DIVINE EMBODIMENT IN HINDUISM AND CHRISTIANITY

God as person, God as body

Celebrating personal embodiment as divine

The highest celebration of human embodiment is the ascription of embodiment to God . The Hebrew tradition, which Christianity inherited and adapted, off ers a few texts that suggest such embodiment: God walks in a garden (Genesis 3:8), speaks with Moses face to face (Exodus 33:11), and covers Moses' eyes with his (God's) hand, preventing Moses from seeing his face, but allowing Moses to see his back ). Yet, even as the Hebrew tradition off ers a few texts that suggest divine embodiment, it also denies any ability to image this God. The second commandment warns, You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, punishing children for the iniquity of parents. Moreover, as the Hebrew tradition matures, it increasingly insists that God transcends the limitations of embodiment; even the heavens cannot hold God (1 Kings 8:27), who fi lls the heavens and the earth (Jeremiah 23:24), and stretches from the beginning to the end of time (Psalm 90:2). Later, the Christian tradition adopts the Hebraic suspicion of divine limitation, baldly insisting that "God is spirit" (John 4:24), cannot be seen, and dwells in unapproachable light (1 Timothy 6:16). Even as Western theism came to reject divine embodiment, the idea achieved orthodoxy in certain strands of Hinduism, such as Vai ṣ ṇ avism. The Ś r ī vai ṣ ṇ ava theologian, R ā m ā nuja, for example, asserts that God is fully embodied, located in Vaiku ṇ ṭ h ā , yet omnipresent on earth. R ā m ā nuja even emphasizes the full particularity of the divine body by describing its magnificent physical appearance (R ā m ā nuja 1956 , §220, pp. 172-73). Indeed, R ā m ā nuja celebrates God's particularity and relationality by lifting up Ś r ī vai ṣ ṇ avism's personal name for God, N ā r ā ya ṇ a. N ā r ā ya ṇ a is not a generic "God," an Infi nite Absolute, or undiff erentiated consciousness. N ā r ā ya ṇ a is fully a person, with a personal appearance, personal name, and personality. The ground of all being and all beings is not being itself; it is personhood itself. And not only personhood, but personhood-in-relation (Sydnor 2011 , p. 8).

Moreover, for R ā m ā nuja and/ or his developing tradition, salvation is entirely physical and personal-to see N ā r ā ya ṇ a, and to be seen by N ā r ā ya ṇ a, in the splendors of Vaiku ṇ ṭ ha. Salvation is not a change in our underlying state of being. It is not freedom from limitation, fi nitude, or embodiment. Instead, salvation is the perfect placement of our God-given bodies within the vision of God, where we dance in the joy of worship. For R ā m ā nuja and his Ś r ī vai ṣ ṇ ava tradition, salvation is continuing fi nitude in relationship to the infi nite N ā r ā ya ṇ a, whose transcendence is exceeded only by his accessibility.

But how can N ā r ā ya ṇ a be somewhere and everywhere, in Vaiku ṇ ṭ ha yet sustaining all reality, at the same time? Some Christian theologians reject any possibility of divine embodiment based on this tension. They reason that, if God has a body, then God has a location. And if God has a location, then God must be somewhere, not everywhere. Therefore, God would not be omnipresent, and there would be places that God would not be. In our deepest shame, we could hide from God. In our deepest grief, God could not rescue us.

R ā m ā nuja elegantly resolves this conundrum. He dedicates his Ved ā rthasan ̱ graha to Vi ṣ ṇ u (N ā r ā ya ṇ a) reclining on Ś e ṣ a, the cosmic serpent who fl oats on the primordial ocean. In this image, Vi ṣ ṇ u dreams the universe into creation, which resides within the dream of Vi ṣ ṇ u. Within Vi ṣ ṇ u's dream, we have a location, as can Vi ṣ ṇ u. At the same time, Vi ṣ ṇ u's dream is pervaded by Vi ṣ ṇ u's mind, which sustains all the elements of the dream. Hence, Vi ṣ ṇ u is somewhere, producing the dream, while Vi ṣ ṇ u is everywhere, pervading the dream. And Vi ṣ ṇ u can be somewhere again, within the dream. Vi ṣ ṇ u is in three places at once. Hence, divine locatedness, much like human locatedness, cannot be reduced to simplistic either/ or binaries. If a daydreaming student can be in a classroom, yet mentally on a beach, and interacting with other mental persons on that beach, then surely N ā r ā ya ṇ a can be in Vaiku ṇ ṭ ha, ever-present within the universe, and personally present to us, as well. God can be embodied, and God can embody us, without contradiction. God's body, unlike ours, is without limitation.

