CHAPTER THREE
DEMYTHOLOGISING DEMYTHOLOGY
News 111
'News about Myths, and Myths about News"
PRELIMINARY
Recently, the author was approached for
discussion, by a student. What was happening in the midst of things, in
tertiary College ? As I listened, and we conversed, it became apparent that
this is a sort of academic news. What was being presented was a view
depreciatory of what was called ‘Judaism’, which may have meant many things,
but evidently did not hesitate, for some reason or other, to incorporate the
Old Testament in its apparent ramblings of negativity. Opinings, inclinings
were the acme of udderance rather than utterance, for it seemed the milk was
sour on arrival. The Old Testament ?
What was its place ? How would he, the lecturer, 'assess it'! Soon it appeared, his evocative inclinations and views resulted in a general consensus, interrupted by one only student with the testimony of truth, that we were in the midst of myth.
Daniel was in view. The fact that Daniel predicted the death date of Christ was thus relevant as we discussed the situation. There is something so intensively unmythical about getting dates right, when you have to create a situation, a Saviour and a people who would set Him at nought, and into this ‘creation’ of the mind, put a date for the occurrence. That is - IF you were doing it - not God; if it were you speaking and not God.
Unfortunately, if it is YOU doing it, it is not possible. If it is God doing it, presenting scope, detail and development in historical finesse, it is not myth.
Since this is what the book of Daniel does, we need to look for a moment in that amazingly novel direction in such things, as one has found so often: the FACTS.
Myth is not of this genre. So we looked at the security of the date of Christ’s death and life (as in SMR Appendix C), the death date of Herod as an index, the time of the letters of Paul (and their being used so soon - in fact by Clement of Rome, and with such reverence). SMR pp. 886ff. was in view in the correlation. Such was the offering of Daniel, together of course in Chs. 2 and 7, with the correct delineation of the empires, with carefully precise notation down to the present time. This may be checked in SMR loc. cit..
Then there was the simple fact (as in SMR Ch. 9) that the entire gamut of Jewish history is aptly covered, in a series of phases, in Deuteronomy 28ff., and Leviticus 26, including the sustained mockery of the Jews, their puniness of power compared with the triumphant prevailing of obedient times, their characterisable desolation and desolatory experience of spirit, the seeming long unanswered prayers as they rebelled more and more and the like. All this was assuredly to be, we find, and in Deuteronomy 32 we see the extent of the deliverance which would finally be necessary!
This desolation in increasing tempo was to happen UNTIL they returned to their land - cf.. Luke 21:24, Ezekiel 36-37 and SMR, Appendix A. Then as we shall see, an amazing transformation in VICTORIES was to occur, yet still one with the faithfulness of God, not their own, the criterion as Ezekiel here shows, and Zechariah 12:10 implies for the outset, as we shall also exhibit. Indeed, these things, duly amplified may be followed in SMR Ch. 9, from the outset.
In conversation, we noted (as throughout SMR Ch. 9) the predictions of their dispersion,
their return to
That is now. It is not every day that the
Jews recapture
In fact, God has a plan as the Ch. 9 above shows so clearly from His word. It is that the Jews SHALL return (they did cf. SMR Appendix A), that they would do so, as there displayed, without honour, still disbelieving, in fulfilment of divine promise, that they would still unbelieving, this proceeding somewhat later, to a large return at a more or less national level, TO THE LORD. It is then they are shown predictively from around 2500 years ago, to repent of piercing the Lord, indeed, as God puts it, to "look on Me whom they had pierced".
PREDICTIVE ACCLAIM
This, naturally, far more demanding, involves PEOPLE with wills and wits and imagination and evil and virtuous thoughts and interactions of personality and circumstances meteorological, geological, democratic, autocratic and dramatic. It involves the roving mind and the active spirit of man. It is, for all that, precisely predicted. It NEVER misses, never errs, having the advantage over ANY scientific experiment, where conditions must be most carefully monitored BY MAN. In this case, with ZERO tolerance for error, it is not merely automatically, but emphatically directed by God. He KNOWS man and his heart and ways, and sees time as we can see space, set before Him. He is ABLE and SHOWS it, in this way, to cover any or all history, and elects to instruct us carefully on various matters, and not least among these, the OVERALL and in many respects, detailed history of the Jews (as in Amos 3:7).
