Though she is remembered for her detective stories. Dorothy L. Sayers was also a theologian, and some years ago, "a book of hers":http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0826476783\/andrewbrownssite on the Trinity was reissued. I got a free copy, so I suppose this must have been at least ten years ago; but I have only now got round to reading it.<\/p>\n\n
It has dated remarkably little, and as I read the opening chapters, I realised that it was all, in one sense, an argument with Pharyngular atheism, of the sort that maintains that religion must by its nature be irrational, and religious beliefs must by their nature be held without evidence.<\/p>\n\n
She starts with a glorious denunciation of modern media and the sloppiness of modern thought, with which I am sure that Professor Myers would agree:<\/p>\n\n
the popular mind has grown so confused that it is no longer able to receive any statement of fact except as an expression of personal feeling. Some time ago, the present writer, pardonably irritated by a very prevalent ignorance concerning the essentials of Christian doctrine, published a brief article in which those essentials were plainly set down in words that a child could understand. Every clause was preceded by some such phrase as: "the Church maintains", "the Church teaches", "if the Church is right", and so forth. The only personal opinion expressed was that, though the doctrine might be false, it could not very well be called dull.
\nEvery newspaper that reviewed this article accepted it without question as a profession of faith—some (Heaven knows why) called it "a courageous profession of faith", as though professing Christians in this country were liable to instant persecution. One review, syndicated throughout the Empire, called it "a personal confession of faith by a woman who feels sure she is right".
\nNow, what the writer believes or does not believe is of little importance one way or the other. What is of great and disastrous importance is the proved inability of supposedly educated persons to read.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nTestify, sister! Her brusque and angry dismissals aren’t just worth quoting in themselves.<\/p>\n\n
The education that we have so far succeeded in giving to the bulk of our citizens has produced a generation of mental slatterns. They are literate in the merely formal sense—that is, they are capable of putting the symbols C, A, T together to produce the word CAT.<\/span> But they are not literate in the sense of deriving from those letters any clear mental concept of the animal. Literacy in the formal sense is dangerous, since it lays the mind open to receive any mischievous nonsense about cats that an irresponsible writer may choose to print —nonsense which could never have entered the heads of plain illiterates who were familiar with an actual cat, even if unable to spell its name. … a great part of the nation subsists in an ignorance more barbarous than that of the dark ages, owing to this slatternly habit of illiterate reading. Words are understood in a wholly mistaken sense, statements of fact and opinion are misread and distorted in repetition, arguments founded in misapprehension are accepted without examination …<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n
She’s writing, as it happens, about Christian doctrine, but nothing she says could not be applied to the difficulties of communicating science. But it will take a couple more posts to get that far. And you’re not going to get them tonight.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Though she is remembered for her detective stories. Dorothy L. Sayers was also a theologian, and some years ago, "a book of hers":http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0826476783\/andrewbrownssite on the Trinity was reissued. I got a free copy, so I suppose this must have been … Continue reading