The failure of George Plumb to do this, despite the author’s affections, gives the lie to the attempt. The idea that we can have any concept of God without talk about God or theology, is just silly. Dogma is just theology that the church for more than 2,000 years has decided is a firm basis for faith. This is not a decision that has been made as some kind of power play to support the hierarchy of the church, or some practical measure to ensure that public morality is upheld, or indeed so that the weak-minded can have something to cling on to in the face of death, but an attempt at truthful speech.
It is the arrogance of modernity to dismiss a tradition that has refined itself over such a long time span, and has fought off heretical attacks that would corrupt the truth it seeks to enunciate. Christian theology is far deeper and more subtle than its glib characterisation by people like Richard Dawkins who refuse to treat the tradition at its best but rely on its corrupt expressions to prove their point that rationalism is the only path that we have to the truth.
And we must wonder about the content of the spiritual that the likes of McDonald seek. Is this not just another name for the spirit of the age? How could it fail to be in the absence of a tradition that confronts it?
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The Plumb Trilogy is still in print and I recommend it to you.
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