Congratulations to Dr. Jason BeDuhn, Professor of the Comparative Study of Religions, on his recent presentation at the 10th Quadrennial Manichaean Studies Conference in Aarhus, Denmark. He presented the paper “Is there a Manichaean ‘Christology’? The Dangers of Looking at Manichaeism through the Lens of Church History.”
Abstract: Manichaean Studies originated as an adjunct of the study of Church History and Christian Theology, and at first relied entirely on polemical sources from the “orthodox” vantage point, in which Manichaean data was read according to, the Patristic construct of how to think about and organize Christian doctrine (and practices). Hence, modern scholarship inherited a polemically constructed Manichaean “Christology” that took various “heretical” positions relative to the Christological debates and concerns that absorbed Patristic writers in the 4th and 5th centuries. While providing many valuable insights into Manichaean discourse on Jesus based on primary Manichaean texts, modern scholarship has found it difficult to shake off this inherited expectation that Manichaeans possessed a systematic Christology comparable to and in dialogue with those “classic” Christologies. This talk examines that expectation and shows how the sources leave it unmet. I will review how Manichaeans were involuntarily (and occasionally voluntarily) drawn into Christological debates among western Christians in significant instances, but argue that actual common ground between Manichaean and non-Manichaean views about Jesus must be sought in earlier, pre-Manichaean attempts to interpret Jesus within existing Jewish and non-Jewish models of divine mediation. Manichaean and non-Manichaean forms of Christianity developed these earlier ideas in divergent, ultimately incommensurable ways.