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PDF versionChristmas is a bulletin from the human side
by Eugene Cullen Kennedy on Dec. 16, 2011
The New York Times recently asked an author of a book on imaginary gardens to review a new book that was actually old hat in its debunking the idea that the Garden of Eden and its alleged inhabitants, Adam and Eve, ever really existed.
That flatfooted reduction of the first power couple and their idyllic garden to inventions, like the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus, to beguile children and the gullible masses, is one of the misunderstandings of the myth of Eden that causes us to miss the spiritual and psychological meaning of this account of our origins.
The other misinterpretation of Eden goes back to the Desert Fathers, who bet that Original Sin's principal effect was to turn on the pilot light of sinful concupiscence in human beings. St. Augustine turned up the heat considerably with his remorseful polemics about the subversive and sinful character of human sexuality, allowing sex only if it donned a wedding garment that green-lighted it for the procreation of children. Blessed John Paul II seldom looked happy and seemed at least mildly obsessed with the inferior character of sexual relations, proposing that abstaining from them was the virtuous choice even for married couples.
Aside from wondering how men got to be called Saint or Blessed with such "are-you-crazy?" ideas about human nature, we may meditate on this season as a Bulletin from the Human Side, bearing glad tidings as well as an understanding of the real effects of Original Sin and a deepened sense of the meaning of Jesus' being born and suffering and dying as a man.
The Christmas Bulletin, for example, tells us that God did not disdain human flesh but took on and lived not abstracted from, but drinking deep of the chalice of human experience that we pass along to each other every day. God did not become a man to find out how bad it was but to celebrate how good it could be when we loved each other.
The real effect of Original Sin was not a sudden ambivalent awareness of our sexual natures but an understanding that sometimes takes the better part of a lifetime to accept; that is, what it means to live in the grip of time that is the mother of all sorrow. The meaning of Myth, such as that of Eden and Adam and Eve's fall, is never historical but always and only psychological and spiritual.
Our inheritance from our first parents is life in the human condition. That is perhaps best understood in the English title, Man's Fate, of Andre Malraux's book La Condition Humaine. The Myth of Eden is the story of our beginnings, of living outside of the Eternal, our longings for which may well be expressed in our longing for transcendence in intimate relations with another, and finding that we do not, like canny athletic coaches, manage the clock but that the clock manages us.
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"Where there is time," the great mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote, "there is sorrow." That is the tragic sense of our limitations rather than the mistaken notion of our excesses that lies at the heart of the Mystery of the Incarnation.
We may well better understand God's becoming man not to pay some ransom for our sins, small as most of them may well turn out to be, but to experience our sorrows as they really are. Jesus experienced everything we do, not excluding sexual feelings, to reveal himself as one of us who bears with us the everyday garden variety sadness, such as the ending of a happy day, to the deepest of sorrows in the losses of those we love and times and places we inhabited happily, to the great letting go that is inescapable for every man and woman.
Christmas is not a Bulletin about angels on high but about people down here where Jesus joins us, not in the trivialization of Original Sin as a revelation of our erotic failings, but in being with us in time in recognition of our eternal longings and our time-bound limitations. That is the meaning of the Pauline description of Jesus' not thinking that the Godhead was something to be clung to, but choosing to empty himself by taking on our lives and our sufferings, thereby making them, in Campbell's phrase, "transparent to transcendence," allowing us to see into the fathomless depths of our human condition every day.
[Eugene Cullen Kennedy is emeritus professor of psychology at Loyola University, Chicago.]
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Thank you, Eugene Kennedy,
Thank you, Eugene Kennedy, for pointing out that the Garden of Eden story is not to be taken literally!!!!! This is especially true now that we are finding out so much about the beginnings of and evolution of earth and its inhabitants. So many Catholics have inherited a childish notion of Scripture stories in the sense of literalizing Bible events rather than interpreting them symbolically or metaphorically.
How would you interpret the Resurrection? Literally?
The Resurrection is one of
The Resurrection is one of the few events in the Bible that demands to be taken literally. We do not have the fig leaves of Adam & Eve, but we do have the Shroud of Turin. We have no witnesses to Adam and Eve's fall but we have several to Christ's rising. The Resurrection is our one great fact. Without it, all is as myth.
