This of course is a phrase from T S Eliot, my middle namesake, although I do not know the context. Mr. Sherwood Sugden, Dennis' friend and publisher, published at least two books on Eliot, including one by this title; written by one of Eliot's best American friends, Russell Kirk. (CAPTAIN Kirk to you my friends!)
Both Sherwood and Eliot were purveyors of the "moral imagination," and conservative moral philosophers. To say they were intellectuals would be an understatement. But as such, they tend to treasure ideas as being, well, above beings. They find the concept of God helpful, but the "idea" of a personal intimate relationship with God they find, well, unimaginable--perhaps by the token of it being, well, uncontrollable! Ideas per se may have some permanent roots in someone beyond our capacity to imagine (insert Heaven here)--but on the other hand, they may only have the appearance of permanence, like the worldwide presence of various forms of pyramids (not to forget their schemes!) whose original has been erased at Babel.
Ideas, like computers, may seem to have a life of their own, beyond the scope of man or God--yet God says quite clearly, "Stop judging by appearances, and use right judgement." That is from Jesus, by the way, the Prophet spoken of in Deut. 18:14. "Ideas have consequences," true--but do we really think our perception of "good" ideas is more important than, say, God's Laws? Which in the NT become the schoolmasters of desperation to bring to us the futility of both law and imagination, culture and society, and all our attempts to redeem ourselves by reinterpreting what has been said ever-so-clearly by Christ? "Effrontery" would also be an understatement in this context.
(As if to prove my point, my computer shut me out after the first sentence of the preceding paragraph as it needed to "re-interpret" Windows for me. Thank God for Autosave!)
The point being, as I have always averred in these pages, is that materialism dictates that ideas, morals, ethics especially, outlast any given person. Which is like saying we have only One Real Culture, if we would just admit it. The Bible throughout, but most clearly in Christ, says quite the opposite. So that our responsibilities are Permanent Things and of eternal import. We can be forgiven of our many flawed ideas and icons--if we can put Christ and even our souls above and beyond their reach. It is called, "surrender," not to philosophy and the love of rhetoric, but to an Actual Ever-Persistent Person. And this can only begin and end with The Person of God Himself.
In Deut. 18 for instance Moses says not that God will raise up new and better laws and concepts and I-Deals, but that He would raise up a prophet, precisely because the people at Sinai protested that they no longer wanted to experience God directly--as if they actually had, since they experienced only manifestations, not the Fullness of the Godhead as such; and Moses experienced much more than they did, and he wasn't complaining! (Please also note that Sinai is not a pyramid!)
"I will put My Words in His Mouth (caps mine) and He will tell them everything I command Him."
"I come to do My Father's will."
To say that intellectuals, conservative or other, cannot countenance such "ideas" i.e. what I call the Whole Person, whose brain cannot even imagine his own self, much less his own soul or spirit; is to me stating the obvious, again and again. It gets rather tedious, or would be if the Trinity were not so Infinitely Interesting and Deep. My attempts to put this on paper, or be convincing, is merely evidence that I left parts of my heart and soul in San Francisco at the City Lights bookstore. Sad to say. Pray for me, "now and in the hour of my death..."
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