Are you still a Christian if you think the nativity story is a myth?

[redrosetea]

Why are we even having this debate because of something the Archbishop of Canterbury said?

Is Rowan Williams all of a sudden someone that Catholics should put stock in whatever he says?

Would a caring and thoughtful cleric make such a statement about the birth of Christ without giving thought to the possibility of leading people astray because they would consider him a person to believe? No.

Rowan Williams is in enough trouble with the people in the UK because of his comments on Sharia law, so let’s forget about what he says on any topic.

:knight1:

He went to Lourdes and got in trouble for that…I don’t know if the man can really do anything right in the eyes of many people

He reminds me of someone in a grocery store witih a shopping cart

 

[EasterJoy]

Great speech. You did not answer the question. Why would you or anyone doubt the veracity of these miraculous events? It is a very simple question.

It really is.

How would I know why? They do. If they don’t all have a different collection of reasons, denials, rationalizations, and misconceptions in place to back that up, I would be very surprised. I will say this, though: I find it remarkable that people who are sold on the idea that the wise men were in fact kings, although Scripture says no such thing, and any number of other things cannot bear the idea of anyone else using their imaginations with regards to the Scriptures. It isn’t enough to believe the veracity of the facts actually in Scripture! No, you also have to believe every barnacle of fancy that has been tacked on in the last 1900 years (but no more!) or you aren’t quite a believer. I say that’s hogwash, right there.

I also would argue that once you’re validly baptized, you’re Christian. You bear a permanent mark. Although those in authority might bar you from the sacraments for your own good if you stray into heresy, and so on, you are still a Christian, no matter what you do, because you still bear the mark of baptism. Nobody can take that away, not even you. Your beliefs may not be Christian, your actions may not be Christian, but you still are.

Let’s stick with discussing whether this idea or that belongs to the Christian deposit of faith, and not make conjectures about whether, in effect, the beliefs of others make them good enough Christians for us. That’s not our place.

 

[redrosetea]

I once read something very interesting about scripture…It is all true from God’s point of view

I am not into picking scripture apart and taking all of the romance and mystery from it…We are not reading a newspaper

 

[jmcrae]

I have heard the loaves and fishes prefigures the euchasrist…has anyone else heard that?

Yes, this is in fact the standard way that it is taught in schools, if they are following a good curriculum.

 

[palmas85]

How would I know why? They do. If they don’t all have a different collection of reasons, denials, rationalizations, and misconceptions in place to back that up, I would be very surprised. I will say this, though: I find it remarkable that people who are sold on the idea that the wise men were in fact kings, although Scripture says no such thing, and any number of other things cannot bear the idea of anyone else using their imaginations with regards to the Scriptures. It isn’t enough to believe the veracity of the facts actually in Scripture! No, you also have to believe every barnacle of fancy that has been tacked on in the last 1900 years (but no more!) or you aren’t quite a believer. I say that’s hogwash, right there.

I also would argue that once you’re validly baptized, you’re Christian. You bear a permanent mark. Although those in authority might bar you from the sacraments for your own good if you stray into heresy, and so on, you are still a Christian, no matter what you do, because you still bear the mark of baptism. Nobody can take that away, not even you. Your beliefs may not be Christian, your actions may not be Christian, but you still are.

Let’s stick with discussing whether this idea or that belongs to the Christian deposit of faith, and not make conjectures about whether, in effect, the beliefs of others make them good enough Christians for us. That’s not our place.

I never mentioned kings or wise men. I questioned why miracles described in scripture, specifically three, are often disbelieved and explained away as having normal everyday unmiraculous meanings by many of the more progressive liberal minded crowd.

Thats all I asked. I’m still anxiously awaiting a response.

 

[JReducation]

Great statement:thumbsup:

Didn’t even begin to answer the question I posed, but a great statement nonetheless:thumbsup:

I never even mentioned the nativity. Re-read my post.

I did answer the question. I answered the question of the OP. I said that I DO believe in the miracles.

I also believe in other miracles contained in scripture.

That does not mean that the way we explain them is exactly how they happened and I used the Christmas story as an example. The miracle did happen, but not the way we explain it. Our representation of it and Luke’s narrative have some disparities.

Let’s agree on something Palmas. Anything I say on any thread, you are going to find something wrong with it. You have done this since you discovered me.

Therefore, I don’t feel obliged to persuade you on anything, because as long as it comes from me, you will find some fault with it.

I have decided to do what Bernadette told the bishop who questioned her about her visions.

