Divine Authorship, the Incarnation, and human avatars

Jesus replied: “Isn't it written in your Law, I have said, you are gods?” Scripture calls those to whom God's word came “gods”, and scripture can't be abolished. So how can you say that the one whom the Father has made holy and sent into the world insults God because he said, “I am God's Son”? (John 10.34-36)

The central paradox of the Incarnation is that Christ is both the unique embodiment of God in human form, and also a prototype of what ALL humans can be when they realize their true nature. But if Christ is unique, how can he also be a Pattern for all other humans? By definition, unique seems to be the opposite of universal. 

The paradox begins to be unravelled when we realize that, according to Christ’s own words in John 10, Christ is God in historic, human form, while all other humans are gods (with a lower case g) who reflect God (with an upper case G). Yet humans can only realize we are “gods” if we strip off our false masks and selfish sin to realize that we “live and move and exist” in God as an expression of God (cf. Acts 17). This universal implication of the Incarnation is substantially the same as the Hindu ideal of the avatar. Hinduism teaches that we are all God in our deepest self, and that when humans realize their inner Divinity, we become avatars of God (such as Krishna and Radha, Rama and Sita). In this theory, all humans are avatars, or embodiments of the Divine. So what accounts for the distinctiveness of Christ as the unique incarnation of God in a world full of (potential) avatars of God?

I’ve tried a number or metaphors and analogies to express the sameness and distinction between the what Christ is and what humans are, to distinguish the Incarnation and avatars. The truths being affirmed can be stated concisely in propositional form:

1. Christ is fully human. 
2. Christ is fully God. 
3. What happened in Christ is unique in human history. 
4. Humans are distinct from God: We are finite and limited. 
5. Humans are expressions of God: We are the living “image of God”. 
6. What happened in Christ is a Pattern for all other humans. 

Yet, how do we keep all six of these theological plates spinning at the same time? Affirming all these truths require a story or analogy to help us hold them all together in the same brain space (even though every analogy falls apart at some point). So here is yet another analogy from the literary world: A writer of a fictional novel creates a myriad of characters to express a story. For each of these characters, the author knows them and inhabits them fully. And yet, these characters are NOT the author themself, even though they are created and animated by the author. And even though they are self-expressions of the author, many authors also report that the characters they create are capable of doing acts they disagree with (which they would not choose if they were in the shoes of the character). They even report that their characters do things which are surprising to them, even though they themselves create and write them at every moment of their existence. So the characters in a story are both one with, and distinct from, the author who creates them. And this distinction is positively willed by the author as a means of making unique characters who can learn and grow during the story. 

Compare this with the possibility that the author could write themselves into their own story as a character within that story. Then the author would experience the limitations and possibilities inherent in the story “from the inside” as any other character would. But they would also be the full self expression of the author, making the exact choices that the author would make in each situation, because that character is the embodiment of the author in those situations. The virtual “self” written by the author could then interact with all the other characters in the world made by the author, even though in the final analysis they are all self-expressions of the same author. 

Now, due to our human finitude, human authors necessarily can only care deeply for a limited number of characters. Some characters are central to the story, while others play bit parts or are entirely disposable. But if the Author is infinite, this is no longer a limitation. An Infinite Author can care infinitely for the entire history and fate of each and every character, in however many stories and lives they go through. And every character could find their ultimate fulfillment by realizing their unity with the Author and their purpose within the Meta-Story that holds all individual stories together. Furthermore, in each story the Author could write themselves in as their own character in that story, as a unique embodiment amongst all the other characters which also embodies facets of the Author in other ways. So if there is one story of humanity being authored in this world, there could be other stories of other kinds of persons being authored in other worlds. And in each world, the Author could write themself in as a character in all these stories. 

Thus, we can maintain the uniqueness of the Incarnation of God in a world full of avatars of the Divine. Jesus is the Author writing Godself as a character into the story of humanity. Yet, every single human is also a character written by God, in God, through God, with a distinct self from the Self which is Godself. Yet each human self is also a self-expression of that Divine Self, creating varied and unique characters which express all the possibilities held within God’s creativity. God wills to experience Reality in and through every distinct individual self, including directly becoming one of those selves in Jesus Christ. The One Infinite Self becomes many selves as an expression of joy and love, and then gathers all of these infinite self-expressions back into Godself through Christ. Ultimately, all humans find eternal fulfillment realizing that they are children of God who reflect the Son of God, as they realize they are infinite avatars of the Divine, just as Jesus is the unique Incarnation of God in human form.