This is a Christian society, established in Japan at Toyohashi in 2006, whose primary function is to enable both Christians and Non-Christians to study the Bible.

WHY NO WOMEN PRIESTS

Reverend I.P.S.G. COSBY

IV. NATION, GIVEN OVER TO ITS SIN

iv. Law & Order
In a world of absolutes, it is possible to say that the plaintiff is either guilty or not guilty and for a judge to sentence a criminal accordingly. In the world of relativism, the judge may pronounce the plaintiff guilty, but the plaintiff can legitimately respond that the judgment is invalid, because there is no absolute or objective punishment since what is considered criminal is itself relative not objective. What the judge understands to be wrong, is different to what the plaintiff believes to be wrong. In a world where there are no absolutes, it becomes impossible to say whether the judge’s opinion is more or less right than that of the criminal.

v. Confusing Reality and Fiction
The consequences for a civilisation which ceases to be anchored to the underlying Principle of Absolutes, is that it begins to confuse reality and fiction. People at a very early age are capable of distinguishing fact from fiction which would seem to be intuitive. For example, child readers of Beatrice Potter’s Peter Rabbit series know intuitively that the characters are fictional. Children enjoy them as such, but do not confuse them with real people, or with the family’s cat. In the same way, children do not confuse Thomas the Tank Engine, Gordon and Edward the red engine with real people³⁷⁾.

It is not the first time European civilisation has given up on reality, seemingly incapable of distinguishing between reality and fiction. It occurred during the Middle Ages in Europe when it was believed, for example, that Astrology was reality. Arguably, it was the discovery of the need to live in the real world that led to the distinction being made between Astrology and Astronomy. This reformation was largely brought about by the Bible being read in the vernacular. Europeans re-discovered the world of Abraham, who had distinguished the God of the Bible from the human conceived gods and world civilisation of Assyria and Mesopotamia, a world view which had spread to Egypt and India, and aspects of which had spread far beyond.³⁸⁾

The foundation of modern western civilisation was, not the Renaissance, but the Reformation. The rediscovery of the Bible and the capacity to read it in the local vernacular restored the Christian way of looking at the world and events as they really were or had been. More than causing the break from the Roman Catholic Church, the Reformation became the motivation for the development of western science and objective analysis of what was real and true. Both Christianity and Science are concerned only with real facts, by which it is possible to determine the truth and know how the World actually is. The main difference between the two is that the remit of science is confined to the Creation, whereas the remit of Christianity includes the world outside of, and beyond Creation, but within which Creation subsists.

As the western world has largely given up on Christianity during the course of the last century, that world has begun to revert to living and thinking in a world of fiction as if it were reality, as had become the case in the Middle Ages. It is not the purpose of this paper to dwell on this. Rather, it is to draw attention to the fact that it is happening. A case in point is the British Government’s policy that fails to distinguish any differences between boys and girls. Clearly, that government is not living in the real world.

The world we live in is essentially binary. If it is not patriarchal, it will be matriarchal. Not only is the latter contrary to the biblical Christian order, but the overall tendency is that where women encroach on what historically has been a male preserve, the reality is, as afore stated, men will tend to withdraw or disengage after initial resistance rather than remain competitive. Where there is a manhood that has conceded the duty of headship, or even senses it is being challenged, it easily becomes a dis-functional manhood, manifesting either domination or laddish irresponsibility³⁹⁾.

The current spate of copycat mass shootings by a deranged (frustrated?) man who then commits suicide may, to a degree, be a symptom of the current situation where a responsible manhood role model is absent. Lastly, it is a manifestation of a dis-functional imploding society when the sexes swap roles. The theatre world currently prides itself on being avant-garde, anticipating trends towards general confusion of the sexes. A manifestation of this role swapping is the current fashion for playing traditional iconic male roles, such as Macbeth⁴⁰⁾ or Hamlet⁴¹⁾ by women.

★★★★★★

37) See Wikipedia: Thomas the Tank Engine, Ref. 8: Characters of the Railway Series. Thomas was an anthropomorphism of the ‘Billington’ 0-6-0 E2 class tank engine employed on the London, Brighton & South Coast Railway.

38) Consider the fairies in Pictish Scotland, the Garuda of Indonesia, the English Leopards and the Scottish Lion on the Royal Arms, the antecedents of which creatures are the ‘Biting Animal’ of the Central Asian Sythian culture. The motif was discovered and brought back to North-West Europe by the Vikings

39) Recent examples have been the inevitable widespread bullying of women in the Royal Navy, particularly in nuclear submarines; in the Metropolitan Police, and in Fire Services, all cases of which are serving severely to discredit the reputation of the services concerned. See, Daily Mail. Navy Probes Submarine Sex Pests Scandal. 29th Oct. 2022, pp. 1, 4, 8, 9; The Times. 30th Oct. 2022, p.1 et al. The Sunday Times. Female Firearms Officers Bullied Out by Boys’ Club of Misogynists. 27th November 2022. pp. 1,2,16,17.

40) See, McAdam, Ezekiel. Macbeth Is Now a Woman: Why Gender-Swapped Casting Needs to Happen More. http:// www.themarysue.com

41) Actresses have wanted to play Hamlet since the 18th cent. (Howard, Tony. Women as Hamlet. CUP 2007. ISBN: 100521864666. University of Warwick, ISBN: 9780521117210. Nevertheless, the recent film with Sarah Bernhardt

Next time is "Conclusion"