Thoughts for the Day after Christmas

It's the day after Christmas, which this year fell on a Sunday.  I write this late in the afternoon, having shared in worship (read the story of Barrington Bunny from Martin Bell's Way of the Wolf)  and watched a Lion's football game (the won the game at Miami, by the way).   It's a day to sort of sit back, relax, and reflect.  But, even as our culture has now moved on to the next "holiday," which is Valentines Day, we shouldn't let the Christmas season go quite yet. 

I probably needn't remind everyone that the 12 days of Christmas don't end on Christmas Day, but actually begin there.  I say, I shouldn't have to remind folks, but perhaps it is required.  So, what should we do with these 12 days?  How do we keep alive the message of the incarnation in all its mystery?

I recognize with Borg and Crossan that there is much in the infancy narratives that is parabolic, but what does this mean?  Does it mean that the entire story is mere metaphor?  At the same time, do we have to become hung up on proving every aspect of the story for it to be true?  Is there not something more here, something in between metaphor and factuality?  That is, in what way should we understand the church's historic confession that in this person we call Christ we meet both a truly human person and the living God?

The Historical Jesus and the Jesus within History

I asked the question -- How much history is there in the Bible?   I did so in response to questions about the historical natures (or lack thereof) of the accounts of the healing ministry of Jesus.  The modern view of such things is rooted in David Hume's demands for empirical evidence.  Hume was a bit like Thomas, he wasn't going to believe until he saw evidence in his own life experience of something similar occurring.  Hume's skepticism isn't all bad -- after all there are lots of things that people claim to see or experience, that are foreign to my experience, and so I'm just a bit skeptical.  You see, I'm skeptical about UFO's and Big Foot.  I'm also a bit skeptical about a lot of what passes as faith healing.  There are, after all, a lot of legs being lengthened out there.  But, let's leave that off for a moment and return to the question of Jesus and history.

Ultimately, without video recordings we have to take somebody's word that events happened in the life of Jesus.  We have to take the word of the authors of the four gospels, for instance, works that were written anonymously some forty to sixty years after the fact (or not fact).  As we think about this question, maybe it would be worth while to change language for a moment.

We speak of the "historical Jesus," by which  we understand the Jesus who lived in history.  To use the criteria of the Jesus Seminar, it's the Jesus that we can agree existed in time and space, after the "post-Easter" interpretations get removed.  Different scholars, from Borg to Wright have their own sense of what this entails.  And all is good, unless we decide that there is one and only one absolute historical reconstruction.  As William Brosend writes in his book The Preaching of Jesus: "It is when one moves from, say, the "real" Jesus to the "only" Jesus, when reconstructions of Jesus within history are presented as historical and/or biblical absolutes, that a line has been crossed" (p. 3).

I appreciate Brosend's attempt at offering an alternate way of looking at the question of Jesus and history.

It is better, I have come to believe, to speak of our reconstructions as presenting Jesus "within history" rather than "the historical Jesus."  The former formulation admits to distinction between the biblical and the historical, without claims to whole and simple truths.  All believers have, to varying degrees, some idea or set of ideas about who Jesus was and is for them.  This is especially true for preachers.  To speak and write of Jesus "within history" is to make explicit that understanding, without making claims for Jesus "as he actually was," which is an unrecoverable reality from a historical perspective, and a not necessarily helpful one from a homiletical perspective.  (p. 3)

Brosend offers this statement as a way of focusing on the matter of Jesus' preaching, understanding that since we don't have recordings or full transcripts, we must rely on the way in which the authors of the gospels told the story.  Marcus Borg and N.T. Wright have different understandings of the way in which Jesus existed within history.  Neither can "prove" their version to be true, but both make there best attempt at understanding how Jesus existed within history.  You and I will have to make our own decisions.  Some among us will lean toward the mythical while others toward the historical.  We'll make our decisions on the basis of what we believe is possible.  We might call that the "Hume scale."   

How Much History is there in that Bible?

One of the questions that faces modern Christians (we may be postmodern, but we're still modern) is how much history is found in the biblical accounts.  Some texts, like Jonah's encounter with the fish are clearly non-historical.  It's clearly parabolic.  Noah's ark and the Great Flood -- non-historical.  But what about the Jesus story?  Is it essentially historical fiction -- non-historical stories built around a personage that may or may not be historical?  I think the vast majority of biblical scholars would affirm the historicity of Jesus' existence, even his crucifixion.  Where we get into deeper water is when we come to the so-called miraculous.  Did Jesus, for instance, walk on water?  Or, turn water into wine?  On those 2, I'm fine with seeing them as metaphor.  But, what about the resurrection?  Well, there, I'm less eager to go the metaphorical route, in large part because I'm not sure how we explain the continuance of the community.  But I've argued that elsewhere.   

The 64,000 dollar question relates to the discernment of what is history and what is metaphor.  Since the posting that raised the question is Bruce Epperly's reflections on healing/curing, I think it's appropriate to note that Marcus Borg, while pushing the metaphorical a great deal, is willing to allow for healings -- but he would want to push toward a logical explanation.  

Consider:

For example, I think that Jesus really did perform paranormal healings and that they cannot simply be explained in psychosomatic terms.  I am even willing to consider that spectacular phenomena such as levitation perhaps happen.  But do virgin births, multiplying loaves and fish, and changing water into wine every happen anywhere?  If I became persuaded that they do, then I would entertain the possibility that the stories about Jesus reporting such events also contain history remembered.  But what I cannot do as a historian is to say that Jesus could do such things even though nobody else has ever been able to.  Thus I regard these as purely metaphorical narratives.  (Reading the Bible for the First Time, p. 47) 

As you can see, Borg, who is fairly liberal, allows for some history in the Jesus story, but is skeptical of events that have no parallels in human life.  In this, he follows David Hume, who raised significant questions about miracles -- what Borg calls the "spectacular." 

I have a degree of historical skepticism, but perhaps my tolerance for the spectacular is greater than is Marcus Borg's, and Borg's is broader than his friend Dom Crossan, but much less than his friend N.T. Wright.   Where do I fit?  Probably somewhere between Wright and Borg.

So, my question -- on what criteria do we determine something to be beyond the historical pale?