Category Archives: Quotes

A diamond in the rough (or two)

Posted by on May 12, 2012 No comments

So for my on-campus job I’m currently updating Calvin’s sermons on the pastoral epistles.  They currently only exist in print (in English) in this 1579 facsimile version, so the early modern English type had still not evolved to where it is today, the spelling is just awful, the punctuation consists exclusively of periods, commas, and colons, and the language (as you might expect) is rather antiquated.  Oh, and the translation is just terrible. So I’m working my way through Titus right now, typing up as closely as i can the “original” text, and then going back and making it intelligible.

Mostly I’ve been really annoyed at Calvin for his jerkitude to anyone who doesn’t agree with him entirely and totally submit to his authority (a story for another time, and probably not for the internet), but in his sermon on Titus 2:1-5 I found these couple gems.  The first is about specificity in preaching, the second is on the whole “I wish the sermon was ‘deeper’” phenomenon, which apparently has been happening at least since the Protestant Reformation, and according to Calvin since Paul wrote his letters.  At any rate, I hope you can wade through the crazy sentence structure.  We’ve been trying to leave the text as intact as we can, which means that sometimes I’ve sacrificed sound grammar and clarity for the sake of being true to the original text (of the translation–unfortunately I can’t just go straight from the French, seeing as how I don’t actually know French).

Now after Saint Paul has spoken generally, he adds: That the elder men should be sober, grave, and modest, sound in faith, in charity, and in patience. Saint Paul could well have spoken of the Law, and have willed Titus to teach the people that every man might have behaved himself godlily. But he treats of each man’s duty particularly, which is a thing well worth marking. For it will fall out, that if men preach but only general doctrine, their teaching will be very cold, so as folk will not be touched with it. And why so? For we shrink back as much as we can possibly when God calls us to him. Therefore he had need to speak to every of us, that we may be touched the nearer.

But still, St. Paul exhorts not Titus to preach it once or twice (and no more), but he will have him to hold on still in so doing. It seems at the first blush to be a superfluous labor; yes, and by reason that we be tickled with vain newfangledness, we would have men to bring us every day some new thing, and it irks us to hear these common things spoken of. Tush (say we), as for my household behavior–how I have wife and children to govern–I can learn those things at home. Must God be fain to reveal me his word from heaven for so common and small a matter? Under color (say I) of seeming not to profit greatly by hearing such things rehearsed, we would rather that the preacher would tell us some strange thing that might make us to soar in the air, according as I have told you already, that the world is inclined to the hearing of curious questions, that may please our foolish and disordered affections. But God’s spirit is wiser than we, and he knows what is meet for us; therefore let us bridle ourselves. And although we might be wearier to hear the things told us which are contained here, as if a man should but beat upon the water, yet let us assure ourselves it is not without cause that God wills and commands them to be renewed to our remembrance. And indeed, if we look well upon ourselves, it will be easy to discern that while we live we will never profit so much as were requisite in things that we esteem to be most common, and are known in manner to little children.

Prayer is Appointed to Convey

Posted by on August 30, 2011 No comments

“Prayer is appointed to convey
The blessings God designs to give:
Long as they live should Christians pray;
They learn to pray when first they live.

“If pain afflict, or wrongs oppress;
If cares distract, or fears dismay;
If guilt deject, if sin distress;
In every case, still watch and pray.

“’Tis prayer supports the soul that’s weak;
Though thought be broken, language lame,
Pray, if thou canst or canst not speak;
But pray with faith in Jesus’ name.

“Depend on Him; thou canst not fail;
Make all thy wants and wishes known;
Fear not; His merits must prevail:
Ask but in faith, it shall be done.”

Joseph Hart

A Sample of Andrew Peterson’s Brilliance

Posted by on February 5, 2011 2 comments

This is something that Andrew Peterson posted in a recent blog post over at The Rabbit Room, and I thought it was so brilliant that I had to share it:

“I am convinced that poets are toddlers in a cathedral, slobbering on wooden blocks and piling them up in the light of the stained glass. We can hardly make anything beautiful that wasn’t beautiful in the first place. We aren’t writers, but gleeful rearrangers of words whose meanings we can’t begin to know. When we manage to make something pretty, it’s only so because we are ourselves a flourish on a greater canvas. That means there’s no end to the discovery. We may crawl around the cathedral floor for ages before we grow up enough to reach the doorknob and walk outside into a garden of delights. Beyond that, the city, then the rolling hills, then the sea. And when the world of every cell has been limned and painted and sung, we lie back on the grass, satisfied that our work is done. Then, of course, the sun sets and we see above us the dark dome of glittering stars.

