The Myth of God Incarnate (1977 Hick), edited volume

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The Myth of God Incarnate (1977) is a volume edited by John Hick.

Abstract

The publication of The Myth of God Incarnate in 1977 stirred a controversy in England in the subsequent decade, and in many respects, continues to spark conversation on a more global level in some Christian circles even today. The book arose out of an expressed need on the part of the contributors to reconcile the exclusivity associated with the traditional articulation of the doctrine of the Incarnation with an increasingly pluralistic religious scene in England. Accordingly, each of the contributors in their own way wrestles with the same question: How can traditional interpretations of the doctrine of the incarnation insist on an identity between the personhood of Jesus and the Second Person of the Godhead? In response, they agree that "Jesus was (as he is presented in Acts 2.21) 'a man approved by God' for a special role within the divine purpose, and that the later conception of him as God incarnate, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity living a human life, is a mythological or poetic way of expressing his significance for us" (ix, emphasis mine).

In contrast to previous scholarship, each of the contributing authors assumes that the Chalcedonian articulation of the doctrine of the Incarnation was utterly foreign to the whole of the New Testament and instead argue that the doctrine only developed slowly, over a great deal of debate and time. The first half of the book traces the origins of incarnational doctrine, while the second half investigates the later development of incarnational doctrine in the church. Francis Young's chapter, "Two Roots or a Tangled Mess?" is particularly instructive in relation to the Jewish backdrop of the doctrine of the incarnation, and her employment Second Temple Period Jewish literature is both extensive and clear. John Hick's chapter, "Jesus and the World Religions," asks where the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation fits within a religiously diverse world. For him, the doctrine must be mythological, because "understood literally the Son of God, God the Son, God-incarnate language implies that God can be adequately known and responded to only through Jesus; and the whole religious life of mankind, beyond the stream of Judaic-Christian faith is thus by implication excluded as lying outside the sphere of salvation" (179). ~ Deborah Forger


Hick regarded the doctrine of the Incarnation as something entirely foreign to the whole of New Testament thought, calling it “a dogma that Jesus himself would probably have regarded as blasphemous” (p.161).

Editions

Published in London [England]: SCM Press; and Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1977 / 2nd ed. 1993.

Translations

Contents

  • Preface
  • 1 - Christianity without Incarnation? - Maurice Wiles

Part I: Testing the Sources

  • 2 - A Cloud of Witnesses - Frances Young
  • 3 - Jesus, the Man of Universal Destiny - Michael Goulder
  • 4 - The Two Roots of the Christian Myth - Michael Goulder
  • 5 - Two Roots or a Tangled Mess? - Frances Young

Part II: Testing the Development

  • 6 - The Creed of Experience - Leslie Houlden
  • 7 - The Christ of Christendom - Don Culpitt
  • 8 - Myth in Theology - Maurice Wiles
  • 9 - Jesus and the World Religions - John Hick
  • 10 - Epilogue - Dennis Nineham

External links

  • [ Google Books]
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