Part 10: Myth Became Fact in the Incarnation

After considering all the evidence on hand, the Nativity stories in the Gospels still can be seen as largely historically accurate, and Christians should resolutely cling to them as such, for the factual truth of this story helps clarify and confirm central spiritual and theological truths of the Gospel. What really happened on the First Christmas, as far as fair and judicious historical research can say, is pretty much what the Gospels tell us happened.

Part 10: Myth Became Fact in the Incarnation

By Robert Stackpole, STD

In this weekly web series, Dr. Robert Stackpole, emeritus director of the John Paul II Institute of Divine Mercy, leads us step-by-step through the life of the Founder of Christianity, from Bethlehem to Galilee to Jerusalem. Along the way, we pause to consider in-depth the historical debate over the gospel stories of the virginal conception and nativity of Jesus, his message of the Kingdom, his embrace of persecution and death on the Cross, and his glorious bodily resurrection from the dead. Finally, we plunge into the great mystery of the Incarnation, and show how it actually shines through the whole gospel story from beginning to end.

Read the series from the beginning.

Again, however, we need to tread carefully. Any claim that the Nativity stories are “fact, not myth” would be as misleading as the claim that the accounts are “myth, not fact.” 

The truth is that, rightly considered, “myth” and “fact” are not mutually exclusive categories. A story can be completely based on historical reportage, and yet have the main features of a good “myth” as well. Drawing upon the thought of the great Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, Cardinal Christoph Von Schonborn of Vienna addressed this subject in his book The Mystery of the Incarnation:

Today we are continually being faced with this either-or: “Is the statement, ‘Jesus is the incarnate Son of God’ to be taken literally or in a symbolic, mythical sense? Was Jesus born of the Virgin Mary in a literal or metaphorical sense? … What if the substance expressed in so many myths like the echo of a great yearning, a shadowy presentiment, has actually become a reality?  [1]

For Cardinal Schonborn, as for Lewis, a “myth” is not necessarily something completely false, because reality does not consist solely of “cold, hard facts.” Reality itself is “mythopoetic.” 

Imaginative contemplation
No doubt many factors were involved in the creation of the great myths (psychological, social, and cultural influences to be sure, perhaps also supernatural elements), but in part, great myths are an imaginative contemplation of the real, mythopoetic dimension of the world in which we live. 

As Lewis wrote: “Myth in general is … at its best, a real though unfocused gleam of divine truth falling on human imagination.” [2] A good myth conveys “the quality of the real universe, the divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic reality in which we all live.” [3]  

For example, ancient peoples could not help but observe the patterns of “dying” and “rising” that permeated the natural world around them: the rising and setting of the sun, the waxing and waning of the seasons of the year, the descent into earthen slumber of vegetation in winter, and the rising to new life again, so to speak, in the spring. Is it any wonder, then, that ancient peoples intuited that one clue to the mystery of the real universe in which we live may be found in the mystery of death and resurrection? And so they told myths about dying and rising gods, or of heroes that descend to the underworld and come back again triumphant. The stories were not literally true, of course, but they conveyed something that, at its core, was objectively true enough to anyone with half a brain: that whatever powers lie behind this universe must be responsible for signifying and expressing, throughout the natural world, the mystery of death and resurrection.

Transcendent longings
Again, ancient peoples (just like us) experienced ineffable desires for something that nothing in this world can ever seem to satisfy: transcendent longings that poets, storytellers, and artists know all about. Is it any wonder, therefore, that they told myths about other worlds where, somehow, those longings somehow might be fulfilled, and gave us imaginative glimpses of Valhalla, Mt. Olympus, and the Elysian Fields, even as writers do today when they take us to Narnia and to Middle-Earth? 

One more example: Ancient peoples observed (just as we do) that true human greatness is never the result of natural effort alone. Rather, it involves the mystery of extraordinary gifts and talents, coming together at just the right moment and in just the right way, with good fortune and providential help — something well beyond mere coincidence. Hence, they imaginatively attributed to their heroes and greatest emperors extraordinary births and supernatural portents — signs of the element of divine gift and providence that must have been involved in those lives from the beginning. And as a general principle, were they not right in thinking so?

