Ancient Reflections on Christmas
Two Biblically Imaginative Reflections on Christmas
Hello, and welcome to the Biblical Imagination, where we read the Bible with fresh eyes, shedding new light on old truths. Christmas is just around the corner, and while some of you may have seen a previous version of this post, it’s worth reviewing to remind ourselves how the Christmas story fits into the larger biblical story.
It is also a reminder that the goal of this blog is to look at the old, old story with fresh eyes - to use our imagination! I smile as I write this, for what I am about to share below is actually very, very old, coming to us from the early centuries of the church. Indeed, my comments near the close bemoan just how much our biblical imaginations have shrunk in recent centuries. For us, (re) learning these “old” truths can be like a child opening her presents under the tree on Christmas day - fresh and new!
Before diving into our topic, I want to say “welcome!” to our new subscribers. It’s a delight to have you join me as we read the Bible with fresh eyes, shedding new - and sometimes old - light on the story we know as The Bible.
The Christmas Story Begins In Darkness
The story of Christmas marks some of the most significant events in the biblical story. The opening pages of the New Testament introduce us to the family into which the long-awaited Messiah is to be born, Joseph and Mary. His lineage goes back to King David and before him, Abraham.
The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.
Matthew 1:1
God promised an heir to the former who would sit as king on an eternal throne, and to the latter, he says, “Through you, shall all of the nations of the earth shall be blessed” (2 Sam 7:13, 16; Ge 12:3).
The young couple are living in a time of spiritual darkness. Roman boots are trampling the land God had given to his people, and their King, Herod, when he hears of the Messiah’s birth, jealously seeks to have the child killed (Mat 2:16). This is horrifying! The King of Israel, mind you! The nation God brought forth from Abraham to be a “light to the nations” amid a dark world—their king! is attempting to destroy the one destined to shine the brightest! So, yes, it is a very dark time.
You may remember that Abraham, too, was called by God during a time of spiritual darkness—the darkness precipitated by the events we know as the Fall: the sin of Adam and Eve and their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. This event is like the first domino to fall, setting off a recurring series of sins, judgments, and restoration. 1
The call of Abraham is presented as a literary reversal of these events.
While Adam and Eve are cast out of the Garden of Eden away from God’s presence and left to wander in the wilderness in the East (the land of Nod), Abraham and Sarah are called from the East to go back west to a paradise-like land, a “land of milk and honey,” where they encounter the presence of God. This U-shaped pattern foreshadows the overall shape of the biblical story from beginning to end.
Using a different metaphor, the apostle Paul, alluding to this same arc of events begun in Genesis 3, says that “all creation has been groaning in the pains of childbirth” (Ro 8:22), waiting with hope and patience for the age to come when both the creation and the children of God shall be set free from their current state of affairs.2
Thus, it is fitting that, at the angelic announcement of the birth of the Messiah, all of creation—heaven and earth—join together in praise, wonder, and adoration. From the highest (heaven’s angels) to the lowest (the lowly shepherds), all join together in praise and welcoming wonder of the child born for us (Luke 2:8-21). The birth of God’s Son, who will save his people from their sins, brings a firm reality to “the hopes and fears of all the years” leading up to it.
This brief summary of events from Genesis to the opening pages of Matthew and Luke forms the background of the following analogy between Eve and Mary, the mother of Jesus. Eve's disobedience is well-known, but when contrasted with Mary’s whole-hearted obedience, we have a striking portrait of the biblical story of salvation summed up in the actions of two women.
Two Virgins, Two Destinies
The early Church Fathers were masters of comparison and contrast. The following meditation views Christmas as beginning the reversal of the Fall by comparing the actions of Eve and Mary. Various versions appear in the works of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Ambrose. Of course, they were following the lead of the biblical writers before them, who were themselves masters of such comparisons.
Here is my feeble attempt to rephrase their efforts.
It was Eve, a young virgin,
Who, in her disobedience to God
Ate from the tree
Conceiving the sin
That brought death into the world
But at Christmas, we remember:
Another virgin, Mary,
Who, in her obedience to God
Conceived the child
Who hung on the tree
Taking away the sin of the world
And giving eternal life to them who put their trust in him
Thus, as death entered the world through a virgin, so now does new life begin with a virgin. Through Mary, He who overcomes death enters the world.
