{"id":5322,"date":"2020-12-27T22:17:21","date_gmt":"2020-12-28T03:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=5322"},"modified":"2020-12-27T22:17:46","modified_gmt":"2020-12-28T03:17:46","slug":"the-abandonment-of-truth-and-the-fall-of-civilization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=5322","title":{"rendered":"The Abandonment of Truth and the Fall of Civilization"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Throne, Altar, Liberty\n<\/a>\n<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Canadian Red Ensign<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/-ShJ56ncRijQ\/Vic7ppYOalI\/AAAAAAAAABc\/d3gWM-vfhbM\/s1600-r\/red%2Bensign.jpg\" alt=\"The Canadian Red Ensign\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Thursday, December 17, 2020<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"> <strong>The Abandonment of Truth and the Fall of Civilization <\/strong> <\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Exactly when Medieval times or the Middle Ages ended and the\nModern Age began has long been a subject of discussion and debate.&nbsp;&nbsp; It will continue to be so, since the\ntransition was not instantaneous but took place over an extended period that\nincluded any number of events which, depending the criteria being taken into\nconsideration, could be identified as the turning point.&nbsp;&nbsp; The question must, therefore, remain open,\nand for several decades now has taken the backseat to the questions of whether\nthe Modern Age has ended, if so when, and what comes next.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Despite the temptation created by so many\nof the events of the current year having been presented to us in an apocalyptic\nframework, it is not my intention to address the latter set of questions here,\nother than to refer my readers to the interesting and persuasive discussion of\nsuch matters by the late John Lukacs in <em>The\nPassing of the Modern Age<\/em> (1970), <em>The\nEnd of the Twentieth Century and the End of the Modern Age <\/em>(1993), and <em>At<\/em> <em>The\nEnd of an Age<\/em> (2002).&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It is the\ntransformation of Christendom into Western Civilization, a matter that touches\non the questions pertaining to both the beginning and the end of the Modern Age\nthat I shall be talking about here.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Or,\nto be more precise, I shall be discussing one aspect of that transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Was the transformation of Christendom into Western\nCivilization the start of the Modern Age (one of the possible answers to the\nfirst question), the end of the Modern Age in both the sense of the purpose\ntowards which that Age was directed and moving and in the sense that when it\nwas accomplished the Age came to an end (if so this touches on the answer to\nall of the questions pertaining to the end of the Age), or was it simply one\nand the same with the Modern Age?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Christendom is a word that can be used in a narrower or a\nwider sense.&nbsp;&nbsp; Let us take it here in its\nfullest sense of civilization that takes the Christian faith as its foundation\nand organizational principle.&nbsp;&nbsp; It is\nessentially the generic version of what American Russian Orthodox hieromonk,\nFr. Seraphim Rose, described in its Eastern Orthodox form when he wrote \u201cthat\nthe principal form government took in union with Christian Truth was the\nOrthodox Christian Empire, wherein sovereignty was vested in a Monarch, and\nauthority proceeded from him downwards through a hierarchical social structure\u201d\n(<em>Nihilism: The Root of the Revolution of\nthe Modern Age<\/em>, 1994, 2018, p. 28).&nbsp;&nbsp;\n&nbsp;Obviously, by the end of the\nSecond World War, one of the time-markers for possible ends of the Modern Age,\nthis had been replaced by liberal, secular, democratic, Western Civilization,\nin all but the most outward, nominal, sense.&nbsp;&nbsp;\nAt the deepest level, of course, the transformation had been\naccomplished much earlier than this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What this suggests, of course, is that, paradoxically, all\nthree options in the complex question in our second paragraph can be answered\nin the affirmative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>While the question of when exactly the transformation of\nChristendom into Western Civilization began must remain open, like the related\nquestion of when the transition into the Modern Age began, it is certain that\nthe radical epistemic revolution belongs to the earliest stages of the\ntransformation.&nbsp;&nbsp; By radical epistemic\nrevolution, I mean the fundamental shift in how we conceive of what we know and\nhow we know it that involved a repudiation of both tradition and divine\nrevelation as evidentiary paths to knowledge and which introduced so drastic a\nchange in the meaning of both reason and science as to constitute a break from\nwhat these things had been since classical antiquity.