The clever men at Oxford

Know all that there is to be knowed.

But they none of them know one half as much

As intelligent Mr. Toad!

When Mr. Toad brags about his intellectual attainments, we think it’s funny and we laugh, because it’s only Mr. Toad, a fictional character. But it’s not so funny when the real, live clever men at Oxford and other dives of “higher education” do the same.

Biblical Archaeology Magazine this month is advertising a book, Jesus and After, produced by the savants at University of Massachusetts at Amherst. “What lies at the bottom of the highly stratified Biblical texts from the First Century?” one asks.

Answers Stephen W. Durrant from the University of Oregon:

“The author has accomplished something rare in this outstanding book… Freed from such ‘stumbling blocks’ as the doctrines of blood atonement and bodily resurrection, the original Christian teaching shines forth with simplicity and directness.”

“For the preaching of the cross,” observed St. Paul, “is to them that perish foolishness” (I Corinthians 1:18).

So the doctrines of blood atonement and bodily resurrection are stumbling blocks? Stumbling blocks to what–getting your doctorate in “Religion”? Winning the approval of an unbelieving fallen world?

“Now if Christ be preached that he rose from the dead,” Paul continues, “how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen: and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain… If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable” (I Cor. 15:12-14, 19).

So these sophomoric twaddlers wish to go back to some supposed “original Christian teaching” that does not provide any cleansing from sins because it jettisons the blood atonement, and does not provide any hope of resurrection–what’s left? “Be nice”? “Sharing is caring”? What kind of shabby excuse for Christianity would that be?

Seest thou a man who is wise in his own eyes? There is more hope of a fool than of him (Proverbs 26:12).

This is the kind of plop that gets taught at our seminaries, and this is why we have “clergy for choice” and “feminist clergy” and all the rest of the smorgasbord of crapola served up by left-wing pseudo-Christianity.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

That ought to make it easy to spot the fools.