The Myth of God Incarnate

"[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".

"[3] The controversy prompted a sequel, Incarnation and Myth: the Debate Continued (1979), edited by Michael Goulder, another contributor to the original volume.

[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.

"[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.

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 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.

"[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.