Small wonder the monarch who asked his philosopher for reason to believe in God in two words, got back, according to report, the answer: "The Jews".
But let us return to more detail.
The Jews then were to be evicted from their promised land, as predicted from Moses on. It would be at the end of a vast pilgrimage that they would eventually be restored, in triumph.
Thus, eventually
True, the Mosque is still on the Mount, but this is by decision of the Jews who hold the land, not by simple direction from without. At the very least, we are trembling on the brink of what the Lord referred to as "the times of the Gentiles", which of course from Daniel 2,7 and 9, provides us last with the Roman Empire which as shown in SMR pp. 902ff., had to be partly strong and partly weak, and has in fact kept to that throughout its various falls and recrudescences, the Holy Roman Empire phase, the Common Market, the European Union phases, with all the military and social, economic and yes, spiritual consequences as traced in SMR pp. 902-931.
The varied and variegated character of its
complexities was all too well shown in the Roman aspect of the Empire in
later stages, the alliance with a form of religion (SMR pp. 923ff.) and its various calamities and
cruelties. It has been not merely somewhat, but altogether partly strong and
partly weak, partly clay and partly iron as Daniel so precisely predicted
(Daniel
All this had to happen before the Gentiles’
innings was over.
Evidentially, this is the way of this world;
it has a will of its own, but the word of God rules. The announcements in
Zechariah 12 were, moreover, not only PRECISE as to outcome, but DESCRIPTIVE as
to the manner of it: overwhelming power was overcome by minimal defenders in a
glorious manner which was historic and classical. That is why LIFE magazine
memorialised one of the wars of the Arabs et al, against the Jews in a
magnificent photographic magazine. Indeed two marvellous magazines appeared in
the
It was indeed wholly indecent, from a sporting point of view, for Daniel to insist on eviscerating EVERY facet of conceivable mythology from his precise, predictive, empirical, testable approach, down to the use of arithmetic of all things, and dates as indicated in SMR pp. 886 ff., in Daniel 9:24-27. How could any self-respecting atheist, from his/her own mythical position (SMR p. 383) even begin to make the normal assault from the wholly imaginary neutrality of anti-supernaturalist, anti-creationist, anti-God, humanistic, agnostic irrationalism, if he should carry on like this! (cf. SMR pp. 375ff.). How could the normal, and hoped for battering of the book occur from those committed to telling the truth while insisting it was not there to tell, and other allied intellectual slamming contortions which may be good for slimming, but not for scholarship: how could it proceed, if the prophet does this sort of thing. Daniel was NOT a good sport for that particular game. On the other hand, it is not a particularly pleasant or profitable game. The facts are far better.
In our conversation about these things, then, as we roved over the program of the lectures which had been received, we noted that this was in fact, not the stuff of myths. For them, you are not supposed to dabble in simple, literal history. Quite the contrary, to be really hot stuff at myth-making (a refined mythopoeic professional, or even a good amateur cf. SMR pp. 380ff.), you are supposed to invent things. Maybe a little thought and symbol, or maybe even some legendary activity will make someone or something, or some scenario to be raised to the level in which the true and mighty things of origins and meanings and so forth, will appear. Flash it on the screen, and there is your myth.
This then will account for that, one thing for another; or the account, facade or tracery of imaginary events will imply some perspective of understanding in things mighty and meaningful! In myths, this might appear, though the realities be hidden in the figures, the symbols, because on those presuppositions of imaginative imagery and onrush into the ... great questions, nothing is really known.
