mystery thrillers. black comedies.

I’m reading that most unfashionable of books, the Bible, when I come across the following passage:

For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.

Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?

For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe…

..But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty.

And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are:

That no flesh should glory in his presence.

(I Corinthians 1, 19-21, 27-29)

Two things strike me:

First, the strong resemblance of these paradoxical ideas to  John Donne’s poetry – specifically, in the things which are not/things that are phrasing to Donne’s Ode on St Cecilia’s Day, which echoes the thoughts and words.

Second, how contrary this thinking is to the prevailing tenor of today’s world. The Jacobean take on the Bible (also expressed by Donne – Dean of St Paul’s London – himself) focussed to a far greater extent than most Christians would today on mortification and the subduing of selfish pride.

Many Christians today would rank “self-expression” as a high good. For all John Donne’s sensual side, this would have been quite alien to him and most of our Jacobean forebears.