Sunday, June 29, 2014

No, God is still incarnate

"The real defect in the Greek religion, as compared with the Christian, is, therefore, that in the former the manifestation [(Erscheinung)] constitutes the highest mode in which the divine being is conceived to existthe sum and substance of divinity; while in the Christian religion the manifestation is regarded only as a temporary phase of the divine [(während es in der letzteren nicht seine allgemeine Bestimmung zu erscheinen ist, sondern dieses nur als ein Moment angenommen wird)]."

     Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, [Lectures on] The philosophy of history II.ii.2 ("The objective work of art"), trans. J. Sibree; GBWW, 1st ed. (1952), vol. 46, p. 271; Berlin Werke, ed. Ph. Marheineke et al., vol. 9, ed. Eduard Gans (Berlin:  Dunker und Humblot, 1837), p. 259.
     Hegel continues as follows:
Here the manifested God dies, and elevates himself to glory; only after death is Christ represented as sitting at the right hand of God.  The Greek god, on the contrary, exists for his worshippers perennially in the manifestationonly in marble, in metal or wood, or as figured by the imagination.
The German is very different (entirely devoid of an enumeration of media) in the Berlin Werke.  This must be due to the fact that the Sibree translation of 1857 is based on the Karl Hegel manuscript first published in 1840.
Der griechische Gott ist dagegen für die Hellenen noch ein Jenseits; als in der Erscheinung perennirend ist die wahrhafte Versöhnung im ihn nicht vorhanden, denn die Erscheinung ist nicht als Moment der Subjectivität in Gott affirmativ gesetzt; . . .
     Do I mistake Hegel in thinking this account of the Incarnation seriously deficient?

No comments: