Is the Resurrection Just a Myth?

I was eighteen when an aunt started talking about Jungian archetypes. She was looking for reasons to exit the Christian faith, and thought Carl Jung’s examinations of the collective unconscious did a good job of explaining away the Biblical narrative. Creation, flood, resurrection: in the light of Jungian archetypes, those were just examples of the archaic myths that populated the unconscious mind.

Harrowing of Hades, Ferapontov Monastery, Russia

I spent a week every summer with my aunt, uncle and cousins, between college and the start of the summer camps where I worked. We’d sit in the sun on her back deck, or on towels by the local swimming hole, and she’d talk about what she was reading: Gestalt, Zen Buddhism, Barry Steven’s Don’t Push the River.

I was working my way through a liberal arts Christian college, where I had started in math and science, switching after a year to a double major in English and humanities. I was reading everything I could get my hands on, and taking classes in history, philosophy, literature, art.

She was eager to see me step free of the narrow constraints of historical Christianity, while I was digging deeper and deeper into questions that had troubled me, and finding answers that made sense. In my senior humanities seminar, I led discussions on Nietzsche and Camus, with six other students and three professors, probing the links between the death of God and the will to power, and the logical conclusions of existentialism. My professors, deeply committed to both faith and reason, were steadfast in insisting we follow ideas to their logical conclusions.

“Ideas have consequences,”  history professor Kay Lindley said, again and again, as we traced the connections between art, literature, philosophy, and the unfolding horrors of war and nuclear disaster.

By the time I left college my aunt had left her marriage to “follow her bliss”, in the words of mythologist Joseph Campbell. I thought of her a year or so later, in the stacks of the University of Pennsylvania library, where I came across Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949) while searching a text I needed for a graduate course.

I remember standing there in the library between the tall shelves of books, first paging through then reading Campbell’s book. Here were the stories my aunt had been talking about, the outpourings of Jung’s collective unconscious, the myths and narratives from across the millennia.

I don’t know how long I stood there in the library, reading, until I gathered my books from my assigned graduate carrel and walked up Locust Walk toward home to continue reading.

I don’t remember all I read, but I do remember two conclusions:

First: Campbell’s work was impressively exhaustive, collecting and considering “a host of myths and folk tales from every corner of the world.” I had studied Greek mythology and European fairy tales, knew some of the stories of Native Americans, bits and pieces of the Bhagavad Gita. It was interesting to see all those stories picked apart then jammed together, pieces of story lined up in odd ways like a museum display of leg bones or feathers.

And second: it struck me then, as it has ever since, that in his eagerness to show the stories were all the same, Campbell cut and hacked and distorted the narratives in a way that left very little of the original sense. He chose what he wanted, ignored what didn’t fit, slid right by what he considered “underdeveloped or degenerate” folk mythologies from “truly primitive” people, distorted more complex narratives to suit his one-size-fits all monomyth.

One Goodreads reviewer, in exasperation, wrote 

his evidence seems randomly generated-—myths and folktales and parables and—-strangest of all—-transcripts of modern dreams—thrown together in a stew, with a breathless Ta-DAA! As if their meaningful unity was obvious. . . .  If you grind the carcass up enough, it all looks like hamburger in the end. Hero hamburger. 

For someone eager to dismiss the narrative of the Christian Bible as just one story among many, I could see the appeal.

And for novelists and screenwriters, his text offered wonderful access to underlying narrative structures. George Lucas, one of Campbell’s first and biggest fans, made a fortune applying the monomyth idea to the seven Star Wars movies.

But Joseph Campbell was not the first to examine similarities among ancient texts.

James George Frazier’s The Golden Bough, itself a complilation of work done during the 1800s, predated Campbell’s Hero with a Thousand Faces by half a century. The idea that the resurrection is one myth among many is certainly not new.

By the time I picked up Campbell’s book, I had read most of G. K. Chesteron (1874-1936), English author, poet, literary scholar. In much of his work, Chesterton explored the function of myth and fairy tale, insisting that human imagination seeks a reality not easily expressed by scientific fact. For Chesterton, myths and legends, at their best, were imaginative foreshadowings of the historic fact of Christ’s resurrection.