Could the Christian God be personally embodied?

Remarkably, R ā m ā nuja's theology anticipates and answers most orthodox Christian objections to divine personal embodiment, i.e., the belief that the ultimate God has a personal body. Some Christian theologians, such as Irenaeus, have suggested that the image of God is in the body, although the weight of the tradition has denied it (Voss Roberts 2017 , pp. 102-104). Feuerbach argues that all thought about God, especially thought of God as embodied, is necessarily anthropomorphic . Due to our epistemological limitations, we make God in our own image, projecting our being onto the Godhead (Feuerbach 1957(Feuerbach [ 1841, p. 111). R ā m ā nuja simply replies that God has graciously created us (or better, graciously sustains us) in the image of God-we are theomorphic . Accusations of anthropomorphism read the situation in the wrong direction. Instead of worrying about anthropomorphism (making God in our own image), we should celebrate our theomorphism (being made in the image of God; Sydnor 2018 , pp. 5-6).

Aquinas argues against embodiment, asserting that embodiment necessitates fi nitude. The infi nite God could not be constrained by a fi nite body (Aquinas 1955(Aquinas -1957. R ā m ā nuja replies that an embodied N ā r ā ya ṇ a can indeed imagine the infi nite universe, thereby sustaining, pervading, and controlling the infi nite, even while located and embodied (R ā m ā nuja 1956 , §95, 76). Aquinas rebuts that if God is embodied, then God would be something that we know sensibly rather than intellectually. But, since intellectual knowledge is higher, more universal, and more reliable than sensible knowledge, God must be something or someone we know intellectually. Hence, God must be disembodied (Aquinas 1955(Aquinas -1957. But R ā m ā nuja is not working within Aquinas's Platonic hierarchy of being. For R ā m ā nuja, all is of God-spirit, intellect, and matter-hence both material nature and intellectual truth are fully divine. One cannot be ranked over the other, as God cannot be ranked over God (Sydnor 2015 , p. 46). St. John of Damascus taps in by arguing that, if God is embodied, then God's body would displace all other bodies. Since two bodies cannot occupy the same space, and God is omnipresent, there wouldn't be any room for anyone else in a universe sustained by an embodied God (Damascus 1958 , p. 171). But, as we have seen above, R ā m ā nuja's doctrine of dreaming creation addresses this objection. N ā r ā ya ṇ a dreams the universe into being. He is an embodied dreamer, pervading his dream, within which he participates. His dreaming embodiment is hospitable to other embodied beings (like the boy, daydreaming that he is on the beach with his friends); indeed, it invites them into being (R ā m ā nuja 1956 , Dedication).

R ā m ā nuja answers by anticipation most orthodox Christian objections to divine embodiment. His success re-situates the question of divine embodiment for Christianity. The Christian tradition's insistence on the disembodiment of God is no longer a rationally compelled conclusion. Instead, it is a theological choice, with theological and pastoral implications. If we relate as persons through our bodies, then how does God express personhood without a body? How can we celebrate our own embodiment, if the source of our being is disembodied? And perhaps most importantly, what is salvation for embodied beings? R ā m ā nuja's answers to these questions cannot simply become the Christian answers, but they can help Christians to generate new questions, and perhaps, new answers as well.

Body of the Goddess, body of the woman

To celebrate the female body

Feminists, both Hindu and Christian, have long labored to celebrate embodiment. Rejecting any dualism of soul and body, which prefers the soul to the body, they have instead argued for the nondualism of soul and body. We are best conceptualized as embodied souls or ensouled bodies. The two are inseparable, interdependent, and compenetrating. Each fl ows into the other, supports, informs, and fulfi lls the other. Soul and body are conceptually distinguishable, but experientially inseparable. They are two-soul and body-as one person (Hilkert 1995 , pp. 197-98).

