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Theological Reflections

Take Two Gospel Pills (they’re better than Aleve).

First, an announcement. Apt pictures which add materially to the overall impact of an article will probably not be appearing on this blog again soon.

Second, a word of background. I have re-entered the work force, participating in one of the positions presumably created to keep the excess population from rioting because of too much spare time. In this job I have lots of time to talk to people around me. One woman had a lot of emotional baggage pulled out through her feet by a metaphysical healer, and another one has had memories of her past lives.

Third, this leads me to think about the relationship of human experience and evangelism. This is furthered by the fact that I am reading Billy Graham’s autobiography, Just As I Am (thanks, Goodwill in Mesa).

And so, to the main course, which impinges significantly, if not obviously, on the topic mentioned above.

There are people who are seeking something because they are not satisfied with their lives; but their seeking is almost always idolatrously egocentrical. What they seek is happiness; relief from pain, from grief, from bitterness. And if their testimony is to be received at all, they have found at least a measure of these things by means which must be recognized as being antithetical to Christianity. It is no use telling them they haven’t experienced what they have; it is no good saying to them that they really were not helped (in the narrow specific sense in which they sought help). Sometimes I think we present the Gospel as the way to leave behind the bitterness of the past, or as some secret to a successful life � �God’s tips for happy living�. But they can have tips for happy living from a Mormon or a metaphysical healer (in that case accompanied with the nine essential oils and a hot towel). As long as we present the Gospel in this way, we are only offering one option among many; and others may be as good, or better. After all, the Gospel doesn’t give us a hot towel.

But say that we distinguish: say that we do not accept their idolatrous assumption that being all right (healthy, well-adjusted, cheerful, reasonably prosperous) is the real goal, the real point. What would happen then? Well, we wouldn’t have the pressure to preserve the Gospel’s uniqueness by trying to make it compete with the hot towel; we wouldn’t have to persuade everyone that Lipton brand chamomile tea really is the best chamomile tea out there. We could instead point out that to the Gospel all that they seek is secondary �a side effect: what they seek so hard is done almost casual and offhandedly by the more fundamental alignment of resting in the grace of God. Many systems and tricks can more or less deal with depression and feelings of guilt and negative energy and misaligned shakras and what have you. The glory of the Gospel does not consist in doing this a little better, but in being something entirely different.

Human devices can deal with feelings of guilt; but only the Gospel deals with sin. Human devices can deal with discontent; but only the Gospel bestows all things upon us.

Human devices can deal with anxiety; but only the Gospel can establish us in peace with God.

Human devices can manage anger, frustration, resentment and bring a measure of concord between man and man; but only the Gospel makes us all one in Christ Jesus.

Let us not make the mistake of presenting the Gospel as though it were only or primarily the answer to people’s felt needs (after all, it answers needs that many do not feel), one option for well-adjustedness among several (even if the best). And let us not make the mistake of maintaining the Gospel’s uniqueness by denying that any other brands are even tea at all.

There is reconciliation through Christ’s blood: God has commenced the restoration of all things. That is something more than valium, or even the unborn child-god, can claim for itself.

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Quotations Theological Reflections

Rahner’s Slant on the Ascension

Here are some striking statements by Karl Rahner. They can be found in The Great Church Year, pp.204,205 or in The Eternal Year. There are some pretty dramatic problems with Rahner, some of which may be documented in time to come on this blog, but the critique of pantheism below is very good.

And so my faith and my consolation are centered on this: that he has taken with him everything that is ours. He has ascended and he sits at the right hand of the Father. �I see the Son of man standing at the right hand of God.� The absolute Logos shall look at me in eternity with the face of a man. Those who theorize on the beatific vision forget this. As yet, I have read nothing about this in any modern tract in dogma. How strange! At this point pious ascetics read into the silence of the theologians some sentimental anthropomorphism about joy. And what is more they even dare�on their way to the beatific vision�to bypass the humanity of Jesus. As though we can do this so casually! Whoever �imagines� things this way obviously is not sufficiently aware that God’s revelation was a man.

Jesus has taken with him what he was, and what we are, to such an extent that he himself, Jesus of Nazareth, abides forever. We must be more important than we thought, of more permanent value and of more substance when we consider that this is feasible in spite of our foolish or despairing pride. One could reduce all Christianity to this one formula: it is the faith in which God so surpassed the pride of human beings that the person’s grossest imaginings of his own worth are degraded to sinful disbelief and almost brutish timidity.

