Thursday, October 30, 2003
"He so connects the Enemy's Son with everything that it's almost like turning the clock back 2,000 years and hearing Him speak again. Hereema actually takes seriously that verse about taking every thought captive and giving it to Him. We haven't been able to get him to worship at the great American shrine of Freedom of Thought. He positively loves to bow."
--from "The Snakebite Letters" by Peter Kreeft.
I have been learning lately that the American church's greatest weakness is (surprise!) not that it is American, but that it succumbs to the same chronological snobbery that the European church succumbed to a long time ago. As Kreeft's fictional demon, above, points out, under the name of Freedom of Thought we have cut ourselves off from our base and decided we know better than those who came before. This is especially prevalent among Christians in higher education. We decide we know better than the church fathers, these men of God from history and look instead to our own times for Biblical teaching, often to people who don't even believe the Bible. This is what the Pharisees did, by the way, and why Jesus had to constantly correct the erroneous views of the common people on the Law--they thought they knew better than Moses. Now we think that we know better than Augustine, Luther, Aquinas, even Paul! Our arrogance must be unbelievable to the Lord and by doing this, we have cut off our own source of authority. More than any other religion, Christianity is a religion based on history but we have the audacity to believe that we have somehow latched on to the secret of Christian living in OUR age alone. Believe me, I have seen and read some of the finest our age has to offer, and I'm not convinced they, to say nothing of the heretics disguised as "balanced" secular professors, have the intelligence or spirituality to match an Augustine or Luther, or indeed to make much a contribution at all compared to those of the past. Besides, once you debunk the past traditions, where does that leave you? If you know better than those five hundred years ago, how about those two thousand years ago?
--from "The Snakebite Letters" by Peter Kreeft.
I have been learning lately that the American church's greatest weakness is (surprise!) not that it is American, but that it succumbs to the same chronological snobbery that the European church succumbed to a long time ago. As Kreeft's fictional demon, above, points out, under the name of Freedom of Thought we have cut ourselves off from our base and decided we know better than those who came before. This is especially prevalent among Christians in higher education. We decide we know better than the church fathers, these men of God from history and look instead to our own times for Biblical teaching, often to people who don't even believe the Bible. This is what the Pharisees did, by the way, and why Jesus had to constantly correct the erroneous views of the common people on the Law--they thought they knew better than Moses. Now we think that we know better than Augustine, Luther, Aquinas, even Paul! Our arrogance must be unbelievable to the Lord and by doing this, we have cut off our own source of authority. More than any other religion, Christianity is a religion based on history but we have the audacity to believe that we have somehow latched on to the secret of Christian living in OUR age alone. Believe me, I have seen and read some of the finest our age has to offer, and I'm not convinced they, to say nothing of the heretics disguised as "balanced" secular professors, have the intelligence or spirituality to match an Augustine or Luther, or indeed to make much a contribution at all compared to those of the past. Besides, once you debunk the past traditions, where does that leave you? If you know better than those five hundred years ago, how about those two thousand years ago?
// posted by The Pendragon @ 10:04 PM 
