There was a time in the
early 20th Century when Liberal Theology was popular, and
by that I don't mean Liberal as Left Wing, I mean Liberal as not
exactly orthodox. People were asking questions and challenging
conventions, and not least of these was how do we read the Bible.
From people like Von Harnack onwards, many seminaries focussed on
higher criticism of the Bible; to read and dissect it as we would any
other book, to look at narrative motifs and themes, to try an
understand miracles in light of other classical world phenomena, and
of course to discuss genre.
This is where Lewis
wades in. He delivered a talk in Cambridge in 1951 on how so many
illustrious Bible scholars just don't understand literature enough to
really pass comment, and a lot of it comes down to one work
discussing the genre of the Gospel of John.
Now the Gospels are
interesting from a higher criticism view, because the first three
(Matthew, Mark, and Luke) seem to define their own genre. When we
read them in light of other First Century writings they don't quite
fit into Bios, Memoir, or Teachings, they in instead their own genre
which we now call Gospel. They share similarities with the others,
but we still can't quite classify them.
But the fourth Gospel,
the Gospel of John, now that is a weird book, and that is why Lewis
needed to clarify something regarding genre.
You see, there was a
train of thought that says the Gospel of John is romance.
That's right folks,
some authors believed that John was the Mills and Boone of his day.
Now Lewis took umbrage at this, and he took a shot at the whole of
Biblical higher criticism with it. In his now famous talk (since
published as Fern Seeds and Elephants) Lewis questions whether these
scholars have read enough romance to call John a romantic. To put
this in perspective, and to keep this a pop-theology blog, here is
the professor of literature at Cambridge dropping the mic on over a
hundred years of theological studies saying that they haven't read
enough to form an opinion. He isn't questioning their ability to
theologise, rather that they were talking out of their rear ends when
it comes to literature. Also his dad was Welsh so he is already half
perfect. Boom, headshot.
And to give him his
credit, Lewis does have his academic chops when it comes to this
stuff, the guy is practically a genius, and between him and Tolkien
they were probably the worlds leading experts in this next field:
Mythology.
Lewis studied a whole
boat load of classical Greek texts, and he taught a hella lot of this
stuff at one of the most prestigious universities in the world. This
guy has chops when it comes to mythology, and that is kind of what he
says the Bible is. Of course, he goes into far more depth than I am
here, he is a genius and I do pop-theology, go read more since I am
only going to skim the surface.
Now Lewis means
something different when he talks myth than when we do. We tend to
think of myths as something which just upright isn't true, but that's
not what it means at all. Myth is how people make sense of the world
around them, and they make that into stories. Maybe everything
doesn't happen exactly as it plays out in those stories, but that
doesn't make them any less true.
To really simplify this
(and I know that I am doing Lewis a disservice here), think to the
story of the Boy Who Cried Wolf, fact or fiction? Actually I am
asking the wrong question there, a better one would be true of false?
You see, something doesn't have to be 'fact' to be 'true', and if we
were to dismiss the Boy Who Cried Wolf because we cannot place the
exact village and the exact breed of wolf, then we lose a most
valuable lesson.
And Lewis was fighting
poor higher criticism on two fronts. Firstly there were the people
who robbed the Bible of it's mythology, its truthiness. And then
there were those who straight up took it too far the other way and
tried to make it all too facty (If I make up enough words does that
make me as clever as Tolkien?). They were getting hung up on author
intention, so when Peter wrote something, what exactly was happening in
his world to influence him, what exactly did he mean?
I love the anecdote
Lewis gives to this. Apparently one day he read a review of his own
work where the critic discusses Lewis' motivation and themes, and all
that stuff we were taught in English class. And Lewis noted that he
didn't recognise any of it. People had read him and reflected
themselves in his writings, and that had completely changed the
message he was trying to get across.
And I am so guilty of
this, contextualising Bible stuff is what I do more than anything
else, and it is really important folks. We cannot pretend that Paul
or James or John would understand our world, any more than we fully
understand theirs. And I don't think that Lewis is fully signed up
to La Mort D'Author philosophy either. I think he just saw some
people going too far in not giving the mythology of the Bible enough
respect to speak for itself. Of course this is somewhat easier for
him since he taught a lot of classical philosophy, so he probably
didn't have to think about context as much as we do.
People were getting so
hung up on finding the authentic intention of the Bible authors that
Lewis gave them this great rebuttal: Mark is dead, and when we meet
St Peter we will have more pressing matters to discuss.
And myth is so
important to the Christianity of Lewis. There is a great story where
Lewis, a die hard atheist at this point, is considering Christianity.
The story goes that he and Tolkien are discussing the Bible and
mythology and they come to this conclusion: The Bible is myth, and
Jesus is myth made real.
Lewis was famously not
an Evangelical, he wasn't hung up on issues like six day creation or
fish swallowing people whole and spitting them out, he did try to see
the truth in the stories of the Bible however, and even told his own
explaining what Jesus meant to him. What exactly he and Tolkien
meant by 'myth made real' I will leave to you to decide, after all,
they are both dead now so we can't ask them.
I hope you have enjoyed
this, and had something to think about. Please remember that this is
a pop-theology blog, I am not your university lecturer and this is
not an academic work, it's just a short piece to make you think about
how you read the Bible. God Bless.