From: cctr114@cantua.canterbury.ac.nz (Bill Rea)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Handmaid (was "I feel threatened...")
Date: 26 Jan 93 09:43:24 GMT
Organization: University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand.

Martha Smith (mjsmith@cac.washington.edu) wrote:

>1) In our particular parish the majority of converts to the Roman Catholic
>Church are young adults who were raised without religion, became some form
>of evangelical/fundamentalist in college, found that unsatisfactory 
>intellectually and turn to Catholicism as the Church that maintains the
>historic sense of the Biblical times and an intellectual honesty compatible
>with contemporary times

Its good to hear of place where people are picking up the converts to
conservative Christianity who have out grown it. In my experience, the most
common time for people to become dissatisfyed with the very conservative
expression of the Christian faith is after about 10 years. I have no idea
what proportion of people outgrow it. But my point is valid, if the fundy
bashers would do more to pick the people that outgrow it rather than
engaging in fundy bashing, the church would be better for it. Mostly it
is left to those who outgrow it to find their own way to a new expression
of the Christian faith, a lot never make it.

>2)  I agree that those who strip the church of its meaning by seeing everything
>metaphorically are destroying the denominations they guide.  However, I resist
>using the word mythology in a negative sense.  The difference between a myth
>and a folk story is that a myth is believed to be true, to be a fundamental
>defining event for the group believing the myth.  Ritual is the physical 
>re-enactment of the myth.  Thus, for a mythologist, it is accurate to call
>the Gospel story "Myth" and the Eucharistic service "Ritual".  I agree common
>parlance is destroying this usage, but the mythologist/folklorist should not
>be misunderstood.

There are two things here, one is the technical meaning of myth which really
is only used in any sigificant way by scholars. When I see the myth used
in the technical sense, I usually realise it. But the common-or-garden
meaning of myth is baloney, and we must be careful if we use the word that
our audience doesn't get the wrong idea. I realise that there are people
who advocate stopping the development of the English language, but I think
that is a hopeless cause. The meaning of the word myth has changed for the
great majority of people. I must disagree with your assessment of the Gospel
as myth by either standard, but also on the grounds that most people would
hear something which you did not say. Most people would hear ``The Gospel
story is a load of baloney''.  Which is not the intention of most liberal
Christians when they say that the Gospel is a myth. But we must also question
their basic point, taking the technical meaning of myth. What are they trying
to imply?  If we take an example which was discussed here recently, if we
say that the virgin birth is myth, then we understand that the virgin birth
stories are theological interpretations of the start of Jesus life, but that
in actual fact he was an ordinary man born as the result normal physical
processes, maybe Joseph and Mary fooling around a bit much, maybe they *did
it* and denied it.  But is this what the Gospels of Matthew and Luke intended?
I would suggest that it wasn't. They give the impression that they thought
they were telling the events and applying a theological interpretation
to them by way of showing how the birth of Jesus fulfilled a prophesy
contained in the book of Isaiah. It is the interpretation of liberal
Christians that the theological interpretation is unsupported by
actual events. I have read a great deal of mythology, from such widely
seperated cultures as Egyptian, Celtic, Norse, North American Indian,
Maori, and Mesopotamian and enjoy it greatly. But these myths do not
appear to have the ``rootedness in history'' which the gospels have.
I'm probably starting to repeat myself, but this arises out of the unique
theological outlook of the Israelite and Judean people who saw God as 
acting in non-repeating events of history. While the Gospels are written
in Greek they come out of this unique theological tradition and I think
we misunderstand them if we try to remove their historical base and turn
them into myth, by either meaning of myth.

>3)  The idea of recommending another denomination appalls me - as the Body of
>Christ we should not be divided; there are appropriately different spiritualities, different callings for different people but to be unable to
>accept the different ways that Gods works within individuals implies placing
>human judgment above divine judgment.  We learn from each other by being
>together not by splintering.

I have heard people who have studied how churches grow say that this always
happens in periods growth in the church, and looking at the appalling
results of the ecumenical movement in this country, I think splintering
is not as bad a thing as we have been led to beleive, but more of than
in my next post, real soon now !!

--
                                                                     ___
Bill Rea                                                            (o o)
-------------------------------------------------------------------w--U--w---
| Bill Rea, Computer Services Centre, | E-Mail   b.rea@csc.canterbury.ac.nz |
| University of Canterbury,           | or     cctr114@csc.canterbury.ac.nz |
| Christchurch, New Zealand           | Phone (03)-642-331 Fax (03)-642-999 |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------