In this section, we will compare (semi-)divine embodiment in the person of the Virgin Mary according to the Roman Catholic tradition with divine embodiment in the goddess Dev ī according to the Ś ā kta (Goddess-worshipping) tradition. On the one hand, this comparison may seem unequal. The Virgin Mary is, after all, an historic human, whereas Dev ī is the eternal Goddess. But closer scrutiny reveals more parallels. According to the Dev ī G ī t ā , Dev ī is the mother of all gods and goddesses (Brown 1998 , p. 79, 130). According to the Council of Ephesus, Mary is Theotokos , the Mother of God. Moreover, if we consider the role that Mary plays in Catholic practice, then her status draws closer to that of Dev ī . Like Dev ī , she hears prayer, appears to devotees, performs miracles, charges locations with her sacred power so that they become pilgrimage sites, and blesses followers through her image in icons and statues. According to Catholic dogma in Lumen Gentium , Mary is Mediatrix with, but adjutant to, Christ (Vatican Council 1965 , III.62). And in the popular but nondogmatic imagination, she is designated Co-Redemptrix with, but adjutant to, Christ (John Paul II 1985 , p. 7). Thus, while there may appear to be a superfi cial imbalance between the two, in practice they provide a rich resource for comparison (Clooney 2005 , pp. 16-23).

The Virgin Mary exceeds humanity through her status as both virgin (symbol of female purity) and mother (symbol of life-giving nurture). As such, she expresses twin, though exclusive, blessings of femininity in one person. On the one hand, the capacity for a female body to birth God, and receive adoration, would seem to celebrate-perhaps even divinize-women's embodiment, even in everyday life. For instance, artists regularly portrayed Mary nursing the infant Jesus, the Madonna Lactans , until Gutenberg's printing press popularized pornography and sexualized breasts (Gripsrud 2008 , pp. 34-36).

So, the Christian tradition, in the person of Mary, off ers resources for the celebration of female embodiment as an expression of divinity. But, on the other hand, Mary also poses challenges. Indeed, one way to scorn sexual reproduction and women's perseverance through labor is to affi rm the perpetual virginity of Mary. To idealize her as simultaneously Virgin and Mother creates an unattainable ideal, an exemplar who sets an impossible example. Mary may rise to mystical heights of holiness, but all other women must fail. In this analysis, rather than affi rming the inherent sanctity of female embodiment, the Virgin-Mother concept of Mary threatens all women with felt inadequacy (Warner 1976 , pp. 336-38).

Th e menstruating Goddess

What if female reproductive processes were fully divinized? What if both women and men could worship a goddess so thoroughly embodied that she explicitly menstruated? Hinduism off ers such a goddess in its most authoritative Ś ā kta (Goddess-worshipping) text, the Dev ī G ī t ā . The Dev ī G ī t ā , or Song of the Goddess, is a philosophical treatise found within the much longer Dev ī Bh ā gavatapur ā ṇ a. It expresses devotion to the Goddess as identical with Brahman, or supreme reality. Hence, philosophically she is impersonal: ultimate truth, pure consciousness, and highest intelligence, pervading all beings even as she sustains them in their being (Dev ī G ī t ā , 2.2-3, 3.16-17). Yet, devotionally she is personal: the compassionate protector, nurturing mother, and gracious ruler who "is fi lled with the sentiment of passion and is ever distressed by the sorrows of her devotees; Disposed to kindness, she is the Mother bearing a crescent moon in her locks" (Ibid., 9.41).

The Dev ī G ī t ā asserts that the Goddess is the fundamental source of all reality, including the gods themselves. Hence, the Goddess's supremacy is absolute: she is within, beneath, and beyond the universe that she sustains, preceding and exceeding it both ontologically and chronologically (Ibid., 1.49-50). Dev ī the Goddess is the supreme being and the ground of being, the soul of the Cosmos and the Cosmos itself, delusion and liberation, pure consciousness and maternal compassion, utter transcendence and utter immanence. Her supremacy is so absolute that the gods, even the greatest god, Vi ṣ ṇ u, worship her, and she rewards their worship with boons and freedom from fear (Ibid., 1.20-25, 55-58). And she is embodied; indeed, she is so embodied that she menstruates (Ibid.,.

