Mistaking Butterflies for Bullets
Peter Kreeft

Two principles that would help us "get past" such difficulties, as ******* put it, are:

1. Arthur Holmes' principle that "all truth is God's truth," wherever it may be found, and Augustine's notion that as the Jews "spoiled the Egyptians," Christians are entitled to "steal" whatever truth, goodness, and beauty they find in paganism and "take it captive for Christ." (See Aslan's explanation to Emeth in "The Last Battle.")
2. The example of Paul, who obviously read and heard and knew a lot of paganism; if he hadn't, how could he have been well enough informed to inveigh against it, refute it, and even use it as a point of departure in his sermons to pagans ("as one of your own poets has said...")? Obviously, we fallen fools understand and appreciate things only by contrast. If God used the principle these students suggested, He would never have tested or tried us, or even allowed any pain (or any snake in the grass in the first place). It is Plato, in the "Republic," and the Taliban, today, who want to censor all wrong and immoral literature; the result would be incompetence and naivete and a violation of our marching orders about equipping the saints for spiritual warfare. We would be little girls standing around a battlefield holding butterfly nets, wondering why so many butterflies look like bullets.