Bravo Niall! Very well-stated indeed. I so much appreciated your descriptive line, “… it remains to be seen whether they can do so when the afterglow of Christian culture has finally faded.” Although obviously speaking of poetry here, your observation that this afterglow has been the very atmosphere affecting poets, has had a similar effect on all of the secular thinking and leftist political policies (during the last 100 years or so) as they developed and were codified. The rabid secularists and atheists of today uniformly conjure their new moralistic and principled rules and ideals in this very post-Christian afterglow. They do so without the slightest acknowledgement, as though the virtues they fabricate (in art as a well as law) are somehow innate in a secular humanity. Not so. Those of us who understand biblical Christianity and the nature of un-regenerate human beings know better.
Bravo Niall! Very well-stated indeed. I so much appreciated your descriptive line, “… it remains to be seen whether they can do so when the afterglow of Christian culture has finally faded.” Although obviously speaking of poetry here, your observation that this afterglow has been the very atmosphere affecting poets, has had a similar effect on all of the secular thinking and leftist political policies (during the last 100 years or so) as they developed and were codified. The rabid secularists and atheists of today uniformly conjure their new moralistic and principled rules and ideals in this very post-Christian afterglow. They do so without the slightest acknowledgement, as though the virtues they fabricate (in art as a well as law) are somehow innate in a secular humanity. Not so. Those of us who understand biblical Christianity and the nature of un-regenerate human beings know better.