At Kamakhya Temple in Assam, the Goddess's menstruation is iconographically explicit, in accordance with its origin legend. Ś iva's fi rst wife, Sat ī , immolated herself after her father insulted her husband. Overwrought by grief, Ś iva began a dance of destruction with her charred body; this dance threatened to destroy the world. Vi ṣ ṇ u intervened and stopped the dance by slowly cutting away Sat ī 's body until Ś iva had no one left to dance with. Each body part fell to earth and became a ś akti p ī ṭ ha , a seat of the divine feminine energy. Kamakhya lies where her genitalia fell (Dobia 2007 , pp. 69-70). Appropriately, the main shrine is a yoni, an iconic depiction of a vagina. This yoni is a naturally occurring rock fi ssure perpetually moistened by ground water (Shin 2010 , p. 5). Devotees decorate the yoni with sindoor, a red-orange powder, further indicating the mythological origin of the temple.

Here, we have a confl uence of gender, myth, theology, and practice stifl ed in Christianity: the Goddess Dev ī is the source of reality, including all gods and goddesses. She is also an embodied female deity, so embodied that she menstruates somewhere among us ; specifi cally, she menstruates in Kamakhya Temple, which is concretely located in the metropolis of Guwahati, in the state of Assam, in the country of India (Dobia 2000 , pp. 231-33). Devotees honor the Goddess's blood as life-giving: coordinated with the monsoon rains, essential to a successful harvest, emblematic of human reproduction, and supportive of social order (Urban 2008 , p. 514).

Paradoxically, as of this writing in 2019, women who are menstruating cannot enter Kamakhya Temple. And no one can enter Kamakhya Temple during Dev ī 's annual three-day menstrual cycle, when the temple closes. Like most temples in India, Kamakhya deems menstruating women to be impure and polluting-even the Goddess herself (Ibid., p. 501). In so doing, they join a general patriarchal tradition of stigmatizing female reproductive processes. The traditions frequently deem these processes not only contaminating, but contagious as well, since the menstruating woman's uncleanness can be communicated to others in her household. For this reason, both the Bible (Leviticus 15:19-24) and the Laws of Manu (4.41-42) prescribe shunning menstruating women, at least partly, to protect men from impurity.

Is the Goddess a feminist?

Many Christian feminists, both female and male, have advocated liberating female imagery for God. Harkening to Mary Daly's admonition that "if God is male then the male is God," they prefer gender-balanced and gender-neutral language for God, insisting that both genders image the divine. However, Kamakhya's celebrations and prohibitions question this eff ort. The high status of the Goddess confl icts with the low status of women, but she does not raise that status. The Goddess is worshipped by men, even gods; women must worship their husband, no matter how vicious, as a god ( Laws of Manu , 5.154). Devotees celebrate the life-giving power of menstrual blood but fear it as well. The (menstruating) Goddess liberates (Dev ī G ī t ā , 7.11-27), but menstruating women contaminate. The menstruating Goddess resides in the temple; menstruating women are banned from the temple. The Goddess is free from social conventions of modesty; women must be modest.

Nevertheless, the current failure of female divinity to produce feminist liberation does not warrant abandoning gender-balanced imagery for God; it is one datum in a very large data set. While there is little sociological evidence for female empowerment through the feminine divine, we cannot know the deep psychological eff ect that Goddess-worship provokes in women or men. Moreover, from the perspective of the Christian tradition, numerous other justifi cations for inclusive language proff er themselves: Christian biblical texts that suggest a feminine aspect of God; the panentheistic residency of God in all persons; a religious commitment to egalitarianism; a progressive commitment to universalism; basic ideals of fairness; the desire for young girls to become strong women; the desire for young boys to become feminist men. The feminization of the divine will not necessarily help, but it may help us achieve gender justice, if we allow it to . In other words, fault for the co-existence of female divinity and male chauvinism may lie more with us than the Goddess (Pintchman 2000 , pp. 197-99).

Embodiment as avatar, embodiment as incarnation

Descent without modifi cation

Both Hinduism and Christianity assert that God acts in human form on earth, but the traditions fl esh out this conviction by very diff erent means, and both diff er internally as well. Comparing them on this topic presents grave diffi culties, as the settings of one theological register tend to distort reception of the other. For example, the term "divine embodiment" has more Christian than Hindu overtones, since the Christian tradition broadly agrees that God at least assumed a human body like our own. (Indeed, this was the minimalist assertion of the Alexandrian "Word-Flesh" Christology, whereas the Antiochene "Word-Human" Christologies asserted that God assumed our entire humanity in the person of Jesus Christ; Schwarz 1998, pp. 152-56). As we shall see, the Hindu tradition generally asserts that God may appear in human form, but in no way possesses or, more importantly, experiences a body like ours. Indeed, were any god to experience temporal, material existence as we do , then this experience would disqualify that god as God. For example, the polemical Ś aivite text Ś ivajñ ā na Siddhiy ā r Parapakkam declares that K ṛ ṣ ṇ a's incarnations resulted from a curse, caused him sorrow and pain, and stained him. Therefore, he is unworthy of worship and his followers should turn to Ś iva (Balasubramanian 2013 , pp. 342-44).

