The essence of Corbin's work...

This, to me, is really the essence of his work:

"...when it comes to understanding the humanity (nasut) of the Iman, that is, to translating Imamology into anthropological terms as an event lived by the soul, the data of the problem will not partake of the physiology that imposes itself on sense perception and ordinary consciousness. It is an archetypal Image which will function as an organ of perception, replacing the faculties of sense perception and making perceptible an object...

and yet the humanity of the Imam is not reduced to what our "realist" exigencies would qualify as a "hallucination" and does not fit in with the idea of a hypostatic union.

The problem is, then: how can a humanity which is mazhar of the godhead be constituted, to what order of reality must it belong, that is to say, what transfiguration of it is presupposed in order that the epiphany (zuhur> mizhar) of this epiphanic Figure (mazhar) may be produced not to the eyes of the body but to the soul's "eyes of light"?

pp. 108-109

As it relates to Christianity, in place of Imam think of a Gnostic, Docetic (though Corbin qualifies what this term means) Christ. This is not the Christ of orthodoxy; this is not God incarnate. This is the Christ of those labeled "Gnostics" as found in the Acts of John and other apocryphal gospels.

This is the Christ encountered in Islam. Yet its continued development in Shi'a and Ismaili thought is not causally connected to some renegade sects of Christianity. In other words, these ideas are not borrowed or hijacked as such. As Corbin notes: "This is a problem which in any case cannot be elucidated by the current methods of purely static and analytical exegesis, by a historicism limited to an essentially causal type of explanation which reads causality into things." (p. 31n7)

These ideas are inherent within the human soul, a longing for a connection to the divine, a longing for a mediator, a savior figure, one in whom we can see our image and have reflected back to us the Divine. It is in this sense that what is commonly deemed "borrowing" occurs.

This figure is found in most, if not every, religious tradition. This is why, as Corbin points out, it can be seen as Archetypal. Christian orthodoxy is obviously against this and thus holds Christ up as the one true, real, bodily revelation of God. It is this claim that ultimately separates "orthodoxy" from every other claim about Christ.

From an orthodox point of view it validates the truth of the claim; for those who follow a more "gnostic" tendency this rends Christ from his true place and forever places him, traps him even, in the mess of humanity (which, of course, is basically what orthodoxy claims is the truth of the matter and therefore the reason he can thus save us).

But is this necessarily true?