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Moreover when one indulges in pantheistic imaginings about God’s existence, on closer inspection one certainly does not make oneself into God, but rather God into oneself. Pantheism is no objection against what has been said above, for what does the incarnation, what does grace and glory mean except that the human person can endure in the midst of God, in the midst of this absolute fire, in the midst of this incomprehensibility. He or she can endure directly before one who is so exalted above everything that is outside of him that it is simply inexpressible. This is, nevertheless, the most unlikely truth. And it is celebrated in Christ’s ascension. For in his ascension this truth has been definitively realized.

In the first paragraph it seems very likely that Rahner was following Leo the Great.

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Quotations Theological Reflections

The Unlikeliness of Truth

From Karl Rahner.� I got it from a compilation book, The Great Church Year.� But it can be found also in The Eternal Year, 19-26.

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If we should examine the birth of the child of today’s feast merely from our point of view, then we could say of him and of us, too, only what is written in the dismal, bitter text of Job 14:1-2: �Man that is born of a woman is of few days, and full of trouble. He comes forth like a flower and withers; he flees like a shadow, and continues not.� From our point of view, we could be no more than a tiny point of light in the unlimited dark, a point of light that can only make the darkness even more frightening. We would be no more than a sum that didn’t come out right. We seem cast off into time, which makes everything disappear, forced into existence without being asked, laden with wearisome toil and disappointment. Through our own fault we burden ourselves with pain and punishment. We begin to suffer death in the moment when we are born. We are insecure and driven to be childish about all that is illusory, all that is called the sunny side of life � which in reality should be only the refining means of ensuring that the martyrdom and torture of life do not end too quickly.

But if in faith we say, �It is Christmas� � in faith that is determined, sober, and above all else courageous � then we mean that an event came bursting into the world and into our life, an event that has changed all that we call the world and our life. This event alone has provided a goal and a purpose for everything. It has not only put an end to the saying of Ecclesiastes that there is nothing new under the sun, but also to the eternal return of modern philosophers; it is an even through which our night � the fearful, cold, bleak night where body and soul await death from exposure � has become Christmas, the holy night. For the Lord is there, the Lord of creatures and of my life. He no longer merely looks down from the endless �all in one and once for all� of his eternity upon my constantly changing life that glides by far below him. The eternal has become time, the Son has become man, the eternal purpose of the world, the all-embracing meaningfulness of all reality has become flesh.

Through this fact, that God has become man, time and human life are changed. Not to the extent that he has ceased to be himself, the eternal Word of God himself, with all his splendor and unimaginable bliss. But he has really become human. And now this world and its very destiny concern him. Now it is not only his work, but a part of his very self. Now he no longer watches its course a spectator; he himself is now within it. What is expected of us is now expected of him; our lot now falls upon him, our earthly joy as well as the wretchedness that is proper to us. Now we no longer need to seek him in the endlessness of heaven, where our spirit and our heart get lost. Now he himself on our very earth, where he is no better off than we and where he receives no special privilege, but our every fate: hunger, weariness, enmity, mortal terror and a wretched death. That the infinity of God should take upon itself human narrowness, that bliss should accept the mortal sorrow of the earth, that life should take on death � this is the most unlikely truth. But only this � the obscure light of faith � makes our nights bright, only this makes them holy.

God has come. He is there in the world. And therefore everything is different from what we imagine it to be. Time is transformed from its eternal onward flow into an event that with silent, clear resoluteness leads to a definitely determined goal wherein we and the world shall stand before the unveiled face of God. When we say, �It is Christmas,� we mean that God has spoken into the world his last, his deepest, his most beautiful word in the incarnate Word, a word that can no longer be revoked because it is God’s definite deed, because it is God himself in the world. And this word means: I love you, you, the world and human beings. This is a wholly unexpected word, a quite unlikely word. For how can this word be spoken when both the human person and the world are recognized as dreadful, empty abysses? But God knows them better than we. And yet he has spoken this word by being himself born as a creature. The very existence of this incarnate Word of love demands that it shall provide, eye to eye and heart to heart, an almost unbelievable fellowship, an astonishing communion between the eternal God and us. Indeed, it says that this communion is already there. This is the word that God has spoken in the birth of his Son.

