Ian S. Markham

This is a deliberately provocative article. The idea is simple: Could Jesus – the Incarnate Word – be someone else? Instead of being a first-century, Jewish male, could Jesus have been a first-century person with Down’s Syndrome? Now the question – could Jesus been something other than male? – has circulated in the scholarly literature. Feminist theologians have asked whether the Incarnate Word could have been a woman? This essay takes a familiar question and poses the question in a new way. The focus is on the question of the omniscience of Jesus.

The Christian claim is that Eternal Word became flesh in Jesus of Nazareth. It was a first-century Jew who became the definitive disclosure of God to humanity and the ultimate identification of God with humanity. In this essay, I wish to reflect on a conceptual question underpinning the Incarnation.¹ What do we expect from an Incarnation? Krishna, the eighth avatar of Vishnu, has explicit self-knowledge of his status and in Hindu theology his beauty is a central characteristic of his divinity.² Does the Incarnation require that the Eternal Word be a person who is exceptionally beautiful? Did God have other options beyond Jesus and what in Jesus is essential to the Incarnation and what is contingent? Was it possible for the Eternal Word to be expressed in a woman or in a person with special needs? The case that brings many of these questions together is a person with Down’s Syndrome. Is it possible for the Eternal Word to be made manifest in a person with Down’s Syndrome?