I ran across this great observation in the latest edition of The New Criterion. The issue was a symposium on what Pope Benedict called, shortly before his election as pope, the “dictatorship of relativism.” That pregnant phrase almost says it all. At any rate, William Stace said, and I would echo it with bells on, that “As a rule, only very learned and clever men deny what is obviously true. Common men have less brains, but more sense” (January 2009, p. 4).
But an incarnational understanding rejects the idea that damage is done to a culture by abstractions like relativism, or postmodernism. They no more exist in some Platonic way than does Christianity. The damage is done by actual men in pulpits, in seminary classrooms, and in university chairs. And the nuances of their position may vary in degrees from the generalization of their collective position, and we should have scholars who know how to parse it all. But those scholars should never lose sight of what is basically going on. If unbelief gives birth to wind, as it always does, then it does not matter if we are in the second trimester of modernism, or the third trimester of postmodernism. The end result will always be — as one with a fundamentalist turn of mind can be counted on to point out — that we shall have no baby when all this is over. ”
We have been with child, we have been in pain, We have as it were brought forth wind” (Is. 26:18).
Those with a fundamentalist turn of mind have their difficulties, as everyone well knows. Luther ought not to have treated the Calvinists the way he did, and which Melanchthon did not want to do. Philip ought not to have made nice with the papists the way he did, and which Luther saw right through. Just think of it as a body life thing.
“Thereupon the conversation turned to the great difference in temperament between Dr. Martin Luther and Philip Melanchthon and to the high measure of agreement between them, which, despite the differences, made them accomplish so much. To this, Dr. Martin Luther commented, ‘In the Acts of the Apostles you have a description of us. James is our Philip, who in his modesty wanted to retain the law voluntarily [Acts 15:13-21]. Peter signifies me, who smashed it: ‘Why do you put a yoke on the neck of the disciples’ [Acts 15:10]? Philip lets himself be devoured. I devour everything and spare no one. So God accomplishes the same thing in two different persons” (Table Talk, p. 355).