Rhetorical versus Empirical Truth
Christianity as a mythological system offers an interrelated network of stories, a pattern of liturgical responses, and a cornucopia of artistic renderings. It serves well those who attach themselves to it.
That being said, what truth lurks in this representation? Rhetorical truth abounds. Although its symbols do not in themselves represent actual facts, they do draw believers into divine life through their revelation.
Christian fundamentalists would reject out-of-hand what I just wrote. They do not distinguish between rhetorical truth and empirical fact. For them, Adam and Eve, two primal humans, our forebears, lived in a Garden. In that idyllic setting the couple conversed with an eloquent snake and munched upon a deliciously forbidden apple, to their lifelong shame. Even up to this day, their fundamentalist descendents scour mountains and valleys for an ark spacious enough to hold two of every animal on earth, for it alone breasted the waves of Yahweh’s righteous anger.
Most Catholics do not embrace such am extreme position. However, they do pick and choose among the stories about mankind’s interaction with the divine: some rhetorical truths make a point but do not indicate a here-and-now fact; some others in a given time and place occurred. For example, did Moses actually hike up to the top of Mt. Sinai? Did a bush incinerate before him and did a voice speak out of its fiery depths? Did a heavenly artist carve ten commandments into two slabs of stone and then entrust them to Moses? Did Moses carry these divine missives down the mountain, and, on beholding the Hebrew’s infidelity, break them into angry pieces on the stony ground? In my experience most Catholics say yes to the hike, the burning bush, and the voice: this scenario happened as reported. Many, however, would draw the line there: the tablets, God’s writing on them, and their subsequent fragmentation make a metaphorical point that should be seriously weighed. But they do not signify verifiable facts.
Consider the New Testament. Did an angel appear to Mary, like a subsequent visit from Elizabeth, her cousin, or is the scriptural author in this story impressing upon us a special intervention by the Divine into human history? Did Mary as a virgin, as a girl who had never had intercourse with a man, actually conceive a child through parthenogenesis, or is this tale meant to emphasize that her child held peculiar importance in carrying out the Divinity’s new and unique initiative?
As for her Son, is he actually God, the Second Person of the Divine Trinity, a Being that has and will live eternally, or is Jesus a human being supremely tuned into the presence of, and dedicated to, manifesting for us the Divine in human life, a presence that gives ultimate purpose and meaning to our existence?
Again, I recognize most Catholics as accepting as fact whatever the Church has declared in its Creed: Mary, the Virgin; Jesus, the second of three divine persons; Jesus revived and vital after three days in the tomb. But I question how they support that position when the Creed declares that “He descended into Hell”: oh, really, and how did He do that without suffering eternal damnation? Or what is factual about “after three days He arose again from the dead”: where had He been? In Hell? And do they have temporal-based days there? Now, then, “He sits at the right hand of the Father.” Does that Father actually have a right hand, or is that not a metaphor? Finally, when “He will come again to judge the living and the dead,” where will that be: at Geneva? at the United Nations? at some stadium big enough to hold billions of people? or is this just another metaphor?
Many Catholics fudge on non-creedal positions. Did Jesus actually walk on water and Peter nearly drown, or is this simply a call for faith in Christ’s message? Did Jesus actually break up the paltry serving of fish and bread and subsequently feed five thousand famished followers, or was the evangelist showing us by concrete example how much attuned to us, how caring of us, Christ was and is? Did Jesus actually freak out a herd of swine, letting devils dwell in them, and then watch them dive off a cliff in terror and despair, or does the story illustrate how following evil does not lead to enhanced life, but only death?
So, at last, how about the Resurrection? The Early Church certainly trumpeted it as the best way of proving Jesus’ divinity, and manifesting that it now carried on as His appointed representative. Down through the ages the Church has staunchly maintained that everything avowing Christ’s divinity is divinely revealed. The Church strictly guards and upholds this position as giving it purpose, authority, meaning, and something to do.
In opposition, I behold Scripture proclaiming one truth, one actual fact: human life has as its ultimate meaning and fulfillment its orientation toward, and union with, a Life that infuses existence with the totality of being. That fact should command our attention, our devotion, and our tireless action. Here we hear the Good News. Other than that all else belongs to Christian mythology.
Is the Resurrection real? Is it an actual fact? I don’t know. But I also do not care. I accept it as a rhetorical truth, a most powerful one at that. I get its message, gratefully.
