a mutually
external relationship and implicitly regarding the
I See G. W. F. Hegel, Begriff der Religion, ed. Georg Lasson
(Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1966), p. 147. Hereafter abbreviated as
BR.
2 Hegel, Die Religionen der geistigen Individualitat, ed. Georg
Lasson (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1966), p. 85.
175
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The Journal of Religion infinite and the finite as two powers
over against each other at the same ontological level. Such an
infinite is a bad (schlechte) infinite because it is limited by the
finite. If God is truly infinite, unlimited, unconditioned, it is
not enough that he be not finite, in-finite; true infinity also
requires that there be nothing that somehow remains external to the
creative causality of God, limiting and conditioning him from
outside. The true infinite is not only not finite but also has the
power to posit the finite in its totality by granting it an
internal relation to the infinite, that is, by positing it as Other
within himself. The true infinite is a unity of itself, the
infinite, and its Other, the finite.3
Second, it is within this internal ontological unity of finite
and infinite that the distinction between them must and can emerge.
This distinction can only be relative; any absolute distinction or
autonomy would mean infinitizing the finite and spell ontological
dualism. Hegel's Absolute has often been accused of "devouring" the
finite, but this accu- sation, I think, is a misunderstanding. It
is important in this regard to recall the transcendental character
of the relation between finite and infinite. The internal unity of
finite and infinite is transcendental, not empirical as in the case
of the unity of one finite being and another. In the latter case
one being is never totally dependent on another; no finite being is
the source of being of another in its totality. By the same token
no finite being is totally free and autonomous vis-a-vis another;
finite freedom is always more or less externally limited by the
brute facticity of other persons, events, and situations beyond
one's control, as it is also dependent for its actualization as
"concrete" freedom on the coop- eration of others external to
oneself. In fact, it is the very definition of finitude, for Hegel,
that a finite being is limited by contingency, externality, and
brute necessity that it cannot wholly sublate.4 A finite being
cannot be totally internally related to or immanent in an Other
without either destroying the Other as Other or being itself
destroyed by the Other.
In contrast, it is the prerogative of the infinite to be able to
posit the finite as Other, be present to it in its totality, and
still preserve it as Other than itself. As Rahner put it, the
radical dependence of the finite on God and their autonomy from him
are directly proportionate to each other, whereas in finite,
empirical relations the proportion is
3 On the concept of the "true" infinite and the relation between
finite and infinite in general, see my article, "Hegel's Absolute:
Transcendent or Immanent?" Journal of Religion, 56, no. 1 (1976):
68-76.
4 See Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, ed. Georg Lasson, 2 vols.
(Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1969, 1971), 1:75, 2:409-10.
176
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The Trinity and the Incarnation inverse.5 For Hegel, God is
infinitely free because, as the positing source of all reality, God
is not subject to any unsublated otherness. And it is because God
is free that he can also grant autonomy and free- dom to his
creatures: "It is only the Absolute Idea which determines itself
and which, in determining itself, is secure in itself as absolutely
free in itself. Thus, in determining itself it releases what is
determined in such a way that the latter exists as something
independent, an inde- pendent object. What is free is present only
for the free. It is the absolute freedom of the Idea that in its
determination, in its judgment [Urteil], it releases the Other as
something free and independent. This Other, released as something
independent, is the world in general."6
Next, what is meant by the Incarnation of the Logos in Jesus of
Nazareth? For the orthodox view, God becomes a human being in such
a way that Christ is truly divine (vere Deus) and truly human (vere
homo). God not only becomes a human being but also subjects himself
to pas- sion and death on the cross. Whatever he does as a human
being he does as God. The history of this man is also the history
of God himself. Yet, when God becomes a human being and dies on the
cross, he does not cease to be God. God becomes something other
than himself yet does not cease to be himself, God. If a God who
becomes a human being is difficult enough to grasp, a God who
simply ceases to be God in becoming human would be an absurdity.
Moreover, God not only dies and rises from the dead but also
remains present in the spirit of humanity, guiding human history
and reconciling humanity with him- self. He is truly immanent in
history yet without losing his divine transcendence. He is immanent
in his Other, but this immanence in this Other does not destroy his
enduring identity with himself.
The dogma of the Incarnation, like that of the Trinity, is
subtle to the extreme, and a correct understanding of it requires
distinguishing it from many apparently similar notions with which
it has been confused, as witness the history of early heresies. It
affirms true divinity ("consub- stantial with the Father") and true
humanity ("consubstantial with us") in the unity of the one divine
person, the Logos. As such, the Incarna- tion is, in Dorner's
phrase, "the most eloquent expression" of the relation between God
and the world.7 The presence of God in Jesus is not identical with
either God's presence in the world generally, as in
5 See Karl Rahner, A Rahner Reader, ed. G. A. McCool (New York:
Seabury Press, 1975), p. 157.
6 Hegel, Die absolute Religion, ed. Georg Lasson (Hamburg: Felix
Meiner, 1966), p. 94 (my translation). Hereafter abbreviated as
AR.
7 See Claude Welch, ed. and trans., God and Incarnation in
Mid-Nineteenth Century German Theology: G. Thomasius, I. A. Dorner,
A. E. Biederman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965), p.
208.
