THE CHRISTMAS STORY
transcript of online conversation with John Meacham
Once again, the Christmas story will be told to millions of the faithful this season. Yet as with so many other elements of faith, the nativity narratives are the subject of ongoing scholarly debate over their historical accuracy, their theological meaning and whether some of the central images and words of the Christian religion owe as much to the pagan culture of the Roman Empire as they do to apostolic revelation. In this week's cover story, NEWSWEEK Managing Editor Jon Meacham explores how the Gospels mix faith and history to make the case for Christ. On Thursday, Dec. 9, at noon ET, Meacham answered your questions about the clash between literalism and a more historic view of the Son of God.
Jon Meacham: Hello, this is Jon Meacham and I'm looking forward to your questions.
Phoenix, AZ: How would not believing in the virgin birth diminish belief in Jesus as the Son of God?
Jon Meacham: As for this first one, you are are touching on a theological debate probably as old as Christianity itself. The early church in the decades after Jesus' Passion came to believe that Jesus was, as it says in the Nicene Creed, "incarnate of the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary." On one level, this was to distinguish Jesus from other great prophets and kings in ancient Israelite history; on another, it underscored the enormity of the sacrifice that God would allow his very son, not someone else's whom he adopted at baptism or invested with divinity in the course of his life, to die that terrible death for, in the view of the church, "the sins of the whole world." Can you be a good and faithful Christian and not accept the Virgin Birth as an historical fact? My personal opinion-and it is nothing more than that-is yes, for its ultimate significance lies in the fact that it is an article of faith.
Las Vegas, NV: Forgetting the ridiculous notion of virgin birth, isn't it a fact that most historians are skeptical about the existance of a historical Jesus?
Jon Meacham: Actually, no. There are enough extrabiblical sources (the work of Josephus, of Tacitus, of Philo of Alexandria) to settle that, and the New Testament should not be taken as a fanciful document by any means. It is a collection of first-century writings that mix faith and history to make a case for the figure whom his followers believed to be the Messiah, the Son of God who would put all things right. "Gospel" means "good news," not history or biography, but to dismiss the gospels or the epistles as completely unhistorical would be a huge mistake.
Cambridge, MA: Great interview with Imus yesterday. Where can I find the Flannery O'Conner quote?
Jon Meacham: Thanks much. I'm working from memory here, but I am almost certain it is in O'Connor's amazing collection of letters, "The Habit of Being," edited by Sally Fitzgerald. It is a fascinating book, and one well worth reading.
Erin, Indianapolis IN: On Imus this morning, you mentioned an essay the pope had written in 1988, that all should read. Could you elaborate more on that?
Jon Meacham: I think John Paul II's proclamation called "Fides et Ratio" (Faith and Reason), issued in 1998, is riveting reading. It should be easily accessible on the Internet, and certainly on the Vatican website.
Pawleys Island, SC.: I do not believe in the virgin birth but I do believe that Jesus was of God and annointed by God in ways that humanity is not. Is this a belief that is not possible?
Jon Meacham: All belief is possible; in a deep and fundamental way, that is what faith, or religion, is all about: an understanding or acknowledgement that there is, in Paul Tillich's phrase, an "ultimate concern" in the universe beyond time and space but which (and now this is just my view) helps explain, order, and guide life within time and space. I think it is a very dangerous thing for any collection of believers, whether it is the apostolic church or anyone or anything else, to say that it has an exclusive claim on truth or transcendence. To do so is to commit, I think, a sin of pride, and as the Bible says, pride goeth before a fall. I have always thought Shakespeare made one of the most profound and perennially relevant theological observations in history when he had Hamlet say: "There are more things in heaven and earth ... than are dreamt of in your philosophy." We are all on a journey, moving through the twilight of the present to, one hopes, a place of light and completeness. Whether that takes place in the realm of the mind or of the heart or of both, it is, I think, a useful way of thinking about faith.
Seattle, WA: What is the order in which the Gospels were written? Did the Apostle Paul begin writing his letters before the Gospels were written?
Jon Meacham: It's generally (though not universally) accepted that St. Paul's epistles largely predate the Gospels, which appear to fall in this chronological order: Mark, Matthew/Luke, John.
Tyler, TX: I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Meacham that faith and reason are not mutually exclusive. But it seems as though Mr. Meacham implicitly contends that a literal interpretation of Scripture and reason ARE mutually exclusive. Why?
