WHY THE OLD CHRIST MYTH IS LOSING ITS FORCE

IN our workaday world “Christ” is, as often as not, a swear-word. On the religious margins it is, as often as not, just an alternative name for Jesus.

The former usage is ignorant, the latter sells the term short. Novelist Philip Pullman also goes awry in his fable about Jesus and the twin brother he conjures up for him in The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ – but more on that another day.

With misconceptions abounding, some sorting out seems in order.

“Christ” is the Greek translation of the Hebrew messiah, a title meaning “anointed” (by God is understood). For the Jews a messiah was essentially a deliverer, whether from their enemies or their sins. They applied the term to several of their kings and high priests – but also to the Persian King Cyrus, who conquered Babylon in 539 BC and allowed the Jews in exile there to return home.

So long before Jesus the title carried a history and a hope, both of which are reflected in the concept of God-become-human that gelled around Jesus in the 1st century AD. The technical word for that is “myth”, which in religion means an anchoring story that people can enter imaginatively and become part of; and when they do, a new perspective on life opens up to them. All living myths have that inward and transformative effect. But myths can also die when the world in which they were shaped moves on.

That is what has been happening to the Christ myth. In its classic form it flourished during the many centuries when a real and objective, pure and righteous God was universally taken for granted, and when the big question was how a sin-prone humanity could ever be acceptable to him.

In the ancient world Jews were conscious of the utter holiness of the God they worshipped and, in marked contrast, their own sinfulness. Temple ceremonies therefore focussed on animal sacrifice to make the people acceptable to God. But, they wondered, how could they be sure that those offerings would suffice?

Greeks of the period were weighed down by the thought of the vast distance that separated them from God. They could not imagine how that gap could ever be bridged.

The Christ myth evolved to answer those pressing questions. Jesus the anointed one would take on himself the ultimate penalty for human sinfulness – he would become the perfect sacrifice that alone would atone for sin.

Ever after, his followers would be invited to identify themselves with his sacrifice, and so be delivered from the consequences of sin. Instead of death and damnation, they would enjoy life with God in his heaven. The gap was bridged at last.

Those are mighty claims and mighty rewards, and there was a time when they dovetailed perfectly with the notions of a theistic God, a heaven as real as Earth, and a fallen humanity locked into sinfulness merely by being human. (The story of Adam and Eve’s disobedience in Eden explained how humanity had got itself into such a pickle.)

The world has changed out of sight since that understanding of the Christ myth became entrenched. Today six basic elements no longer apply:

• We have a vastly different understanding of the universe and humanity’s place in it.

• A symbolic understanding of “God” – or no understanding at all – is gradually overtaking the old theistic view.

• Heaven and hell as physical destinations for the departed have withered away.

• Anthropology and biology confirm that human beings did not begin with Adam, but evolved in fits and starts over millions of years.

• A dark side is acknowledged to be part and parcel of human reality – but it does not stem from the disobedience of a historical Adam and Eve.

• And recent scholarship has provided a more humanly grounded picture of Jesus, and of the way the Christ concept developed after his death.

As a consequence, the idea of a sacrifice to atone for sin and restore our relationship with a non-existent being in his heavenly realm loses all its force. The traditional myth-as-story no longer dovetails with the world as we now know it to be. Our western, secular world-view is so fundamentally different that a new interpretation is necessary, or Christianity will crumble into dust.

Jettisoning the myth-as-story brings one huge benefit: it shakes Christian faith free to be re-imagined and re-expressed for our secular world. Faith might then centre not on that story, but on the mythic Christ of subjective experience. I’ll explore that further in my next column, Christ Now.

May 28, 2010

© Ian Harris, 2012