[Oe List ...] 12/30/2021, Progressing Spirit: Matthew Fox:Origins and Common Meanings to Hanukkah and Christmas; Spong revisited

Thu Dec 30 04:31:33 PST 2021

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Origins and Common Meanings
to Hanukkah and Christmas
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|  Essay by Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox
December 30, 2021
Hanukkah and Christmas are both stories of promise and hope in a time of darkness.  And both speak to miracles or marvels. 

According to Rabbi Arthur Green, the story of Hanukkah begins with the original victory of the Maccabees, a “ragtag little band of guerilla warriors,” who successfully expelled the large army that was the successor to Alexander the Great’s vast imperial army.  To many, this seemed like a miracle.  Was it the hand of God at work?  “Who knows?” answers Rabbi Green in his important book, Judaism for the World: Reflections on God, Life, and Love.  But the lesson is there: Miracles happen.[1]  

Christians too began as a ragtag little band, a band of believers hiding from the vast and all-powerful Roman Empire.  Often they had to sequester in underground caves or catacombs to meet and practice their rituals in Jesus’s name.  When aboveground, it was not unusual to encounter torture and death at the hand of the empire if they were found out.

When Constantine came to power in 306 AD, the prevailing religion was Mithraism.  On his being converted to Christianity, he rendered Christianity the state religion and public funds were put to building churches (above ground).  Constantine built the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in a spot said to be the birthplace of Jesus.  By the end of the fourth century, Christianity banned the old forms of worship.

December 25 as a Christian festival dates to the fourth century.  Rome first celebrated Christmas on December 25 in the year 336.  (We possess one document suggesting Christmas was celebrated in Antioch, Turkey on December 25th in the second century.)  In 350 Pope Julius I declared December 25 the official date for Christmas and in 529 Emperor Justinian declared Christmas a civic holiday.  The Council of Tours in 567 declared Advent a period of fast and preparation for Christmas and the time from Christmas to Epiphany (12 days of Christmas) was declared part of the festive season.

Ancient peoples felt the sun was abandoning them on the Winter Solstice, December 21, and offered rituals to appease the sun to get it to return.  Fire, logs, trees, gifts, sacrifices were part of the festivals.  Instead of abolishing these favorite pagan Winter solstice festivals, Christianity incorporated these old traditions into the celebration of Christmas.
An interesting parallel exists between Hanukkah and Christmas in this regard: Both were established deliberately, the first by rabbis who did not want to endorse the descendants of the Maccabees who were considered decadent for having sold out to Greek culture and values; and the second by the popes who, following on Constantine’s making his empire Christian, found the ancient celebrations of Saturnalia, etc. to be too libertine. 

But neither could simply wipe away the festivals—they were too popular and imbedded in the DNA of the culture.  What to do?  Both rabbis and popes therefore chose a new miracle to celebrate at that same festival time.  The rabbis chose the candle miracle.  The popes chose the Christmas miracle.

About the former, the story of the small bit of oil that burned for eight nights became the miracle of Hanukkah.  Ever since then, Hanukkah has been the festival of light (and miracles).  Coming at the beginning of winter, Rabbi Green calls it “a sign of hope that the brightness will grow again.” 

Miracles lie at the heart of the victory of the Maccabees and the story of the fire that burned non-stop for over eight days. Rabbi Green answers the question, “What is a miracle?” with another question: “What isn’t a miracle”?  In summary, Hanukkah is “all about the light.”  And it is also “a time of miracles.”

“Miracle” in English means that at which we marvel and Green defines it as an experience that awakens a sense of wonder within you.  One responds with prayer. In Hebrew, the word for miracle, nes, means “banner.”  The miracle is a ‘banner moment,’ one that sticks out, rising above the rest and calls out: “Here I see the divine presence!  Let me wave its banner!” 

In the Christmas story, there are many wonders and banner moments: a divine child; pagan astrologers following a bright star in the sky to the manger; the appearance of angels to the poorest of the poor, shepherds, announcing peace to all people of Good Will; the birth of a child in poverty in a manger to be called a “prince of peace” from a mother, Mary, who conceived by the Holy Spirit.  Lots of miracles, wonders, divine presences there; lots to wave banners about.  Lots of experiences of the divine presence, the name Emmanuel—God-with-us--is invoked. 

