Janie B. Cheaney, in a World magazine article titled "The invisible crown," suggests that the world is "distressed," and that while we know many things, we don't know the most important things. "For all our discoveries and advances over 6,000 years, something stubbornly stays hidden. They are penumbra; life itself eludes us."
First off, you notice she's a creationist who believes, against a monumental mass of evidence, that the world and all that exists is a mere 6,000 years old!
Somewhere she found the word "penumbra" and figured she could work it into an article. If you don't know, penumbra (singular) derives from from the Latin paene "almost" and umbra, meaning "shadow." The plural, which appears to be the way she uses the word, is penumbrae.
There are several definitions of the word. Cheaney seems to have chosen this one: "something that covers, surrounds, or obscures."
In her article she refers to the beliefs of John Derbyshire, a conservative who writes for the right wing National Review. Poor John has lost his faith and no longer believes in the virgin birth or the incarnation. Cheaney says that Derbyshire "accuses Christianity of being anti-science" because "Christianity establishes itself on a (sic) 'historical' event that defies reality, namely the incarnation. We are asked to believe that a human female was impregnated by a non-human spirit and gave birth to a god-man." Derbyshire thinks such a doctrine is "ridiculous."
Cheaney responds by proclaiming God has given humanity special honor. He did this first of all by making humans "'a little lower than the angels and crowned with glory and honor.'" That's what creation is all about.
(What that really means is elusive. We know from nothing about angels -- The Bible tells us that in some cases they are friends of God and in other instances, they are his opponents.)
Secondly, God has given us special honor by incarnation--by becoming a human being in the form of Jesus: "Thought an unbelievable condescension ... our Lord considered it no shame to knit Himself into the creation He designed and blessed." She quotes a hymn by Brian Wren which says, "Good is the flesh that the Word has become. Good is the body, for good and for God."
(She uses the right word, there - "unbelievable.")
The third way God gave us special honor was by resurrection. "As Christ's physical body snapped the bonds of death, His spiritual life blooms and multiplies." Jesus' resurrection ensures that believers will also revive and live forever in heaven.
All of this, Cheaney claims, is "Not scientific, but hardly anti-science. It's rather beyond science, in the realm of the unknowable." We know lots of things, she says, "But we don't know how life began and we don't know the force that holds all its tiny components together. For all our discoveries and advances over 6,000 years, something stubbornly stays hidden. They are penumbra (sic); life itself eludes us."
We just have to hang on and believe all kinds of nonsense that has no basis in reality and eventually God will show us what is up.
This is the kind of junk theology that permeates the world of fundamentalist Christianity and Creationism.
If you tend to think that Cheaney has something of importance to say, I offer the following for consideration:
The myth of the god man permeated the ancient world and is found is almost all cultures in various forms. A virgin birth is very much part of the myth and many facets of the Christian nativity story appear also, e.g., the cave, shepherds, wise men bearing gifts, etc. Osiris-Dionysus was called "The wondrous babe of God, the Mystery" and "He of the miraculous birth." One scholar writes of the Elusian mysteries: "The mystic child at Eleusis was born of a maiden; the ancients made for themselves the sacred dogma 'A virgin shall conceive and bear a son,' by night there was declared 'Unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given.'"
Most interesting is that an early church father, Justin Martyr, aware of various points of coherence between the myths of paganism and Christianity, wrote: "In saying that the Word was born for us without sexual union as Jesus Christ our teacher, we introduce nothing beyond what is said of those called the Sons of Zeus."
A virgin birth is important in mythology for the "son of God" must be born of a virgin. The incarnation--a god taking on human flesh depends on such a birth. Almost without exception, the various god men were virgin born. And thus, according to Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, (The Jesus Mysteries), "Osiris-Dionysis, in all his many forms, is also hailed as the Son of God. Jesus is the Son of God, yet equal with the Father. Dionysus is the 'Son of Zeus, in his full nature God, most terrible, although most gentle to mankind.' Jesus is 'Very God of Very God.' Dionysus is 'Lord God of God born.'"
So far as the resurrection goes, the god man mythology includes dying (often by crucifixion) and resurrection, the latter providing immortality for his followers.
For example, again from Freke and Gandy: "The Megalensia was a spring festival in the Mysteries of attis which, like Easter, lasted for three days. During this time the myth of Attis was performed as a passion play, just as the story of Jesus was performed as a passion play in the Middle Ages. An effigy of the corpse of Attis was tied to a sacred pine tree and decorated with flowers sacred to both Attis and his Syrian counterpart Adonis. It was then buried in a sepulchre. But like Jesus, on the third day Attis rose again. In the darkness of the night a light was brought to his open grave, while the presiding priest anointed the lips of the initiates with holy oil, comforting them with the words: 'To you likewise shall come salvation from your trouble.'"
There is no penumbra involved in any of this. The main foci of pagan mythology was reconstituted to become part and parcel of the Jesus myth.
While there may be value in the god man mythologies, they are certainly anti-science in that they propose a world view and a life style that is out of sync with reality and for which there is no evidence whatsoever.
Cheaney is right when she says we have learned many things. What she doesn't say is that as a result of that learning, many religious beliefs have had to be discarded. But she is wrong when she says we don't know how life began and how it holds together. Science has a handle on both of those things, although that's another whole subject.
And it's not a matter of hanging on, waiting for a god to make everything clear. That's our job. The kind of theology Cheaney proposes as "truth" has always merely cluttered things up and made our job much more difficult. Penumbrae is the word for her theological understandings. We need less of that and more science.
For more on the conflict between religion and science, click here.
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