In a published debate in 1904, Chesterton offered a summary of his position:

If the Christian God really made the human race, would not the human race tend to rumours and perversions of the Christian God? If the centre of our life is a certain fact, would not people far from the centre have a muddled version of that fact? If we are so made that a Son of God must deliver us, is it so odd that Patagonians should dream of a Son of God? The Blatchford position really amounts to this—that because a certain thing has impressed millions of different people as likely or necessary, therefore it cannot be true. 

C. S. Lewis, Oxford scholar in medieval literature, had been heavily influenced by the idea that Christianity was one myth among many. And yet, he recounts in his autobiographical “Surprised by Joy,” 

I was by now too experienced in literary criticism to regard the Gospels as myths. They had not the mythical taste. And yet the very matter which they set down in their artless, historical fashion — those narrow, unattractive jews, too blind to the mystical wealth of the Pagan world around them — was precisely the matter of great myths. If ever a myth had become a fact, had been incarnated, it would be just like this. And nothing else in all literature was just like this. Myths were like it in one way. Histories were like it in another, but nothing was simply alike. And no person was like the Person it depicted; as real, as recognizable, through all that depth of time… yet also so luminous, lit by a light from beyond the world, a god. But if a god — we are no longer polytheists — then not a god, but God. Here and here only in all time the myth must have become fact; the Word, flesh; God, Man. This is not "a religion," nor "a philosophy." It is the summing up and actuality of them all. (236) 

Years later, Lewis explored the idea of myth further in “Myth Became Fact”:

The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. (God in the Dock) 

This is not a new discussion. In fact, Paul in Corinth pointed the Greeks from their myths and legends to the historical fulfillment in Christ’s resurrection. By faith, some believed. Others held to their

dogmatic pursuit of many gods, or none.

There is more evidence for the resurrection than for most events recounted in ancient literature, multiple eyewitness accounts, and far more manuscripts, from much closer to the event, than for any other ancient occurrence. 

Lewis, considering the resurrection, wrote: 

Somehow or other an extraordinary idea has arisen that the disbelievers in miracles consider them coldly and fairly, while believers in miracles accept them only in connection with some dogma. The fact is quite the other way. The believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly) because they have a doctrine against them. 

Ideas have consequences. 

We continue to witness the consequence of Campbell’s belief that we are all the heroes of our own personal stories, following our own bliss, asserting our own values. We watch the shattered marriages, unparented children, self-absorption, self-medication, self-aggrandizing leaders.

And tell ourselves his version of reality is the reasonable, logical, undogmatic one.

I don’t believe it.   

The Gospels contain a fairy-story, or a story of a larger kind which embraces all the essence of fairy-stories. They contain many marvels—peculiarly artistic, beautiful, and moving: ‘mythical’ in their perfect, self-contained significance; and among the marvels is the greatest and most complete conceivable eucatastrophe. The Birth of Christ is the eucatastrophe of Man’s history. The Resurrection is the eucatastrophe of the story of the Incarnation. This story begins and ends in joy. . . . To reject it leads either to sadness or to wrath. (J. R. R. Tolkien, “On Fairy-Stories,” in The Tolkien Reader, 71-72)

Other Easter Reflections:

    Resurrection Sunday: Exuberant Reversal, April 5, 2015

    Saying Yes to the Risen Christ, April 20, 2014

    Where Is Newness Needed? March 31, 2013

    Risen Indeed: the Hermaneutic Community April 8, 2012

    Resurrection, April 25, 2011 

(In)visible Witness

This Wednesday, March 9, is Ash Wednesday, and by the end of the day many Christians will be wearing a smudge of ashes on the forehead – a visible witness to the call for repentance.

It’s always interested me to see ashes on the foreheads of people who’ve given no other sign of interest in the Christian faith. It’s a good thing, isn’t it? A quiet acknowledgement of the life of the church, a reminder of the beginning of Lent, an expression of sorrow for the ways we’ve fallen short of God’s best.

I know there are non-liturgical Christians who find the ashes offensive. Acts of repentence are to be done in secret, right? In Matthew 6, the gospel reading for Ash Wednesday, Jesus says “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.”

