The relations between Christianity and mythical thought can hardly be presented in a few pages. For the fact is that their relations raise several quite separate problems. First of all, there is the equivocal use of the term “myth.” The earliest Christian theologians took the word in the sense that had become current some centuries earlier in the Greco-Roman world, i.e., “fable, fiction, lie.” They therefore refused to see a “mythical” figure in Jesus and a “myth” in the Messianic drama. From the second century on, Christian theologians had to defend the historicity of Jesus against the Docetists and the Gnostics as well as against the pagan philosophers. We shall presently see the arguments they employed to support their thesis and the difficulties they had to meet.

The medieval view of the universe as entirely theophany, manifestation of God; and hierarchy, the ordered participation of all beings to God, could not conceive of an opposition between subject and object. Aut lux hic nata est aut capta hic libera regnat, “here the light is born, or here, captive, it freely reigns,” may be read in the vestibule of a chapel at Ravenna: that not yet created golden light enclosing heaven and earth in the selfsame unity where everything became perceptible at a single glance. From an infinite distance descended the Word, filling the void and becoming the universe; while from below, the rising wave of adoration gradually divested created beings of their terrestrial weight, introducing finiteness and multiplicity into the realm of immutable crystalline eternity. Light as the most efficacious means of sanctification, as the surest way of negating the restrictive power of thingness: this was the basis on which Robert Grosseteste formulated an entire light-cosmogony. The stained glass masters of the cathedrals of the West, and the Byzantine mosaicists held the same view. The description of Saint Sophia, made in the 6th century by Paul the Silentiaire, leads us right into the heart of this magical world of light:

The apse is like a peacock, whose plumage has a hundred eyes. One's sight is blinded by the brilliant light emanating from the golden immensity of the vault. It is a Latin and barbaric display at the same time. The altar is of gold; it rests on golden columns and golden supports; other than gold there are only sparkling gems. In the evening so much light is reflected from the temple that you would think it to be a nocturnal sun. Resplendent night laughs like dawn; it too seems to have rosy feet. The navigator needs no other lighthouse; he need only gaze at the radiant temple.

The history of religion has long and with some justification been under the tutelage of the positivists who have been content to line up witnesses, to catalogue rites and to compile an index of divine epithets—all this with great patience. But it is now being taken away from them, for it seems that it can no longer be confined to description; it must also make an effort to understand.

The subject is therefore evolving along several lines. Sometimes “the religious” is treated as a separate category and subjected to a kind of morphological analysis; sometimes it is viewed in the perspective of other social sciences like psychology and sociology. Each of these points of view is justified by itself to the extent that it agrees with the facts of the matter. But it also exposes the student of religion to the dangers of systematic exclusiveness and excessive generalization.

That religion has a geographic dimension has long been recognized. Men like Alexander von Humboldt, C. Ritter, F. von Richthofen, F. Ratzel, V. de la Blache, and de Martonne repeatedly pointed to the interaction of landscape and religion. It must be admitted that in many cases the geography of religion became a study in the influence of environment upon religious conceptions, essentially of concern to the student of religion rather than to the geographer. On the whole, however, the geography of religion has concerned itself with the way in which religious conceptions work so as to modify the landscape, either directly or indirectly.

Anyone who has had any dealings with Burma and its religion will know the difficulties involved in the definition of the word nat. My own views will, I hope, become clearer in the course of this paper. At the start, however, I should perhaps stress two principal meanings. In the first place, nat refers to beings superior to humans who live very long lives in a number of refined abodes situated above the earth. Many of these nats are recognizable as Hindu deities who have remained in the Buddhist adaptation of Hindu cosmology and the Hindu pantheon. The word nat also refers to certain historical spirits, that is human beings, often but not exclusively Burmese, who—usually after a violent or unpleasant death—have assumed a superhuman status and are still held to play a role in the affairs of men. These nats are usually referred to as the “37 nats” though there are many more than 37 and this principal list of 37 only represents a particular case of a general process whereby certain human beings are still held today to become nats after their death.

To begin with, the subject of this paper is not simply “authority,” nor “the Church and authority,” still less “the Church and political authority,” but Christianity and authority. This means to say that it is intended to discuss the meaning of authority amongst “all those who profess and call themselves Christians,” irrespective of their affiliation to one or another Christian Church or denomination. This proposition makes it incumbent upon us to admit that, although Christians in general owe allegiance to one or another such Church or denomination, these are as yet divided and unreconciled, neither has the recently expressed desire to come to a closer understanding between them been strong enough to bring the different denominations closer to each other. This is a very healthy, but at the same time a very difficult, attitude to take for any Christian who is consciously attached to “his” Church. It is healthy because it makes us admit that our efforts have been too weak—or that no efforts have been made at all—to render the Church to which we belong so overwhelmingly convincing to the other Christians that it has become the rallying point for all Christians. There is a certain fluctuation from one Church to another, but in the effect these movements cancel each other out. Thus the attitude advocated here can serve as a test for the efficacy of our faith. For we believe that “the” Church is built by faith upon faith; and if our faith were but sufficiently effective no true Christian would be able to resist the invitation to join our Church. On the other hand, it is a most difficult attitude to take. For it is a delusion to speak, as the Church of England frequently does, of being “a branch of Western Catholicism.” For no other such “branch” seems to be in communion with this one; and the phrase only tends to obscure “our unhappy divisions.” However, if it is true to say that the Church is the Body of Christ, meaning by this the visibile vestige of His Incarnation, how can it be divided?