It is almost a commonplace that, since critical study of the canonical gospels reached wider currency in the mid-nineteenth century, English Christology has very often been closely concerned with the effects of such study on the formulation of the doctrine of the Incarnation. A book such as The Myth of God Incarnate, together with its conservative rejoinders, forms simply one more (undistinguished) episode in a tradition dominated by a particular understanding of the relationship between the historical and the dogmatic in Christology. This tradition is especially concerned with the question of whether the wedge driven by gospel criticism between the ‘Jesus of history’ and the ‘Christ of faith’ (as the latter is found in the gospels) leads to a position where incarnational formulae lack historical grounds and so cease to command assent. It was concern along these lines which led many orthodox English Christologians to concentrate their energies in the defence of the doctrine of the Incarnation as a doctrine resting on secure historical foundations. Lightfoot, remarks Morgan, ‘inaugurated the century-long Anglican tradition of defending the doctrine of the Incarnation by maintaining the essential historicity of the gospels’.

Anglican Christology in particular has often responded to historical criticism by urging that the doctrine of the Incarnation stands or falls by its historical grounds. Theologians might differ as to whether it does in fact stand or fall.