insert Chi Roh here

"No man ever spoke like this man."

Yes, I keep coming back to this observation, esp. when I am tempted to look at the writings of others, including my own, as anything but purest speculation. We write as if driven, yet Christ (Yes, that Christ after which Christ Mass is named) only wrote in the sand. It's surely not because he was an illiterate Galilean peasant--how then could he have argued with all those doctors about the Scriptures? No, he chose to be quoted by us, because as far as any can tell, his words are for us. And, "if God be for us (before us too!!!) who can be against us?"

One can "explain" history by materialism alone; yet is that not like trying to 'splain quantum phenomenae with Newtonian tools,with which materialism only appears to be true on a local human level? It's sure no theory of everything, even though millions have made it so in their own minds, usually to maintain their own less-fettered hedonism.

Yet even so, God wants us, apparently, to be Christian hedonists, i.e. to "enjoy Him forever." The true pleasures, per Mr. Screwtape and Mr Lewis, are His invention, and are inimitable and unsubsumable and have their components of sensate desire, but dominate them in the long run. (See John Piper's "Desiring God".

As to Christmas itself, an odd thing has happened to me on the way to the manger.

As a child, I was dominated by my desires to get stuff--giving was kind of a drag, rather like writing thank you notes for socks and underwear. So mine were Newtonian and Darwinian assumptions: you give, I get--I increase, you decrease! Kind of John the Baptist in reverse.

Since then I have been rather inundated by "Theories of Christmas" from Dickens to the "new" atheists and back to Church again. But as a result, I note that Jesus Himself had no reported words about His birth; a physician, who was apparently also a compulsive writer, gave the most commonly used account. So in deference to a scientist that was there--or thereabouts!--I would tend to accept Luke's version as definitive, "good enough", but not comprehensive--as has been said of the Bible as a whole.

But, strangely enough, it is the many tsunamis of opinion that restore a sense of mystery beyond words. "Why believe him rather than the others?" (Beckett)

Well, that's the point and there's the mystery. The gospels are as good an account as we are going to get. Scholarship will neither add nor detract from any of them. Inconsistencies simply relate to the relative views of man and are one of many reasons why the gaps will be filled in only later, as was the case with Isaiah and all the OT prophets.

Question: what does Jesus think of Christmas? Only the denizens of heaven know, and are informed more fully. "Angels long to look into these things." re: human existence.

Therefore one can only, even logically, say, "This too is a great mystery. I speak concerning the church..." concerning its Brideship. The coming in fulfillment of Isaiah 53, which I hope everyone has read--recently(!!!), therefore regains the status of mysterium tremendum simply because the plethora of opinions are all wrong, to greater or lesser degrees. This is the right sort of relativism, rightly applied to our own estate, not God's . And who then can prove otherwise? (seeing as even the revered gold standard of the scientific method and doubly-blinded studies are now suspect--as with the numbers highly specified to maintain our universe, it appears that God has been toying with the science as well--because of scientism, i.e. idolatry?

Well, so much for "Christmas Science!!!" Thanks esp. to Joyce and Dennis and John and Alex for sticking with this sticky wicket of a blog since its inception, and for making it worthwhile and challenging me to rethink my opinions and see and know how relativistic they are. For the records, I see no reason to change what is axiomatic, except the consequences of them surely need fleshing out. And if God deigned to come in the flesh, surely I can be at "present" content with my low estate and poverty of being a carnal and pushy person, and let Christ be in me more and more. Perfection eludeth me, hence the AA saying: "I can't--He can-- so I'd better let Him, eh?"

"REJOICE! AGAIN I SAY IT:RE-JOICE!!!