Fr Matthew Reese

Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
—1 Corinthians 1:20-25

Dear Friends in Christ,

Whenever I come across this passage, I think immediately of the Reformed theologian and philosopher, Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), and his incredibly pithy title, On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers.

Christianity’s Cultured Despisers.

They are not a new phenomenon, and they have been the subject of much Christian apologetics and debate—some of it measured and hopeful (say, C. S. Lewis), some of it rather more polemical (say, William F. Buckley), some of it downright hysterical (no doubt, some names spring immediately to mind).

But the cultured despisers are not always so sophisticated either.

I remember, as an undergraduate, watching the great Archbishop Rowan Williams debate Richard Dawkins at the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford. (The room was so packed they ran out of seats, so—rather dejected—I watched the livestream from across the street).

I would’ve probably called myself an atheist at the time, but even I rolled my eyes to the back of my head when Dawkins asked the archbishop how he “explained thunder.”

“Well, Richard, rather the same way you do,” I remember the reply.

Few serious people think that the purpose of the Christian religion is the explanation of meteorological phenomena, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still plenty of other disdain to go around. So, it can be difficult sometimes to wear our Christian faith on our sleeves.

For so many people, the catholic faith is a “stumbling block, a folly.”

But the “folly of what we preach” is its very power.

We preach Christ crucified, we preach a God who so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

The Lord whom we follow calls us to poverty in a world of greed, love in a world of hatred, peace in a world of war. What greater folly can there be than that?

Yours in Christ,

—Fr Matthew