The Myth of God Incarnate is a book edited by John Hick and published by SCM Press in 1977. James Dunn, in a 1980 literature review of academic work on the incarnation, noted the "...well-publicized symposium entitled The Myth of God Incarnate, including contributions on the NT from M. Goulder and F. Young, which provoked several responses."[1] Two years later, in another literature review, R. T. France commented that "theology dropped out of the headlines again, until in 1977 the title, if not the contents, of The Myth of God Incarnate revived public interest".[2] In the 21st century, The Daily Telegraph 2005 obituary for contributor Maurice Wiles (father of Andrew Wiles) described the book as "a highly controversial volume of essays."[3] The controversy prompted a sequel, Incarnation and Myth: the Debate Continued (1979), edited by Michael Goulder, another contributor to the original volume.
In the preface to the book, the contributors start by describing their "clear" perception that Christianity has always been a changing and diverse "movement"[4] quoting T. S. Eliot—"Christianity is always adapting itself into something which can be believed." They also explain that they are "convinced" that growing knowledge of Christian origins leads to accepting that Jesus was ... 'a man approved by God' for a special role within the divine purpose," but that later Christian conceptions of him "as God incarnate, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity" were a "mythological or poetic way of expressing his significance for us."[4] The contributors also mention that: "we have met together for discussion five times during the last three years, and we now offer the results in the hope that they will stimulate a wider discussion both inside and outside the churches."[5]
Overview
The contributors to Hick's collection of essays divided their work into two sections: the first examining "Christian sources"; and the second examining "the development of doctrine."[5] In the preface, however, they note that this division is not absolute, since sources and contemporary issues are related, and discussion of either references the other.[5]
Maurice Wiles' 10-page introductory chapter to the volume questions whether "the incarnation of God in the particular individual Jesus of Nazareth" is actually essential to Christianity,[6] or whether there can be "a Christianity without (in this sense) incarnation?"[6] He structures his essay in three numbered parts, each of which is a subquestion. Wiles' subquestions explore whether his main question "is (1) a proper, (2) a necessary and (3) a constructive question to ask."[6]
A proper question?
Regarding his first subquestion, Wiles addresses the "many ears" he expects might find Christianity and incarnation "so nearly synonymous that the suggestion of a possible 'Christianity without incarnation' will sound to them equally paradoxical and unintelligible."[6] He explains that incarnation, in the sense in which he is using the term, is just one "interpretation of the significance of Jesus."[7] Wiles provides three analogies from other Christian thinking to illustrate his meaning: the eucharist, the relationship between the authority and inerrancy of the Bible, and the relationship between incarnation and the virgin birth of Jesus.[7] In each case, abstract doctrines have been so associated with concrete applications, that denials of the concrete applications have historically been seen as denials of the abstract doctrines, hence heresies.[7] However, with the eucharist in particular, Reformation theologians affirmed a meaningful understanding of the eucharist, despite denying the concrete application of transubstantiation—that bread and wine physically become the body and blood of Jesus in the Roman Catholic mass.[7] Wiles concludes that his main question (regarding Christianity without incarnation) is not a contradiction but a proper question, just like the Reformation question regarding a eucharist without transubstantiation.[8]
A necessary question?
Wiles offers, under three subheadings, three lines of argument in support of his position that "separating 'Christianity' and 'incarnation' is not merely ... admissible ... but ... inescapable."[8] According to Wiles, the question of separation is a necessary question arising from: (a) the origins, (b) the history, and (c) contemporary affirmation of incarnational doctrine.[8] Regarding (a) origins, Wiles contends that, "Incarnation, in its proper sense, is not something directly presented in scripture. It is a construction ..." He acknowledges that New Testament (NT) writers "talk of [Jesus] as God's pre-existent Son come down to earth."[9] However, Wiles' views this as a manner of speech ("one of a number of ways in which Christians thought and spoke of Jesus.").[9] He proposes that it is no longer reasonable, to "the main body even of convinced believers",[9] to speak in such terms as the NT writers, which presume what moderns do not, namely "supernatural divine intervention ... as a natural category of thought and faith."[9]
Wiles offers an additional argument for the necessity of questioning the actuality of the incarnation, by expressing dissatisfaction with the intelligibility of (b) historical formulations of incarnational doctrine: "Are we sure that the concept of an incarnate being, one who is both fully God and fully man, is after all an intelligible concept?"[10] Although he concedes that "negative generalizations are notoriously dangerous claims to make,"[9] he ventures that "the church has never succeeded in offering a consistent or convincing picture" of how Jesus could actually be both God and man.[9] In particular he suggests a tendency to err in favour of Jesus as divine,[9] citing the seventh century Monothelite controversy and E. L. Mascall as a distinguished exemplar of the traditional view writing at the time Wiles' essay was published.[10] Wiles concludes his grounds for the necessity of his main question by further appeal to (c) the writing of his own contemporaries. He notes that incarnation, as understood in the work of John Baker, for example, is so far removed from the original NT usage, that "it is not genuinely the same idea that is being expressed." Wiles quotes Baker: "Jesus did not see himself ... as a divine pre-existent being from heaven."[11]
A constructive question?
