Incarnation: A New Evolutionary Threshold

by Diarmuid O'Murchu

The incarnation and resurrection of Jesus, writes Diarmuid O’Murchu, marks a new evolutionary threshold and points the way towards the fulfillment of our destiny. We can continue in that direction… or destroy ourselves. It is our to co-create with God, or co-destruct on our own. Incarnation shows us what we need to know to choose rightly.Incarnation reveals how the notion of separateness – of “others” and “borders” and the earth as an object to exploit – endangers everyone and everything. O'Murchu expands the Christian idea of Incarnation to reveal a universal embodiment of Spirit. He shows how all forms of embodiment – from bacteria to the stars, from our children to strangers – evidence a God who loves bodies, and chooses the corporeal form in every initiative of co-creation.

Genres: Spirituality, Nonfiction, Theology

248 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 18, 2017

About the author

Diarmuid O'Murchu, a member of the Sacred Heart Missionary Order, and a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin Ireland, is a social psychologist most of whose working life has been in social ministry, predominantly in London, UK. In that capacity he has worked as a couple's counsellor, in bereavement work, AIDS-HIV counselling, and laterally with homeless people and refugees. As a workshop leader and group facilitator he has worked in Europe, USA, Canada, Australia, The Philippines, Thailand,
India, Peru and in several African countries, facilitating programmes on Adult Faith Development.

His best known books include Quantum Theology (1996 - revised in 2004), Reclaiming Spirituality (1998), Evolutionary Faith (2002), Catching Up with Jesus (2005), The Transformation of Desire (2007), Ancestral Grace (2008), Jesus in the Power of Poetry (2009).

Reviews

[Jacob Frank · Rating 1 out of 5]

Airily written, the book names ideas without really explaining or defending them in any depth. The author's citation style is similar; he namechecks a plethora of authors, but never analyzes their ideas with any rigor. One premise that the author does manage to convey, that our hunter-gatherer ancestors, along with contemporary First Nations peoples, had/have a healthier and more integrated relationship to the natural world and to the divine presence, and that the real "original sin" occurred with the cluster of social changes accompanying the Agrarian Revolution, is also the most problematic and ill-founded. First of all, the author's ability to write such a book as this is predicated on the fact that he is a post-agrarian, post-industrial man, and thus can benefit from written language, and from the technology, science, and the accumulated information necessary to publish a book and to make archaeological and cross-cultural observations. Secondly, any evidence contrary to the author's assertions, for example the existence of human sacrifice in many primitive cultures, is dismissed by the author as likely due to the intrusion of agriarian/patriarchal culture. It would be far more productive to look at successive developmental stages dialectically, with each presenting both new potential for human flourishing, and new forms of oppression.

In sum, if one is looking for a new age, post-modern take on Christianity, this might be the ticket. What this book is not is at all Christocentric, i.e. focused on Christ as a primary reality, or very scientifically, philosophically, or theologically rigorous.

To sum up even more concisely: Meh.

[Lauren Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had the great pleasure of being part of a workshop Diarmuid O'Murchu held in Cape May, NJ (Thank you Sister Rita!) some years ago. I was one of the few people there who wasn't a nun, and I was as impressed by the willingness of the Sisters to open themselves to something new (old) as I was with O'Murchu.

Okay, do I think he completely understands Indigenous spirituality? Almost, but not quite. Still, it doesn't matter. He is pointing us all to something so much larger, so much more powerful and inclusive than any particular tradition. I urge anyone interested in what it means to be a human, and what it means to live in Spirit, to read this book.

A wonderful companion read to anything on Perennial Philosophy/Tradition.

[Trisha · Rating 5 out of 5]

This very insightful book speaks eloquently to people like me who have rejected the religion we inherited as children because its dogmas, doctrines and theologies (including traditional teaching about the Incarnation of Jesus) simply make no sense and have long since ceased to feed our spirits now that we are adults.

For O’Murchu Incarnation is not something that happened once and for all in the historical person of a Jewish carpenter from Nazareth. Rather, Incarnation is “God’s embodiment in creation” which has been going on throughout the cosmos for eons.

O’Murchu feels that our understanding of “God” is faulty to begin with because “. . . we have been programmed to think of “him” as some Divine Entity who charts the course of humankind and decides what will and will not happen to each of us.” O’Murchu soundly rejects the notion of an angry and vengeful God who demanded the bloody death of his son in order to pardon the entire human race from the sin of its mythical parents. Yet somehow this flawed story has formed the faith of millions of people for two thousand years.

O’Murchu suggests a much more helpful way to conceptualize God is by considering how indigenous peoples throughout the world have envisioned the Great Spirit. In O’Murchu’s view “The entire universe is God’s primary revelation to us, where the energizing Spirit has been at work for time immemorial.”

O’Murchu doesn’t discount the impact Jesus has had on the generations that have believed in him, but he feels that instead of focusing on his death and what the Church claims happened three days later, it’s much more important to focus on his life and his message of compassion, mercy, justice and the responsibility to be of service to others.

Reading this book has affirmed what I’ve suspected for a long time: My faith in an incomprehensible God does not depend on what the Church has tried to make me think I must believe.

[Christian Raab, OSB · Rating 1 out of 5]

There is a scene in C.S. Lewis's novel, Perelandra, in which the characters Ransom and Weston have a conversation. Weston's words are the words of the anti-Christ or, at least, the words of one who deeply believes the web of lies sewn by Satan for the modern West. O'Murchu and Weston are on the same page. In a way, O'Murchu has done a service by bringing together in one place so many heresies, old and new, and articulating them. Here we find all of the ancient suspects: Modalism, Pantheism, Docetism, Joachimism, Pelagianism, as well as denials of the Virgin birth, and the redemptive significance of Christ's cross. It's all wrapped up in a nice package of Hegelian post-modern feminist deconstructionism. At times, O'Mirchu's caricatures of Christianity are so far off the mark that it is clear he does not even understand the narrative he purports to be critiquing. Throughout, it is entirely unclear why the myth he prefers is preferable to the myth he wants to jettison. But, he gets by that with some good old fashioned virtue signaling and by making assumptions that everyone who is "woke" will understand what he is getting at and why it needs to be gotten at. All in all, O'Mirchu makes James Martin look like Pope Pius IX.

[Matt Nixon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal book on Christian spirituality! This is a must read for anyone asking deeper questions about God, Jesus and living a life of meaning. The author is one who flies under the radar because his ideas are so radical, but read him. You won’t regret it.

[Ephrem Arcement · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my first O’Murchu book, sad to say! What has taken me so long?!?! This is a bold and very clear and prophetic updating of Christian theology and spirituality. If you like De Chardin, Haught, and Delio, you will want to read O’Murchu.

[Robert Dalgleish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reimagining One’s Faither

This book will upend one’s understanding especially if you are a traditional Christian - but that’s good, in this case.