Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Biblical World, Vol. 44
Some ages are sterile; some are creative. Ours is one of the latter. T o understand it, one has only to look back upon such periods as those of Augustus, of Origen, of Thomas Aquinas, of Luther and Calvin, of Rousseau. In all of these periods, the crea tive forces in society were easily dominant. It was then that men built up great states, great theologies, great cultures.
The history of the church can be read in these creative epochs and always in terms of the combination of earnest Christian piety with the best culture of the day. Speaking generally, the great body of Christian teaching which we call orthodoxy was produced by university professors who were also churchmen. At all events, orthodoxy was not a product Of fanaticism or of obscurantism. The organization of each new doctrine was the outcome of virile thinking on the part of men who represented the really constructive culture of their day.
But all these creative epochs have had their by-products. The social mind from which has Sprung the great body of Christian truth has been accompanied by counter social minds which have produced heresies and all forms of political and religious eccentrici ties. The creative impulse works sanely with sane people but extravagantly in unbalanced minds.
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