“My job is to explain, not to persuade you.”

Fraternally,

JR

 

[palmas85]

I did answer the question. I answered the question of the OP. I said that I DO believe in the miracles.

I also believe in other miracles contained in scripture.

That does not mean that the way we explain them is exactly how they happened and I used the Christmas story as an example. The miracle did happen, but not the way we explain it. Our representation of it and Luke’s narrative have some disparities.

Let’s agree on something Palmas. Anything I say on any thread, you are going to find something wrong with it. You have done this since you discovered me.

Therefore, I don’t feel obliged to persuade you on anything, because as long as it comes from me, you will find some fault with it.

I have decided to do what Bernadette told the bishop who questioned her about her visions.

“My job is to explain, not to persuade you.”

Fraternally,

JR

Actually you jumped in the middle of a discussion I was having with someone else so I asked you the same question, since you decided to join in. I didn’t pick you out.

That being said, giving extremely long verbiose answers to very simple questions is an old trick. Many people get intimidated by someone who writes or speaks at length and sounds like he or she knows what they are talking about.

I don’t. Particularly when they really don’t say much of anything.

I merely asked for an opinion as to why miracles performed by Christ would be doubted or explained away as normal everyday events and why some would doubt them. Thats all. Thats all I ever asked. Nothing else. Nothing at all.

 

[JReducation]

Actually you jumped in the middle of a discussion I was having with someone else so I asked you the same question, since you decided to join in. I didn’t pick you out.

That being said, giving extremely long verbiose answers to very simple questions is an old trick. Many people get intimidated by someone who writes or speaks at length and sounds like he or she knows what they are talking about.
I don’t. Particularly when they really don’t say much of anything.

I merely asked for an opinion as to why miracles performed by Christ would be doubted or explained away as normal everyday events and why some would doubt them. Thats all. Thats all I ever asked. Nothing else. Nothing at all.

The emphasis is mine. I don’t play that game. If my answers are long it’s because I have something going on in my head that I believe it’s worth sharing. Check some of my other posts and threads that I have begun.

Again, we go back to the same old same old. Nothing I contribute when you’re around is good enough for you.

I’m sorry if I interrupted a question that you were asking another poster. I didn’t mean to do that. I was trying to answer the OP’s question.

Fraternally,

JR

 

[palmas85]

The emphasis is mine. I don’t play that game. If my answers are long it’s because I have something going on in my head that I believe it’s worth sharing. Check some of my other posts and threads that I have begun.

Again, we go back to the same old same old. Nothing I contribute when you’re around is good enough for you.

I’m sorry if I interrupted a question that you were asking another poster. I didn’t mean to do that. ** I was trying to answer the OP’s question.
**
Fraternally,

JR

Then why jump into something that wasn’t even related to it?

 

[SFH]

Let me qualify that statement. If you do not accept the divinity of Christ, you are not a Christian. If you do not accept the perpetual virginity of the Most Blessed Mother, you are not a Catholic (it’s an article of faith). While there may be elements of the Nativity Story that the evangelists wrote as allegory or myth, the evidence in support of the “myth” theory is very, very slim. In all likelihood, everything happened just like the evangelists wrote, or pretty darn close.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

I don’t know how you can be? Either you think Jesus is the Son of God, born of a Virgin or you don’t…I don’t think Mathew ,Mark ,Luke, and John were liars…

None of that implies that one has, in order to be Christian, to believe that the nativity stories in Matthew or Luke are accounts of actual events.​

At least, that is (I assume) what you are concerned with.

Christians who don’t believe the historicity of the star, the Magi, etc., are not implying or suggesting that anyone is lying - such Christians can easily accept the Gospels as true. The confusion comes from mistaking the assertion:

• “The gospels are true”
  with
• “Everything in the gospels that looks like an historical event, is an historical event.”
  One can perfectly well deny the latter, while accepting as true, & believing, the former. Because that is the way in which the nativity texts seem to require to be understood. It is precisely because people do care about the truth of the gospels that they do not see the Nativity texts as accounts of events; which is not to deny that actual events at various times may have influenced the Evangelists. That is not the same as saying that events happened in a sequence & connection that justifies taking the Nativity accounts as accounts of events that happened in the sequence, & interconnection, & at the period, of the Nativity.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

It sounds weird to me…if Christ was just anyone’s son he wouldn’t be divine…they must doubt Christ’s divinity…if you do that how can you be a Christian?

