Hegel and the Incarnation: A Trinitarian Critique of the Hegelian System

This essay will attempt to assess compatibility of Hegel’s philosophy in relation to an

Orthodox belief in the incarnation. My goal is not only to show where Hegel's thought
diverges from traditional Trinitarian grammar1, but to also point towards the
convergences that have provided material for contemporary theology.2 As we shall
see, Hegel can be interpreted as a defender of the Christian religion.3 Yet regardless
of the singular and ultimate position of Christianity, Hegel’s system must ultimately
be seen by what it itself declares as the purpose of philosophy: a movement away
from primitive imagination towards universal-speculative thought. This entails:
abandoning the traditional tension between immanence and transcendence, limiting
both divine and human freedom, and ultimately challenging the uniqueness of the
incarnate person of Christ. One must consider whether this abandonment of the
‘image of Christ’ and its explicit dogmatic expressions, leaves us any reason to retain
the historical Jesus, other than as a pedagogical necessity, which has now passed over
into the realm of manifest spirit?

1
See Warren McWilliams, "Beyond 'Mere Transcendence': The Riddle of Hegel's Phenomenology,"
Perspectives in Religious Studies, Vol. 6, No. 1, 1979, pp.46-64 “Hegel's understanding of the absolute
as spirit is explicitly grounded in his reinterpretation of the Christian faith, especially its trinitanan
understanding of God Although this understanding forms the fundamental basis for his own position.”
2
Hegel opens up the possibility of change and movement within the life of God, this idea is central to
those 20th Century theologians who might be described as doing their ‘theology from below’:
Moltmann, Rainer, Pannenburg and Hans Kung, for Kung, theologies’ use of Greek Metaphysics to
support divine ‘impassibility’ has always smacked of Parmenidean immobility.
3
It is interesting to note that, given Hegel’s utility for modern philosophy, this religious aspect has
been largely ignored. Heidegger notes: “The present-day Hegel-renaissance—this prevailing form of
thinking—is difficult to retrieve from the grist-mill of the dialectic. It is now merely an empty-running
mill because Hegel's basic outlook, his Christian theological metaphysics, has been sacrificed. For in
this alone does Hegel's dialectic find its elements and its support.” M. Heidegger, in Neue Züricher
Zeitung (September 21, 1969), cited in H. Küng, Menschwerdung Gottes (Freiburg: Herder, 1970) 510.
(a) Arguments over transcendence and immanence in Hegel’s philosophy.

(i) Hegel’s logic is the death of the transcendent ground of being.

(ii) In Hegel’s understanding of the Church, the incarnation and the Spirit
are co-extensive; this removes the eschatological character of kerygma,
which effectively immanentizes the Church’s destiny.

(b) An Arguments against the limitation of divine and human freedom in Hegel

(iii) The manifestation of God in conscience limits God’s free election, and
provides an inadequate explanation of theodicy and human freedom.

(c) Arguments against the uniqueness of the incarnation

(iv) Hegel’s notion of universal Spirit ‘deifies’ the rational subject and
imperils the uniqueness of the incarnation by suggesting all can become
fully incarnate.

(iv) Revelation for Hegel is not a unique ontological event inserted into history
but the uncovering of the primordial affinity between God and man, thus
implicitly rejecting the uniqueness of the incarnation.

(v) Hegel’s Philosophy suggests that God is experienced speculatively, but the
uniqueness of Jesus requires an image to reveal a person who can be
known personally and is more than a function of history.
(i) Hegel’s Logic is the death of the transcendent ground of being

Hegel’s system of logic works as a history of traditional philosophical categories4,

essentially being an explication of their nature, relations, and the mode of their
development. The main issue of Hegel’s logic for the incarnation is that it sacrifices
divine transcendence; this can be summarized as follows:

There is no proposition to be regarded as separate and isolated.5 The contiguity of the

world is sustained by reciprocal relations that form a single and harmonious system.
Identity through difference is the central principle of Hegel’s philosophical logic.
Spirit becomes other than itself in the process of time and rises above opposition
between itself and the other by knowing itself in the other and developing itself in the
other.6 Thus Hegel’s logic is always a meditation on the historicity of being as
becoming7. This resolution is what Hegel understands as the negation of alienation.
What underlies this is that the mind is never satisfied with a result that is incomplete,
or contradictory, so that there is an inherent movement within consciousness itself.
This progressive movement of thought is called the dialectic. What this in effect
accomplishes is that we can’t think the ‘world’ apart from thinking ourselves: to think
it as separate is to fail in thinking-as-such, “we simply cannot ask the question, are
denied the conceptual framework to ask would there be a God if there was no
world?”8 We cannot speak of a self-grounded reality, and so fall silent when
confronted with the transcendence of God.9 What Hegel’s logic points to, contrary to
the patristic doctrine of impassibility is that God is not a transcendent creator but the
essence of the world, and that this essence is in itself thoroughly rational. To put this
simply, the logical reduction here is that: God can’t be what thinking can’t recognise.

4
J. G. Hibben, Hegel’s Logic: An Essay in Interpretation, First Published: 1902, Charles Scribner’s
Sons, New York. This Edition: 2000, Batoche Books Limited, 52 Eby Street South, Kitchener, Ontario,
N2G 3L1, Canada. p. 11.
5
Contrast with Aristotle
6
Diogenes, Allen. Philosophy for Understanding Theology. Westminste, John Knox Press; 2 edition,
2007.p.175.
7
Piotr J. Malysz. Hegel’s Conception of God and its Application by Isaak Dorner to the Problem of
Divine Immutability. p. 458.
8
R. Williams, Logic and Spirit in Hegel, from Post-Secular Philosophy: Between Philosophy and
Theology. Ed Phillip Blond. Routledge, London: 1998. p. 136
9
It is worth comparing Hegel with Wittgenstein on the boundaries of the unsayable.
This is essentially a theology from below10. One has to ask what this double
movement of immanentizing the divine and universalising human subjectivity
accomplishes? The first thing we seem to sacrifice is divine transcendence and God’s
perfect self-sufficiency.

(ii) In Hegel’s understanding of the Christian Church, the incarnation and

the spirit are co-extensive, this removes the eschatological character of
kerygma, and immanentizes the Churches destiny.

Hegel refers to the universal manifestation of God when he describes the transition
from the earthly Jesus to the Christian Church. The individual or particular
incarnation of God needs to disappear in order to give way to a universal
manifestation. The spirit of the Church becomes universal “spirit” when its incarnate
nature: "being other [than essence] or its [individual] sensory presence [in Jesus] is
taken back . . . and posited as surmounted, as universal,"11. This withdraw is
necessary as to leave space for absolute speculative knowledge which enables it to be
present in all the members of the Church. But does Hegel really intend that the
Church is a universal incarnation? One might resist this conclusion by appealing to
Orthodox Christian doctrine, which distinguishes the incarnation and ecclesiology, as
they deal with different kinds of divine-human unity respectively, the Word is fully
incarnate in Jesus, but the Spirit is not fully incarnate in the Church. Hegel is not
cognisant of such distinctions, for Hegel the incarnation depends not on a hypostatic
(or personal) union of the two natures (divine and human), but rest upon a recognition
that universal divine essence manifests as universal thinking within human
subjectivity. For Hegel the difference between the incarnate Word and the indwelling
Spirit is not qualitative but merely one of degree, and in this sense he departs from the
Trinitarian grammar that has guided Christian theologising. For Hegel divine presence
occurs in the Church “through human knowing and not through the hidden power of
the glorified Christ.”12 It is interesting that one might contend that for Hegel the
Church is more divine than Christ, given that its universality complies more fitly with

