Episode 134 - Myth Busting Myth-Busting: Plot Twist Included

What if the world isn’t a pile of loose facts but a living story that wants you on stage? We open with a bold claim: you don’t know God by standing at a safe distance and defining him; you know God by being saved into relationship through the Son in the Spirit. From there, we challenge the modern habit of treating “myth” as a polite word for lies. In Scripture and the classical world, mythos meant a meaningful narrative, the frame that lets events become legible. We argue that faith does not fight facts; faith makes facts possible because testimony, memory, and history all rest on trust.

Together with PJ from the Global Church History Project, we trace how atomistic thinking flattens reality. When you chop the world into bare particles and isolated events, you end up denying the very meanings you already rely on. The Bible resists that move, speaking through stories, psalms, prophecy, and eyewitness accounts. Creation becomes the theatre of the covenant, a stage set for the Son to win his bride. That’s not sentiment; it’s a claim about how things are: history has plot, purpose, and promise.

We also reframe time. Rather than a resource we squeeze, time arrives as kairos—the right moment that seizes us. Jesus comes at the opportune time, and Esther steps forward “for such a time as this.” That lens reshapes vocation: we are not sole authors of destiny; we are characters invited into a story already rich with meaning. Finally, we explore authorship and creation: making shapes what is, but authorship speaks life where there was none. To call Jesus the Author of life is to confess that meaning, vitality, and hope are continually given, not merely assembled.

If you’re weary of thin facts and hungry for a thicker world—one where faith, story, and truth belong together—press play. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves good stories, and leave a review telling us where you sense kairos calling you next.