To conclude his analysis of the value of questioning the actuality of the incarnation, Wiles anticipates that "some people" might "feel" that were such questioning to "lead to the abandonment of traditional incarnational doctrine, that could only be regarded as an entirely negative and destructive outcome."[12] To help allay such fears, Wiles offers three ideas, historically highly valued in Christian traditions and associated with the incarnation but, he argues, are "not necessarily bound to the incarnation and would not therefore be eliminated from a 'Christianity without incarnation'.[13] The first idea, listed as (a), is "the conviction that the physical world can be the carrier of spiritual value." Wiles notes that this anti-dualist position within Christianity, denying strict separation between the spiritual and the physical, is shared with Judaism, which clearly has no doctrine of Jesus as God incarnate.[13] Wiles clarifies that he is proposing a Christianity that retains a genuine broad sense of incarnation of spirituality, especially in its doctrine of creation,[13] just without applying this too strictly to the person of Jesus of Nazareth.[13]
The second idea, listed as (b), is "the significance of Jesus as a model for human life."[14] Wiles observes that there has been considerable diversity in what people have considered to be lives patterned on Jesus as the standard;[13] and that even the NT does not provide a comprehensive picture of just precisely how Jesus lived his entire life. He quotes R. H. Lightfoot, who famously declared, "the form of the earthly no less than of the heavenly Christ is for the most part hidden from us."[15] Even given these limitations, Wiles reflects that "on any showing to which the name of Christian could conceivably be given [Jesus'] life would remain of substantial importance to us."[14] So, Wiles suggests, Jesus' significance as a role-model "is not directly affected by the way in which his relationship to God is understood."[14]
Before concluding his essay, Wiles considers what he believes to be the most important traditional incarnation-related idea, transformed but retained under his new understanding. Listed as (c), it is the view that in Jesus, "God has acted decisively for the salvation of the world."[14] He anticipates the objection that his transformation would "imply that the worship of Christ, traditional throughout the whole of Christian history, was idolatrous in character."[14] He acknowledges that "It is at this point that the greatest difficulties are likely to be felt. Can they be met?"[14] Although he provides no conclusive answer, Wiles stresses that his new understanding of incarnation could still provide for Jesus to "remain a personal focus of the transforming power of God in the world."[16]
Adoptionism, also called dynamic monarchianism, is an early Christian nontrinitarian theological doctrine, which holds that Jesus was adopted as the Son of God at his baptism, his resurrection, or his ascension. How common adoptionist views were among early Christians is debated, but it appears to have been most popular in the first, second, and third centuries. Some scholars see adoptionism as the belief of the earliest followers of Jesus, based on the epistles of Paul and other early literature. However, adoptionist views sharply declined in prominence in the fourth and fifth centuries, as Church leaders condemned it as a heresy.
In Christianity, Christology, translated from Greek as 'the study of Christ', is a branch of theology that concerns Jesus. Different denominations have different opinions on questions such as whether Jesus was human, divine, or both, and as a messiah what his role would be in the freeing of the Jewish people from foreign rulers or in the prophesied Kingdom of God, and in the salvation from what would otherwise be the consequences of sin.
The resurrection of Jesus is the Christian belief that God raised Jesus on the third day after his crucifixion, starting – or restoring – his exalted life as Christ and Lord. According to the New Testament writing, Jesus was firstborn from the dead, ushering in the Kingdom of God. He appeared to his disciples, calling the apostles to the Great Commission of forgiving sin and baptizing repenters, and ascended to Heaven.
