Category: Theological Reflections

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Quotations Theological Reflections

Undervaluing Christ’s Priesthood.

Alfred Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Book 2, Chapter 5, p. 118

In the absence of felt need of deliverance from sin, we can understand, how Rabbinic tradition found no place for the priestly office of the Messiah, and how even His claims to be the Prophet of His people are almost entirely overshadowed by His appearance as their King and Deliverer. This, indeed, was the ever-present want, pressing the more heavily as Israel’s national sufferings seemed almost inexplicable, while they contrasted so sharply with the glory expected by the Rabbis. Whence these sufferings? From sin (Men. 53b)�national sin; the idolatry of former times (Gitt. 7a); the prevalence of crimes and vices; the dereliction of God’s ordinances (Gitt. 88a); the neglect of instruction, of study, and of proper practice of His Law; and, in later days, the love of money and party strife. But the seventy years’ captivity had ceased, why not the present dispersion? Because hypocrisy had been added to all other sins (Yoma 9b); because there had not been proper repentance (Jer. Yoma 1.1); because of the half-heartedness of the Jewish proselytes; because of improper marriages, and other evil customs (Nidd. 13b); and because of the gross dissoluteness of certain cities (Yoma 19b).

This sounds oddly familiar.

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Preaching Quotations Theological Reflections

Augustine’s End

Here is some Karl Rahner, to prepare your heart for worship:

�Feast of St. Augustine�

When Augustine, a tired old man of seventy-five, lay down to die in 430, he had to await death in his city under siege. And when he looked back upon his life’s work, from his human viewpoint at that time, he could really speak his words: nihil sum nisi quod expecto misericordiam Dei*. I am no longer anything; yet only one thing am I: a clinging to the mercy of God.

His African church at the beginning of the end, the parties of the Arians and the Donatists, whom he might have believed to have eliminated by his spirit, again in ascendancy; the world of an ancient culture waning, everywhere dark night and terrestrial hopelessness. And his embattled heart often put itself the question whether the last judgment stood before the door: �Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for you are with me.� Augustine did not doubt that he would not stray when it came to his God. The light of eternity lit up for him the darkness of his times, and faith’s hope in the eternal sabbath helped him endure courageously the heavy darkness of the six terrestrial days of unhappiness and need. For him the God of unfathomable ways and judgment was still also the God of love and mercy.

*[I am nothing but what I expect of the mercy of God {Editors Note}]

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Quotations Theological Reflections

The Source of Good

Cicero, The Nature of the Gods

Balbus speaks:

If Reason, Faith, Virtue and Concord are to be found among men, whence can they have come down to earth but from the gods? Since we have some measure of sense, rationality and wisdom, the gods must have them in far greater measure. They must not only have them but use them too in the greatest and most admirable works.

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Preaching Quotations Theological Reflections

Leo the Great’s Elevated Christology

Leo the Great, Sermon 77, On Whitsuntide, lii

The Lord Jesus does, indeed, say to His disciples, as was read in the Gospel lection, �if ye loved Me, ye would assuredly rejoice, because I go to the Father, because the Father is greater than I;� but those ears, which have often heard the words, �I and the Father are One,� and �He that sees Me, sees the Father also,� accept the saying without supposing a difference of Godhead or understanding it of that Essence which they know to be co-eternal and of the same nature with the Father. Man�s uplifting, therefore, in the Incarnation of the Word, is commended to the holy Apostles also, and they, who were distressed at the announcement of the Lord�s departure from them, are incited to eternal joy over the increase in their dignity; �If ye loved Me,� He says, �ye would assuredly rejoice, because I go to the Father:� that is, if, with complete knowledge ye saw what glory is bestowed on you by the fact that, being begotten of GOD the Father, I have been born of a human mother also, that being invisible I have made Myself visible, that being eternal �in the form of God� I accepted the �form of a slave,� �ye would rejoice because I go to the Father.� For to you is offered this ascension, and your humility is in Me raised to a place above all heavens at the Father�s right hand. But I, Who am with the Father that which the Father is, abide undivided with My Father, and in coming from Him to you I do not leave Him, even as in returning to Him from you I do not forsake you. Rejoice, therefore, �because I go to the Father, because the Father is greater than I.� For I have united you with Myself, and am become Son of Man that you might have power to be sons of God. And hence, though I am One in both forms, yet in that whereby I am conformed to you I am less than the Father, whereas in that whereby I am not divided from the Father I am greater even than Myself. And so let the Nature, which is less than the Father, go to the Father, that the Flesh may be where the Word always is, and that the one Faith of the catholic Church may believe that He Whom as Man it does not deny to be less, is equal as God with the Father.

