From Priority of John by J.A.T. Robinson

The traditional supranaturalistic way of describing the Incarnation almost inevitably suggests that Jesus was really God almighty walking about on earth, dressed up as a man. Jesus was not a man born and bred–he was God for a limited period taking part in a charade. He looked like a man, he talked like a man, he felt like a man, but underneath he was God dressed up–like Father Christmas. However guardedly it may be stated, the traditional view leaves the impression that God took a space-trip and arrived on this planet in the form of a man. Jesus was not really one of us; but through the miracle of the Virgin Birth he contrived to be born so as to appear one of us really, he came from outside.

I am aware that this is a parody, and probably an offensive one, but I think it is perilously near the truth of what most people–and I would include myself–have been brought up to believe at Christmas time. Indeed, the very word incarnation (which, of course, is not a Biblical term) almost inevitably suggests it. It conjures up the idea of a divine God taking our nature upon him, or that of Wesley’s Christmas hymn, with its veiled in flesh the Godhead see.

The supranaturalist view of the Incarnation can never really rid itself of the idea of the prince who appears in the guise of a beggar. However genuinely destitute the beggar may be, he is a prince; and that in the end is what matters.

But suppose the whole notion of a God‘ who visits the earth in the person of his Son is as mythical as the prince in the fairy story? Suppose there is no realm out there from which the Man from heaven arrives? Suppose the Christmas myth (the invasion of this side by the other side)–as opposed to the Christmas history (the birth of the man Jesus of Nazareth)–has to go? Are we prepared for that? Or are we to cling here to this last vestige of the mythological or metaphysical worldview as the only garb in which to clothe story with power to touch the imagination? Cannot perhaps the supranaturalist scheme survive at least as part of the magic of Christmas? Yes, indeed, it can survive–as myth.