Both Hanukkah and Christmas are festivals of light occurring in the darkest time of the year in the northern hemisphere.  Light and Divinity are closely associated around the world.  Indeed, I found in researching my book on deep ecumenism, One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faith Traditions, that light is the most universal metaphor for Divinity among most cultures of the world.   

Rabbi Green reminds us that in the Jewish tradition, “light is the first of God’s creations.” We should remember that the light that was first created was not the sun or the moon however.  They come later in the Genesis story (and today’s scientific creation story). Green tells how one “of the most ancient and beloved of Jewish legends,” is that the first light that God created was too bright for humans to handle because it would allow for no hiding and no secrets.  “So God hid it away for the righteous, living in a future time when they could be trusted to handle it well.” 

In the Hebrew Scriptures, light very much accompanies the Divine.  Psalm 27:1: “Yahweh is my light and my salvation.”  Ps. 36:10: “In Your light we see light.”  “Yahweh brightens my darkness (2 Sam. 22:29).  “Yahweh shall be a light to you forever.”  (Is. 60:20).  “The soul of a human being is the lamp of Yahweh, revealing all the inmost parts.” (Prv. 20:27)  The Torah too is associated with light. “Torah is light.”  (Prv 6:23)  

Study and learning lead us to Enlightenment.  Shabbat is associated with light—it begins and concludes with lighting of candles.  In Jewish mysticism, Zohar means “Shining” or “Brilliance.”  There is a “hidden light” also that we need to explore and eventually bring forward to share.  That too is part of the mystical journey.

The Christmas story also can be said to be “all about light.”  Not only the light of the heavens that guided the magi, but the light of the Christ child born in the darkness of the night and in the darkest of times when the Roman empire ruled over the known world so cruelly.  Indeed, its local chieftain, Herod, sought to kill the Christ child by murdering all the new-born boys in the area.  So the story goes.  The light of Promise vs. the darkness of Evil becomes a story that runs through the entire life of Jesus, culminating in his crucifixion at the hands of the Empire and the victorious resurrection that follows.

Darkness however is not denigrated.  After all, Wisdom literature tells us that in the silence and dark of the night the “stern warrior leapt to earth” to help humankind.  Light comes out of the dark.

So many statements on light and Jesus can be found.  Matthew’s gospel tells us that Jesus’s preaching began with a citation from the prophet Isaiah (8:23-91): “The people that lived in darkness has sent a great light; on those who dwell in the land and shadow of death a light has dawned.”  His message was, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is close at hand.”  (Mt 4: 16f) 

Among Jesus’s teachings were these: “You are the light of the world…Do not hide your light under a bushel.  Your light must shine in the sight of men, so that, seeing your good works, they may give the praise to your Father in heaven.”  (Mt 5. 14-16) 

In John’s Gospel, we hear: “I am the light of the world.” (8:12)  “Be the children of light.”  (12:36)  “All that came to be had life in him and that life was the light of humans; a light that shines in the dark; a light that darkness could not overpower.”  (1:4f)  In John’s epistle we learn that “God is light.” (1Jn 1:5) 

Paul talks of the “light of the glorious gospel of Christ” and the need to “give the light of the knowledge he tells us.”  He tells us unbelievers have “minds the god of this world has blinded, to stop them seeing the light shed by the Good news of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God….It is the same God that said, ‘Let there be light shining out of darkness,’ who has shown in our minds to radiate the light of the knowledge of God’s glory, the glory on the face of Christ.”  (2 Cor 4: 4-6).  And that we “reflect like mirrors the brightness of the Lord, all grow brighter and brighter as we are turned into the image that we reflect.”  (3:18)  He instructs the Ephesians to “walk as children of light.”  (5.8)

Science contributes to the season also by telling us that “Matter is frozen light” (David Bohm).  Has a more stark statement on Incarnation ever been spoken?  All matter is light.  No more fleeing matter to get to spirit  (light) is needed.  No wonder Einstein said he wanted to do nothing more than study light all his life.

Jungian psychologist Marion Woodman relates how many people dream about the birth of a divine Child and “the dreamer is astonished by its beauty, and its capacity to talk with the wisdom of an elder…The old life dies; a new life is born.  The soul is finding a new world.”[2]

So a deep and meaningful promise is made at the time of Hanukkah and Christmas in a dark time of the year and a dark season in history.  From darkness there emerges light and miracles or marvels that bring hope and empowerment, new birth and new life.  May it be so.

Blessed Hanukkah, Blessed Christmas to all!

~ Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox

Read online here

About the Author
Rev. Dr. Matthew Fox holds a doctorate in spirituality from the Institut Catholique de Paris and has authored 35 books on spirituality and contemporary culture that have been translated into 74 languages. Fox has devoted 45 years to developing and teaching the tradition of Creation Spirituality and in doing so has reinvented forms of education and worship (called The Cosmic Mass). His work is inclusive of today’s science and world spiritual traditions and has awakened millions to the much neglected earth-based mystical tradition of the West. He has helped to rediscover Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Thomas Aquinas. Among his books are A Way To God: Thomas Merton's Creation Spirituality Journey; Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior For Our Times; Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for Our Times; Stations of the Cosmic Christ; Order of the Sacred Earth; The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times; and Julian of Norwich: Wisdom in a Time of Pandemic – And Beyond. To encourage a passionate response to the news of climate change advancing so rapidly, Fox started Daily Meditations with Matthew Fox.

[1] See Arthur Green, Judaism for the World: Reflections on God, Life, and Love New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020), 153.  Subsequent references are to Green’s fine chapter on “Hanukkah: All about the Light,” pp. 153-156.[2] Robert Bly and Marion Woodman, The Maiden King, p. 157.  |

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Question & Answer

Q: By Denis

While reading this excellent book, "Biblical Literalism: A Gentile Heresy" I am preoccupied by a burning question:

The entire explanation of Matthews is based on a chronology of Jesus’ life having taken place between his birth around 4 BCE and his death around 30 CE. Both these dates are based solely on details found in the New Testament and not corroborated by any actual historic documentation that someone like Jesus was born during Herod’s reign and was put to death during Pontius Pilate’s governorship. The entire existence of Jesus is therefore based on a Jewish legend developed by Jewish preachers.  Am I missing something?

A: By Dr. Carl Krieg

Dear Denis,

The first step in the search for truth is always to ask the question, which, contrary to many trends in our society, you have done. The second step is to do some research, looking to people who have studied the issue, and have access to pertinent and reliable information. This also is a learning process contrary to many trends in our society. You and I are extremely fortunate to have at our fingertips almost unimaginable resources in books and the internet. As I was reading about your question, “Did Jesus exist?”, I became so entranced by the information on Google that I forgot all about the bread dough I had made, allowing it to over-rise, and flop. There is a lot to be learned! 

If you search for the historical Jesus, the historicity of Jesus, or the quest for the historical Jesus, you will find enough to keep you reading for the rest of your life, most of which is offered by scholars who have devoted their lives to answering your question. That search involves learning new languages, examining early texts, studying the evidence pertaining to first century Palestine, etc. In other words, they know their stuff. The unequivocal conclusion by the vast majority, including atheists and others who have no predisposition to be positive, is that, yes, Jesus really existed. Their conclusion is based, in part, on the non-biblical writings of Tacitus and Josephus, and is also based on careful analysis of evidence that can be gleaned from the letters of Paul as well as from the gospels themselves. 

There are those who believe that Jesus is “only” a myth, just as there are those who believe that the earth is flat, that there never was slavery in the United States, that the Holocaust never happened, and that the Jan 6 attack on the US Capitol was a peaceful, patriotic demonstration. Again, in all of these instances, the first task is to ask the question: what is true? and then seek reliable answers from those who have studied the issue. If we do neither of these, we are doomed to ignorance.

For my own self, I have no doubt that Jesus existed, not the Jesus that church dogma presents to us, but the Jesus I have described in my other writings. The point of beginning for all our knowledge of Jesus is not when he was born, but when he encountered those who were to follow him. Had no one been so thoroughly impacted by him that they actually became his disciples, he would have disappeared into the dustbin of history as just another peasant. That these disciples so passionately believed and followed is proof enough for me that Jesus was a real person. 

~ Dr. Carl Krieg

Read and share online here

About the Author
Dr. Carl Krieg received his BA from Dartmouth College, MDiv from Union Theological Seminary in NYC and PhD from the University of Chicago Divinity School. He is the author of What to Believe? the Questions of Christian Faith and The Void and the Vision. As professor and pastor, Dr. Krieg has taught innumerable classes and led many discussion groups. He lives with his wife Margaret in Norwich, VT.
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Howard Thurman reminded us that the work of Christmas goes far beyond a single day or even a season.  The work of Christmas — social justice that lies at the heart of the Gospel — is absolutely central to how we must live year-round. 

