Brady Bowman

C. S. Lewis:

[W]e are afraid that heaven is a bribe, and that if we make it our goal we shall no longer be disinterested. It is not so. Heaven offers nothing that a mercenary soul can desire. It is safe to tell the pure in heart that they shall see God, for only the pure in heart want to. There are rewards that do not sully motives. A man’s love for a woman is not mercenary because he wants to marry her, nor his love for poetry mercenary because he wants to read it, nor his love of exercise less disinterested because he wants to run and leap and walk. Love, by definition, seeks to enjoy its object.

John Webster, on theological criticism as an activity performed by and for the Christian community:

There are no infallible methods of theological criticism, though there are some pretty well-tested ones which we ignore at our peril, such as exegetical or creedal fidelity. What is crucial is that criticism be seen as a spiritual transaction which cannot be codified or made into a routine. Christian theological criticism requires of its practitioners the same skills as any other kind of theology, because it is simply Christian theology about the business of appraisal rather than description. It requires the same attentiveness, the same self-distrust, the same readiness for fresh conversion, above all, the same prayer for the coming of the Holy Spirit to disable the dullness of our blinded sight. Critical theology is thus a mode of reflective attention to the gospel, one which directs that attention to the possible fissures between the gospel and our inhabitation of it. Therein, it simply reiterates God’s repudiation of our idolatries.

my new office doormat, courtesy of the Davenant Institute

As I embark on a self-directed course of study in art history, the natural place to begin is the Stone Age. Paintings from the Paleolithic era are more impressive than I remembered. Looking at ancient artwork (and reading ancient history for that matter), I’m struck more by the continuity between us moderns and those distant ancestors than any of the (seemingly great, but really quite superficial) differences. These paintings from the Lascaux Cave in France are particularly striking (Wikipedia).

C. S. Lewis, on (gulp) hell:

There is no doctrine which I would more willingly remove from Christianity than this, if it lay in my power. But it has the full support of Scripture and, specially, of Our Lord’s own words; it has always been held by Christendom; and it has the support of reason. If a game is played, it must be possible to lose it. If the happiness of a creature lies in self-surrender, no one can make that surrender but himself (though many can help him to make it) and he may refuse. I would pay any price to be able to say truthfully ‘All will be saved.’ But my reason retorts ‘Without their will, or with it?’ If I say ‘Without their will’ I at once perceive a contradiction; how can the supreme voluntary act of self-surrender be involuntary? If I say ‘With their will,’ my reason replies ‘How if they will not give in?’

Lewis…doing his thing, I suppose

C. S. Lewis:

The Christian doctrine of suffering explains, I believe, a very curious fact about the world we live in. The settled happiness and security which we all desire, God withholds from us by the very nature of the world: but joy, pleasure, and merriment, He has scattered broadcast. We are never safe, but we have plenty of fun, and some ecstasy. It is not hard to see why. The security we crave would teach us to rest our hearts in this world and oppose an obstacle to our return to God: a few moments of happy love, a landscape, a symphony, a merry meeting with our friends, a bathe or a football match, have no such tendency. Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.

C. S. Lewis:

The sacrifice of Christ is repeated, or re-echoed, among His followers in very varying degrees, from the cruellest martyrdom down to a self-submission of intention whose outward signs have nothing to distinguish them from the ordinary fruits of temperance and ‘sweet reasonableness’. The causes of this distribution I do not know; but from our present point of view it ought to be clear that the real problem is not why some humble, pious, believing people suffer, but why some do not. Our Lord Himself, it will be remembered, explained the salvation of those who are fortunate in this world only by referring to the unsearchable omnipotence of God.