Abstract

That divine and human wisdom do not necessarily coincide, is an ancient idea, whose validity, in the Christian world at any rate, may not depend solely on the rhetorical talent of its first proponent, St Paul. Similarly, the reversal of apparently self-evident ideas – for example, that strength is superior to weakness, or that fame is preferable to obscurity – has not just been part of the stock-in-trade of Christian apologetics over the centuries, but seems to be woven into the fundamental experience of humanity. ‘Greatness’ comes eventually to be revealed as megalomania, and ‘fame’, as the Chinese sage, Chuang Tzu, has it, ‘is the beginning of disgrace’.