That is the presuppositional hall of fame for myths. That is the way those who are inured to all this, imbued with it, free from truth and ensconced on the academic throne of will-o'-the-wisp chasing, in the land of wandering thought and wilful extrusions from nowhere in particular, can proceed. Its head can be patted, and the hand that pats can do the same thing in modern dress, as with organic evolution, and make a new myth whilst smiling gently at former myths. It can even forget that it is a myth. That is so VERY modern. (See SMR pp. 252Iff., and That Magnificent Rock Ch.1 and Ch.8.)
So the two, legend and myth fit nicely, like two shoes. Make a legend in some way or other, and then use it for a myth. That is one way. In any case, there is some way for the ingredients to be prepared, cut up on the board, and put into the broth.
But this myth manufacturing presuppositional philosophy in which so many, some witting, some witless, live does not live here. It simply does NOT fit with Daniel in particular, or the Old Testament in general. There is one God (SMR Ch. 1), and He naturally enough being infinite, as there shown, does not dabble in things at the comparable level. He is incomparable. He is not found in some other place. He is where He is, does what He does and does it, of necessity, with a hand and manner which none can imitate. It is not a matter of a Jaguar and a Volkswagen here. It is a question of an infinite difference in power and wisdom. If there WERE any other place where this sort of thing occurred, this precision, this incisive, decisive and accurate account of things past and to come, without any need of revision in some three and one half millenia, then it would militate against the reality that there is ONE GOD... unless of course, He put His word in two places. In fact, there is but one account of this stature.
There is of course a second version. This one
is the one to which the first one referred. It is WRITTEN, and is called in
Isaiah 34, "the book
of the Lord". The one to whom it
refers (cf. Joyful Jottings for detail, as also to
SMR Ch. 9), is called the Lord of the book.
It is He who said that the Bible indeed testified of HIM, but it was not enough
to think so. It was also necessary to come to Him (John
When one does not, however, and when one does
come to this Creator in human format (Colossians 1, John
It is shown in myriads of cases and in ways too marvellous to isolate in this chapter. However some examples are provided of that blend of
· worship (for it is fitting to worship one's Creator and Redeemer, whose goodness give to this quality its very name - cf. SMR Ch. 4 pp. 368ff., 372ff., 428ff., 582ff., 611ff., 620ff.).
· work (for the night is coming),
· peace (for "the work of righteousness will be peace, and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance forever"),
· joy (for who would not rejoice at the defeat of the sin that binds, the death that severs, the darkness that looms),
· delight (for the Lord is in FACT very wonderful, and there is none like Him as a friend),
· grace (for one's failures, here or there, are not pounced on by some angry tiger, but dealt with by One as compassionate as a nurse, as firm as law and as pardoning as goodness, since the penalty is covered, and the family kindness is always present, as are the qualities that prevail), and
· power to prevail, for the assignments are to be performed as given, and who but He can secure that!
· miracle as required for SUCH purposes as these, in completing the work assigned.
But the history of nations is replete with the exhibition of His worship, praise and the enduements of His grace.
His transformations are proverbial, innumerable,
· history's darlings and marvels - people of stable and informed purpose who did not cringe, yes, neither trusted in themselves, whose words ring and whose lives speak (like Bunyan, Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Knox, like the 2000 C. of E. Clergy who left in the 1660's their homes, salaries and even physical safety rather than cringe in conformity to unchristian requisitions from forms and forces not the Saviour, but the State; like the innumerable Scotch Presbyterians who refused to Caesar the pulpit of shame, and suffered loss, were put in cages, exposed to winds, shot at in forests);
· for courage has been so often required that books of martyrs abound; and faith so greatly utilised that wonder mixes with poignancy as the saints suffer and prevail in goodness and righteousness... not the saints of form, but those of fact, whose reliance is on Christ, on God only as required (I Timothy 2, Jeremiah 17, Psalm 2, Psalm 62, Ezekiel 33, Romans 3-8, Psalm 73).