He goes on to give specifics: “when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

And “when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

And “when you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

So, ashes are a bad thing?

Is faith meant to be private? Is it strictly an individual thing, between me and God?

In Matthew 5, Jesus says ““You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.”

If we live our faith in secret, how will our light shine before others? If we don’t let our right hand know what our left hand is doing, how will our good deeds bring God glory?

I think Jesus was talking about motivation. In the Jewish culture of his day, charity, prayer, and fasting were assumed. Everyone knew what was expected, everyone knew how to do it, but, as becomes clear as Jesus talks about the Pharisees in other places, these acts of obedience had become spectator sports, done to impress, rather than please God or encourage others.

The current problem is very different.

In The Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior, Steven Garber wrestles with a question that has troubled me for years: how can young Christians grasp a coherent worldview, when they don’t hear one fully articulated? But even more, how can they learn to live that worldview with integrity, when they see few visible examples?

In hours of conversation with Christians who have come through the early years of career and family with faith and focus intact, Garber discovered, among other things, that “what I believe is deeply affected by my social experience: my family, community, city, society, and century.”

On one level that seems obvious, but consider a culture where

We believe that each man must find the truth

That is right for him.

Reality will adapt accordingly.

The universe will readjust. History will alter.

We believe there is no absolute truth

Excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth.

We believe in the rejection of creeds. (Steve Turner, Creed)

Garber discusses the work of Peter Berger, a sociologist who has spent forty years studying “the relationship between belief and behavior in the light of modernity’s power to shape how we see and live in the world.” According to Berger:

“Meaning systems …must be lived collectively; constant interaction with other people who perceive and interpret reality in the same way as oneself is necessary if one’s “nomos” [socially constructed ordering of experience] is to be automatically effective in embuing one’s everyday experience with meaning. But modern societies have largely dissolved these supportive systems. … So in the end the individual is in a certain sense alone with the task of making sense of the world and his own place in it out of scraps and oddments culled here and there in his differentiated life and contacts.”

How do we understand what’s real, what works, what’s of value, what’s worth pursuing, when called on to construct that reality on our own?

There are plenty of philosophies available, products to buy, anthems to sing. Have it your way. Do what feels right. Be fastest, smartest, prettiest, best. Run over anyone who gets in your way.

Who advocates for the life of faith? If the only time we talk about God, his word, prayer, giving, fasting, discipleship, compassion, is Sunday morning or evening, if the only place that conversation about faith and practice takes place is in church,  no wonder kids think it’s irrelevant.

Deuteronomy 11 says “Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Teach them to your children, talking about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates . . . .”

That passage may be familiar. What may be less familiar is the rationale just before it:

“Remember today that your children were not the ones who saw and experienced the discipline of the Lord your God: his majesty, his mighty hand, his outstretched arm;  the signs he performed and the things he did in the heart of Egypt, both to Pharaoh king of Egypt and to his whole country; what he did to the Egyptian army, to its horses and chariots, how he overwhelmed them with the waters of the Red Sea as they were pursuing you, and how the Lord brought lasting ruin on them. It was not your children who saw what he did for you in the wilderness until you arrived at this place . . .. But it was your own eyes that saw all these great things the Lord has done.”

Moses was warning his people: what to you is real, clear, even obvious, in a different place and time will seem implausible, even ridiculous, if you don’t continue to share the stories of God’s work in the world. Daily, hourly, at home, on the road. God has demonstrated his power – now it’s up to you to keep that reality visible for those who haven’t seen it.

 We are surrounded by stories, voices, demonstrations of ways to live. More than any other culture, ever, we are inundated with ideas about what does and doesn’t work, what is and isn’t of value. The messages are non-stop, inescapable, wired into our children’s brains, popping up on our screens, pressing in from every side.

Who shares the message of faith? Who demonstrates what the life of faith looks like? Who makes the life Christ modeled visible, plausible, compelling?

