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About
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Table of Contents
Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV
Part V
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Part II: Primitive Monotheism and
the Origin of Polytheism
Chapter 2
Some Implications
FROM THIS all too brief survey, several
points of importance emerge. Most obvious, of course, is the
evidence that at least with respect to man's religious history
the theory of evolution is quite contrary to the facts. The most
primitive people are still assumed to be a paradigm of early
man, since the parallels between their art, their weapons, and
their general cultural level and the art and weapons of prehistoric
man are pretty well taken for granted. The Eskimo, in particular,
is said to give us a very good picture of Paleolithic man. Yet
Paleolithic man is supposed to have been almost a gibbering ape
except for his possession of some tool-making skills and social
organization which the apes never achieved, whereas his modern
representatives in every part of the world have a highly developed
religious sense which is totally at variance with any theory
of animal origins.
It
is true that today we find these people with religious beliefs
encrusted over and almost totally submerged by superstitious
fears and distortions that seem to us of the worst kind. It is
easy to be horrified by some of their religious practices (ritual
cannibalism, for example). But when such practices are compared
with modern use of nuclear weapons, they could be more humane
when viewed in the light of their object, since in this case
it is not so much the destruction of their enemies as it is the
acquisition of the strength they admire in them and wish to capture
for themselves. And, of course, for reasons already noted, they
have tended to neglect the benevolent and merciful heavenly Father
of whom they seem once to have had knowledge and whom they believe
they need not fear, and seek instead to appease the malevolent
and more immediately present evil spirits which they believe
they do need to fear.
It
seems clear now that man must have begun with a pure concept
of a Supreme Being, a great God, Lord of all, Creator of
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the world, merciful and
just and all-seeing, omnipresent, and omniscient. This was the
faith of primitive people whom evolutionists themselves hold
to be our "contemporary ancestors."
Where did this pure faith come
from? It was revealed from the very beginning, and such a revelation
demonstrates that man's mind at the very beginning was clearly
capable of spiritual comprehension. Adam and Eve were not exceptional
animals barely escaped from some primate herd, but creatures
of another order by an act of divine creation which prepared
them to enjoy a unique relationship with God and to be the recipients
of a much fuller revelation than appears from a superficial reading
of Genesis. They walked with God in the Garden and communed with
Him.
Moreover, as for existing primitive
people themselves, I believe, culturally speaking, that they
once knew better things. (36) What the evidence does show is that men may preserve
certain recollections of man's original faith if they have not
been corrupted by the sophistications of high civilization. Civilization
tends rather to cloud than to clarify true faith. Lord John Avebury
observed: "Materialism is one of the latest products of
the human mind; spiritualism [he did not mean what we mean now
by this word] is one of the earliest." Primitive people
are far more disposed to attend to matters of the spirit, to
accept God as real, than civilized man is. Civilization robs
man of his spiritual perception, rather than enhancing it.
This is an important fact because
it is contrary to what we generally assume. It always comes as
a shock, for some reason, to find that the cultured genteel individual
may be totally untaught in the things of God and even hostile
to spiritual truth. It is the "nice" people who are
so often spiritually unconcerned. Somehow, God still seems able
to speak more easily and directly to people who are less culturally
sophisticated. Not many noble are called (1 Corinthians 1:26).
As a consequence, one has to face
the anomalous fact that in that very aspect of human behaviour
which most completely distinguishes man from the animals, namely,
his religious sense, man appears to have had his clearest insights
when he had, supposedly, barely repudiated his animal heritage.
On the other hand, when he had struggled "upwards"
after millennia of civilization he had in fact lost his initial
vision and become spiritually decadent. At the same time the
very people who propose this anachronism would also like us to
believe that as man has culturally evolved, his spiritual insights
have gradually been purified until he has now achieved a monotheistic
36. Custance. Arthur C., "Primitive
Cultures: A Second Look at the Problem of Their Historical Origin,"
Part II in Genesis and Early Man, vol.2 in The Doorway
Papers Series, Zondervan Publishing Company.
pg.2
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and elevated
concept of the nature of God. Yet in the same breath we are assured
this process of "improvement" will only reach its climax
when man no longer has any such religious beliefs at all! The
logical extension of a false premise inevitably leads to such
contradictions.
Again,
the history of man's religious insights underscores a further
fact of profound significance. To hold part of the truth but
not the whole of it may be as dangerous as holding no truth at
all. It is said that heresy is part of the truth carried to its
logical conclusion. The great "ecumenical" heresy is
that God is benevolent. God is indeed benevolent, though merciful
would be a much better word; but God is also just. The unthinking
individual who knows only that God is good will be misled into
feeling safe no matter what he does. He can with equanimity ignore
the worship or recognition of God altogether. God won't mind
how he behaves, for no matter what he does he can assure himself
that he has had nothing to fear and that God will fully understand
even if he forgets Him completely. He need only fear evil.
The
Christian concept of God as loving and merciful has been welcomed
by society because it is such a "comfortable doctrine."
Part of the truth carried to its logical conclusion gives an
entirely false view of man's relationship with God. And, there
is every reason to suspect, it is an entirely unsatisfactory
view in point of fact. The very idea of God being displeased
with man's conduct, or judging his motives, or intending to reward
his life appropriately at some great Assize is safely dismissed.