177
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The Journal of Religion creation, or the universal presence of
the Holy Spirit in the believers. Nor is it to be confused, as
David Strauss would have it, with a uni- versal incarnation of God
in every human being in which God is simply, without distinction,
identified with the human in pantheistic fashion, in which the
Logos becomes Homo generalis, a Platonic uni- versal, turning the
individuality of humans into a mere appearance. The humanity
assumed by the Logos did not exist prior to the union with the
divine, and it was real humanity, not a mere external garment, that
the Logos put on, which would turn the Incarnation into a mere
theophany in human form. If the Logos did not cease to be divine
through the Incarnation, neither did he merely appear to be human.
The divine did not replace the human, as the human did not replace
the divine. The union of the human and the divine in the one divine
person of the Logos is a union that preserves the distinction of
the two natures, which must be acknowledged "without confusion or
change," "without division or separation" (Chalcedon). The Incarna-
tion, to put it in Hegelian language, is the paradigm case of unity
in difference.
A CRITIQUE OF THE CLASSICAL TRADITION
The question to ask now is, What do creation and the
Incarnation, thus understood, presuppose about the nature of God
and his relation to the world as conditions of their possibility?
Are the concepts and categories of the post-Nicene Fathers
(Athanasius, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, Basil) and those
of classical theism (Aquinas) adequate to this task? Is the God of
classical theism capable of creating the world and becoming
incarnate in one of his creatures?
As is well known, the classical orthodox formulation of the
trinitar- ian dogma grew out of the christological problem, the
ontological status of the Logos through whom the world was created
and who became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth. The basic underlying
logic was something like this. The divine nature is immutable,
impassible, and eternal, but creation and Incarnation imply a
relation to the finite, mutable, and temporal. The divine nature in
its unoriginate, eternal being, therefore, cannot be the source of
such a relation without impairing its immutability. Nor, however,
could a merely finite being be such a source. The source could only
be something that is divine yet not simply identical with the
divine nature as such. The solution: the divine nature subsists in
three Persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and it is the Son, the
Logos, through whom the world was made and who became flesh, not
the Father, the unoriginate origin of both the Son and the Holy
Spirit.
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The Trinity and the Incarnation
This solution, however, was not without serious difficulties. In
order to preserve the unity and simplicity of the Godhead ("one"
God), it had to place the Persons, the subsistent "relations" of
origination and other- ness, outside the divine nature, while in
order to preserve the full divinity of the Persons, it had to
identify the Person of the Father and through him the other Persons
with the Godhead because, after all, it is the originating activity
of the Father precisely in his divine nature that con- stitutes the
Son as Son and the Spirit as Spirit. To the extent that the unity
of the divine nature was stressed along with the diversity of Per-
sons while also conceiving the relation between the unity and the
diversity as mutually "external" or "outside," the classical
formulation already contained an unresolved tension between the
much-dreaded pagan polytheism on the one hand and a monotheism of
the divine nature of which the Persons would be Sabellian
"modes."8
The same ambiguity in the conceptualization of the relation
between unity and multiplicity, between self-identity and relation
to an Other, was carried over into the christological affirmation
of the unity of the divine Person in two natures. It affirmed both
the true humanity and the true divinity of the Logos yet also
exempted the divinity from any real participation in the humanity
for fear of endangering divine immutability. The Logos truly became
flesh, but he did not suffer and die on the cross; only his
humanity did. The human and the divine were united yet also
remained mutually external. All the changes and sufferings took
place on the human side of the gulf separating the human and the
divine. For all its denials, classical christology could not
overcome the Docetist implication that the humanity was no more
than an "external garment" put on by the Logos without really
affecting him.9
The same basic dilemma between unity of nature and diversity of
relations, between identity and otherness, is also found in the
medieval Thomistic synthesis, which, despite its restatement of the
doctrine of the immanent Trinity, contained the same ambiguity,
especially in conceptualizing the relation between God and the
world, between the immutable divine substance and its relation to
the Other, the world of change and multiplicity. Creatures are
"really" related to God, but God is not likewise really related to
the world. Recently, under the prodding of process thought, some
Thomists have tried to bring God and crea- tures together more
closely by exploiting the distinction between "nature" and "person"
or between "real" and "intentional" being in God. According to
William J. Hill,
8 In these criticisms of classical trinitarianism, see Leslie
Dewart, The Future of Belief (New York: Herder & Herder, 1966),
pp. 144-48; Paul Tillich, History of Christian Thought (New York:
Simon & Schuster, 1967), pp. 77-79. 9 See Rahner, p. 149.
179
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The Journal of Religion if God really relates to a world of
creatures, and if those creatures creatively introduce genuine
novelty into the world (as they do), and if they truly suffer (as
they do), then this cannot remain alien to God's experience. Thus
in some sense, without jettisoning the divine immutability (which
would dedivinize God), God responds knowingly and lovingly to such
suffering. One suggestion may be made here as an alternative to the
dipolar nature introduced into God by process thought. The
suggestion is to acknowledge as irreducible the dis- tinction
between nature and person (or, in a trinitarian context, Persons)
in God. It might then be possible to maintain that in His nature
God is eternally the infinite act of being and as such is incapable
of any enrichment or impoverishment of His being; here the divine
being is considered in its absoluteness and remains immutable. In
His personhood, however, we are dealing with God's being in its
freely-chosen self-relating to others, in that intersubjective
disposing of the self that is self-enactment and self-positing.
