Church of England Newspaper (October 1958)
In his article on “Right and Wrong Uses of Mythological Language” in the Church of England Newspaper earlier this year Mr. John Wren-Lewis raised once more the question of the validity of the “mythological” attitude to life and stated his belief that it is the “crucial issue for 20th-century theology (and probably sociology, too, perhaps even science itself)”.
Since I share this belief and there is some evidence that many readers of the Church of England Newspaper share it also, it may be right for me to attempt to carry the matter a little further.
One thing appears to be certain: if he is right and I am wrong, then the sooner the mythological element in Christianity is scrapped, the better.
I am in some doubt as to what will be left of the Bible, when the process is accomplished, but we should not let that deter us. For there is no doubt that many modern people do find it a stumbling-block; and in any case Christ is not only Love but also Truth.
What then does he, and those who think like him, say is the relation between science, nature, man and God; and what do I, and those who think like me, say it is?
There will hardly be room in this article to do much more than endeavour to state the two positions as clearly as possible. But it may well be important that this should be done.
Firstly we both agree, in Mr Wren-Lewis’s words, that “the quite extraordinary growth of scientific knowledge which has taken place since the 17th century and the rapid social changes which continually accompany it, are directly connected with the decline of the whole ‘mythological way of looking at life’.”
The man of today, he adds, is encouraged by that decline to see life as “an objective response to actual experience”, whereas, the men of most ages have felt themselves to be involved in a vast drama of invisible powers for which the objective world was only a veil.
He holds that this is necessarily — or at all events is in fact — a progress out of illusion and towards the truth. Our experience is “actual” in some sense in which theirs were not. Their experience was, for the most part, a substitute for “real” experience, though the creators of the myths never intended it to be so. It was therefore of the nature of neurotic fantasy.
The reason why our experience is real and theirs was not, is (if I have understood him rightly) because nature really is what 20th century science conceives it to be.
“Objective”, “actual”, and “real” all denote the same thing, namely an existence independent of human consciousness, and with one exception the “real” is that which man perceives through his senses, with or without the aid of precision instruments.
The one exception is Love, which exists both in human consciousness and objectively, and is God. It is also a “Creative Power”; and the myths which, taken literally, amount to neurotic fantasies, were intended by their creators “to be used as descriptions of the many subtle aspects of that Creative Power”.
Lastly, the decline of the mythological way of looking at life which modern science has brought about enables man, for the first time in his history — or in his history since his fall — to shake off his escapist neuroses (the myths) and to step into his true inheritance of positive love for his fellow man and objective knowledge of nature.
I may have been wrong in my allusion to the senses as the criterion of reality, though it seems to be implicit in most of what Mr Wren-Lewis says.
For he does also say that science, too, operates (less ambitiously) in the same way as the creators of the myths intended to operate, that is, by using “myths” or “models” as symbols for communicating truth about concrete experience (his italics).
And it is from this point that I can best proceed to state, by way of contrast and, in some measure, of critique, my own view and that of those who agree with me.
We do not think it any more justifiable to call the mythological way in which men looked at the world before the scientific revolution a “substitute” for real experience than it is to call by that name the ordinary modern way of looking at the world.
That is not to say that we want to return to the mythological way. We do, however, believe that man can only reach the truth about nature, himself and God by resurrecting the imaginal quality which was characteristic of the mythological and pre-scientific consciousness.
We believe that it is the decline of this quality in his thinking which has made it so difficult for the man of today to grasp the mythological element in Christianity and to relate it properly to the historical facts.
We do not think that the scientific picture of the world is more real, that is nearer the truth, than the mythological way was in its time. On the contrary, we think that in many respects (and these all important) it is very much farther from the truth.
The view that inductive science is approaching nearer and nearer to objective knowledge of reality appears to us to be based on a somewhat childish fallacy.
Exact physical science is aware (as Mr Wren-Lewis himself points out) that the picture which it presents of reality is a “model”.
But the “public philosophy” of which he speaks — and some physicists themselves — also tacitly assume that a more and more precise and effective model can somehow gradually approach and eventually reach identity with the original of which it is a model.
We think that, if you can believe that, you must also be able to believe that a man who paints cleverer and cleverer pictures of an orange may end by having an actual orange which he can eat.
We think that the reality behind the models — as well as behind the real world of appearances called “nature”, which science itself long ago discovered to be determined by the senses and the imaginations of man — is the creative Power which Mr Wren-Lewis himself says was always intended to be shown forth in the myths. If this is not so, it seems to us that Art must be a toy and the Sacrament a dream.
We think, further, that the insertion between these two — the supersensible and the sensible reality — of a supposititious third, “real” objective “world of nature” (for the scientist at once a “model” and not a model, and for the ordinary man the only reality he acknowledges) is an illusion — is, in fact, the disastrous illusion which we owe to the Science of the last three centuries.
Incidentally it was this that I called “idolatry” in my book Saving the Appearances, the conclusions of which were by no means based solely on history.
It follows that we think, with Mr Wren-Lewis, that a right decision on the point at issue is no less crucial for science itself than for theology.
We read in the signs of the times that the creative Power demands increasingly to be known by man, as well as loved and worshipped, and we believe that increasing knowledge (or, if the term is preferred, “concrete experience”) of that creative Power, and of His servants the divine Hierarchies, must kindle in man increasing love — whereas mere exhortations to love will fall on increasingly deaf ears.
Which of us is right? Perhaps time alone will show; nor should I be surprised if Science itself decides in our favour before theology does. Mr Wren-Lewis evidently has immense confidence in the future of science continuing on its present lines. I see it as heading straight for bankruptcy — because of the fallacy to which I have referred — and I hear it already talking a good deal of nonsense. I think it must soon acknowledge the validity of an imaginal approach to truth, leading to a spiritual as well as physical science, if it is to survive.
Again he sees Western man as emerging, with the help of the scientific outlook, from chronic neurosis. I look round and can find no justification for this optimism. On the contrary, the gulf which Mr Wren-Lewis wants to fix and deepen between man’s intellectual life, as a “knower” of “reality” through his nerves and senses, and his emotional and religious need for participation in the divine love appears to me to be plunging him deeper and deeper into nervous disorders and hectic reactions of every description.
“Soon,” said Rudolf Steiner, “the children will be born trembling.” Mr Wren-Lewis’ way out of neurosis is to spread the compost on the weeds and set about intensifying the causes of it.
And there I think I must leave it. Perhaps, if I have succeeded in nothing else, I have at least shown how important it is to be very sure indeed that he is right before we turn to follow him. I think he would agree with me in this.