These things are the lot of HIS people, who are not aristocrats but forgiven sinners in whom He lives, whose word is as He has given it, and life derived from His.
It is not enough to tell your neighbours how
good He is. You have to come and have the operation and receive the work of His
gift from His hands. In that sense, yes there is a living book, the Lord in
person on earth (as in Philippians 2 cf. Repent or Perish Ch. 2, pp. 41ff., A Spiritual
Potpourri Ch. 12, and Biblical
Blessings Ch. 13). Indeed, the
Old Testament and the New alike, state, predict and retrodict with fearsome
indifference to the libellous words of their detractors. They simply do not so
operate, as unbelief would desire. They are crisp, clear and decisive,
pervasive, invasive and their very profundity is at no odds with their scope,
coverage and fearless audacity and enterprise. If it were possible to stick the
neck out in the presence of the guillotine of factuality as a stunt, this would
far surpass that. Indeed, God constantly reiterates it: HE IS TELLING
But enough. Let us look at the underlying
misconception, confusion and lèse-majesté being committed by those, perhaps
themselves immersed agnostically in myths of their own making, who like to look
at everything and everyone else as if caught in the same predicament.
PREDICAMENT
Predicament ? But of course.
- If you cannot know it all, how can you tell;
- if knowledge in this old and weary world, is not available,
- but only glimpses of symbolism and talk;
- and if you cannot tell ...
- then why, and indeed HOW
- tell ANYONE ANYTHING about myths and the like.
Caught in your own, you are a
mere myth on legs, by your own devisings.
GETTING DOWN TO IT
Myths! that appears to be the vocal depreciation trundled out to obscure or interpret the fantasies of men in the dust of contrivance. There are those who say such things even in academic circles, in lieu, it might seem, of reason. It is not, indeed, that they do this on purpose; but then purpose is not always the guide of man. Events can come from the cultural medium, the political pressures, the domestic blend, the educational milieu, the longing of the heart and the hopelessness of the burdened heart, often too obscure in its sorrow, to know WHY there is such heaviness.
This is the MODEL often propounded. It is in the generic of Kantianism (dismissed advisedly in SMR Ch. 5 and Predestination and Freewill Appendix on Kant, cf. SMR p. 397, for more than adequate reason, as self-contradictory). It is in essence a mythical model. The forms of fantasy are supposedly enlivened by the imagination of dim comprehension of something or other in the art forms of creative thought. (In fact, this is not the least of the reasons why incredibly unsophisticated and elementary forms of art can win prizes nowadays. It is sometimes to help comprehension of the fact that they do not comprehend, but want to 'talk' about it, that skilful artists present artistically almost execrable substitutes for art. They do this, and often, then they 'win'. The prize is real enough! It is a pose, a posture, a philosophy, and at the present, it can pass for art. So does defamation of art interpret degradation of spirit.)
The general approach to cynicism and scepticism has been provided in SMR Ch. 3. The exposure of the surrogate character of the myth charge, from the source which itself is susceptible to it, has been shown in SMR pp. 380ff.. It is installed where it does not belong; and more ironic still, it proceeds as an intrusive label FROM the source where it does belong. It is like would-be emigrants who do not WANT their own country, alleging that some other country is the same, from a state of appalling ignorance of its actual nature. Myths are exported intemperately from the land of myth, in the minds of men, who see as if in dark glasses, mythically set. Myths are seen everywhere, but of course, they are really a mere projection of the philosophic glasses.
The exquisite and precise character of the myth which is ANY alternative to Almighty God for the source of the earth has been noted in SMR pp. 252H-I, and its expatiation presented numerously in such places as : News 82, That Magnificent Rock Ch. 8 pp. 254ff., Answers to Questions 5, pp. 116ff., Repent or Perish 7, Kingdom of Heaven Ch. 8, SMR pp. 999-1002. Again, the very basics of its scientific squalor appear in SMR pp. 145ff., and the detail of that squalor in That Magnificent Rock Chs. 1, 5 and 7, with additions in Ch. 8. The historical flow of the escapades is noted in SMR pp. 422Eff..