Here we are concerned not with what God is in His being as
transcendent to world, but with who He chooses to be vis-a-vis a
world which He creates and redeems in love. 10
The basic distinction between "nature" and "person," between the
absolute, immutable being in itself and the multiple relations to
Others, by which the early Fathers tried to safeguard both the
unity of God and the threeness of Persons in the immanent Trinity,
is here applied to God's economic relations to the world as
well.
Using the same conceptual categories, W. Norris Clarke likewise
argues that God remains unrelated to the world in his "absolute"
being in himself (ens naturale) but that he is really related to,
that is, affected by, the world in his "relational" being for us
(ens intentionale), a position that he considers an advance over
Saint Thomas, for whom God was not really related to the world even
in his intentional being. Thus, for Clarke, "in some real and
genuine way God is affected positively by what we do," and "his
consciousness is contingently and qualitatively different because
of what we do." He immediately goes on, however, to add that "all
this difference remains... on the level of God's relational
consciousness and therefore does not involve increase or decrease
in the Infinite Plenitude of God's intrinsic inner being and
perfection.""
How is this so? The mystery lies in the peculiar character of
"rela- tion" itself. "Relation is unique among all the categories
in that the addition of relations to a being does not necessarily
add to or subtract anything from its absolute real being and
perfection. It relates the subject to its term but does not
necessarily change or modify it internally in
10 William J. Hill, "The Historicity of God," Theological
Studies 45 (1984): 332-33. 11 W. Norris Clarke, The Philosophical
Approach to God. A Neo-Thomist Perspective (Winston- Salem, N.C.:
Wake Forest University Press, 1979), p. 92.
180
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The Trinity and the Incarnation
any non-relative way."12Just as, for the Greek fathers, the act
of gener- ation and the relation of origination posited by it does
not involve any change in the human nature of either the Father or
the Son -both are human, or divine in the case of the divine
Persons, apart from such relations-so, for Clarke, "when the Father
gives His entire identical nature (what He is) to the Son in love,
and both together to the Holy Spirit, the two are relationally
distinguished as Giver and Receiver, but what they possess as their
intrinsic perfection of being is the identical simple and infinite
plenitude of absolute perfection that is the divine nature."13 The
relations among the Persons of the Trinity are real, subsistent
relations, whereas God's relation to the world is real regarding
his intentional being but only "rational," not "real," regarding
his intrinsic being; but in either case relation remains external
to the divine nature and does not affect its simplicity and
immutability.
The basic question, of course, is whether relation is merely
"external" to nature, whether it is possible to posit an
"irreducible" (Hill) distinc- tion between "nature" and "person."
Does relation really "add nothing to and subtract nothing from"
nature (Clarke)? According to this view, nature is fully and
completely constituted as nature apart from all relations. To use a
favorite classical analogy, a father remains a human being apart
from his activity of generating a son and the relation of
fatherhood posited by that act, just as the son retains his human
essence apart from his sonship and relation of dependence on the
father. To be a father and to be a human being are different,
because, if not, only a father would be human. This is so because,
as Gregory of Nyssa argued, "cause" and "nature" cannot be
"defined" in the same way. 14 This, I think, gives a clue to the
abstract character of nature and its external relation to relation
in the classical approach. From a "definitional" point of view, the
concept of "father" is indeed different from that of "human being."
Does it follow from this, however, either that the son can exist as
a human being apart from his relation of dependence on the father,
or that "father" and "human being" can exist separately?
Furthermore, could a merely conceptual father ever give birth to a
son? In what sense does a merely conceptual son originate from a
merely conceptual father? Plainly, we must go beyond the merely
conceptual level; after all, we are not talking about a merely
conceptual but a real Trinity or about a merely conceptual but a
real Creator of the world.
12 Ibid., p. 101. 13 Ibid. 14 Gregory of Nyssa, Select Writings
and Letters of Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, trans. William Moore
and Henry Austin Wilson (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B.
Eerdmans, 1983), p. 336 ("On Not Three Gods").
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The Journal of Religion From the viewpoint of concrete
existence, "cause" and "nature,"
"father" and "human being," and "relation" and "nature" in
general are not so easily separable or separately intelligible. The
activity of causa- tion and the causal relation to an Other posited
by that act can only come from nature as the intrinsic principle of
activity and only express something of that nature itself. An act
is not its own source; it is always the act of a subject with a
determinate nature and reflects the deter- minacy of its source.
The Father generates a divine Son, not a human son, only because
his activity comes from and expresses the infinite power of his
divine nature. Conceptually distinct, the Father and his divine
nature are not separately intelligible. Activity and relation are
intelligible only in their inner relation to nature from which they
originate and that they concretely actualize.
Nor is nature intelligible apart from relations. I may indeed
exist as a human being apart from some relations, for example,
particular citi- zenship, profession, location, friendship, and so
on, but what follows from this is simply that some relations are
peripheral to my existence as a human being, not that relations as
such or all relations are merely external and accidental to my
concrete human existence. Apart from all relations, and thus taken
as an "abstraction," nature simply does not and cannot exist, not
even as potentiality, because real potentiality already implies
actualization of that potentiality and thus relations in which it
is actualized. From the concrete point of view, my being a "son" is
not extrinsic but intrinsic to my "nature" as a human being because
my relation of dependence on my "father" is both an expression and
an actualization of my human nature as a finite, dependent being.