I wouldn't hang my faith in
I wouldn't hang my faith in the Resurrection on the validity of the Shroud of Turin if I were you.
http://www.shroudstory.com/
Try this one and you might
Try this one and you might have a better hook to hang your faith on:
www.shroud.com
Your comment is true, David,
Your comment is true, David, as far as it goes. But the great danger, I believe, is equating Resurrection with resuscitation. More than the Shroud of Turin, it is the Church--the people of God--that is the greatest sign of the Resurrection. There were many witnesses to the Risen Christ; I don't think there were any to the actual Resurrection.
Lazarus was resuscitated.
Lazarus was resuscitated. Whatever happened to Jesus was resurrection. To say we have witnesses of the risen Christ but none to the resurrection is kind of like saying we have several witnesses who saw a man standing in wet clothes but because we didn't see how he got wet then we shouldn't speak of wetness.
I regret responding to David
I regret responding to David that we can't take the Resurrection literally. If he means that we have several witnesses to Jesus' resurrection, then he is misreading the Scriptures. We do indeed have witnesses that testify that Jesus is risen, but understanding what those witnesses were really trying to proclaim may be different from what the Scriptures literally record. If the Resurrection is our one great fact, it is not faith but science. It is really true, but it is not literal.
David, my understanding is
David, my understanding is that scientfic tests done on the Shroud of Turin date the cloth about 15 centuries after Christ. That still does not explain the shroud, but if these tests are accurate, it would cause serious doubt that it was the shroud of Jesus
My understanding is that
My understanding is that those carbon-based tests were found to be faulty, and there is new data on it's age and even a reconstruction of the actual face of the man covered by the shroud. Nuclear imaging replaces the old carbon-based technology, and so much more has been learned about the Shroud Of Turin and it's history as well.
Also, the Resurrection is our
Also,
the Resurrection
is our one great fact,
because Jesus said so.
I believe.
And that too is a fact.
Want proof?
You gotta believe, first.
As much as a mustard seed.
The shroud of Turin, by all
The shroud of Turin, by all tests and investigations, is a hoax. The fact of the Resurrection can be grasped only by faith. We would do well to abandon wishful thinking about things that common sense tells us are beyond belief, and embrace the conviction, however tenuous, that faith alone can provide.
Folks, The Shroud is not a
Folks,
The Shroud is not a fake. The carbon dating done in the 70's has been proven to be compromised -- even non-believers admit as much. For an update look into the Shroud check out this very scientific site:
www.shroud.com
The Shroud doesn't prove anything, yet it implies everything. It is an enigma that is unique in human history -- kind of like the very event it may be evidence of.
David, how about this? The
David, how about this? The Resurrection is, indeed, absolutely true. However, it does not have to be literally true in a purely physical sense to be true; it is true in a spiritual, mystical sense. The first time I heard some theologians
suggesting that perhaps the tomb was NOT empty that morning of the first day of the week, I was shocked and thought, ""Dear God, are they denying the Resurrection? That's terrible!" But as I read along, I came to see that they were not in any way denying the Resurrection - only saying that the MANNER of the Resurrection might be different than what we have thought. There was absolutely no doubt in the minds of those who experienced Jesus' presence after that morning that IT WAS JESUS and that he was alive! But there was something different about him. He wasn't always recognized immediately, he came and went through walls as if they weren't there and, though he is reported to have been seen by 500 people, there were many times that number who saw nothing. So he was alive but living in a RESURRECTED state, not as just a resuscitated corpse. Theology professor Luke Timothy Johnson of Emory University explains it this way - that the witnesses to the Resurrection experienced a powerful "energy field" that they recognized as Jesus and so immediately, joyfully and without reservation proclaimed him to have 'risen' and to be alive and with us again.
him
That's one way of looking at
That's one way of looking at it, sure. The point is that something happened to Jesus body that was unique. It could very well have a scientific explanation, because God likes science. My point is that I've often heard it said that the gospels are mere myths and stories - -that there is no hard evidence that any of those stories really happened. But the Shroud of Turin could be considered that one piece of hard evidence (yes it still requires a leap of faith) that bolsters the 'story' of a resurrected man.
