Metaphorical Resurrection, yea, sure.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brandon-ambrosino/resurrection-as-metaphor-what-the-early-christians-meant-when-they-said-jesus-is-lord_b_2988438.html

Earlier this week, I wrote a piece about the Christian concept of the resurrection. Does it matter, I asked, if Jesus' resurrection is interpreted metaphorically? My answer was that it matters a great deal, since "a Jesus whose physical body remains in the grave gives me no hope for a physically broken world."
A friend emailed me that I was reading the Gospels wrong, and that the resurrection was best interpreted metaphorically. To relegate the resurrection to a purely physical phenomenon was to read the Easter narrative in the most primitive way, at its lowest common denominator. The Resurrection narratives are given to each of us to interpret and enjoy in our own way -- literally or metaphorically.
The Easter stories, he reminded me, belong to all of us.
And yet before they belonged to us, they belonged to other people -- people who lived and thought and wrote within the first century. It seems to me, then, that if we are to truly understand what the gospel writers are trying to say, we need to contextualize them not first within our own world, but within theirs.

And it must be bodily because, after all, a dead Messiah -- no matter how spiritually alive he may be -- is still dead. He's especially dead if he's being experienced as a ghost. In the ancient Mediterranean world, a vision of a recently deceased loved one confirmed that he was dead... not that he was alive.
It's difficult to imagine the disciples saying, "God has warmed our hearts and caused us to experience the metaphorical presence of Jesus, and therefore we know that he's the Messiah!" Unless Jesus' postmortem appearances were experienced in a physical way, his disciples would have assumed that Rome had won again, and that Jesus, regardless of what they hoped, couldn't have been Lord.
For this reason, scholars of all persuasions are forced to seriously consider what happened between the event of Jesus' crucifixion and the event of his proclamation as Lord. As it turns out, the early Christians answer this question in their Easter stories. What convinced them that Jesus was the Messiah was that, unlike other people murdered by Rome, he didn't stay dead.

What's with this myth business? / 2

Dear Tolkien--looking over some other things about his life--seems to have drunk deeply from the mystics, which seems to put him for me into the category of great English professors and writers, who think they are great at philosophy or theology or both, in addition to fantasy writing, but truly have their limitations in those regards.  Their fictional side runs away with them.  It does not work in all spheres, gentlemen.  It's not that simple.  I would say, if they asked me.  Maybe it's no wonder that the movie industry has turned the books into action flicks that the Tolkien family is deeply satisfied with, as we hear this week in advance of the opening of the Hobbit.  Maybe the sophistry of this myth business isn't that workable.  Still, I wonder why it doesn't bother me, when Lewis says about the Narnia series, that the underlying premise is that just because there is one place, why should there not be another place.  He likened it to being a boy away a boarding school.  He slaves away far from the comforts of home and the freedom of summer holidays, the woods and field and shore and many adventures.  Such as there are summer holidays and there is slaving at boarding school, such there can be one place and another, and while you are in one, it is hard to imaging the other until you are there and then it all happens in reverse.  This works for me.  There is more than I can know or imagine.  That's alright.  But this myth talk is just double-speak to me.

I also want to quote some things from the German philosophers around that time, their looking for genius (Fuehrer) and mythology.  When I have time, but soon.  These will be from a book by Karla Poewe, "New Religions and the Nazis".  Some of this, seems to me to connect in cogent ways.

In the meantime, glancing at my favorite place to get irritated at, I see this outgrowth of the myth thinking.  This is the Christmas message--believe it or not.  What is it we are supposed to get out of it?  Are we allowed to say anything definite about it?  Did something actually happen?  What am I supposed to glean?

It is very difficult not to impute into the very unassuming original story all the grand assumptions of our time. We don’t know what happened. We can’t rely on the texts for historical accuracy. Our minds gather all the accretions built up over the centuries and assign the magnificent edifice of these traditions to whatever happened in the first century. We don’t know what happened.

But something happened. The borrowed mythologies and hopes combined together with an event that is hopelessly buried in our own mythologies and hopes. But something happened that changed the way we perceive reality and That-Which-We-Call-God.

What with this myth business?

The Supreme Fiction:  http://www.berfrois.com/2012/12/a-supreme-fiction-ronald-hendel/

Quotes:  opening and closing paragraphs

Wallace Stevens used to write about “the possibility of a supreme fiction, recognized as a fiction, in which men could propose to themselves a fulfillment.” Some of his best poetry takes steps toward a supreme fiction, conjuring a sense of clarity through its oblique modernist verse. It occurred to me that Genesis is such a supreme fiction, or perhaps it is the supreme fiction in western culture, which begat many others. For thousands of years this book has been the mirror or lamp that reveals what reality consists of – regarding the nature of human existence, the cosmos and God. Or, to put it differently: the meaning of life, the universe and everything...
...Genesis has long exerted its revelatory force as a supreme fiction. Yet, it may seem anachronistic to call it that, since the recognition of its fictive quality is so much a characteristic of modernity. In pre-modern times – and still today among many – it was (and is) a supreme non-fiction. Perhaps the contrast of fiction versus non-fiction draws an illusory line. I prefer to describe Genesis as a work of magical realism. In any case, the life of Genesis persists, since it continues to live in our cultural and religious imagination. Our lives are still entwined in its life, whether we are believers or not...

Lewis and Tolkien on myths:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzBT39gx-TE

Myths are fiction, beautiful lies.  How can you believe a lie.  But Jack:  myths are not lies.  We have been duped into accepting the lie of materialism, the hideous claim that there is no supernatural order to the universe.  They have come up with a false myth.  They have made us believe that this is all there is.  The materialists have put us into a prison of false four walls.  Escaping from this prison is considered an act of treason.  Myths exist outside of the prison and allow us to escape it to see the beauty outside the walls.   Myths show us a fleeting glimpse of truth.  Creativity  is God's imageness in us.  We create stories because God is a story teller.  He tells his story with history.  --  All of history is a divine myth? -- We are all part of his story.  This very conversation is.  --  Christianity is the true myth.  The archetype. The evangelion.  The true joy.  Rejecting it leads to darkness or wrath.  Accepting it leads to joy. 

Jack is cute, very good looking. -- Tolkien, sorry, makes no sense to me.  It does not work for ME.  ARRRRR!!!!  I thought I liked Tolkien.

I am wondering if this is a kind of Roman Catholic talk, which is used to discounting scriptural revelation when push comes to shove.  Myth, myth, myth.  Keep your myth.  Pulling my hair out.  The supreme fiction and true myth, the archetype, to combat materialism.  Does this help someone?  Did this help C.S.Lewis?