THE UNSPOKEN PROMISE

                             John Young

It is not biblical scholarship that leads to novel conclusions; it is
the erroneous rejection of the supernatural.

The priest started homily by saying he had consulted some Scripture
commentaries as part of his preparation. It was not a good beginning!
I had heard him start like that on other occasions-and then wander
into error. He is not a trendy, but where Scripture scholars are
concerned he doesn't seem to know there's a war on.

A bit later he said: "Not every detail has to be accepted literally";
and that was ominous, for it was the Feast of the Epiphany, and he
was talking about the coming of the wise men. As the homily proceeded
the sowing of doubts continued, yet at no stage were we told which
points might be non-literal. Rather the impression as left was that
the account as a whole might be symbolical, and not a record of
actual events.

Some sixty years had elapsed, we were assured, between the birth of
Jesus and Matthew's writing of his Gospel, so accuracy would be
difficult. Further, resemblances to Old Testament incidents suggest a
symbolical construction in Matthew, with the aim of paralleling or
echoing the Old Testament.

By the end of the homily one could reasonably gain the impression
that for this priest, the Magi, the star, the Holy Innocents and the
flight into Egypt were all fiction. And this from a priest who
generally appears orthodox, and who, I am sure, sincerely wishes to
be orthodox. Why, then, is he ready to countenance positions
incompatible with the Church's understanding?

The fact of this incompatibility should be clear--as also in the
rejection of the historicity of the other infancy narrative: that of
Luke. The Church has always seen these as accounts of real events.
The Church Fathers, the theologians and Scripture scholars, the
faithful in general: with practically no exceptions until recent
times, has maintained that these things really happened. This is
clear from the liturgy too, as in the veneration of the Holy
Innocents. To question the factuality of the angels' announcement of
the birth of Christ to the shepherds, in Luke, or of Matthew's
account of the star, the wise men, the slaughter of the children, the
flight into Egypt: this is to question nearly two thousand years of
Christian tradition. It is to show an outlook on these matters alien
to that of the Church. It is against the Catholic conviction, as
recalled by Vatican II, that the historicity of the Gospels is to be
unhesitatingly affirmed.

The widespread doubts about the infancy narratives, doubts often
expressed today by people who are a long way from being modernists,
point to the extent of the confusion caused by the demythologizing
Scripture scholars who exercise such enormous influence in the
seminaries, in teacher training colleges and on the lecture circuit.
So pervasive is their influence that their views tend to be accepted
uncritically by numerous priests, religious and catechists; or when
not accepted are often assumed to be at least probable. That his
acquiescence is uncritical becomes clear when we look at the reasons
given for the alleged "new insights." Take the reasons offered in the
homily am speaking of.

One reason given for disputing the historicity of Matthew's account
was the time gap, allegedly sixty years, between Jesus' birth and the
composition of the Gospel. But a moment's reflection should show how
silly this argument is. Firstly, it is not sixty years we are
concerned with, but thirty odd years. For it is a question of when
the account would have been established in the early Christian
community, since owe that had happened there is no sound reason to
suppose it would be distorted during the years before the Gospel was
written.

J.B. Phillips remarks on "the fantastic retentiveness of the Oriental
mind." He mentions a friend who worked for twenty-five years in
Malaya, and found that "conversations of twenty years ago and more
could be recalled perfectly, mistakes, faulty pronunciations and
all...."

Just think of the sensation the coming of the Magi would have caused
in Jerusalem. They wanted to know where the king of the Jews had been
born-the one for whom the Jewish people had been waiting for
centuries. Later on there occurred the appalling massacre of the
innocent children, as Herod sought to kill the Messiah. Are we to
believe that these events were forgotten in a generation? Did the
chief priests and scribes forget how they had informed the king that
the Messiah was to be born in Bethlehem? Did the people forget that
"all Jerusalem" had been troubled at the astonishing news brought by
the Magi? Did the parents and brothers and sisters of the murdered
infants forget what had happened to them?

St. Luke tells us that "the number of the disciples multiplied
greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were obedient
to the faith." It would be incredible therefore if the events
recorded by St. Matthew were not part of the oral tradition of the
early Church from the beginning.

And what of Our Lady? Are we to suppose that she who pondered these
things in her heart didn't tell the first Christians about her
treasured memories of the events surrounding the infancy of Jesus?

