The seventh chapter of the Apostle’s first epistle to the Corinthians is to the church of today as true religion is to AWANA, as worship is to the gospel song, an alien thing.

It contains a desire for those who are unmarried to remain so. In our day this is not a desire that is encouraged. It is strange to suggest that for anybody to remain a virgin all their life is desirable at all. Our attitude is altogether contrary.

Why do we have an attitude different from one of the very apostles of our Lord? I think we cannot conceive of having a daughter or a son in our home who gives himself to prayer and meditation for hours and for days. I say it is not a consideration; it is not one of the alternatives we regard even when we are making our most sober deliberations.

I think the reason for this absence is that we do not long for it ourselves. Yet how else can we understand the matter of verses three through five? We do not conceive of devoting ourselves for the time this situation involves to this sort of longing for God.

No longer do we seek to delight ourselves in the Lord entirely even one day of the week. If we do not do it one day of the week, we could not do it several. We have no idea of great devout longings. So we cannot conceive of a life devoted, in holy virginity, to seeking the Lord.

But what about being fruitful and multiplying? They had a great deal more of the monastery in the Middle Ages. The human race pulled through those times, for all that holy virginity was prized. A concern for any flagging enthusiasm, when it comes to the perpetuation of our species, is hardly a heavy one.

Would that we had a greater concern for holiness. Would that in our homes we so cherished the time we had to seek the Lord, so sought more, that the thought of being devoted entirely, continuing on in the house of their parents, were considered at least as one of the choices. Would parents long for their sons and daughters to be given over to such devotion, serving in their church, living with their parents, satisfied with no other success but the pursuit of God?

But we do not think a life of contemplation counts. The presence of the Lord is not so sweet or valuable. We prize cares of this world and those who are busy with those cares, more than we prize that which is comely.

Here is why popular culture still brings me joy.

Surmounting all is an intuitive feeling about the immanent nature of reality.

I think that Weaver is saying that this sentiment answers the question of how reality is immanent.

Do you think I’m right?

I have been reading some of George MacDonald‘s short stories. If I could ever get to the place where I wrote stories that well, I would be very pleased, and surprised.

I often wonder, when I read these things, how much I am missing. I understand them a whole deal better, it seems to me, than the last time I made some forays into MacDonald. It reminds me that after reading so much Weaver, since at last beginning to understand the first page of the first chapter of Ideas, as Bauder was quick to point out, I have to read the whole again.

And what of Scripture? Even if there is no end to the making of new books, is there any end to the reading of old books? Blessed be God who giveth us books in abundance.

I have also started reading MacDonald’s Unspoken Sermons at work, when things get slow. Now here is essential Christianity, again. These are like Tozer’s sermons. They kindle a desire for holy things. Here is a particularly luminous passage from the Second Series, if you are interested:

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The good news about the new edition of Fundamentalism and American Culture is that Marsden didn’t change any of the original book so I won’t have to read it again. Oxford didn’t even change the pagination (except for the afterword and the pages with notes), but they made the whole book larger, so the font is bigger. Not changing the pagination was really nice of them. I bought my first copy from somebody who had underlined and written all over the book so it has all manner of annoying things in it. Now I can just put my markers on the new edition. Increasing the size of the letters is going to go over well with many and generally cause that people not hold the book so close when they read it.

The book is also larger because Marsden has added a new section after “Interpretations” with his reflections on fundamentalism and evangelicalism in the last 25 years. There is not much there as far as insight or perspicacious analysis. I haven’t read the Left Behind stuff but Marsden’s interpretation of their appeal strikes me as ludicrous. He also has some concessions to feminist criticism of the earlier edition and other nods and homage to the spirit of the age. He has a long section called “The South Rises Again” that has worthwhile things, I thought.

I think it is a remarkable achievement that the book sits undisputed in its field of study these 25 years. That the second edition contains exactly the same text of the first speaks to the quality of Marsen’s historiography.

I don’t think the addition is on the same level with the original work. But maybe it has to do with the material he had to work with . . .

Thanks.

Thanks for the reflections on Weaver. Thanks also for the exemplary way in which you have been dealing with that bloated and obnoxious tick, Kevin; may the teeth of his obfuscation be broken in the head of his infatuation with the spirit of the age.

But thanks for the reflections on Weaver. I am resolved to read The Southern Tradition at Bay already, but more so now. That line about the South having the last non-materialistic culture has in it the germ of a whole appendix to my thesis. It almost makes me want to wrest the thesis back from my instructors and put it on the course I had originally descried (although that was vague and murky). But I will not.

However, I have seen better how to return to it the elements I had wanted to dwell on. Your reflections have helped me to see through the prism of the men I’m using to focus the thesis and to catch again a glimpse, an intimation of the glory which Weaver saw. I have received an idea. MUHAHAHAHAHAH!

The ISI has put together a collection of Lukacs’ essays, reviews and reflections of almost 900 pages that they are giving away (with no concern for the actual value of the writings) for $18. Get Remembered Past.

Lukacs has learning. He writes marvelously. His judgment is sound. His reasoning sane and compelling. His contempt for false ideas very evident, shrewd and witty. His command of the matter he writes about is never inadequate (from what I can judge). I am amazed. Lukacs is mainly writing about history and historiography, but he touches on very many things.

Here. He’s talking about Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities and reviewing the great acclaim the conservatives gave to it (before scorching the liberals for obsequiously acclaiming it):

Vigilante’s summation reads: “Wolfe is the most contagious force the good guys have. Things are looking up.”
I think that for the Konservatives this is so. They, and Wolfe, will continue to command attention; they will continue filling the vacuum of American though that the bankruptcy of American ideological liberalism has brought about. That collapse is an ugly sight, because it involves the collapse not merely of ideas, but of character, as the vacuum is being filled by the poisonous exhalations of opportunism and fear.

This sort of statement is not uncharacteristic.

And notice the insight that the quotation affords. It diagnoses so much so accurately. I am reminded of a certain feckless Gadarene who has the unenviable talent of issuing from his single throat the legion cries and roars of babel all at once. This wonder recently crowed about the sinking ship, in the same post asserting both his loyalty, conviction and espousal of certain beliefs and also his firm intention to jump ship when it became clear that enough of the herd were heading over the side. And it was done and maintained without any of the painful or embarrasing consciousness of folly uttered that might cramp the style of those endowed by their Creator with a few brain cells to rub together or an inalienable and basic sense of decency.

Here are opportunism and fear. Here is not only an absence of ideas, but a glib unconsciousness-so utter it is stupefying-of (and to) what makes up character.

Lukacs has a very interesting observation to make in this regard. It will show you his great judgment. While he might be describing certain unmitigated millipedes, he is speaking of history, which he maintains is not at all like science and cannot be made subject to the laws of physics. For, he says, “while it is easier to wrestle with a weak body than with a strong one, it is more difficult to wrestle with a weak mind than with a strong one.”

The need for philosophical thinking becomes evident when you listen to Tozer. You have to explain essences in order to expound Scripture. For example: when Tozer reads in Isaiah, “Awake!” he begins to wonder, what is it to sleep?

Great. Funny. Get it.