Under what (if any) circumstances is the making of a myth justified?

Faith & Science Conversation
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Yet, our response to the calling of that higher agency may have us doing to the best of our abilities all that we can as if it did depend on us, no? This is about God’s mediated action on earth which he often chooses to carry out through humans.

Quite so, Merv - quietism is scarcely a robust theology, methinks! But to be seeking the wisdom and will of a Lord who is intimately involved with the Creation he has entrusted to us is a very different kettle of fish from rushing around trying to fix something using the same tools you bust it with in the first place!

I notice in the newspaper today there’s a paper in Science in which a working group of 22 scientists conclude that, geologically, we really have have entered a new age, the Anthropocene, leaving the Holocene behind. They date the change to the mid 20th century, and the causes traced (nuclear fallout, deposits of synthetic minerals, sea-level rises from carbon emissions etc) are, without exception, the direct effects of the scientific advances of just the century leading up to that.

I find it devastatingly sobering that we have been able to trash a 4.5 billion year old world in just one century, in the name of Baconian progress. What was it that particle physicist said about “Science gets you to the moon - religion crashes you into buildings”. Hubris, or what?

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@Mervin_Bitikofer

I tend to agree with you on the value of myth as defined and used by CS Lewis. However, this is not the commonly understood meaning of myth so it may be helpful to share how CS Lewis defined it:

For Lewis, myths are stories that awaken the human imagination, embody universal realities, and define the values of a culture. To use Lewis’s own terminology, myths are “numinous” and “awe-inspiring.” They make us feel “as if something of great moment had been communicated to us” (An Experiment in Criticism [Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1961], 44). In other words, they bridge the gap between the world of time and space and the eternal realms that lie beyond — much the way that the wardrobe in Professor Kirk’s house opened a portal between our own world and the kingdom of Narnia. In bridging this gap, myths allow us “to actually experience Reality and grasp eternal truths” (Christensen, C.S. Lewis on Scripture, 64).

Nothing in this definition rules out the possibility that mythology may also serve as history. When Lewis uses the word myth, he does not mean a story that is not historically true. Rather, he means a story that is rooted in ultimate reality — a story that explains the nature of things and may in fact be true. Some myths are, and some myths are not, grounded in history. So Lewis defined a myth as “an account of what may have been the historical fact,” which he carefully distinguished from “a symbolical representation of non-historical truth” (The Problem of Pain, 64).

The ambivalence in using the word “myth” to capture this meaning instead of the more common popular meaning ascribed to “myth” was also not lost on CS Lewis:

In using the term myth, Lewis recognized that he was susceptible to misunderstanding. “I must either use the word myth or coin a word,” he wrote, “and I think the former the lesser evil of the two” (Experiment in Criticism, 43).

I tend to prefer the original meanings whenever possible so I side with CS Lewis on this one, but I also understand that this may be as hopeless a cause as trying to rehabilitate “awesome” from its current everyday usage…

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Thanks for bringing the clarity of Lewis’ view in. If anybody is an authority on mythologies, it would be Lewis.

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One’s own hubris is one of the many things against which science is impotent --and ironically so, given how it is purported to have self-skepticism as one if its hallmark properties.

On another topic, Jon, I’m almost finished with Wright’s “How God Became King” and find it full of richly challenging material . Somewhat related on this topic but maybe worth it’s own topic here and/or at the Hump.

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Sounds like one for *The Hump *, Merv - but then I would say that. :grinning:

I look forward to it in anticipation!

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I prefer the definition of Myth (Mythos) as the antonym of another Greek word, Logos.

They both can be translated as “word,” but “logos” is a word the truth of which is based on logic and experience, while “mythos” is a word or meaning which is based on tradition and authority. Some maybe most people consider science based on logos, while religion is based on mythos, However Jesus is designated the Logos in the Bible, and Jesus criticized the Pharisees for their tradition based faith, while calling on His followers to have a faith based on experiential knowledge and logic. Therefore Christianity rejects Mythos, ideas not based experience and logic, out of hand.

