"Mythical"

"That which has been from the beginning, which we ourselves have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, and have touched with our own hands - the word of life - manifested amongst us... this is what we speak of to you - the coming of eternal life, which the Father has brought amongst us". 1 John 1 & 2.

"In the end, everything becomes literature. Whatever is told (revealed) unfolds itself in time - it becomes story... The only reason to tell a story is because of what it means".

Andrew Klavan - The Truth and Beauty.

Back in the my teens, I absolutely loved the album The Myths and Legends of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table by Rick Wakeman. It was an album that lead my imagination into the magical realms of what might have happened in England in those turbulent times between the departure of the Romans and the settlement of the Anglo Saxons. Such thoughts fuelled many a holiday trip to various locations in the 80s and a final settling in my own thoughts as to some of the 'possibles' with respect to this mythical figure (by the way, I still love the album!).

It's in this light that I want to refer to coming across the recent conversion of Paul Kingsnorth and his joining of an Eastern Orthodox form of church.

Paul has certainly been on quite a journey, and it would appear from his own testimony on this that something palpable yet unseen has been present in his background for a very long time. It's clear that all this is working, in a similar fashion to what's evident with Jordan Peterson, to expose him to the living reality of Jesus Christ, but whilst this is certainly a profitable direction of travel, there are a few 'wrinkles' that all of us have to address.

In the Rebel Wisdom video linked to above, Paul speaks frequently about the 'mythical' nature of theological truth - there's no point looking for Eden, or evidence of Noah's Flood, he would assert, because these are meant to be treated merely as 'stories' with meanings that somehow anchor us to what matters. He also speaks of the 'literalist' church (apparently focused in America) being a 'recent phenomena' and not in any manner related to the church of prior times, the Eastern church's tradition of mysticism being the correct approach to such difficulties.

I've always found this to be a bizarre and unfathomable principle of this tradition.

If you address this religious system in respect to the Incarnation, they have absolutely no doubts that you're dealing with history - divine intervention that cannot be refuted. The question is why? Why is this section of the biblical narrative to be deemed as actual, when so much of the rest of this collection of events is to be seen, at best, as amounting to some manner of useful story?

Think of it this way -

We know that Pilate existed, that Herod issued heinous edicts, that Jesus was indeed crucified, all because of extant materials from the period, so what, then, are we to make, for example, of the discovery of the City of David, or the curse tablet (in the last few weeks) on Mount Ebal from the times of Joshua's Conquest, which contains BOTH the divine names ("El" - Elohim and YHWH - Yahweh)? These are just the recent examples of a vast array of materials that are now available to construct a very palpable narrative of ancient history which clearly marries with the Biblical accounts of events.

What our 'myth' only friends need to consider is that the entire basis of why things are this way today - the fall of humanity - clearly cannot be mythological. It has to be a real event, as real as the divine work of creation itself.

You also then have to face the vital testimony of the scriptures.

The writer to Hebrews, for example, isn't simply referring to 'stories with useful messages' when he speaks of Abraham, or Moses and Joshua, or Sampson, or earlier patriarchs. He's saying these people engaged in real actions with God present, and it was that truth that makes the difference.

When I watch a TV drama or a good film, I may be seeing something that is aiming for some measure of historical accuracy on a particular person or event, but I'm usually watching something that is generally fictional in nature - just like the tales in the King Arthur legends, but it would be totally wrong for me to come away from that with the conclusion that real historical figures never actually existed - that history never happened (we wouldn't be here if it hadn't). The same is true of the Biblical record. We may go about manufacturing all manner of 'what ifs' about the people and times spoken about there, but these people and what they underwent must be taken for what's stated - very real.

It's great when people come to a point of having to deal with the real Jesus, but that Jesus is surrounded by a 'cloud of witnesses' - the saints from prior times and ages, that were transformed in their lives by the same good news that reaches us.

It's imperative that Christianity believes and shows that.