Apart from relations that actualize and manifest it, nature becomes
an unintelligible abstraction. In short, activity and relation are
intelligible only as the self-activation and self-pluralization of
nature, as nature is itself intelligible only as a process of
manifesting and actualizing itself through activity and relation.
The relation between the two is mutually internal and
constitutive.
The consequence of separating nature and relation is no less
serious in the case of God's creative and Incarnate relation to the
world than in the case of the immanent Trinity. If, as Hill says,
God's relation to the world is a matter of "God's being in its
freely chosen self-relating to others," and yet this
"self-relating" is "irreducibly" different from his nature as
infinite, immutable, absolute being, then, at least two unsavory
conclusions follow. One is that in that case either we end up with
two Gods, or the difference cannot be "irreducible." By definition,
creation is God relating himself to an Other, but if this
self-relating God is irreducibly different from God in his absolute
nature, have we not posited a radical dualism between God for us
and God in himself?
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The Trinity and the Incarnation
On the supposition of an irreducible difference, do we not also
have to posit such a difference between the economic and the
immanent Trinity with all its consequences for salvation as
understood by Chris- tian faith?
If, on the other hand, the difference could not be irreducible,
if there is an inner unity between God relating himself to the
world and God in his absolute being, how are we to conceive this
inner unity except as God, precisely in his nature, relating
himself to the world? After all, it is only because God is a God of
certain "nature," that is, the infinite act of being, that he can
create at all and even become incarnate. But this is precisely what
constitutes a scandal to Thomism; such a view seems to introduce a
contradiction into God's own being between his simplicity and
immutability on the one hand and an inner relation to composite and
mutable creatures on the other. And this leads to the second con-
clusion: either creation and Incarnation are impossible because the
unity of God in himself and God for us seems to pose such a
contradic- tion, or the relation between nature and relation-and
along with it simplicity and immutability-must be reconceptualized
so as to make room for creation and Incarnation, to which I now
turn.
HEGEL ON THE TRINITY AND THE INCARNATION
Creation and Incarnation, for Hegel, are relations to the finite
posited by God's own activity of internal self-differentiation. As
such, activity, relation, and otherness are the very process in
which God manifests and actualizes his very essence. If God is to
create and become incar- nate without ceasing to be himself, then,
there must be in God's essence itself an aspect whereby he is the
unoriginate origin of all being, an aspect whereby he can posit out
of his own being something other than himself, and an aspect
whereby he can sublate this otherness and maintain his identity
with himself, in short, an originating, a pluraliz- ing, and a
reintegrating principle. Without the first, there would be no God.
Without the second, there would be no possibility of creation and
Incarnation; the Father would have to change himself into a
creature and perish as God. Without the third, the Logos in the
otherness of the finite would remain separated from the Godhead,
and God would be literally divided from himself. It is as the
divine principle of self-other- ing that the Logos alone can be
both the creative and the Incarnate Logos, a point on which Dorner
and Rahner agree with Hegel.15
15 See Hegel, AR (see n. 6 above), p. 94; on Dorner, see Welch,
p. 216, and Karl Rahner, The Trinity (New York: Seabury Press,
1974), p. 86.
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The Journal of Religion The possibility of creation and
Incarnation presupposes in God
himself this plurality, not simplicity, of principles consonant
with his more primordial unity and expressive of that unity. It
also presupposes an immutability compatible with entering into a
world of change and still preserving identity in that world, a
living, active, dynamic identity capable of positing and conquering
otherness, something more than the metaphysical immutability of the
classical conception. What is required is a shift from a philosophy
of "substance," which stresses simple self-identity,
self-sufficiency, and essential immutability of being and allows
activity, relation, and otherness only as something external to
itself, to a philosophy of "spirit," which regards active mediation
by otherness as internal to the constitution of self-identity in
its concrete unity.16
For Hegel, God is truly God only as Spirit, and as such
essentially trinitarian. In an act of primordial judgment of
separation (Ur-teil) the Father distinguishes himself from himself
and posits an Other, the Son. Posited by the Father as his Other,
the Son is distinct from the Father, but as his Other or his
self-expression the Son shares the totality of the divine being.
The Son "unites the two qualities of being the totality in itself
and of being posited as other."7 The infinity of the Father lies
precisely in this power not only to remain Father as a
self-identical sub- stance but also to posit an Other of himself
without ceasing to be him- self. The Father is both himself, that
is, Father in his distinct self- identity and related and present
to the Son in his distinct Otherness to the Father, where this
relation is not external to the divine essence of the Father but is
itself something posited by the Father in his divine nature. In
this sense the identity of the Father is not the simple identity of
a substance with itself but an identity mediated to itself by
Otherness or a unity of identity and disidentity. The same is true
of the Son, whose identity is likewise internally mediated by his
relation to the Father. In and through the Son the Father returns
to himself as a con- crete, dynamic, mediated identity, which is
the Holy Spirit. The Father does not merely posit an Other but also
has the power to sublate the Otherness of the Son, that is, to
preserve that Other as Other and at the same time transcend that
Other as something posited by himself, whereby he mediates himself
to himself. The Other is not a brute datum separating the Father
from himself but a medium thoroughly open and transparent to the
self-mediating action of the Father. This,
16 For Hegel's critique of "substance," see BR (n. 1 above), pp.
188-97, and Phdinomenologie des Geistes, ed. Johannes Hoffmeister
(Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1952), p. 19 ff. ("Vorrede"). 17 Hegel, AR,
p. 91.