I would say that the Birth of Jesus and His death and Resurrections may be miracles, but they are not myths, They are based on the experience of those who witnessed them and the Church at large and the theology of the Church.

On the other hand the Virgin Birth is based on a misread prophecy taken out of context. It also leads to unchristian dualism. I would not say that the Virgin Birth is wrong, I would not say that it is very important either. It might be important as a sign, but it is not important as a fact. It is a sign that Jesus is the Messiah, but not the only sign and not an important sign.

That is why I reject survival of the fittest as the basis of evolutionary theory. It is a myth in that it has not been verified by experiment or carefully designed field observations. That makes it unscientific, which is a real scandal for a two hundred year old theory.

Just because it is not verified does make something untrue, but ecological natural selection has been verified many times and so it is about time we replace survival of the fittest with ecological natural selection.

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myth
miTH/Submit
noun
1.
a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.
synonyms: folk tale, folk story, legend, tale, story, fable, saga, mythos, lore, folklore, mythology
"ancient Greek myths"
2.
a widely held but false belief or idea.
“he wants to dispel the myth that sea kayaking is too risky or too strenuous”

In answer to your question, in relation to the first definition, it is never justified to “create a myth” because traditional stories are found, not made. If you make one, then you have made a contemporary story, which is not traditional, and therefore not truly a myth.

In relation to the second definition, the making of a myth is never justified. It is never acceptable to create a widely held but false belief or idea. Even if you think that it is for the greater good, because it is inherently false, its creation and dissemination is bad (lying, bearing false witness, sin). Even if you think it is for the greater good, if we stray from actual truth, then we open ourselves and others to the dangers of inevitable unforseen consequence. And also it’s sinful. Which is bad. Adhering to the truth gives the best chance of forseeing future problems and preventing them.

Note that if there is full disclosure and all concerned understand that you are creating a work of fiction (ie. Tolkien’s fiction which was the creation of a fictional myth as background to his created elvish language), then it is perfectly fine; but what you have created is then not technically a myth, but a fictional story for entertainment purposes since it is not truly “widely held” by anyone.

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@Relates

Your thoughts above, Roger, brought to mind this that I’ve just read recently (also from Wright: “Last Word”), which also is pertinent toward my reaction to @JohnZ as well, with some insight.

Wright speaks in early pages of different forms of truth that most readers have been able to navigate different styles of teaching and relating truth. Then in the modernist age people tried to restrict all valid truth claims to just being only of the literal historical or scientific sort, demoting or dismissing any truth claim that comes in more parabolic packaging. Little room was accorded for anything so vague or nebulous as “narrative” or “myth”. Then even later postmodernists push back on this modernist objectivity to question the notion of certainty or objectivity on anything at all. This is the current cultural air breathed by pretty much all of us today. Now I’ll quote Wright directly (p. 32 of American edition):

This uncertainty in turn, of course, begets a new and anxious eagerness for certainty: hence the appeal of fundamentalism, which in today’s world is not so much a return to a premodern worldview but precisely to one form of modernism (reading the Bible within a grid of a quasi- or pseudoscientific quest for “objective truth”). Every single aspect of this impinges on the reading of scripture in general and its use in church in particular. In this book I shall be arguing neither for a variety of modernism, nor for a return to premodernism, nor yet for a capitulation to postmodernism, but for what I hope is a way through this entire mess and muddle and forward into a way of living in and for God’s world, and within the community of God’s people, with Christian and biblical integrity.

My apologies if this extended quote pushes any copyright boundaries. I can only plead that it might spur other curious readers to search their own local libraries.

