The Wounds

"Our rock, then, is in heaven; in it is strength, and on it security. Is it not said that the rock is a refuge for the conies? And where, in truth, is there a firm and safe refuge for us who are weak, except in the Wounds of our Savior? There I dwell with safety so much the greater, as He is so powerful to save. The world rages around me, the devil lays snares for me; but I do not fall, for I am founded upon a firm Rock. Perhaps I have committed some great sin, my conscience is troubled, but I do not despair, because I remember the Wounds of my Lord; for He was wounded for our iniquities. What sin is there so deadly that it may not be remitted through the Death of Christ?

-St. Bernard of Clairvaux

Doxology

Though nothing beats, in my opinion, the theology in the old hymns of the church, I find that many of the newer, "contemporary" (oh how I despise that word) songs are also often filled with profound thoughts. Here are a few of my favorites, quotes from some of the younger saints in this communion of ours. Feel free to edify us with some of your favorites.

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"All the heavens cannot hold you Lord,
how much less to dwell in me?
I can only make my one desire:
Holy unto Thee."

-Third Day

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"Give me one pure and holy passion,
Give me one magnificent obsession.
Give me one glorious ambition for my life:
To know and to follow after you.

"To know and to follow hard after you,
To grow as your disciple in your truth.
This world is empty, pale, and poor
Compared to knowing you my Lord.
Lead me on, and I will run after you.
Lead me on, and I will run after you."

-Passion Worship Band

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"Be my vision and I'll be your delight."

-Point of Grace

Protestant Ecumenists

"It was because they recognized what they had received through the Catholic Church that the first generation of Reformers wished for the renewal, not the disruption of the historic ecclesiastical structures. It was against their will that the visible continuity and unity were broken, and they thought of the separate polities which they established, not as new churches, but as temporary emergency measures. Convergence into a reformed and united church was their goal, and this once again is the objective of those Protestant ecumenists who are their heirs."

-George Lindbeck

Lenten Reminder

"For men see Him just so far as they die to this world, and so far as they live to it they see Him not."

-St. Augustine

Truism

"I should not like my writing to spare other people the trouble of thinking. But, if possible, to stimulate someone to thoughts of his own."

-Ludwig Wittgenstein

Irenaen Wisdom II

"It is better and more profitable that we should be uneducated and know little but draw near to the love of God, than that we should think ourselves deeply learned and experienced and so blaspheme against the Lord. That is why Paul proclaimed, 'Gnosis puffs up, but love builds up.'"

-St. Irenaeus of Lyons

And who is my neighbor?

"And, again, who does not see that no exception is made of any one as a person to whom the offices of mercy may be denied when our Lord extends the rule even to our enemies? 'Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you.'"

-Augustine, de Doctrina Christiana

How easy this is to forget in times of war. How quick we are to define the other as enemy when we first define ourselves, not as followers of Christ, but as Americans.

Authorial Intent?

A crucial quote from that great Armenian C.S. Lewis that is, I think, helpful in many ongoing hermeneutical debates in the theological world today.

"An author doesn't necessarily understand the meaning of his own story better than anyone else." -C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces

Along similar lines is a quote by one of my favorite writers of fiction from his best work:

"A narrator should not supply interpretations of his work; otherwise he would not have written a novel, which is a machine for generating interpretations." -Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose

Of course the Old Testament writers are the prime examples of these truths. I think that it would be safe to say that none of them had Jesus Christ in mind when they were writing their words of truth. Yet, as the Apostles and the Fathers and the Medieval exegetes and countless saints throughout the life of the Church realize, the Old Testament is about Christ. It does not matter that the original author may not have intended his work to speak of Christ, it does. Or to argue like the greatest of medieval exegetes Aquinas, the literal meaning of Scripture is indeed what the author intended. But the author was God.

If only modern biblical scholars would awaken to this point.

Methodists Beware!

"There is nothing more grotesque than to think of a Christ who would want to establish committees."

-Hans Urs von Balthasar

Amen and Amen!

Inspiration (2)

"In matters of faith, no [one], not even the Pope or the bishops, possesses the truth . . . This divine truth possesses us . . . Truth takes possession of us. But we must go a step further. It does not take possession of us individually, for this truth is entrusted before all to the Church. Similarly, at the level of the Church as a whole, we cannot strictly say: 'The Church is in possession of the truth, of the true faith.' Yet the true faith is unfailingly entrusted to the Church, the Body of Christ and the Bride of the Lord. It is entrusted to her as a sacred heritage which never becomes her own property. In other words, the sum total of her teaching will never exhaust all its wealth." -Piet Fransen

Agree or disagree? And with what specifically?