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The Trinity and the Incarnation
of course, is an eternal process in the Godhead, and it is the
totality of this process of movement that constitutes the
spirituality of God.18
How, then, does this compare with classical trinitarianism? Both
Hegel and the classical view agree that the Father is the
unoriginate source or ground of the Godhead and that the Persons
are essentially relational, but whereas the classical doctrine
places such relations out- side the divine essence, generating the
tension between the mono- theism of divine nature and tritheism of
Persons, Hegel identifies the Father with the Godhead as such and
regards the Persons or subsistent relations as internal to the
Godhead of the Father, who therefore con- tains the immanent
Trinity within himself. The distinction of Persons is at least as
real in Hegel as in the classical view, but Hegel would dis- agree
that each Person is fully God as much as the other, not because he
denies the divinity of the Persons but because such a statement
would imply the possibility of separate existence of the Persons
and of tritheism.
What is at stake here is the question of ontological priority
within the eternal process itself: which is ontologically prior,
the unity of the divine nature or the distinction of Persons? One
could not absolutize the distinction without falling into
tritheism, nor could one absolutize the unity of the divine nature
in its immediate self-identity without mak- ing impossible the
origination of the Son and the Holy Spirit as well as creation and
Incarnation. Nor yet could one deny the ontological primacy of
unity over plurality without positing radical pluralism; unity and
plurality are not ontologically equal. Hegel's way, therefore, is
to give ontological priority to the Father, not simply as one of
three Persons but precisely as the unoriginate ground of the divine
nature in its unity while also positing the power of
self-pluralization within the one Godhead of the Father as the
origin of both the Son and the Spirit.
It is therefore not so much each of the Persons as the totality
of the divine process that manifests the "fullness" of divinity.
Each Person, without ceasing to be distinct, is itself a "moment"
or aspect of the self- pluralizing and self-unifying process, in
which no Person, not even the Father, could be taken in isolation,
where, therefore, it would be mis- placed to ask whether each
Person is fully God as much as the other. The Father alone, for
Hegel, would be an abstraction; he exists con- cretely only as
Father of the Son and origin of the Spirit. The Father is
concretely divine precisely as part of the whole process that he
origi- nates and in which he becomes actual and concrete, as the
Son exists concretely as Son only as the Other of the Father, and
as the Spirit exists concretely only as the process in which the
Father sublates the
18 See ibid., pp. 70, 72, 139.
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The Journal of Religion Otherness of the Son and returns to
himself. The divine process is an eternal circle where the
beginning enters into the middle and end points as their internal
presupposition and becomes concrete only as a "result" of such
mediation, just as the result could not be separated and reified
from the beginning and the process of which it is a result and into
which it enters as their internal presupposition.
The three Persons are thus mutually internal in the unity and
totality of the divine process, of which the Father is the
originating principle, the Son the pluralizing, and the Spirit the
reintegrating and unifying principle, and from which none could be
separately considered. The distinction of Persons is thoroughly
relative to the self-unifying totality of this divine process of
which they are moments. This, however, must not be understood in
modalistic fashion, in which the three Persons are merely
manifestations of and thus subordinate to a more primordial divine
nature or divine ground. The divine "nature" is not something that
exists apart from the divine Persons and that somehow exercises
control over them. It is an internal principle of the Persons in
their con- crete existence and as such not to be reified into an
autonomous entity in its own right. The divine nature is precisely
the nature of the Father and identical with him, by which he, not
the nature, differentiates him- self from himself, returns to
himself from that differentiation, and thus exists concretely as
one God.
It is this vitality of the immanent Trinity with its inner
multiplicity and finality that makes possible God's economic
self-revelation in terms of creation and the Incarnation. In this
regard it is important to try to see the inner unity of these two
key events of salvation. For Hegel, cre- ation and the Incarnation
are not simply two successive events occurr- ing one after the
other in time, connected at best by the subsequent necessity of
making up for the "fall" of man at the beginning, as reli- gious
consciousness tends to "represent" (Vorstellen) the relationship,
as though the Incarnation were merely an "afterthought" for God. On
the contrary, if the Incarnation means the union of the human and
the divine, and if it is to be more than a brute, inexplicable
mystery, then, human nature must be understood as something that
was created from the first with the capacity and inner need to
enter into union with the divine. Were created human nature simply
other, alien, and opposed to the divine, the Incarnation would not
mean genuine unity but mere juxtaposition of two heterogeneous
elements. Unless human nature were created with an inner
teleological relation to the divine, the Incar- nation would mean
only an external imposition of the divine on the human, which on
its part would not need the divine and for which, therefore, the
Incarnation would have no redemptive, reconciling sig- nificance.
The Incarnation as a redemptive event presupposes an
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The Trinity and the Incarnation
inner, teleological relation between the human and the divine,
between creation and redemption: the creation of finite spirits
with an inner need for the divine makes the Incarnation humanly
meaningful, just as redemption is the teleological fulfillment of
creation.