Having just finished another of Wright’s even more recent works, I think he has some important things to say to all believing Bible readers today, and I’m eager to read on in this work as well. This particular snippet I think has good insight

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@Nick_Allen

Thanks for your thoughts, Nick, which you obviously composed simultaneously while I was composing my response above to Roger. I do agree that we don’t go around creating myths in their larger sense (at least not in any way that we are consciously engineering). I agree that bearing false witness is bad. But I’m not sure that one can cleanly say that technical truth must always be present before any larger truth or good can be acknowledged (and maybe you make no such claim --but some might). For example if we can back this down to a simple local narrative: a young child has become convinced by things his mother has said that if he runs up to or talks to strangers, really horrible things will probably happen to him. Now this may not technically be true, but I would argue even so that for you to try to relieve such a child from his parentally-installed predilections by enticing him to carefully trust strangers (most strangers end up being very kind after all!) that you would nonetheless be doing a great and unChristian disservice in the act. Even though what the child has been allowed/encouraged to think by his parents may not be technically true, it still contains a larger Truth that the parents want their child to heed.

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@Nick_Allen

And I forgot to mention that I think my reply to Roger with the Wright quote substantially makes up what would essentially be my response to you too.

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@Mervin_Bitikofer Um, no. Truth is true and false is false. The current cultural air breathed by pretty much all of us today makes me hold my nose. In your example, the best course of action would to be honest with the child, which would be to teach the kid manners and “stranger danger”. The larger truth that the parents want the child to heed is that the kid needs to be careful around strangers because some of them are not safe, and this larger truth can be taught to the kid directly without recourse to exaggeration. It is wrong to manipulate people (adults or children) to try to shape their behavior by telling them things that are not true, because the truth will assert itself and people need to be prepared for that. Also, remember to be good in any of your reply’s or the tooth fairy will put coal in your stocking.

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I’ll reword this response to be less of a short retort and more of an explanation (and hopefully to still avoid any tooth fairy visits :slight_smile: )

I too hold my nose at most (but in my case not all) of the post-modernist air. In recent years I’ve become more aware, though, of how much we (and creationists are especially included here) have deeply inhaled the modernist air from the last couple of centuries. The younger generation may only know a post-modern culture first hand, but that hasn’t stopped them from inhaling our second-hand smoke as it were. And the smell of it has permeated so deeply into our cultural trappings that we have begun to mistake it for a part of our pious tradition –even thinking it to be the historically faithful approach to the Bible. But it isn’t. And never was, as I can see now in continued study of the Scriptures themselves. And while we have managed to hold our nose for some modern scholarship (especially much of the ‘higher biblical criticism’ sort), we unconsciously inhaled all the rest of the (often unstated) presuppositions that we have now have even given a pious cloak to make it look like creedal defense. Faithful biblical scholars today are helping us discard some of that distorting and misleading modernist baggage to see Scriptures with clearer eyes.

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What this does, it seems to me, is simply equate “myth” to story, and then leave it open to possibility as to whether the myth is true or not true. I am at a point where the use of the word myth is meaningless. What three or five characteristics do you use, to distinguish myth from narrative? What three or five characteristics do you use to distinguish myth from fiction? If “myth” is to mean some combination of historical narrative and fiction, how do you distinguish myth from historical fiction? In other words, what is myth? What is it like, and what is it not. (100 words or less :slight_smile: )

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@Mervin_Bitikofer

Thank you for that quote N. T. Wright’s Last Word. It is wise in that it points to a large part of the problem is a human problem rather than a faith problem.

Some people seem to think that just because they understand the Bible in a certain way they have faith and they are saved. He understands wisely that this is not true.

First of all our faith in not in the Bible, but in Jesus Christ. In fact wright did not want the book to be entitled the Last Word because The Last Word, as in the Ultimate Final Word (Logos) is Jesus Christ, not the Bible. When we understand that we relax about the details of what the Bible says and look at the whole picture of God’s plan of salvation.

Second, Wright criticizes pre-modernism, modernism, and post modernism, so there is no easy solution to understanding the Bible. I wish he had said that there is no easy solution to understanding life. This is not a theological problem, this is a scientific, philosophical, human problem, that requires a scientific, philosophical, human response.

Third, the biggest problem we have is that most people on all sides do not realize that there is a problem with language and how Westerner understand life. They think that their point of view is just fine, or needs just a little fine tuning. The first step in solving a problem is understanding that there is a problem.

