Lubac on Atheism - II

Lubac writes,

"We do not want a mysterious God. Neither do we want a God who is Some One. Nothing is more feared than this mystery of the God who is Some One.

We would rather not be some one ourselves, than meet that Some One!"

(Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987 [1948]) 214.)

Short but deep. Lubac pierces directly to the heart of atheist spirituality (yes, that’s right, I said "atheist spirituality"). From a Christian perspective, men are fallen creatures - not seeking God as much as running from Him. Genuine "seekers" will find what they ask for, as Jesus tells us. But many who claim to be in pursuit of Truth are merely buying time for themselves to live according to their own dictates rather than submit to the will of God.

Just as in Lubac’s era, atheists today constantly hurl insults at Christians for being "irrational" and for believing in a Being they cannot see (a "mystery" which cannot be fathomed by human reckoning), and for believing in miracles and the Resurrection of Christ. If a God does or ever did exist, He would not the be the kind of Being described in the Bible, so we are told. He would rather be the kind of god famously spoken of by the philosopher Spinoza, or Einstein: universal and infinite, perhaps, but not conscious, not personal, and never interfering in the natural order of things. Even the atheist Richard Dawkins has said — and I am paraphrasing — that he could believe in such a god, because that type of god is not God. He is more of a mathematical concept.

Lubac was insightful: he saw such atheistic comments as the result of human fear. Not liberation, as is so often heralded by atheists, but fear of a God Who is both mysterious and personal. Human history and much of human behavior (not to mention our secret mental worlds) reflect too poorly upon us to accept such a God. So, we try everything to eradicate Him — even to the denial of the peculiar nature of His chief creation, humanity itself. We are no longer the offspring of God, sons of Adam, distinct from the animals, charged with dominion over the earth; rather, we are the offspring of animals, sons of apelike ancestors, one with the animals, charged with evolving the next great species. In short, we would rather not be the image of the mysterious-personal God, we would rather be the result of impersonal forces, somehow having arrived at something we call consciousness (don’t worry, science will soon "explain" consciousness as a "natural" — read impersonal — phenomenon).

Again, a paradox of atheism. Just as with that majority of atheists who are materialists, the deniers of a mysterious God must degrade man in order to do so. The denial of God always logically reduces the value of man. Even when those who argue otherwise speak of freedom, dignity, or progress, they destroy, or at least empty, the very category of personality which makes these concepts meaningful.

Anyone who would lower God beneath the bar of terrestrial measurement, would have no problem degrading man accordingly. But, as Lubac has noticed, the atheist would rather have it that way, even if he and his favorite propagandists say just the opposite.

Christ-Myth Fails Under Scrutiny - Flemming, Freke & Gandy

I first thought to start a blog after writing my first book, Manifested in the Flesh, and before my second, The Return of the Village Atheist. Time got away from me, and I have found myself talking mostly about the so-called "New Atheism" in general and not addressing the Christ-myth atheists that began my descent into the caverns of the infidels to begin with. I here return to the Christ-myth nonsense in order to show just a few of the many breathtaking leaps the Christ-myth writers pawn as scholarship.

There are two varieties of argument, or evidence, which concern me the most. The first are reinterpretations of what have classically been understood as historical witnesses to Christ outside of the Bible: Josephus, Seutonius, Tacitus, etc. Of this class I may find time to deal with later, for the second variety concerns me more. This second class is made up of various references from other religions — often pagan mystery-cults — which sound as if they very explicitly contain Christian doctrines, yet they predate the New Testament writings, sometimes by centuries. These evidences, when they are presented in a certain striking manner (which I shall argue is misleading and poorly researched), lay the foundation for the understanding that Christianity borrowed its most distinct doctrines frm already existing religious cults. Some of these instances, which I have not covered in the book, I want to examine here in this blog.

The problem with such "evidences" is that when you search just below the surface of the presentation — trace just a few footnotes and sources — you find that they are almost made up out of thin air. Following are two clear examples from Timothy Freke’s and Peter Gandy’s book The Jesus Mysteries.

First, Freke and Gandy present the Christian sacrament of Holy Communion, or the Lord’s Supper, as nothing less than an ape and imitation of earlier pagan practices. They write, "The ritual of eating and drinking the ‘body’ and ‘blood’ of Jesus is celebrated by Christians as the Eucharist. Such a ‘holy communion’ was also practiced in the Mysteries, as a means of becoming one with Osiris-Dionysus" (TJM, 48-9). Alongside what should be considered a very general and unconvincing parallel of the Graeco-Roman god Bacchus (the "god of wine"), they proceed to pull out what seems to be the clincher, a genuine smoking-gun. They write,

"An inscription reads, ‘He who will not eat of my body and drink of my blood, so that he will be made one with me and I with him, the same shall not know salvation.’" (TJM, 49).

And just when the readers mind is settling in saying, "I’ve heard that before. That’s Jesus in John 6:53, 6," Freke and Gandy reveal to us the shocking truth: this is not Jesus! It is "actually the Mystery godman Mithras speaking!"(TJM, 49, italics mine). And, believe it or not, they’ve got the scholarly footnote to prove it! They cite scholar Jocelyn Godwin’s book, Mystery Religions in the Ancient World (1981), page 28.