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Quotations Theological Reflections

The Purpose of Revelation

Louis Berkhof, Introduction to Systematic Theology, pp.137,138

In speaking of the purpose of revelation we may distinguish between its final end and its proximate aim. The final end can only be found in God. God reveals Himself, in order to rejoice in the manifestation of His virtues, especially as these shine forth in the work of redemption and in redeemed humanity. The proximate aim of revelation, however, is found in the complete renewal of sinners, in order that they may mirror the virtues and perfections of God. If we bear in mind that revelation aims at the renewal of the entire man, we shall realize that it cannot seek the realization of its aim merely by teaching man and enlightening the understanding (Rationalism), or by prompting man to lead a virtuous life (Moralism), or by awakening the religious emotions of man (Mysticism). The purpose of revelation is far more comprehensive than any one of these, and even more inclusive than all of them taken together. It seeks to deliver from the power of sin, of the devil, and of death, the entire man, body and soul, with all his talents and powers, and to renew him spiritually, morally, and ultimately also physically, to the glory of God; and not only the individual man, but mankind as an organic whole; and mankind not apart from the rest of creation, but in connection with the whole creation, of which it forms an organic part.

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This statement manifests rather nicely that a lack of recognition of the cosmic implications of God’s saving activity is not, after all, a characteristic of the mainstream, authoritative Reformed.

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Quotations Theological Reflections

Aquinas and Authority

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica P(1)-Q(1)-A(8)-(RO)2

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Nevertheless, sacred doctrine makes use of these authorities as extrinsic and probable arguments; but properly uses the authority of the canonical Scriptures as an incontrovertible proof, and the authority of the doctors of the Church as one that may properly be used, yet merely as probable. For our faith rests upon the revelation made to the apostles and prophets who wrote the canonical books, and not on the revelations (if any such there are) made to other doctors. Hence Augustine says (Epis. ad Hieron. xix, 1): �Only those books of Scripture which are called canonical have I learned to hold in such honor as to believe their authors have not erred in any way in writing them. But other authors I so read as not to deem everything in their works to be true, merely on account of their having so thought and written, whatever may have been their holiness and learning.�

Which ought to make it rather clear that Aquinas may have been quite uncomfortable at Vatican I.

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Quotations Theological Reflections

Hans Urs von Balthasar

Yesterday I just finished reading a little book, Credo: Meditations on the Apostles’ Creed, by Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988), rather famous Swiss theologian of the Roman Catholic persuasion.� It is among the last of his writings, and is very simple.� Below are some quite fine and noble things that he said, but I would not want to give a wrong impression: these are what I considered the high points of the book, and some of them were quite high: but alas that was not all he said.� He says some unfortunate things about Mary, for instance (pp.70,83), and seems very preoccupied with the relation of the sexes to the Trinity (e.g, pp.30,78): his views on the one and the many, intra-Trinitarian relationships, and certain of the divine attributes also seem somewhat substandard to me, as well as the things one would expect from a Roman Catholic: a certain lack of understanding with regard to the church, the judgment, etc. (see, e.g., problem passages on pp.29,48,51,63,71).� I found his stress on the individual rather interesting, given the current buzz about community (pp.83-86).
Anyway, the upshot of all of this is, that I am preserving what stood out as the highlights of this book (borrowed from the Marion County Library and shortly to be returned), but what is below is by no means a full picture or an at all unqualified endorsement of this man’s theological writings.

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…if God is not in himself love, then, in order to be love, he would need the world, and that would spell the end of his divinity�or we would have to characterize ourselves as part of God and thus ascribe necessity to ourselves. (p.37)

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Why, then is there a world at all?

As a Christian, one can venture an initial answer (nobody else can do so): If three must exist within God himself (in order that he can be called �love�) a One and an Other and their Union, then it is �very good� that the Other exists, then the world is not, as in the rest of the monotheisms, a fall from the One. (pp.38,39)

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The �Other� is, in the first instance, the Son, and therefore other beings can be created only in the Son (�without him was not anything made that was made,� Jn 1:3). Hence, if the world is to be �risked� and judged conclusively to be �very good,� it is the Son who is guarantor for the success of the venture. (p.39)

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Yet still we acknowledge in faith that he does incarnate himself, does not himself take hold of the human nature that he will inhabit, but allows himself to be conveyed, as the �seed� of the Father, into the virginal womb by the Holy Spirit. But this means that the occasion of his Incarnation is already the beginning of his obedience. Theologians have very often claimed the opposite, on the ground that the union of the human and the divine natures occurs solely in the Son as the Second Person in the Divinity.

