Incarnation

CRITICAL: a descriptive compound (‘God came in human form’) stands in for a single fixed term, since no crystallized incarnation-vocabulary exists in currently available Kashmiri Christian literature. Two distinct objections must be taught into rather than sidestepped: in mainstream Islamic theology, God taking human form is shirk (blasphemous association); in Kashmir Shaivism, while Shiva’s self-manifestation (spanda) as the world is a live philosophical category, it describes an impersonal, ongoing, non-dualistic self-expression of undivided consciousness, not the eternal Son’s unique, personal, once-for-all assumption of a fully distinct human nature. Never use اوتار, which would default a Pandit-background reader toward pan-Indian Vaishnava avatar theology rather than either the biblical doctrine or Trika’s own actual framework.