Theology, Not History or Mythology

Re Jesus in a Hurry, February

One of my favourite features in the magazine is Progressive Lectionary by Laurence DeWolfe. In Jesus in a Hurry, DeWolfe begins: “The opening chapters of all four gospels are more important as theology than as history. … Much of the richness is lost to us if we take these chapters first, and often only, as history.” He later writes, “The gospels represent an ancient literary form, in which the life story of a famous person begins with narrative that echoes stories from the past.”

 These comments were of particular interest to me as, during the season of Advent, I read a little book by theologian Raymond E. Brown, A Coming Christ in Advent, which states, “We must content ourselves that there is no way to know precisely how historical the infancy narratives are … Thus we avoid both a naive fundamentalism that would take every word of these accounts as literal history and a destructive skepticism that would reduce them to sheer mythology.”

Now I do not recall in any of the Christmas sermons I have heard (and I have heard many) anything but a literal interpretation given to these beautiful nativity stories. Laurence DeWolfe and Father Brown give a different interpretation that I believe makes these stories much more meaningful.