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The consequence of this revolution for\nChristian Truth was that it was removed from the realm of knowledge and\nreassigned to the realm of a \u201cfaith\u201d which had itself been radically redefined\nso as to bear no resemblance to St. Paul\u2019s \u201cthe substance of things hoped for,\nthe evidence of things not seen\u201d (Hebrews 11:1) but to be almost the very\nopposite of this.&nbsp;&nbsp; Clearly this was a\nmost significant event in the breaking of the union between civilization and\nChristian Truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In my last essay, in which I talked about the increasing\nconfusion with regards to basic logical concepts that has occurred in a period\nthat has also seen dogmatic authority increasingly assigned to \u201cscience\u201d\ndespite this contradicting the non-authoritarian nature of science in both\npre-Modern and Modern meanings, I mentioned the paradox of the fact that the\nremoval of tradition and divine revelation from the realm of evidence which\nthus emptied that realm of all but the kind of evidence which historians and\ncourts rely upon and the kind which scientists rely upon should have tipped the\nbalance in favour of reason in the ancient debate about the priority of reason\nversus evidence but has seemingly had the opposite effect of elevating one\nparticular form of evidence over reason and the other remaining form of\nevidence.&nbsp;&nbsp; It also needs to be observed,\nwith regards to the dogmatic, authoritative, voice now ascribed to \u201cscience\u201d,\nthat in the most obvious cases of this, actual empirical evidence has itself\nbeen trumped by something else.&nbsp;&nbsp; In the\nanthropogenic global warming\/climate change \u201ccrisis\u201d of recent decades and the\nWuhan bat flu \u201ccrisis\u201d of this year, in both of which we have been told that we\nmust accept a drastic reduction in human freedom and submit to totalitarian\nmeasures and group-think in order to avert a catastrophe, dissenters have been\ntold to \u201cshut up and listen to the science\u201d, but the \u201cscience\u201d in question has\nlargely consisted of computer model projections, which have been granted a\nbizarre precedence not only over reason, such as the questioning which provokes\nthe \u201cshut up and listen to the science\u201d response, and non-empirical evidence,\nsuch as the historical record on the world\u2019s ever-changing climate which\ndirectly contradicts the entire alarmist narrative on this subject, but even\nempirical evidence as this has until recently been understood, observations and\nmeasurements made in either the real world or the laboratory.&nbsp;&nbsp; Since plenty of this sort of empirical\nevidence joins non-empirical evidence in supporting reason against these\nnarratives, we are in effect being told that we must set both reason and\nevidence aside and mindlessly obey orders backed only by the fictional\nspeculations of an artificial \u201cintelligence\u201d.&nbsp;&nbsp;\nAnyone still open to the evidence of tradition and divine revelation,\nwill find in Scriptural descriptions of the effects of idolatry upon the minds\nof those who practice it, an ample explanation of this phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That tradition and divine revelation became vulnerable to\nbeing forced out of the realm of evidence can in part by attributed to their\nhaving been set against each other in the period that produced the Reformation\nand Counter-Reformation.&nbsp;&nbsp; Both sides\nshare the blame here.&nbsp;&nbsp; The papacy and\nits adherents at their worst placed such an emphasis on tradition that they\nsometimes gave the impression that they had elevated it over divine revelation and\nthus were inviting a response similar to that given to the scribes and\nPharisees by the Lord in Matthew 15:1-2, emphasis on verses three and six,\nwhereas the more radical elements of the Protestant Reformation went so far in\nthe opposite direction as to contradict such New Testament affirmations of\ntradition as I Corinthians 11:2 and II Thessalonians 2:15 and 3:16.&nbsp;&nbsp; It is beyond the scope of this essay, of\ncourse, to offer a full resolution of this conflict.&nbsp;&nbsp; I shall simply point out that by divine\nrevelation I mean what theologians call \u201cspecial revelation\u201d, which is distinct\nfrom \u201cgeneral revelation\u201d such as that described by St. Paul in Romans&nbsp; 1:19-20.&nbsp;&nbsp;\nGeneral revelation or natural revelation, is God\u2019s revelation of Himself\nin the natural order of His Creation, and is the source of such truth as can be\nfound in all human tradition.&nbsp;&nbsp; Special\nrevelation, is God\u2019s salvific revelation of Himself in His Covenants, His\nwritten Word, and ultimately in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ.&nbsp;&nbsp; When Christianity makes claims of\nexclusivity, such as \u201cI am the Way, the Truth, and the Life, no man cometh to\nthe Father but through Me\u201d, these rest upon special revelation.&nbsp;&nbsp; When Christianity acknowledges truth in\nother religions, this is on the basis of the general revelation that informs\nall traditions.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; See the essays by C.\nS. Lewis in the first section of <em>God in\nthe Dock<\/em> (1970), and the book <em>Christianity\nand Pluralism <\/em>(1998, 2019), by Ron Dart and J. I. Packer for a more\nextended discussion of these matters.