The giant bent foward in his chair and looked at her.
‘Who are you?’ he said.
‘My name is Reason,’ said the virgin.
‘Make out her passport quickly,’ said the giant in a low voice. ‘And let her go through our dominions and be off with all the speed she wishes.’
‘Not yet,’ said Reason. ‘I will ask you three riddles before I go, for a wager.’
‘What is the pledge?’ said the giant.
‘Your head,’ said Reason.
…
Reason set spurs in her stallion and leaped up on to the giant’s mossy knees and galloped up his foreleg, til she plunged her sword into his heart…and the Spirit of the Age became what he had seemed to be at first, a sprawling hummock of rock.
-Pilgrim’s Regress, Book 3, Chap IX
Nothing comes of nothing. Dust returns to dust. So will Modern Sophistry crumble as iron and clay. Descartes and his progeny may have stripped Lady Wisdom of her tattered robe, and she may have doffed goat skins for a time, but she is as undaunted as her Master, and as much a dread warrior as He is.
I admire Kierkegaard, the gadfly of the modern age, in many ways, but he seemed to forget that Lady Wisdom was his defender, not vice versa. C.S. Lewis, on the other hand, saw her role more clearly, recognizing her not only as God’s handmaiden, but as the Armor Bearer of the Most High. He clad her in armor and gave her resounding victory over the mountain of sophistry that comprises the spirit of our age. Lewis stood firmly, grasping Wisdom’s seven pillars, and gazed (and wrote) in rapt awe, along with L’Engel and Andrew Peterson, of the mystery of wisdom in Scripture: “a little child shall lead them.” Lady Wisdom is a marvelous teacher, and makes great students and warriors not only from the simple of heart, but “the weak things of this world.”