Dear
Rev. Know-it-all,
I
unfortunately stumbled across your last incoherent and un-scholarly article
about the reality of the Christmas story. It simply leads me to think that you
are a Neanderthal with no real in-depth understanding of Scripture. I am a tenured
professor of Scriptural Deconstruction at the Hackenbush Institute of
Threebingen University in Verwirrt am Sumpf, Lower Lichtenstein, where we have
continued to develop the work of Reformation theologian Hans Von Unmoeglich,
and his theory of “Sola Scriptura, Sola
Securum Stipendium.” If you ever picked up a scholarly book more involved
than the Sunday Funnies, you might have the makings of a real scholar!
Yours,
Professor
Jurgend Von Schnickelfritz, D.Min, S.S.D., B.Y.O.B.
Dear
Professor Von Schnickelfritz,
I
was educated in the thought of Hans Von Unmoeglich in my seminary daze, I mean
days, as were most people of our generation, but my thinking changed when I
made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land to see exactly where all the things we
believe in didn’t happen. There I met an Arab tour guide. Until that time I had
been rather dismissive of Arab tour guides who were happy to show you the stone
for want of which Jesus had no place to lay his head and the inn where the
parable of the good Samaritan would have happened if it had not been a parable.
The
Arabs are not, well, Northern European. How could they be as jaded and
sophisticated as are we? This guide was different. He was Catholic and his
English was excellent. I discovered that he was a teacher of History and
English who had graduated from the University of Albuquerque, New Mexico. He
was, like most Palestinian Christians I have since met, very civilized,
courteous and intelligent. Their ancestors were actually bathing regularly when
our Teutonic ancestors were still painting themselves blue and running naked
through the forest with pointy sticks. He completely changed my view of
history. He explained oral tradition in a way that I had never heard it
explained. He used a very homespun example of how oral tradition works. He
recalled the time that his grandfather showed him a particular tree in a
particular field where that grandfather’s grandfather had proposed to his soon
to be wife.
It
became clear to me that Middle Eastern people value their families in a way
that you and I in the West do not. The old stories are important to them
because of the people they love. If a story was important to my grandfather, it
is important to me, and if it is important to me it will be important to my
grandchildren with whom I will carefully share it.
I
heard a similar story from Cardinal Francis George, who is a real scholar, and
has a very precise mind. He told us about his grandmother who shared stories
that her grandmother had told her about what it was like to be a Catholic on
the Kentucky frontier around 1812. They had no priests, but that didn’t stop
them from coming together on Sunday, reading the scriptures of the day and
saying the Rosary, all this to be followed by a time of food and fellowship.
That’s more than 200 years before the date of this writing.
Accurate
memories of important things can endure for centuries if they are about
memories of those who are dear to us. Accurate tradition is the result of love,
which is often in short supply among tenured professors. Hence, some of them
fail to value or even understand tradition. Professor Martin Luther of
Wittenberg University who developed the principle of “Sola Scriptura” is a fine example of the disconnect that has
created modern Biblical scholarship. Martin and his parents had a rough time of
it. Luther remembered that, “For the sake of stealing a nut, my mother once
beat me until the blood flowed”, and “...my father once whipped me so hard I
ran away.” Perhaps if the Luther family had enjoyed the occasional family game
night, things might have been a little more peaceful in Europe for the next
five centuries.
Modern
Scripture study seems sometimes to accept the “sola scriptura” principle rather uncritically. In my education, it was an unnoticed assumption.
If someone had studied in a German university they were thought automatically
brilliant whether or not we could understand a thing they were saying. (An
aside: One particular professor came back from Tubingen and wrote hymns
embodying the latest biblical theology, things about the empty tomb and the
doubts that plagued him. We were forced to learn them and sing them at Mass. We
called these dreary songs the “Dead Sea Chanties.” He left the business of
religion about a year after he arrived at my seminary. We were a surly and
rather difficult bunch of adolescents.)
The principle of Sola Scriptura is unworkable when it looks only at the text in
order to understand the text, even if it is clothed in scholarly language.
Some
scholars are fond of saying that the story of Jesus’ birth and death are just
tired reworkings of old myths such as Adonis and Isis and Mithras. There is a
difference. Jesus and his birth, death and resurrection are not “once upon time”
or “in a land far away.” They happened in the places and times that were
remembered well by their families and friends. The children of the first
followers of Jesus were more than able to share the stories accurately with the
first Christian scholars such as Justin Martyr.
“But when the Child was born in Bethlehem, since Joseph could not find lodging in that village, he took up his quarters in a certain cave near the village; and while they were there Mary brought forth the Christ and placed Him in a manger, and here the Magi who came from Arabia found Him… those who presided over the mysteries of Mithras were stirred up by the devil to say that in a place, called among them a cave, they were initiated by him.” (Justin. Dialogue with Trypho, Chapters LXX and LXXVIII).
Justin
Martyr is asserting quite the opposite of what some modern scholars assert. It
was the pagan Mithraist myths that imitate the Gospel!
And
who was Justin Martyr? He was a Greek or perhaps Roman scholar who was born
about 100AD in Nablus in the Holy Land. Nablus is about 35 miles from Bethlehem. After his conversion to Christianity from
Platonism Justin set about reconciling the details of the Gospels. He did
research, and remember that he lived only a strenuous day’s walk from Bethlehem
and one long lifetime after the death and resurrection of Jesus. He was
researching things that had happened less than a century before his time and
less than a day away from where he grew up. He spoke of the Magi, the cave at
Bethlehem and all these things that we associate with the Christmas story, and he
was so convinced of the reality of these things that he was willing to die for
them, which he ultimately did. He travelled to Rome to establish a school of
philosophy and there he was beheaded in around 165 AD for refusing to deny
Christ. It wasn’t only the stories of the Bible that he believed to be true.
"And this food is called among us the
Eucharist ... For not as common bread and common drink do we receive these; but
in like manner as Jesus Christ our Savior, having been made flesh by the Word
of God, had both flesh and blood for our salvation, so likewise have we been
taught that the food which is blessed by the prayer of His word, and from which
our blood and flesh by transmutation are nourished, is the flesh and blood of
that Jesus who was made flesh."
He
believed that the flesh born of the Virgin Mary in Bethlehem was no different
than the Flesh and Blood we receive at Mass. He believed strongly enough to
lose his tenured teaching position along with his head. I would say that his
opinions are a bit more valuable than that of any scholars who think themselves
his intellectual superior.
Yours,
The
Rev. Know-it-all
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