Divinity is not genetic; it’s not inheritable - so why would He not be Divine if He were the Son of someone else ?​

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

If you take the miracles out of the gospels what is left?

Christ Himself - & that is worth more than any miracles. FWIW, it’s not even clear that He did anything that would count as miraculous by the standard of an age better acquainted with nature than His own - an act might be thought by Evangelist X to be miraculous within that Evangelist’s knowledge of the world; that does not mean that the act is miraculous if measured by the knowledge of the world available to a later age.​

He is said to have done many signs - & “signs” do not have to be [what we call] “miraculous”: all they need do, is act as signs; & anything, however ordinary, can do that; as the OT shows. Miracles prove nothing at all - false prophets can do them, so they mean nothing. Mere miracles are the stock-in-trade of every competent trickster; they are anything but evidence of religious authenticity. To base faith on anything so trivial, is to mistake sensationalism & wonder-mongering for faith.

The “signs” done by Jesus are important as signs of the closeness of the Kingship of God - they show that a new order is beginning, that it is “breaking in”, & that “the prince of this aion (= world, age) is being cast out”. This is what is meant when people say that the Gospel is “eschatological”. The signs are signs of the coming of the Father’s Kingship, & thus of the ending of the power of the devil. That’s why the Lord’s Prayer prays for the speedy coming of the former, & for protection against the latter: it is eschatological through & through.

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Atheists can be ethical can’t they? Will that get them to heaven if they deny Christ?

Apparently so. To deny Him in words, is a very different thing from denying the Reality of Him - if He has preached in a way that distorts Him, denial of a distorted Christ will not necessarily be denial of Christ; it may well be a sign of a deeper faith than the faith of someone who does accept a distorted Christ as Christ. This was recognised in the 17th century; though it’s made an impact on Church teaching only much mote recently. So what looks like atheism can be faith, even if it is wearing a mask. There are probably going to be a lot of atheists in Heaven - & lot of church-goers & apologists in the other place. The words of Jesus certainly suggest this.​

If you want atheists to be saved, then pray for them

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Myth is a misleading term because since the 19th Century unbelievers have tried to treat Scripture in the same way that they treat, say, Babylonian mythology. In fact, the Bible is very unmythical by companison with what we find in he records of Babylonia,or Egypt . or the similar mythology of the Greeks and Romans.
There is, for instance, no divinization of natural “forces” and “events.” Instead we have a kind of DEmythologization of those same sources, or at least a critque of that mythology not unlike Plato’s critique of Greek mythology. We may think of the Hebrew religion as equally radical but progressive in the way that philosophy did not prove to be. So mythology ought to be used for Biblical religion only if it is also applied to philosophy or even to “modern science.”

Could you please elaborate on this last bit ?​

That is, as an overarching way of dealing with a reality that transcends the senses. Thus Genesis is an effort to recover man’s original understanding of who he was and his relationship to a posited Creator who is also a “Father.”

It’s true that there are wide differences between the Biblical & Babylonian (or rather, Mesoptamian) literatures - but while it is only right that the differences mean the Bible should not be assimilated too closely to the other, there are plenty of similarities as well. Besides, the wide difference in age between the parts of the Biblical texts means that the Biblical texts come into all kinds of relations with texts outside the Bible - this is important as a reminder that the Bible was not sealed off from all other texts, but is related to them; & quite often borrows from them. That in turn is important because it makes the Incarnation part of a pattern of “incarnation” - of a people, of a literature, of God Himself. This has a lot of implications for how the Church deal with other religions, because it affects the Church’s self-understanding. And the similarities between very old extra-Biblical literatures, & that in the Bible, is a clue to the continuity of God’s purpose: He does not start to be “original” at the Incarnation, but works from within a tradition that is already influenced by others.​

That the Bible can be treated to the same sorts of operation as much older texts, is evidence of its continuity with them, & of its humanity.

People make critical separations not only in Genesis, but also in the Enuma elish, the Babylonian “epic of creation”; so Genesis is not alone in being divided by sources, despite assertions sometimes made to the contrary: the Enuma elish is very clearly based on much older legends: the god Marduk whom its exalts owes a lot to the god Ninurta, among others. Part of the work of critics is to judge whether an interpretation is really valid or not - & not all supposed parallels between the Bible & Mesopotamia have proved to be as real as they have seemed. Sometimes OTOH they have been noticed where for a long time they were not seen. There are examples of both in the massive (three volume) commentary on Genesis by Claus Westermann.