Myth and Truth. By John Knox. Charlottesville, The University Press of Virginia, 1964. 87 pp. $2.50. Reviewed by Gordon H. Clark, Butler University
The author begins by assuming that Christianity is essentially mythological. Genesis 1 is in the same class with Homer. Since myth is the use of imagery to express otherworldly themes in terms of this world, the story of redemption must be a myth.
Although Dr. Knox asserts that a mythological story does not have to be false, and even in one sense must be true, he so defines truth as to guarantee the falsity of Biblical and creedal statements.
Neither the Bible nor the creeds are supposed to give factual statements. To speak factually of God's doings would be to identify God with man and the world. Faith has nothing to do with facts or truth or propositions; faith gives us no answers to any questions. The Biblical stories must be reduced to our existential conditions. Genesis 1 is not an account of what happened in the past, but an expression of what man is now.
Therefore Protestants should accept a measure of Romish Mariolatry. It is a valuable expression of subjective experience. Thus if all the churches would understand their creeds as mythological expressions of inexpressible personal experience, we could all unit, recite the Apostles Creed together, knowing it to be false, and form a world-wide ecclesiastical monstrosity that would live happily ever after in ecumenical bliss.
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