As we prepare for a New Year, we need your help to do continue the work of Progressive Christianity in 2022. ProgressiveChristianity.org and Progressing Spirit strive to live authentically at the intersection of faith, reason, and justice.  We strive to be a bold witness for the work of Christmas that Thurman described.

If you have not yet made a donation to ProgressiveChristianity.org, but believe in the work that we are doing, we hope that you’ll consider making a year-end donation.  Your gift makes an enormous impact and helps to ensure that a progressive Christian voice is amplified.  Thank you for your generosity.
Happy New Year from your friends at ProgressiveChristianity.org/Progressing Spirit!   |

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Bishop John Shelby Spong Revisited

Richard Dawkins and His Challenge to Christianity

Essay by Bishop John Shelby Spong
October 12, 2011

Recently, the New York Times ran a major interview with Professor Richard Dawkins of Oxford University under the banner headline of “A Knack for Bashing Orthodoxy.”  This world famous professor is now better known for his attacks on what he believes is the religious expression he calls Christianity than he is for his obviously brilliant work as a biologist.  His book, The God Delusion, was for many months at or near the top of the best seller list in non-fiction not only in the New York Times, but in every other book-measuring list around the world.  There is obviously enormous interest in religion that is abroad today, including an interest in religion’s demise that is the vein that Dawkins mines so well.

In 1991 I was a “scholar in residence” at Magdalen College of Oxford University while researching material for my book Born of a Woman: A Bishop rethinks the Birth of Jesus and the place of Women in a Male-Dominated Church.  Some people at New College, Oxford, heard that I was at the university and invited me to give a lecture.  Accompanying that invitation was a second one inviting Christine and me to dine that evening at the “High Table” at New College with that college’s “Fellows.”  For those not familiar with English practice, “The Fellows,” another name for the tenured faculty, eat three meals a day in their respective colleges at “High Table,” which is usually at an extended table with comfortable and sometimes well padded chairs and on an elevated stage, hence its name.  Each course of this elegantly prepared formal dinner served at “High Table” is accompanied by the proper wine, poured by a host of attendants who seek to meet any need a faculty member might have.  Prior to the meal, the “Fellows” meet in a faculty lounge for sherry and an interdisciplinary conversation and, following the meal, they adjourn to the same room for coffee, brandy and more conversation.  Meanwhile, the students sit on benches around a table in a great hall, but distinctly on a lower level than the faculty.  No wine is served to them and the menu for their meal is not only different, but quite inferior to that served to the faculty.  Protocol requires that the students not begin to eat until the senior “fellow” present speaks the words of the blessing, usually in Latin, and they cannot leave until they are dismissed again by the same senior “fellow” when the faculty adjourns for coffee.  The ancient English class system is clearly still operative.

We accepted this invitation and, properly attired, we joined a faculty line to process to our seats.  I had spent that day in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, one of the two or three great libraries of the world, reading a series of recommended books.  One of then was a small book with a catchy title, The Selfish Gene, by a professor named Richard Dawkins in which he looked at evolution from the perspective of a single gene and its struggle to survive.  It was a fascinating piece of work and it helped me to begin to develop a new understanding of the nature of life itself and even a new way to understand the human reality that theologians of the past have called “Original Sin” and “The Fall.”  At that moment, I did not know who Richard Dawkins was or where he taught.

When we sat down at the table, my wife was on my right and a member of the faculty of New College was on my left.  I turned to this person with my hand outstretched and said, “I am Jack Spong, who are you?”  His response was instant and his smile was warm, “I’m Richard Dawkins,” he said.  The coincidence was almost more than I could embrace.  I told him that I had just that day read The Selfish Gene.  When he discovered I was an Anglican bishop, he was surprised that I had enjoyed the book as much as I had.  It was distinctly anti-religious he asserted.

That conversation stuck in my mind as the years passed and Richard Dawkins became more and more of a public figure and even a television regular. His popularity was easy to understand. He is photogenic, personable, warm and articulate.  He also takes what he calls an anti-religious stance.  Not only does he assert his atheism, but he also delights in ridiculing his understanding of religion, regarding it as childlike, ignorant, superstitious and, to use what seems to be his favorite word, “incurious.”

