Religious Language and The Mythic

The Nature of Myth A myth is a story told using symbol, metaphor, analogy and parable to convey some kind of religious truth. The story, in itself, tells us nothing if taken literally, but through it we gain something considered a deeper truth, or a more in depth meaning. A lot of Christians resign themselves to the fact that a lot of stories in the Old Testament (if not all of the Bible) are myths and allegories.

The Nature of Myth Mythic interpretations are often used to present complex ideas to differing audiences, to make concepts that are hard to understand more accessible and to put abstract principles such as morality into a more concrete example. Allegories, fables and parables all function in this way as well. As such, there are lots of ways a myth might function: The myth could be a story or a fable that is not true, but has some other value. For example, Braithwaite argued that religious stories are inspirational to us, and they provide us with the motivation to lead a moral life. The myth could be a literary device that enables us to talk about things that are 'ineffable' i.e. beyond language. So myths help us to speak of spiritual/ supernatural events in natural terms. The myth could be a method of interpreting 'ultimate reality' in the sense that Tillich described above. So a myth is just a form of symbolic meaning along the lines of Tillich.

Why use Myth? The accounts of events in The Bible may seem strange or absurd to the scientifically-minded believer, and so interpreting the stories as myths is a way of making the Bible 'palatable' to many people. If these stories are meant to be taken literally, as historical occurrences, then they are open to the kind of criticism and falsification that all history is open to. For example, the Bible dates the origin of the universe at a few thousand years B.C., but every single respectable scientist now accepts that the universe is billions (probably 13.7 billion) years old. However, if we interpret the Bible in a mythological sense then the stories of the Old and New Testament cannot be 'proved wrong' by scientific or historical evidence. If believers claim that religious stories and language are about the world, then they are open to attack from A. J. Ayer and Antony Flew, who have tried to show that religious statements are unverifiable and unfalsifiable and therefore meaningless. However, these attacks fail if we take the view that religious statements are myths and are still meaningful (because a statement doesn't have to be literally true or false in order to be meaningful).

Cosmogenic Myths The most prevalent case of myth as interpretation is in cosmogony, the telling of the creation of the world or universe. In The Bible this is told through Genesis but creation myths abound in the world’s cultures. As scientific understanding has progressed more and more people have come to view these as simply stories that can often be discarded. A lot of contemporary philosophers dislike the use of mythology in conveying ideas beyond our own, as they often contain outmoded ideas; for example the Genesis story appears anachronistic compared to the theory of the Big Bang.

What Myth is For Bultmann myth “talks about the power or the powers that we think we experience as the ground and limit of our world . . . within the circle of the familiar world, . . . within the circle of human life . . . Myth talks about the unworldly as worldly, the gods as human” (Bultmann New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings)

Rudolf Bultmann Rudolph Buttman says that to gain any truth from the New Testament we must cast asunder the use of mythological language. But what does Bultmann categorise as myth? Bultmann uses myth in a limited and narrow sense which cannot be identified with an ideology or with make-believe. Bultmann says that mythology, "…is that manner of representation in which the unworldly and divine appears as worldly and human -- or, in short, in which the transcendent appears as the immanent. Thus, in the mythological manner of representation, God’s transcendence is thought of as spatial distance." He thinks this aspect of God-talk, particularly in the New Testament, should be stripped away. We must, in his terms, demythologise.

Why must we Demythologise? Myth is a form of objectification.  God for example is seen as an object out there.  This linguistic expression is part of a process of bringing God within the compass of a subject-object relationship.  God comes to fit within our human conceptualisations. Bultmann writes much about eschatology being a mythical expression of God objectified in the time continuum at some future date. Myth has an aetiological function.  It is explanatory; in particular the universe is explained by means of myth. Myth also gives us a double view of history, a history of God or the gods and secular history. 

Demythologisation? Because the modern man confuses the mythological picture of the world with the New Testament teaching about himself, sin, salvation, resurrection, and the sacraments, he rejects the total package. This leads some men to pick and choose among the myths, retaining those which are not too impossible and rejecting others, but this procedure fails to get at the root of the matter, for the radical question is whether the truth of the New Testament can exist outside its outmoded mythological picture of the world. Most men reinterpret the New Testament either unconsciously or selectively, but Bultmann claims that "if the New Testament is to maintain its validity, there is nothing else to do but demythologize it."

An Existential Translation In an attempt to illuminate the divine, myth ends up illuminating the existential perspective of those who speak about the divine. Any interpretation of mythology must, therefore, also be existential in nature. The myth must be “translated” into our own contemporary context in order for the message to be rightly heard. Demythologization is thus a process not of excising mythological ideas from the pages of Scripture, but of translating the New Testament.