How Jesus 'rose' is open to speculation. But he certainly appears to have done it.
But all IS myth. And the
But all IS myth. And the mistake is to think that that is a put-down. Religious "facts" are rather impotent; religious myth is suggestive and powerful. Myth is the language and material of spirituality and religion. Cultures make myth as an artistic creation, imitating the Creator. Products of imagination are therefore very precious, because they are imitations of God's act. It is not an insult for a story or an event to be called a "myth." Just as God has imagined us into being, God, loving us so much, has allowed us to imagine God in turn in the religious myths generated by cultures and individuals. To me, this is a beautiful thought. (I suppose to some others, it will be horrifyingly unorthodox.) Of course the Resurrection is myth. We should want it no other way.
The Resurrection comes
The Resurrection comes incarnate each time we love truly our enemy, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, free the prisoner, give real sanctuary to the illegal immigrant.
This is the true and palpable Resurrection, not some medieval pilgrimage cloth which even wojtyla had to stop investigating.
If tomorrow they discovered the bones of Jesus, would you love your neighbor any less? Your enemy?
After reading many, many
After reading many, many articles touching on the mythology of the Garden of Eden, I have yet to come across one that gives a satisfactory interpretation of "original sin". So I ask, in light of new scholarship, does the concept of "original sin" have any validity or use? Or are we just trying to take an antiquated idea and fit it into modern dress?
A follow-up question that has
A follow-up question that has been circling around in my brain: How can we say that the 'sin' of those first people was the "orginal sin." Doesn't the church teach that the first sin really belongs to Satan, the angel that rejected God? Satan was first to sin, making his the 'orginal sin.' Was it humans that brought sin into the world or was it the Evil One? Thanks to science, we now know that the action of our first parents did not bring suffering and death into the world. There was suffering, death and destruction in creation long before humans came into being. As a species, we're the new kids on the planet. How is it we have fossils of plant and animal life millions of years before humanity. I believe it is important to continue to examine our language around this 'original sin' concept because the old understanding can no longer stand!
Peace!
Very good points! Another
Very good points! Another concept to include is that the entire matter of Original Sin is man-made, based on the Church's pervasive stance that man is evil by nature. For centuries, the institutional Catholic Church used this to control it's faithful, to fill it's coffers (indulgences anyone?), build monumental and horribly ornate houses of worship on the backs of the poor workers and artisans, elevate the clergy to positions of superiority, and more. As the populations of better-educated Europe and the United States grew, Original Sin became to be viewed for what it was/is: a story, a parable, an anti-human philosophy that defies reason. New "interpretations" of OS coming out of humanistic thinking place it as the capacity of each of us to hurt and defy God by the mistreatment of one another. And there are other thoughts about it, if not completely dismissing the whole story. So I believe you are right on track here, Anonymous, and find your comments quite thought provoking. Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas!
Merry Christmas!
Challenge yourself. Google
Challenge yourself. Google First Scandal.
everyone should double check
everyone should double check Google while posting.
MMA Forum
"Where there is time, there
"Where there is time, there is sorrow." Yes. But where there is time, there is also beauty. The reason why the flowers of spring are so achingly beatiful is because we know that they will no last for long. An artificial flower, no matter how near-perfect a replica of the real thing, is ultimately boring and something to be taken for granted because we know that it will last a much longer time and that there are thousands more than can be purchased where that one came from.
Demythologization feeds our
Demythologization feeds our longing to feel respectable in the eyes of our culture's liberal elites. The problem is that this modus operandi becomes a frantic attempt to reach an ever-receding horizon. Christianity's cultured despisers find the supposed anthropoligical lessons gleaned from a story of an incarnate God just as ridiculous and disposable as traditional approaches to original sin and redemption. I'm not trying to settle any debate about which parts of the biblical narrative are to be considered historical (I've found that such debates tend to distract from the actual content of those narratives). I'm just saying that Mr. Kennedy's approach is a dead-end. If it allows him and some readers to hang onto their faith, then by all means go that route. But, please don't pretend that it somehow gets closer to the heart of the saving message given to the apostles by Jesus Christ.