Fourth, Wright did not put forward a solution to the problem in your quote from the beginning of the book. If one does not know that there is a problem, one will not put forward a solution, that can be discussed and accepted or rejected. Right now I am not interested in a diagnosis of the problem. I want a solution that than be discussed. He must have put something forward in the book that you can quote to see if it is useful.

Five, God has given a basic answer to understanding reality through the Trinity. For some reason people, believers as well as unbelievers do not want to explore that possibility. I fail to understand why we do not want to accept this wonderful gift of knowledge and understanding God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, has given to Christians and humanity.

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I do look forward to finishing this shorter work, and then maybe I can come back here with quotes, Roger. In fact his slightly longer (but still eminently readable!) work “How God Became King” is a more recent work of his, and I did finish reading that. So I think I can begin to anticipate much of where Wright may be going in this earlier work.

I don’t imagine Wright is maybe quite so gung-ho about heaping further emphasis onto already shouted traditional creeds or Trinitarian technicalities (not that he is disagreeing with any of their contents, mind you). He just thinks that we’ve so powerfully pushed those, that we fail, then to see some very essential and significant things that the creeds leave out.

I’m not at a spot in time here where I can spend time elaborating now. But maybe I’ll revisit some of what you bring up here at a later point.

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Myth and narrative are not mutually exclusive terms and they both have multiple senses, so it gets squishy.

Narrative is a text genre. So the text genre of a literary myth is narrative (as opposed to expository or hortatory, for example.) As I pointed out above, myth and narrative are often used interchangeably when talking about the telling of history with an agenda.

I was using the term narrative in the way it is commonly used in sociology or political science, as a way of identifying a person’s framework for understanding the world. For example, my husband enjoys commenting on NPR threads about development work and international politics. It is a common narrative among other commenters that religion is destroying the world and can not be credited with any good. All facts and information are filtered through and made to fit their narrative and serve as further proof that their narrative accurately describes the world. So according to their narrative, I am involved in development work, not because my religion has motivated me to do a good thing and help people, but because I have a white guilt complex I need to feel better about, or I have a secret desire to exploit the poor somehow, or I am a pathetic loser who could not get a real job in the US. You could say this narrative, that religion is destroying the world and no good can be credited to it, is a myth (synonym for lie) and offer a different interpretation of the facts. You wouldn’t really be simply exposing a lie though, you would be offering a different narrative, a different interpretation of information that supports a different story about how the world works and different conclusions about what it means. That kind of thing is not easily reduced to a truth value. You evaluate narratives on a better/worse continuum (not a true/false continuum) based on how well they correspond to and explain reality and how much a person has to manipulate, fabricate, or ignore in order to maintain the narrative’s coherence.

As far as myth and fiction…
I think myth is a kind of origins story (not necessarily purely fiction) that intentionally attempts to communicate insight, truth, and meaning about things that are important to the identity or beliefs of a community. In many ways the way we tell early American history to children is mythic. It is based on real facts and people, but we “mythologize” them to serve our purposes of creating an identity as Americans and to teach our beliefs about freedom, democracy, equality, courage, etc. We leave parts out when they don’t fit the narrative. We fictionalize parts to make them fit better. If several thousand years went by, the story of how American began would probably become even more mythic.

Historical fiction is a story someone makes up to communicate the facts of history in an entertaining way. A mythologized history is a story that tells the facts of history from a certain perspective and with goals of instilling certain beliefs and values.

I don’t draw this big black line between story and truth like it appears you do. There are lots of stories that communicate true things. Sometimes the true things they communicate are facts. Some times the true things they communicate are ideas. You evaluate the value of a story based on what it is claiming to do (entertain, motivate, inform), not strictly on some kind of truth-o-meter that corresponds only to accurate representation of historical facts. Humans use stories for much more than communicating facts. We use them all the time to define ourselves and find meaning in the world.

