Gordon Clark: Review of Maker of Heaven and Earth by Langdon Gilkey (The Presbyterian Journal)

1965. Review of Maker of Heaven and Earth by Langdon Gilkey, The Presbyterian Journal. 6 Sep. 1: pg. 22.

MAKER OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, by Langdon Gilkey. Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, N. Y. Paper, 378 pp. $1.45. Reviewed by Gordon H. Clark, Professor of Philosophy, Butler University, Indianapolis, Ind.

In this book the author, rejecting the first chapters of Genesis as "fables and nothing else," makes a sustained attempt "to reinterpret the idea of creation so that it is not just an irrelevant dogma inherited from a prescientific and prehistorical past, but a symbol which points to the profoundest understanding… of human life."

His reinterpretation follows the currently popular mythological view of theology. The Bible is not revelation, but a witness to revelation. Revelation itself cannot be put into literal, unambiguous words, but can only be expressed in analogies, paradoxes, and myths. "All positive language about God is analogical and symbolic." Quoting Anthony Flew with approval, Dr. Gilkey asserts, "That the heavens were created by the word of God is not a piece of literal theory."

To continue, "Revelation and religious truth concern God and his relation to the world . . . They do not impart 'facts' about (the world)... We are certain that valid information about the observable facts of the sensible world is derived only from scientific inquiry, not from religious faith . . . Knowledge that the universe began at a moment, since it is a cosmological fact about the universe and not a theological affirmation about God, cannot be a part of religious truth."

After 300 pages of this the author blandly asserts, "In the preceding chapters we have tried to under- stand the meaning of the Christian doctrine of creation." In fact, he frequently assures the reader that his theory embodies the real meaning of Christianity. If so, Calvin, Luther, Augustine, and even the Apostle Paul did not know very much about Christianity.

Now, the great difficulty with the atempt to reduce Christianity to mythology is that no intelligible meaning remains. If all religious language is analogical and symbolic, we never know anything about the alleged reality to which it points. The very idea of pointing itself becomes unintelligible.

Dr. Gilkey tries to meet this objection.  Though the theory of "mythological language . . . deliberately denies this language is to be interpreted literally"; though "like the symbol of the Fall, creation has no inherent and original factual content"; and though "we can never regard personal symbols about God as literally applicable"; still there is a direct, unsymbolic knowledge of God. It is not to be found in any metaphysical term like Pure Being, or First Cause, for metaphysical terms such as these are only indirect symbols. Nor is this direct knowledge found in the terms Creator and Lord, for "It is only by analogy and paradox, not by literal language, that we can speak of God as our Creator and Lord."

No, God is known directly and unsymbolically as holy love in Christ. Even so, "In Christ, God is not known as He is in Himself." But "all who receive Him in faith can now experience and know with overwhelming immediacy the nature of God as holy love . . . Thus the personal recreative love of God in Christ, not the ontological power of God in general existence, is the one unsymbolic and direct idea of God that Christians possess."

Strange, is it not, that if metaphysical being and cause are symbolic, if Creator and Lord are only analogical, and if "we can never regard personal symbols about God as literally applicable," the term love is unsymbolic and direct! This unsatisfactory and inconsistent defense of the theory leaves us with the conclusion that mythological theology is mythological.