We have already dealt with the relationship between fact and truth in the biblical accounts of Jesus. I have tried to show that the question “Did it really happen this way?” arises from a misunderstanding that confuses fact and truth, while neglecting to recognize that everything that is reported as an event has been filtered through the experience and understanding of the narrator. For this reason, what we receive as an event is always colored and conditioned by interpretation: by our own interpretation, when it comes to our own experience, or by the experience of the person who transmits the information to us.
Concerning the accounts of Jesus’ conception and birth, we must recognize that they represent a synthesis of historical fact—what we call an event—and a transcendent meaning that human words cannot express except through images and similes. Jesus’ parables provide an excellent example. They are stories based on a common experience that the listener recognizes as an event: the power of the king or householder, the care of the shepherd for his flock, and so on. Jesus takes these known facts and uses them as images, that is, as verbal icons, to express a meaning that speaks to the immediate experience of his listeners. As the listeners, and later the readers of Scripture, speculate on the basis of their own experiences, they easily see the image of God as Lord and Judge in the king or ruler, in the agricultural cycle a sign of God’s presence and work in creation, in the rulers of nations a warning of judgment and a call to compassion, and in the shepherd a witness to Christ’s concern to “seek and save the lost.”
Jesus never intended the parables to be taken as events in the sense that they recount events that actually happened. They are pictures, verbal images, that go beyond themselves to point to a deeper truth. For this reason, they are “more than an event.” Although they are based on familiar, everyday facts, they raise the listener to a higher level, to a state of absolute truth concerning our relationship with the eternal God. In this sense, the creation story, in fact the first eleven chapters of Genesis, can be considered a parable. If we ask, “Did it happen this way?” the answer is yes and no. Yes, insofar as the creation narrative affirms that God is the sole author of all that exists, that everything came “from nothing into being” by his will and power, and that what he created and continues to create is essentially “good.” But no, as far as is known today, and scientifically proven if you will, the universe is not composed of three layers where “the water is above the dome of the sky,” and the days of creation cannot be understood literally as periods of twenty-four hours.
To put it in more technical terms, there is a “mythological” aspect to every biblical story, including the Nativity narrative. But to say that, we need to be very clear about what a myth is. A myth is neither a legend nor an invented story. Nor should we conflate myth with a moralizing allegory. Strictly speaking, a myth is a narrative that serves to express, in human language and imagery, truths that go beyond what we consider to be purely historical. Some truths, such as emotions and aspirations, are best expressed in poetic language. Transcendent truths, that is, truths about the inner life and visible work of God, for example, are best expressed in mythical language.
If this seems confusing, it is probably because we tend to misunderstand the concept of “history” or “historical truth.” Misled by a dualism, we create an inappropriate dualism between the temporal and the eternal, just as we always do between truth and event. We consider them to include different domains of reality, while they are always merging. The universe came into being as a result of the Big Bang, but the reason we cannot answer the question “what happened before?” is that time itself did not exist, while the Creator did exist, and at a specific moment in time set in motion what we know as material and historical reality. We cannot, therefore, understand the historical or “real” aspect of creation without referring to a transcendent Creator (although many have tried…).
Similarly, Jesus’ presence in people’s lives and experiences took place in the past as the result of certain historically determined events, that is, he was born, crucified and buried in specific places and times. But at the same time, this birth and this death are transmitted with greater significance, because they are vehicles of divine intervention in historical reality. He who was born of the Virgin Mary is a human being but he is the eternal Son of the Father, and it is he whose death and then his resurrection mark the decisive passage to eternal life. Here we find the culmination of the fusion of time and eternity, of historical event and transcendent reality.
Since God is present and active in every event of human history as well as in all our personal and intimate experiences, we must correct every false dualism between time and eternity, between event and truth. All time is permeated by eternity, just as every event has the capacity to communicate some aspect of absolute truth. Yet eternity transcends time just as truth transcends simple event. Language attempts to express this inner relationship, and it is most effective in the form of myth: a narrative in human words that expresses in its own way the essentially inexpressible mystery of divine-human interaction.
This is why we affirm that the creation account in Genesis is true, even though not all the elements of the story are “realistic.” This explains why all the accounts of Christ’s birth, death, resurrection, and glorification are true, even though it is impossible to affirm every detail to the satisfaction of skeptics who may exist. The truth of these accounts, in any case, is not without objectivity, for it can only be perceived with the eyes of faith. Thomas saw and believed, as did the other apostles and many others (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). What they saw was true: historical truth insofar as they saw the Lord in the flesh, and transcendent truth insofar as that body was transfigured into the resurrection body.
What we often forget is that what we call an event, a time, or a historical fact is always filled with eternal presence and meaning. The phrase “actual eschatology” is not just a theological term. It is also a verbal icon that seeks to express an ineffable truth. It means that the world itself, in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ famous words, is “saturated with the majesty of God.” Biblical narratives, whether we classify them as factual, historical, didactic, or mythical, are verbal icons that seek to capture this majesty, make it comprehensible in human language, and present it to us as a life-giving witness to what is absolutely and unequivocally true.
Father John Brake
Translated into Arabic by Father Antoine Melki
Quoted from the Orthodox Heritage Bulletin
