Is the Incarnation a Myth?

I was in Latin America when The Myth of God Incarnate (edited by John Hick) was published in faraway London (see September 9 issue, page 45 and September 23 issue, page 30). But within a day or two the ripples (even shock waves?) had reached Argentina, and people were asking me if English churchmen were still Christians. (In the United States the book is published by Westminster Press.)

The book is unworthy of its highly competent contributors. Of course, every symposium is uneven, but this one contains several inner contradictions. My problem with the book concerns the questions of language, authority, and heresy.

Language

First, the debate is confused by a failure to agree on the meaning of the word “myth” and to distinguish between substance and form, or doctrine and language. Sometimes “mythical” is used quite harmlessly to mean no more than “poetic” or “symbolic.” Frances Young contrasts “myth” with “science” in the sense that religious reality is inaccessible to scientific investigation, indefinable in human language, and inconceivable to the finite mind. Her use of the word “myth” may be injudicious, but we have no quarrel with her and others’ desire to preserve the element of mystery in Christian faith and experience. Maurice Wiles makes a conscious attempt to define the term, though he admits it is “loose and elusive.” He takes four biblical doctrines (creation, fall, incarnation-atonement, and resurrection-judgment) and argues that to call any of these a “myth” implies that there is “some ontological truth” which corresponds to the central characteristic of the myth and some “appropriateness” about it. The weakness of his argument may be judged when he goes on to write of the “Incarnation myth.” Despite the variant uses of the word myth all the contributors deny that Jesus either claimed to be or was the God-man of historic Christianity. The book airily dismisses the claims of Jesus on the ground that they are Johannine not synoptic. No serious attempt is made to face the claims—often indirect rather than direct—that the Synoptic Gospels do record or explain how ho kurios, the Septuagint title for Yahweh, could be applied to Jesus so early and without controversy, as in the Pauline epistles, which indicated that the divine lordship of Jesus, demanding worship and obedience, was already the universal faith of the church.

Authority

The contributors don’t recognize the authority of the New Testament. They have no objective standard or criterion by which to test their views. The book is divided into two halves, “testing the sources” and “testing the development,” but the sources are not the New Testament documents against which the later development of doctrines is assessed. New Testament writers and patristic writers are quoted without any distinction drawn between them.

What, then, are the sources of incamational belief? Michael Goulder constructs an ingenious but largely unsupported theory that it arose from “the Galilean eschatological myth” and “the Samaritan gnostical myth” (the latter emanating from Simon Magus) in dialectic with one another. Instead of these “two roots” Frances Young prefers “a tangled mass” of divine births, claims, titles, appearances, and expectations—pagan and Jewish—all creating a “cultural atmosphere” conducive to the deification of Jesus.

Granted such an atmosphere, what sparked off belief in the Incarnation of God in Jesus? The authors reply that it was an experience of salvation through Jesus. There was no “revelation,” only an inference from their experience. The same is true today, they say. They retain some kind of commitment to Jesus because he means something special to them.

Now we evangelicals have ourselves often stressed that creed without experience is valueless. Nevertheless, to base creed upon experience is a very different and a very precarious practice.

Heresy

What should the contemporary church do with heretics? Is that a harsh word? I think not. A humble and reverent probing into the mystery of the Incarnation is the essence of true Christological scholarship. But attempted reconstructions that effectively destroy that which is supposed to be being reconstructed is Christological heresy.

Let me defend my question further. It is based on three convictions: there is such a thing as heresy, that is, a deviation from fundamental, revealed truth; heresy “troubles” the Church, while truth edifies it, and therefore if we love the truth and the Church we cannot fold our arms and do nothing.

The purity of the Church (ethical and doctrinal) is as much a proper Christian quest as its unity. Indeed we should be seeking its unity and purity simultaneously.

I do not myself think a heresy trial is the right way to approach this. Heretics are slippery creatures. They tend to use orthodox language to clothe their heterodox views. Besides, in our age of easy tolerance, the arraigned heretic becomes in the public mind first the innocent victim of bigoted persecutors, then a martyr, and then a hero or saint. But there are other ways to proceed. The New Testament authors are concerned not so much about false brethren as about false teachers, who act like wolves and scatter or destroy Christ’s flock. Although the contributors to The Myth of God Incarnate are academics, most of them are also ordained Anglican clergymen who hold a bishop’s license to preach. Is it too much to hope and pray that some bishop sometime will have the courage to withdraw his license from a presbyter who denies the Incarnation? This would not be an infringement of civil or academic liberty. A man may believe, say, and write what he pleases in the country and the university. But in the church it is reasonable and right to expect all accredited teachers to teach the faith that the church in its official formularies confesses and that (incidentally) they have themselves promised to uphold.

There is a second and more positive step to take. The apostles’ response to the rise of false teachers was partly to warn the churches not to listen to them or be led astray by them, and partly to arrange for the multiplication of true teachers. Thus, Paul told Titus to appoint presbyters in every town who were loyal to the apostolic teaching, so that they might be able both “to give instruction in sound doctrine and also to confute those who contradict it” (Tit. 1:5,9). It is in this connection that we must congratulate Michael Green on the speed and sagacity with which he assembled his team of authors to write the answering symposium The Truth of God Incarnate. Heresy cannot be finally overcome by any force except that of the truth. So there is today an urgent need for more dedicated Christian scholars who will give their lives to “the defense and confirmation of the gospel” (Phil. 1:7).

JOHN R.W. STOTT

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