Swallowing Foolish Reductios

“The final divide between the embarrassed and unembarrassed horrifies those moderns who take the Enlightenment seriously, but it should also horrify decent, clean-shaven modern Christians, because so many of us are instinctively embarrassed by the claims of the Christian view of reality. Though the Judgment will forever divide the embarrassed and the unembarrassed, the embarrassed do appear to be making up a large portion of professing Christians. Think for a moment about how many squabbles in the Church stem from not wanting to have moderns think we are unenlightened throwbacks… dare we say, medieval? Consider how agitated we get in our rush to assure our Enlightenment lords that scriptural faith endorses nothing so obviously embarrassing and unmodern and wicked as excommunication, the death penalty, patriarchalism, slavery, a young earth, and monarchy, or that Scripture condemns sodomy, public schools, recycling, or whatever else might make moderns shake their fingers at us.

“But the important test question here isn’t whether Christianity teaches egalitarianism or an old earth, but what if it clearly didn’t? Would we be embarrassed then? What if Scripture really taught all those horrible things mocked so loudly by moderns—would we be ashamed? This is a wonderful personal test. Think of the most horrible moral or scientific accusation raised against the Christian faith and then ask, what if it’s true? Would we be embarrassed to stand by Christ? Or could we thumb our noses at modern scowls? We are promised that idolatrous wisdom is less than false; it is foolishness. The very first commandment calls us to disdain all other loyalties and fear God alone. That sort of attitude makes up the radical Scriptural challenge, ‘Let God be true, but every man a liar’ (Rom. 3:4). Every man? Could we stand firm if every scientific study and political expert denounced Christian truth? Could you stand loyal and unembarrassed against laughter pouring forth from the president of N.O.W., Stephen J. Gould, and Calvin College? Evangelicals have tended to buckle their knees at much less. We don’t know the great joy of swallowing the reductios from our opponents. Let them have their feeble idols; we have Christ.” (Angels in the Architecture: A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth, Douglas Jones and Douglas Wilson, pp. 48, 49)

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