Last weekend the Wall Street Journal had a weekend feature on “Man vs. God” in which neither side defended the Biblical Christian faith.
Back in the ‘70s there was a book called the Peter Principle that declared that people rose in the system till they got to a position whose duties they were incompetent to fulfill, and there they stayed. Richard Dawkins, a competent scientist whose concept of the “meme” is very useful (Andy Crouch uses it without the name in his latest book!), eminently reaches his level of incompetence as a theologian and philosopher. But Karen Armstrong declares,
“The best theology is a spiritual exercise, akin to poetry. Religion is not an exact science but a kind of art form that, like music or painting, introduces us to a mode of knowledge that is different from the purely rational and that cannot easily be put into words.”
I cannot say what I really think of this argument without violating the terms of the Kennel Kode! Better men both intellectually and spiritually, such as Dallas Willard, J. P. Moreland, and Alvin Plantinga, could chop this woman’s argument to pieces in a moment. Ours is precisely the faith of the Word, and then the Word become Flesh at a certain time, in a very exact body.
The mentality that Karen Armstrong represents, not the rantings of Dawkins and the New Atheists, is the real threat to the Christian Faith, the thing we have to be prepared to deal with. Atheists have always been few. And, furthermore, today they have the disadvantage of standing against the postmodern spirit, because they make hegemonic truth claims! I almost welcome a manly fight with Sam Harris’s Fight Club, especially if we have the opportunity to trample on the postmodernists in the process.
And, anyone wonder why I was never for “prayer in public schools”? There is no doubt in my mind that if we had organized prayer in our public schools, it would be under the god of Karen Armstrong that these prayers would be made.