Cardinal Schonborn reflects on all this in the light of the work of Lewis:

Surely, the reason why the great myths of the nations have something in common with the story of the Son of God who came down from heaven for our sake is that there is a trace, in the imagination of the great pagan teachers and myth-makers, of the very Incarnation which, according to our faith, is the core of all cosmic history.

The distinction between myth and Christian history, therefore, is not simply between false and true; myths are not false simply because they are myths. C.S. Lewis sees the relationship between myth and Christian history as the difference between “a real event, on the one hand, and blurred dreams and [imaginative] intimations of this same event on the other hand.” [Lewis writes]:

“The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens — at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person, crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle.”  [4]

That’s why Lewis encourages us not to be afraid if we find that Christianity has parallels to myth. Would it not be a pity if Christianity, in order to assert its truth, had to reject all prior intimations of its truth? If Christianity is to fulfill the “longings of the nations,” it does not need to reject the expression of this longing as it is found in the myths. It sounds like a theological manifesto when Lewis says, “we do not need to be afraid of the mythical luminosity which attaches to our theology” ….

It is not a question of setting myth against reality; because of a defective understanding of “reality” this leads inevitably to the repression of the symbolic dimension of the Christian message, what one might call its “mythical luminosity.” But it is equally mistaken to reduce the historical reality of the events of the Incarnation, Cross, and Resurrection to a “merely” symbolic significance, as Gnosticism did. Rather, we must say that the history of Christ is the “highest myth” because in it myth has become a reality. [5]

Profound truths
Applying these reflections to the story of the Nativity of Jesus, we can see that too many contemporary New Testament scholars essentially take the same position as the Gnostic heretics long ago: The story of the Son of God who “came down” from Heaven and was “born of the Virgin Mary,” they say, is “merely” a symbolic and imaginative expression of abstract truths about the “significance” of Jesus or about His “closeness to God.” On the literal level, these stories are said to be just early Christian myths and legends, borrowed in part from pagan mythology, but those Christian myths nonetheless convey profound theological truths.

No doubt they do. But at best, this reduction of the Nativity story merely to a profound myth is no more than a half-truth. For what if what was hinted at and imaginatively anticipated (even yearned-for) by the pagan myth-makers really happened once? What if the pagan myths are actually the copies, and the original was what really happened when the angel came to Mary in Nazareth and the Child was born on Christmas night in Bethlehem?

In short, what if God was working in the hearts of the pagan myth-makers from the beginning, whispering to them the wonder of what He would do for His world someday to prepare the Gentile world for the real coming of His Incarnate Son, just as He was working in the hearts of the Hebrew prophets to prepare His chosen people for the coming of the Messiah?

After considering all the evidence on hand, the Nativity stories in the Gospels still can be seen as largely historically accurate, and Christians should resolutely cling to them as such, for the factual truth of this story helps clarify and confirm central spiritual and theological truths of the Gospel. What really happened on the First Christmas, as far as fair and judicious historical research can say, is pretty much what the Gospels tell us happened.

The world as a story
But again: The Nativity story is not just historical reportage. It is “myth that has become fact,” as Lewis would say, “without ceasing to be myth” — just as the eternal Word became flesh without ceasing to be the Word. Reality is not just a series of cold, hard facts that can be captured in verbal propositions.

The real world is also a story: a beautiful, exciting, miraculous, sometimes tragic and terrifying story, one in which each one of us has an important part to play. And the “turning point” of that true story, the truest myth of all (simply because it is also fact) — indeed, as Lewis would say, the central chapter of the story, without which whole narrative of natural and human history does not make sense — that turning point occurred 2,000 years ago when a prophecy inspired by the Creator of all began to come true, in real life: “Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name ‘Immanuel,’ which means ‘God with us’.”

Next: Part 11: The Dawning of the Kingdom of God
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Notes
[1]   Christoph Von Schonborn, The Mystery of the Incarnation (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1992), p. 16 and 23.
[2]   C.S. Lewis, Miracles (The Macmillan Co., 1947 edition), p. 161.
[3]  C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald: an Anthology (New York, the Macmillan Co., 1947), p. 10.
[4]  C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970) p. 66-67.
[5] Schonborn, p. 17-21.
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