On the night before his Passion, Jesus told his disciples that they would all desert him and flee. A National Service 2nd Lieutenant could have told him that nothing was more calculated to ensure that they did all desert him, but Jesus himself could not see it. Similarly it would not have helped if the Almighty had, the night before his Passion, told Jesus that his views on political theory were infantile. That awareness had to wait until after he had died.
So not only do I think that the language of Incarnation is inappropriate so far as the followers of Jesus are concerned, because it would be met with derision, but in the modern world it is better to avoid it as regards Jesus himself. After all, in the letters of St.Paul you do not find the language of Incarnation; he refers to, “God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”. It was the worthy fathers at Nicaea who thought of it, and their thoughts are not intelligible to the average modern mind.
Secondly, the Church should recognise that Jesus did not come to save men from their sins, or atone for them. The moment you accept Evolution and Darwin, such views become untenable. He came to lead us out of a world where consciousness is limited to this mortal world, and lead us into a world where men could believe in immortality, either in the sense of a life after death, or in living an immortal life in this world even if death comes along inevitably in the end. Marcus Aurelius, one of the greatest of the Stoics, conceived this in the 2nd century AD, and Professor Whitehead in the 1920s, and no doubt many others in between. In Chapter 36 of “Man’s Relationship with God”, I set out this view fully: of the necessity for the Creator to provide a Redeemer to lead us out of a limited world. But it is obvious that the disciples, right up to the Passion, had no idea what Jesus meant by rising again; still less the Jewish people. Their consciousness was limited to this mortal world. In the Old Testament, after death it was Shoel, or the pit, where no-one praised God. And nothing is more certain in the New Testament, than that Jesus convinced his disciples that he had risen from the dead. Though nowadays we wonder in what sense it is true?
So whilst I am sure that the crucial change necessary, if the Church is to avert terminal decline, is a recovery of the original Gospel, which in biblical language is that the Incarnation potentially includes all of us; it is not the appropriate language to use in modern times. I think the avenue most likely to lead to success is to attempt to recover of the ability to perform New Testament style healings. As I wrote in Religion Rewritten, these healings themselves are not the most important thing, though they would fill the pews. They are merely the road to something much bigger. What would Jesus have achieved, without his healings? “The whole world” would not have gone after him. Nicodemus would never have visited him by night, and said that the leaders knew he was a man come from God. Jesus would have been revered as a wise preacher; and the crucifixion would never have taken place. We would never have heard of him.
Jesus preached that the Incarnation potentially includes all of us, in the parable of the sower, in the metaphor of the vine in the last discourses, and in his insistence that he was The Way, The Truth, and the Life. He did not say that he would lead us along the next part of the Way. St.Paul too grasped that there was to be a new creation. But the clergy through the centuries have preached a different gospel, that Jesus saved us from our sins, and from the punishment we so richly deserved; but the Liturgy speaks no word about what we are to do when we have been saved. No word about using our own initiative.
Again, I remind the reader that the well-known healer Harry Edwards wrote that after 2000 years we are just beginning to have the knowledge and the experience to appreciate that the Gospel healings should be taken literally. And it is well worth while exploring the enormous riches of the spiritual world, with discretion, to find out if this is true. (Earlier healers were Dorothy Kerens and the Revd. Cameron Peddie). And indulging half-heartedly in the mysticism of Plotinus will not find out if it is true. It is a blind alley. Much more courage is needed than that. Nothing else will see off Islamic terrorism. Nothing else will fill the churches with people, going probably for the wrong reasons. The modern world worships success. It wants results; and you need to give them results, even if the real reward, the Peace of God, passes their understanding.