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Quotations Theological Reflections

The Transfiguration and Adam

G. Campbell Morgan, The Crises of the Christ (Kregel, 1989: Grand Rapids), p.167

God’s humanity has blossomed once in the course of the ages, and that transfigured Man upon the holy mount, flashing in the splendour of a light like the sun, glistering with the glory of a whiteness like that of the snow, and flaming with the magnificent beauty of the lightning which flashes its radiance upon the darkness, that was God’s perfect Man. That was the realisation of the thought that was in the mind of God when He said, �Let Us make man in Our image.�

Obviously there is a lot more to the argument than what appears here.� But the conclusion I came to in looking at it is that the Transfiguration was not a beam of divine glory –was not Christ’s preincarnate glory temporarily shining through the veil of humiliation.� It was God’s approval of Him as the perfect man, the fulfiller of the covenant of works, the one who could go to the cross as the head of a new, resurrected humanity.

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Quotations Theological Reflections

The Tallith of the Curse?

Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

That the world is frayed is no surprise; that the world could ever become new and whole beyond uncertainty was, and is, such a surprise that I find myself referring all subsequent kinds of knowledge to it. And it suddenly occurs to me to wonder: were the twigs of the cedar I saw really bloated with galls? They probably were; they almost surely were. I have seen those �cedar apples� swell from the cedar’s green before and since: reddish-gray, rank, malignant. All right then. But knowledge does not vanquish mystery, or obscure its distant lights. I … will tomorrow steer by what happened that day, when some undeniably new spirit roared down the air, bowled me over, and turned on the lights. I stood on grass like air, air like lightning coursed in my blood, floated my bones, swam in my teeth. I’ve been there, seen it, been done by it. I know what happened to the cedar tree, I saw the cells in the cedar tree pulse charged like wings beating praise. Now, it would be too facile to pull everything out of the hat and say that mystery vanquishes knowledge. Although my vision of the world of the spirit would not be altered a jot if the cedar had been purulent with galls, those galls actually do matter to my understanding of this world. Can I say then that corruption is one of beauty’s deep-blue speckles, that the frayed and nibbles fringe of the world is a tallith, a prayer shawl, the intricate garment of beauty? It is very tempting, but I honestly cannot. But I can, however, affirm that corruption is not beauty’s very heart. And I can I think call the vision of the cedar and the knowledge of these wormy quarryings twin fiords cutting into the granite cliffs of mystery, and say that the new is always present simultaneously with the old, however hidden. The tree with the lights in it does not go out; that light still shines on an old world, now feebly, now bright.

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Quotations Theological Reflections

God Doesn’t Stop Halfway Through

Karl Rahner, “He Is the One Who Started It”

[Speaking of Philippians 1:6-11] We are all the work that God the Father has begun in his grace through Christ Jesus in the Holy Spirit. He has begun the good work in us, we have not. But he has begun it through our freedom, and it is always questionable, as it were�it is always the one great all-embracing question, comprehending time and eternity�whether the work that has been begun will be brought to completion.

And when the apostle asks this question, when he asks whether what he has begun with words and tears, with penance, anguish, and all the power of his apostolic work and suffering will really be brought to completion or whether it will run down and atrophy�when he asks whether these men and women who have now made a start will one day enter into the glory of divine light as children of the light, asks with fear and trembling because no one is certain of his salvation�then he lifts up his eyes to God, his heart is filled with confidence, and he says: I am sure that God, who has begun this work, will bring it to completion.

And we too may say this, frail and helpless as we are, we whose Christianity is always running down and atrophying, we whom the stream of daily life is always threatening to swallow up, extinguishing whatever light and power, life and glory have begun to emerge in our Christianity. Instead of studying ourselves we ought to say: he who has begun this work�and it is not we who have begun it, not we in our weakness, even in our freedom�God, in the glorious power of his grace, will bring it to completion. And that is our bold assurance, our splendid sovereign confidence. He says: it is right for me to feel thus about you all, because, he says�and here something entirely personal and genuinely human comes into the power and grandeur of God’s work�because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.