However, the creed describes not a �taking of something to oneself,� but an �acquiescing in something that happens to one.� In this pretemporal obedience, the Son still differs profoundly from naturally engendered human beings, who are not asked whether they wish to come into being or not; the Son permits, in full consciousness and with full consent to the divine plan for redemption, himself to be used as the Father wishes. But already here, he does so in the Holy Spirit of obedience, through which he will atone for the disobedience of Adam and �infiltrate� it. (pp.45,46)

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For us humans, that will mean that our obedience, which we owe to our Creator and Lord and to all his direct and indirect commands, can be, in Jesus Christ, and even must be, an expression of our love; so that any love of God or other human beings which excludes obedience, or wishes to get beyond it, does not at all deserve the name love. (pp.46,47)

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…[Of the death of Christ, that He] died with the surrender of his Spirit into the hands of the absent…. (p.52)

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Thus, in the communion of saints in God, the adventure of creative, imaginative love are intensified beyond all counting. Life in God becomes an absolute miracle. Nothing is given in a concluding way, the act of giving goes on unfolding boundlessly. The heavenly are therefore always ready to help in cases of earthly need�certainly through eternal, perhaps also through temporal, gifts�so as to rekindle our courage to strive, despite everything, toward the life everlasting, and to grant us a foretaste of that which awaits us. And if we are given to suffer, deeper shafts are sunk in us than we thought we could contain, depths destined to become, in the life everlasting, reservoirs of greater happiness, wells still more productive. Wells that flow forth of themselves, gratis; for in the life everylasting [sic], all is gratis. The words �without money,� �for no payment,� when it is a matter of God’s gifts, run through the whole of the Bible (Is 55:1; Sir 51:52; Mt 10:8; Rev 21:6; 22:17). This �gratis� is the innermost essence of divine love, which has no other ground than itself; and by it, everything that exists in eternal life with God is determined. And precisely because this love is without any ground, its depths cannot be plumbed; one never gets to the bottom of it, it remains deeper than anything that can be grounded or �put into concepts.� Hence, Paul quite accurately says: �Know the love…which surpasses knowledge,� in order to �be filled with all the fulness of God� Eph 3:19).� (pp.103, 104)

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Opening Scripture Quotations Theological Reflections

Some Partial Preterism From A Rational Man

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To make Ben happy:

Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, pp.443-445

Without here anticipating the full inquiry into the promise of His immediate Coming, it is important to avoid, even at this stage, any possible misunderstanding on the point. The expectation of the Coming of �the Son of Man� was grounded on a prophecy of Daniel, {Daniel 7:13} in which that Advent, or rather manifestation, was associated with judgment. The same is the case in this Charge of our Lord. The disciples in their work are described �as sheep in the midst of wolves,� a phrase which the Midrash {On Esther 8:2, ed. Warsh. p. 120 b} applies to the position of Israel amidst a hostile world, adding: How great is that Shepherd, Who delivers them, and vanquishes the wolves! Similarly, the admonition to �be wise as serpents and harmless as doves� is reproduced in the Midrash, {On Song of Solomon 2:14} where Israel is described as harmless as the dove towards God, and wise as serpents towards the hostile Gentile nations. Such and even greater would be the enmity which the disciples, as the true Israel, would have to encounter from Israel after the flesh. They would be handed over to the various Sanhedrin, and visited with such punishments as these tribunals had power to inflict. {St. Matthew 10:17} More than this, they would be brought before governors and kings, primarily, the Roman governors and the Herodian princes. {ver. 18.} And so determined would be this persecution, as to break the ties of the closest kinship, and to bring on them the hatred of all men. {vv. 21, 22.}The only, but the all-sufficient, support in those terrible circumstances was the assurance of such help from above, that, although unlearned and humble, they need have no care, nor make preparation in their defense, which would be given them from above. And with this they had the promise, that he who endured to the end would be saved, and the prudential direction, so far as possible, to avoid persecution by timely withdrawal, which could be the more readily achieved, since they would not have completed their circuit of the cities of Israel before the �Son of Man be come.�

It is of the greatest importance to keep in view that, at whatever period of Christ�s Ministry this prediction and promise were spoken, and whether only once or oftener, they refer exclusively to a Jewish state of things. The persecutions are exclusively Jewish. This appears from verse 18, where the answer of the disciples is promised to be �for a testimony against them,� who had delivered them up, that is, here evidently the Jews, as also against �the Gentiles.� And the Evangelistic circuit of the disciples in their preaching was to be primarily Jewish; and not only so, but in the time when there were still �cities of Israel,� that is, previous to the final destruction of the Jewish commonwealth. The reference, then, is to that period of Jewish persecution and of Apostolic preaching in the cities of Israel, which is bounded by the destruction of Jerusalem. Accordingly, the �coming of the Son of Man,� and the �end� here spoken of, must also have the same application. It was, as we have seen, according to Daniel 7:13, a coming in judgment. To the Jewish persecuting authorities, who had rejected the Christ, in order, as they imagined, to save their City and Temple from the Romans, {St. John 11:48} and to whom Christ had testified that He would come again, this judgment on their city and state, this destruction of their polity, was �the Coming of the Son of Man� in judgment, and the only coming which the Jews, as a state, could expect, the only one meet for them, even as, to them who look for Him, He will appear a second time, without sin unto salvation.

That this is the only natural meaning attaching to this prediction, especially when compared with the parallel utterances recorded in St. Mark 13:9- 13, appears to us indubitable. It is another question how, or how far, those to whom these words were in the first place addressed would understand their full bearing, at least at that time. Even supposing, that the disciples who first heard did not distinguish between the Coming to Israel in judgment, and that to the world in mingled judgment and mercy, as it was afterwards conveyed to them in the Parable of the Forthshooting of the Fig-tree, {St. Luke 21:29-31} yet the early Christians must soon have become aware of it. For, the distinction is sharply marked. As regards its manner, the �second� Coming of Christ may be said to correspond to the state of those to whom He cometh. To the Jews His first Coming was visible, and as claiming to be their King. They had asked for a sign; and no sign was given them at the time. They rejected Him, and placed the Jewish polity and nation in rebellion against �the King.� To the Jews, who so rejected the first visible appearance of Christ as their King, the second appearance would be invisible but real; the sign which they had asked would be given them, but as a sign of judgment, and His Coming would be in judgment. Thus would His authority be vindicated, and He appear, not, indeed, visibly but really, as what He had claimed to be. That this was to be the manner and object of His Coming to Israel, was clearly set forth to the disciples in the Parable of the Unthankful Husbandmen. {St. Matthew 21:33-46, and the parallels} The coming of the Lord of the vineyard would be the destruction of the wicked husbandmen. And to render misunderstanding impossible, the explanation is immediately added, that the Kingdom of God was to be taken from them, and given to those who would bring forth the fruits thereof. Assuredly, this could not, even in the view of the disciples, which may have been formed on the Jewish model, have applied to the Coming of Christ at the end of the present Aeon dispensation.

We bear in mind that this second, outwardly invisible but very real, Coming of the Son of Man to the Jews, as a state, could only be in judgment on their polity, in that �Sign� which was once refused, but which, when it appeared, would only too clearly vindicate His claims and authority. Thus viewed, the passages, in which that second Coming is referred to, will yield their natural meaning. Neither the mission of the disciples, nor their journeying through the cities of Israel, was finished, before the Son of Man came. Nay, there were those standing there who would not taste death, till they had seen in the destruction of the city and state the vindication of the Kingship of Jesus, which Israel had disowned. {St. Matthew 16:28, and parallels} And even in those last Discourses in which the horizon gradually enlarges, and this Coming in judgment to Israel merges in the greater judgment on an unbelieving world, {St. Matthew 24 and parallels} this earlier Coming to the Jewish nation is clearly marked. The three Evangelists equally record it, that �this generation� should not pass away, till all things were fulfilled. {St. Matthew 24:34; St. Mark 13:30; St. Luke 21:32} To take the lowest view, it is scarcely conceivable that these sayings would have been allowed to stand in all the three Gospels, if the disciples and the early Church had understood the Coming of the Son of Man in any other sense than as to the Jews in the destruction of their polity. And it is most significant, that the final utterances of the Lord as to His Coming were elicited by questions arising from the predicted destruction of the Temple. This the early disciples associated with the final Coming of Christ. To explain more fully the distinction between them would have been impossible, in consistency with the Lord�s general purpose about the doctrine of His Coming. Yet the Parables which in the Gospels (especially in that by St. Matthew) follow on these predictions, {St. Matthew 25:1-30} and the teaching about the final Advent of �the Son of Man,� point clearly to a difference and an interval between the one and the other.