&nbsp;&nbsp;\nSpecial revelation, because of its role in the <em>ordu salutis<\/em>, comes with promises of divine protection against\ncorruption (Matthew 5:17-18, for example) that are obviously not extended to general\nrevelation (see the larger context of the Romans passage cited above), which\nwould seem obviously to place the primacy on special divine revelation, without\neliminating the epistemic value of either human tradition in general or the\nparticular Apostolic tradition affirmed in Scripture in the aforementioned\nPauline references.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The turning of divine (special) revelation and tradition\nagainst each other facilitated the rise of rationalism which attacked their now\ndivided house and excluded them both from the realm of reason, evidence, and\nknowledge.&nbsp;&nbsp; That this having ultimately led to\nevidence taking primacy over reason in an ongoing discussion\/debate which began\nprior to Socrates seems counterintuitive is due to the reasons mentioned above,\nhowever, it seems more inevitable when we consider what is asserted about Jesus\nChrist in the first verse of the Gospel according to St. John.&nbsp;&nbsp; \u201cIn the beginning was the Word, and the Word\nwas with God, and the Word was God.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\nThe word rendered Word in the English of this verse is Logos, the word\nfrom which logic is derived.&nbsp;&nbsp; It does\nindeed mean \u201cword\u201d in the sense of the unit of speech that is the basic\nbuilding block of sentences, although it can also mean \u201csentence\u201d in certain\ncontexts, or even \u201cspeech\u201d in general.&nbsp;&nbsp;\nIt also, however, can mean thought, in the sense of calculation,\njudgement, evaluation, and basically everything suggested by the word \u201creason\u201d.&nbsp;&nbsp; This personification of reason and ascription\nto it of divine status would have been familiar territory to the Greek thinkers\nof the day, as just such a thought had long been a dominant theme in Greek\nphilosophy.&nbsp; &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Heraclitus of Ephesus, who is otherwise best known for his\nview that constant change is the defining characteristic of the world \u2013 \u201cyou\nnever step in the same river twice\u201d \u2013 introduced the concept of the Logos into\nGreek thought.&nbsp; Logos, to Heraclitus, was\na divine, rational principle that governs the world of flux and brings order\nand meaning to what otherwise would be chaos. In the first century, the Hellenizing\nJewish philosopher, Philo of Alexandria, had famously equated the Logos of\nGreek thought with the personified Wisdom in Jewish Wisdom literature. The\neighth chapter of the Book of Proverbs in the Old Testament is the canonical\nexample of this personification of Wisdom, and the Wisdom of Solomon, one of\nthe disputed books of the Septuagint, is a book long example of the same,\npossibly originally written as expansion of or commentary on the chapter in\nProverbs.&nbsp; Even prior to Philo there had\nbeen a tradition in Jewish thought somewhat parallel to the Greek Logos,\nrepresented primarily in the Targum (a translation, or more accurately number\nof translations, of the Old Testament into Aramaic, along with midrash or\nexegetical commentary on the same, also in Aramaic), in which the personified\nMemra acts as the messenger or agent of God.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There was one huge difference between Philo\u2019s synthesis of\nGreek and Hebrew thought on this matter and St. John\u2019s.&nbsp;&nbsp; For Philo the Logos was not God, per se, but\na divine intermediary between God and Creation, roughly the equivalent of the\nDemiurge, albeit the benevolent Demiurge of Plato\u2019s <em>Timaeus<\/em> not the malevolent Demiurge of the Gnostic heretics.&nbsp;&nbsp; For St. John, the Logos was both with God,\nand was identical to God.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The lack of\na definite article preceding Theos in the final clause of the first verse of\nthe Gospel does not mean that a diminutive or lesser divinity is intended.&nbsp;&nbsp; Since the clause joins two nouns of the same\ncase (nominative) with the copula, and Theos is the noun that precedes the\ncopula, its anarthrous condition indicates that it functions grammatically as\nthe predicate rather than the subject (E. C. Colwell, \u201cA Definite Rule for the\nUse of the Article in the Greek New Testament\u201d, <em>Journal of Biblical Literature<\/em> 52, 1933).&nbsp;&nbsp; Even if this were not a recognized\ngrammatical rule, St. John\u2019s intention could hardly be clearer, as his Logos,\nidentified in the fourteenth verse as Jesus Christ, repeatedly makes statements\nemploying the Greek equivalent of YHWH in such a way as to unmistakably\nidentify Himself as God.&nbsp;&nbsp; Indeed, this\nmakes St. John\u2019s use of the Greek philosophical term for the divine principle\nof reason that makes reality orderly in a way that evokes the first chapter of\nGenesis with its repeated \u201cand God said\u2026and it was so\u201d, transforming what had\nbeen \u201cwithout form and void\u201d into that which \u201cwas very good\u201d, a much more\npowerful embrace of reason than Philo\u2019s.