What of the dominant model of man which excludes understanding, of the temporal man, the controlled and the conditioned man ? Those so shrouded in the clouds of control and compulsion, of the unconscious and the libido, or the martial arts of historical determinisms, or the social injections of the times, or the biological necessities which are imagined but never found as the leverages on life, may well opine about myth. They become myths by their own theories; in theory. In practice ? It is not quite so simple.
There is the conscience and the spirit of
man, with its clouds and vapours, hopes and imaginations, which, when
undisciplined can move mountains of mullock onto the mind, and make it a sort
of mini-Hiroshima. (See Barbs, Arrows and Balms 18, 19, 26, Appendix 1, SMR Ch. 4, Spiritual Refreshings for the Digital
Millenium Ch. 13). From such sources
discourses are prone to be radioactive. Destruction is their métier. It is
however not imparted, so much as exhibited. It is sad, even poignant.
THINGS THAT SHOULD NOT HAPPEN:
WAR BY DECLARED NEUTRALS!
Indeed, you have in this sort of philosophical presuppositional milieu the quite delightful situation that the NEUTRALITY which some academics love to profess, becomes nothing less than a call to submerge religion in culture (or anything else you might prefer, mythical implications of culture will do, anything so long as MAN is in charge and his mind and spirit are FREE from the objectivities of their construction and of reality), and then profess they know nothing. Obviously they then could not teach ANYTHING, so it is often better on this way, to profess that NO ONE ELSE knows anything, while as for their part, THIS THEY KNOW, that this is so.
Thus you have in this disingenuous construction two classes. The teaching and the taught. The teacher KNOWS ONE FACT about religion, that no one knows what it really is, or what the end and beginning and middle and meaning REALLY is. THIS of course he/she COULD get only by KNOWING THE ABSOLUTE which is NOT so limited and obscured, clouded and controlled, disposed and dispossessed of knowledge of these things as man is SUPPOSED to be. It is not just that the teacher would have to KNOW that there WAS an absolute, but that it would have to divulge its nature in express and definitive terms.
Otherwise, of course, the absolute, when it arrived into the interstices of the mind of man, would simply be muddled and muddied by all the limits, unconscious drives, prejudices and stark inabilities attributed to man in his relativised situation (another presupposition, these neutralities come to war in droves, all dressed as civilians). BUT IF, as required for knowledge of such things, the teacher did KNOW GOD in this way, then of course God would need to be THERE to be known, and to have the interest in DIVULGING this information definitively, escaping the derailing, pollution and distortions of man in the process.
Then scientifically we would naturally want to see its credentials. If a lecturer HAS such a divulgement so that he COULD know that there was nothing there, it could only come from SOMETHING there, articulate and definitive. The ONLY way there could be the removal of truth, would be by its presence. It is a difficult task, is it not! Yet they know, which implies this existence, which they then deny. Self-contradiction is the penalty of lèse-majesté to truth, in short order.
We are discussing a type of philosophic position, which tends naturally to discount any ABSOLUTE TRUTH, with the absence of it in order to do so. It is amusing ? It is disastrous. It is common.
But the ground ? The credentials for such
knowledge, even though it be couched in negative
terms ? These unfortunately this kind of
lecturer NEVER presents, for the very sufficient reason that it is SUPPOSED
that whatever there is, for, by or through which everything is: this is not and
CANNOT be known. Hence he/she is in a bind.
It is this. To present these presuppositions as a basis for thought (NATURALLY they are not STATED to be such, for the show could not then go on), is to present them as true. IF they are KNOWN to be true, then what they profess MUST be contradicted to enable such knowledge to be even possible. Indeed the impossibility of objective validity without the self-revealing God is dealt with in detail in That Magnificent Rock Ch. 5, extended in Ch. 7 and again presented in Barbs, Arrows and Balms 7 (cf. SMR Ch.3).