The disciples must have the more readily applied this prediction of His Coming to Palestine, since �the woes� connected with it so closely corresponded to those expected by the Jews before the Advent of Messiah. {Sot. 9:15; comp. Sanh. 97 a to 99 a, passim} Even the direction to flee from persecution is repeated by the Rabbis in similar circumstances and established by the example of Jacob, {Hosea 12:12} of Moses,
{Exodus 2:15.} and of David. {1 Samuel 19:12; comp. Bemidb. R. 23, ed. Warsh. p. 86 b, and Tanch.}

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Quotations Theological Reflections

Sanctity and Glory

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Sanctification in Christ, is glorification begun; as glorification is sanctification perfected.
Walter Marshall, The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification
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Quotations Theological Reflections

Aquinas on Angels

Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Treatise on the Angels, Question 63 ‘The Malice of the Angels with Regard to Sin”

An angel or any other rational creature considered in his own nature, can sin; and to whatever creature it belongs not to sin, such creature has it as a gift of grace, and not from the condition of nature. The reason of this is, because sinning is nothing else than a deviation from that rectitude which an act ought to have; whether we speak of sin in nature, art, or morals. That act alone, the rule of which is the very virtue of the agent, can never fall short of rectitude. Were the craftsman�s hand the rule itself engraving, he could not engrave the wood otherwise than rightly; but if the rightness of engraving be judged by another rule, then the engraving may be right or faulty. Now the Divine will is the sole rule of God�s act, because it is not referred to any higher end. But every created will has rectitude of act so far only as it is regulated according to the Divine will, to which the last end is to be referred: as every desire of a subordinate ought to be regulated by the will of his superior; for instance, the soldier�s will, according to the will of his commanding officer. Thus only in the Divine will can there be no sin; whereas there can be sin in the will of every creature; considering the condition of its nature. (…)

Sin can exist in a subject in two ways: first of all by actual guilt, and secondly by affection. As to guilt, all sins are in the demons; since by leading men to sin they incur the guilt of all sins. But as to affection only those sins can be in the demons which can belong to a spiritual nature. Now a spiritual nature cannot be affected by such pleasures as appertain to bodies, but only by such as are in keeping with spiritual things; because nothing is affected except with regard to something which is in some way suited to its nature. But there can be no sin when anyone is incited to good of the spiritual order; unless in such affection the rule of the superior be not kept. Such is precisely the sin of pride � not to be subject to a superior when subjection is due. Consequently the first sin of the angel can be none other than pride.

Yet, as a consequence, it was possible for envy also to be in them, since for the appetite to tend to the desire of something involves on its part resistance to anything contrary. Now the envious man repines over the good possessed by another, inasmuch as he deems his neighbor�s good to be a hindrance to his own. But another�s good could not be deemed a hindrance to the good coveted by the wicked angel, except inasmuch as he coveted a singular excellence, which would cease to be singular because of the excellence of some other. So, after the sin of pride, there followed the evil of envy in the sinning angel, whereby he grieved over man�s good, and also over the Divine excellence, according as against the devil�s will God makes use of man for the Divine glory.

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Quotations Theological Reflections

The Value of Justification

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, III.16.4

Our doctrine is, that justification is a thing of such value, that it cannot be put into the balance with any good quality of ours; and, therefore, could never be obtained unless it were gratuitous: moreover, that it is gratuitous to us, but not also to Christ, who paid so dearly for it; namely his own most sacred blood, out of which there was no price of sufficient value to pay what was due to the justice of God. When men are thus taught they are reminded that it is owing to no merit of theirs that the shedding of that most sacred blood is not repeated every time they sin. Moreover, we say that our pollution is so great, that it can never be washed away save in the fountain of his pure blood. Must not those who are thus addressed conceive a greater horror of sin than if it were said to be wiped off by a sprinkling of good works? If they have any reverence for God, how can they, after being once purified, avoid shuddering at the thought of again wallowing in the mire, and as much as in them lies troubling and polluting the purity of this fountain? �I have washed my feet,� (says the believing soul in the Song of Solomon, 5:3,) �how shall I defile them?� It is now plain which of the two makes the forgiveness of sins of less value, and derogates from the dignity of justification. They pretend that God is appeased by their frivolous satisfactions; in other words, by mere dross. We maintain that the guilt of sin is too heinous to be so frivolously expiated; that the offense is too grave to be forgiven to such valueless satisfactions; and, therefore, that forgiveness is the prerogative of Christ�s blood alone. They say that righteousness, wherever it is defective, is renewed and repaired by works of satisfaction. We think it too precious to be balanced by any compensation of works, and, therefore, in order to restore it, recourse must be had solely to the mercy of God.

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