Ś r ī vai ṣ ṇ ava theologian Ved ā nta De ś ika (1268-1369) notes the many avatars (descents) of Vi ṣ ṇ u to earth and the apparent suff ering of some of these avatars. Yet, he insists that this suff ering is the play-acting of Vi ṣ ṇ u, not the real suff ering of a human: in the stories of the avatars, the distress is only of the nature of play-acting and that, too, has compassion as its cause. "It is of the nature of sport to the Omnipotent" (De ś ika 1956 , pp. 239-40). According to De ś ika, Vi ṣ ṇ u cannot truly suff er. Human suff ering is the result of sin, ignorance, and imprudence ( aviveka ). Karma, which is administered by Vi ṣ ṇ u, binds individual souls ( j ī vas ) to prak ṛ ti , within which they suff er. This suff ering is a blessing, since it chastises humans for their failures, impelling them to surrender to their true Lord (Ibid,. This is Vi ṣ ṇ u's scheme of salvation, which Vi ṣ ṇ u creates, executes, and enjoys. Vi ṣ ṇ u is the playwright; he may act in his play, but he is only acting, and he always controls the plot. Devotees recognize his gracious control and know that his suff ering is only apparent; only the wicked think that his suff ering is real, that he can be defeated, and that they can seize control of the plot (Ibid,.

When Vi ṣ ṇ u appears in human form, when he acts in his play, he is not composed of the same material that composes our human bodies. We are condemned by our karma to association with prak ṛ ti (the profane psycho/ physical complex), and this association contracts our knowledge, thereby causing suff ering. Since Vi ṣ ṇ u is perfect knowledge, and prak ṛ ti contracts knowledge, Vi ṣ ṇ u cannot be associated with prak ṛ ti . Vi ṣ ṇ u must be composed of some other substance, which De ś ika designates ś uddha-sattva . Ayyangar translates this term as "pure being," but it could also be loosely translated as pure goodness, absolute knowledge, or perfect serenity. Indeed, all of Vaiku ṇ ṭ h ā , Vi ṣ ṇ u's heaven, is composed of ś uddha-sattva , including Vi ṣ ṇ u's devotees. There is no suff ering or ignorance in Vaiku ṇ ṭ h ā and, when Vi ṣ ṇ u descends to earth to restore the dharma, he retains his substrate of ś uddha-sattva . Hence, there can be no suff ering or ignorance in Vi ṣ ṇ u (Ibid, pp. 66-67).

De ś ika paints Vi ṣ ṇ u as the savior we need. As suff ering humans, we can fall into the pit of despair. Unable to extricate ourselves, we need a God who can pull us out, not a God who jumps into the pit with us, denying us hope of rescue. When we are grief-stricken, our assurance comes from the presence of the transcendent God, ever compassionate and ever reposed, who extends the right hand of deliverance. The infi nite bliss of God promises to remove our suff ering, not succumb to it. God's love lifts us into God's serenity; it does not sacrifi ce the divine serenity to our human desperation. Indeed, St. Augustine seems to agree with De ś ika: "A man bends over and extends his hand to someone lying down, for he does not cast himself down so that they are both lying, but only bends down to raise up the one lying down" (Augustine 1981, p. 181, quoted in Eikrem 2018).

Seeming to descend

The early Christian tradition off ered concepts of embodiment analogous to that of Ved ā nta De ś ika, in which Christ only seems to assume a human body, the material reality of which is illusory. Utilizing the Greek verb doke ĩ n , "to seem," Christian theologians of embodiment derided these disembodied theologies of Christ as Docetism . They also deemed them heretical.

