If New Testament Christianity is to reappear today with
its power and joy and courage, men must recapture the basic
conviction that this is a Visited Planet. It is not enough to
express formal belief in the "Incarnation" or in the "Divinity
of Christ"; the staggering truth must be accepted afresh--that
in this vast, mysterious Universe, of which we are an almost
infinitesimal part, the great Mystery, Whom we call God, has
visited our planet in Person. It is from this conviction that
there springs unconquerable certainty and unquenchable faith
and hope. It is not enough to believe theoretically that Jesus
was both God and Man; not enough to admire, respect, and even
worship Him; it is not even enough to try to follow Him. The
reason for the insufficiency of these things is that the
modern intelligent mind, which has had its horizons widened in
dozens of different ways, has got to be shocked afresh by the
audacious central Fact--that, as a sober matter of history,
God became one of us.
... J. B. Phillips (1906-1982), New Testament Christianity
[1956], chapt. iii, par. 3