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

Transcript

From Immutability To Knowing God

Rev Dr PRB 0:30

Well, welcome back to the Christ-centered cosmic civilization, and we've just finished this long series looking at the immutability of God and related issues. And one of the things that's come to the surface in that is the difference between trying to speak about God or define God from a I was gonna say a pagan perspective, but I mean it's really a kind of disengaged philosophical distance as opposed to engaging with God in the way that the Father has revealed himself through the Son and the power of the Spirit in Scripture, and there are those like it's two incredibly different uh ways of speaking about God and in fact engaging with God. One way is a cat is a fact is something that you know we've noticed, it's something that has its origins in paganism, and there's an attempt to kind of know God first, and then later worry about relating to God, kind of, if that is even possible in that in that regime. Whereas what the Bible does is you are saved in order to know God. So so like knowing God cannot happen uh abstractly or di in a disengaged way, and it's impossible to know God unless you're saved, and the fat and and that the Father determines how we will know the living God, and and he does that by sending Jesus in the power of the Spirit from the beginning of the world, even in the creation of the world, and such that the this reality of from the Father through the Son by the Spirit is present to us in in many aspects of cosmic reality, but not as an impersonal thing, but always as this gospel invitation. So we we've kind of been exploring that, and one of the issues that's come up and even been requested by friends of the show is to circle back around to the idea of mythology or mythological truth or mythological theology versus abstract truth or abstract theology. And why is it that the Bible does one of the like does do mythological theology, but it doesn't do the kind of theological or philosophical thought that we might get in a scholastic disputation. There are no scholastic disputations in the Bible, even though it's written over this enormous period of time through se different cultures, different continents, there's three different continents that converge in the writing of the Bible, and yet nowhere do we get anything like a philosophical disputation, a scholastic discourse, or anything like that. And some have suggested that it's because that is it should have done that. I know I don't that doesn't seem persuasive to me. I think the Holy Spirit was aware of that possible way of of speaking and engaging, but the spirit did not choose it, and instead chose a whole variety of other ways of engaging with truth, but one of them wasn't a scholastic disputation. So we we one of the the question that the friend of the show was asking was sort of what do we mean? I'm I'm joined here with PJ from the Global Church History Project. What do what what do we mean when we're talking about a mythological approach to theology? Because the friend of the show who was and and there were several who we got into a conversation on this, and it was really like what if the problem is that in the culture generally, if a person says something is a myth, that means it's not true. It's sort of similar to the way faith is, but the people will say there's faith or there's facts. Faith is trying to make yourself believe something that you know it is isn't true. That's how someone defined faith. And of course, we in the Bible, you know, Bible Christian faith church, we're we are we recoil in horror at that because faith is what you know of a certainty. It's what you you it's you entrusting yourself to what is demonstra demonstrated to be true. It's good like we trust Jesus not because we think he's false, but because he is demonstrating himself to be trustworthy. We trust the bike the what the Bible teaches us and shows us the stories it tells, because it is trustworthy and therefore has this high degree of certainty to it. So faith is not in opposition to facts, faith is a kind of possibility for facts. It's if well the word facts actually kind of just means events, happenings, and so we know about happenings because of historical testimonies of them. Why do we trust historical testimonies? Well, we tend to think, well, I think this is a a credible witness, they're reliable, they're believable, trustworthy, and therefore I'm gonna therefore I I kinda have confidence in the testimony, the historical witness. So I in in truth or facts, as it's originally understood, facts are events, historical happenings really. Facts require trust. There's no way of accessing historical happenings without a level of trust that the records or footage or whatever or testimonies are trustworthy. So we know that faith, it's wrong to put faith in opposition to facts and all any Christian who's who's at all thought about this knows that. They're like, well, hang on, faith is not an opposition to facts, faith is the possibility of facts. Right. Now then the difficulty is when it's if we say mythology, a mythological approach to theology, that is constantly understood in the culture at large as stories that are not true, but contain but the consider the idea and Jordan Peterson is cursed us with this sort of stuff. He's really wrecked the pitch on this. Like, I think that before Jordan Peterson it was slightly easier to talk about this subject, but he loves doing these things that uh you know it's a beautiful lie kind of idea, that there are myth of myths that are obviously not really historically true, but they contain this kind of psychological principle or something like that, a homely truth that is wrapped up in a beautiful lie. And he's kind of brought in that so that it's made it a bit harder to talk about what what we what is really meant when we're talking about mythological theology in a biblical sense. So the difficulty is you get shows that are like myth busters, and the idea is that here's a myth, it isn't it and we'll show it's a myth because we'll show it isn't true. So there the word myth functions as lie. We want to expose lies. And that's what you do, expose a lie, and they're saying we're gonna bust myths. But if we can, what we'd like to do is myth bust myth busting. We'd like to say that word, myth busting, it itself needs to be busted. Because myth doesn't mean that. So let's ask PJ, what is myth? It going back into the origins of that word. Did it did it originally going back maybe thousands of years, was reti what has it always been in opposition to