Imagine the world's inhabitants living in an underground cave their whole lives, never having seen the out-side, necks and legs chained, only able to look at one wall in front of them. Behind and above them is a catwalk on which figures are moving. Because of a fire at the opening of the cave, the imprisoned people can see projections of these figures on the wall in front of them. "Look, a dog!", one exclaims. Another shouts, "There is a man!" But, of course, they are but shadows dancing across the wall as the real dog and the real man traverse the catwalk. If only they could escape their chains and step out into the bright sunlight of the real world. The moral to the story: "The world of our sight is like the habitation in prison, the firelight there to the sunlight here, the ascent and the view of the upper world is the rising of the soul into the world of mind." (1)
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1 [ Back ] Plato, Republic, from The Great Dialogues of Plato (New York: Mentor, 1956), Book VIII, 315.
2 [ Back ] Rudolf Bultmann, What Is Theology?, trans. by Roy A. Harrisville, ed. by Eberhard Jungel and Klaus W. Muller (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1997), 148.
3 [ Back ] Julius Schneiwind, Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate, ed. by Hans Werner Bartsch, trans. by Reginald H. Fuller (London: SPCK, 1953).
4 [ Back ] Ibid.
5 [ Back ] See especially The Essence of Christianity.
6 [ Back ] See especially The End of an Illusion.
7 [ Back ] Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, trans. by Duncan Large (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 20.
8 [ Back ] Daniel Breazeale, ed. and trans., Philosophy and Truth: Selections from Nietzsche's Notebooks of the Early 1870's (Atlantic, NJ: Humanities Press, 1979), 112.
9 [ Back ] Herman Ridderbos, When the Time Had Fully Come (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1957), 52.
10 [ Back ] Richard Gaffin, Resurrection and Redemption (Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1978), 61.
11 [ Back ] Ibid., 50.
12 [ Back ] Geerhardus Vos, The Pauline Eschatology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1930; Phillipsburg, NJ: Presbyterian and Reformed, 1994), 290.
Michael Horton is the J. Gresham Machen professor of apologetics and systematic theology at Westminster Seminary California (Escondido, California), host of the White Horse Inn, national radio broadcast, and editor-in-chief of Modern Reformation magazine. He is author of many books, including The Gospel-Driven Life, Christless Christianity, People and Place, Putting Amazing Back Into Grace, The Christian Faith, and For Calvinism.
Issue: "So What are We Waiting for: Christ's Return or Our Escape?" Jan./Feb. 1999 Vol. 8 No. 1 Page number(s): 4-9
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