Also, I would urge all to guard against feelings of pride about being smarter (in your view) than the ignorant masses that makeup the majority of the members of Christ's body. This trait is another common side-effect of demythologization.
As to demythologization and
As to demythologization and Dr. Kennedy's approach being dead-ends, I disagree. They open new avenues for 21st century life, thought, interpretations, conversation, convictions.
I do agree though that some people get bogged down in tangential issues rather than the main one; that became evident above where some of the boys ragged on about what's real and what's not....
Isn't that the problem with
Isn't that the problem with religion(s)? Seeking a literal truth in their particular "book", whether it be the Bible, Koran, Torah? It's as if these books were encyclopedias or science journals, law codes or, "evenly" theology texts. I really don't think that they are. But it gets worse.
So what happens/happened when humans find or create a "power book"? Simple, like we have done with stone, wood, steel and atom - we "convert" them into weapons.
Lawyers would do no better than theologians in sorting out the "definitives" from scripture; numberless internal contradictions, so much antiquated – place and time specific – narrative, perspective and dictate. So much so that an ounce of intelligence would suggest that these are not where the real lessons are. Duh!!
We Christians, particularly Catholics pretend that "it's all there": not just the apple and snake but patriarchal absolutism of hierarchy and "ontological" reservation of sacrament to (supposedly) flacid, but hardly placid, penis. Just in case anyone objects, we call upon our past, rewrite it and call it “sacred tradition” to justify our invention.
We pretend that Jesus and this self-defined cadre of clones invented ethics, sociology, community, justice and love. We quote Aristotle as if his real name was Jesus and then reconstruct Jesus as if he created human intelligence and empathy but really meant reverence to hierarchy and obedience to their dictate. His historical message was not their source but rather an incarnate stamp on what was intrinsic to creation: intelligence, compassion and, yes, an evolutionary leap to do more and go farther.
Surely it was, as well, an escalated declaration that their antitheses - the denial and abuse of intelligence, authority and the repression of compassion were to be rooted out. He applied these warnings particularly to his “agents”. That is why, I think, he choose unsophisticated, working types (men and women) as his team. They still don't get it.
The salvational act of Jesus was something much more mysterious and awesome than what they have reduced it to. Yes, it incorporates all that is human and expected of humans, but it elevates it all to a dimension of relationship with God that is "ontologically" distinct from dictate; that was and is cosmically evolutionary. Maybe we should pay more attention to Pinocchio, the princess and the frog, and “The Little Prince” for a while and rediscover the virtue of wonder. Then come back to Scripture.
As a writer, I love the truth
As a writer, I love the truth expressed in your last two lines.
As an earthling and follower
As an earthling and follower of The Way I also especially love the last two lines but the whole thing was right on. Writers can't have all the fun!
Happy New Year.
Well stated Dennis. Jesus
Well stated Dennis. Jesus was indeed teaching The Way to an evolutionary jump in how humanity could experience temporal/material life. Trouble is He was also right, the cost is our 'selves' or our perception of ourselves as discrete biologically derived egos.
No wonder no one since Jesus has really gotten what he was all about. Original sin is really our original natal condition of having to absorb our parents culture in order to maintain our biological survival. The Transfiguration should have clued in (at least Peter and James) that Jesus was teaching them all about homotranscendant, the next evolutionary stage of conscious self reflecting humanity.
Thanks David Goulet. I miss
Thanks David Goulet. I miss you Colkoch. Wish we could meet some day!
Miss you too Dennis. You
Miss you too Dennis. You never know, maybe someday we will meet. We'd sure have a lot to talk about--outside of hockey I mean.
Eugene are you Catholic? I
Eugene are you Catholic?
I ask because it is obvious you have no real concept of what Original Sin or its effects on human beings is. Also to wash away the teaching or the Sainthood of Augustine because of his focus on sexual relationships is down right ignorant and might I add arrogant.
To add to this - you call Eden a myth - WRONG!!!! I agree it is not literal or was ever meant to be taken literally but it is far from a myth. It is an aetiological story. A beautiful tapestry which truly shows to us the working of the Holy Spirit in the writings of the original authors and redactors of the Old Testament.