history? So a myth just uh is the Greek word for story, and so you get in Homer and Plato, if they say, I'm gonna tell you a story of what happened, they're not gonna say I'm just gonna outright lie to your face. I'm just just prefacing that they're just I'm just gonna tell you sorry, yeah, I'm gonna tell you a mythos, is what they say. And so literally it's a narrative. I'm going to tell you a narrative. But that when you think about compare that, like the idea of a narrative is a superstructure over events. So you've got events which, as you said, are facts facts. So if you put a superstructure over it, any superstructure in one sense doesn't exist. If you're very atomically minded. Yeah, yeah, that's true, because you could just say, here's a series of events, they have no relation to each other, but as soon as you relate them to each other and show, ah, there's a something happening here, there was first this which led to this, which led to this, and gave this conclusion, you've created a plot and made and connected facts up with a plot, is that right? Yeah. Yeah. So there's that idea that uh if you're very atomically minded, and so the uh whole idea of atomic theory, so not just applying this to actions to the verb kind of world, but also to nouns, that you can just break things down to very small things, and then they're the only thing that's real, and they might make up bigger things, but the big thing's just a lie, there's actually just the small things, and they will interact with each other, they'll hit each other with force or energy or waves, and then anything bigger than that's an illusion. So you sometimes get people who you know, especially once they first find out about atomic theory or they first really think about it, then they're like, Oh, touching things is just an illusion. No one's ever touched it. Oh, yeah, they do say that, and they think it's like phenomenology, and they're like, Yeah, we only experience phenomenon, like I'm sp I'm touching a table, and they'll go, Oh, you're not touching a table. Your fingers are experiencing the phenomenon of hard and smooth, and you know, they there's a whole period of philosophy where that was considered clever. It's gone absolutely thick, but there was a period where that was considered profound, wasn't it? Yeah, yeah, go on, Kylie. It's the same phenomenology, yeah. Yeah, so it's the same, but we all of course know we can touch things and grab hold of things, and the Bible's always saying that it never gets into this idea. And of course, the Lord is aware of subatomic particles, but uh nevertheless feels like if someone sees something they shouldn't or does something they shouldn't, they've actually seen or done or whatever, they've actually done it, it's not all an illusion. So the Lord doesn't think in that atomic way, even though he's totally aware of subatomic particles. But nevertheless, people think that way, and then and let's just explore that a tiny bit more before you move on. It because I found that the the you uh there was I remember a preacher, this is going way back like 30 years, and it was at theological college, and there was a preacher who was saying it's very important that we distinguish between facts and meaning, and that's important when we come to the like Jesus, because the fact is there was this man who died at a particular time, and the meaning of that is well, whatever, that's like have whatever meaning we attach to. So for him, there was like these discrete particles of events that intrinsically have no meaning at all, but extrinsic to them is applied a meaning. So I he just said that like the fact is a man was crucified, and I'm in my mind, even though at the time I don't know, I was I was like 20 or so. No, I don't know early so, but I I remember just sat there for the rest of the time saying, no, hang on, but even that is not truly atomistic, because why have you defined that body of organic material as a human? Like, it it that's already like a huge level of narrative to like pull that organic thing, another organic thing, piece of wood, you know. Like, why do you call that and why do you think why have you named that as crucifixion? And like, and why is it that you there's a point at which you would say he is now dead, like you've already like it's all interpreted, so why do you draw the line at a particular point? Do you know what I mean? Yeah, that's a huge deal, like the again, it's like one of these things where moderns think they've come up with something and they're the first to do so, but actually, this has a huge tradition, especially in Indian philosophy, that they they have that whole idea where all identification, whether it's self-identification or identifying something else, it's all just like kind of moving like everything's just a single mass of one thing, yeah. It's just existence, and then identity kind of moves on it and then moves off it, and it's just like a sliding thing that slips around uncertainly. It's not a real thing. So they they've already thought that, and so there's several religions, you know, Buddhism and Hinduism and Jainism, all built around that idea that you know, totally atomistic, taking it super seriously. So even bodies and human beings and souls and all this don't exist. And they do think there is no differentiation between anything, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, that that's truly blowing apart. No, let us not interpret anything at all, because any of that they would say is arbitrary if you go down that route. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, that sort of idea does exist, and therefore of the material world, and therefore there is a in the noun sort of thing, and therefore in events and actions and verbs, it also exists, and that's that sort of view where you just have facts and then myth. So, any story, narrative, anything, that's all intrinsically false, because nothing like that can exist. There's just it just exists in your own mind, you know, so there's there is no meaning, as you said. So, whereas it seems that intrinsically human beings before they particularly start living in cities, before they start living in a way which means they can detach themselves from kind of how the Bible describes we should live. Like, you know, in the Bible it's often like, oh, you know, when you're farming and you're all and you you get the cycles of the seasons and that, you know, that's how we and then if you can just put yourself in a little room where you're shielded from everything God's made for you, and then you just have your own little environment, then you're like