Newsweek/MSNBC's The Birth of Jesus: A Christianity for Relativists and Multiculturalists?
What does the recent Newsweek article on the Nativity MSNBC - Religion: The Birth of Jesus, have to say about Newsweek and their buddies at MSN, and more generally, about the mainstream media?
Although the author, Newsweek's John Meacham, is a self described believing Christian according to his recent appearance on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews, he sees something of a dichotomy of faith and reason. Meacham has maintained in an interview that he does not believe faith and reason are incompatable, referencing Augustine, but he gives too much weight to skeptics than even a modern day Aquinas or Augustine would.
In his Nativity article, he gives credence to Dan Brown's preposterous, ahistorical novel while contrasting the Nativity narative with history. He holds up similarities between the Nativity narative and pagan myths as evidence of syncretism, as opposed to being evidence that these are universal truths which therefore had the ring of truth even to the pagan mind and about which even pagans may have had some revelation or natural knowledge. Meacham couldn't possibly find it within himself as a Christian to suggest that the similarities with pagan myths were due to the fact that the soul is as Tertullian and Augustine put it, naturaliter Christiana. He likewise casts the similarities between the miraculous birth of Jesus and earlier miraculous Biblical and classical births as a literary affectation, rather than a divine foreshadowing, progressive revelation or old covenant/new covenant mirroring. Would he likewise as easily dismiss the concept that Mary was the ark of the new covenant or that Jesus was the new Adam (bringing redemtion versus sin).
Meacham calls the Jesus Seminar (that fringe group which the astute Richard John Neuhaus has described as "academically risible") "a group of scholars devoted to recovering the Jesus of history". Meacham, in an act of either jouralistic ignorance or irresponsibility, does not really give his reader an indication of how controversial the Jesus Seminar is, nor of the fact that they have concluded that the Gospel accounts are in their very essence wrong, or that the "Seminar" has concluded that the Resurrection never occured. Based on such a conclusion, the participants of the seminar cannot be fairly considered Christians.
While Meacham rightly points out that "[i]n 1965, the Second Vatican Council held that while the Scriptures are ultimately 'true,' they are not necessarily to be taken as accurate in the sense we might take an Associated Press wire report about what happened at a school-board meeting as accurate." Now, while this is a proposition that fundmentalists would not accept, Meacham doesn't either give account of the fact that Catholic exegesis accords more literal weight to the Gospels than to, for example, Genesis or Revelation. Meacham maintains that the Gospel writers had little to work with; the implication being that they were writing so long after the time of Christ. But that is not really the case. If the evangelist Mark was writing in 60 A.D., it is in the neighborhood of three decades after Jesus' passion and resurrection - less distance than a biographer of J.F.K. today. Paul's letters were written even closer to the time of Christ. There were, without any doubt, folks still alive at the time of Mark's writing who were around at the time of Jesus' birth. Granted, some of the classical literary techniques were employed in the Gospels, and I, myself, do not hold to a literalist view. Still, a certain degree of literalism is to be required of those who would call themselves Christian.
Consistent with the rest of his approach, Meacham quotes the oft cited but never insightful Elaine Pagels, with her inane blather about gnosticism. He mentions what are sometimes called the "battles" over Christianity. He tellingly fails to mention that all of the gnostics texts substantially postdate the canonical scriptures. The insinuation of those like Pagels and Bart Ehrman is that these "other Christianities" had equal footing with the orthodox. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although Ehrman doesn't mention it in the text of his book Lost Christianities, a glance at his own chart of the various noncannonical books found at the beggining of his book, shows that these other gospels and epistles were of a substantially later date.
According to Meacham, summoning his knowledge of Greek, gnostics merely engaged in a "choice" (how appropriate), while Saint Irenaeus - Meacham doesn't use that moniker, he's merely "Iraneus" - the author of Detection And Overthrow Of The False Knowledge:A Refutation of Gnosticism, commonly known as Against Heresies, is the "fierce" scourge of these ill fated advocates of choice.
Meacham, who in an interview expressed his distaste for claims of exclusive truth, cites John Henry Newman in a fashion that probably has the great English churchman rolling over in his grave. Newman spoke of Christ as a light which guides us through life. To Meacham "The Christmas star is just one such light; there are others". What a wonderfully multicultural and nonjudgmental Christianity Meacham espouses. And this is the type of Christianity which the mainstream media can tolerate. Perhaps we can edit and redact the appropriate portions of the Gospels to suit non-Christians, as the seething bigot Daniel Goldhagen recommends in A Moral Reckoning (the L.A. Times listed this shrill screed as one of the 100 best books in the year it was published). "I am a Way, a Truth (is that to strong Mr. Meacham?), and a Life. Anyone can come to the Father in a myriad of ways."
