The similar phrase 'Worldly Christianity' is one used by Bonhoeffer. It's J Gresham Machen that I want to line up most closely with. See his Christianity and culture here. Having done commentaries on Proverbs (Heavenly Wisdom) and Song of Songs (Heavenly Love), a matching title for Ecclesiastes would be Heavenly Worldliness. For my stance on worldliness, see 3 posts here.

Novelists 24 George Eliot

Mary Ann(e) (or Marian) Evans (1819–1880), better known by her pen name George Eliot, was a novelist, journalist and translator (she translated Strauss's The Life of Jesus Critically Examined Volume 2, 1846,  and Feuerbach's The Essence of Christianity, 1854 - no help to her at all). She was one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She is the author of seven novels, including Adam Bede (1859), The Mill on the Floss (1860), Silas Marner (1861), Middlemarch (1871–72), and Daniel Deronda (1876), most of them set in provincial England and known for their realism and psychological insight.
Female authors were published under their own names during Eliot's life, but she wanted to escape the stereotype of women only writing light hearted romances. An additional factor may have been a desire to shield her private life from public scrutiny and to prevent scandals attending her relationship with the married George Henry Lewes, with whom she lived for over 20 years.
Middlemarch has been described as the greatest novel in the English language (Martin Amis and Julian Barnes). She certainly is a great writer.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mill on the Floss was one of my A level English books- with Hardy's Return of the Native it was extremely dark and depressing. :-( Life without Christ has no light at the end of the tunnel just darkness.
Jean-Marc

Unknown said...

i think she is very helpful and very intelligent woman.
Visalus