· While they assure us that everything is relative,
· they procure the absolute truth that this is so,
· thereby contradicting themselves:
· as they oppress with logical fallacies to match the magics of naturalism,
· the reductionisms of humanism,
· itself unmeasured, measuring all,
· and the fluencies of irrationalisms,
· presented (of course) with reason,
· just to complete the fiasco!
This MYTHOLOGY of the lecturers of so many of our bogged down tertiary institutions may not in the least resemble what they think; but from observation, in this genre of philosophy which rules so many tertiary halls, this is the way it frequently goes. Now to DEMYTHOLOGISE the demythologising in which they often think they are embarking: this is the pleasant task of the moment. Since this, their frequently found position, as demythologisers of the New Testament or the Old, for that matter, requires this base, and the base requires that the things presented would HAVE to be true, in the book they criticise, at least in kind, then the more they reject, the more they accept. In this mental splits situation, one would expect they may become a little strained. It is but natural.
What is less natural is the folly of students listening to such self-contradiction.
C.S. Lewis*1A in his GOD IN THE DOCK has a delightful chapter (5) on the Myth Becomes Fact. Here he notes that the realities can stretch beyond our ken (for although the works of God attest His capacities, His heart must be revealed). Seeing may occur in ways less than adequate. People might put this in myth. When however God sees fit to unleash His Son on earth, send His eternal word in the flesh format for better instruction, inspection and the bearing of sin for those who do not LIKE or WANT the controls and constraints which SIN provides (for it is this, and not really society or the other brutalities ascribed to our situation, by the mechanists of psychology and the dilettantes of philosophy, which is the base and the elective dynamic): what then ?
THEN says Lewis, the area which man seeks to interpret, interprets itself and presents itself. What was beyond man is now in his midst. What he sought in limited language/comprehension is now presented in unlimited actuality. God has spoken in flesh.
K.A. Kitchen provides a very different but equally applicable approach when in his Ancient Orient and Old Testament he points out that it is time the delusive, presumptuous, arrogantly distanced from reality philosophies stopped trying to ram their thoughts impotently into the Bible; and that instead, some severe and realistic study was made of its MILIEU. In the Middle East, he indicates, there are to be found the historical and geographical, the social and the political ways and proceedings in terms of which the Bible may the more aptly be understood, than in the presence of rashly intruded twentieth or nineteenth century philosophies. He illustrates with some finesse. These philosophic assumptions, used in place of actual and precise study of what is there, have of course been outrageously jejune and inapplicable, often based on the evolutionary theory which has bitten scientific dust to the point its very teeth are broken (as displayed in precise detail in That Magnificent Rock Ch. 1) . They are desolated to the point of being almost like a one act play. There is only one act, since the act does not work.
Thus arrived the infamous follies of the
German scholar Welhausen, in which he sought to indicate that there could be no
such literary and legal advancement as would make it POSSIBLE for Moses to KNOW
so much as to write the laws and to include the lore which is to be found in
the legal systems of the Pentateuch. He was of the genre of the evolutionary
myth (correctly so-called as in SMR pp. 252Iff.,
and exhibited Wake Up World, Your Creator is Coming... Chs. 4 and 5, and That
Magnificent Rock Ch. 8). The myth controlled his thought, but history
did not; logic did not: it was an affront to fact to impose such concepts. This
was of course shown when
As Dr Clifford Wilson shows so well in his 'the
impact of
This reinforced Kitchen's*2 whole point: know what you are talking about it, and talk about it as it relates to what it is saying, not to some egregious philosophy. As we see, such philosophies ally themselves with nothing so well as irrationality, and live nowhere long (except in the minds of those for whom the severities of scientific method are not duly applied, for whatever reason, as shown in the above references).
