It looks like there might be water on the moon (H/T Huff Post). As a backyard astronomer (with my tiny 4.5 inch Dobsonian) I love stuff like this.
But there is a pinch with my religious faith in all this. Right? Jesus goes "up" into heaven? The creeds say he "descended" into hell?
This is why I've always been attracted to Bultmann's demythologizing approach and, recently thanks to Tracy, the work of Tillich.
From the beginning of Bultmann's Kerygma and Myth:
The cosmology of the New Testament is essentially mythical in character. The world is viewed as a three storied structure, with the earth in the center, the heaven above, and the underworld beneath. Heaven is the abode of God and of celestial beings -- the angels. The underworld is hell, the place of torment. Even the earth is more than the scene of natural, everyday events, of the trivial round and common task...
All this is the language of mythology, and the origin of the various themes can be easily traced in the contemporary mythology of Jewish Apocalyptic and in the redemption myths of Gnosticism. To this extent the kerygma is incredible to modern man, for he is convinced that the mythical view of the world is obsolete. We are therefore bound to ask whether, when we preach the Gospel today, we expect our converts to accept not only the Gospel message, but also the mythical view of the world in which it is set. If not, does the New Testament embody a truth which is quite independent of its mythical setting? If it does, theology must undertake the task of stripping the Kerygma from its mythical framework, of "demythologizing" it.