Incarnation literally means embodied in flesh or taking on flesh. It refers to the conception and the embodiment of a deity or spirit in some earthly form or the appearance of a god as a human. If capitalized, it is the union of divinity with humanity in Jesus Christ. In its religious context the word is used to mean a god, deity, or divine being in human or animal form on Earth.
Communicatio idiomatum is a Christological concept about the interaction of deity and humanity in the person of Jesus Christ. It maintains that in view of the unity of Christ's person, his human and divine attributes and experiences might properly be referred to his other nature so that the theologian may speak of "the suffering of God".
John Harwood Hick was a philosopher of religion and theologian born in England who taught in the United States for the larger part of his career. In philosophical theology, he made contributions in the areas of theodicy, eschatology, and Christology, and in the philosophy of religion he contributed to the areas of epistemology of religion and religious pluralism.
Hypostatic union is a technical term in Christian theology employed in mainstream Christology to describe the union of Christ's humanity and divinity in one hypostasis, or individual personhood.
Philosophical theology is both a branch and form of theology in which philosophical methods are used in developing or analyzing theological concepts. It therefore includes natural theology as well as philosophical treatments of orthodox and heterodox theology. Philosophical theology is also closely related to the philosophy of religion.
Miaphysitism is the Christological doctrine that holds Jesus, the "Incarnate Word, is fully divine and fully human, in one 'nature' (physis)." It is a position held by the Oriental Orthodox Churches and differs from the Chalcedonian position that Jesus is one "person" in two "natures", a divine nature and a human nature (Dyophysitism).
James Douglas Grant Dunn, also known as Jimmy Dunn, was a British New Testament scholar, who was for many years the Lightfoot Professor of Divinity in the Department of Theology at the University of Durham. His best known for his work on the New Perspective on Paul, which is also the title of a book he published in 2007.
Eutychianism, also known as Real Monophysitism, refers to a set of Christian theological doctrines derived from the ideas of Eutyches of Constantinople. Eutychianism is a monophysite understanding of how the human and divine relate within the person of Jesus Christ, with Christ being in one nature and of two, with the humanity of Christ subsumed by the divinity.
Maurice Frank Wiles, FBA was an Anglican priest and academic. He was Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford for 21 years, from 1970 to 1991.
In Christian theology, the incarnation is the belief that the pre-existent divine person of Jesus Christ, God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, and the eternally begotten Logos, took upon human nature and "was made flesh" by being conceived in the womb of a woman, the Virgin Mary, also known as the Theotokos. The doctrine of the incarnation then entails that Jesus was at the same time both fully God and fully human—two natures in one person.
Reginald Horace Fuller (1915–2007) was an Anglo-American biblical scholar, ecumenist, and Anglican priest. His works are recognized for their consequential analysis of New Testament Christology. One aspect of his work is on the relation of Jesus to the early church and the church today. For this, his analysis, which uses the historical-critical method, has been described as neo-orthodox.
The Reverend Frances Margaret Young, OBE, FBA is a British Christian theologian and Methodist minister. She is Emeritus Professor at the University of Birmingham.
Lewis's trilemma is an apologetic argument traditionally used to argue for the divinity of Jesus by postulating that the only alternatives were that he was evil or mad. One version was popularised by University of Oxford literary scholar and writer C. S. Lewis in a BBC radio talk and in his writings. It is sometimes described as the "Lunatic, Liar, or Lord", or "Mad, Bad, or God" argument. It takes the form of a trilemma — a choice among three options, each of which is in some way difficult to accept.
Divine presence, presence of God, Inner God, or simply presence is a concept in religion, spirituality, and theology that deals with the ability of God to be "present" with human beings.
The pre-existence of Christ asserts the existence of Christ prior to his incarnation as Jesus. One of the relevant Bible passages is John 1:1–18 where, in the Trinitarian interpretation, Christ is identified with a pre-existent divine hypostasis called the Logos. There are nontrinitarian views that question the aspect of personal pre-existence, the aspect of divinity, or both.
Christian theology is the theology of Christian belief and practice. Such study concentrates primarily upon the texts of the Old Testament and of the New Testament, as well as on Christian tradition. Christian theologians use biblical exegesis, rational analysis and argument. Theologians may undertake the study of Christian theology for a variety of reasons, such as in order to:
Christian theology sometimes refers to Jesus using the title Redeemer. This refererences the salvation he accomplished, and is based on the metaphor of redemption, or "buying back". In the New Testament, redemption can refer both to deliverance from sin and to freedom from captivity.
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