This human need for the divine, for Hegel, is not a passing
accident in human life; it is an "existential" (Heidegger, Rahner)
built into the relational structure of man as the self-conscious
but finite unity of finite and infinite (with God as the infinite
unity of finite and infinite). As Hegel defines the essence of God
in relational terms, so he locates the essence of man in the
dialectic of his relation to the infinite. Man's transcendence to
God is the very basis of all his relations to the finite and as
such constitutive of his essence or Wesen, not an external or
contingent addition to it. It is this capacity and drive for
transcendence that makes possible human freedom, human dignity,
ethical and reli- gious life, as well as self-conscious
subjectivity and rational thought. This orientation to the
infinite, however, only defines "man's essence" or "concept," which
as such is not a present reality but a task and a goal yet to be
achieved. In his finite "existence" and "reality" man seeks the
infinite not in the truly infinite but in what is "natural" and
finite. Infinite in "form" but finite in "content," the human
spirit seeks its infinity, its certainty of itself, in absolutizing
and universalizing its "natural" desires in all their particularity
and contingency.19
As a finite unity of finite and infinite, then, the human spirit
neces- sarily experiences a contradiction, an estrangement between
its essence and existence, its concept and reality, an estrangement
that is also qualified as "guilt." Insofar as the human spirit has
not yet transcended its condition of naturality with its immanent
determinisms while at the same time becoming conscious of its own
(formal) infinity as a self, there is a necessary tension between
its natural particularity and its spiritual universality, a
tendency to absolutize that particularity into particularism and
assert such particularism over against the universal, hence, a
propensity to evil. At the same time it still remains an act of its
will and freedom to actualize this tendency into particular acts of
guilt. As far as the human condition is concerned, then, it is
necessarily evil or infected with
"original sin" even while particular human acts may remain free.
This evil, guilty, or sinful condition-or "existential" of finite
existence in its estrangement from the true infinite-reaches its
self-conscious climax in the "infinite sorrow" of the Jewish
experience of alienation from God and the "infinite misery" of the
Roman experience of alienation from the world, which drives the
human spirit into its own depth with its experience of "total" and
"universal" estrangement. Along
19 See ibid., pp. 97, 105.
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The Journal of Religion with this experience, however, is also
posited the need and demand to overcome that estrangement.20
Could humans, then, overcome this estrangement and achieve
reconciliation with the infinite on their own resources? Hegel's
answer is that they could not. The finite spirit, of course, tries
to do so, but as long as it remains its own activity alone, it
remains merely subjective and formal, with no guarantee that it is
also objectively efficacious. Subjective possibility, if it is to
be a "real" possibility, presupposes objective possibility. Just as
my particular act of knowing presupposes its intrinsic, objective
possibility based on the general intelligibility of being, and just
as my eating an apple presupposes the objective homo- geneity of
myself and the apple that I propose to make part of myself by
eating,21 so my Setzung of the reconciliation of finite and
infinite depends on the Vorraussetzung that "precisely what is
posited is also something implicit" ("eben das Gesetzte auch an
sich ist").22 Only if the antithesis of finite and infinite is not
absolute but sublatable "in itself," can the subject also try to
sublate it explicitly "for itself." That is, only on condition
that, despite the real antithesis of finite and infinite, a basic
unity between them, more primordial than their antithesis, does
persist and triumph over than antithesis, is it possible for the
finite spirit to do its part in the reconciliation.
Should someone object why, if reconciliation is already actual
"in and for itself," the finite subject still needs to make it
explicit, two things may be pointed out. One is that the objective
"already" of divine reconciliation, which must be understood as a
"process," not as an accomplished fact of the past, does not make
the subjective "not yet" of human reconciliation an illusion or the
need for subjective human appropriation of divine reconciliation
unnecessary, any more than the general, real intelligibility of
being renders the reality of subjective ignorance a fiction or
subjective appropriation of that intelligibility use- less. This,
of course, raises the issue--which is the second point-of how God's
activity of reconciling himself with the finite depends on yet also
"overreaches" the self-reconciliation of the finite with the
divine. This is the general issue of the relation between human
freedom and divine initiative, nature and grace, which as such is
not peculiar to Hegel but common to all theism that accepts God's
ontological sover- eignty as the source of all being. I cannot
pursue this question here. If the finite spirit cannot bring about
the reconciliation of itself and its infinite Other on its own,
then this infinite Other must bring about this reconciliation and
show that it is reconciling itself with the finite
20 See ibid., pp. 104-21. 21 See ibid., pp. 159-60. 22 Ibid., p.
136.
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The Trinity and the Incarnation
spirit precisely in the way that the finite in its actual
existential condi- tion can know itself as being reconciled with
the infinite. The intrinsic identity of human and divine, the
ontological basis of reconciliation, must show itself as actual
through God's own activity of reconciliation and this to humans
where they are. That is, the redemption of the human requires the
Incarnation of the divine.
For Hegel, this Incarnation is possible only as the Incarnation
in an historical individual for two reasons: the nature of God as
Spirit and the nature of humans as spirits in history. What is at
stake here is the concrete demonstration of the identity of God
himself and humanity. In all preceding, that is, pre-Christian
religions, God makes himself known to humanity in a number of ways,
but all these ways stop short of revealing God himself, God as
Spirit. Natural objects (natural religion), human artifacts (Greek
religion), the transcendent God (Judaism), and God as "fate" (Roman
religion): these reveal God only as an abstraction or only as a
will remote and external to the human spirit. They reveal God only
through finite intermediaries and fail to reveal God himself, God
as a self, subject, or spirit with his own univer- sal infinity.