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Discussions of myth, story telling, and truth can become convoluted when they “spill over” into how people may view, and believe, the teachings of the Bible. It is a central tenet of the Christian faith that such teachings are, and must be, inspired by the Holy Spirit. For non-believer, this is an impossible proposition and they would instead, examine every genre and ways to make up stories, in an effort to nullify a need for guidance in understanding the Bible. When we add direct interventions by God in human affairs (and in Nature), meaningful discussions with non-believers becomes impossible.

Regarding theists, understanding the Bible is helped by study and any insights offered by historically valid information - but ultimately, we trust in God and seek guidance from the Holy Spirit - myths? narratives? stories? history? these are categories that seek to organise how language is used by us. The Bible however, is written primarily to reveal God to us - so all categories used for oral and written communication must be subjected to this primary criteria.

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To teach a lesson or truth very much like a parable. I know this is a short answer; however, I need say no more. I have not read the previous answers; therefore, they may say much the same thing. :grinning: Some may say this about Genesis 1-11; however, I accept the Roman Catholic view on Adam and Eve in relation to Theistic Evolution.

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@GJDS
Kevin VanHoozer (a Reformed theologian who interacts very deeply with postmodern philosophy of language) has written some interesting things along these lines about what he calls “theodrama” and divine speech act. The idea is that the whole of Scripture is God actively doing something with human language. He sees the Christian life as entering and continuing “God’s story.”

Here is a CT summary of his stuff if anyone is interested: http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2015/june/kevin-vanhoozer-drama-king.html

The article says:

[quote] "The stories, poems, letters, and visions in the Bible aren’t simply the products of human authors who were infused with divine insight. Instead, says Vanhoozer, the Bible is God’s way of addressing and guiding the church, of administering his saving covenant with us. Studying the biblical books in their historical contexts is, of course, vital. But the Bible achieves its present purpose—of making us all like Christ—because of how God speaks through it, present tense…

By saying that all of Scripture was “without error,” evangelicals risked implying that all of Scripture came in the form of “true or false” statements. How, then, to understand an exclamation of praise in the Psalms? Or what could the cry of “Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!” mean if it could only be slotted into a “true” or “false” box?

“To read always for the proposition is like always listening to a Brahms symphony only for the melody,” Vanhoozer says. “My motivation for saying that [is] to hold Scripture up high, to let it be everything it’s supposed to be.”

In short, Vanhoozer shook up evangelical thinking about Scripture at just the moment when it could have calcified. He insisted that evangelicals were right to keep a high view of Scripture’s authority. But he was equally firm that God does many things with the Bible: God prompts lament, incites adoration, urges repentance, wounds pride, and announces forgiveness and new life. Of course, Scripture also asserts truth statements to be believed, but that’s not the only thing it does.

The biblical canon doesn’t just make claims about the world. It seeks to reinvent that world—and remake us in the process.[/quote]

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[quote=“Christy, post:31, topic:4159”]
Quoting Vanhoozer: The biblical canon doesn’t just make claims about the world. It seeks to reinvent that world—and remake us in the process.
[/quote][my emphasis added to ‘just’ in the quote above]

Vanhoozer treads just a bit lightly over the critics of this view, well-represented here by JohnZ (we’ll see how good a job I do anticipating his objection). Of course the Bible doesn’t do just those things [claims about the world]; but where it does, they should be expected to be true, right? Or earlier about the question of what to do with expressions of praise or such, that is a caricature of those critics because they are intelligent enough to know that not all expressions are claims. They are not ignorant of interrogative or imperative or exclamatory modes of expression as distinguished from declarative statements.

Note --I don’t number myself among those critics except that I do agree we shouldn’t assume that they consider themselves stumped by these things.

All of that said, I will hasten to add that I am in agreement with the gist of Vanhoozer’s approach as characterized in the given quote. I haven’t read his full article. But I do agree that even just among grammatical claims (statements) --and to further sharpen that: even among the claims that on a surface level can appear to be of a naive literalist or historical sort – we shouldn’t be wantonly imposing that criteria of interpretation on all of those. That is where I think I would continue to disagree with JohnZ.