The Truth of Christianity / Being an Examination of the More Important Arguments For and Against Believing in That Religion

by W. H. Turton

(9.) Man.

(C.) Conclusion.

The accuracy of the narrative points to its having been Divinely revealed.

Having decided in the previous chapters on the Existence of God, and that it was credible that He might make a miraculous Revelation to man; we pass on now to the Jewish Religion, which (as well as the Christian) actually claims to be such a Revelation.

And the first argument we have to consider in its favour is that afforded by the opening chapter of Genesis. It is urged that this account of the Creation must have been Divinely revealed, since it contains a substantially correct account of events which could not have been otherwise known at the time. What then we have to examine is, whether this narrative is nearer the truth, as we now know it from geology and other sciences, than could have been the case, if written by a man ignorant of these sciences. And the ancient narratives of Babylonia, India, Persia, and elsewhere, show how far from the truth mere human conjecture on such a subject is likely to be.

While if we admit a revelation at all, there is nothing improbable in some account of the creation of the world having been revealed to man very early in his history, and being accurately preserved by the Jews, while only distorted versions of it occur among other nations. Indeed considering the common custom among ancient nations of worshipping the heavenly bodies, animals, etc., no subject could have been more suited for a first revelation than the statement in simple language that all these were created by one supreme God. We will now consider the general principles of the narrative, and then its detailed order.

(A.) Its General Principles.

The most important of these are its pure Monotheism, its seven days, and its gradual development, each of which we will notice in turn.

(1.) Its pure Monotheism.

This alone renders it almost, if not quite, unique among similar narratives. According to the writer, the whole universe, including sun, moon, and stars, was all due to one God. And this is obvious enough now, but it was not so when the narrative was written. For other ancient accounts are either Pantheistic, and confuse God with the universe; or Dualistic, and assume two eternal principles of good and evil; or Polytheistic, and make the universe the work of several gods. The Jewish writer, on the other hand, has kept clear of all these theories; and he is admittedly right and all the others wrong.