Category: Quotations

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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.

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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.��

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Quotations Theological Reflections

The Son was always the revealer

John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, IV.8.5

First, if it is true, as Christ says, �Neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him� (Matthew 11:27), then those who wish to attain to the knowledge of God behoved always to be directed by that eternal wisdom For how could they have comprehended the mysteries of God in their mind, or declared them to others, unless by the teaching of him, to whom alone the secrets of the Father are known? The only way, therefore, by which in ancient times holy men knew God, was by beholding him in the Son as in a mirror. When I say this, I mean that God never manifested himself to men by any other means than by his Son, that is, his own only wisdom, light, and truth. From this fountain Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and others, drew all the heavenly doctrine which they possessed. From the same fountain all the prophets also drew all the heavenly oracles which they published.

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Quotations Theological Reflections

Conversion is Negative and Positive

Cocceius has this beautiful remark (from Heppe’s Reformed Dogmatics)

There are two parts of conversion answering to the two ends. The man who is converted is converted from bad to good, from darkness to light, from the slavery of Satan to God, I K. 8:35, Is. 59:20, Jer. 15:19, Ac. 26:18. These parts are called in Scripture nekrosis, the mortification, or ekdosis, the putting off of the old man; and zoopoiesis, quickening and endusis, putting on of the new man, Col. 3:9-10.�(XIV, 8) These parts go together. But, as regards the order of nature, although newness is subsequent to oldness,�yet the newness of the love of God is the cause of abolishing the oldness of the enmity of God. Darkness is not removed save by light; not death save by life; nor poverty save by riches; nor nakedness save by being clothed; nor ugliness save by beauty; nor vice save by virtue; and so neither hate save by love.

This has application to sanctification and to preaching. We cannot hope to kill without vivification: to attempt the negative without the positive is ultimately destructive. And so in preaching: the pastor may weep over the darkness, spiritual poverty and ugliness of his congregation and indeed of his own heart; but the remedy for it is not found in exposing it (that is no more than a preliminary): the remedy is found in the light, life, wealth, garments, beauty, virtue and love of Christ.

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Piety Quotations

Where is the lamb?

Matthew Henry, on Isaac’s question in Genesis 22 �Where is the lamb?�

It was a very affecting question that Isaac asked him, as they were going together: My father, said Isaac; it was a melting word, which, one would think, would strike deeper into the breast of Abraham than his knife could into the breast of Isaac. He might have said, or thought, at least, �Call me not thy father who am now to be thy murderer; can a father be so barbarous, so perfectly lost to all the tenderness of a father?� Yet he keeps his temper, and keeps his countenance, to admiration; he calmly waits for his son’s question, and this is it: Behold the fire and the wood, but where is the lamb? See how expert Isaac was in the law and custom of sacrifices. This it is to be well-catechised: this is,
[1.] A trying question to Abraham. How could he endure to think that Isaac was himself the lamb? So it is, but Abraham, as yet, dares not tell him so. Where God knows the faith to be armour of proof, he will laugh at the trial of the innocent, Job 9:23.
[2.] It is a teaching question to us all, that, when we are going to worship God, we should seriously consider whether we have every thing ready, especially the lamb for a burnt-offering. Behold, the fire is ready, the Spirit’s assistance and God’s acceptance; the wood is ready, the instituted ordinances designed to kindle our affections (which indeed, without the Spirit, are but like wood without fire, but the Spirit works by them); all things are now ready, but where is the lamb? Where is the heart? Is that ready to be offered up to God, to ascend to him as a burnt-offering?

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Piety Quotations Theological Reflections

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit Accomplishing Salvation

I found this lovely quote in a paper by Mark Jones.

Thomas Goodwin, Works III, Man’s Restauration

I will chuse him to Life, saith the Father, but he will fall, and so fall short of what my Love designed to him: but I will redeem him, says the Son, out of that lost Estate: but yet being fallen he will refuse that grace, and the offers of it, and despise it, therefore I will Sanctify him, said the Holy Ghost, and overcome his unrighteousness, and cause him to accept it.

