Getting the Story Right... Or Wrong.

In the New York Times over the weekend, Nicholas Kristof interviewed Elaine Pagels, who has apparently written another book.  Here's the whole article.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/21/opinion/virgin-birth-jesus.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1KTT0T7uiI_mhJ7s2SmX2BWYnurSAkssDQOfMU--Ed-oyu4UZqHUezXJk_aem_7HgqKv-lCqc4RTQJZz574g

Christians hold the story of Jesus' mother giving birth to him without having sex with a man as essential.  You cannot accurately call yourself a Christian if you clam up for part of the definitive Creeds.  The problem has always centered on how we believe it, what believing it means, and what we do with this belief.  

On the one hand, Empire has always twisted the Virgin Birth story in ways that perpetuate imperial power.  Medieval theologians decided it was all about Mary's "purity" because they learned from St. Augustine that sex was evil.  This of course saddled real women with impossible standards -- virgin and mother -- and served to keep them subservient and subject to guilt-trips for centuries.  Modern theologians like Pagels attack the doctrine mainly because, in reaction to that Medieval view, they have judged it as non-historical and contrary to what we know of gynecology, therefore untrue.  In searching for the "truth" they assumed that some man impregnated Mary.  They dismiss the Virgin Birth story as concocted mainly to imitate other mythic and political miraculous births.  

Kristof insists Pagels talk about how her book points "to ancient evidence that Jesus might have been fathered by a Roman soldier, possibly by rape."  

First of all, that's not our story.  I have zero patience with people who need to contradict the Christian story.  As if everything needs to happen in order to gratify our needs and preferences.  So if I don't like some aspect of a story, I should feel free to adapt it to something more satisfying to me.  When we do this to our own personal memories, we call it delusion or lying to ourself.  When we do it to someone else's story, it is slander.

Perhaps Pagels dredges up this "Mary was raped" lie because she feels it has the underscores Mary's situation as an oppressed woman.  It supposedly shows God bringing good out of evil.  While this interpretation may theologically redeem the slander, Empire can easily utilize it like an opiate, excusing its own evil.  "Too bad this happened to you, but think of our new baby!"  

If we want to hear what the story means when not whitewashed by Empire, coming from the mouth of an actual oppressed woman, we might listen to abolitionist and former slave, Sojourner Truth.  In 1851, she stated that Christ came "from God and a woman.  Man had nothing to do with him."  In other words, the Virgin Birth separates Jesus from patriarchy.  It prevents any man from claiming to have brought him into the world.  Completely cut off from a male line, he has no inheritance, his bloodline comes through King David and Abraham by adoption.  According to the alternative exhumed by Pagels, the Empire, represented by a soldier, may claim parental rights over God.  Jesus isn't even fully Jewish, anymore, but half something else.  It makes Jesus white.  Now the Empire owns him.  The DNA would show it.

That's good news for Empires, at any rate.  Our own version of Empire, Modernity, has very effectively exercised paternity over God by basically reducing Jesus Christ to a harmless mascot while using his image as a cynical spiritual warrant for its regime of eco-cide, vivisection, exploitation, and domination.  Modernity sired a "historical Jesus," different from the One in the gospels, who only says and does what Modernity decides measures up to its criteria for "truth."  Just as Rome used the cross as a warning of what will happen to resisters, the effect of Pagels' story is to remind women on behalf of Empire: "your body, my choice."  "You will bring into the world what we make you bring into the world."    

It does not surprise me that Pagels has so much enthusiasm for this.  Her entire career has been an aggressive affirmation and articulation of the hold that Empire -- that is, Modernity -- has over Jesus Christ.  For her, the categories, methodologies, mentality, demands, and assumptions of Modernity determine who Jesus is.  Modernity thus  "liberates" Jesus from his own family, the community of his disciples, the Church.    

In the article she seems to try to move away from historicity and understand the stories more as stories, "They are not written simply as history; often they speak in metaphor.  We can take them seriously without taking everything literally," she says.  "I left Christianity behind," she relates, after having experienced one of its more toxic aberrations in particular church.  But compelled by "something powerful" she went back, "asking questions.  How were these stories written?  How do they affect us so powerfully?  They speak to a deep human longing for a sense of transcendence and spiritual experience.  For we can respond to the same story in more than one way.  As a historian, I question the literal truth of the virgin birth story.  But I still love the midnight service on Christmas Eve, where the story is gloriously told and sung as miracle."  So she balances her welding the machete of scientific method with a  saccharine sentimentality.  

I get the impression she believes these stories are mainly entertainment, spectacle, written for what kind of feelings they produce.  They can't possibly be about God; it always has to be about what we want and what we feel.  Such is the Modern view of everything.  It's all about us, me.   

