Which definition of “mythology” is he using? That’s an important question since the popular understanding of the term is “made up”, i.e. fiction.
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Yet in listening to him it’s clear that he has considered those as background. That’s something I appreciate, having watched friends in a certain denomination as it came apart because some people didn’t like even applying that much of historical criticism even in never mentioned in sermons. Had Tim been in that denomination as those battles were being fought he would have been lumped in with the “liberals” – which in that context meant “false teacher” – regardless of how orthodox his actual teaching was.
I’ve generally considered historical criticism to be two different things lumped together: the solid part is determining the literary, cultural, and worldview context of the writer; the other is explaining away anything remotely supernatural. The first part is essential, the second is both dangerous and ridiculous because it isn’t approaching the text honestly.
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Mythical historicity
What does that mean? that it’s made-up history? that it’s history told in a mythological way? that there’s a kernel of history in a mythology-style story?
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Theological history?
A story that has some basis in history but has been adapted to fit theology.
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Okay – and I found this: 3 things to keep in mind if you don’t want to screw up the Noah story - The Bible For Normal People
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I am dubious of Biblical criticism and it is not because of conservatism of any sort. I simply found their arguments to be lacking in much solid ground, and ultimately just another way people make the text mean what they want. And this is not because I am defending some kind of “true” meaning of the text, but quite the opposite – defending against the effort to push some kind of “true meaning” on to people.
I didn’t come to the Bible with any premise that this represented the truth. I perceived truth from reading it. And yes that was obviously in English as well as through a perceptual filter, since science was part of how I see reality. I see reality as the ultimate arbiter and for many things science is the best tool we have for seeing what that is. So on the one hand, I must have some commitment to the text in which I found meaning. On the other hand, I have to acknowledge that this hardly happened free of bias. I guess I just want to defend the freedom of others to find what meaning they can in the text like I did.
I am very skeptical that we can accurately determine literary, cultural, and worldview context of the writer. And this is not the same as determining the cultural and worldview context of the society which they were a part of. People are quite often extra-ordinary and far from the culture and worldview of their society.
As for explaining away anything supernatural, this is more complicated. I am very opposed to the insertion of magic counter to natural law into the text (by all means take the narrative as what happened, but this rarely excludes natural explanations). On the other hand, things happen which are frequently difficult to explain, and I do believe in a supernatural God. So while I see little reason to believe the miracles of Jesus came from divine powers, I also see little reason to credit arguments that a prediction of events (like the destruction of the temple) means it had to be written after the event.
I don’t know what the “literary, cultural, and worldview context of the writer” would be if not "the cultural and worldview context of the society which they were a part of. I suppose if it could be pinned down what city the writer lived in, his economic and social statuses, whether he was from the capital or anyplace else right down to rural village, and other biographical details then these two could diverge, but other than a few references in the texts themselves stating who actually wrote something that’s so far from the realm of possibility it’s not worth the time pondering.
Given that Jesus is and was God, that seems a very odd view.
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Any specific examples?
History works under methodological naturalism and tries to reconstruct what is most probable about the past. Miracles to history would be akin to gaps to science. History is scarcely able to deal with the most improbable class of events there is.
Vinnie
Funny, I don’t see them as improbable within the scope of redemption. Unusual, unpredictable, and noteworthy, but not improbable.
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People are quite often extra-ordinary and far from the culture and worldview of their society.
Human societies is full of misfits who go against the prevalent ideas and worldviews of the majority. The individual variations are greater than the variations between cultures and groups.
I believe Jesus is God, but God became man. Man is defined by limitations but God is not. To quote Jesus… “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing." It wasn’t by divine powers but simply be seeing what the Father was doing in the world. And I don’t see any evidence of the Father doing things supernaturally, but only what @Dale calls “providential timing.”
Even within the Christian faith apologists routinely tell us supernatural miracles are very rare events. History tries to reconstruct what most probably happened. Events that defy the laws of science as we know them are improbable as nature is ordered and consistent. As Christians we believe in the consistency of the world around us because it is a reflection of the nature of God. I am not sure what your argument is. None of what I am writing is remotely controversial.
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No argument. I just thought it worth mentioning that miracles do not seem improbable to me. Even answer to prayer can be supernatural, when you understand that some things happen or do not happen because of an absence of prayer.
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I understand that history is not “exactly what happened in the past” but a best guess on what happened in the past based on methodological naturalism and a certain way of thinking. So if Jesus was truly God’s Son, sober canons of history will just get Him wrong in many ways. But historians will correctly reject a bazillion other supernatural (and silly) claims from antiquity, IMHO.
Vinnie
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Indeed some of our informal intelligent design folks regarded the “unusual, unpredictable, and noteworthy” events as something to expect from a Designer trying to get a message across.
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Supernatural actions were implicit in the identity of the Messiah. That’s why John refers to miracles as “signs”: they point to just Who Jesus is.
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When I was in grad school there was a seminar I missed comparing the miracles of the scriptures to those claimed by other ancient near eastern writings; now I wish I’d caught that one because supposedly there’s an easy dividing line between the ones in scripture and the silly claims of other sources.
Craig Keener’s Miracles Today was seminal for me, and his 2 volume work on Miracles looks fascinating… what will it be like when we have a neural link for downloading books in the next 20 years, at the very least I am looking forward to better AI tools to query ebooks.