Saturday, March 10, 2007

Nietzsche's Epigram and Ramm's Rebuke

A word for apologists:

“The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments.” --Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 191.

Another word from Bernard Ramm's neglected classic:

"What is the devil’s due Evangelicals can glean from Nietzsche? It is the willingness to be driven like Nietzsche. It is the willingness to spare no pains in the search for truth. It is the willingness. . . .to work into the late hours of the night or to start in the earliest hours of the day; to pick up a new project as soon as we have finished an older one; to grow weary and exhausted in our quest for truth; to have...our eyes watery from too much reading, and our bodies bent over from long, weary hours at the study desk.

No Evangelical whose reading habits are a disgrace to the seriousness of the Christian ministry, or who spends more time before a television set than he does in serious reading in his study has the right to damn Nietzsche from the pulpit to some gruesome place in the Inferno."

--Bernard Ramm, The Devil, Seven Wormwoods, and God (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1977), 61-62.

4 comments:

Jeremy said...

This is exactly what I needed to hear. I have a lecture to finish for Monday, an oral report to write for class on Tuesday, and an essay to complete for Tuesday as well. Despite the work I put in over this past week (Spring Break), my son became ill, and I lost about four days worth of work time. Now I'm playing beat the clock to finish all of this stuff. Such a rebuke is encouarging. (However, it is more than a little odd to be encouraged by anything Nietzschean.)

Jeff Burton said...

What serendipity. My pastor condemned Nietzsche from the pulpit this very morning! No kidding!

Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D. said...

J:

I prayed for you. Fight the good fight in the Spirit.

DG

Yossman said...

This was an encouragement for me. I'm writing an introductory course targeted at both the recently converted Christian and the non-christian. I'm working with a group that meets every week and so every week I need to have the next episode ready. It's been a strain on my family since I have a regular job. But both my wife and I know that this is what we have to do. Thanks.