What is required is that God identify himself with the human not
abstractly but concretely, not through intermediaries but through
himself; that is, God must identify himself precisely as a self-
conscious subject with humanity.
Humanity, on the other hand, is spirit in the world, not a pure
spirit, but a natural, embodied spirit with a natural, sensible
consciousness. (If Hegel also insists that this sensible
consciousness must be sublated, we must also remember that this
sublation preserves the reality of sensible consciousness and does
not eliminate it, which would result in the disembodiment of the
human into purely angelic existence, obvi- ously not what Hegel
could mean, for whom the Spirit does not shun sensibility "in
monkish fashion.") The reconciling identification of God and
humanity must occurfor humans precisely in their natural con-
sciousness, the "normal" and enduring form of human consciousness
in its concrete historical existence. God as a self-conscious
subject must appear to man's natural consciousness; that is, God
must incarnate himself as an empirical historical individual.
The logic of reconciliation requires God's self-manifestation in
a form that combines sensibility and self-consciousness, which can
be found only in a particular, sensible individual. Individuality,
for Hegel, is "the principle of actuality." The ultimate subject of
existence, still more of self-conscious spiritual existence, is the
individual, and in this ontological sense even God, the Absolute
Spirit, is an individual, although a "concretely universal"
individual. Ultimately, for all its rela- tion to an Other, being
means unity, identity with itself, inner undi-
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The Journal of Religion videdness, and thus distinction from the
Other. Human individuals are not only individual in this
ontological sense but also sensible indi- viduals constituted by
materiality that is essentially external and exclu- sive. God's
self-manifestation in a form that is both sensible and self-
conscious, therefore, can only be in one individual. The idea that
God could have become incarnate in many individuals or in the human
species as a whole either reduces the divine to an abstraction
without subjectivity or turns the human into an accidental mask of
the divine in the manner of Indian myths and Docetism.23
It is important to note here -against Barthian objections-that
for Hegel, this human need for God's redemptive Incarnation is not
a necessity external to and imposed on God. As mentioned earlier,
crea- tion is a function of God's self-differentiation ad extra by
virtue of his self-differentiation ad intra. The separation of the
finite Other from the infinite is itself posited by God's
separation of himself from himself. By the same token the human
need for reconciliation with God is simply the finite side of God's
need for reconciliation with himself through the mediation of the
finite, a mediation not imposed on God from without but posited by
God himself. The need for the Incarnation is first and foremost a
necessity inherent in the immanent Trinity and only secondarily a
human need. Hegel's doctrine of creation and the Incar- nation, in
this sense, is thoroughly trinitarian.
Although Hegel rules out the possibility of a purely historical
proof -in the positivistic sense--that Jesus of Nazareth was
precisely that historical individual in whom the divine was united
with the human, it is also true that for him Jesus was that
individual. As "God in human form"24 or "the concrete God,"25 Jesus
is not "the mere organ of revela- tion but is himself the content
of revelation,"26 the ontological congeni- ality of human and
divine. The history of Jesus is the history of God himself, and he
alone is "utterly adequate to the Idea" ("schlechthin der Idee
geniss").27 In his death on the cross, "God himself is dead,"28 and
in subjecting himself to death, "the uttermost pinnacle of
finitude,"29 God experiences the sting of otherness at its most
radical and proves his own humanity and his love for humanity.
But just as, in the immanent Trinity, the Father does not remain
separated from the Son but overcomes or sublates the
separation,
23 On the necessity of Incarnation in one individual, see ibid.,
pp. 133-34, 137-42. 24 Ibid., p. 163. 25 Ibid., p. 148. 26 Hegel,
Philosophy of Mind, trans. William Wallace and A. V. Miller
(Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1971), sec. 383 (addition). 27 Hegel, AR, p. 185. 28
Ibid., p. 165. 29 Ibid., p. 161.
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The Trinity and the Incarnation
reconciling himself with the Son in the Spirit, so God does not
remain dead in Jesus but has the power to sublate the otherness of
death, that is, God has the power of Resurrection. No longer
limited to the physi- cal boundaries of a particular historical
individual, God himself rises as the Holy Spirit from the
particularity of finitude in a negation of nega- tion and becomes a
universal spiritual presence in the depth of human history, where
he reconciles humanity with himself. For Hegel, other- ness,
negation, finitude - which is a moment of divine nature itself-is
not the final word; reconciliation is. It is precisely the infinite
power of God to subject himself to finitude and to overcome and
triumph over that finitude and achieve reconciliation between
himself and his Other. 30 In this sense Hegel's theology of the
death and resurrection of Jesus, which he calls "the whole of
history,"31 is essentially a "theology of Resurrection."32 Insofar
as such resurrection and reconciliation is rooted in the inner
trinitarian nature of God himself, it is also, one could say, a
"theology of hope," a hope that God himself guarantees in the
ultimate triumph over death and negation. The infinity of God in
Hegel is not that of a God untouched by evil and finitude but that
of a God who suffers yet overcomes them.
One question still remains to be discussed. How does Hegel
distin- guish between God's presence in Jesus of Nazareth in whom
he is incarnate and his presence in the creatures in general in
which he is not? Hegel does not, as far as I know, provide an
explicit answer to this particular question that has preoccupied so
much theology from Chal- cedon to contemporary theologians such as
Rahner, Cobb, Hick, and others. What is clear is his rejection of
the "substantialist" approach so characteristic of classical
christology. It is possible, however, to attempt a Hegelian, if not
Hegel's, answer to the question on the basis of the preceding
discussion.
