Category: Quotations

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Quotations Theological Reflections

The Divine Word

Calvin points out that God’s word is Godlike:

….as the Prophet possessed the discernment of the Holy Spirit, he penetrated into their hearts and brought out what was hid within. We indeed know this to be the power of the word, as the apostle teaches in the fourth chapter to the Hebrews: for the word partakes of the nature of God himself, from whom it has proceeded; and as God is a searcher of hearts, so also the word penetrates to the marrow, to the inmost thoughts of men, and distinguishes between the feelings and the imaginations.

Commentary on Amos 6:13

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Preaching Quotations Theological Reflections

Preaching the communication of properties

Our times do not seem like a high-water mark for doctrinal preaching, for a variety of reasons (one of which might be a foolish notion that doctrinal preaching is opposed to textual or expository preaching). And some doctrines seem harder to preach than others, they seem to be set forth primarily as a safeguard against error, but to serve no purpose other than defense of more fundamental truths.

I suspect it is easy to feel that way about the doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum, set forth in WCF VIII.7 in these words:

VII. Christ, in the work of mediation, acts according to both natures, by each nature doing that which is proper to itself; yet, by reason of the unity of the person, that which is proper to one nature is sometimes in Scripture attributed to the person denominated by the other nature.

While it can be seen that this is certainly an explanation of the workings of Scripture phrases such as “crucified the Lord of Glory” (1 Corinthians 2:8; other texts cited in supports of this doctrine include Acts 20:28 and John 3:13), and that this usage itself serves as a safeguard against Nestorianism, the use of the doctrine may not be immediately apparent. But Martin Luther provides an example, not only of preaching doctrine, but of preaching this doctrine and doing so clearly, simply, and movingly. From Volume 24 of the Works edited by Jaroslav Pelikan, speaking of John 14:16:

We have stated often enough that in the divine essence of Christ and the Father there are two distinct Persons. Therefore when speaking of Christ here one must teach clearly that He is one Person, but that there are two distinct natures, the divine and the human. Again, just as there the nature or the divine essence remains unmingled in the Father and in Christ, so also the Person of Christ remains undivided here. Therefore the attributes of each nature, the human and the divine, are ascribed to the entire Person, and we say of Christ: “The Man Christ, born of the Virgin, is omnipotent and does all that we ask � not, however, according to the human but according to the divine nature, not by reason of His birth from His mother, but because He is God’s Son.” And again, “Christ, God’s Son, prays the Father, not according to His divine nature and essence, according to which He is coequal with the Fathe,r but because He is true man and Mary’s Son.” Thus the words must be brought together and compared according to the unity of the Person. The natures must always be differentiated, but the Person must remain undivided.
And now since He is believed as one Person, God and man, it is also proper for us to speak of Him as each nature requires. Therefore we should consider what Christ says according to His human nature and what He says according to His divine nature. For where this is not observed and properly distinguished, many types of heresy must result, as happened in times gone by, when some people asserted that Christ was not true God and others that He was not true man. They were unable to follow the principle of differentiating between the two types of discourse on the basis of the two natures.
(…)
Yes, all that Scripture says of Christ covers the whole Person, just as though both God and man were one essence. Often it uses expressions interchangeably and assigns the attributes of both to each nature. This is done for the sake of the personal union, which we call the “communication of properties.” Thus we can say: “The Man Christ is God’s eternal Son, by whom all creatures were created, Lord of heaven and earth.” And by the same token we say: “Christ, God’s Son (that is, the Person who is true God), was conceived and born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, crucified and dead.”
(…)
Here we must again confess with our Creed: “I believe in Jesus Christ, God the Father’s only Son, our Lord, born of the Virgin mary, suffered, was crucified, died.” It is always one and the same Son of God, our Lord. Therefore it is certain that Mary is the mother of the real and true God and that the Jews crucified not only the Son of Man but also the true Son of God. For I do not want a Christ in whom I am to believe and to whom I am to pray as my Savior who is only man. Otherwise I would go to the devil. For mere flesh and blood could not erase sin, reconcile God, remove His anger, overcome and destroy death and hell, and bestow eternal life.
Furthermore since the angels in heaven adore Him and call Him Lord as He lies in the manger, and say to the shepherds, according to Luke 2:11: “To you is born this day … a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” He must be true God. For the angels do not worship mere flesh or human nature. Therefore it follows that both God and man must dwell in this Person. And when you speak of Christ, you speak of an undivided Person, who is both God and man; and he who sees, hears, or finds Christ with the faith of the heart surely encounters not only the man Christ but also the true God. Thus we do no let God sit idly in heaven among the angels; but we find Him here below, lying in the manger and on His mother’s lap. We summarize and say: “Wherever we encounter this Person, there we surely encounter the Divine Majesty.”
As has often been stated, all this makes it possible for us to withstand the devil and to vanquish him in the hour of death and at other times when he terrifies us with sin and hell. For if he were to succeed in persuading me to regard Christ as only a man who was crucified and died for me, I would be lost. But if my pride and joy is the fact that Christ, both true God and true man, died for me, I find that this outweighs and eclipses all sin, death, hell, and all misery and woe. For if I know that He who is true God suffered and died for me, and also that this same true man rose from the dead, ascended into heaven, etc., then I can conclude with certainty that my sin was erased and death was conquered by Him, and that God no longer views me with anger and disfavor; for I see and hear nothing but tokens and works of mercy in this Person.
Make sure that you comprehend this doctrine in such a way that you leave the Person of Christ intact and assign the functions of each nature to Him despite the difference in these natures. For according to the divine nature, He was not born of a human being, nor did He inherit anything from the Virgin. It is true that God is the Creator and that man is a creature. But here the two have come together in one Person, and now God and man are one Christ. Mary bore a Son, and the Jews crucified a Person who is God and man. Otherwise � if He were only man, as other saints are � He would be unable to deliver us from even one sin or to extinguish one little drop of hell’s fire with all His holiness, His blood, and His death.

