Reflections on the Psalms

p. 57

Theologians are tempted not just by “ordinary pedantry and conceit,” but particularly by spiritual pride. “One is sometimes . . . . glad not to be a great theologian; one might so easily mistake it for being a good Christian. The temptations to which a great philologist or a great chemist are exposed are trivial in comparison. When the subject is sacred, proud and clever men may come to think that the outsiders who don’t know it are not merely inferior to them in skill but lower in God’s eyes; as the priests said (John 7:49) ‘All that rabble who are not experts in the Torah are accursed.’”