&nbsp;\n&nbsp;&nbsp;See Calvinist philosopher Gordon\nH. Clark\u2019s <em>The Johannine Logos <\/em>(1972)for a fuller discussion of this. &nbsp;This is why the rejection of Christian\nepistemology, which affirms both special revelation and tradition, and embrace\nof a rationalist epistemology that removes both from the realm of evidence \u2013\nalthough done in the name of reason and hence the term \u201crationalist\u201d \u2013 must\ninevitably assign reason a much lower place than it had occupied in a worldview\nthat acknowledges the Divine Logos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The elevation of empirical evidence over historical evidence\nwas also an inevitable consequence of the same epistemological revolution.&nbsp;&nbsp; The reason for this is that the special\nrevelation and tradition which were banished from the realm of evidence, each\nhave a unique relationship with one of the two evidences allowed to remain.&nbsp;&nbsp; When special revelation and tradition were\nsent into exile, the hierarchical relationship between the two was also\nrejected, leading to the inversion of this hierarchy for the corresponding two\nevidences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Empirical evidence or science \u2013 real empirical evidence,\nmind you, not the computer generated, pseudoscientific, fiction masquerading under\nits name today \u2013 corresponds with tradition.&nbsp;&nbsp;\nHere, I mean tradition in the generic sense of \u201cthat which has been\npassed down\u201d (tradition comes from the passive perfect participle of the Latin\ntrado, the verb for handing over or passing on) rather than the content of any\nparticular tradition.&nbsp;&nbsp; Tradition\u2019s chief\nepistemic value is that it is the means whereby that which has been observed,\ndeduced, and otherwise learned and known in the past is made available to those\nliving in the present so that each generation does not have to re-invent the\nwheel so to speak and discover everything afresh for itself.&nbsp;&nbsp; Apart from this, human knowledge could not\nsignificantly accumulate and grow.&nbsp;&nbsp; As mentioned\nbriefly above, with regards to Romans 1, the truths of general or natural\nrevelation which are passed down in tradition are susceptible to corruption,\nbut it is also the case that living traditions are flexible and\nself-correcting.&nbsp;&nbsp; That this, and not the\nrigid inflexibility that rationalists falsely attribute to it, is the nature of\ntradition, was an insight that was well articulated by Michael Oakeshott (see the\ntitle essay and \u201cThe Tower of Babel\u201d, in <em>Rationalism\nin Politics and Other Essays<\/em>, 1962).&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\nWhile true science\u2019s value is primarily utilitarian rather than epistemic\n\u2013 \u201cscience is always false, but it is often useful\u201d as Gordon H. Clark put it \u2013\nthe merits of tradition as described in this paragraph overlap to a large\ndegree those which scientists would ascribe to their vocation and methodology.&nbsp;&nbsp; In the best sense of the word, science is\nitself a particular tradition, which has been accumulating natural knowledge\nand correcting itself since Thales of Miletus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Special revelation, on the other hand, is connected to\nhistorical evidence.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This can clearly\nbe seen in both Testaments.&nbsp;&nbsp; The Old\nTestament is primarily the record of God\u2019s revelation of Himself through a\nCovenant relationship established with a particular people, Israel, in a\nparticular place, the Promised Land, over a specific era of time stretching\nfrom the period of the Patriarchs, from whom the people were descended, to the\npartial return from their exile in Babylon at the beginning of the Second\nTemple period. &nbsp;&nbsp;Even the portions of it which are not strictly\nhistorical narrative in literary genre fit in to that history.&nbsp;&nbsp; This is most obviously the case with the\nprophetic writings, which contain divine warnings given to Israel and sometimes\nthe surrounding nations, in connection with events described in the historical\nrecord, but even in the case of the Psalms of David, many of these can be tied\nto specific events in that historical king\u2019s life, as they collectively are\ntied to his life as a whole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is all the more the case with the New Testament.&nbsp;&nbsp; The New Testament presents us with God\u2019s\nultimate revelation of Himself, both to the people with whom He had established\nthe Old Covenant and promised a New, and to all the peoples of the world, in\nthe Incarnation of His Son \u201cand the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us\u201d.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The story of God\u2019s Incarnational revelation\nis told in the form of history \u2013 events about specific people, in identifiable\nplaces, at identifiable times, attested to by witnesses.