10
Rowan, Williams, Logic and Spirit in Hegel, from Post-Secular Philosophy: Between Philosophy
and Theology. Ed Phillip Blond. Routledge, London: 1998. p. 136
11
Phenomenology of Spirit selections translated by Andrea Tschemplik and James H. Stam, in Steven
M. Cahn, ed., Classics of Western Philosophy (Hackett, 2007). 415.6-8.
12
Daniel P. Jarmos, SJ. Hegel on the Incarnation: Unique or Universal? Theological Studies 56 (1995)
p. 288.
the universal ascendancy of divine essence.13 Contrasted to the Church, for Hegel the
particular manifestation of God in Jesus was not fully equivalent to the universality of
essence that was made concrete in the Church; the incarnation was “an [existence]
alien or external to it,”14 and therefore it needed to be brought to completion by the
Church. This position is possible because of the downgraded status of the Spirit,
which in effect does away with the eschatological resolution in the individual person
of Christ, which the sacraments bear witness to. We are no longer sojourners and co-
citizens of the “City of God” when for Hegel the earthly Church is the final and
ultimate expression of the “Absolute Spirit”.

(b) An Arguments against the limitation of divine and human freedom in Hegel

(iii) The manifestation of God in conscience limits God’s free election, and
provides an inadequate explanation of theodicy and human freedom.

For Hegel incarnation develops out of conscience. It functions as the universal

reconciliation of alienation, and as such can be called the “the appearing God”. This
reconciliation occurs when “evil” individual thinking is pardoned:

… Pardon occurs because this evil consciousness knows its resemblance to another consciousness, and
so proves itself to be a universal thinking which grasps the essence common to different individuals; it
is a "pure knowing" of essence, and is therefore universal or “good.”15

One objection that could be made here is that, if the Absolute manifests as human
moral subjectivity, why should Hegel limit God's incarnation to the single figure of
Jesus? One might suggest an implicit religious pluralism that cannot be squared with
the uniqueness of the incarnation16. Yet a counter-objection could be raised for Hegel

13
Ibid. p. 290
14
Phenomenology of the Spirit 415.9
15
Daniel P. Jarmos, SJ. Hegel on the Incarnation: Unique or Universal? Theological Studies 56 (1995)
p. 281-2.
16
It is interesting the much of Hegel’s work see religion in the context of the state, he was very
concerned that a Catholic or Islamic state could not provide the appropriate grounds for civil society.
See Thomas A. Lewis. Cultivating Our Intuitions: Hegel on Religion, Politics, and Public Discourse.”
Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics 27:1, 2007. p. 235. “If we focus closely on the way that
Hegel conceives of religion as cultivating our intuitions, we can learn from Hegel today without
concluding that religious pluralism is intrinsically a challenge to the state”
that he develops this idea so that only Jesus becomes the full incarnation of God. But
is this really sustainable as every human being can potentially become an instance of
universal thinking and so contain inherently the potential for bridging of the human-
divine divide (theandric principle). What appears to be freedom of self-actualising
nature through spirit is contrary to the freedom of divine presence, which it should be
acknowledged might express its power through absence. For Hegel the conscience
only functions to realize what we already in potential are. In stating this universalism,
Hegel’s philosophy limits God’s free election, and consequently does not provide a
sufficient explanation of radial evil17, which is for Hegel conterminous with natural
human limitation. In Hegel’s philosophy every reverse or slide towards chaos or
decadence in human culture becomes part of the universal dialectics ascent, this
totalising aspect to Hegel’s philosophy does not take human freedom seriously, and
denies the possibility of the rational subject not choosing God, as a conscious act of
will.

(c) Arguments against the uniqueness of the incarnation

(iv) Hegel’s notion of universal Spirit deifies the rational subject and
imperils the uniqueness of the incarnation.

