Outline: Cunningham, Sacred Quest: Myth
I. Myth: definition
--narrative concerning sacred reality and its relationship to humanity
--designed to disclose the ultimate truth about crucial human questions
--How did things begin? What's the origin of evil?
II. Religious stories
--Stories are central to humans
--Stories are about identity, disclosure, relationships
III. Functions of religious stories
--pass on information, insights, lessons
--recall paradigmatic moments
--vehicles for disclosure
IV. Other kinds of religious stories
--parable: fictional, with goal of getting reader to think in new ways
--allegory: characters and actions stand for something else
V. Preservation of sacred language
--Oral: transmission entrusted to certain people, families, or at certain times
--Written: measure the rightness of ideas or practices in a culture
--Invoke the presence of the sacred by being chanted or read
--Define a community
VI. Summary: Sacred stories
--means of connecting with the sacred dimension of life
--order the cosmos
--sustain and nourish a tradition
--serve an ethical function
VII. Theology
--second-level discourse: thinking about meaning of stories
--exegesis: explanation
--history of a tradition and connection to other traditions
--systematic
--apologetic (why we do things this way and not that)
--critical
--ethical
VIII. Visual Language
--places, art, shrines
--anteroom of the divine
--teaching function
--statement of identity
IX. Language and Truth
--cannot be scientifically proven
--religious truth is not identical with factual truth
--more important to know what practitioners think than to evaluate truth claims