The Hedgehog knows one big thing, but our Synod Fathers (and Mothers) seemed consumed with many lesser things.
There once lived a Greek poet by the name of Archilochus, among whose surviving fragments is the following, which I regularly inflict each semester upon great numbers of unsuspecting students: The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. Knowing next to nothing about either animal, they wonder if I’m making a zoological point, which of course I’m not. It’s a metaphor...