The controversy over the reality of God's enfl eshment may extend to the earliest Christian communities, since the New Testament itself wavers on the nature of Jesus' body. On the one hand, some biblical passages suggest that Christ is disembodied, or at least diff erently embodied from regular humans; he walks on water (Mark 6:45-53), is able to fast from food for forty days (Luke 4:1-2), and slips through angry mobs like a mist (Luke 4:30). Indeed, so attractive was this spiritualized Jesus that the second century Gnostic gospel Acts of John claimed that Jesus walked without leaving footprints (Acts of John, 93) and was never crucifi ed; the true Jesus talked to John while the empty body of Jesus was crucifi ed (Ibid., 97).

Most of what we know about these early theologians of spirit comes from arguments against them made by the theologians of embodiment, who won the struggle for control of the church. Although the (later deemed) orthodox polemicists rarely record the motivations of the (pejoratively designated) Docetists, we may infer several possibilities, some of which resonate with De ś ika's own concerns. First, Gnostic sects in the classical world frequently asserted the superiority of spirit to matter and deemed salvation to be (at least in part) the release of spirit from matter. God's appearance in Christ was to this end, not to sacramentalize matter through the divine presence (Pagels 1979 , p. 144). Indeed, in the Valentinian (Gnostic) tradition, the secret sacrament of redemption was named apolytrosis , or "release," a term that had political as well as religious overtones (Ibid., p. 37). Second, absolute monotheists believed that Jesus was the appearance of the one God on earth, rather than the appearance of a unique person within the tripersonal Godhead. Because the source of matter, space, and time cannot be limited by matter, space, and time, God's appearance as a human must have been just that-appearance (Greek: dók ē sis ). Third, many Greeks shared De ś ika's conviction that God is impassible, so utterly transcendent that our actions do not aff ect the Godhead. God acts but is not acted upon. The suff ering of Jesus poses certain challenges to this view, which Docetists like Cerinthus (according to his detractors) addressed by asserting that the spirit of Christ only temporarily assumed Jesus' body at his baptism, leaving it before his crucifi xion. Thus, the divine did not suff er through the passion (Hall 2000 , p. 173).

Descent as incarnation

Concurrent with these celebrations of spirit over (and sometimes against) matter, other Christians were asserting the basic goodness of embodied, temporal, material life. These assertions extend all the way back into the New Testament, which repeatedly emphasizes the fl eshly nature of Christ. Speaking of the incarnation, the Gospel of John begins: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…and the Word became fl esh [ sarx ] and lived among us" (John 1:1, 14a). Speaking of the resurrection, the Gospel of Luke records Jesus' fully embodied return to the disciples, his invitation to touch him, and even his request for and consumption of food in their presence . Refl ecting on these events and their implicit theological assertions, the biblical writer John emphasizes the centrality of divine embodiment by declaring, "Every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the fl esh [ en sarki ] is from God" (1 John 4:2b, italics added).

These early Christian confessions of the embodiment of God in Christ raise perplexing theological questions. God is everywhere; Jesus was somewhere. God is infi nite; Jesus was fi nite. God transcends time; Jesus was within time. God is omnipotent; Jesus died, powerless, on the cross. How then could Jesus be divine and human, reconciling these heretofore mutually exclusive opposites in one person?

As theologians studied, debated, and spun their thoughtworlds, they eventually concluded that Christ could not be half human and half God, a curious admixture of earthly and heavenly elements. The Christ had to be fully human and fully God. According to Gregory of Nazianzus, if God saves humankind by taking part in our humanity, and God wants to save our entire humanity, then God must assume our full humanity-memory, reason, will, soul-the divine and human co-existing, without confusion or separation, in one person, Jesus the Christ (Gregory of Nazianzus 1894 [ c. 380 ], p. 440). Christologically, Gregory refuses to assemble a God-Man, confi guring divine and human natures like some sort of jigsaw puzzle. Instead, the two natures join without fusing, in the fullness of both.

The Orthodox Church agreed with Gregory's maxim, "That which was not assumed has not been redeemed." Gregory's insight became dogma at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, which declared Jesus to be both fully human and fully divine, the Savior in whom the divine and human natures are united without confusion. But how absolute was the divine assumption of human vulnerability?

