The Demythologizers are still at it… 

      They are an interesting lot, the demythologizers, who nearly always make their grand appearance – for the six hundred and seventy-third time – at or around Easter time.  They have read – usually only about – Harnack and Bultmann, whose biblical studies, though a bit dated, still seem to inspire.  What?  The need to fit the Gospels into the acceptable framework of the modern worldview, a perspective that really cannot allow even one, tiny little miracle, much less that miracle of all miracles – the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. 

      It was Tolkien, I believe, who even dared, in a grand spirit of rebellion so often needed, to refer to the story of Christ’s life, death and resurrection as The Myth.  His presentation of the Christian story in this way was the final blow to C. S. Lewis’ agnosticism and was one of the chief means of the birth of Lewis’ Christian faith.  For Lewis was a big fan of those fanciful and delightful pagan myths, which were, and are, marvelous if foggy windows on reality, cloudy openings, yes, but still letting in a good bit of light.  That light, Tolkien argued, shines on Christ, whose “mythical” appearance just happened to be historical – Christ, the Light of the World, came as the fulfillment of all the best things foreshadowed in the ancient myths; He, ultimately, was what they were pointing to.

      All the more clear, much clearer, were the foreshadowings, in the prophets of Israel, of Christ’s coming as Messiah – again, ancient stories shedding light, but still a bit misty since the fulfillment of them, Jesus of Nazareth, was to be far more glorious than ever imagined.  The myths of heathens tentatively expected Him; the prophets yearned for His coming; and even Nature herself, in receiving Him in the Incarnation, found the key to the meaning of her existence:  the Logos Himself, through whom the universe was created and given its pattern, logic, its very story that reveals an inner purpose and movement back toward God, Who created His world intentionally imperfect – assigning to man and woman the stewardship task of perfecting what He had begun. 

      Man, the Old Adam, fell and failed.  The New Adam, Christ, triumphed and has set all things right… something to be manifested fully in the coming of God’s Kingdom at the end of time.  Meanwhile, our Lord has left us His promise, guaranteed by His bodily resurrection, that this restoration of all things will be accomplished, even though it entails a difficult pilgrimage for His people on this sin-wracked earth, a pilgrimage of those whose citizenship is in heaven and whose time on earth a sojourn – a way of being in this world hinted at in the experience of the Hebrews during their forty years of wandering in the desert, in Moses’ forty days on the mountain speaking with God, in our Lord’s own forty days in the wilderness facing and rejecting the temptations that overwhelmed Eve and Adam, and, finally, in our forty days of Lenten experience every year.  This all has to do with an immensely grand story that in different phases “repeats” itself, but with ever greater light being thrown on what God is really up to.  That became so very lucid in the incarnation, the life and death and resurrection of Jesus bodily from the dead:  the restoration of all things that includes the defeat of even death itself.

      Well, this is a tad too hopeful for that “sophisticated” view of the ultimate tragedy and purposeless of life held to so stubbornly by the demythologizers.  Unable to enjoy the real point of a myth – an opening onto the Divine – and the excitement of the fulfillment of prophecy and the occurrence of miracles, they seem dead set on denying that joy to everyone else.  Thus the relish with which they set about disabusing the rest of us of our infantile clinging to mere “fables”… like the Resurrection.  They are the enlightened ones who have firmly grounded their argument on the unshakeable assertion of the impossibility of a miracle… in spite of all the evidence. 

      It’s a bit of an affront to such “mentors” as these, whose world is way too small for any supernatural aspect, for their humanity and the world itself to be in such a sad state of affairs the healing of which would require a miracle.  But that’s the very point of the Christian story, which, unlike myths, played its way out in the arena of history and not merely in the imagination.  “But,” they answer, “We cannot take with any historical seriousness the material of the Gospels.”  “Why not?” the little ones beg response.  “Because,” they, patiently putting up with our childlikeness, instruct us, “the Gospels speak of miracles.”  “What if though,” the child insists, “the miracles are historical events?”  “That’s impossible,” they retort, growing ever more exasperated, “because we all know that miracles don’t happen.”  There’s that assertion again.  So much for history; it’s all about naturalistic dogma. 

      How refreshing it is to put down the latest academic extract on David Hume and his skepticism (which no one really takes seriously, since it would spell the end of all science), and pick up the Gospels, where Matthew, Mark, Luke and John do gleeful somersaults of descriptions so that we get the point of what they and others experienced:  the Savior’s rising bodily from the dead. 

      It would be easy, too easy, for me to simply choose to live in a world that is in touch with the supernatural, receptive of miracles, and destined for a glorious consummation of all that is good, just, and beautiful as opposed to selecting to abide in the dank and dismal “merry”-go-round world of the demythologizers.  But there is a much better reason for me, for you, to make that choice:  all the evidence supports it.  Miracles happen… in spite of the touted dogmas to the contrary.  There is no other really convincing explanation of the Gospels other than the very one they present to us.  The myths and prophecies prepared us for this explanation.  And Christ came in their fulfillment.