Scripture: A Verbal Icon

The last chapter took up the issue of the relationship between fact and truth in the biblical accounts of Jesus’ birth. I tried to point out that the question “Did it really happen that way?” arises from a common misunderstanding that confuses fact with truth, while it overlooks the point that everything reported as fact is filtered through the reporter’s own experience and understanding. For that reason, what we receive as fact is always colored and shaped by interpretation: our own, when it is a matter of our personal experience, or that of the person who conveys the information to us.

With regard to the biblical accounts of Jesus’ conception and birth, we need to recognize that they represent a synthesis of historical reality—what we call fact—and transcendent meaning, a meaning that human words can express only through images or figures.

We find this synthesis most clearly expressed in Jesus’ parables. These are stories built upon common experiences that the hearer knows as fact: the authority of the king or master of the household, the annual cycle of planting and harvesting, the hypocrisy of certain members of Israel’s ruling class, the care of a shepherd for his flock, and so forth. Jesus takes these common realities and uses them as images—verbal icons—to express a meaning that speaks to the immediate experience of his hearers. Extrapolating on the basis of their own experiences, those hearers (and future readers of the Gospels) easily see in the king or master an image of God as Lord and Judge, in the agricultural cycle a sign of God’s presence and activity in creation, in the rulers of the people a warning of judgment and a call to compassion, and in the shepherd a witness to Christ’s own concern to “seek and save the lost.”

Jesus never intended for his parables to be taken as fact, in the sense that they recount events that actually took place. They are figures, verbal images, which point beyond themselves to a deeper reality. For that reason, they are more than fact. Although based on familiar daily realities, they lift the hearer to a higher plane, a level of ultimate reality that concerns our relationship with the eternal God.

In this sense, the creation story—indeed, the first eleven chapters—of Genesis can be considered parabolic. If we ask, “Did it really happen that way?”, the answer is both Yes and No. Yes, insofar as the creation story of Genesis 1 affirms that God is the unique author of all that exists, that everything comes “from nonexistence into being” by His will and power, and that what He created and continues to create is essentially “good.” But no, insofar as it is now known (it is scientifically demonstrable), that the cosmos is not three-tiered with “water above the firmament,” and that the “days” of creation cannot be understood literally as 24-hour periods.

To put it in more technical terms, there is a profoundly mythological aspect to every biblical account, including the accounts of Christ’s Nativity. But to say that, we need to be very clear about the meaning of myth. A myth is not a legend, an invented story. Nor is it to be confused with a parable. In the proper sense of the term, a myth is a narrative that serves to express, in human language and figures, realities that transcend what we consider to be the purely historical. Some realities, such as emotions and aspirations, can be most adequately expressed in the language of poetry. Transcendent realities—truths about the inner life and external operation of God, for example—can best be expressed in the language of myth.

If this sounds dubious, it is most likely because we tend to misunderstand the concept of history or historical reality. Seduced by a certain intellectual dualism, we create an improper dichotomy between the temporal and the eternal, just as we often do between fact and truth. We consider them to embrace different spheres of reality, whereas they constantly merge into one another. The universe came into being as a result of the “Big Bang.” But the reason the question “What existed before that?” cannot be answered is because time itself did not exist. The Creator, however, did exist; and at a particular a-temporal “moment” he set in motion what we know as physical and historical reality. We cannot understand the historical or factual aspect of creation, therefore, without reference to the transcendent Creator (although many people have tried).

Similarly, Jesus’ presence in the life and experience of His people occurred in part as a result of certain historically determinable facts, namely that He was born, crucified and buried at specific times and places. Yet at the same time, that birth and that death are transfused with a higher significance because they are vehicles for divine intervention into historical reality. The One born of the Virgin Mary is a human being, but He is also the eternal Son of God; and it is He whose death, followed by His resurrection, marks the definitive Passover into eternal life. Here we find the ultimate merging of time and eternity, of historical event and transcendent truth.

Because God is present and active in every event of world history as He is in our most intimate and personal experiences, it is imperative that we correct any false dichotomy between time and eternity, fact and truth. As we pointed out earlier, however, the respective terms are not synonymous. Truth is always “more” than sheer fact. Yet the two constantly overlap one another: temporal facts are ceaselessly intersected or interpenetrated by eternal truth. All time is permeated with eternity, just as every fact has the capacity to convey some aspect of ultimate reality. Still, eternity transcends time as much as truth transcends simple fact. Language attempts to express this interrelationship, and it does so most effectively in the form of myth: a story in human words that expresses in its own unique way the ultimately inexpressible mystery of divine and human interaction.

This is why we affirm that the Genesis creation story is true, even though every element of the account is not factual. And this explains why the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ birth, death, resurrection and glorification are true, although every detail could not have been verified to the satisfaction of skeptics who might have been present. The truth of those accounts, however, is not merely subjective, even though it is perceptible only to eyes of faith. Thomas saw and believed, as did the other disciples, together with countless others (1 Cor 15:3-8!). What they saw was reality: historical reality insofar as they beheld the risen Lord in the flesh, but transcendent reality insofar as that flesh was transfigured into His resurrection body.

Although we are usually oblivious to it, what we call fact, time and historical reality are always filled with eternal presence and meaning. The expression “realized eschatology” is not mere theological jargon. It too is a verbal icon that seeks to express an ineffable truth. It means that the world itself, in the memorable words of Gerard Manley Hopkins, “is charged with the grandeur of God.” Scriptural accounts—whether we class them as factual, historical, parabolic or mythological—are verbal icons, whose purpose is to seize that grandeur, to make it intelligible in the form of human language, and to offer it to us as a life-giving witness to what is ultimately and absolutely true.