All mysticism is in many ways similar. It can be said that the Christian mystics take their stand with the mystics of other world-wide religious traditions in pointing to “the Beyond that is within.” In an age when the claims of established religion are so widely questioned, the witness of the mystics is of particular appeal. Some mystics have found it necessary to even rebel against their respective religious leaders. Another great question that confronts the present age is the relation of Christianity to other world religions. If Christianity is to embark upon truly cooperative relations with other religions, it must be deeply imbued with the insight and experience of the mystics. Even if it finds the courage to plumb the depths of its own bright and dark history, it cannot neglect its mystical dimensions.
Myths and legends number among the most creative and abundant contributions of Christianity to the history of human culture. They inspire artists, dramatists, clerics, and others to contemplate the wondrous effects of Christian salvation on humans’ perceptions of the cosmos and its inhabitants. They conjoin diverse cultural horizons, taking those worldviews bounded by Christian revelation and fusing them creatively with the religious histories that exist prior to and alongside the orthodox Christian world. Even for the less pious and the nonbelievers, the distinctive visions of reality presented in Christian legend or myth, and the symbolic actions based upon them, have helped to form the fundaments of Western civilization. Pilgrimage to the shrines of legendary saints, to mention but one example, touches economic and political life, military history, visual and musical arts, popular devotion, and the exchange of scientific information. Moreover, the content of the legends and myths themselves has contributed directly to theories about religion, society, politics, art, astronomy, economics, music, and history.
An appreciation of the positive role of myth and legend in culture has been long in coming. Christian theology, taking its lead from Greek philosophy, at first denigrated the value of myth. In constructing the Christian canon and in choosing authoritative interpretations of it, the early church suppressed or excluded certain myths and legends in favor of the genres of philosophy, history, and law. The Letter of Paul to Timothy echoes the prevalent Hellenistic view of myth: “Have nothing to do with godless and silly myths” (1 Timothy 4:7). Obviously, we should not expect consistency or internal logic while applying this to a number of important mythical themes that remain central to the New Testament—e.g., Christ as the second Adam (Romans 5:12–14), the heavenly spheres (2 Corinthians 12:2–4), and strangest of all the retention of the celestial battle between angels and demons.
The Apologists from the 2nd to the 5th centuries used legend and myth. Clement of Alexandria and other Church Fathers roundly condemned the belief that Greek myths might be autonomous sources of truth. In spite of its ambiguous use of mythic symbols and themes, the history of Christian doctrine testifies to the systematic excision of inconvenient legendary and mythical elements that were intrusive upon Christian orthodoxy. Folk practices, based on legend, were policed and suppressed. For example, a precedent-setting Episcopal council convoked by the Byzantine emperor Justinian II in 692CE, prohibited baking bread in the form of the Virgin Mary's placenta, as was the custom on the afterbirth day - the day after Christ's birth. Better not to celebrate the feminine expression of a human birth at all. Perhaps, it touched too close to the questionable status of the virgin birth for those male leaders of the day. This ambiguous, but ultimately negative attitude toward Christian myth and legend lingers to this day. The spiritual but not religious of today are strongly questioning the use and misuse of the Revelation myths by modern church leaders as a way of presevering the myth of the end time to hold on too self-aggrandizing power. As in the past, Revelation is being used to infantilize those who are too easily dominated by fear of death and timidity about the future.
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