ABSTRACT
An answer to this question is suggested by a book of Ransom's called God FVithout Thunder, published in ]93] , which Stanley Edgar Hyman describes in The Armed Vision as "a book in defence of orthodox religion". This would lead one to expect that Ransom believed one religion was true and others false, that this religion would very likely be the Christian religion, and that the book would contain defences of such doctrines as those of Original Sin, the Incarnation, Redemption, and Atonement. Certainly it starts off in orthodox style by criticising various attempts by scientists to emasculate religion, to rob God of His thunder. Yet al ready in the Preface there are signs that his defence may be more destructive than otherwise; for he describes "how roundly the world has of late been disabused of the most and best of its myths-and as a consequence been stricken with an unheard-of poverty of mind and unhappiness of life" and talks of "how sorry .a reputation the true priests, the devout keepers 0/ the myths, enjoy now in the Western World". The purpose of his book, is to help reverse this bad state of affairs by elucidating the "function of myths in human civilisation".l And, in effect, we find that, when he has finished describing the attempts of scientists to arrive at an acceptable religion, he presents an interpretation of the Bible that takes its statements as myth. Ransom claims that in this he is reverting to an earlier tradition of Biblical exegesis, though I should have thought such a view, except with regard to certain parts of the Bible such as the account of tbe Creation and the Fall, or the Book of Revelation, unlikely to be one that would commend itself to the framers of the Creeds.