Th e God-forsaken God

According to the twentieth-century theologian Jürgen Moltmann, this assumption was absolute. If Christ came to redeem suff ering, then Christ had to suff er, unto the deepest form of suff ering: God-forsakenness. Jesus cried from the cross, " Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani ?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34). This cry harkens back to Psalm 22:1, from Jesus' own scriptures, which reads, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?" (Psalm 22:1). In Jesus, God the Son has taken the God-forsakenness of the psalmist onto himself (Moltmann 1995b , pp. 175-77). God the Father must suff er his Son's suff ering and death. While Moltmann rejects any "death of God" language, he insists that God has taken even God-forsakenness into the Godhead, thereby redeeming it.

Moltmann's theology of divine descent creates "a confl ict of interest between God who has become man and man who wishes to become God" (Moltmann 1993 , p. 71). We try to rise to God, only to fi nd that God is always already here. We seek to become God, only to fi nd that God has become human. And, by assuming our humanity, God in Christ reveals our humanity to us. Yet we, in response, dehumanized the perfectly human. Our crucifi xion of Christ refl ects our continuing rejection of the divine potential within us. Confronted with God as human, we respond by dehumanizing God, because we cannot bear the truth of our own inhumanity. The crucifi xion is an act of avoidance.

Wounds that scar, scars that heal

Moltmann's theology of the cross would be dismal were it not for his faith in the resurrection. Suff ering, rejection, and death do not have the last word; joy does. God raises Jesus from the dead as a symbol of divine perseverance, radical forgiveness, and the sacred promise of new life, made available in this life . Understood this way, resurrection is continually available. We experience resurrection in the healing of spiritual wounds, in the reconciliation of broken relationships, and in the liberation of the oppressed from bondage. Thus, faith in the resurrection does not dull us with patient expectation of heaven; rather, it energizes us with hope for the Kingdom of God and invites us to enact resurrection in history (Moltmann 1994 , pp. 81-82).

Moltmann portrays Jesus as the savior we need. As suff ering humans, we can fall into the pit of despair. Yet we can fi nd the divine presence even here, for Christ himself so despaired. Moltmann may introduce the fi rst truly omnipresent God, the true God who precedes us and accompanies us through every situation, including those situations in which God is absent. God the Son experiences the absence of God the Father, who anguishes over the abandonment of the Son. Through Jesus' experience, the healing power of God is available to us, even when we cannot feel the presence of God. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" cries Jesus from the cross, echoing Psalm 22, and assuring us that he too has known abandonment. But, in echoing Psalm 22, he also reminds us of that poem's faith-fi lled conclusion:

You who fear the Lord, praise him! All you off spring of Jacob, glorify him; stand in awe of him, all you off spring of Israel! For he did not despise or abhor the affl iction of the affl icted; he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him. For Christians, the arc of Psalm 22, from despair to trust, fi nds historical expression in the arc of Jesus' life, through which the extremes of suff ering and joy are expressed, with joy receiving the fi nal word. According to the Christian faith, we too can trust joy, for God has promised life a fi nal victory over death and joy a fi nal victory over suff ering.

Th e infi nitely compassionate God

No theologian speaks for the entirety of her or his tradition. Ved ā nta De ś ika and Moltmann certainly do not speak for theirs. Still, in each we get a taste of the feeling for life that their subtradition off ers. And, by comparing the two, we gain deeper critical insight into the choices that theologians must make. Moltmann proposes a suff ering God that De ś ika would fi nd incomprehensible, or even degrading. For De ś ika, a God stripped of majesty is no God. But according to Moltmann, De ś ika's God of glory turns a blind eye to the depth of our affl iction. The divine splendor, recoiling from stain, abandons us to our abandonment. Moltmann criticizes the utter transcendence of De ś ika's God; De ś ika criticizes the utter immanence of Moltmann's God. Does divine embodiment extend into the hell of human bodily suff ering? Or does divinity instead stand above, compassionate yet detached, off ering a vision of bliss to those with tears in their eyes?

Who is right, De ś ika or Moltmann? Maybe both are, and God's loving kindness exceeds the apparent exclusivity of our theologies. In this view, God appears to the suff ering in the form that they most need. This God, whose compassion exceeds any limiting nature, would appear as spirit to the intellectual and body to the dancer, as menstruating Goddess to the female and as Virgin Mother to the orphan, as the face of serenity to the anxious and as weeping co-suff erer to the bereaved. In other words, God may be infi nite precisely so that God can be particular. And each form of God would be objectively real, not illusory, invested with the fullness of the divine. Out of love, the Infi nite Absolute becomes the Finite Particular within infi nite particular situations, so to heal all persons.