So I trace down Godwin’s book looking for the real ancient source of this "inscription." But I am disappointed: Godwin does say what Freke and Gandy claim, but gives no scholarly citation or source at all for the quote. So, I had to do the scholarly leg-work myself in order to find it.
Finally, after combing through several books, I actually found it. It was quoted by M. J. Vermaseren in Mithras, The Secret God (1963), p. 103-4, and Vermaseren himself is quoting the famous Mithras scholar Franz Cumont’s work. It turns out that the quote is not from any ancient artifact, but is derived from one single medieval manuscript that alleges to parallel Persian religion with Christian.

So, now, put this together. What we have is Freke and Gandy quoting Godwin, who is quoting Vermaseren, who is quoting Cumont, who is quoting a lone manuscript that was written about a thousand years after Christ. Thus we have the refutation. This is shoddy scholarship, quoted uncritically by successive generations of skeptics and passed down like a hereditary disease. There is no such parallel between the words of Christ and Mithras after all, only a very late and dubious manuscript. The apparently striking truth turns out to be a very poor joke.

A second example is even more striking, for it deals with a even more central and distinct Christian doctrine, the Trinity. Freke and Gandy imply (they rarely make a direct claim - rather, they make implications and rely on their readers’ gullibility to fill in the gaps) that Christians stole the idea of a Triune God from previous pagan religion. They write, "The notion of a divine trinity is not found in Judaism, but it is prefigured by paganism" (TJM, 82). Then they quote from a hundred year-old scholar of ancient Egypt, E. A. Wallis Budge. In his 1899 work Egyptian Religion, Budge quotes a religious text that has the god Nerbertcher say "Being One I became Three" (TJM, 82). Sounds like a trinity, right? But how much is it really like the Christian idea?

As in the first case, the context proves the lie. Budge gives us the fuller text (which Freke and Gandy must have had in front of them):

The god Nebertcher says, "I emitted from myself the gods Shu and Tefnut, and from being One I became Three; they sprang from me, and came into existence in this earth. . . . Shu and Tefnut brought forth Seb and Nut, and Nut brought forth Osiris, Horus-khent-an-maa, Sut, Isis, and Nephthys at one birth." (Budge, Egyptian Religion, 42, 45)

So this is hardly a latent trinity, it is merely a very selectively chosen fragment of a very typical polytheistic genealogy of pagan gods. How many gods are there altogether? I count ten. Freke and Gandy should have talked about a "decinity" instead of a trinity - but that, of course, would have been nonsense. So to cover their nonsense, they edited out a tiny fraction of the text which to portray to their readers as a precursor to Christian doctrine. But there is nothing unique about this fragment when seen in its context. There are such genealogies all over the pagan world. Greek mythology is famous for the carousing of the gods. Gnosticism, the heresy which the early Church fathers refuted, had numerous examples of mythical tales that were filled with multi-tiered "emanations" of gods, just like the one spoken here by "Nerbertcher." Christianity was always opposed to it (even as early as Paul - see 1 Cor. 8:5-6).

Speaking of Nerbertcher, here is some more of his soliloquy from the same religious text, just for your entertainment:

"I evolved the evolving of evolutions. I evolved myself under the form of the evolutions of the god Khepera, which were evolved at the beginning of all time. I evolved with the evolutions of the God Khepera; I evolved by the evolution of evolutions . . ." (Budge, 41)

This god seems to have only one thing on his mind. Much like modern "scientific" paganism: the universe created itself and matter is eternally evolving. No wonder these myths are so attractive some modern atheists like Brian Flemming! Hey, maybe someone should send this text to the famous atheist and evolutionist Richard Dawkins. Maybe he might read it and decide he believes in a god after all: the evolved/evolving/evolution god Nerbertcher.

Far from being a source of Christian doctrine, Egyptian religion was looked down upon by the early Church fathers. This should come as no surprise since much of Egyptian paganism was among the most openly base. Here are some facts about Egyptian religion:

1. Egyptian gods were mortal — even the highest among them, Ra, the sun-god, and Osiris. None were necessarily eternal.

2. They had countless gods which were often "grouped" for pragmatic, regional, or relational reasons, sometimes in two’s or three’s.

3. Osiris—Isis—Horus was just one of the later of these concoctions of local gods, and was created mainly to legitimate the undeserved inheritance of the throne by a Pharaoh’s son.

4. The most significant feature of Egyptian religion by far was the outright worship of Animals. For example, the following animals received worship for these purposes:

A. Wisdom (Tahuti-Thoth): Baboon

B. Male Reproduction (Ra and Ptah): Bull

C. Female Reproduction (Hathor-Isis): Cow (the so called "great queen of heaven" was worshipped as a cow! Here’s a direct quote from one Egyptian religious poem: "Hail to thee, Great One, who came forth from the Heavenly Cow." Morning Hymn, Frankfort, p.17)

D. Pregnancy (Ta-urt): Hippopotamus (!)

E. Maternity (Mut): Vulture

(DISCLAIMER: Husbands, do not attempt to use "C," "D," or "E" as terms of endearment at home. Joel McDurmon and American Vision will not be held accountable for any consequences resulting from such actions.)

