Why Mono Divine Incarnation?
Reflections on Singular Divinity in a Pluralistic World
Ed Reither
Introduction: The Provocation of the Question
Why did Christianity elevate one man—Jesus of Nazareth—not simply as a prophet or teacher, but as the singular incarnation of the eternal God? Not just godlike, not simply inspired, but God in the flesh, once and for all.
This is not a question of skepticism or belief. It’s a question of formation. Christianity, emerging from Jewish monotheism and spreading through a world rich with divine figures, chose a path of radical exclusivity: one incarnation, one savior, one revelation. Why?
The intention here is not to answer that question definitively, but to reflect on its emergence and implications. The aim is to look at what preceded it, what surrounded it, and what may have been lost when the tradition hardened into singularity.
The Hebrew Root: Monotheism Without Incarnation
Monotheism, as it emerged from ancient Israel, was a decisive break from the surrounding religious landscape. The God of the Hebrew Bible was not simply the highest among gods, but the only God, unseeable, unnameable, beyond image.
The Shema (“Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One”) stood as a declaration of this divine singularity. God could not be made visible. The prophets, even Moses, encountered God in veiled forms: fire, cloud, voice—but never as a man.
Even in the later Second Temple period, where Jewish thought began to entertain intermediary figures—Wisdom, Logos, the “Son of Man” in Daniel, or the angel Metatron in Enochic literature—these were not incarnations. They were manifestations, agents, bridges. The line was still there. God did not become human.
This is the religious world Jesus was born into. And it’s the theological world his followers would eventually stretch, and then break.
The Plural World of Divine Men
Outside of Israel, the ancient world was full of what the Greeks called theioi andres — divine men. Figures like Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Apollonius of Tyana were said to heal the sick, raise the dead, teach wisdom, and commune with gods. In India, spiritual realization was not only accepted, it was expected. Avatars, sages, and siddhas emerged century after century.
In that environment, divinity was a spectrum, not a binary. Gods could descend. Humans could ascend. Sacred biographies blurred the line between myth and history, miracle and memory. The divine wasn’t located in one person, but spread across many.
So when stories about Jesus began to circulate—healing, exorcising, forgiving sins, raising the dead—they weren’t entirely out of place. He fit into an existing cultural imagination. In fact, as Adolf Harnack points out, prophetic figures were not at all absent in 1st-century Judaism. They were numerous: John the Baptist was hailed as a prophet, the Essenes were believed to possess prophetic gifts, and figures like Theudas and the Egyptian claimed visionary authority. Even Josephus styled himself a prophet. The people were not only open to prophecy—they expected it. Prophets were believed capable of miracles, and even of returning from the dead. So Jesus was not greeted as something alien or unimaginable. He was, in many ways, a recognizable figure. What was different was what came next.
Begotten, Not Made
If we’re going to ask why Jesus came to be understood not just as a teacher or prophet, but as the one and only incarnation of the divine, we have to stop for a moment at the Council of Nicaea. That’s where a certain narrowing began—one that shaped the theological world we’ve inherited, even if we’re not always aware of it.
By the early fourth century, there were many interpretations of who or what Jesus actually was. Some thought he was a man specially chosen by God—perhaps anointed in spirit, but human through and through. Others leaned toward the idea of Jesus as a divine being who appeared in human form but didn’t fully suffer or die like the rest of us. Still others tried to hold both together in different ways.
The debate that Nicaea was meant to settle wasn’t about whether Jesus mattered—it was about how he mattered. Was he a created being, a kind of bridge between God and the world? Or was he, in some way, God Himself?
Arius, the Alexandrian priest whose name still carries the weight of controversy, held that Jesus, the Son, was exalted but not eternal—that he was begotten, yes, but not of the same essence as the Father. For Arius, there was a time when the Son was not. That view wasn’t outside the realm of ancient thinking. It made sense in a world that already understood divine hierarchies and intermediary beings—angels, daemons, demigods, the Logos. In a way, it was compatible with broader traditions in both Hellenistic and Jewish thought.
But the response of the Council was clear—and decisive. Jesus was declared to be “begotten, not made, of one substance with the Father.” Not a divine messenger. Not a lesser god. Not a philosophical Logos hovering near the divine. But God from God, Light from Light. One with the Source itself.
This wasn’t just about theological clarity. It was also about authority—about closing the door on competing narratives and fixing a boundary around what could and could not be said. Over the next several centuries, councils would continue to refine this stance, working out Christ’s two natures, the role of Mary, and the language that must be used to speak of divine incarnation. Each move edged the tradition toward a more rigid singularity.
By the time of the Disputation in Barcelona in 1263, these questions were no longer open for discussion. For Friar Paul Christian, Jesus wasn’t just the Messiah foretold in Jewish texts—he was the eternal God made flesh, a truth now protected by centuries of theological scaffolding. For Nachmanides, this was unacceptable. Not only because it violated the Hebrew sense of God’s radical otherness, but because it seemed to take a man—and make him an object of worship.
This tension—between divine uniqueness and human particularity—was not new. But by this point in history, the Christian claim had solidified: there is one incarnation, one divine mediator, one path. Everything else—be it the prophetic traditions of Israel, the realized sages of India, or the philosophical divine men of Greece—was either a precursor, a shadow, or a mistake.
And so we return to the question: why one? Why did a faith that emerged from the Hebrew insistence on God’s incomparability and invisibility—no image, no body, no man shall see Me and live—come to insist that one man embodied the eternal God in full?
