Eric Voegelin on the Incarnate Christ (Essay‪)‬

In his 1965 Ingersoll Lecture "Immortality: Experience and Symbol" Eric Voegelin declared that "the symbolism of incarnation would express the experience, with a date in history, of God reaching into man and revealing him as the Presence that is the flow of presence from the beginning of the world to its end. History is Christ written large." (1) Despite the fact that the Incarnation was a subject to which Voegelin devoted relatively little space in his extensive writings, as this statement indicates it does play a critical role in his philosophy. Nevertheless, as Mark Mitchell observed at the beginning of an essay critical of Voegelin, "Eric Voegelin's treatment of Christianity is notoriously problematic" (2) in the sense that it demands at the very least a revaluation of the meaning of core Christian beliefs, particularly, as some critics have pointed out, the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Resurrection. Gerhart Niemeyer, for example, who deeply admired and was greatly influenced by Voegelin's work, nonetheless expressed disappointment at Voegelin's inadequate treatment of the historical person of Christ in The Ecumenic Age. (3) Mitchell argues that because Voegelin's philosophy cannot account for fallen human nature and salvation it is "simply inadequate." (4) David Walsh characterized Voegelin's treatment of Christianity as incomplete and unsatisfactory, Bruce Douglass argued that Voegelin lacks "a sense of the Gospel as salvation in the specifically Christian sense," and others such as John Gueguen and Frederick Wilhelmsen have also pointed out what they see as significant problems in Voegelin's understanding of Christianity. (5) Ultimately all of these criticisms raise a question about Voegelin's understanding of Christ and the Incarnation. Despite their serious reservations about the implications of Voegelin's philosophy for Christian belief, these same critics do not reject Voegelin's philosophy out of hand because they find too much common ground with Ellis Sandoz who "never doubted that Voegelin was profoundly Christian" (although not a "Christian philosopher" because of his desire to maintain an impartial stance) since "the whole of his discourse was luminous with devotion to the truth of divine reality." (6) That is, Voegelin's philosophy resonates so powerfully with the soul's hunger for God that it cannot be simply dismissed. This creates a dilemma for Christians who believe in traditional Christianity but also find profound truth in Voegelin. I shall argue that despite the insights by which Voegelin en-hances our understanding of Scripture and Christianity there remains a fundamental incongruity between his philosophical analysis of the Incarnation and traditional Christian belief.