On The Wisdom of This World
"On the Wisdom of this World" was originally titled "A Sermon upon the Excellence of Christianity in Opposition to Heathen Philosophy" in the 1765 edition of Swift's Works. Its introductory passage from scripture comes from I Corinthians 3:19 - "The wisdom of this world is foolishness with God." This sermon emphasizes the nature of rewards and punishments, and how such aspects of Christianity had been lacking in the classical philosophies.
Except for The Gospel of St. Matthew, Swift relied on I Corinthians more than any other Biblical book. I Corinthians was a favorite work for Swift to rely on, because the epistle emphasizes how to act as a proper Christian and how to conform to united principles. Although the Anglican mass emphasizes the Epistle to the Romans, Swift relied on Corinthians in order to combat religious schismatic tendencies in a similar manner to his criticism of dissenters in "On Mutual Subjection".
However, a second aspect of I Corinthians also enters into the sermon; Swift relies on it to promote the idea that reason can be used to comprehend the world, but "excellency of speech" is false when it comes to knowledge about the divine. To this, Swift said, "we must either believe what God directly commandeth us in Holy Scripture, or we must wholly reject the Scripture, and the Christian Religion which we pretend to confess".
Read more about this topic: Sermons Of Jonathan Swift, Surviving Sermons
Famous quotes containing the words this world, wisdom and/or world:
“Where is there such an one who has not a thousand times been struck with a sort of infidel idea, that whatever other worlds God may be Lord of, he is not the Lord of this; for else this world would seem to give the lie to Him; so utterly repugnant seem its ways to the instinctively known ways of Heaven.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“We judge of a man’s wisdom by his hope, knowing that the inexhaustibleness of nature is an immortal youth.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“This world is run by people who know how to do things. They know how things work. They are equipped. Up there, there’s a layer of people who run everything. But we—we’re just peasants. We don’t understand what’s going on, and we can’t do anything.”
—Doris Lessing (b. 1919)