In Hegel’s philosophy God manifests within human thinking. For Hegel “spirit” has
an incarnational significance that reveals God’s human appearance: “spirit . . . [is
divine] essence that essentially is [human] self-consciousness”18. Therefore the
incarnation in Jesus is the revelation of “spirit”, the distinction is not a qualitative but
an extensive one. For Hegel the incarnation functions as a rational truth, rather than a
supernatural mystery.
We have to ask does the term “spirit” have a unique or a universal meaning? Hegel
appears to be inconsistent on this point, In Chapter 6 of The Phenomenology of Spirit
on Spirit, “spirit” refers to human subjectivity in a general sense, however in Chapter
7, on Religion, “spirit” relates exclusively to the single incarnation of God in Jesus.
Against this first position, Hegel may mean to differentiate between “spirit” in general

17
A Hegelian who closely adheres to The Phenomenology of Spirit should have seen Auschwitz as the
further development of the Universal Spirit's self-consciousness.
18
Phenomenology of the Spirit 405.25
and “absolute spirit”19, which appears in Jesus. So it seem that Hegel allows for the
uniqueness of the incarnation of Christ. Yet we should note that in Hegel we
consistently see his treatment incarnation “means nothing other than [this], that actual
world-spirit has reached this knowing of itself.”20
One might conclude that Hegel’s expression indicates the divinity of the whole of
rational consciousness; for unless the total “world-spirit” was capable of becoming
God incarnate, it could not recognize itself in the ultimate and singular person of
Jesus.21 Hegel therefore suggests something more than a divine incarnation confined
to the person Jesus, “since the world-spirit knows itself as divine, the incarnation will
soon expand from the single person of Jesus to a “universal divine human.”22 For
Hegel ‘spirit’ is the ‘world-soul’ coming into self-manifestation, and functions like an
alienated “Gnostic Sophia” whose destiny is to be reunited with the absolute. This
again is possible though the collapsing of the transcendence of the Triune God into
the immanent functions of History. Universal salvation seems in this case to be
heralded by human progress, a progress that is denied to the non-rational subject.
What we see here is a flattening out of any distinct Trinitarian functions into universal
history; it is therefore an inevitability that the unique personal significance of Christ
has to give way to the universal consciousness of ‘spirit’.

(vi) Revelation for Hegel is not a unique ontological event, but the
uncovering of a primordial affinity between God and man, which
implicitly rejects the uniqueness of the incarnation.

As noted ‘spirit’ is somewhat akin to the Platonic world-soul. Thus one could speak
of deity revealing itself to itself, “Whereas Christianity believes in an infinite mystery
that remains mysterious despite its revelation, Hegel’s God is the world-essence
revealing itself as human thinking”. For Hegel this is possible because “God is
knowable because the self is knowable, and God has been revealed as a human
self.”23 In contrast to traditional Christology, God is manifested in a single human

19
Ibid. 404.33.
20
Ibid.404.29-30.
21
Daniel P. Jarmos, SJ. Hegel on the Incarnation: Unique or Universal? Theological Studies 56 (1995)
p. 283.
22
Phenomenology of the Spirit. 421.4.
23
Ibid. 405.25-36.
being, but the two natures remain distinct, so that God, in God’s divinity, remains a
mystery in which the belief that God was in Christ yields little knowledge of God’s
essence24. In this sense mystery is preserved. For Hegel however the difference
between the two natures has been surmounted25 so God’s essence (what it is in itself)
is essentially human. Again what this presupposes is a primordial affinity between the
human and divine subject. This subsuming of the divine-human subject is kept in
tension by the patristic formula of the two natures, but is here entirely collapsed in
Hegel’s philosophy as to be considered in Chirstological terms as kind
Monophysitism. Instead of making a God out of humankind, Hegel’s soteriological
consequence is to imprison the vision of human potential inside an image of our own
making, inturn remaking God in our own image, and therefore limiting it.

(vi) Hegel’s Philosophy suggests that God is experienced speculatively, but

the uniqueness of Jesus requires an image to reveal a person that can
be known personally and is more than a function of history.

