Soren and the Scheming Swindlers

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When a church experience starts to resemble a variety show or a self-help seminar I often have the urge to flee the venue. But there's also another extreme to avoid, and Soren Kierkegaard had a timely warning against excessively scholarly detachment.

The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obligated to act accordingly.

Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship.

Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close.

Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.

Thanks to Trevin Wax, a blogger who exhibits the very best of generous orthodoxy.