On and on it goes, all the way to the lightless borderlands of time and space, which we come to discover in some future age are but the beginnings or endings of a single word spoken from the mouth of God. Some nights, while I traipse down the hill, I imagine that word isn’t a word at all, but a burst of laughter.”

If you don’t know who Andrew Peterson is, then open iTunes right now (or whatever you use to get music) and buy his album, The Far Country.

A sample of Chesterton’s brilliance

Posted by on February 2, 2011 1 comment

It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness of our epoch. But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is a profound laziness and fatigue; and the fact is that the real laziness is the cause of the apparent bustle. Take on quite external case; the streets are noisy with taxicabs and motor-cars; but this is not due to human activity but to human repose. There would be less bustle if there were more activity, if people were simply walking about. Our world would be more silent if it were more strenuous. And this which is true of the apparent physical bustle is true also of the apparent bustle of the intellect. Most of the machinery of modern language is labour-saving machinery; and it saves mental labour very much more than it ought. Scientific phrases are used like scientific wheels and piston-rods to make swifter and smoother yet the path of the comfortable. Long words go rattling by us like long railway trains. We know thy are carrying thousands who are too tired or too indolent to walk and think for themselves. It is a good exercise to try for once in a way to express any opinion one holds in words of one syllable. If you say “The social utility of the indeterminate sentences is recognised by all criminologists as part of our sociological evolution towards a more humane and scientific view of punishment,” you can go on talking like that for hours with hardly a movement of grey matter inside your skull. But if you being “I wish Jones to go to gaol and Brown to say when Jones shall come out,” you will discover, with a thrill of horror,that you are obliged to think. The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word “damn” than in the word “degeneration.”

from G.K. Chesterton’s masterpiece Orthodoxy

Epiphany

Posted by on January 6, 2011 2 comments

Hey guys, today is Epiphany! It’s a feast day that celebrates the incarnation.

“Epiphany means ‘to make manifest.’ By the fourth century, Epiphany was a major annual celebration for the church. It is a season when we see Jesus’ divine mission revealed when the magi visit him, and then we remember his baptism, miracles, ministry, and his call for us to follow.”

Just something to think about. And maybe pray about?

Have a great day, friends!

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silent

Posted by on December 1, 2010 No comments

One of my favorite hymns–originally from the Liturgy of St. James. Watch & listen to it here.

Let all mortal flesh keep silence,
And with fear and trembling stand;
Ponder nothing earthly minded,
For with blessing in His hand,
Christ our God to earth descendeth,
Our full homage to demand.

King of kings, yet born of Mary,
As of old on earth He stood,
Lord of lords, in human vesture,
In the body and the blood;
He will give to all the faithful
His own self for heavenly food.

Rank on rank the host of heaven
Spreads its vanguard on the way,
As the Light of light descendeth
From the realms of endless day,
That the powers of hell may vanish
As the darkness clears away.

At His feet the six winged seraph,
Cherubim with sleepless eye,
Veil their faces to the presence,
As with ceaseless voice they cry:
Alleluia, Alleluia
Alleluia, Lord Most High!

And Now, I Shall Be Stereotypical and Post A Quote From C.S. Lewis

Posted by on May 7, 2010 3 comments

“We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks in two, and each of those into two again, and at each road you must make a decision. Even on a biological level life is not like a river but like a tree. It does not move towards unity but away from it and the creatures grow further apart as they increase in perfection. Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good.
“I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road. A sum can be put rightly: but only by going back till you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on. Evil can be undone, but it cannot ‘develop’ into good. Time does not heal it. The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, ‘with backward mutters of dissevering power’–or else not. It is still ‘either-or’. If we insist on keeping Hell (or even Earth) we shall not see Heaven: if we accept Heaven we shall not be able to retain even the smallest and most intimate souvenirs of Hell.”
– from The Great Divorce by C.S. Lewis

For some reason, I had it in my head that this quote was saying something along the lines of there being one correct path and that we must find it, but upon rereading and typing it up, I came across the peculiar last sentence of the first paragraph, which I had forgotten about.

Good, as it ripens, becomes continually more different not only from evil but from other good.

What do you think this means?

(Let’s get some responses this time, guys!)

“My Theology Can Beat Up Your Theology”

Posted by on April 26, 2010 3 comments

That is the title of a great post by the late “iMonk” (Michael Spencer) who recently lost his battle with cancer. Or perhaps to say it another way, finally has total victory over sin, as he stands in the presence of God.

At any rate, I think this is an excellent article, and one that people like me need to read, and live by. Not to say that we shouldn’t be bold, and preach the hard truths of the Gospel unashamedly, but that we should be careful about what hills we are willing to die on. And also, we need to be constantly checking our motives to make sure that the reasons we are fighting are pure–that our heart is something other than just wanting intellectual or spiritual dominance.