I have always disagreed with your views but never so vehemently with the utter claptrap you have written here and anyone who appreciates this bile should reconsider their status as Catholic.
Thank you - that is all
Dear Derek L: Your overly
Dear Derek L: Your overly eager rush to demean the article's author betrays your reliance on pupularized and corrupted meaning of words. Search out a bit and then reflect a bit on the more profound meaning of 'myth'. Hint: Joseph Campbell.
Dear Dennism, Thank you for
Dear Dennism,
Thank you for your comments, however, aetiology is the proper branch to go down here - Joseph Campbell is not always right.
I know in America you have a problem with Creationism.
I find it amazing you don't comment on St. A or any of the other teachings that Eugene dismisses.
What I have found in the NCR over the last few months of reading is that apart from John L Allen Jr, every other writer wants to be apart from the Church. That's fine - there are over 40000 Protestant denominations in the world. Choose one.
Derek: You have not dealt
Derek: You have not dealt with your apparent identification of "myth" with cultural lie. So, your "being amazed" that I didn't address Augustine is a cop out. Please note that I didn't claim that Campbell is always right. It's just that he makes a lot more sense than literalist avoidance of the obligation to intelligence.
and of our obligation as
and of our obligation as Catholics to compassion
Thanks Eugene, It has always
Thanks Eugene, It has always been a mystery to me that the Hebrew word Adam
means nothing more than First Man and then people go making hay out of it and personalize it. Speaks more to our origins than to any sinful state. But, the
power of Myth cannot be underestimated, how else could the idea we have in the USA that we can all become millionaires make any sense. Not only do the gullible buy into it but its right into the pockets of the Republican Party
who will insure very few of us ever get there. Pure economics dictates that
if all were millionaires you would simply have defined the new poverty level.
Merry Christmas, may we all grow in appreciation of myth, and may more of us come to see through the myth makers of our time.
Veni, Veni Emanuel!
TomC.
As I always told my students
As I always told my students when reading scripture, "Do what you do in English class. Don't fuss with the plot. Pay attention to the theme, the truth underneath." As little children, we learned all life's great lessons through stories that were not "true" but whose truths were undeniable.
If Jesus didn't actually,
If Jesus didn't actually, physically ressurect from the dead, then the rest of our faith is all meaningless b.s.
Further, if you don't believe in Christ's literal resurrection from the dead, whatever else you want to call yourself, you cannot call yourself a Christian.
When the son of man returns
When the son of man returns will he find faith on earth? Just wondering.....
or anyone left, for that
or anyone left, for that matter . . .
Faith is Love
Love thy enemy.
Preserve the race.
Love is the Presence of Jesus.
To insist on the literal
To insist on the literal interpretation of Eden, the Resurrection, etc. is to reduce the Bible and belief to a history or science textbook. The Eden and Resurrection narratives are an ancient Near Eastern culture's attempt to grapple with the meaning of the human condition. And what powerful, life-changing stories they are! A tribute to the creative human imagination.
Religion faith and belief is a right brain thing, not a left brain thing. It is more in the dimension of intuition and poetry, less in the rational, evidenciary dimension.
The Odyssey, the Exodus, the Resurrection, Pinocchio and the Velveteen Rabit, all tell essentially the same wondrous, beautiful story: the transformation from lost to found, slavery to freedom, death to life.
These archetype stories are happening in our lives every minute of everyday.
Happy Incarnation to All!
No one is telling you that
No one is telling you that you can't believe that, Greg; however, what you cannot do is claim to be a Christian and believe that Christ's Resurrection from the dead is not a literal, factual event.
made real, literal and
made real, literal and incarante, factual, each time we love our enemy in mercy and in truth, as Jesus commands us in life.
um...no.
um...no.
Alex, I believe that you
Alex, I believe that you totally misread or misinterpreted (or both) Greg's comments. And, I would be very, very careful in telling someone you really don't know at all if they are a Christian or not, simply based on a blurb they wrote on a website. That would not be at all Christian to do, now would it?
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