This time of the year, within a few weeks of Christmas, I reflect again on the dilemma facing the Church.
The Christmas story, of the child being born in a stable, the angels singing, the wise men arriving with their gifts, and then the flight into Egypt to avoid the slaughter of the innocence by Herod, has an extraordinary appeal. And of course an enormous commercial reality has been built up around it over the years. Reading in today’s paper, I see it is predicted that spending in Ireland will be up 14% from last year.
The dilemma is that the Christmas story is mythological; it is not an historical account of the birth of Jesus. That is largely accepted by scholars nowadays.
After the death of Jesus, when his followers began to spread out of Judaism to the surrounding regions, they needed something special about this person Jesus in order to emphasise his importance, and the reality of his resurrection, to give authority to his teaching that they were preaching about. At that time many of the surrounding cultures had various beliefs about gods, some believing in the notion of one God, but others have a range of gods to cover different aspects of life. It was common among these cultures to have stories about gods coming down to earth and having relations with humans. It was out of this type of thinking, and to give importance to Jesus in the eyes of these ‘foreigners’ that the Nativity story gradually developed. The earliest of the New Testament writers, Paul, made no reference to it, so it hadn’t become widespread until later.
Now it can be said with a fair degree of certainty, that Jesus was born in Nazareth, son of Joseph and Mary, and that, as the gospels tell us, he was one of a family of possibly five or six.
None of this makes any real difference to who Jesus was, or the significance of his life and teaching. But the question is, should the gathering of believers who come to church to celebrate Christmas be acquainted with this new understanding? A scripture scholar, invited by a parish priest to speak to the people about Christmas, was instructed ‘Don’t tell them the truth’! Was he right or wrong?
This is part of a wider question about the Bible. Most of it, especially the Old Testament, but also some of the New Testament, is not a historical account, but rather mythological and imaginary. But that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t contain truth. In dealing with the notion of God and religion we are all the time in the world of mystery, about which we cannot fully grasp or understand. The best we can do is get glimpses of the mystery, and story and myth are better suited to open up this world to us than historical accuracy.
But the Church has, down through the centuries, treated these stories and myths as if they were actual historical accounts, and they have even built beliefs and dogmas around them. For example, constructing the teaching of Original Sin around the myth of Adam and Eve, and all that followed from that.
Pope Francis regularly criticises what he calls ‘clericalism’, the idea of a caste within the Church that is superior to the rest. I see this situation as an example of ‘clericalism’ — somethings that the clerical academics know, but cannot be told to the ordinary believer. Better leave them with their simplistic faith.
It won’t work anymore. Instead, I believe, it will just increase the number of people who regard the whole thing as a fairytale.
