Written as a response to "The Myth of God Incarnate" crowd, Hebblethwaite argues for the uniqueness of the Incarnation: "Christianity shares with many other religions belief in an infinite and transcendent God, the source of the world’s being and of all its values. It recognises that in every part of the world traditions of religious belief and religious experience have made it possible for men and women to enjoy the blessedness of spiritual life and of the knowledge and love of God. But the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation expresses the conviction of Christians that this God has made himself known more fully, more specifically and more personally, by taking our human nature into himself, by coming amongst us as a particular man, without in any way ceasing to be the etertial and infinite God" (21).
As the God-man, Jesus truly and graciously reveals God: "In Jesus’ character and acts we see the character and acts of God himself in terms we can readily understand. At the same time God does not overwhelm us in his self-revelation. Instead he invites and wins our personal response" (23).
The incarnation cannot be reduced to a mere myth. It has no power to move us unless there is real objective content to event and explanation, for "we are not moved by nonsense" (39).
We must not fear going "beyond the facts." Jesus is not discovered simply by restricting ourselves to historical inquiry: "The Church theologian as such has no special interest in restricting his perspective to the purely human, in other words in remaining resolutely ‘below’. Some modern theologians give the impression that unless they remain within the framework of purely human categories their talk of Jesus will make no contact with the mind of their contemporaries. But it is one thing to begin where other people are, quite another to remain there for fear of offending secular sensibilities. That is to betray a loss of confidence in the Church’s tradition as a possible framework for the interpretation of reality" (81).
Hebblethwaite provides profound reflections on truth-talk, on the significance of creeds, on the nature of theological development ("movement is always back and then forward, not just on and on and on, moving further and further away from its origins" 106), and how any serious talk about God is ontological ("Ontology - 'substance' talk - is involved in any serious theistic belief" 161). For this reason, the Incarnation cannot be construed as a mere metaphor. It has to do with an actual event.
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