Just the Facts, Ma'am

When I was a teenager in America, an evangelical Christian friend tried to convert me. He assured me that heaven would be made of gold. A city **literally** made of gold …

I pressed him. What would we be living in? Golden houses. What would we travel in? Golden cars. Everything gold. I wonder if he would have said the cars ran on liquid gold …?

Such things put me off Christianity for twenty years. Most of which I spent devoted to the New Age movement.

After my wife converted to Catholic Christianity, my mother-in-law asked her, if this meant that she now believed in creationism! …?!!

Creationism, in which “seven days” can mean **nothing other** than “seven 24 hour periods”.

My friends, I invite you to pause a moment, and feel the immense **tragedy** that all the above represents …

Now, it is true that 2+2 means **nothing other** than 4. It is a mathematical fact. And nothing can **contradict** that.

There is a Realm of Facts, where **nothing other** than the fact is meant. Here in this realm, contradictions cannot be valid. But Christianity is nothing, if it is not rooted in a Realm of Profound Truth, that transcends the Realm of simple Facts.

But this Realm of Truth beyond facts, has now become confused with facts. For example, this is not only evident in fundamentalist Protestantism - but at the opposite end of the spectrum from my evangelical friend, where lies the great liberal Protestant, Bultmann, who said that Christianity must demythologise or die.

Bultmann wrote: “The New Testament … invites criticism because some of its representations are … **contradictory** … representing Jesus as born of a virgin **contradicts** the idea of his pre-existence. So, too, does faith in creation **contradict** the notion of the world rulers … and the view of the law as given by God **contradicts** the view that it comes from the angels (Emphasis mine).”

Again, transcendent truth is confused with the Realm of Facts- which rightly permits no contradiction. Bultmann cannot seem to see that contradictions no longer carry the same weight in the Realm of Profundity. And it is only in the Realm of Facts, that contradictions have such importance.

This was however, clearly understood, by that pioneer of quantum physics, Neils Bohr who said: ‘The opposite of a fact is surely a falsehood. But the opposite of one great truth may well be another great truth.’

That is to say, in the world of facts, contradictions must be avoided. But in the profound world, different conclusions are both possible and necessary.

My friends, the TRAGEDY of the world lies in the reduction of profundity to simply facts. Facts alone.

It is a tragedy that allows a travesty of Christianity to take hold of the popular imagination. Particularly I think, in the secular countries of Protestant heritage wherein, for example, my mother-in-law grew up. Yes, though I am prepared to be corrected, I believe this literalism is especially marked in both evangelical and liberal Protestantism. And I believe genuinely it is not so marked in that other 70% of global Christianity, that is Eastern Orthodoxy and Catholicism.

But the tragedy of reduction of Truth to literal facts alone, is found everywhere these days, working out in increasing sclerosis and calcification of the world.

It is thus a tragedy that Hermeticists must work every day to address.