When the demythologization of the Christmas story is completed, we find in the infancy narratives of Luke and Matthew stories that are rooted in eyewitness accounts. It is okay to decorate the Christmas tree. It is my modest hope, however, that we will see the decorations for what they are, and in seeing them, appreciate [...]
Christ was not only born on the level of the world, but even lower than the world. The first act of the divine drama was enacted, not only on no stage set up above the sightseer, but on a dark and curtained stage sunken out of sight. This sketch of the human story began in [...]
It is important that we put away the tinsel and the lights, and for the Little Drummer Boy to put away his drum, so that we may see the story of the birth of Jesus Christ with as much historical accuracy as possible. Now is the time for a cringe-confession. I was once the Little [...]
Myth can be a fantasy tale full of whimsy and phantasmagorical characters, but true myth is much more than that. It is a tale that is true whether it is factual or not, and when it is both factual and true our eyes and hearts are opened to new realities and our quotidian lives are [...]
Like Beowulf, we can fight the dragons in our lives with joy and hope, for the Great Dragon had his death blow on the original D-Day when a man walked out of a tomb two thousand years ago. The Lutheran theologian Oscar Cullman famously compared the death and resurrection of Christ to D-Day. After the [...]
In the "Oresteia," Aeschylus examines whether a city exists for proper worship of gods or whether it exists for proper cultivation of “that which is most divine in us.” Today’s offering in our Timeless Essay series affords our readers the opportunity to join John Alvis, as he considers Aeschylus' views of the polity as embodied by [...]
If we accept that Christianity is a story, emphasize the primacy of faith, and deemphasize historical testimony, are we not merely reduced to telling our different stories, without being able to point to anything as having compelling objective truth? The mythopoetic appeal of Christianity is strong and valid. Yet there has to be something that [...]
People have wrestled with dualistic tension at least as far back as ancient Greece, with two competing streams epitomized in the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus. But as the Magi and shepherds both came to adore the newborn Christ Child, all dualistic bedrocks crumbled before the manger of the incarnational God. “Who make imagination’s dim [...]
As an anthropologist and folklorist, Andrew Lang believed that fairy tales and folklore serve as records of the past in the cultural realm, much like the tradition of common law in the legal realm. Through the study of cultural norms and folkways, one can understand the mores of the present. Some men should never have [...]
Part of the modernist mythos has been the idea that historical clarity increases exponentially the closer one gets to one’s own time. The myth tells us that the origins of mankind, the development of civilization, the foundation of certain human institutions are all lost in the dim past. This is what I will call “the [...]
Zombie legends remain a relevant medium that continues to capture the imaginations of modern people. As with any myth or legend, we gain wisdom about ourselves when we endeavor to unearth the symbolic meanings that lie buried beneath the surface. At times, what we find is as frightening as it is illuminating. With the Halloween [...]
The ancient myth-makers knew beneath the glittering palaces of worldly power there were bullish beasts like the Minotaur lurking in the labyrinth. Likewise, beneath our surface palace there is a cavern, a cellar, a dark and bewildering labyrinth. Each of us has his own Minotaur—the fearsome blend of the man and the beast in us. [...]
The relationship between science and the humanities is unavoidable simply because genealogies, in the end, are an extension of man’s thinking that combines reality with myth. Thomas Kuhn seemed to accept this fact, but today his colleagues’ aversion toward myth and magic has effected new iterations of magic that are devoid of meaning and spirituality. [...]
In the midst of a dream, Orual’s doubts are finally answered by the gods. Once Psyche gives her the gift of beauty, and the God of the mountain appears and speaks to her, her ugliness is washed away. It takes all of Orual’s life to come to this point of faith and cleansing, and now [...]