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Pastoral Care Quotations Theological Reflections

Victory Through Faith

Augustine (City of God, Book 21, Chapter 16) explains that our hearts must be purified through faith.

And if vices have not gathered strength, by habitual victory they are more easily overcome and subdued; but if they have been used to conquer and rule, it is only with difficulty and labor they are mastered. And indeed this victory cannot be sincerely and truly gained but by delighting in true righteousness, and it is faith in Christ that gives this. For if the law be present with its command, and the Spirit be absent with His help, the presence of the prohibition serves only to increase the desire to sin, and adds the guilt of transgression. Sometimes, indeed, patent vices are overcome by other and hidden vices, which are reckoned virtues, though pride and a kind of ruinous self-sufficiency are their informing principles. Accordingly vices are then only to be considered overcome when they are conquered by the love of God, which God Himself alone gives, and which He gives only through the Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who became a partaker of our mortality that He might make us partakers of His divinity.

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Practical Notes Quotations

Farmers and Craftsmen Uphold the World

While the books commonly known as Apocrypha are not to be any otherwise approved or made use of than other human writings (and while claims for their divine authority naturally meet with revulsion and even tend to discourage their use), like other human writings they have some worthwhile theological reflection, some poetic forms of expression, and some shrewd common sense. Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 38 & 39 deal with the value of the varying contributions that different sorts of people make to society. In between treating of physicians and intellectuals, there is this forceful and valuable statement:

Sirach 38:24-34

24: The wisdom of a learned man cometh by opportunity of leisure: and he that hath little business shall become wise.
25: How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough, and that glorieth in the goad, that driveth oxen, and is occupied in their labours, and whose talk is of bullocks?
26: He giveth his mind to make furrows; and is diligent to give the kine fodder.
27: So every carpenter and workmaster, that laboureth night and day: and they that cut and grave seals, and are diligent to make great variety, and give themselves to counterfeit imagery, and watch to finish a work:
28: The smith also sitting by the anvil, and considering the iron work, the vapour of the fire wasteth his flesh, and he fighteth with the heat of the furnace: the noise of the hammer and the anvil is ever in his ears, and his eyes look still upon the pattern of the thing that he maketh; he setteth his mind to finish his work, and watcheth to polish it perfectly:
29: So doth the potter sitting at his work, and turning the wheel about with his feet, who is always carefully set at his work, and maketh all his work by number;
30: He fashioneth the clay with his arm, and boweth down his strength before his feet; he applieth himself to lead it over; and he is diligent to make clean the furnace:
31: All these trust to their hands: and every one is wise in his work.
32: Without these cannot a city be inhabited: and they shall not dwell where they will, nor go up and down:
33: They shall not be sought for in publick counsel, nor sit high in the congregation: they shall not sit on the judges’ seat, nor understand the sentence of judgment: they cannot declare justice and judgment; and they shall not be found where parables are spoken.
34: But they will maintain the state of the world, and [all] their desire is in the work of their craft.

There is no wealth apart from natural resources, the fruit of the earth, and the products made by skill and labor.

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Quotations Theological Reflections

God so Loved the World that He Gave His Only-begotten Son

Turretin, Institutes of Elenctic Theology IV.10,15

Although the love of beneficence and complacency cannot be exerted towards us except on account of Christ antecedently (because the actual pacification of God made by Christ ought necessarily to be supposed to the real communication of the divine love to us), this is not equally necessary with respect to the love of benevolence (which remains in God). God could be favorably disposed to us antecedently to Christ, although he could not bless us except on account of him. Nor does this carry any prejudice to his justice because that love does not exclude, but includes and draws after it a satisfaction necessarily. Just because he is favorably disposed to us, he appointed Christ as a Mediator, that he might actually bless us through him. If he loves us, he ought not to be considered as already appeased, but only as about to be. Beneficence indeed requires a reconciliation already made, but it is sufficient for benevolence that it shall be made in its own time.

