Samicarr, this is interesting. I’m happy to follow this line a little, in the light of your earlier post, and in the bit of John’s response that seemed concerned that myth and fiction meant much the same, I think there is something here that is quite real as an issue. I hope this doesn’t disappoint.

But I need to keep one foot on the bottom here, my overriding interest in this, and perhaps my reason for writing the original, is the nature of story and our relationship with narrative modes today. Just as I wouldn’t conflate myth and fiction, with the slightly pejorative inference that brings, neither would I merge myth and story, largely because story is too generic a term. I think we would lose something important if we took up with the syllogism that all myths are stories therefore all stories are myths.

I agree; it is not going to be easy to discover or rediscover those worldview type narratives that we really need now. And I agree that this is, in part, because we have, as a society, become mere consumers of the short-lived fictions of a hyperactive media and, indeed, that in recent years these are frequently triumphs of form over content. But neither is it going to be easy in the light of the work that Andrew and others are doing which, as suggested before, is not so much changing the claims of scripture but is repositioning us in relation to more historically sensitive readings of the texts.

New-myth is an oxymoron, just as a new-legend would be. To be mythic, perhaps, a story has to have lost contact with its author, to have lived-on in the hands of a community that desires to be true to the story. Perhaps myth never has a single author but arises, maybe over very long periods within the conversation of a society as it wonders about life or crops or enemies or land or the weather. And just maybe, with some mythic stories, throughout their formative period, this conversation is also a process of inspired dialogue with the Spirit of God.

The reason why I haven’t studied deeply myth as a literary form is that I am not sure it is best understood in literary terms. Myth is a different order of story. Myth is important, I think, because it is distinguished by being a lived story. (One could wish the same for theology and dogmatics as well I suppose) Its truthfulness relies less upon verifiable history than upon the coherence of the perceptions of those who live it. And although the stories we live in today are predominantly modernist, are still hopeful of science, still lived technologically and adored in the marketplace, there remains the sobering fact that we are still so very hungry for understanding and meaning. In another thread Andrew explored the notion of restoring Wonder and I think this catches the pulse of something profound and something common in mythic narrative. The dissatisfaction with modernism and with scientism is that their cultural effects are often to reduce wonder, that analysis, and, sometimes, mere categorisation are enough to tick our boxes. This might not be true of science, but it is certainly the effect of popular scientism. (Perhaps better called the Public Misunderstanding of Science). Modern myth, then, becomes ironic as well. The mythology of scientism abandons science in order to make faith statements about science. (But I really don’t want to get on at Dawkins again!) Similarly, unfortunately, the high view of scripture espoused by those who regard themselves as literalists often forbids critical engagement with scripture in order to demonstrate inerrancy.

Obviously we cannot accord the same weight to all mythic stories. A story that has stood throughout the whole history of writing, and from long retelling prior to written language has to have particular worth and import regardless of faith or views on authority and cannon. But if, as you say, contemporary story making can be carried purely on visual and virtual characteristics, then these stories rest on nothing more than the imagination of the individual. And what a poor thing that often turns out to be. These stories don’t last more than a few months unless they gain ‘cult’ status (a rather interesting term in this context!)

You are right, I think. This is myth as style, as a palette of icons and movements, colours and music. We, wrongly, call this mythic because it rests on nothing and looks and sounds like what we currently imagine myth to look and sound like. I think this a categorical error, this is fantasy not myth, and fantasy, I would argue, is myth’s opposite. We can tell that it is such partly because it lacks that other signature of real myth, it has no implication for us; it does not call to us and invite our engagement. This is not about something being imposed ‘critically from without’ (and I admit that this particular tenet of PM has rather lost its lustre for me), but about something inherent in the story, in its resonance and in its provenance.

But where do people go when, as you say, the resistance to myth is because modernism exposes a severing of the ties, and when the mystique of science begins to lose currency and people hunger for more than the narrative that science has brought… fantasy seems to be the genre of choice. If we look simply at the expenditure of production houses selling to BSky, the dominant genre is science as fantasy, and in the spiritual, mystical or occult. The reaction, so heavily drawn from marketing data, is that when the voice of science becomes monotonous, (and when religious themes only appear in comedies) the other-worldly legacy of a neo-platonic worldview resurfaces.