Uh, no.  I realize that Pagels merely reflects the confusion, chaos, and compromise  that hobbles churches this time of year.  But these invented reimaginings of the story tell us nothing about Jesus, God, the world, or us.  They only push the empty, novel, desperate ideas of the inventors.  They are certainly not worth a trip to church to hear about.

I'm sorry Pagels had a bad experience in some church somewhere.  It does not justify her for poisoning our stories with such malicious nonsense.  I say, let the stories shine in the radical, deeply subversive, highly transformational glory they have without her redactions.  Pagels appears to be too thoroughly indoctrinated into the ideology of our own Empire to see that.

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Cardiology and Ecclesiology.

I've had three cardiologists, not counting the one who put a stent in my Right Coronary Artery (whom I barely remember because I was kind of out of it).  I now visit my current cardiologist regularly, but thankfully now infrequently.  Generally, I do whatever they say to do.  I take whatever medications they say to take.  I eat and avoid eating according to their instructions (more or less).  Indeed, a good percentage of my daily behavior revolves around this advice.  I trust my cardiologist to set me on the right path to avoid another Myocardial Infarction ("heart attack") and thus stay physically functioning within acceptable parameters on this planet.

I do not "do my own research" beyond what I need to know to ask the right questions.  I most certainly do not dismiss my cardiologist's advice or orders as the biased product of some corrupt elite, and follow instead my own theories, feelings, and desires.  

(A friend of mine did this.  He had a heart attack and bypass surgery, and followed his cardiologist's advice for years, until he attended a seminar with a Dr. Atkins where he got the idea that it wasn't about the cholesterol at all, but carbohydrates.  So he changed his behavior back to regular fried bacon and eggs, but no bread....  Soon thereafter he had such a massive Myocardial Infarction that he was dead before he hit the ground.)

These days I hear a lot about people who reject this or that orthodoxy as hopelessly corrupted by the agenda of the "elite," with no purpose other than to keep them in control and increasing in wealth at our expense.  Experts, science, peer review, fact checking, scholarship, indeed anyone who went to college or got an advanced degree in anything all fall under suspicion as fatally tainted by "wokeness," a word they use to lie about some arbitrary philosophy which expresses the elite's power.

This perspective has always lurked in the Church, especially in Protestantism, but I notice it becoming more prominent today.  Protestantism inherently contains a "do your own research" strain that thinks of faith as a private relationship between God and each individual, and any person's interpretation of the Bible is as legitimate as any other.  Some now consider having gone to seminary a handicap for ministers, especially if this hifalutin knowledge tells people what they don't want to hear.  We have had people relying on charismatic influencers rather than accredited and ordained pastors for decades now.

We don't just see this on the populist right, but it infuses the thinking of "Progressives" as well.  Consider this quote, attributed to liberal icon Barbara Brown Taylor: "What if the church invited people to come tell what they already know of God instead of to learn what they are supposed to believe?"  She goes on to basically say that the church's job consists of blessing people for what they are already doing in the world.  Thing is, if my cardiologists had that approach to their work I'd be dead.  I can't think of anything more horrifying than that my cardiologist would pay much attention to "what I already know" about my heart, which is next to nothing.  Why would I waste my time listening to people "tell what they already know of God" based, no doubt, on their own research or experience?  A lot of people are "already doing in the world" perfectly awful things for which we should most certainly not bless them.

In my experience, Presbyterians have such a deficient ecclesiology that it gets easily overwhelmed by influences from a culture dominated by the values, practices, and structures of Modernity.  We reflexively despise authority, suspect "religion," and devalue the gathering of believers, as if these were unconscionable restraints and restrictions on our individual freedom to do as we please.  They get in the way of one's "personal relationship with Jesus," a contagion we contracted from Evangelical influencers.  

We have forgotten the purpose of the Church.  Therefore, unless we just abandon it altogether (as much of the West is doing), we have to dream up some reason for its existence that makes sense to us.  It seems like the Church only becomes intelligible to Modernity as a social club, an educational institution, a cadre of activists, an ethnic enclave, a community center, a place to receive spiritual comfort or moral advice, or a nostalgic anachronism.  Some of these activities may relate to the Church's actual identity as Christ's Body, but all of them are derivative and secondary.  

The Church is where people, through worship and mission, discipleship and repentance, participate in the means of grace -- the Word, Sacraments, and prayer -- and so come into obedience and conformity with Jesus Christ and acquire the Holy Spirit.  

The Church therefore has a specific task requiring particular tools, expertise, practices, stories, and rituals.  It teaches a lifestyle.  It has this in common with cardiology -- and frankly any institution (another bad word) that has a purpose, from a bowling league to a Spanish class to a dance troupe to a string quartet.    