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Literary Criticism Practical Notes Quotations

Poets’ Politics

George Orwell, “As I Please” Tribune 28 January 1944

Whether a poet, as such, is to be forgiven his political opinions is a different question. Obviously one mustn’t say “X agrees with me: therefore he is a good writer”, and for the last ten years honest literary criticism has largely consisted in combating this outlook. Personally I admire several writers (C�line, for instance) who have gone over to the Fascists, and many others whose political outlook I strongly object to. But one has the right to expect ordinary decency even of a poet.

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Practical Notes Quotations

The Convenience of the Ministry?

(Quotes from Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria)

Still the Church presents to every man of learning and genius a profession, in which he may cherish a rational hope of being able to unite the widest schemes of literary utility with the strictest performance of professional duties.

This attitude seems rather unfortunate: not, of course, because many of the authors whose maintenance was provided by the Church of England did not both diligently discharge their duties and also write widely and learnedly; but because, in spite of prohibiting any positive ministerial neglect, still would view the ministry of the Gospel as a means to another end. It is acknowledged that it is considered a noble means; and it is acknowledged that the end in view is quite the opposite of mean. But it cannot be consistent with the attitude of the Apostle to the Gentiles that preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ should be subordinated to any other purpose. And Coleridge�s rather skewed attitude is demonstrated a little lower on the same page:

That not only the maxims, but the grounds of a pure morality, the mere fragments of which
�the lofty grave tragedians taught
In chorus or iambic, teachers best
Of moral prudence, with delight received
In brief sententious precepts;
(Paradise Regained)

and that the sublime truths of the divine unity and attributes, which a Plato found most hard to learn and deemed it still more difficult to reveal; that these should have become the almost hereditary property of childhood and poverty, of the hovel and the workshop; that even to the unlettered they sound as commonplace, is a phenomenon, which must withhold all but the minds of the most vulgar cast from undervaluing the services even of the pulpit and the reading-desk. Yet those, who confine the efficiency of an established Church to its public offices, can hardly be placed in a much higher rank of intellect. That to every parish throughout the kingdom there is transplanted a germ of civilization; that in the remotest villages there is a nucleus, round which the capabilities of the place may crystallize and brighten; a model sufficiently superior to excite, yet sufficiently near to encourage and facilitate imitation; this, the inobtrusive, continuous agency of a Protestant Church establishment, this it is, which the patriot, and the philanthropist, who would fain unite the love of peace with the faith in the progressive amelioration of mankind, cannot estimate at too high a price.

Here the point to be emphasized is the curious connotation of the line, undervaluing the services even of the pulpit and the reading-desk. This does not seem to place the highest value on the work of the pulpit, and the following statements make it regrettably clear (for we would fain think well of Coleridge in all parts and relations) that he thinks of the civilizing influences of the Church above and beyond its saving influences. The point is not to undervalue the effects of the Gospel on society as a whole (though here too, I think we must expect more from the proclamation of Christ than from the discreet attendance at garden parties and the citation of Horace), but to lay the emphasis with Paul that it has pleased God through the foolishness of preaching to save those who believe: their salvation is fundamental to other influences (at least those of a perdurable nature): and it is primary. We may have the former without the latter, but we shall never have the latter without the former.

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Philosophical Points Practical Notes Quotations

Logic, reductio and secular learning

Augustine covers a lot of ground in this interesting quote from De Doctrina Christiana, Book 2, Chapters 31,32

There are also valid processes of reasoning which lead to false conclusions, by following out to its logical consequences the error of the man with whom one is arguing; and these conclusions are sometimes drawn by a good and learned man, with the object of making the person from whose error these consequences result, feel ashamed of them and of thus leading him to give up his error when he finds that if he wishes to retain his old opinion, he must of necessity also hold other opinions which he condemns. For example, the apostle did not draw true conclusions when he said, �Then is Christ not risen,� and again, �Then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain;� and further on drew other inferences which are all utterly false; for Christ has risen, the preaching of those who declared this fact was not in vain, nor was their faith in vain who had believed it.
But all these false inferences followed legitimately from the opinion of those who said that there is no resurrection of the dead. These inferences, then, being repudiated as false, it follows that since they would be true if the dead rise not, there will be a resurrection of the dead. As, then, valid conclusions may be drawn not only from true but from false propositions, the laws of valid reasoning may easily be learnt in the schools, outside the pale of the Church. But the truth of propositions must be inquired into in
the sacred books of the Church.

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Quotations Theological Reflections

God Completes Salvation

Karl Rahner, �He Is the One Who Started It� [from Biblical Homilies]

[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.

Now if only Rahner would take our “splendid sovereign confidence” and move it into the realm of personal, subjective assurance in line with the Westminster Confession.

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Quotations Theological Reflections

When did the law begin?

Petrus Dathenus, The Pearl of Christian Comfort

Dathenus: First of all, you should realize that the law did not have its beginning when Moses received the two tables which were inscribed by the finger of God, and later explained in his five books. The law had its beginning when God created Adam in His image and implanted His law in Adam’s heart. The law of God was there then, as the image of God in which Adam was created, made as Paul says, in true righteousness and holiness.