|
|
|
|
|
|
Resources |
|
|
|
Ecce Homo
| Article
# : |
11488 |
|
|
Section : |
BOOK WORLD
|
| Issue
Date : |
10 / 1986 |
4,511 Words |
| Author
: |
Lee Congdon
Lee Congdon writes regularly on modern literature. He teaches
eastern European history at James Madison University. |
JESUS THROUGH THE CENTURIES
His Place in the History of Culture
Jaroslav Pelikan
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985
270 pp., $22.50
THE VINDICATION OF TRADITION
Jaroslav Pelikan
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984
93 pp., $5.95 (paper).
We are no longer surprised by the storm of protest that self-appointed guardians of "cultural pluralism" raise every time someone so much as mentions the Judeo-Christian tradition. Ever on the alert for subterfuge, these verbal vigilantes insist that religious zealots employ the familiar hyphenation in order to put a more respectable front on reactionary attempts to discredit "alternative life-styles" and advanced opinion. In this way, they betray their ignorance of history as well as their contempt for the public's intelligence, for Western culture, whatever one chooses to think of it, is Christian through and through. Neither Secretary of Education William Bennett, nor the Reverend Jerry Falwell, nor anyone else will find it necessary to "impose" Christian values on others; those values are warp and woof of the very fabric of our communal existence. So much so that even our civilization's most celebrated discontents discover soon enough that they are constrained to define their rebellion with reference to Christianity. "Only a Christian culture," T.S. Eliot observed, "could have produced a Voltaire or a Nietzsche." No wonder, then, that the Olympian German
... (1998 of 27304 Characters)
Read Full Article
|
|