suddenly, oh wait, everything God says, you know, that's not real, and that that's because you've gotten rid of it all. But once human beings start doing that, then they get confused in this way. But then before any human beings do that, they all just seem to totally buy into myth that the that you have meaning. All of history is deeply meaningful, and and that fact there are no such things as as isolatistic facts, but everything around us comes in a way narratively that there it there's everything is is uh is all there it's like the sun rises, it goes across the sky like a bride bridegroom defeating the darkness, and then it sets. So every day is kind of a narrative of something happening, and the and the it's all connected up together with a it's not as if there are just these atomistic moments that have no meaning. It all has a m a mi a meaning and a plot and a direction, and we recognize that already, so there is nothing and so is it the case like if like the word myth then just going back to is this pre-Socratic times? Yeah, and even to some extent in Socratic stuff, but then as it goes on, because like Plato and Socrates do kind of think their mission is to get rid of myth. So they really they they see the I the idea of like a time, it's almost like the idea of movement almost they want to get is it to some extent. I think their a lot of their criticism is particular in that they bel they believe myths over time build up, and so they do attach sort of human being, and then they get distracted from what originally happened, and then they might also build up untruths, even in the sort of meaning sense. So the the it what the the a bit like were something we've thought about that at the Reformation there's this feeling ah, there's too many intermediaries between us and the father, let's get rid of all of them except just Jesus, and then in doing and it's like this huge kind of demythologizing of the universe, and in and the intention is so that the really true will stand out sharply. So Plate and Aristotle are trying to do that, but in the process, what they do is strip away meaning in a way, and just as it happened in a way at the Reformation, like one of the unintended consequences at Reformation is to create a flat universe that has nothing, you know, is is is just two-dimensional. You're saying that has happened in another way with Plato and Aristotle, and it is something to think about that a lot of the and particularly, I think English reformers will just call themselves like a neo-Platonist at the time. Wow. So even scholastics don't do that, even if we think, well, you are because you you know, yeah, they know they can't, it's like a taboo they can't cross, and then they they still have to think, no, these events in history, the Bible says they're meaningful, so I have to believe they are. I have to do they're not it's like it's against my my philosophy, yeah. So yeah, they they'd sort of before that point, they're like, whereas after that, there is a bit of honesty in the remote movement. What's that? Well, if this is basically what Christianity is, let's just say it then, let's just be neoplatus. So you can find some who just say the and on both sides, I think like Erasmus probably is a bit like that. Oh no, you certainly find it in Catholicism. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You do, with with a uh quite a strong embrace of that. Yeah, yeah. So it does go, but there is a sense everyone goes a bit just kind of in one sense crazy, in another sense honest at that time, that they are just suddenly like all these for centuries they were like, we've got to pretend this, because if we lose this, it's gonna go wrong. And then they're like, Well, we already have lost it, let's just be honest, and then the modern world happens. So that yeah so so the so then myth, this is what we're really trying to get to in in this episode, is that myth is not m is not what the modern world thinks it is. What myth is really meaning, and it's not again. Let's just hold on to that for a minute because one of the things I find when I'm trying to get people to engage with meaning is they'll say, Oh, there are the facts, and that is what things really are in the like in the brutal factuality of the universe, and then we can attach meaning to things, but meaning is not intrinsically in those things, and so if I say, Oh, I want to talk about a mythological view of reality, in my I'm trying to say I'm simply wanting to take reality as it is, with its because it comes to us with meaning in it, it comes to us di with a dire a plot, a narrative, and it's part of that's why I like that phrase that oh and our ancestors, uh Christian ancestors used to talk about creation is the theatre of the covenant. So there's like the the creation is a theatre in which the covenant, God's covenant, and and you know there's a lot to unpack just in that phrase, but I liked the word theatre because a theatre is where a play happens, and it's as if the live the living god has created this enormous. I know that they probably don't mean theatre in that way, they probably mean theatre as in like a an arena, a space in which something. But I'm saying no, like let's hold on to that other the the and the meaning of theatre as a play, and that the living god makes the universe as a pla uh in which a story is happening, and there's a main character, and it's Jesus, and and the story's a romance where he gets his bride, and that's really and that's not imposed extrinsic to the atoms, but the atoms themselves have this narrative, they're it like part of them. So that if you're going to uh view the world as it really is, you must view it mythically, you must engage with it as if it uh not as if, because it is full of meaning and narrative, and and and and it is not atomistic. Is this fair? Yeah, and so it's interesting that different views of what atom yeah, atoms, events, and time mean means has huge implications. There was a big thing on the internet recently when someone was explaining how African time works, and how it's quite similar to Homeric, how Homer describes time and things. That you've basically just you've got the present and then you've got like legend and history and all of that is just moving. Well, it's essentially in the future, and it's like moving towards you and it captures you. So everything so you wait for time to happen. Time is something that's coming for you, and so that's why you have things like them that they will just do things when time has happened in the right way, rather than making time happen. Oh yeah, we there's a we're taught, aren't we, from