Jon Meacham: You raise a fascinating point, but almost everything hinges on the phrase you use: "literal interpretation." By saying "interpretation," it seems to me you and I may well agree, because my view is quite simple: one can (and should) take the scriptures seriously, read them carefully, use our hearts and minds to the fullest to comprehend their meaning, and then do all we can to live by the lessons they teach. To me, that's what "intrepretation" is. If, however, you mean that a "literal intrepretation" means accepting the Bible as a complete historical record (ie, that there were actually six days in which the world was created, or that Moses literally parted the Red Sea) rather than a document which is truthful if not accurate in the sense that one of our reporters would go outside and report a fire, then we do seem to disagree. The Bible is a brilliant, challenging, endlessly fascinating book which, I humbly submit, should be read with an eye toward the circumstances in which the various books were composed-a view shared, for what it's worth, by the Catholic Church and many, many others.
Worcester, MA: I am always curious as to why people assume "the Bible", as we know it, was the ONLY written dicumentation of Chirst's words and teachings. Rarely do I see any mention of the Gnosic Gospels/ Nag Hammadi library, which sheds a completely different light on things, as opposed to the edited down version of the traditional King James bible. Christianity would have been profoundly different had these writings not been destroyed and I would love to know what your thoughts are on the Gnostics and their potential influence on history.
Jon Meacham: You are bringing up one of the great mysteries and unfolding debates in the long and rich history of Christian theology. How did some books make the cut, so to speak, and why were others dismissed? Were the people we think of as "gnostics" really "heretics" (the word in Greek, by the way, means "choice," which is is interesting) in the sense we think of heretics? They were a broad and complex part of the first-century's religious universe and no doubt have much to teach us. I think there is enormous scholarly interest in this, and I follow it with great interest. And we are lucky indeed that Elaine Pagels of Princeton, who is a wonderful scholar on all of this, is such an accessible and thoughtful writer, whether one agrees with her or not.
Burlington NJ: How do you explain how Christianity has prevailed for 2000 years? Many other religions have begun and not stayed in existence.
Jon Meacham: My own view, and it is only that, is that Christianity has endured largely for two reasons, one based on the power of its story, the other on the power of its message. First, the story: the sacrifice of a child by a father is such an overwhelming idea, so startling, so shattering, that the notion that God would allow his son to die on a cross "for us and for our salvation" endures in the heart and the mind. The story's impact for believers, of which I am one, is that we are summoned to do what is hard, not what is easy, we are called to see the world in a completely different way: that out of darkness comes light, out of weakness strength, out of death life. And that is a compelling, challenging, transformative thing. And second, the essential message of Christianity is the promise that the gates of Hell shall not finally prevail--that at the end of days, as it says in Isaiah and in the Revelation of St. John the Divine, God shall wipe away all tears, and there shall be no sorrow, no more pain, no more death for, as the New Testament puts it, "the former things are passed away." The idea that we can live a better, more loving life here by following the great commandment to love our neighbors as ourselves (which first appears in Leviticus) and, by so doing, ultimately come to completeness and order in the world to come is at the heart, I believe, of Christianity's appeal.
Newport Beach, CA: You just wrote, "I think it is a very dangerous thing for any collection of believers, whether it is the apostolic church or anyone or anything else, to say that it has an exclusive claim on truth." Could we take a more rational look? Here's a religion that says an ordinary human being had conversations with invisible demons, had a mother who was still a virgin at his conception, that angels appeared at his birth to sing praises, that a star appeared in the sky. Isn't it pretty silly to think any of this really happened? Isn't it obvious that many people, over a period of decades, decided to create a mythological hero to compete with the Roman Emperors declaring themselves deities, or in the case of Augustus, "the Son of filius" or "Son of God"? Isn't it silly to think that a Roman centurion actually watched Jesus die and then, after experiencing earthquakes and corpses coming back to life, suddenly announced, "Surely this was a Son of God"?
Jon Meacham: You may be right; someone whose views are diametrically opposite may be right. My point is that we simply don't know, and to claim either that the Christian story is literally and inerrantly accurate (truth, as we've discussed, is a different matter) or to claim, which you are in a way doing, that the whole business can be explained away with a neat theory is probably not the way to go. Faith and reason, I firmly believe, are not mutually exclusive, and some of the smartest people in the long history of the West have come to Christianity (Augustine) and some have fallen away (Matthew Arnold). My point is that rigid literalism of any kind, either theocentric or agnostic or atheistic, is arguably not satisfactory in the long run. Or at least rigid literalism-the idea that my view is of course right, and not subject to scrutiny and critical examination-is not satisfactory to me. Humility, it often seems, is the beginning of wisdom.
Thank you all so much for a fascinating exchange. All the best. Jon Meacham
back to The Words home page