I don’t know a whole lot about Spencer, and I haven’t really ever read much of his blog before, but I think after reading this article I’m going to have to go back and peruse his archives. He speaks with both wisdom and clarity, and seems to have a clear understanding of what is important (and what is not).

Okay, Now I Can Reconcile Myself With The Doctrine of Election

Posted by on January 31, 2010 3 comments

Let me say first of all that this is a topic that has been floating around in the back of my mind lately. It surfaces when I’m not doing much or when I’m working on a graphic design project that doesn’t take much thought. Some of my best thinking comes that way…ha. But anyway, here’s the question: What do I think about the doctrine of election? I mean, (as Trey so eloquently said of me) I’m a universalist in that I want everybody to go to heaven, but not in that I believe everybody will go to heaven. More recently I’ve been of the thinking along the lines of this quote from the end of an article written by Shane Claiborne to non-Christians:

In closing, to those who have closed the door on religion — I was recently asked by a non-Christian friend if I thought he was going to hell. I said, “I hope not. It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you.” If those of us who believe in God do not believe God’s grace is big enough to save the whole world… well, we should at least pray that it is.

(Read the rest of this article here for an interesting point of view to consider from a very legit, if a little extreme, Christian.*) Not so much of the “It will be hard to enjoy heaven without you,” part, though it definitely pains me thinking about friends I have and other people who won’t be in heaven (all the better reason to live out Christ’s love and forgiveness), I’m guessing I won’t be concerned with much else than God. I’m more talking about the last sentence. I’m of the mindset that I should believe that God’s grace is big enough to save the whole world and pray that God will use me and every other Christian to help that be accomplished.

I was fairly conflicted with my line of thinking I’d been following in my mind and the doctrine of election that is so prevalent in the Christians that I know personally until I read a post the other day that made perfect sense to me. This is what John Piper posted about election, and it’s the best way I’ve heard it explained so far:

Is it a sin to dislike the doctrine of election?

It’s sin not to like the true doctrine of election. It’s sin not to like what God likes.

I want to say it like that because many people have conceptions of doctrines—all kinds of doctrines—that are inaccurate. And therefore their good hearts dislike them.

So you could say, “I dislike election,” and be a good person, because you don’t see election clearly. And what you’re disliking should be disliked. Or you may be a person who is starting to see it clearly and your old self, which is bad, is rising up and not liking what ought to be liked.

So I don’t know whether this person should be chastised or not. The principle would be, “To the degree that you see biblical truth clearly, you should like it.”

Hell is a biblical truth. So when I say, “You should like hell,” what I mean is that you should like it the way God does.

God, it says, “is not willing that any should perish.” God “does not delight in the death of the wicked.” God “afflicts us, but not from his heart” (Lamentations 3). So there is in God himself a willing that hell be and a liking that it exists in that big picture. And yet he grieves over sending anybody there.

So the word “like” is just a little bit difficult here, because you’re going to have to do double perspectives again.

If God ordains that Jerusalem be destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, should we like that? My answer is both yes and no. We should not like women boiling their children, but we should approve of God’s decision that it happen.

And so there’s a double perspective in which the things that you see in the small lens should be disliked, whereas what you see in the bigger lens of how God runs the world should be liked.

So there you have it! While I may not appreciate that people go to hell, I should appreciate the place hell has in God’s plan. Though I’m definitely still not saying I’m a Calvinist in regards to this debate as a whole. I feel like that’s too simple of putting it. I believe there is a tension between the two sides and I believe that John Piper pegged that tension very well in that post.

(I feel like I didn’t write this post as well as I could have, so please feel free to call me out on anything that is unclear.)

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*Though from what I’ve read of his work, he would greatly appreciate me saying I thought he is a little extreme, because he believes that if everyone agrees with him he’s doing something wrong, but that’s another subject I can post later. If you are looking for a book that is challenging/a different perspective, try Claiborne’s book The Irresistible Revolution. Though I don’t agree with everything he says, he poses very interesting points.

Weight of Glory

Posted by on January 30, 2010 2 comments

C.S. Lewis’s Weight of Glory sermon/speech/essay continues to be in my estimation the best work he ever produced. At least half, if not more, of the things I quote/reference from Lewis are contained in this very short piece. If you haven’t read it, you need to. Here is a taste, perhaps the most quoted paragraph of anything he ever said or wrote:

Indeed, if we consider the
unblushing promises of reward and the
staggering nature of the rewards promised
in the Gospels, it would seem that Our
Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but
too weak. We are half-hearted creatures,
fooling about with drink and sex and
ambition when infinite joy is offered us,
like an ignorant child who wants to go on
making mud pies in a slum because he
cannot imagine what is meant by the offer
of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily
pleased.

Reposted from mah blog