I realise this is not exactly what you meant with your question about whether or not anyone is excited by the potential of narrative but this is where I can and do get excited about it.

If myth cannot deliberately be remade but only be the fruit of our communal endeavour, and if we have become derelict in our communal imagination, preferring a role as consumers of the stories of the others and if, as I suggested earlier, this is likely to get worse because we actually teach our children these ways, as much by what we don’t teach in schools as what we do, where then now?

I believe the field is fertile and that it is open to us. I’m not convinced it is religious conservatism or modernist scientism that stand in our way; more that it might be the legacy of a misunderstood or at least misapplied creation story. The mythic task, which is to say the narrative task that can connect a beginning with an end or a new beginning, is the task of connecting Genesis 1-3 and what follows with the people of God today. Again I agree with the implication of what you said. This requires a revival of inspired and sanctified imagination, a passionate commitment to a conjecture of faith, the capacity to receive from the biblical narrative and to imagine ways of living that express its hope, even if, at present we are at sea in a storm of tall tales and our old ways of remembrance have failed. (Oh, I forgot to mention myth as communal remembrance! But enough already!!)

But the conjecture and the adventure are not merely imaginary, the sanctification and the inspiration are essential if what we produce and live out are not to be entirely subjective. I guess this is why so many are intent upon the delicate task of extracting Christianity from Christendom, and why people respond so deeply to Breuggemann’s plea for the rise of the poets or, more mischievously, to Hauerwass’ manifesto to confiscate all the Bibles in America. But this is also a hunger that can drive us to positions of rank stupidity, what is the point, for example, of grabbing a headline by calling Penal Substitution child abuse when it costs you your voice?

If there is to be a revival of wonder and a renewed capacity to astonish western society it is, surely, in the way in which we form storied communities, the way we resolve conflict, the way we relate to power, the way we deal economically, all of these, and more, and all of them astonishing because of the creativity that drives us on. For me it has to work out like this. I have little interest in rehabilitating the idea of myth, but a deep interest in investing in communities that are intent upon imagining and becoming colonies of heaven.

Relates:

Not so easy to respond to, I admit, because I don’t think I understand where you are going with this, but I’ll have a go.

Remember that my point was not to debate historicity, or the Genesis account. I wanted to celebrate mythic ways of thinking, and more widely, aesthetic ways of acting, as part of our interpretive and expressive role. I’m not doing dogmatics here!

When it comes to understanding stories, especially ancient stories where we don’t have the tools to get at historicity, the nature of the story in its subjective adoption is much more open to us. When I suggested that Genesis 1 is a phenomenological account I mean to emphasize exactly this subjective element. Genesis 1 is a perfect response, in structure and scope, to a man sitting on a hill and staring up at the night sky. (How else could he see the sky but as a great vault above him?) He wonders about the rhythm of day and night, of seasons, of birth and death. He sees the sea in the distance and the forests to the west, he wonders at the distinctions between creatures that fly, creatures that die out of water, that die in water. How can this be?

In other words, I wouldn’t agree with you about myth being static over against history’s dynamism. That seems rather binary. But I would agree that one function of myth is as a stabilizing story in the context of shifting events.

Samicarr’s contribution here was much appreciated. His contention that myth is dead under the weight of modernist scientism is well made. But I would also want to say that in the overwhelming, and rapidly changing world of fantasies and propaganda within which we live, mythic narrative is more appropriate and potentially more potent than ever. Myth is not dead, it is just never allowed to mature, and it can only mature by being lived.

Where you lose me, rather, is in statements like “the Christian standard for history is the historical person, Jesus the Messiah.” I don’t understand what you mean. If you are suggesting that we can exercise critical judgment on texts like Genesis but not on texts about Jesus because ‘Christian’ historicity somehow starts in the New Testament, I wouldn’t agree. Separate Jesus from his Jewish history and Jesus makes no sense. To disconnect Jesus not only from his nation’s history, but from the stories, no matter how mythic, that were formative and normalising in that history, is to make Jesus himself mythic, and our place in his narrative quite imaginary.

Just to be really smart-assed, and with the usual smile, I’d like to agree with your final sentence, but I suspect that what I am really after is for the Kingdom of God to make us a reality!