Incarnation

The theological term for this is hypostatic union: the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, became flesh when he was miraculously conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary.

[5][6][7][8][9][10] al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah is an important figure in the Druze faith whose eponymous founder ad-Darazi proclaimed him as the incarnation of God in 1018.

[15] The initiation text, "Mīthāq Walī al-Zamān" (Pact of Time Custodian), which begins with, “I rely on our Moula Al-Hakim the lonely God, the individual, the eternal,... Obedience of almighty Moulana Al-Hākim, exalted be him and that obedience is worship and that he does not have any partners ever, present or coming”,[16] closely resembles Christian beliefs about Jesus' divinity.

[15] Islam completely rejects the doctrine of the incarnation (Mu'jassimā[17] / (Tajseem) Tajsīm) of God in any form, as the concept is defined as shirk.

[26]: 43 Haile Selassie I, Emperor of Ethiopia from 1930 to 1974, is traditionally seen by Rastas as the Second Coming of Jesus or Jah incarnate, and is sometimes referred to as "the living God".

[26]: 32–33 [27] Leonard Barrett has argued that many Rastas believe in a form of reincarnation, where Moses, Elijah, Jesus and then Haile Selassie are avatars of Jah.

[38] Avatar literally means "descent, alight, to make one's appearance",[39] and refers to the embodiment of the essence of a superhuman being or a deity in another form.

[39] In Hindu traditions, the "crossing or coming down" is symbolism, states Daniel Bassuk, of the divine descent from "eternity into the temporal realm, from unconditioned to the conditioned, from infinitude to finitude".

[41] An avatar, states Justin Edwards Abbott, is a saguna (with form, attributes) embodiment of the nirguna Brahman or Atman (soul).

[41] The verb roots and form, such as avatarana, do appear in ancient post-Vedic Hindu texts, but as "action of descending", but not as an incarnated person (avatara).

[43] The related verb avatarana is, states Paul Hacker, used with double meaning, one as action of the divine descending, another as "laying down the burden of man" suffering from the forces of evil.

[46] It is in medieval era texts, those composed after the sixth century CE, that the noun version of avatar appears, where it means embodiment of a deity.

[54] The Serer religion of West Africa rejects any notions of incarnation or manifestation of the supreme deity Roog (also called Koox in the Cangin language).