‘The Christ Event’

Abstract

I would like to begin at this point by considering the peculiar, but for many people intriguing, procedures of Professor Maurice Wiles, Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. In his article ‘Does Christology rest on a mistake?’1 he begins with a very close parallel which he draws between the idea of the incarnation and the ideas of creation and the Fall. No intelligent person thinks today of creation in a literal way along the lines of the Book of Genesis—it was not a once-for-all event a few thousand years ago. It is a continuing process of sustaining the contingent finite universe in a way which goes beyond all but the dimmest understanding on our part. God did not create the world as we make things. Nor is creative activity restricted or manifested only in special events or parts of the universe, though there may well be events which make us appreciate better than others that the world is created. The divine creativity is everywhere.