DR. CUMMINGS: Three "YOUR SAY" LETTERS

Besides the recent comments and letters to the editor (both positive and negative), three readers took the time these past few weeks to write provocative and insightful letters that the editorial page editor felt deserved a place in the "Your Say" section of the paper. I think they also deserve a thoughtful answer.

I answered David Mann personally, but I want to thank him publicly. His questions centered on: objective truth versus relativity, certainty versus faith and my penchant for questions, not answers. Mann is not only an accomplished writer but a sensitive and highly intelligent gentleman and I value his comments and questions.

First of all: I do recognize objective truth in mathematics and science; we all do. Likewise, I also marvel at our scientific discoveries in relativity. But I think Mann's inquiry is really focused on my understanding of the Bible. Do I think each Bible story must be historically accurate to be true? My answer is no. Mythical truth and metaphorical truth are biblical staples. It is not relativity that I apply to my biblical translations and interpretations, but rather my understanding of the literary style that is being used. I don't read Romeo and Juliet like the police report on Ferguson, Missouri, and I don't read Luke's Infancy narratives like the BBC announcement on the birth of the British prince.

My former classmate John Dominic Crossan, one of the leading scripture scholars of our day, wrote in his classic book "Jesus, a Revolutionary Biography," these famous words: "Our gospels are prophesy historicized, not history memorized." For example, just re-read the first two chapters of Matthew's gospel. He quotes five prophesies from the Old Testament and makes them apply to Jesus. To think that the five Hebrew prophets were actually thinking of Jesus when they wrote these lines hundreds of years before, and that Matthew is writing an historical account of the birth of Jesus, is not what I demand of a "truthful story."

Second: Am I certain of my faith? No, I am not certain of my faith nor of my opinions, and if I sound like I am, I apologize. I think that's the beauty of faith — it is not certainty, and yet we can live by it. I also apologize if I am overly critical of those who claim their faith as the only truth. Their certainty sounds both arrogant and hypocritical to me, and I sometimes voice my irritation.

Third: Mann would like more answers from me. Sorry. I no longer exercise my "answer-prone" Catholic priesthood. I'm still full of questions.

Philip Lengel also wrote a "Your Say" letter. He was absolutely correct in his dismissal of my mention of Socrates, whose historicity is "mired in controversy." I think we could just as easily prove the historicity of Matthew's Wise Men from the East (Matt. 2:1). I should have said my scholastic training was Aristotelian-Thomistic, which it was, but I didn't feel too many readers would connect with that. Reading Lengel, however, I feel he must have read the Summa Theologica and he should now recognize my "Socratic questioning format" as coming from St. Thomas.

Lengel says that I "routinely dismiss traditional religious viewpoints on the grounds that such views are inherently dogmatic." He's right. Dogmatic statements like: "Outside the Roman Catholic Church there is no salvation," get dismissed immediately, and I don't try to spin or justify them.

Lastly, Roberta Johnstono wrote a touching and deeply felt letter in which she clearly identifies why some readers would think I am "anti-Christian." She writes about our evangelists: "These men knew Jesus better than anyone now living or dead and I find reading their remembrances of him to be very beneficial in my life."

Roberta (and others like her) believe that the four writers of our gospels lived, worked and traveled with Jesus — listening to his Aramaic words and writing them down in Greek, verbatim. I do not believe that. I believe that those who knew Jesus died many years before the first gospel was written in 70 AD. (The average life expectancy was 29 years.) I believe our evangelists were not Galilean peasants but experienced Greek writers who wrote down snippets of oral tradition, parts of which were edited and redacted during the years 30-110 AD and parts of which were invented by those early Christians.

I think the fact that we have a New Testament at all is close to miraculous, (I say this metaphorically, of course,) and I love to read it every day.

Dr. Bill Cummings is the CEO of Cummings Consolidated Corporation and Cummings Management Consultants. His website is www.billcummings.org.

This story was originally published October 31, 2015 at 7:44 PM with the headline "DR. CUMMINGS: Three "YOUR SAY" LETTERS ."