At first, such a liberation from the fear of consequences can
be a tremendous relief. But just as the man who falls freely
in space is temporarily liberated from the conscious effects
of gravity � until he hits the ground � so a man thus
"liberated" from the burden of unforgiven sin will
feel a tremendous sense of relief until, suddenly, the illusion
of "weightlessness" is destroyed. Most men have this
awful sense of "reckoning" at times � some with
an appalling sense of terror. Psychiatrists actually have been
gradually coming to the conclusion that man is unhealthy without
some fear of the consequences of sin. Freedom from gravity even
in the physical world may yet prove to be unexpectedly upsetting
to man's well-being. (37) It is not healthy to live in a dream
world where all is forgiven and dismissed as though nothing had
ultimate significance nor will ever be brought before some higher
Court of Justice.
37. M.D. Canada, vol.11,
1968, p.70.
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One of man's strange problems is the persistent feeling
that in some way he really ought to be punished and not merely
forgiven, otherwise he cannot forgive himself. To feel the urge
to punish oneself, to make some kind of expiation, while at the
same time believing that there really is no one in heaven or
on earth who cares whether such an expiation is made can be very
disturbing. It leaves man with a sense of guilt but no sense
of sin -- the modern dilemma. We are so constituted that there
is a greater sense of release in falling down before a God of
justice and appealing for mercy, than there is in trying to persuade
oneself that no wrong has been done at all because there is no
ultimate source of righteousness. The burdened conscience remains
as a mockery, but it remains burdened. So the most primitive
people, like the most civilized, have never been quite able to
rid themselves of the feeling that it is necessary to make sacrifices
which cost something. But because God is thought of as benevolent
only and therefore not requiring sacrifices, such sacrifices
are made to devils � for to whom else can they be made?
So,
originally, man's faith in the goodness of God was balanced by
an equal knowledge of His holiness and justice. But one of the
effects of civilization was to "play down" the more
demanding side of God's nature, until His justice has become
entirely lost sight of and conscience has become the plaything
of cultural values which are relative. Nobody minds one saying
today that God is love, but one is not considered very civilized
if one says that God is also just. In short, a part of the truth
is a dangerous thing, and we need to restore the equally important
truth that God is not only benevolent and forgiving but just
and demanding also. I suspect that rather extraordinary things
would happen for good, if God's ministers were once more to proclaim
the message of judgment as Jonathan Edwards did. The fear of
the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. . . .
And
this brings me to the final point. As we have seen, there is
every reason to believe from the study of the "faith"
of primitive people that man once shared a revelation of the
nature of God and man's relationship to Him. Yet we know from
Scripture that even by the time of Abraham there was scarcely
an individual alive to whom that revelation was of any vital
consequence. How did this come about? Is revealed truth itself
powerless? The answer, I think, must be Yes, such truth is
powerless. It is powerless, unless it is freshly revealed in
every generation and to the individual personally. A knowledge
of the truth, no matter how precise and accurate it is, if it
has been acquired merely by oral transmission or by reflection,
is powerless to engender genuine spiritual understanding. The
truths
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we inherit
do not provide real insight. Thus the same truths may survive
for several generations and yet be spiritually sterile, and being
sterile will become of little consequence, something preserved
by habit but without power to affect conduct. One sees this in
the lives of young people who have been brought up in a godly
Christian atmosphere, where they have become familiar with truth,
the real significance of which is lost to them entirely, because
they have been taught only by man and not by the Holy Spirit.
This
is what I mean by the necessity of inspiration. We may be told
a saving truth, perhaps in Sunday school, until we are word perfect,
and yet be totally unresponsive to it, until one day the Holy
Spirit opens our understanding. It is clear that the Holy Spirit
cannot open our understanding to truths that we have never heard,
and to this extent the memorization of Scripture is a kind of
guarantee that at least the vehicle for the communication of
spiritual insight will be available to the Holy Spirit. The danger,
however, is that truth with which one becomes familiar in this
way may cease to convey any meaning whatever, so that the mind
becomes hardened against that which ought to enlighten but doesn't.
It is even more unfortunate that the Truth itself acquires the
reputation of being inconsequential by reason of its powerlessness.
The crucial point here is that spiritual truth is powerless,
and it is even a hindrance unless and until the Holy Spirit has
opened our real understanding to its true meaning. Though this
may appear as bordering upon heresy, it seems to me that there
is more hope for those who have never heard the truth of the
gospel than there is for those who have heard it all their lives.
Perhaps, in the wisdom of God, there is more hope for the present
generation of biblical illiterates than for the generation which
lived in the borrowed light of Victorian times.
Thus,
in summary, the evidence shows unequivocally that man cannot
have evolved in his religious insights in the kind of a way he
has evolved in his technical skills, for example, because while
these skills steadily improved, his insights did precisely the
opposite. Man evidently started with a vital faith in God and
a conception of his own relationship to Him that must have been
revealed, since it has never been improved upon nor even maintained
unless continually strengthened by or confirmed by revelation.
In
the possession of a capacity for spiritual understanding man
is a unique creature, but he is also a fallen one, constantly
needing the renewing of his mind because constantly plagued by
the noetic effects of sin. Neither the enlarging influence of
civilization, which
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frees
him from some of the burdens of daily living, nor the softening
and restraining effects of culture, which set some limits to
his evil propensities, are adequate to dispel his spiritual blindness
or set him free from superstition, fear, and idol worship.
The
original revelation of which so many nations and tribes have
a dim recollection must be renewed by the Holy Spirit in the
heart of the individual to be effective in transforming his life,
enlightening his mind, and bringing peace into his soul. Without
this divine inspiration, neither traditional knowledge nor personal
reflection will return man to fellowship with his Creator. Except
a man be born again (John 3:3), he cannot see nor can he enter
into the kingdom of God.
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Copyright © 1988 Evelyn White. All rights
reserved
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