An Unorthodox Defence of Orthodoxy

Extract

In the new religion of science God is supposed to have had the goodness to invite man to profiteer upon the universe.’ When Daedalus found he could fly he got too far above himself—and the vanquished world: his wings melted in the sun’s heat and, being dust, he unto dust returned.

The science of the world, it would seem, is in fair way to conquering the world. Having measured the world, it cannot but think it has measured the master of the world. It re-edits its theology to suit the newer enlightenment, and ‘the God of Mr. Pupin, we are given to understand, is a God who serves.’

Mr. Ransom sketches the religious history of East and West in terms of an Eternal Triangle. There was the bearded, inscrutable God of Thunder : the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. There was the Logos : Reason, the Patron of Science. There was the Pneuma, the Paraclete, the Ghost. There came a day, says Mr. Ransom, when the Logos, the Demigod, was substituted for ‘the Pneuma, the Holy Ghost, the Tetragram, the God of Israel.’ ‘And this was the very beginning of Occidentalism.’ We cast out the thunder : we could make our own. We wanted something sane yet soothingly sentimental. And so we chose the Logos. homely, serviceable scientist like ourselves. We fashioned the ‘soft modern version of Christ.’ We had been left with too remote a Reason : we said : ‘Not on bread alone doth man live’ (We neglected to add ‘Nor on butter’).