Chapter Nine
Christianity Today
In order to ascertain the nature of Chrîstianity today, it is neces
sary to bear in mind the distinction between knowledge which is
arrived at by observation and deduction, and knowledge which is
revealed to man through no power of his own. Deductive knowl
edge is always changing in the light of fresh observations and new
experience. It therefore lacks certainty. Revealed knowledge is from
God. In every revealed message, there is a metaphysical aspect and
a physical. The metaphysical teaches the nature of the Divine Unity.
The physical provides a code of behaviour. Revealed knowledge
has always been brought by a messenger who embodied il. The
way he lives is the message. To behave as the messenger did is to
have knowledge of the message, and in this knowledge is certainty.
Chrîstianity today is said to be based on revealed knowledge,
but none of the Bible contains the message of Jesus intact, and ex
actly as it was revealed to him, peace be on mm. There is hardly
any record of ms code of behaviour. The books in the New Testa
ment do not even contain eye-witness accounts of ms sayings and
actions. They were written by people who derived their knowl
edge second-hand. These records are not comprehensive and have
never been satisfactorily authenticated. Everything which Jesus said
and did which has not been recorded has been lost forever.
Those who seek to verify what is in the New Testament daim
that even if by no means comprehensive, it is at least accurate.
However, it is significant that all the oldest surviving manuscripts
of the New Testament, from which all the present translations of the
Bible derive, were written after the Council of Nicea, The Codex
Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus date from the late 4th or 5th cen
tury, and the Codex Alexandrius from the 5th century AD. As a ce
sult ofJ~e Council of Nicea, nearly three hundred other accounts
of the IV~ of Jesus, many of them eye-witness accounts, were sys
tematidùly destroyed. As we have seen, the events leading up to
the Council of Nicea indicate that the Pauline Church had every
reason to change the contents of the four Gospels which survived.