3/5/06 5:44 PM Overview Of Project

concerning how any individual is to be expected to recognize an encounter as divine or demonic or homemade in some way.

5:51 PM Here is what we will do. We will posit three beings: God, Demon and Man. God is all perfect, thus perfect in goodness and in power and in rationality. Demon is more powerful than Man. And so God and Demon are the Supernatural. Now Demon is like God then in power greater than man but also in terms of rationality, for that is but one anyway, but then differs is that while God loves the moral law of pure rationality, Demon hates it and wants to subvert morality and finally destroy it. Man is like God and Demon in terms of rationality and Man is like Demon in being willing to violate the moral law, except while Demon hates the moral law, Man respects it and violates it only reluctantly and for reason. So Man is unlike God in that Man does not love the moral law, but he is also unlike Demon in that he does not hate the moral law, rather he respects it. He respects it but does not love it.

Now we imagine a scene where Man is encountered by a being purporting to be divine, of God, and who commands that thus and thus shall be followed by thus and thus results in one’s own existence. E.g., he tells someone to slay an innocent child.

Now based on the notions developed above we want to lay out the criteria:

Appearance. You simply cannot tell. No help, excepting merely that something supernatural is afoot, but not that it be divine or demonic. “the devil can appear as an angel of light.” And an infinite line looks just like a very long finite line.

Moral content. Whatever else God may say this much will be clear in his communication to man, the moral law is the supreme guide to all behavior and the way to please God. Therefore immediately we see that it is then impossible for a divine communication to include any guidance that would lead someone to think that he were to violate the moral law.

Clarity. From perfection we would expect to have a communication where what is pleasing to God is understandable even to children, e.g., love your neighbor as your self, and “how would you like it if someone did that to you?” There would be no need for interpretive experts for understanding.

Universality. From compassion we expect a communication which is applicable to all people in their immediate condition, e.g., in whatever condition you find yourself, seek first and always to do all that you can to be loving. And so where handedness and sexuality were not unacceptable conditions, and women were not inferior.

Experience. This is sort of an iffy one and sort of post-appearance, namely the effect that the communication has on Man. From a divine communication we would expect a certain effect on Man namely that he become more respectful of the moral law and even come to love the moral law, or become more distant from it and looking instead to the principle of Self for guidance, where the stakes were too high to worry about others, for they will have to fend for themselves and cannot be helped.

Now we shall turn to our histories and examine the means whereby each of four prophets of old have reported encounters and how these encounters are to be classed according to divine, demonic, delusional, fraudulent.

Our conclusions, that will be developed in the essay itself, now under construction, will be that Abraham should have consider his voice as delusional or demonic but not as divine and he was quite in error in his choice, and would have served us better to have honored the moral criterion and not to have rejected it.

Paul could be divine because the communication is moral at the core, it is exceptionally simple and clear and it is universal for (in the person of the Gentile Christian) the homosexual and left hander are considered no different from anyone else, although very often they do have to mind their manners and follow the rules of common etiquette.

Mohammed’s could be delusional (although I doubt this) or demonic, for the moral icon is the immoral attitude of Abraham at that particular moment in his life, in an iconic sort of way. It is no clearer than the national tax code and its excludes homosexuals. It does not have any of the signs of the divine, for even the giving to the poor is nothing more than an extortion of property via his communication, no different from burning it up in a fire or bowing down before a rock. [I have that from Kant.]

Smith could be demonic or hallucinatory or fraudulent (for he could be a genius composer/conceiver and exploiter). Otherwise it is not much different from the communication of Mohammed.

When we consider the fifth criterion, namely the effect of the communication on the prophet, we find no change of any character, but merely the same old, apparently righteous and decent prophet. Paul alone stands out as an experience with this particular result that the man who hated Jesus now loved the Christ and had come to love the moral law, not simply respect it, but love it. And that is precisely what one would expect from a divine communication that Man could come beyond merely respect, and could come to love the moral law.

Now before proceding further the Christian evangelist must be clear in his mind of the two very distinct congregations of the church, namely the Nonbelievers and the Believers in the sacred histories. These both will share the same desire to come to love the moral law. The former, the Nonbelievers, can have no assurance in earthly life that they are thoroughly dedicated to the moral law above self, but only a growing hope that one will be found to have the right disposition before a divine court. The Believers of the sacred histories have an assurance of this salvation in the person of the atoning Jesus and a confirmation of their life with him (in resurrection) in their experience. On its own experience is only suggestive and never definitive. The definitive comes in the sacred histories and belongs to those who come in faith. And so the essential difference is that the Believer can rest easy in his mind about his salvation while the Nonbeliever can only hope. That’s it.

And where is the man who can be so reckless as to profess to be so righteous that it would be impossible for him to stumble under any condition, for that man alone has no need of a savior? [That man could not on that account alone become a savior, for he may have sinned in the past.]

Paul indicates that all men have need of a savior, and he ought to know, for he was foremost among the righteousness under the law. And so if he in all his righteousness had need of a savior, then all men have such a need.

And so now the Paulian can speak to the Muslim and invite him to accept Jesus’ death for his own sinful nature and to take on the new nature of those who rise with him into eternal life.

The big hurdle is for the Christian to get over his rejection of homosexuality and to accept it as much as left handedness. Then he can approach the Muslim (and the Mormon) with the story of Paul and the Gentile Christian and then backward again to Jesus himself and see the gospels in a new light, without the Islamic baggage attached. To Jesus through the back door.