F=T;
The Musical Puzzle of the Miraculous Element
In the Gospels (& in the Bible Generally)

The Gospels as rhetoric type resemble the texts one might find (in my experience) the literary product of a not-very-well-educated peasant, with the possible refinement that the modern peasant would be less likely to try to convince with the description of fabulous/miraculous events.

It is only Orthodox to claim belief in the Gospels, the New Testment, the Bible, but so difficult it is for me to do so that on most days, my hardest-clot in this regard would be to claim "poetic faith" of S.T. Coleridge, "the willing suspension of disbelief." This same kind of faith occurs in a reader who though totally secular and non-superstitious 'lets go' to follow by way of entertainment a ghost story.

I am in concurrence with Rudolf Bultmann in thinking that the mythic content of the Gospels needs to be broken down (the post-modern word for this is "deconstructed.") To be Orthodox with the Gospels creates a paradoxical syllogism, like F=T in the propositional sense. This is modally shown in the highest level in Biblical allegory, but is also evident in other Scriptures, and to me can only be broken down to a tautology good for casting the lessons of morality/ethics.

Indeed the ethics of the New Testament are-- without the layers and layers in the Bible of the-miraculous-- immanently agreeable. It is even hard to use this convict-like narrative as a 'musical background' to best-practice-conduct because of the nearly obvious conclusion to a sane modern reader that here in the Gospels is FALSE (not TRUE) witness, a violation of the 9th of the 10 Commandments.

I am a modern reader; I am polite to educated people who claim to believe in Jesus BECAUSE he walked on water, yea resurrected. But I wish to redeem walking on water by never attempting to try doing so, and in resurrection which means rot-in-peace.

In W.S. Maugham's OF HUMAN BONDAGE is a chapter where a lad with club foot prays unsuccessfully for the wholeness of his feet, only to have failed and for his priestly father to proclaim that the lad lacked faith. I would thus claim that faith-- good faith-- means having a 'club foot' and realizing that there is nothing one can do of one's own to correct this condition.

Let me claim this as my 'Orthodoxy'... as a counterpoointal music to the drone of the miraculous held by the Gospels-- and thus by me 'musically'-- for the 'marching-hymn' for the walk-of-faith.

--Vernon Lynn Stephens