&nbsp;&nbsp; We are told that the Virgin Birth, the event\nshortly to be commemorated at Christmas, occurred in the reign of Augustus\nCaesar, when Herod the Great was king of Judea, and Cyrenius was governor of\nSyria, and that it took place in the city of David, Bethlehem. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;The baptism of Jesus by His cousin John the\nBaptist is the event that signaled the beginning of His public ministry.&nbsp;&nbsp; We are told that John the Baptist\u2019s own\nministry began in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar, when\nPontius Pilate was governor of Judeau, Herod Antipas was tetrarch of Galilee,\nand Annas and Caiaphas were high priests. &nbsp;&nbsp;The locations of Jesus&#8217; most significant\nmiracles are identified, and the events of the final week of His public ministry\nare related in great historical detail \u2013 His dramatic entry into Jerusalem, His\nteaching in the Second Temple, His betrayal by Judas for thirty pieces of silver,\nHis Last Passover Supper with His Apostles, His arrest in the Garden of\nGethsemane, His first, illegal, trial before the aforementioned high priests\nand the Sanhedrin, His second, official, trial before the aforementioned Roman\ngovernor, the mob turning against Him, His torture by the Roman soldiers, His\ncrucifixion between two thieves at the hill of Calvary, and His burial in the tomb\nof Joseph of Arimathea.&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Real places, real people, real events.&nbsp;&nbsp; As St. Paul would say to Festus a few years\nlater, \u201cthe king (Agrippa) knoweth of these things, before whom also I speak freely,\nfor I am persuaded that none of these things are hidden from him; for this\nthing was not done in a corner.\u201d&nbsp;&nbsp; The\nsame St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians, would set forth the evidence for the\ncrowning event of God\u2019s Incarnational revelation of Himself in history, the\nResurrection of Jesus Christ, citing eyewitness after eyewitness.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Resurrection is not something to which\nevidence of the empirical sort can speak, but the historical evidence for it is\noverwhelming. (1)&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the Christian epistemic hierarchy special revelation\nwhich takes place in and through history ranks higher than tradition of which\nscience at its best is a particular example.&nbsp;&nbsp;\nThe abandonment of Christian epistemology early in the transformation of\nChristendom into Western Civilization involved a repudiation of both special\nrevelation and tradition as well as the ranking between the two.&nbsp; Even though considered in themselves, a\nstrong case could be made for the superiority of historical evidence over\nempirical evidence \u2013 the latter consists of observations made in artificially controlled\nsituations to test hypotheses and so cannot be counted upon to have epistemic\nvalue, to speak truth about reality, things as they are in themselves, even\nwhen they have the utilitarian value of helping us to manipulate things to our\nown use, and so when it comes to determining truth about reality, the empirical\nmust count as merely one form of testimony among the many that make up\nhistorical\/legal evidence, as it is in standard courtroom practice, and is therefore\nlogically subordinate to the larger whole of which it is a part \u2013 this has\nresulted in science being elevated over other forms of evidence, over tradition\nof which it is a particular example and thus logically subordinate to the\ngeneral form, and over reason.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;\nScience, which belongs at the bottom of the epistemic totem pole and is\nessentially magic that works (see C. S. Lewis\u2019 \u201cThe Abolition of Man\u201d, the\nthird lecture\/essay in the book of the same title), has been raised to the very\ntop of the pole.&nbsp;&nbsp; <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This elevation of science over all other evidence, all other\ntraditions, and reason itself goes a long way to explaining how people who are\nscientists only in the sense that they speak the technical language of some\nbranch of science or another have managed to substitute baseless predictions\nspat out by some machine for actual empirical evidence and ascribe to these the\nkind of authority that properly belongs to special revelation.&nbsp;&nbsp; They have put this false science to the use\nof frightening people into giving up their basic rights and freedoms in exchange\nfor protection against one Bogeyman or another and are thus laying waste to\nwhat little remains of the civilization that was once Christendom.