[Don’t ask me how Rahner reconciles this with Canons XV and XVI of the Council of Trent’s Canons on Justification, because I don’t know]

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Preaching Quotations Theological Reflections

Truth and Passion: or, One Thing Leads to Another

From John Dryden’s Religio Laici, Preface

If any one be so lamentable a Critick as to require the Smoothness, the Numbers and the Turn of Heroick Poetry in this Poem; I must tell him, that if he has not read Horace, I have studied him, and hope the style of his Epistles is not ill imitated here. The Expressions of a Poem, design’d purely for Instruction, ought to be Plain and Natural, and yet Majestick: for here the Poet is presum’d to be a king of Law-giver, and those three qualities which I have nam’d are proper to the Legislative style. The Florid, Elevated and Figurative way is for the Passions; for Love and Hatred, Fear and Anger, are begotten in the Soul by shewing their Objects out of their true proportion; either greater than the Life, or less; but Instruction is to be given by shewing them what they naturally are. A Man is to be cheated into Passion, but to be reason’d into Truth.

Dryden is correct and incorrect in the last sentence, depending on how we take him. As a statement of what happens, there is truth in the statement that a man is cheated into Passion (though considered in that journalistic light it seems hardly correct to say that men are reason’d into Truth, considering how rarely that happens). As a statement of the right method of procedure, it may be all right as far as telling you the easy way to raise passions; but that cannot be commended. Now applying this to preaching, I suppose it would scarcely be possible to exaggerate the horrors of sin and hell; and I am convinced it would not be possible to exaggerate the glory of Christ and the majesty of God. And so, when it comes at least to ultimate things, reasoning into truth and inciting into passion ought to go hand-in hand. The reasoning into Truth is the means of inciting into a just and proper Passion. To this may be added some words from J.I. Packer’s article “Jonathan Edwards and the Theology of Revival” in Puritan Papers, v.2: (quoting Edwards Works, v.1:394,391 �London, 1840 edition)

It is sometimes imagined that, because in the pulpit he read a manuscript in a steady, quiet, even tone, and avoided looking at his congregation as he spoke, he did not share the Puritan concern to preach directness, authority and felt power….

But this is a mistake. Edwards knew very well that “the main benefit obtained by preaching is by impression made upon the mind at the time, and not by an effect that arises afterwards by a remembrance of what was delivered.” And when the earnestness and vehemence of Whitefield and the Tennents during the revival of 1740 came under fire from the Latitudinarians, who saw it as a regrettable lapse into “enthusiasm,” Edwards ran to their defense:

I think an exceeding affectionate way of preaching about the great things of religion, has in itself no tendency to beget false apprehensions of them; but on the contrary, a much greater tendency to beget true apprehensions of them, than a moderate, dull, indifferent way of speaking of them…. If the subject be in its own nature worthy of very great affection, then speaking of it with great affection is most agreeable to the nature of that subject… and therefore has most of a tendency to beget true ideas of it. … I should think myself in the way of my duty, to raise the affections of my hearers as high as possibly I can, provided that they are affected with nothing but truth…. I know it has long been fashionable to despise a very earnest and pathetical way of preaching; and they only have been valued as preachers, who have shown the greatest extent of learning, strength of reason, and correctness of method and language. But I humbly conceive it has been for want of understanding or duly considering human nature, that such preaching has been thought to have the greatest tendency to answer the ends of preaching…. An increase in speculative knowledge in divinity is not what is so much needed by our people as something else. Men may abound in this sort of light, and have no heat…. Our people do not so much need to have their heads stored, as to have their hearts touched; and they stand in the greatest need of that sort of preaching, which has the greatest tendency to do this.

(…)

“His words,” wrote his first biographer, Samuel Hopkins, “often discovered a great deal of inward fervour, without much noise or external emotion, and fell with great weight on the minds of his hearers; and he spake so as to reveal the strong emotions of his own heart, which tended, in the most natural and effectual manner, to move and affect others.” Such a feeling communication of felt truth was, in fact, precisely what the Puritans had had in mind when they spoke of “powerful” preaching.

Perhaps the thread of the quotation has led us rather far astray from where he started with Dryden. I’m sure you all saw how what Edwards says bears on and corrects what Dryden says (is it not remarkable that Edwards is a better guide to preaching than a hurried poet who converted to Roman Catholicism and it would seem almost never revised anything he wrote?). But allow me to fuss briefly at both Packer and Edwards as well as at old Dryden.

Packer may be correct (he certainly knows more about it than I do) that the Puritans thought of a “feeling communication of felt truth” when it came to defining powerful preaching: and I certainly would not wish to suggest that this couldn’t or doesn’t enter in to the constitution of powerful preaching. But when Paul speaks of preaching that was powerful (1 Thessalonians 1:4-6) the power seems measured by the effect, not by the sensations or liberty or emotions of the preacher. In other words, however we define powerful preaching with regard to the preacher, we must not forget that in preaching there is also a congregation to be considered.