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Philosophical Points Piety Quotations Theological Reflections

A Cambridge Don, the Stagyrite, and the Increase of Holiness

C.S. Lewis, “Free” from Studies in Words

[Of Aristotle] Looking from his study window he sees the hens scratching in the dust, the pigs asleep, the dogs hunting for fleas; the slaves, any of them who are not at that very moment on some appointed task, flirting, quarrelling, cracking nuts, playing dice, or dozing. He, the master, may use them all for the common end, the well-being of the family. They themselves have no such end, nor any consistent end, in mind. Whatever in their lives is not compelled from above is random�dependent on the mood of the moment. His own life is quite different; a systematised round of religious, political, scientific, literary and social activities; its very hours of recreation (there’s an anecdote about them) deliberate, approved and allowed for; consistent with itself. But what is it in the structure of the universe that corresponds to this distinction between Aristotle, self-bound with the discipline of a freeman, and Aristotle’s slaves, negatively free with a servile freedom between each job and the next? I think there is no doubt of the answer. It is the things in the higher world of aether which are regular, immutable, consistent; those down here in the air that are subject to change, and chance and contingence. In the world, as in the household, the higher acts according to a fixed plan; the lower admits the ‘random’ element. The free life is to the servile as the life of the gods (the living stars) is to that of terrestrial creatures. This is so not because the truly free man ‘does what he likes’, but because he imitates, so far as a mortal can, the flawless and patterned regularity of the heavenly being, like them not doing what he likes but being what he is, being fully human as they are divine, and fully human by his likeness to them. For the crown of life�here we break right out of the cautious modesty of most Greek sentiment�is not ‘being mortal, to think mortal thoughts’ but rather ‘to immortalise as much as possible’ and by all means to live according to the highest element in oneself.

The bearing that this remarkable passage has on the doctrine of sanctification may be too obvious to need to be pointed out. But perhaps it would not come amiss to remark simply that being made free from sin and having become the servants of righteousness, we have indeed been brought into the large freedom of being what we are – the children of God.

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Preaching Quotations

Outlining

Charles J. Brown gives some sage advice in his book, The Ministry: Addresses to Students of Divinity

Then, more specifically, first, let there be no mechanical observing of any fixed and unvarying method in the preacher’s outlines. An endless variety will naturally arise here from the character of the text and of the theme, which ought ever to guide, as to his specific plan.

In general, the text dictates not only the content of the sermon, it also dictates the structure. Brown doesn’t go into it, but there are two real dangers to that mechanical observation of a fixed and unvarying method (however excellent it may seem) in outlining.

One is the danger of boredom. When you have the same outline every week, it makes the content seem very similar. But more than that, it tends to impose a similarity of content as well. So there is an appearance of similar content, and there is also a reality. Having always the same sort of outline works to keep you from seeing in the text anything that doesn’t square with your outlining, or at least keeps you from using whatever more you saw in your sermon. Your principle of selection is influenced by your outline: if your outline is always the same, your principle of selection is always the same, and so your content varies very little. And thus your preaching becomes very boring.

The other danger is that of undermining the force of your message with an inappropriate outline. A sermon on the doctrine of adoption, for instance, that has the structure of a harangue is a sermon that has lost much of its rhetorical force. Or there are sermons that have an imperatival structure, an “every Christian must _______” method of organization, and yet the content is of grace, an announcement that God in Christ has done. The structure in that case puts the emphasis on the hearer’s responsibility, on their duty, though the theme and focus of the message may be on the grace of God. There again, the structure undermines the content.

Combine these two factors, and a sermon on the reasons Christians have for joy can become a depressing monologue that leaves a congregation drained and clubbed down by the very content that should have rejoiced their hearts and strengthened their hands.

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Piety Quotations

Theology is Piety

Karl Rahner, Thomas Aquinas: Monk, Theologian, and Mystic
One becoming a priest must be a theologian. Not a schoolboy who snakes his way through examinations because otherwise one won’t get ordained. We don’t need to be theological geniuses. But we have to be human beings and Christians who love theological knowledge, who are there for it with mind and heart. For us there can in the long run be no really spiritual life without an intellectual life. In theology we have to allow ourselves to be challenged as whole persons with all we are, with mind and heart, with the whole weight and seriousness of existence in our times, with all the experience of our lives. Not only what is written in schoolbooks belongs to theology.
But theology can only be pursued as preparation of the whole priestly person preaching later on, if there flows into it and there is elaborated in it whatever moves or what ought to have moved a cultivated person in the age in which God has placed us without our asking. Just as Thomas did, so must we. If the living God has spoken to us, and if theology is nothing but the exact listening to God’s revelation with every means of grace and nature available to a person, then we have to be theologians, or we are not in general what we should be. For us, theology is simply a part, an inner moment of the work of salvation on our own existence and that of others. Not just an academic affair.