It is helpful here, I think, to distinguish three, not two,
modes of God's presence in the creature. The first is God's
presence in nature or the totality of nonhuman creatures. Here God
is present as the source of their being, but not as Spirit. For
Hegel, the Spirit can exist as Spirit only for another spirit. It
is only in and for the human spirit that God can be present as
Spirit, which is the second mode of God's presence, that is, the
presence of the Holy Spirit in the interiority of the human spirit.
There are two characteristics to this mode. One is that it is
essen- tially a spiritual, not physical, presence, and the other is
that it is still
30 See ibid., pp. 140, 163, 166. 31 Ibid., p. 163. 32 Michael
Theunissen, Hegels Lehre vom absoluten Geist als
theologisch-politischer Traktat (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1970),
p. 282.
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The Journal of Religion infected by the more or less estranged
otherness of the human and the divine; that is, while the divine
Spirit is reconciling itself with the human, the response of the
human remains to varying degrees that of the guilty, alienated
creature.
The third mode of God's presence is that in Jesus of Nazareth.
Jesus remains thoroughly human, not in Docetic appearance-the
finite Other of God -as is every other creature, yet God so unites
and iden- tifies himself with Jesus as his own Other that God is
himself involved in this Other. The intimacy of this
self-identification of God with Jesus is characterized, first of
all, by the fact that God is present to him not only in the
interiority of his spirit as in the second mode but in the totality
of his concrete historical existence. His pain, his death is God's
pain, God's death. Second, it is a union of the human and the
divine in which otherness does remain but without the estrangement
so characteristic of the relation between God and other human
beings. Jesus is the divinely posited exemplar of the
reconciliation of the human and the divine "utterly adequate to the
Idea." In this sense one might say that the rela- tion between God
and Jesus is the finite analogue - and repetition - of the
unestranged, sublated otherness between the Father and the Son in
the immanent Trinity. Third, Jesus is not an external "organ" of
reve- lation like prophets and other finite intermediaries and
signs but "the content" of revelation, that is, God himself
reconciled with his human Other. By virtue of his "true" infinity,
God does not remain merely infinite but, without losing his
infinity, finitizes himself in the human otherness of Jesus so that
the history of Jesus is God's own history, so that in the death of
Jesus "God himself is dead."
* * *
Speculation on the Trinity and the Incarnation is inherently
risky. No "labor of the concept" seems more strenuous and more
confusing than speculation on these metaphysical ultimates. One
often does not know what one is talking about, and there are so
many ways one can go wrong. I have attempted only to throw some
light on the issues involved by reviewing Hegel in the context of
the classical formulations, in the belief that a more adequate
understanding of these central Christian dogmas lies in the
Hegelian rather than in the classical metaphysical approaches. Many
issues still require elaboration or further elabora- tion, such as
the "contingency" versus "necessity" of creation and Incarnation
and the transcendence of the immanent over the economic Trinity, on
which Hegel himself seems either obscure or at least
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The Trinity and the Incarnation
difficult to comprehend.33 If anything is indicated, however, by
the many contemporary attempts to reformulate the two dogmas, such
as those of Barth, Rahner, Moltmann, and Pannenberg, in whom
Hegel's Denkform is still quite wirklich, it is that his potential
to illuminate deserves further exploration.
33 I dealt with some of these issues in an article (n. 3 above)
and in "Hegel's Retention of Mystery as a Theological Category,"
Clio 12, no. 4 (1983): 333-53.
193
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Article Contentsp. 173p. 174p. 175p. 176p. 177p. 178p. 179p.
180p. 181p. 182p. 183p. 184p. 185p. 186p. 187p. 188p. 189p. 190p.
191p. 192p. 193
Issue Table of ContentsThe Journal of Religion, Vol. 66, No. 2,
Apr., 1986Front MatterTruth or Meaning: Ricoeur versus Frei on
Biblical Narrative [pp. 117 - 140]Cultural Hermeneutics: The
Concept of Imagination in the Phenomenological Approaches of Henry
Corbin and Mircea Eliade [pp. 141 - 156]The Parable of the Loaves
[pp. 157 - 172]The Trinity and the Incarnation: Hegel and Classical
Approaches [pp. 173 - 193]Review ArticlesSoloveitchik's Halakhic
Platonism [pp. 194 - 198]Alfred North Whitehead: A Biography [pp.
199 - 202]
Book Reviewsuntitled [pp. 203 - 204]untitled [pp. 205 -
206]untitled [p. 206]untitled [p. 207]untitled [pp. 208 -
209]untitled [pp. 209 - 210]untitled [pp. 210 - 212]untitled [pp.
212 - 213]untitled [pp. 213 - 214]untitled [pp. 214 - 215]untitled
[pp. 215 - 216]untitled [pp. 216 - 217]untitled [pp. 217 -
218]untitled [pp. 219 - 220]untitled [pp. 220 - 221]untitled [pp.
221 - 222]untitled [pp. 222 - 223]untitled [pp. 223 - 224]untitled
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Book Notesuntitled [p. 228]untitled [p. 228]untitled [p.
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The Editors' Bookshelf: Art, Literature, and Religion [pp. 234 -
236]Back Matter