However, even if the latent demand for demythologization is not nearly as widespread as we are claiming, at least among the cultured elements of the population there tends to be an almost complete indifference to the church and its traditional message of sin and grace. To be sure, when this is pointed out, a common response among certain churchmen is to fulminate about ``the little flock'' and ``the great crowd'' and to take solace from Paul's castigation of the ``wisdom of the wise'' in the opening chapter of First Corinthians. But can we any longer afford the luxury of such smug indignation? Can the church risk assuming that the ``folly'' of men is as dear to God as their ``wisdom,'' or, as is also commonly implied, that ``the foolishness of God'' and ``the foolishness of men'' are simply two ways of talking about the same thing? Can we continue to alienate precisely those whose gifts we so desperately need and apart from whose co-operation our mission in the world must become increasingly precarious?

There is an ancient and venerable tradition in the church (which derives, however, from the heritage of the Greeks rather than from the Bible) that God is completely independent of his creation and so has no need of men for accomplishing his work in the world. by analogy, the church also has been regarded as entirely independent of the ``world'' in the sense of requiring nothing from it in order to be the church. But, as Scripture everywhere reminds us, God does have need of his creatures, and the church, a fortiori, can ill afford to do without the talents with which the world, by God's providence, presents it.