The second reason offered by the homilist for doubting the
historicity of Matthew's account was the resemblance between
particulars in that account and incidents in the Old Testament. An
example is the killing of the Jewish baby boys by Pharaoh, with Moses
escaping the massacre and later saving his people. In Matthew the
baby boys are killed by Herod, with Jesus escaping their fate and
later saving us.

But to see this as an invention is to ignore the truth that God
reveals his Revelation through deeds as well as words, and his
providence has so ordered things that real events in the Old Covenant
foreshadow real events in the New Covenant. The Church has always
understood this, and one who doesn't accept it simply has not got the
mind of the Church in this matter. Yet if one does accept it there is
no basis for explaining the similarities by saying these Gospel
incidents are inventions.

The striking thing about reasons given for denying the historicity of
the infancy narratives, of which the two offered by the homilist are
typical, is that they are so weak. Why, we might wonder, would
intelligent people believe them? Why would scholars, some of them
impressively erudite, do so? It is not as though we were dealing with
a small minority of Scripture scholars; on the contrary, we are
dealing with a large proportion, including some of the most
influential.

One thing, I am convinced, underlies this phenomenon: a denial of the
supernatural. Not that all who are taken in by demythologizing are
deniers of the supernatural. But the influence of those who are, such
as Bultmann, has so infected Scripture studies that it has become
fashionable to question the historicity of anything which cannot be
explained without invoking the supernatural.

Take the infancy narratives. Are they plausible if we disregard God's
special intervention? Clearly they are not. There is no natural way
in which it could be known, or even suspected, that a particular baby
born in Bethlehem would, some thirty years later be acclaimed the
Messiah. St. Luke tells us the shepherds learned the Messiah's
identity from angels; and this precisely the kind of explanation that
those who reject the supernatural will find incredible-and logically
so.

In Matthew we have a marvelous star which leads the wise men to
Jerusalem, and then shows them the house in Bethlehem. And why do
they go to Bethlehem? Because the scribes told them the birth of the
Messiah in Bethlehem had been prophesied in Malachi-the supernatural
again! Then they are given a divine warning about Herod.

If we subtract the supernatural from all this, the narratives
disappear, including the slaughter of the Holy Innocents and the
flight into Egypt. Herod would simply have had no reason to suppose a
baby just born in Bethlehem would turn out to be the expected King of
the Jews, and a supposed rival to himself.

The same presupposition operates, of course, in relation to the
Gospels as a whole -and the Bible as a whole. Either a natural
explanation has to be found for things apparently involving the
supernatural, or the incidents have to be rejected. But Scripture is
full of the supernatural; so the whole edifice collapses.

The influence of scholars who do not accept the supernatural is
reinforced by peer pressure and by the danger of damaging one's
career by opposing the "experts." It is also easier to get published
if the current anti-supernatural line is followed-not least because
it gives scope for a more sensational treatment, with "bolder
insights" and "challenges to conservative thinking."

People such as the homilist I have been talking about then tend,
sheep-like, to follow the prevailing fashions in scholarship. They
don't follow them to their ultimate conclusions; they don't even
suspect the ultimate conclusions; but they succeed in communicating a
great deal of confusion to their audience.

It may seem a daunting task, even a rash task, to oppose an array of
Scripture scholars with impressive credentials and a degree of
erudition vastly superior to our own in their chosen field. But the
perspective changes dramatically when we see the unspoken premise
behind the demythologizing. It is not biblical scholarship that leads
to the novel conclusion; it is a philosophical presupposition: the
erroneous rejection of the supernatural.

The scholarship of these people is subservient to this error, and
seeks to defend the indefensible. That is why their arguments against
the historicity of so much in the Gospels are found, with a little
common sense thought, to be weak arguments. Their conclusions, in
this area, are not based on evidence, but on that fatal
presupposition.

Once we grasp this, their authority no longer seems daunting. Rather
we are like the little boy in Hans Christian Andersen's tale of <The
Emperor's New Clothes.> The adults had been pressured into believing
the Emperor was attired in splendid new clothes, and they were doing
their best to see the clothes. Then the little child, viewing the
scene with unprejudiced clarity, stated the simple truth: "He's got
no clothes on."

Taken from the April 1995 issue of "Religious Life," published by the
Institute on Religious Life, P.O. Box 41007, Chicago, IL 60641-0007.
Subscriptions are $10.00 per year.

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