In Christ, not the academy, lies wisdom [I Cor 1]

Terry Eagleton is no friend of Christ or the Church. He writes in his 2014 book “Culture and the Death of God”

Yet despite the fact that art, Reason, culture and so on all had a thriving life of their own, they were also called on from time to time to shoulder this ideological burden, one to which they invariably proved unequal. That none of these viceroys for God turned out to be very plausible is part of my story. The Almighty has proved remarkably difficult to dispose of. Indeed, this is perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of the narrative the book has to tell. Again and again, at least until the advent of postmodernism, what seems like an authentic atheism turns out to be nothing of the kind.

Another recurrent feature of my argument is the capacity of religion to unite theory and practice, elite and populace, spirit and senses, a capacity with culture was never quite able to emulate. This is one of several reasons why religion has proved easily the most tenacious and universal form of popular culture, though you would not suspect so by leaving through a few university cultural studies prospectuses. The word ‘religion’ crops up in such literature about as often as the sentence ‘We must protect the values of a civilised elite from the grubby paws of the populace’. Almost every cultural theorist today passes over in silence some of the most vital beliefs and activities of ordinary men and women, simply because they happen not to be to their personal taste. Most of them are also ardent opponents of prejudice

Terry Eagleton, Culture and the Death of God, Preface, ix

Eagleton is correct. The other book I got was Borges on the death of culture, and he starts by quoting T.S. Eliot, and then moving to Steiner, who rejected Eliot commenting that European culture was Christian by noting Heidegger wrote his philosophy by the light of Concentration Camp Crematoria. But that is a weak argument: against the person (I agree with Strauss that Heidegger was a bastard) and not the ideas. I would argue that Heidegger is a grammarian, not a philosopher, but that is another talk.

The highly intelligent tend to leave God out. They worship their reason overmuch. And they feel uncomfortable with emotion or worship. Most of them see religion as foolishness: greater fools they are, for they worship their imperfect minds.

For if modernism is flawed (and it is: read Schaeffer) then post modernism is more so. Because it is fascist: what matters is action, not reason: and thought itself is suspect.

But in Christ there is wisdom — though the world may see it not.

Paul, called by the will of God to be an apostle of Christ Jesus, and our brother Sosthenes,

To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours:

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge—even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you—so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

I appeal to you, brothers, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you agree, and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same judgment. For it has been reported to me by Chloe’s people that there is quarreling among you, my brothers. What I mean is that each one of you says, “I follow Paul,” or “I follow Apollos,” or “I follow Cephas,” or “I follow Christ.” Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius, so that no one may say that you were baptized in my name. (I did baptize also the household of Stephanas. Beyond that, I do not know whether I baptized anyone else.) For Christ did not send me to baptize but to preach the gospel, and not with words of eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

(1 Corinthians 1:1-19 ESV)

If we tend to, as intellectuals, leave God out — because it seems to be a form of cheating, or because we are too snobbish to consider that the Pentecostals with their loud music may be preaching the gospel — then the things we use to find transcendence otherwise do not work. They fail. They destroy lives.

Even though they are good in themselves. But I have seen too many sacrifice good sense for five seconds off their Fran time or to move up one chair in the first violins.

We need to meet. We need to be united. Particularly with those of Christ we don’t particularly feel comfortable with (which, for this Reformed blogger, is the Catholics, Orthodox and Pentecostals). We need to support our brothers. In our families, in our congregations, and those of faith.

Particularly when martyrs are being made every week, for the Orcs[1] of Islam crucify, rape and enslave the people of Christ and burn our books and meeting places, and the Orcs in facebook, twitter and the capital try to regulate our speech. We need to stand together.

The academic will not see our wisdom. But Saruman was foolish, though learned: he raised Orcs to do his bidding, and thus removed himself from having to deal with the free and ordinary people of this world.

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1. The Orcs are those who have left their humanity behind to embrace terror, deliberately damning themselves.