And when it comes to Edwards, I must fuss provisionally. I don’t know whether the quotation from him could properly be limited to that time period�as the references to “our people” might suggest�or whether he believes his words to be universally applicable. If the latter is the case, then I do not believe that his words can be accepted without qualification, because there are times when an “increase in speculative knowledge in divinity” is precisely what is needed. Albert Martin has remarked this with regard to Thessalonians 4: in the first two verses Paul attempts to stir them up, because they already know; but in v.13 he instructs them because they need to know. We could also mention that according to Paul there is a zeal that is not according to knowledge. I am not accusing Edwards of denying that, you understand; I simply think it as well to be explicit on that point lest someone should seize on the quote from him and either begin to throw over or justify throwing over instruction for emotional manipulation (which Edwards’ example certainly does not encourage).

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Quotations Theological Reflections

Orthodox Apophaticism

P.D. Steeves, �Orthodox Tradition, The� in the Evangelical Dictionary of Theology

Relying principally on the sixth century writer Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite, Orthodox writers insisted that God in his nature is beyond any understanding. Humans can know nothing about the being of God, and therefore all theological statements must be of a negative, or apophactic, form: God is unchanging, immovable, infinite, etc. Even a seemingly positive affirmation has only negative significance; for example, to say, �God is Spirit,� is actually to affirm his noncorporeality. Theology, then, is not a science of God, which is impossible, but of his revelation. That which is known is not necessarily true of God but is what God chooses to disclose, although in that sense it is indeed true knowledge.

[Umberto Eco notes that it is better to call him, �Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, and I find that C.S. Lewis uses “Pseudo-Dionysius” in “Modern Theology and Biblical Criticism”.]

Now the concluding sentence of the quote from Steeves’ article is one that is rather difficult to accept. And if Matthew Winzer and Richard Muller are correct, the reformed scholastics have left us in no need of accepting it. Thus, in Post-Reformation Reformed Dogmatics, v.1, p.229 Muller writes:

…the theology of the Reformation recognized not only that God is distinct from his revelation and that the one who reveals cannot be fully comprehended in the revelation, but also that the revelation, given in a finite and understandable form, must truly rest on the eternal truth of God: this is the fundamental message and intention of the distinction between archetypal and ectypal theology.

Ectypal theology is not archetypal theology: ectypal theology is certainly accomodated theology; but it is nonetheless true theology and speaks truly of God.

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Quotations Theological Reflections

And the third day rise again

Here is something very appropriate for the first day of the week, when we remember that Christ has indeed risen.

Leo the Great, On the Lord’s Resurrection

The Apostle of the Gentiles, Paul, dearly beloved, does not disagree with this belief [the belief that Christ’s identical body was resurrected], when he says, �even though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now we know Him so no more.� For the Lord�s Resurrection was not the ending, but the changing of the flesh, and His substance was not destroyed by His increase of power. The quality altered, but the nature did not cease to exist: the body was made impassible, which it had been possible to crucify: it was made incorruptible, though it had been possible to wound it. And properly is Christ�s flesh said not to be known in that state in which it had been known, because nothing remained passible in it, nothing weak, so that it was both the same in essence and not the same in glory. But what wonder if S. Paul maintains this about Christ�s body, when he says of all spiritual Christians �wherefore henceforth we know no one after the flesh.� Henceforth, he says, we begin to experience the resurrection in Christ, since the time when in Him, Who died for all, all our hopes were guaranteed to us. We do not hesitate in diffidence, we are not under the suspense of uncertainty, but having received an earnest of the promise, we now with the eye of faith see the things which will be, and rejoicing in the uplifting of our nature, we already possess what we believe. (…)

Let God�s people then recognize that they are a new creation in Christ, and with all vigilance understand by Whom they have been adopted and Whom they have adopted. let not the things, which have been made new, return to their ancient instability; and let not him who has �put his hand to the plough� forsake his work, but rather attend to that which he sows than look back to that which he has left behind. Let no one fall back into that from which he has risen, but, even though from bodily weakness he still languishes under certain maladies, let him urgently desire to be healed and raised up. For this is the path of health through imitation of the Resurrection begun in Christ, whereby, notwithstanding the many accidents and falls to which in this slippery life the traveler is liable, his feet may be guided from the quagmire on to solid ground, for, as it is written, �the steps of a man are directed by the Lord, and He will delight in his way.