When one considers the FINDING of the
HITTITES who were for long not known to secular contemporary literature in our
times, and this endorsement of Biblical records, the excavations of Professor
Garstung and recently, Dr Bryant Wood at Jericho, and the prodigious
correlation with Biblical statement ... and so on (but see SMR for these treats
and similar, on pp. 68ff., 377-385, 712ff., 945ff., 1003ff., 1082ff., 1180-1186C), it is apparent that
philosophy has indeed been a substitute for both simple logic and hard digging.
The philosophies of mythology, which end up as a mythical novelty of the
twentieth century, still clinging on like dying vines, abound; but it is time
they were comprehensively demythologised. They are illogical, self-contradictory;
they smuggle in propositions which they use to remove opposition, but which
first remove themselves. This they fail almost routinely to notice, or if they
notice, to acknowledge.
·
As
we note in Repent or Perish Ch. 7, SMR 999-1003, pp. 374-385 and indeed in the entirety of
Ch. 3, in SMR pp. 422Eff., and in Answers to Questions
5, pp. 116ff., Wake Up World! Your Creator
is Coming...Chs. 4 and 5,
and numerous other places:
· it is ONLY the logical realities of a creator who is ADEQUATE for what happens -
· and not the naturalistic mythology which talks demurely in terms of what neither in form, in force, in structure nor in observation CAN or DOES create itself (a difficult task, in any case, and nothing is first itself debarred by definition alone! cf. Barbs, Arrows and Balms 29) -
· which suffices.
All
else is exactly and precisely myth: the development of a scene and scenario of
thought, with or without historical association, but with a certain vivid or
hopeful note of action, which is neither logically adequate for what it
portends, nor equipped with technical interface to produce it. It is a musing,
a roving, an imaginative reflectiveness, filled with action, here non-persons,
'forces' apparently real or conceivably once extant, which without any evidence
to support it, stir thought and makes the ignorant happy, or sad, or in some
way contented with the innovation. It serves its clientele; but it is NOT a
logical structure. THIS is the nature of the myth which avoids the Creator, and
would make a magical power to descend, unobserved and unobservable, without
ground or testable element, onto the scene to ...
"explain" it.
WHAT DOES HAPPEN
When however we have a book which is eminently testable in detail of spade and conspectus, in hundreds of thousands of words of depictions of the past, present and future, filled with predictions and principles in the best manner that is so fitting for that other model, a SCIENTIFIC hypothesis, and without descending to that level as a PRODUCT, which performs at that level as a PRESENTATION, then of course this must be tested. It must be seen if it will validate itself or not; whether its claims are consistent with its performance or not. In the Biblical religion of revelation ONLY is such a privilege accorded in vast and unflinching multitudes of manners. If then that is from God, then of course we are out of the purlieus of philosophical confinement. First, methodically, people can TEST it.
It has lasted for some 3 and one half millenia unwounded, and HISTORY is its laboratory which shows as we watch, thousand year stride by thousand, what it says happening. It predicts that God (Psalm 45) is to send the One who is to be sacrificed for sin (Isaiah 53), and indeed the basic course with numerous precise details, of the history of the race. It focusses on the end of the Age, which by its words is ours; and it discusses this in just that detail which any testable item needs, to be validatable*3.
This we see in SMR Chs. 8- 9, and in numerous other places.
It presents a CHRIST to come who HAD to perform miracles, rise from the dead, be slain by His own people, in the process piercing His hands and feet, who would produce a GOSPEL which is specified in advance, which would circuit the Gentile world which in turn would provide its own predicted procedures to doom, for its neglect, as similarly earlier shown for the Jews. Like an operation, it is useless as a basis for blaming the doctor if you do not have it.
All this is found in the above reference to prophecy and principle, and far more. Hence, available for test is the PERSON of Christ, for whom ONE slip in behaviour, in morals, in knowledge, in error on any topic of life, when under scrutiny as the Messiah would instantly have ended His unassailable career. This test for Him, as God in flesh, was a stinging opportunity and it was used to the full, even to the point of seeing what happened ... when He was literally stinging when metal pierced, as predicted, His hands and feet. What happened HAD to be like that; the environment of people, of terms, of truth, of rejection, of power, of willingness, of place and so on: it all had to be or the Bible was wrong.
