Author: py3ak

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Notes Quotations Theological Reflections

The Knowability of God

The Protestant Scholastic Francis Turretin wrote:

But if any singular, immaterial and in the pure act is presented, science can undoubtedly appropriate it because being is an object of intellect. Therefore the more perfect a being is, the more can he be known and apprehended; and he is the more perfect, the more he is in act and the less in potency.

This can serve to elucidate the statement he had made a little previously that God is the most capable of being known of knowable things. Being is an object of intellect. In order for something to be known, it must have being. We cannot know the non-existent. But created objects are like a candle flame guttering in a wind; they are there, but they are barely there. What we see around us is almost non-existent, comparatively.

The more something is merely potential, rather than actual, the closer it is to non-existent. So a being is more perfect, the more he is in act and the less in potency. But God is actus purissimus, a most pure working: He is fully actual, fully realized. There is no potential in God, because all is actual. So God is most perfect, most existent, and consequently, most capable of being known of knowable things. We only know things that exist; nothing exists so fully as God, and so God is eminently knowable.

Of course, there is more to the story than that. We must distinguish between what is knowable and what human beings can know. William Hendriksen spoke truly in saying: “God�s very essence, by virtue of what it is, conceals him.” This is by no means an insoluble difference. Turretin again:

But when God is set forth as the object of theology, he is not to be regarded simply as God in himself (for thus he is incomprehensible [akataleptos] to us), but as revealed and as he has been pleased to manifest himself to us in his word, so that divine revelation is the formal relation which comes to be considered in this object. Nor is he to be considered exclusively under the relation of deity (according to the opinion of Thomas Aquinas and many Scholastics after him, for in this manner the knowledge of him could not be saving but deadly to sinners), but as he is our God (i.e., covenanted in Christ as he has revealed himself to us in his word not only as the object of knowledge but also of worship. True religion (which theology teaches) consists of these two things.

Since God is most fully existent, He is most eminently knowable; but I am only capable of knowing Him covenanted in Christ.

Categories
Piety Theological Reflections

Once and again

Bernard of Clairvaux, On Loving God


In the first creation He gave me myself; but in His new creation He gave me
Himself, and by that gift restored to me the self that I had lost. Created first
and then restored, I owe Him myself twice over in return for myself.

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Practical Notes Quotations

Worship of the State

Walter M. Miller, Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz

He fingered the mound of faggots where the wooden martyr stood. That’s where all of us are standing now, he thought. On the fat kindling of past sins. And some of them are mine. Mine, Adam’s Herod’s, Judas’, Hannegan’s, mine. Everybody’s. Always culminates in the colossus of the State, somehow, drawing about itself the mantle of godhood, being struck down by the wrath of Heaven. Why? We shouted it loudly enough�God’s to be obeyed by nations as by men. Caesar’s to be God’s policeman, not His plenipotentiary successor, nor His heir. To all ages, all peoples�”Whoever exalts a race or a State or a particular form of State or the depositories of power … whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God….” Where had that come from? Eleventh Pius, he though, without certainty�eighteen centuries ago. But when Caesar got the means to destroy the world, wasn’t he already divinized? Only by the consent of the people�same rabble that shouted: “Non habemus regem nisi caesarem,” when confronted by Him�God Incarnate, mocked and spat upon. Same rabble that martyred Leibowitz….
“Caesar’s divinity is showing again.”

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Pastoral Care Poetry

The Village Parson

From Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village, a little snapshot of a good minister:



At church, with meek and unaffected grace,
His looks adorn’d the venerable place;
Truth from his lips prevailed with double sway,
And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray.
The service pass’d, around the pious man,
With steady zeal, each honest rustic ran;
Even children follow’d with endearing wile,
And pluck’d his gown, to share the good man’s smile.
His ready smile a parent’s warmth express’d,
Their welfare pleas’d him, and their cares distress’d;
To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given,
But all his serious thoughts had rest in Heaven.
As some tall cliff, that lifts its awful form,
Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm,
Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread,
Eternal sunshine settles on its head.

