was enabled to know both man and God as they are. He was close to God, for he lived in His presence, and he was close to man, having shared his basic limitations and defects. No wonder he regretted his late discovery of God: “ Too late I love Thee, Thou beauty of ancient days, yet ever new, too late I love Thee.” Having desperately tried to solve his infinite need by finite means, it was not before he met the gentle Master of Galilee that his predica ment was solved with compelling force. And where else can man be confronted with this direct and categorical call: “ Come to me, all you that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” “ I am the bread of life, he that cometh to me shall never hunger and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.” There is then a way of escaping agnostic uncertainty. It is by tasting the Bread of Life, by drinking of the Water that will satisfy for ever. Through surrender of the finite self, the gift of the Infinite is accepted and man dis covers the true meaning of exis tence as he returns to God. Thou hast created us for Thyself with an infinite need for Thee, and the soul is restless until it reposes in Thee. Christ-God, Creator and Redeemer, the only solution to the human pre dicament. Do I hear you objecting at this point: “ But this is all theory to me, I have no experience along these lines. Pragmatically, this may be useful to some, but I prefer the more comfortless state of theoreti cal uncertainty to any pragmatic crutch. No amount of theory con cerning man’s obvious predicament can swerve me from my carefully reasoned agnostic premise.” Let us grant, that a compelling conviction concerning the reality of God is not to be had apart from a genuine encounter with God, which alone can resolve the basic uncertainty. However, even from a pure theoretical standpoint, isn’t it true that any knowledge claim lim ited to the natural alone is at least potentially narrower than a knowl
began to question the custom of plucking at strings and straining one’s vocal chords to no purpose, undoubtedly the result of ancestral superstition. Rebels began to de nounce the hypocrisy of so mean ingless a custom. In time only those attended the temple services whose prestige or livelihood depended upon doing so, and a small rem nant who still retained enough of the faculty of hearing to feel some thing of the ancient reverence for music. These last were dubbed mystics, and when noticed at all were made the butt of ridicule. Psychologists built ingenious the ories to expose the causes of their delusion, while semanticists started a campaign to have words like music, tone and harmony elimina ted from common speech, since they had no referents in actual experience. Since the society was democratic, the music lovers were not persecuted for heresy, but came to be tolerated as harmless old fogies who might serve usefully to illustrate the bigotry from which most of the citizenry had happily escaped. The whole thing was ac cepted as a clear proof of social and intellectual progress. And of course no one heeded or understood when once in a while a music lover, goaded into argument would reply (in sign language presumably): ‘It is not we who are deluded, but you, my friends, who are deaf.’ ” Now the purpose of Christianity is to have man’s spiritual sight re stored, so that by faith he may see the Son of God and resolve once and for all his agnostic predica ment.' Far from being irrational, obviously the man who once was blind and now can see is in the superior position of being able to evaluate both states empirically. And down through the centuries we find an unending stream of testimonies as to the reality of the spiritual and the possibility of man’s basic predicament being solved. The agnostic uncertainty can be resolved by a restoration of man’s spiritual sight through a compelling encounter with the Son of God. END.
edge claiming a comparative in sight into both natural and spirit ual? Forcing a naturalistic inter pretation of the spiritual, without any spiritual experience being in volved, would constitute a type of speculative, a-priori judgment quite out of line with the empirical experiential premise. At least po tentially, a person having first hand experience in both the natural and the spiritual is able to form a broader empirical judgment than the person who has to interpret part of his data, namely the spir itual, purely speculat ive ly. To reduce all types of possible experi ence to just naturalistic ones a-priori would also constitute a type of reductionism quite incompatible with the empirical temperament. A parable by Philip Wheel wright, formerly of Da r tmo u t h College and now teaching in Cali fornia, may illustrate this point: “ On an isolated island there lived a society of men who had once been devoted lovers of music, but who in the course of genera tions gradually lost their hearing. They loved music to the point of worship and regarded it as a holy thing, the most exalted form of human experience. Once a week they would gather and listen rev erently to the ceremonial plucking of instruments and the singing. As deafness increased there was no immediate change in ceremonial habits. They continued their music services even though the sounds be came dimmer to their perceptions and by the fourth generation were scarcely heard at all. Finally the more progressive later descendants About the Author Timothy Fetler is head of the philoso phy department at the Bible Institute of Los Angeles and minister of music at the First Baptist Church in Fullerton, Calif. The son of an exiled Russian missionary, he grew up in Europe and speaks five languages fluently. He has a Ph.D. from Northwestern University and is working on a second doctorate at USC. He has also taught at both of these universities.
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THE K IN G 'S BUSINESS
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