If we have seen God at work, we need to tell about it, for those who haven’t seen it, don’t believe it, can’t quite imagine it. If there’s joy in giving, we need to share that, for those who can’t picture it, for those who worry about how they’d make ends meet if they redivided the monthly budget. If there’s power in prayer, we need to celebrate, testify, tell the story, affirm that yes, God is faithful, powerful, real. We need to talk about the realities of the Christian faith at the dinner table, driving to and from school, in quiet conversations before bed, at family gatherings with the extended family listening, with colleagues, friends, neighbors.

We also need to show what it looks like. I know many kids and young adults who have never seen anyone read a Bible except sitting in a church pew, who have never heard adults talk about God’s word in the context of a family decision. It saddens me to think of the times I’ve asked “who do you pray with about this?” and heard the answer, from kids, young adults, parents: nobody.

I am deeply thankful for the people who have been brave enough, consistent enough, to demonstrate the Christian life to me in a way I could see and understand. Family, friends, colleagues, faithful people who have shown me, bit by bit, what obedience looks like. What sacrificial giving looks like. What a life of prayer looks like.  What real repentence looks like. In real lives. In the real world I live in.

John Stott, in commentaries and study guides on the Sermon on the Mount, quotes the Scottish theologian AB Bruce: “we are to 'show when tempted to hide' and 'hide when tempted to show.’”

Too often, we’re tempted to hide, and to keep hidden what we’re called to make visible. We’re happy to express ourselves, but uncomfortable expressing the salt and light we’re called to live. We forget this amazing reality: we’re called to be like Christ. To make Christ known. In the particulars, the details, the dailiness of life.

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;

As tumbled over rim in roundy wells

Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's

Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;

Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:

Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;

Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,

Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;

Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;

Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —

Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

To the Father through the features of men's faces.

                                                     Gerard Manley Hopkins

Please join the conversation. Your thoughts and experiences in this are welcome. Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments. 

Story

Eugene Peterson, in Eat This Book, says “We live in an age impoverished of story.” I’m wrestling with the idea of story, of text: where do we find ourselves in the larger story? Who decides which stories are worth reading, worth remembering? What do we do with the words God gives us, with the Word God gives us? How do we live into the story God has given us?

My own story has unfolded, and continues to unfold, in ways very far from what I imagined. The adventures have been deeper, the challenges richer, the rewards sweeter, than I could have foreseen, yet I still struggle when the plot takes unexpected turns.

I struggle as well with the sense of call. I have many friends in their early twenties, wondering what God is calling them to, anxious to see the story settle into a more expected pace. Yet I’m learning calling is never complete – each day is a new word to be wrestled with; each morning the Word pulls me deeper into this story beyond my control.

In To Be Told: Know Your Story, Shape Your Future, Dan Allender asks “What sort of author do you have?” My author is mysterious, wise, amusing, gracious beyond understanding. Yet, knowing that, I struggle, daily, with the longing to grab hold of the text of my life and write my own next chapter. Not because mine would be better. I know without question that whatever story I dream up for myself would be far smaller than the story God is unfolding.

It’s a question of pace: I want to get on with it. Show me the next thing, and I’ll run do it. But if the next thing is to wait, to listen, to be still and know who is God, and who isn’t, my fast-food self jumps up in indignation. I want explanations, instant assignments, obvious resolutions.

As I’ve been rereading the stories of the Old Testament, kings planning for war, women waiting for children, impatience emerges as an obvious point of temptation. More than one story takes a tragic turn out of sheer frustration with God’s apparent failure to speak or show up. Yet God’s glory is often shown in that space between desire and completion –

Section V of Burnt Norton, the first of TS Eliot’s Four Quartets, describes the tension between movement and stillness, between desire and the timeless love beyond desire:

“Words strain,
Crack and sometimes break, under the burden,
Under the tension, slip, slide, perish,
Decay with imprecision, will not stay in place,
Will not stay still.  . . .  The Word in the desert
Is most attacked by voices of temptation,
The crying shadow in the funeral dance,
The loud lament of the disconsolate chimera.”

Words matter; The Word matters more. Our stories call us, yet their importance, and our own calling, is found in the larger story. And the patterns of our lives require times of stillness as well as times of movement. At each turn of the page, as each chapter unfolds, we’re drawn back to the painful task of waiting for the author of our stories to reveal his perfect plan:

I wait for the Lord, my whole being waits,
and in his word I put my hope.
I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.