(One town I heard about had a group called the Quilting Club.  Originally, they  actually made quilts, discussed quilting technique, shared fabrics, and distributed quilts to needy families.  But over time, the subsequent generations became less interested in quilts.  They didn't have the time and the specialized knowledge was lost.  But they were still friends.  So the Quilting Club morphed into a group of women who met monthly for lunch.  Maybe they raised money to buy quilts to distribute at Christmas, but they really didn't have any interest in actual quilting.  They considered it quaint and quirky, a kind of secret among themselves, that they retained the name.  If you showed up and actually wanted to learn quilting, they wouldn't even know to whom to refer you.  In other words, a rock band calling itself "The Cardiologists" is unlikely to help me lower my blood pressure.  So a group calling itself a Christian church should be able to provide guidance and support for a journey of spiritual transformation, but don't necessarily count on it.)  

The thing about cardiology is that its practitioners share a common expertise and practice.  Though you might get some differences in personality, style, and approach around the edges, the basics of reading an EKG, making diagnoses, and prescribing medications are going to be largely the same whether I go to one in New Jersey or Germany, no matter what medical school they attended, or what book they read last week.  I can trust that they're not going to tell me that something they got off the internet or heard on a podcast means that now my heart would be cool with my smoking, drinking more alcohol, consuming mass quantities of fat and salt, and sitting on the couch watching TV all day.  

I trust the same things of a shamanic healer or a practitioner of ayurvedic or Chinese medicine, a Chiropractor or a yoga instructor.  I expect them to know their stuff and honestly give me their insights and advice from within that tradition and community of knowledge.  I expect them to have expertise.      

What if people came to church with expectations like I have when I go to the cardiologist?  What if we could assume the Pastor of a Christian church to have  competence to teach someone the Way of Jesus in continuity and partnership with his followers of every age?  Jesus commands his disciples to make disciples, to teach people to follow him by taking on specific attitudes and behaviors.  If someone asks me a question about following Jesus' Way, I should be able to give them a straight answer based on my tradition, community, and experience.

I depend on my cardiologist to answer my questions.  I expect them to have some expertise and information that I do not have because I haven't had their training or their experience dealing with people in my situation.  I tire of the idea that we in the Church can't do anything more than just join people in their questions.   We're pretending like the subject matter at church doesn't really mean anything in particular or specific, that it's just a bunch of answerless questions we struggle with together to find our own personal answers.  Uh, no.  I go to my cardiologist with questions... but I want to go home with answers, and a plan of action.  People need to know we in the Church have ana answer to their questions and his Name is Jesus.  We have a diagnosis and we have prescribed remedies.  We need to say, "This is how we follow Jesus, we do this and this and this and this.  

(Like when a minister said to me they "struggle" with the words of the Baptismal Formula.  I, a presbytery Stated Clerk, replied, "Struggle all you want.  But when you do a Baptism, you need to use the words."  Not because the Book of Order says so, which it does.  But because Jesus says so, and the entire 2000 year tradition of Christianity says so.  It's not a matter of interpretation or innovation.  It's not something open to our questions.  It's a matter of simple obedience.  If we can't do what he says in this obvious and easy case, how will we do what he says when it is difficult, challenging, and ambiguous?)

Yes, I realized of course that the Bible has many different perspectives and approaches.  But my job as a Pastor, except in Bible study, is not to say, "Well, Paul says this, but maybe that wasn't really Paul, and Leviticus says this, but Isaiah says something different, and then Jesus says this in Mark but this in John, so basically take your pick and do what feels right to you."  The community and tradition have determined boundaries of interpretation.  These are not impermeable or unchanging, but they do give us guidance.  The deeper the tradition goes, the more we should respect it.  Ultimately, Jesus Christ as attested in Scripture has priority.  A community of disciples should have clearly articulated standards and preferred interpretations, based on the texts and on the shared experience of what works.  

And humility means that, unlike cardiology, it remains possible that our presentation of the Way of Jesus will not work for everyone.  In the end, the soul is not a physical organ like the heart.  It is not as subject to the rules of chemistry and physics.  Someone may simply do better on another path.  In this case we let people continue their search elsewhere; we do not try and adjust or adapt our path to the point of threatening its basic coherence and integrity, in order to accommodate them.  Zen teachers don't become Southern Baptists because that's what people who show up prefer.

(It reminds me of a book by Thomas Merton: The Waters of Siloe in which he recounts the history of the Cistercian Order.  The Cistercians' practice includes establishing monasteries in different places, starting with a few monks.  If the place thrives, they praise and thank God.  But if it does not thrive, they eventually decide to close up shop and move on to somewhere else.  (Jesus teaches something like this in Matthew 10:14.)  They do not try to adapt the practices that are constitutive to the Cistercian way by changing them to suit what will better attract adherents in specific locales.  (Jesus also makes this point in Mark 4:1-20.  The sower doesn't change the seed to suit the different kinds of soil.  It thrives or it doesn't.)  

Basically, I hope for a Church that knows what it's doing and does it with confidence, and humility.  But does it, and has the integrity to share it with and teach it to those who ask.

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