Figures in the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the Church of England have risen periodically to challenge him in public debate.  One was John Hapgood, the former Archbishop of York, and a man of recognizable academic achievements.  Another was Keith Ward, the Regius Professor of Divinity at Christ Church, Oxford, but these church-led attacks accomplished little.  Each of these “defenders of the faith” suggested that Dawkins was reacting to a caricature of Christianity that would make a first year theology student wince at its naiveté.  They even suggested that he study theology, suggesting that unless he did so, he would inevitably be dismissed in theological circles as “uneducated.”  What none of them realized was that Dawkins was making contact with the public with his one liners and his penetrating insights, while these theologians, were seeking to make sense out of the convoluted theological explanations of the past that had been developed primarily to undergird  and sustain ecclesiastical power.  Before they had reached their point their audiences had turned glassy-eyed and were wearing “who gives a damn” faces.

When Dawkin’s book The God Delusion came out in 2006, it was popularly received.  I read it with interest and enthusiasm.  What amazed me was that the God Dawkins criticized is the God that I too criticize.  My primary problem with him was that he assumed that the God I worshiped was the same deity that he was so cleverly rejecting.  I do not see God as an external being, supernatural in power, living above the sky and always prepared to intervene in human history to right a wrong, to do a miracle or to answer prayers.  I do not see God as either a heavenly parent or a heavenly judge dispensing rewards and punishments to obedient or disobedient children according to their deserving.  This rather juvenile God died centuries ago, the victim of a revolution in thought that produced the modern consciousness.  This revolution was ignited by Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo, who together shattered God’s dwelling place above the sky and rendered the primitive God of the childhood of our religion to be “homeless.”  Next came Isaac Newton, whose development of what later came to be called “natural law,” destroyed the idea of God as a supernatural figure, able to intervene in history by setting aside the physical laws by which this universe operated.  In turn Newton rendered God “unemployed.”  This God no longer had any work to do.  This God did not bring victory in warfare, cure sicknesses, rescue people from peril or guarantee that God would prevail against evil.

Newton was followed by Charles Darwin, who destroyed the primary myth by which Christians had traditionally told their faith story.  How could there be a “fall” from an original, created perfection, Darwin asked, if evolution had moved from a single cell to cellular complexity? Without the foundational concept of a fall from perfection into “original sin” the sacred symbols of our popular faith story began to fall like bowling pins.  If there was no fall, the idea that Jesus was God’s rescue operation, designed to overcome that fall, became absurd.  The idea that God required the death of Jesus to pay the price of that sin became weird and seemed to define God as the ultimate child abuser, who required the death of the son before forgiveness could be extended.  The off-stated Christian concept that “Jesus died for my sins” in fact filled worshipers with nothing other than debilitating guilt and the suggestion that we should be “washed in the blood of Jesus” in order to receive salvation or that we should drink the blood of Jesus in the Eucharist to be cleansed internally became grotesque images.   Yet those are the things that Richard Dawkins was attacking in 2006!

I can conceive of God apart from supernaturalism. I can deny the theistic definition of God without being an atheist, since the theistic definition of God is a human creation not a divine revelation.  I believe I can experience a transcendent presence in the life of Jesus, which is my understanding of “divinity,” without buying the late first century explanation of the Virgin Birth and without affirming miracles as literally true. I believe that I can assert and enter the reality of eternal life while simultaneously dismissing the traditional definitions of heaven and hell.

Those are, of course, not popular ideas in traditional modern religion, as we see it lived out in churches, on television and through the eyes of politicians, who use primitive religious concepts to create fear and to enhance electoral prospects.  It is this popular religion to which Richard Dawkins reacts so relentlessly.  Indeed in this interview he said that he wrote The God Delusion after enduring “four years of the public religion of the Bush administration.”

In his Times interview, Dawkins said, “I have had perfectly wonderful conversations with Anglican bishops and I rather suspect if you ask them in a candid moment, they’d say they don’t believe in the Virgin Birth.  But for every one of them, four others would tell a child she’ll rot in hell for doubting.”

My friend Richard, it was not in a “candid moment,” but in a best-selling book written 20 years ago that I dismissed the birth stories of Matthew and Luke as anything more than mythological tales.  Because medicine men in the past used voodoo and doctors in the 18th century bled their patients to release the evil spirits, does not mean that modern medicine still embraces these ideas.  Because uneducated people and even some educated, but fragile people still cling to a fundamentalist literalism, does not mean that this is what Christianity means.

Someone once asked me who I would choose if I could have dinner and conversation with anyone in the world?  My answer was Stephen Hawking and Richard Dawkins.  Someday perhaps that dream will come true.

~  John Shelby Spong
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