Similarly, but from another perspective: by a tree, death enters the world; so by the tree of the cross, life is regained.”
Some are unsure of what to make of such analogies. Like a calf at a new gate, they stop and stare, unsure of what to do. The analogy between Eve and Mary is curious and even fascinating, but they wonder: “What are we to do with it?” “How do we make this practical?” “How do we fit this into our daily Christian life?” The “gate” they are so familiar with tells them it must be practical or prophetic, but this is neither. No, this is literary art - a beautiful image, like Michalangeloe’s painting on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, artistically declaring God's glory.
From Exile To Sonship
Here is another analogy. This one on the incarnation. While it is not as polished, it is rich with themes woven throughout the biblical story.
To you who were a castaway, banished from the realms of paradise,
dying of your weary exile,
reduced to dust and ashes,
without further hope of living,
by the incarnation of the Word was given the power to return from afar to your maker,
to recognize your parentage,
to become free after slavery,
to be promoted from being an outcast to sonship:
so that you who were born of corruptible flesh may be reborn by the Spirit of God and obtain through grace what you had not by nature, and, if you acknowledge yourself the son of God by the spirit of adoption, dare to call God Father.
—Leo the Great (ca. 400–461)
Again, we have a beautiful portrait of God’s grace through Christ, beginning with the human condition after the Fall: exile, dust and ashes, without hope. But when the Word became flesh, by the power of the Spirit, we were set free from our slavery to sin and promoted from the status of an outcast to sonship, such that we may now call God “Father.”
Some may be surprised to learn that this way of reading the Bible communicated through literary analogy and contrast has long been a facet of biblical writing and teaching. As the analogy between Eve and Mary and Adam and Abraham above demonstrates, this has been a staple of biblical narrative for two millennia, even before the stories were written down.
However, during the Reformation and afterward, especially during the age of science and modernity, this way of reading and understanding the biblical story began to fall by the wayside in parts of the Church. Emphasis was increasingly placed on history, doctrine, and practice - the focus being intensified on what we should know and how we should live.
Similarly, time-honored ways of reading the Bible that kept the unity of the Old and New Testaments began to slip into the background and, at times, obscurity. The nadir of this last digression is evident in the gospel tracts that insist that Jesus came to earth only to die for our sins. One can only say this if clueless about the meaning of the Old Testament.
Hence, in recent centuries, the Bible, the glorious story of God—with Him as author and main character creating, judging, and saving the world—has increasingly come to be viewed as a collection of historical stories and events, read like a self-help book, a compass for life, or wisdom for living. Or worse, it has become so individualized that we read it as God's saving word to "me" rather than to Israel or the Church - more about what happens to us after we die than about life in the here and now.
Yes, beloved reader, we have lost something precious. Reading our Bible for information rather than an encounter with God has made it a dry and dusty book for many Christians - revered, to be certain, but dry and dusty because we don’t enjoy it. As Matthew Mullins points out in his helpful book on this topic, Enjoying The Bible:
To read it always for information is to miss out on the other forms of meaning it has for us, most especially the kind of relationship with God it seeks to foster
How, Then, Should We Read?
The good news is that, in recent decades, there has been a rebirth in reading the Bible closer to how its inspired authors intended. Through its literary beauty and storytelling, we become imaginatively and emotionally engaged. However, this renewed interest remains, in many ways, academic and has yet to make its way into the pew and our homes. Honestly, I continue to struggle myself to read the Bible in a way that leads to something like joy. I comfort myself by knowing that I’m at least aware that there is a better way and seeking it.
Certainly, there are parts of Holy Scripture we should read as teaching us how to live—the Ten Commandments, Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, or Paul’s letters are clearly in this category—but there is much that goes beyond simply information we ought to know. And not a little of it shows us God's glory, leading us into worship! Reading the Psalms is a good place to start.
Meditations such as those above are like this: crafted and shaped to capture our imaginations, leaving us standing in awe of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who have loved us so much as to come and become one of us and invite us into fellowship with them!
Merry Christmas!
The first domino is Adam, followed by Cain and Able, then Noah and the Flood, and finally, Babel.
Specifically, we are waiting for the resurrection of the dead, or as the apostle puts it “the redemption of our bodies.” (Ro 8:23)