"The substance of things hoped for"

Slate has two really fascinating articles relating to Christmas. In the first one, a minister addresses the problematic Immaculate Conception. Basically, the article posits the notion that even if Jesus had a human father, it doesn't take away from the symbolism of the Christmas story. (There's an awesome quote by Elizabeth Cady Stanton: "If a heavenly father, why not a heavenly mother? And if an earthly mother, why not an earthly father? . . . I think the doctrine of the Virgin Birth as something sweeter, higher, nobler than ordinary motherhood, is a slur on all the natural motherhood of the world." I forget how radical those 19th-century American feminists were! Even Lucy Stone is lost on contemporaries.) The second article is an exchange between three theologians about the existence of Jesus, the significance of faith, and the importance of historical and biological accuracy.

Nerdy but interesting articles. I have a tremendous amount of respect for theologians as scholars of texts that some people happen to consider holy -- they analyze, critique, and debate various scriptures like literary hawks dissect a writer's work. That's a rather tough field -- I mean, here are folks who are just double-checking the Greek and Hebrew translations, contributing to a discourse about the cultural roots of and current significance of texts; they're half historians, half literary critics. The only problem is that to understand most their analyses you have to have some familiarity with the texts themselves (and some of us try not to do that anymore). It also just so happens that the subject matter is something for which others have killed or been killed. (Actually, I shouldn't say that... nothing "just so happens.")

Of course, the only reason I think this is all fascinating is because I'm not spending Christmas Eve with family tonight, having declined to attend the apparently mandatory Christmas church service Sunday morning.