| Myth busting by apocalypse
By contrast to myth as speculative, biblical testimony is apocalypse or revelation. Wherever a backward glance occurs, it is not in quest of the past but as apocalypse that is already looking forward to a new reality in the promises or word of God. The wistful stories of mythology lack any traction to anticipate the sovereign fulfilment of promise. Myth is used by some to interpret biblical writings, yet it is foreign to the anticipatory focus of revelation that invokes faith in the sure promises of God. While humans seek to resolve their difficulties and dilemmas as these are perceived in human memory and configured within assorted cultural bric-a-brac, the goal of humanity has already been disclosed by the word of God. Biblical apocalypse anticipates the dignity of humanity in God who calls to be things that are not. This dignity is fully focused in Jesus Christ as God’s creative word disclosed in saving grace and truth that summons response. v Religious myth presents images of divinity and humanity forged from selected phenomena of life but unsullied by time. Yet myth is unable to represent anything new by such images. Even within natural recurrence, each instance of life is finally extinguished. Mythic images offer no engagement with anything that is truly otherwise as life-changing within human life. Any projection of reality that might be otherwise than the way it has always been is derived from what is passing away and therefore no possibility at all. The impotence of myth becomes evident in the modern focus on tangible verities; gods and timeless places wistfully conjured in myths evaporate, like mist in morning sunlight. In biblical testimony, idolatry—positing some form of ultimate reality through a prism of passing phenomena—is futile. Identifying every aspect of phenomena with divinity, pantheism seeks to redress the loss inherent in myth. By contrast, in the seminal call story of Scripture, Abraham leaves an idolatrous past to trust God who gives the future—unlike the impotent projections of myth from the stuff of life, which is the essence of idolatry. Conjectured verities of myth are cast as timeless variations on what is always passing away. By contrast, the future is otherwise than what has been. The future is yet to be engaged in volitional freedom, decisions and responsibility as new events and effects in human life and relationships. Faith in God as our source of volitional and relational life—as ever-approaching and ever-new in the creative word or promise of God—is unlike the conjectured verities and divinities cast in mythic analogies from fleeting life. God alone can disclose what is otherwise than transitory phenomena, even as this disclosure occurs in events with tangible effects within human life. This is the impetus of trust in the word of God and its fulfillment. This is presented in messianic anticipation in which a person—the definitive word of grace and truth—is given to us as the intimate face of God and the future of humanity. Apocalypse is disclosure of a word otherwise in the midst of time and life in anticipation of the reign of God. In brief but slightly skewed images of familiar human concerns, the gospel through parables presents the reality of God as an imperative to be encountered in real decisions that affect life in specific ways. The reality of God is not a flight to timelessness but is encountered in a pending moment. The reign of God is near—encounter occurs in our response. Parables exemplify this imperative response as a crucial moment that will change everything. This pending reality is only substantiated by decisions, events and freedom for new possibilities—a vocative word is heard as an imperative to decision for another reality other than any we have assumed, yet entirely in our midst. With or without response, this reality is experienced, either as invitation to expansive joy or as a withering of gifts—to have, and be given more or not to have, with even what we have being taken away. Apocalypse gives linguistic shape to such decisive possibilities. With either optimism or pessimism, myth eradicates time through timeless images of loss in “the way things are,” tinged with wistful longing for what might be, yet cannot be. By contrast, apocalypse accentuates time as events and crises invoking decision. The language of apocalypse is confronting as the crisis of decision that can change everything, even for eternity. Apocalypse discloses a pending and decisive moment when everything will be different—even if missed. The weight of apocalypse is on call, response, decision and destiny. Natural recurrences are not reiterated, as in rites and rituals appealing to gods and mythic verities in projections of perennial desire and its frustration within time. The strangeness of some apocalyptic images dramatises the eternal implications in a pending decision. Even as surreal, apocalypse is antithetical to myth in the call to singular and decisive decisions in which God is to be encountered and our direction changed. Time is punctuated by events given through a word otherwise. Such crucial moments are before us in any new day. Biblical testimony can look back on a day that has become a thousand years, even as it looks forward to each day as a singular occurrence. A day is the context for decision, responsibility and accountability. The reiteration of “today” implies a specific time of challenge and response that might also be missed. The impetus of biblical testimony is toward the future in the promises or word of God. Each day arrives with the possibility of trust and decisions called forth by this word. While in a backward glance a day merges into many days of anticipation, the future only arrives one day at a time. Anticipation always occurs in a specific day, however many centuries each day of anticipation becomes. A “day” can be a thousand years and remain a day. Arrival of what has been anticipated comes as a day for reception and response. The future meets us in tangible decisions of a new day in Christ and not in ever-changing conjectures concerning the future of humanity. Even if anticipated for centuries, the future of God meets us through trust in the imperative word “today” and at no other time. v Christian gospel has often been categorised as mythical or as composed of so many myths within comparative religious criteria. Yet gospel is not at all like the generalisations of myth that are generated within cultures and religions, either about God or concerning our integral humanity. Myth may be a religious category through which timeless inklings of divinity and wistful aspirations are cast. Yet myth is wholly unlike the reality of tangible events that can change human possibilities. God reaches out to humanity in its various expressions of hubris and compromise within time, calling forth our response through Jesus Christ as the crucial and eventful disclosure of God in grace and our humanity in truth. Our response is invoked by the realism of parables, sayings and encounters that call us to a yet greater reality—the reign of God—in tangible decisions of faith expressed through deed and word in the midst of others. In Christian gospel, grace and truth disclosed as gift in distinctive events with decisive implications for people are proclaimed. Without faith, these are an affront and a scandal, wholly unlike the dreamy, impotent assurances whispered in myth.
Selected sources: Bartsch ed. Kerygma and Myth I & II; von Balthasar Seeing the Form. Related articles: Time and its punctuation and Alice and apocalypse |