Although the author, Newsweek's John Meacham, is a self described believing Christian according to his recent appearance on MSNBC's Hardball With Chris Matthews, he sees something of a dichotomy of faith and reason. Meacham has maintained in an interview that he does not believe faith and reason are incompatable, referencing Augustine, but he gives too much weight to skeptics than even a modern day Aquinas or Augustine would.
In his Nativity article, he gives credence to Dan Brown's preposterous, ahistorical novel while contrasting the Nativity narative with history. He holds up similarities between the Nativity narative and pagan myths as evidence of syncretism, as opposed to being evidence that these are universal truths which therefore had the ring of truth even to the pagan mind and about which even pagans may have had some revelation or natural knowledge. Meacham couldn't possibly find it within himself as a Christian to suggest that the similarities with pagan myths were due to the fact that the soul is as Tertullian and Augustine put it, naturaliter Christiana. He likewise casts the similarities between the miraculous birth of Jesus and earlier miraculous Biblical and classical births as a literary affectation, rather than a divine foreshadowing, progressive revelation or old covenant/new covenant mirroring. Would he likewise as easily dismiss the concept that Mary was the ark of the new covenant or that Jesus was the new Adam (bringing redemtion versus sin).
Meacham calls the Jesus Seminar (that fringe group which the astute Richard John Neuhaus has described as "academically risible") "a group of scholars devoted to recovering the Jesus of history". Meacham, in an act of either jouralistic ignorance or irresponsibility, does not really give his reader an indication of how controversial the Jesus Seminar is, nor of the fact that they have concluded that the Gospel accounts are in their very essence wrong, or that the "Seminar" has concluded that the Resurrection never occured. Based on such a conclusion, the participants of the seminar cannot be fairly considered Christians.
While Meacham rightly points out that "[i]n 1965, the Second Vatican Council held that while the Scriptures are ultimately 'true,' they are not necessarily to be taken as accurate in the sense we might take an Associated Press wire report about what happened at a school-board meeting as accurate." Now, while this is a proposition that fundmentalists would not accept, Meacham doesn't either give account of the fact that Catholic exegesis accords more literal weight to the Gospels than to, for example, Genesis or Revelation. Meacham maintains that the Gospel writers had little to work with; the implication being that they were writing so long after the time of Christ. But that is not really the case. If the evangelist Mark was writing in 60 A.D., it is in the neighborhood of three decades after Jesus' passion and resurrection - less distance than a biographer of J.F.K. today. Paul's letters were written even closer to the time of Christ. There were, without any doubt, folks still alive at the time of Mark's writing who were around at the time of Jesus' birth. Granted, some of the classical literary techniques were employed in the Gospels, and I, myself, do not hold to a literalist view. Still, a certain degree of literalism is to be required of those who would call themselves Christian.
Consistent with the rest of his approach, Meacham quotes the oft cited but never insightful Elaine Pagels, with her inane blather about gnosticism. He mentions what are sometimes called the "battles" over Christianity. He tellingly fails to mention that all of the gnostics texts substantially postdate the canonical scriptures. The insinuation of those like Pagels and Bart Ehrman is that these "other Christianities" had equal footing with the orthodox. Nothing could be further from the truth. Although Ehrman doesn't mention it in the text of his book Lost Christianities, a glance at his own chart of the various noncannonical books found at the beggining of his book, shows that these other gospels and epistles were of a substantially later date.
According to Meacham, summoning his knowledge of Greek, gnostics merely engaged in a "choice" (how appropriate), while Saint Irenaeus - Meacham doesn't use that moniker, he's merely "Iraneus" - the author of Detection And Overthrow Of The False Knowledge:A Refutation of Gnosticism, commonly known as Against Heresies, is the "fierce" scourge of these ill fated advocates of choice.
Meacham, who in an interview expressed his distaste for claims of exclusive truth, cites John Henry Newman in a fashion that probably has the great English churchman rolling over in his grave. Newman spoke of Christ as a light which guides us through life. To Meacham "The Christmas star is just one such light; there are others". What a wonderfully multicultural and nonjudgmental Christianity Meacham espouses. And this is the type of Christianity which the mainstream media can tolerate. Perhaps we can edit and redact the appropriate portions of the Gospels to suit non-Christians, as the seething bigot Daniel Goldhagen recommends in A Moral Reckoning (the L.A. Times listed this shrill screed as one of the 100 best books in the year it was published). "I am a Way, a Truth (is that to strong Mr. Meacham?), and a Life. Anyone can come to the Father in a myriad of ways."
posted by BarbariansAtBay at
6:26 PM
