"It is a pity that we know so much about Christ, and yet enjoy Him so little."

- Charles Spurgeon
Against the Incarnational Gnostics

Doug Wilson:




For the academicians, incarnational means being able to talk about incarnational, preferably with words like incarnational. But for the genuinely incarnational, it means being able to laugh at the people who always write big fat books full of words. Faith without works is dead, and this includes the faith of intellectuals. Intellectual faith without incarnational works is dead. But such works would not include poring over one another's books, handing them back and forth with compliments or critiques, circulating them in a small band of irrelevant smart people. That reminds of the time someone threw a bunch of Scotsmen down into a pit and they all got rich selling rocks to each other.

. . . Now this is why intellectuals (high rpm) and pseudo-intellectuals (pseudo-high rpm) can sit up until two in the morning talking about how a particular French filmmaker was deconstructing the suburban instantiations of gnosticism with his gritty authenticity, while down the street another man puts them all to shame by getting up three hours later to go duck hunting with his son.


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Comments on "Against the Incarnational Gnostics":
1. dbd - 05/30/2006 7:26 am CDT

Well, I dunno.

These irrelevant people--irrelevant to whom?

Gnosticism is not so great, but it's not not so great because its fans are nerds.

2. Alan - 05/30/2006 8:36 am CDT

He's not making the point that nerds are the argument against gnosticism, but rather that nerdiness is the opposite of how to simply and effectively battle against it.

3. Kevin - 05/30/2006 10:12 am CDT

hehehe. Thanks, Alan.

4. SD Jones - 05/31/2006 6:06 am CDT

I assume Mr. Wilson's argument does not include the intellectual debt he owes to Iraneaus, Augustine, Polycarp, Luther, Calvin (whose Institutes is currently the largest book on my shelf), Barth, Bonhoeffer, Lewis, Tolkien, etc. etc. etc. The ivory tower is such an easy target, which most likely makes it the wrong target. Since when is writing on the nature of faith dead works? We will be in a world of hurt as a faith if we give into the anti-intellectuals. Who is he referring to? No one I read, as far as I can tell.
Peace.
SD

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