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Salient. An Organ of Student Opinion at Victoria College, Wellington, N.Z. Vol. 12, No. 10. September 20th, 1949

Wot, Again?

Wot, Again?

Veritas seems stilt to be in ordin-ately proud of having been able to prove that something exists. Good luck to him. It is unfortunate that this is perhaps the only thing in his final article of which he can be proud: a string of biased, unsound pronouncements uttered with the rhetorical sincerity of a dogmatist.

Mere assertion, however sincere, is no proof. This applies both to Christ's assertions that he was God, and to Veritas's naive assertions that this self-identification with the Hebraic Jehovah is ipso facto true. There is no reason at all to connect the great universal philosophy preached and practised by Christ with any of the conventional features of Jehovannic theology. The one amounts to a general denial of the other.

And the Resurrection? Very touching. Very heroic. Very divine. And in spite of accounts of it being found in "one of the most thoroughly tested of all historical documents," I would venture to assert (humbly) that the four accounts of it are different—it is not my purpose to imitate some of my predecessors in this controversy in abusing the space at my disposal, so if Veritas wishes to find the differences, let, him read the New Testament, which is, after all, one of the most thoroughly tested of all historical documents. . . .

And when second-hand, hearsay evidence from a biassed witness is accepted in a court of law, I will accept Veritas's arguments.

Intelligent People?

"In fact, the disciples who knew him believed him to be God, 700,-000,00 Christians also believe it . . ." And the inhabitants of the Roman empire believed that the Caesars were gods, or, if you prefer a modern example, many young Germans thought of Hitler as a god, and, as Veritas would no doubt like to believe, many Russians think of Stalin as a god. . . . And Christ had a great advantage over all these men—he was not a god as a matter of official policy, he bad a more potent means of focussing men's minds upon him. He was persecuted, he was scourged, he was crucified. . . .

Christ and Clarity

Christ at times said he was God: at other times he said that he was the Son of God. The clarity of these statements can be seen from the arguments about the tripartite nature of God which have arisen subsequent to them. There would [unclear: surely] have been no need for so much sterile discussion if Christ had made his own position fully clear.

Prophecy, Prophecy, all is Prophecy . . .

It is a simple matter to find any amount of "true prophecy" after an event has happened. All that is required is a suitable amount of diligent research. The Biblical quotations which Veritas gives are quite relevant in this argument: however, any references taken from Plutarch, Vergil and Cicero cannot but be suspect. The so-called Messianic Eclogue of Vergil is most probably written in praise of the then unborn child of Augustus and Livia, and in any case, the presence of the Messianic idea in Latin and Greek authors is merely indicative of the gradual spread of Eastern cultural ideas into the West, not that the "expectation of His coming" was "an expectation common among all nations."

Shouting from the Barricades

It should be noted that the Church condemned Communism, Fascism and Nazism not only in order of time, but also in the order that they became either actual or potential menaces to the spiritual and temopral power of the Church: the Church has not yet seriously condemned the opportunist dictator Franco, who had the prudence not to make any move to diminish the various powers of the Church to any appreciable extent.

Veritas complains of the "the defence against reason, the defence of unprovoked abuse and insinuation so common in 'Salient'." As the writer of some of this alleged vulgarity, I am touched to the quick by his criticisms. In fact, all I can say in my defence (shamefacedly, in sackcloth and ashes, tearing the hem of my garment), is that it was the lack of any vestiges of fundamental reason and logic in his article prompted my verbal excesses.

Proofs and Puddings

I have a finite mind. I am aware of this fact. Even proud of it: for indeed the idea of an infinite mind in a finite body is more than ridiculous, it is repulsive. And to. this poor finite thing, Veritas, none of your arguments rings true. The existence of a God is something beyond the proofs of causality, something above all the noble assertions of Jesus; it is a matter of faith, of belief. A man does not come to faith by logic, or to belief by causality: men are born with the seeds of faith in them, and whether these seeds germinate at once, or in the maturity of their years matters little. The seeds must have been there from the beginning.

Any person who has made a study, however brief, of comparative religion must realise that there is little to pick and choose from the basic teachings of all religions. All would have man lead a better life, improve his habits of living and thinking. And this universality of purpose, if nothing else, would be for some a sufficient proof of the existence of an all-pervading spirit of some kind, but not a spirit concerned with the petty dialectal and dogmatic disputes of any one of those religions, not even of that great and influential body to whom friend Veritas gives his allegiance.

Flattened Fifth.