We are One Another

An appropriate quote, I think, for this blog:

"I bear in my life of faith today the drama of Israel, the fruit of the costly discussions of Nicaea and Chalcedon, what Francis of Assisi mined in the mysteries of evangelical poverty, what thousands of obscure believers have affirmed of the power of hope in their responses to persecutors. And our successors will, in their time, be enriched by what African and Latin American Christianities in their contexts are working out before our eyes. The communion of saints is not relegated to the register of merits or of prayer. It already involves the fundamental plan of faith."

-Jean-Marie Roger Tillard

Imago Trinitatis

"The trace of the Trinity appears in creatures." -St. Augustine

God's Definition of 'Reward'

"Now this is our highest reward, that we should fully enjoy him, and that all who enjoy him should enjoy one another in him." -St. Augustine

Slave of Christ

"Being a slave of Christ is more distinguished than any freedom."

-Origen

On Walking to Work and the Faithfulness of God

My wife Julie has a job for next year! Starting on September 10th, she will be a chaplain at St. Mary's Hospital. St. Mary's is a strong hospital with two locations in the Milwaukee area. She will be working at the one on Lake Avenue (pictured left), which is, incidentally, only five minutes from our apartment! She will be walking to work! This is quite a change from the 35-40 minute drive she now has everyday. Though she is only part time right now, it has been indicated to her that there is a strong possibility of it going full time soon.

This is just one more blessing in a string of blessings that we have experienced since coming to Milwaukee. Yes it is true that it is cold here (except when it is unbearably hot) and yes it is true that we got an inordinate amount of parking tickets in the first months and yes it is true that we have been living on an intern's salary for a year, but these are all incidental to the truth that we have consistently felt God's hand on us here. I do not think it is a matter of God rewarding us for our faithfulness. Rather, I believe that God called us to Himself and we have followed, which led us on paths to one another and then to Milwaukee and now for Julie to St. Mary's hospital.

I leave you with a few of my favorite lines from hymns that celebrate God's faithfulness.

"Great is thy faithfulness." -Thomas O. Chisholm

"Ponder anew what the Almighty can do." -Joachim Neander

"Here I raise mine Ebenezer, hither by Thy help I'm come." -Robert Robinson

Right Interpretation

This beautiful quotation comes from Richard B. Hays, a professor of New Testament at Duke and one of the foremost Wesleyan Biblical scholars of our time:

"No reading of Scripture can be legitimate, then, if it fails to shape the readers into a community that embodies the love of God as shown forth in Christ. This criterion slashes away all frivolous or self-serving readings, all readings that aggrandize the interpreter, all merely clever readings. True interpretation of Scripture leads us into unqualified giving of our lives in service within the community whose vocation is to reenact the obedience of the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us. Community in the likeness of Christ is cruciform; therefore right interpretation must be cruciform."

-Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, p. 191

Ut Unum Sint

A word to us from Pope John Paul the Great on the possibility of Christian unity:



"The courageous witness of so many martyrs of our century, including members of Churches and Ecclesial Communities not in full communion with the Catholic Church, gives new vigour to the Council's call and reminds us of our duty to listen to and put into practice its exhortation. These brothers and sisters of ours, united in the selfless offering of their lives for the Kingdom of God, are the most powerful proof that every factor of division can be transcended and overcome in the total gift of self for the sake of the Gospel."

Irenaen Wisdom

Irenaeus has, in my mind, the greatest understanding of the incarnation of all of the early Fathers. I am prepared to argue for that. For the time being, I just wanted to give you a snippet of the kind of thing that makes this man's theology imminently beautiful and at the same time practical:

"So He (Jesus) united man with God and wrought a communion of God and man, we being unable to have any participation in incorruptibility if it were not for His coming to us, for incorruptibility whilst being invisible, benefitted us nothing: so He became visible, that we might, in all ways, obtain a participation in incorruptibility." -Irenaeus

That, my friends (with all apologies to Dorothy Parker), is true poetry.

Peace

A poignant word from a second century saint in these war torn times:

"Christians, who, having learned the true worship of God from the law, and the word which went forth from Jerusalem by means of the apostles of Jesus, have fled for safety to the God of Jacob and the God of Israel; and we who were filled with war, and mutual slaughter, and every wickedness, have each through the whole earth changed our warlike weapons, - our swords into ploughshares, and our spears into implements of tillage - and we cultivate piety, righteousness, philanthropy, faith, and hope, which we have from the Father himself through whom he was crucified."

-Justin Martyr, Dialogue With Trypho

The Sword of the Spirit

"Nothing can so banish licentious habits from the soul and restrain memories which disturb and stir up troubling flames in the body as can avid devotion to the love of learning and searching investigation into the meaning of the passages of Scripture."

-St. Isaac of Nineveh