Existential Theology Demythologizing seeks to bring out the real intention of myth, namely, its intention to talk about human existence as grounded in and limited by a transcendent, unworldly power, which is not visible to objectifying thinking. Thus, negatively, demythologizing is criticism of the mythical world picture insofar as it conceals the real intention of myth. Positively, demythologizing is existentialist interpretation, in that it seeks to make clear the intention of myth to talk about human existence. (Bultmann New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings)

The Kerygma The word ‘kerygma’ means proclamation. The essential proclamation of the gospel is what Christian theology attempts to understand and communicate. However this presents essentially the problem of mythology. We cannot write or think except through the thought forms of our time and culture. In this sense the writers of New Testament text inevitably wrote mythology and it is these mythological ways of thinking that obscure our understanding of the kerygma. For this reason the text is in need of demythologization.

The Kerygma Continued In order to understand the kerygma as a faith event for me, the mythological language of the text needs translating into an existential conceptualisation. This understanding of the interpretative task (or hermeneutic) Bultmann calls demythologization. The purpose then of demythologization is to present to the reader their own existential encounter. Demythologization, as Bultmann defines it, is primarily a positive attempt to interpret Scripture for the sake of hearing the kerygma as modern persons. The program of demythologization does not reduce God to us, but interprets Scripture so that we, as modern persons, know that God is indeed for us.

Bultmann’s Own Words Christian preaching is Kerygma, that is, proclamation addressed not to the theoretical reason, but to the hearer as a self. In this manner Paul commends himself to every man's conscience in the sight of God (II Cor. 4:2). De-mythologizing will make clear this function of preaching as a personal message, and in doing so it will eliminate a false stumbling-block and bring into sharp focus the real stumbling block, the word of the cross. (Bultmann, Jesus Christ and Mythology, 36)

What Demythologisation Does Demythologization strips away the "pre-scientific world explanation and ... [the] objectified understanding of God" utilized by the early Christians; the kerygma which remains is best understood as "the word of God, as expressed in the language of any time and place, and its specific historically conditioned formulation in the New Testament".

The Hermeneutic Issue There has always been a hermeneutic problem in Christianity because Christianity proceeds from a proclamation. It begins with a fundamental preaching that maintains that in Jesus Christ the kingdom has approached us in a decisive fashion. But this fundamental preaching, this word, comes to us through writings, through the Scriptures, and these must constantly be restored as the living word if the primitive word that witnessed to the fundamental and founding event is to remain contemporary. If hermeneutics in general is the interpretation of expressions of life fixed in written texts, then Christian hermeneutics deals with the unique relation between the Scriptures and what they refer to, the "kerygma" (the proclamation).

The role of Religion One way of looking at Bultmann’s endeavour is to consider it as translation. It is an attempt to fit the gospel to man’s condition. Theological thinking, he says, is concerned with the immediate understanding of one’s self as a person. This is different from thinking about one’s self or one’s world. It tries to get at the basic question of "Who am I?" In reading the Bible, one tries to share the experiences and the historical situation represented in the document and to look for the answer to his own question for self- understanding. The new understanding is the gift of the new creation, for God is judge now and is calling men to decide for life or death.

Some Responses However, Bultmann’s idea of demythologising is opposed by some theologians however, as they believe that to ignore the use of myth in the bible would render most (if not all of the Bible) as useless and nothing can be gained from it. The main criticism is that it renders scripture as something subjective, to be interpreted and understood in our own personal way – much like a novel. This denies the objective truth that is (supposedly) there in religious texts. The crucifixion, for example, is no longer a divine miracle that holds primary place in religious thinking, but merely an event that means what ever we take it to mean. It turns religion from true in essence to true by our own interpretation.

John Macquarrie John Macquarrie argues that Bultmann is not entirely clear about the meaning of myth.  On the one hand it means the representation of the divine and superhuman in human and worldly terms.  Yet it also seems to mean the world view of a particular time. The issue for Bultmann is to experience what the Christ and his life means to me.  However Karl Barth insists that the focus theologically should be what does the Christ’s life mean in its own right, beyond this subjective perspective.  Therefore Bultmann’s makes theological assumptions that over emphasise the subjective element of religion.

Hans-Georg Gadamer To say that demythologizing is necessary only works if there is available a pre-understanding of what the New Testament message is and how it can be known.  Yet if there is this pre-understanding then why is demythologizing necessary? Hans-Georg Gadamer points out that Bultmann in attempting to get beneath the mythological element of religious text but, Gadamer says, we can never achieve objectivity with respect to a text because we can never escape our own prejudices.  We can never get outside our own prejudices to get a clear perspective about them.  As such any attempt to reach the heart of religious writing is misguided.