quite young that you must make you you're in control of time, and time is a resource for you to use. Whereas in that view, time is something that is happening, and you must wait for it to arrive, and then you'll know it's the right time to do something. Because time, in a sense, is in control, and you are a resource for time to use, yeah, and then uh it very quickly lends itself to storytelling and things, and so these uh cultures that do embrace that, like Homer. So there was a time Europe was like this, and they had much better stories. And do we have any stories as good as like the Trojan War and everything? And if we do, it's like totally made up because then we managed to use those muscles in like a totally fictional universe. But could we tell about a war that actually happened? Because the Trojan War actually happens, but then they talk about it in such a way, and Homer can see the meaning in it in such a way that it's like, oh, this is the best story ever, and like we can't improve on it. And like the Odyssey like that, where so many stories today are actually just the Odyssey, because then people go back to it, it's like, oh, this is the best story. When when you do think this way and you do actually see how history's actually moving, you you get better stories. Well, so history then has its own momentum, history. Well, really, we want to say it is his story, like it isn't just its own momentum, like, but that it is already happened. You know, it's it the events are happening, the story's being told, and then we want to be caught up into it, but we are not writing the story. It's like so in the Bible you get that word, don't you, where it says Kairos at the right uh Jesus came at the Kairos, the opportune time, the right time. And there's this idea then that there is a like time, there is a he can't, he doesn't, he can't just come at any time, he has to come at the Kairos, the right time, the opportune time. And that the maybe the Bible then is saying, and this is what you're suggesting, that there's this wider belief that there is always that like we all should be waiting for those times, and like and and not as if we are the masters of destiny, but that that we're waiting for us to be written into the plot kind of thing, and it's like we're called on to come onto the stage. And you get that with Mordecai and Esther, isn't it? Where Esther's like, well, I I can't actually seize the moment everything. Mordecai's like, well, maybe it is the moment, yeah. Such a time as this, maybe this is the what you're being written into. Yeah, so this is your moment to go on the stage, kind of thing. And then that's a much more thrilling view of human life that it doesn't like there's human you you can uh I suppose that's why like someone like Elijah is like he the Lord didn't call him to be a prophet, but he's like, I'm gonna be one, and then he gets super zealous, and then as if the Lord says, Okay, right, you will write you into the plot, you're gonna be one of the great prophets, and it means that there's a way in which the the there's this wonderful divine author, the author of life, he's called that, the author of life, and he's writing a story, and we'll and and everything around us, everything around us is part of this, and there are no like disengaged atoms, the atoms are being are written into the story too, and that we we can live looking to him and like sort of offering ourselves to be characters in his story and waiting for an opportunity to be part of the plot. It's interesting. Well, just that um author, we've thought about ex hulus and ex nielo debates and stuff in the past, but where there has been that sort of distinction, and people have taken the ex hulus view, so this is create creation f uh one view is that the creation is from nothing, and the ex hulus view is God forms the universe out of water. I think that's Peter's view, or there's other versions of it in the Bible where the the the creation is formed out of pre-exist something that is already there, right? Yeah. Yeah, and so that is the word make means that if you make a pot, you make it out of play, or if you you know that's what make it whereas authorship is from nothing, basically. That there is, you know, you've got words that you strung together, and then that is something new from nothing, basically. So you do sometimes get that, and sometimes the people who are on either side of the nicene debate, and they get one over to the nicene side, but they kind of were always on the nicene side, they have that where they're like, Well, doesn't the father make the son? Because you do sometimes get that language in the Bible, and it's like, well, he made he says the son, he sends the son to do something that the son wasn't doing before, and that is making him and you you get this language making and creating in that way. If someone is created a bishop, they were not made from nothing, they didn't uh make it homunculous and put him in the in the sea. Well, maybe that has happened, but that doesn't always happen. Yeah, but it yeah. Yeah, so the point being then that this idea of authorship, so the creation might be formed from something, but author it's a kind of an exciting thought that if Jesus is the author of creation, that could be from nothing. Like he's like ru he writes a story that is brand new, and the universe has it, and life as well. If he's the author of life, as I said, scripture says, that life has to come from him, so it's like you could almost imagine existing just as a dead sort of yeah, but then it's like life always has to come has to come freshly from him, he's the author of all life, uh, and you know, nothing can depend on nothing can live without him, even if you can imagine petering out as uh existing in some way. So it's interesting that as well, that as you yeah, as we talk about authorship and that sort of making, and so that something could have a story, and then only real and it's like what's this thing? It's just existing, but it's not really in the story, it's not being authored, it's just there to the side, and it's like what's that doing? And then once it gets authored in, it means something. That's it. So we don't necessarily see the significance of something, what its part is in the story, but it like with that view of time that you were suggesting, it's like, yeah, but wait, we will see what what its role is in the story. Wait, you too may have a role in the story. Like you let's find out where the story's going. Well, we'll leave it at that for now, because but there's a lot we I want to keep exploring this, and then we'll do another episode.