It is not by accident that Bob Marley’s “One Love/People Get Ready”[1] was named Song of the Millennium by the BBC. It is not by accident that the universal Hindu Aum, the Chinese Tao and Rastafari are all expressions of a dialectical unity found in the universe. It is not by accident that there is a riddim of creation, which was discovered and expressed in Jamaica. It is not by accident that Dialectical Incarnation is actually a dialectical “one love” and “one heart” of all reality. This book will explain why none of these events are accidents, but actually historical incarnations of the one harmony of love that is human, divine and the totality of reality.
This philosophy emerged when I came to Jamaica in 1982 to teach philosophy at St. Michael’s Roman Catholic seminary in Kingston. While teaching Marxism, and its Dialectical Materialism, as part of a Contemporary Philosophies course, I found that I also needed to teach Hegel’s Dialectical Idealism. Marx had found it necessary that Hegel’s dialectic be “turned right side up again” since it was “standing on its head.”[2] In explaining the dialectical method that both philosophers use, I indicated that Hegel’s idealism could be the thesis while Marx’s materialism is the antithesis. This necessarily, as the reader will discover, brings forth a synthesis. Upon initial, and then continued, reflection I discovered that incarnation is the synthesis of idealism/transcendence, i.e., spirit and materialism/immanence, i.e., matter. I began to do research which led me to formulate the philosophy I originally called dialectical incarnationalism. It is through the influence and fluidity of Rastafari (as will be discussed), and its adage of “No -ism, no schism” that this new philosophy is now called dialectical incarnation. Dialectical Incarnation cannot be confined to a closed “-ism” of philosophy. Incarnation is constantly, dialectically and evolutionarily creating itself in diverse particular expressions, which are culturally lived out by conscious and intentional incarnational beings, in their material “supernatural existential.”[3] The first formal written articulation of Dialectical Incarnation is ‘God is Love and the totality of reality’: Karl Rahner: A Proposal for Dialectical Incarnationalism, the research paper that I wrote for a STL (Licentiate in Sacred Theology) degree at Weston Jesuit School of Theology in 1997.[4] In this philosophical theological essay, I used Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s cosmological metaphysics as a foundation for Karl Rahner’s systematic dialectical ontology of the divine and human, the transcendence and the immanence, of all reality. This philosophy of incarnation found various forms of expressions in two articles I later wrote—”Christ the Alpha and the Rasta”[5] and “Riddim of Creation.”[6] I also use parts of these in this book.
I now go beyond these preliminary presentations and offer a more complete and specifically philosophical explanation of Dialectical Incarnation. The major parts of this dissertation are the historical and philosophical explanations of how there is a unity of all reality and how much of Western philosophy has separated the polar entities of spirit and matter, divine and human, transcendence and immanence, subject and object. Dialectical incarnation breaks down this dualism and offers philosophical arguments that support the understanding that all of reality is a unified whole, that the dualism of Western philosophy is an illusion, and that God and Nature comprise a single harmony of incarnate love.
I have discovered that no one has written or articulated a philosophy of incarnation and the oneness of all reality in this complete manner. In this way the book has significance not only in philosophy, but natural theology and the understanding of reality in general. There have been attempts at unifying bi-polar entities in different forms of monism, but no philosophy has surfaced as it is expressed in Dialectical Incarnation. Unfortunately, much of Western philosophy has identified incarnation as being a revealed theological phenomenon, and specifically a Christian one which is exclusively associated with the person of Jesus the Christ.
The first limitation within this philosophy is not within the philosophy itself but rather with having to argue against the predisposed, revealed theological perspective mentioned. Incarnation is present in all of reality. The anthropomorphism expressed by the majority of humanity towards the transcendence of all reality is restricting the true understanding of incarnation. As will become evident, the synthesising of spirit and matter, divine and human, transcendence and immanence, is required to explain the complete and dialectical nature of the totality of reality.
A second limitation is the fact that dialectical reasoning is difficult in itself. Hegel admits this when he says that “[dialectical reasoning] is perhaps taken for a joke [for it] is one of the hardest things thought expects to do.”[7] Because it is difficult does not mean that one should hesitate in trying to expand human reasoning.Within these initial limitations the philosophy still maintains a theoretical framework of demonstrating a new dialectical method in perceiving all of reality. Seeming contradictions of opposites are in fact able to be resolved. The antagonism toward dialectical reasoning has been present since its discovery, yet philosophy must not be hindered by anthropomorphism and a strict Aristotelian logic. The hypothesis that “all of reality is one” is conceivable when dialectical reasoning is properly understood. The fact that different entities are, in fact, distinct from one another does not constitute a separation. Therefore, the ultimate objective of this philosophy is to finally break down the dualism which has insidiously established itself within the major framework of Western philosophy. In that this planet earth and its consciousness through humanity have entered into a new millennium it is of paramount importance that one remains open to the ongoing evolution of all of reality. With all said and done, I welcome all readers to the discovery and the philosophical explanation of and argumentation for the philosophy I call Dialectical Incarnation: a harmony of one love, one heart in the totality of reality.
Bob Marley, “One Love/People Get Ready.” New York: Universal Music Publishing Group, 1965.
Karl Marx, Karl Marx: Selected Writings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 420.
The phrase “supernatural existential” is a term coined by Karl Rahner, who will be discussed at length in Chapter .
Martin Schade, ‘God is Love and the totality of reality’: Karl Rahner: A Proposal of Dialectical Incarnationalism (Boston, MA: Weston Jesuit School of Theology, 1997).
Martin Schade, “Christ the Alpha and the Rasta: A Reflection on Christology within the Emergence of Rastafari.” Caribbean Journal of Religious Studies, 17.1 (1996): 38-64.
Martin Schade, “Riddim of Creation: An Incarnational Expression of Caribbean Theology.” Caribbean Journal of Religious Studies 19.1 (1998): 28-38.
G.W. Hegel, Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 71.