F. Other Animals worshiped: Falcon, Jackal, Frog, Crocodile, Snakes, Fish, etc. In many cases these animals have been found mummified and placed among buried rulers.

The Early Church fathers picked up on this ridiculous side of Egyptian religion. One of the earliest apologists, Aristides, wrote:

"The Egyptians, moreover, because they are more base and stupid than every people that is on the earth, have themselves erred more than all. For the deities (or religion) of the Barbarians and the Greeks did not suffice for them, but they introduced some also of the nature of the animals, and said thereof that they were gods, and likewise of creeping things which are found on the dry land and in the waters." (The Apology of Aristides, XII)

It is hardly likely that the early Church fathers drew inspiration from the very Egyptian paganism they so openly despised. Besides this, Freke and Gandy are wrong to say that the notion of a divine trinity is not found in Judaism. While it is not explicitly stated in Judaism, the latest New Testament scholarship — notably that of N. T. Wright — is showing that the elements of Trinitarian worship were latent in Judaism from very early on (more on that at another time).

So once again we see that, from every angle, the claim made by Freke and Gandy is so far off as to be on the verge of open dishonesty. Their quote is selective, the actual context of the quote gives a very different story, the historical context of Egyptian religion makes the claim highly unlikely, and the clear views of the early Church itself prove just the opposite point.

A third case concerns the supremely important doctrine of the Incarnation. Freke and Gandy imply that Greek mythology predates this doctrine by nearly 500 years! According to them, the Graeco-Roman god Bacchus came in the Flesh, and they quote him, "Lord god of God born!," "Godhead in a mortal shape . . . manifest to mortal men," "I have changed my immortal form and taken the likeness of man" (they are quoting Euripides, Bacchae, 5C B.C. - compare Phil. 2:7-8; John 1:14).

I refute this claim at length in my book Manifested in the Flesh: How the Historical Evidence of Jesus Refutes Modern Mystics and Skeptics (pp. 91-4). He who wishes to see the full refutation, as well as a fuller defense of the Incarnation may look there. In an Appendix to the same book I cover much more about their book in all its comical details.

It was after viewing the atheist Brian Flemming’s anti-Christian DVD that I realized there needed to be a response this brand of nonsense. The answers are out there, but propagandists like Flemming, and Freke and Gandy, have strewn a labyrinth of misleading thoughts and distractions for their readers and followers. Thankfully, they don’t tend to persuade actual scholars (the only scholarly review that I could find of Freke and Gandy’s book was a scathing and sarcastic criticism - something highly uncommon in scholarly journals. I quote the review in my book). They do, however, persuade lots of uncritical people, and shock a lot of unsuspecting and otherwise unprepared Christians. Let there from now on be no more shock.

If you have any specific questions regarding other claims of the Christ-mythicists, please feel free to email me at the address found on my profile page, or post them in the comments section of this post. I will do my best to research and address the concerns.

Atheists After Your Kid

A few words from a recent Dennis Prager column struck a chord. Why have atheists such as Sam Harris, Dawkins, Dennett, etc., received such a broad hearing? Why are they being listened to so widely, and why are people falling for such weak secular arguments? Prager answers, we cannot overlook the effects of generations of secular education:

"The secular indoctrination of a generation that has grown into adulthood is bearing fruit. Unless one receives a strong religious grounding in a religious school and/or religious home, the average young person in the Western world is immersed in a secular cocoon. From elementary school through graduate school, only one way of looking at the world -- the secular -- is presented. The typical individual in the Western world receives as secular an indoctrination as the typical European received a religious one in the middle ages. I have taught college students and have found that their ignorance not only of the Bible but of the most elementary religious arguments and concepts -- such as the truism that if there is no God, morality is subjective -- is total." (Full Artilce)

Hearing Prager’s comment reminded me of the 45-minute lecture I gave at American Vision’s recent Worldview Super Conference. The argument is right on. While it will be a few weeks before DVD’s of the conference are available, DeMar has given me permission to share my full-text manuscript with my blog audience (see link below).

The speech, entitled "There’s an Atheist After Your Kid," covers the current push among atheist promoters to do everything necessary to usurp total control of the education of your children, even to the extent of coercing the content of home-school curricula, if they could. With Dawkins constantly saying that religious education is a form of child abuse, and that atheists need to unite and form a political lobby, it behooves us as Christians to question the wisdom of secular education, as well as the failure of many Christians to get involved in politics. There are many reasons for this negligence, and I talk about the biggest one in the speech. I also give a Biblical view of educational authority, over against the atheists, and call for Christians everywhere to return to our covenantal commitments to Christian culture, of which the education of children is the beginning.

Some theologians of the late nineteenth century saw the path secular education would lead us down. Reformed giants such as A. A. Hodge, as I quote in the speech, clearly saw that atheism would be the result, and thus he argued against public schooling. Now that we can see Hodge was right, isn’t it time to take his advice before it is too late?

DOWNLOAD THE FULL LECTURE in PDF:
Atheists After Your Kid.pdf