We can trace the development historically. We can point to councils, creeds, and controversies. We can speculate about the political need for unity, or the emotional need for certainty. But even now, centuries later, we still live under the weight of that turn. The idea that God became one man, once and for all, continues to shape Western consciousness—and close off the possibility that divinity might be found, again and again, in many.
Conclusion: The Question Beneath the Question
We’ve looked at how the idea of a single divine incarnation took shape—through the struggles of early councils, the influence of empire, the collision of Jewish and Hellenistic thought, and the eventual solidifying of Christian doctrine. But behind all of that—beneath the theological formulations and historical developments—there’s another layer to this question. And it’s not historical. It’s psychological.
Because religion, in the end, isn’t just a system of belief. It’s a response to the fact that every one of us will die. That we are aware of this, and that we carry that awareness—sometimes consciously, often not—is what gives religion its depth and urgency. Morality matters, of course. So does tradition, ritual, and belonging. But none of that explains why the question of divine embodiment took the form it did. What does begin to explain it is fear, hope, and the need for certainty.
When Christianity declared that God became a single man—once, for all—it offered a powerful resolution to the anxiety of death. Here was a figure who had passed through death and come out the other side. Here was the promise that death itself had been broken, not just for him, but for anyone who believed. That’s no small thing. It’s not just theology. It’s psychological reassurance.
But this leads us back to the original question: Why one? Why a singular incarnation, rather than an ongoing presence? Why was divine reality fixed to one life, one name, one death?
Maybe that’s the wrong kind of question for religious institutions to ask. Institutions need answers. But individuals—especially those facing their own death—don’t always need answers. They need truth. And truth isn’t always singular. It often appears differently, depending on the life it enters. The religious answers we’re given are general. But the death we each face is particular.
So perhaps this question—about incarnation, singularity, and the divine—isn’t finally about history or theology at all. Perhaps it’s just one version of the question we’re each carrying, quietly, all the time: What happens to me? Where is God in this?
And maybe the only honest way to carry that question is not only to keep asking it, but to turn inward, to dive deeper into one’s own nature, and to see if—perhaps—you are already connected to these mysteries that have always existed, and still do, and always will. And as for those who say they’ve found the answer—let them find out if it’s true when they pass through the door of the unknown.
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This essay is based on initial research—which included names like Proclus, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Apollonius of Tyana, Alexander of Abonoteichus, Emperor Aurelian, Julia Domna, Damis, the theios anēr tradition, theurgy, Stoicism, and the Ulpian Library—here is a tailored bibliography that reflects the intellectual, spiritual, and cultural worlds these figures represent.
Primary Texts
- Philostratus. Life of Apollonius of Tyana, trans. F.C. Conybeare. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1912.
(Biographical account of a 1st-century philosopher-sage often compared to Jesus.) - Iamblichus. On the Mysteries, trans. Emma C. Clarke, John M. Dillon, and Jackson P. Hershbell. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003.
(Foundational text on Neoplatonic theurgy, frequently cited by Proclus.) - Proclus. The Elements of Theology, trans. E.R. Dodds. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963.
(Key metaphysical work of late Neoplatonism.) - Proclus. On the Theology of Plato, trans. Thomas Taylor. London: A.J. Valpy, 1816.
(One of the major Neoplatonic expositions on divine hierarchy and incarnation.) - Diogenes Laertius. Lives of Eminent Philosophers, trans. R.D. Hicks. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925.
(Biographical sketches of figures like Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Democritus.)
Philosophy, Magic, and Divine Men
- Anderson, Graham. The Second Sophistic: A Cultural Phenomenon in the Roman Empire. London: Routledge, 1993.
(Contextualizes Apollonius, Alexander of Abonoteichus, and philosopher-wonderworkers.) - Bowersock, G.W. Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969.
(Details figures like Apollonius and their interaction with imperial authority.) - Bowie, Ewen. “Apollonius of Tyana: Tradition and Reality.” ANRW II.16.2 (1978): 1652–1699.
(Scholarly article on the historical and legendary aspects of Apollonius.) - Edwards, Mark. Neoplatonic Saints: The Lives of Plotinus and Proclus by Their Students. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000.
(Biographical traditions within the Neoplatonic schools.) - Finamore, John F. Iamblichus and the Theory of Theurgy. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985.
(Detailed study of Neoplatonic ritual and spiritual embodiment.) - Johnston, Sarah Iles. The Restless Dead: Encounters Between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
(Explores daimonic intermediaries and the philosophical reinterpretation of spirits.) - Smith, Morton. Jesus the Magician. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1978.
(Controversial but important comparative work on Jesus and Hellenistic divine men.) - Taylor, Thomas. The Mystical Hymns of Orpheus. London: Kessinger, 1896 (reprint).
(A source of esoteric philosophy influencing Neoplatonic and theurgical traditions.) - The Mission and Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, Harnack, Adolf (1851-1930), Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
Imperial Culture
- Bendlin, Andreas. “State Cults and Religious Mobility in the Roman Empire.” In A Companion to Roman Religion, ed. Jörg Rüpke. Oxford: Blackwell, 2007.
(Covers imperial cults and the flexibility of religious roles under Roman rule.) - Levick, Barbara. Julia Domna: Syrian Empress. London: Routledge, 2007.
(A biography of the influential empress and patron of philosophers like Philostratus.) - Price, Simon R.F. Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
(Explains the link between political authority and divinized humans.)