Religion leads to Hegel’s own system, he describes religion as a preparation for the
conceptual knowing of his own philosophical system. God is attainable only in pure
speculative knowing. In other words, Christianity, despite its use of imagining,
remains true only insomuch as it coincides with Hegel’s philosophy. God appears in
the philosopher even more completely than in Christ26. We see in this ascendency of
philosophy passing from image (Vorstellung) to concept. From the Orthodox
Christological perspective, the uniqueness of Christ requires an image, which effects
in a single person a universal meaning; “apart from the image this uniqueness
disappears whereas Christian faith or imagining exalts the uniqueness of Christ, Hegel
develops concepts that apply to all human beings”27. Consequently Hegel’s position

24
The essence-energy distinction, in Byzantine theology is an attempt to preserve divine
transcendence.
25
Ibid. 406.9-10.
26
In Hegel’s Lectures on Religion (a later work than the Phenomenology) this pressure has subsided.
Religious imagination does not always stand in the shadow of the philosophical speculation.
27
See Daniel P. Jarmos, SJ. Hegel on the Incarnation: Unique or Universal? Theological Studies 56
(1995) p. 294. Who also notes “But here the following distinction should apply: though God appears in
a superior way through philosophical thinking, a non-philosopher (like Jesus) can surpass the
philosopher in moral behavior. Such behavior applies universal thinking to empirical reality, and so
manifests universal divine essence in real existence.”
on the incarnation carries an explicit criticism of Christian imagination, which
acknowledges only Christ; God incarnate, as the definitive image of God.
In support of Hegel it should be noted that Christianity anticipates this conclusion by
its recognition of Spirit in the Church, which universalises divine presence from the
single person of Christ to the entire body of Christ. However for Hegel, the Church
founders in its attempt to comprehend the full implication of Spirit’s universal
presence by continuing to think of God as truly transcendent and thus separate. We
should conclude that for the Church a unique incarnation of God preserves divine
transcendence; but for Hegel’s philosophy the universal incarnation eliminates
transcendence and also any foundation for the eternal image of the incarnation, which
for Hegel, though the incarnation was a necessity, belongs to the past as a unifying
orientation, and not the future as an eschatological hope. The traditional dualistic
tension (both in anthropology and eschatology) cannot be sustained in Hegel when the
ontological status of the Trinity as persons has been subsumed into triadic diacetic of
world history. In Hegel’s philosophy Christ is viewed in purely “economic terms” as
a pedagogical exemplar on the path to universal spirit, and not as a unique reconciler
at the end of history. Hegel, in asserting this, both limits and obscures the uniqueness
of the incarnation.

Conclusion:

Hegel’s religious philosophy questions the very fundamentals of Christian theology,

which accepts a revelation, centred on Christ, the unique and unrepeatable mediator
between humanity and God. One must firstly conclude that Hegel’s philosophy has no
place for the “image” of Christ as the unique incarnation of God.28 Secondly by
shifting divine-human unity from the Church's eschatological future into the present,
Hegel places into existing human beings the same divine presence found in Jesus, and
thus posits an unmediated apotheosis on purely natural and rational grounds.
Consequently Hegelian philosophy, though it makes attempts to posit a ‘necessary
incarnation’ cannot confine divine incarnation to the single instantiation of Jesus
Christ. Hegel acknowledges that eschatological expectation opposes his own

28
See Daniel P. Jarmos, SJ. Hegel on the Incarnation: Unique or Universal? Theological Studies 56
(1995) p. 290.
conclusion, insomuch as it imagines its full unity with God as “a distant [thing] of the
future.”29 But for Hegel this expectation indicates a deprivation in the Church, as “this
community is not yet completed in this its self-consciousness”30 Having sacrificed the
unique image and function of Christ as eschatological reconciler, one could finally
comment on the susceptibility this position has to totalitarian visions and utopian
schemes, which are alien to the eschatological spirit of the Gospels. Yet one does not
have to exclusively believe in history as the domain where the Absolute is self-
realized to find parts of Hegel’s philosophy useful insomuch as they provide a tool for
recognizing the unity of world in relation to itself.31

29
Phenomenology. 421.1.
30
Ibid. 420.9.
31 Perhaps Karl Barth's judgment will yet prove true: "It may be that the dawn of the true age of Hegel
is still something that will take place in the future." Karl Barth, Protestant Thought: From Rousseau to
Ritsch, trans. Brian Cozens, p. 274.
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