Literary approach to faith

[Hunho]

Let’s imagine this: When a person reads ‘Lord of the Rings’ he/she is able to ‘believe’ the story and events. Similarly with seeing a Sci-Fi or vampire movie. ‘Belief’ is sustained while engaged in that particular thought-world (or language game) of the literary or artistic genre in which one is engaged. A work of literature is ‘true’ if its ideas have a resonance. The distinction of ‘fiction or non-fiction’ is a genre classification, and has nothing to do with real ‘Truth’. Hamlet, and the Iliad are ‘true’ stories, although may be the never actually happened.

Now, I propose that religion can be approached in the same way. If we read a work of literature, say the Gospel of John, can we appreciate it as a viable work of literature? It is true if it has resonance with the human condition.

Is the most appropriate approach to religious truth (i.e. the truths expressed in literature in the genre known as ‘sacred texts’) one of literary appreciation? Is the ‘Truth’ of a religious text not 'it’s factual content, but its ability to resonante with the human condition?

It seems anything other than such an aesthetic conception of ‘truth’ is redundant in a post-modern, post-scientific world.

The primary fact about Christianity that people so often ignore or overlook is that it is a revealed religion. It is not a product of the human mind. For Christians the truths which we believe, which we put our trust in, are what God has revealed about himself and his creation in the Old and New Testaments.
“Historical truth” is a statement about an event that happened in the past, whether five minutes or five million years ago. Also, the past, i.e. the events which have already occurred, are still present ontologically in the consequences that they have produced.