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Quotations

Religious Quarrels

from George Savile, Marquis of Halifax’s Political Thoughts and Reflections
‘Most Men’s Anger about Religion is as if two Men should quarrel for a Lady they neither of them care for.’

(As quoted by James Sutherland, English Literature of the Late Seventeenth Century

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Quotations Theological Reflections

Christology has Soteriological Implications

Theodoret, Polymorphus, Dialogue 2

Orth. � And the name Man is the name of a nature. Not to pronounce the name is to deny the nature: denial of the nature is denial of the sufferings, and denial of the sufferings does away with the salvation.

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Quotations Theological Reflections

Extolling the Son

Melito of Sardis, On Faith
(from Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church, v.2 pp.578,579)

The Lord Jesus Christ is acknowledged as the perfect Reason, the Word of God; who was begotten before the light; who was Creator with the Father; who was the Fashioner of man; who was all things in all; Patriarch among the patriarchs, Law in the law, Chief Priest among the priests, King among the kings, Prophet among the prophets, Archangel among the angels; He piloted Noah, conducted Abraham, was bound with Isaac, exiled with Jacob, was Captain with Moses; He foretold his own sufferings in David and the prophets; He was incarnate in the Virgin; worshipped by the Magi; He healed the lame, gave sight to the blind, was rejected by the people, condemned by Pilate, hanged upon the tree, buried in the earth, rose from the dead and appeared to the apostles, ascended to heaven; He is the Rest of the departed, the Recoverer of the lost, the Light of the blind, the Refuge of the afflicted, the Bridegroom of the Church, the Charioteer of the cherubim, the Captain of angels; God who is of God, the Son of the Father, the King for ever and ever

.

Categories
Piety Quotations

Demolition Comes Before Construction

Richard Sibbes and John Davenport, To the Christian Reader
(prefixed to John Preston’s The Saints’ Qualification)
-cited in A.B. Grosart, Memoir of Richard Sibbes, D.D., in v.1 of the BOT reprint of Sibbes’ works.

The foundation of Christianity is laid very low; and therefore the treatise of ‘Humiliation’ is well premised before that of the ‘New Creature.’ God will build upon nothing in us. We must be nothing in ourselves before we be raised up for a fit temple for God to dwell in, whose course is to pull down before he build. Old things must be out of request before all become new; and without this newness of the whole man from union with Christ, no interest in the new heavens can be hoped for, whereinto no defiled thing shall enter, as altogether unsuitable to that condition and place. Nothing is in request with God but this new creature, all things else are adjudged to the fire; and without this it had better be no creature at all.

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Poetry Quotations

Me embrujaste

Two lines from this song:



Y toda mi sangre se puso de pie



Desde el alma hasta la boca se me sube el coraz�n



What elegant and vivid intensity! Plainly I need to read more Spanish poetry.

Categories
Quotations Theological Reflections

The Simplicity of Our God

Henry P. Liddon, quoted in Spurgeon’s Treasury of David on Psalm 63
[Of the phrase ‘O God, thou art my God’, particularly the word ‘my’]

�The word represents not a human impression, or desire, or conceit, but an aspect, a truth, a necessity of the divine nature. Man can, indeed, give himself by halves; he can bestow a little of his thought, of his heart, of his endeavour upon his brother man. In other words, man can be imperfect in his acts as he is imperfect and finite in his nature. But when God, the Perfect Being, loves the creature of his hand, he cannot thus divide his love. He must perforce love with the whole directness and strength and intensity of his Being; for He is God, and therefore incapable of partial and imperfect action. He must give Himself to the single soul with as absolute a completeness as if there were no other being besides it, and, on his side, man knows that this gift of himself by God is thus entire; and in no narrow spirit of ambitious egotism, but as grasping and representing the literal fact, he cries �My God.� (�) Therefore we find St. Paul writing to the Galatians as if his own single soul had been redeemed by the sacrifice of Calvary: �He loved me, and gave himself for me.��