For many years David Tacey has written and spoken of the need for spiritual depth in Australian young people, who have largely rejected religious belief as irrational. In his latest book – Beyond Literal Belief: Religion as Metaphor – he outlines the problem he sees, discusses the inadequacy of the response among the Christian churches, and proposes a solution.
In his judgment, the narrow assumption that reality is confined to what can be seen and measured, is thin and damaging. It disallows the access we need to deeper and intangible human reality.
The churches, which do speak of another world, fail to provide this access to our contemporaries because they demand that their stories, symbols and creeds be literally understood. Our prevailing culture rightly dismisses this claim as unbelievable.
He argues that the Christian story, like all religious beliefs, should be seen as metaphor. Although tied to the historical life of Jesus, it points to the deeper reality within us. When we cease to understand literally the stories of Jesus miracles and his rising from the dead, and the belief that God became man in Jesus, we can enter the deeper reality that these stories intimate and find illumination in them.
Tacey argues further that in turning from a literal understanding we recapture the original Christian message. It was based on a life-changing spiritual experience associated with Jesus, and expressed in metaphor. But these metaphors soon came to be taken literally, and the literal interpretation was later enforced by the authority of the institution. Only in recent centuries have brave thinkers seen the absurdities of a literal understanding. Tacey appeals to Jung’s exploration of myth as a way of expressing deep aspects of the human world.
The urgency with which he has addressed the shallowness of the culture inherited by young people, and his despair at the failure of the Christian churches to meet their hungers, explain why he criticises so vehemently those in churches who resist his interpretation.
This makes it difficult for me as a Catholic priest to engage helpfully with his argument. I have long admired Tacey for the seriousness and effectiveness of his reflections on religious education. I also find illuminating his exploration of Christian stories and Christian symbols. But in taking issue with his central argument, I shall inevitably be seen to share the timidity, lack of intellectual rigour and self interest he finds in the churches.
I certainly acknowledge that I have an interest.