It has never been impugned by reason. Indeed, not only this, but the subsequent developments in deep and often detailed measure, and profoundly so for our own generation (see SMR Chs. 8-9), had to be. They were and are testable. They pass with honours. What happens is in the tone and tenor as well as in the detail of the predictions. The principles apply. The results accrue, and we are living them.
Hence the projections of world history are as
open as a book. It is all shown. It could be prevented by powerful man trying
to show God wrong; but it is not. The resurrection could have been rubbished,
though predicted for a millenium. He could have been smashed into small pieces;
kept in irons, exhibited as a corpse. But it was not se (cf. SMR pp. 931ff.).
THINGS THAT DO NOT HAPPEN
NOTHING is EVER carried off against the Bible, which serenely smiles while the vilification and demythologisings proceed from those whose inadequacy of thought, infelicity of logic, contradiction of concept make it ESSENTIAL that their demythologising be demythologised. Theirs is the myth, and the word of God is the ONLY LOGICALLY POSSIBLE source of truth. Its actuality is shown moreover not merely by its millenial invulnerability, its constant confirmation and that the more dramatic in the midst of endless endeavours of wits to invest it with error, but by the necessity that that God whose being is assured from His words (as in SMR Chs. 1, 3), should have divulged His answer to the world so constructed in behaviour and spirit, as it now is (as also shown in the above chapters on Biblical prophecy, 8-9).
It is found (as likewise shown in detail in SMR Chs. 1,3, 10) in ONLY one place which meets the specifications of the case. THAT place confirms itself in the concerted, programmatic performances of Christ and history, which have had, in science, in any art or endeavour, almost limitless opportunities to find a refutation, a sustainable criticism; but these have failed, and it has stood. In Barbs, Arrows and Balms Chs. 1-3, we see some of the all but incredible antilogisms indulged in by those who seek to escape. There is systematically, however, no escape; except in myths. These are fine so long as they are not believed to be true: as an art form or poem. Logic requires something better for truth.
The Bible moreover divorces its account of
the creation from just such things as those mythical wanderings, with a
rigour and vigour so great, that one has had to memorialise and demonstrate it
in
The Biblical Workman Ch. 7, A Spiritual
Potpourri Ch. 9, SMR pp. 485-498 (cf. a useful additive in Creation,
Vol. 19, No. 1, Dec. 1996-Feb. 1997, pp. 23ff., dealing with alternative
writing that could have been used).
C.S. Lewis shows similar things concerning
the New Testament presentation of Christ, also at the literary level which, in
terms of myths and non-myths, was his field at
ff., we see something of the
- "Reviewers both friendly and hostile, will dash you off such histories with great confidence; will tell you what public events had directed the author's mind to this or that, what other authors had influenced him, what his over-all intention was, what sort of audience he principally addressed, why - and when - he did everything... ... " ; and he adds:
- "not one of these guesses has on any one point been right."
THINGS THAT DID HAPPEN ...EVEN THEN!
When however we resume normal testing, we find that
- the power and the successful proclamation in Jerusalem
- of the precise things which, were they untrue,
- would have been instantly dismissed as mere verbal garbage from a collection of obviously lying rotters,
· but being true would be expected to draw many thousands;
· and that men who would not budge, when they declared the resurrection of His body:
Could the enemy, then, stop Him, from acting, and ... from laughing ?
- Leaving however the rational requisition that the word of God must be present and true, as demonstrated in SMR Chs. 1,3,10, and the historical, literary, paleontological, biological, chemical, physical, archeological and social confirmations, the teachers of myth proceed with their own manufacture, with the smoke screen
- of calling that myth which lacks EVERY ingredient of myth,
- and using for their own part,
- what has EVERY PHASE of it, as they present.
But what DO they say, those who so teach ?