TRAGIC DESTINY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 30, Issue 767, 2 April 1954, Page 5

TRAGIC DESTINY

Sir,-Mr. C. L. Saunders claims to know that the God of the Bible is "working out a plan of salvation." The first God in the Bible is that invented by Abraham when he discarded the pantheon of Sumerian gods that was his youthful heritage some four thousand years before Christ. Abraham’s God was a friendly human sort of being with whom one could walk, talk, make bargains; one who did not lay obligations on one. He was a Family God specially favouring Abraham and his seed. But this relatively kindly and human being became later transformed into the distant and terrible Jehovah, laying down commandments, demanding implicit obedience, threatening dire punishments, jealous of other gods and demanding the "sacrifices’’ common in all primitive religions. No man might see Him and live. But by the time we get to Isaiah, this same God has become the One God and source of all good. The New Testament presents the evolution of the Family God into the Father God, and the plan of salvation involves the sacrifice of the first-born (a Canaanitish abomination)-God sacriftcing His firstborn to appease Himself. The Bible enshrines Babylonian and Sumerian religious myths and traditions adopted and adapted by the Hebrews, It has no more validity than the Veda, the Koran or even the Book of Mormon. Abraham’s deity was a mental conception, as all deities are, These conceptions lead to action, and judging from the behaviour of mankind — more especially the Christian section of itand the state of the world today, one sees no evidence of any plan of salvation. On the contrary, whether a mythical deity is racked with "inner tragedy" or not, mankind seems to be approaching nearer and nearer to the climax of its tragic destinv-if destiny it be.

J. MALTON

MURRAY

(Oamaru).