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This demonstrates just how fundamental to civilization\nis its account of reality and truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>(1)&nbsp;&nbsp;In\nhis essay \u201cMyth Became Fact\u201d, C. S. Lewis spoke of this historicity of the\nChristian story as the distinguishing point between it and pagan myths with\nsimilar elements, and thus described the significance of the Incarnation in\nthis way:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Now\nas myth transcends thought, incarnation transcends myth. The heart of\nChristianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the dying god,\nwithout ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and\nimagination to the earth of history. It happens \u2010 at a particular date, in a\nparticular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a\nBalder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical person\ncrucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does\nnot cease to be myth: that is the miracle. I suspect that men have sometimes\nderived more spiritual sustenance from myths they did not believe than from the\nreligion they professed. To be truly Christian we must both assent to the historical\nfact and also receive the myth (fact though it has become) with the same\nimaginative embrace which we accord to all myths. The one is hardly more\nnecessary than the other.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It was precisely this consideration, that the\nChristian message was a \u201ctrue myth\u201d, as put to him by J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugo\nDyson, which had brought Lewis to Christian faith. &nbsp;His interpretation here, of the Incarnation\ntranscending myth by presenting us with a \u201cmyth which is also a fact\u201d comes\nafter, of course, his explanation of the meaning and value of myth <em>qua<\/em> myth, for which explanation I refer\nyou to the essay as a whole which can be found in <em>God in the Dock<\/em>.<br><a href=\"https:\/\/thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com\/2020\/12\/the-abandonment-of-truth-and-fall-of.html\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><\/a>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLabels:\n<a href=\"https:\/\/thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/C.%20S.%20Lewis\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">C. S. Lewis<\/a>,\n<a href=\"https:\/\/thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/Fr.%20Seraphim%20Rose\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Fr. Seraphim Rose<\/a>,\n<a href=\"https:\/\/thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/Gordon%20H.%20Clark\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Gordon H. Clark<\/a>,\n<a href=\"https:\/\/thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/Heraclitus\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Heraclitus<\/a>,\n<a href=\"https:\/\/thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/history\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">history<\/a>,\n<a href=\"https:\/\/thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/Hugo%20Dyson\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Hugo Dyson<\/a>,\n<a href=\"https:\/\/thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/J.%20I.%20Packer\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">J. I. Packer<\/a>,\n<a href=\"https:\/\/thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/J.%20R.%20R.%20Tolkien\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">J. R. R. Tolkien<\/a>,\n<a href=\"https:\/\/thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/John%20Lukacs\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">John Lukacs<\/a>,\n<a href=\"https:\/\/thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/logic\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">logic<\/a>,\n<a href=\"https:\/\/thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/Michael%20Oakeshott\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Michael Oakeshott<\/a>,\n<a href=\"https:\/\/thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/Philo\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Philo<\/a>,\n<a href=\"https:\/\/thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/Plato\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Plato<\/a>,\n<a href=\"https:\/\/thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/Ron%20Dart\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ron Dart<\/a>,\n<a href=\"https:\/\/thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/science\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">science<\/a>,\n<a href=\"https:\/\/thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/special%20revelation\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">special revelation<\/a>,\n<a href=\"https:\/\/thronealtarliberty.blogspot.com\/search\/label\/tradition\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" target=\"_blank\">tradition<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Throne, Altar, Liberty The Canadian Red Ensign Thursday, December 17, 2020 The Abandonment of Truth and the Fall of Civilization Exactly when Medieval times or the Middle Ages ended and the Modern Age began has long been a subject of &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/?p=5322\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1708,2827,1121,2674,2831,2833,2829,2835,2830,2834,2836,2839,2837,2838,2832,2678,2828,2840],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5322"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5322"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5324,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5322\/revisions\/5324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cafe.nfshost.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<br />
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