Currently reading: Low Anthropology by David Zahl đ
Finished reading: The Revenge of Conscience by J. Budziszewski đ
An interesting work on the implications of original sinâand its widespread denialâfor contemporary American politics. Budziszewski offers a more subtle presentation of conscience than is typical. He suggests that much of our social decay and moral confusion comes not from a weakening of conscience, but rather from our suppression of it, which results in moral energy being redirected and bubbling up in other ways. Since, as Budziszewski explains, knowledge of guilt produces certain “objective needs,” there remains a desire for satisfaction (e.g., confession, atonement, reconciliation, justification), pacified now through non-religious, pseudo forms. In this respect, The Revenge of Conscience comports nicely with Wilfred McClay’s reflections in his seminal essay, “The Strange Persistence of Guilt.”
Finished reading: Prince Caspian by Clive Staples Lewis đ
Legalistic Christianity leads to dualistic Christianity. When people fail to grasp the gospel of grace, they tend toward a Pharisaical obsession with ritual purity and cleanness. If we assume we are saved by the purity and rightness of our lives, we are encouraged to stay within the confines of the church, content to be in relationships and situations where we don’t have to deal with nonbelievers and their ideas. In addition, the black-and-white mentality of legalism does not allow for the kinds of flexibility and tolerance for uncertainty that are necessary for deep, thoughtful Christian reflection, creativity, and vocation.
When a man says that he grasps an argument he is using a verb (grasp) which literally means to take something in the hands, but he is certainly not thinking that his mind has hands or that an argument can be seized like a gun. To avoid the word grasp he may change the form of expression and say, ‘I see your point,’ but he does not mean that a pointed object has appeared in his visual field. He may have a third shot and say, ‘I follow you,’ but he does not mean that he is walking behind you along a road. Everyone is familiar with this linguistic phenomenon and the grammarians call it metaphor. But it is a serious mistake to think that metaphor is an optional thing which poets and orators may put into their work as a decoration and plain speakers can do without. The truth is that if we are going to talk at all about things which are not perceived by the senses, we are forced to use language metaphorically. Books on psychology or economics or politics are as continuously metaphorical as books of poetry or devotion. There is no other way of talking, as every philologist is aware.
A few gems from Calvin on preaching:
- Commenting on Romans 11:14: "Observe here that the minister of the word is said in some way to save those whom he leads to the obedience of faith...[P]reaching is an instrument for effecting the salvation of the faithful, and though it can do nothing without the Spirit of God, yet through his inward operation it produces the most powerful effects."
- Commenting on 2 Corinthians 3:6: "We are, then, Ministers of the Spirit, not as if we held him [Christ] enclosed within us, or as it were captive - not as if we could at our pleasure confer his grace upon all, or upon whom we pleased - but because Christ, through our instrumentality illuminates the minds of men, renews their hearts, and, in short, regenerates them wholly. It is in consequence of there being such a connection and bond of union between Christ's grace and man's effort, that in many cases that is ascribed to the minister which belongs exclusively to the Lord."
- Commenting on Galatians 3:1: "Let those who would discharge aright the ministry of the gospel learn, not merely to speak and declaim, but to penetrate into the consciences of men, to make them see Christ crucified, and feel the shedding of his blood. When the Church has painters such as these, she no longer needs the dead images of wood and stone, she no longer requires pictures; both of which, unquestionably, were first admitted to Christian temples when the pastors had become dumb and been converted into mere idols, or when they uttered a few words from the pulpit in such a cold and careless manner, that the power and efficacy of the ministry were utterly extinguished."
- From Institutes (4.8.9): "Here, then, is the sovereign power with which the pastors of the church, by whatever name they be called, ought to be endowed. That is that they may dare boldly to do all things by God's Word; may compel all worldly power, glory, wisdom, and exaltation to yield to and obey his majesty; supported by his power, may command all from the highest even to the last; may build up Christ's household and cast down Satan's; may feed the sheep and drive away the wolves; may instruct and exhort the teachable; may accuse, rebuke, and subdue the rebellious and stubborn; may bind and loose; finally, if need be, may launch thunderbolts and lightnings; but do all things in God's Word."
James Wood provides a moving account of his conversion, highlighting in particular how the gospel heals wounds of family breakdown and relational dysfunction. (Pro tip: Don’t read this one at work, or really around any other people.)
Ed Feser, with five gradations (of increasing sophistication) in one’s conception of God:
God is literally an old man with a white beard, a kind of stern wizard-like being with very human thoughts and motivations who lives in a place called Heaven, which is like the places we know except for being very far away and impossible to get to except through magical means.
God doesn’t really have a bodily form, and his thoughts and motivations are in many respects very different from ours. He is an immaterial object or substance which has existed forever, and (perhaps) pervades all space. Still, he is, somehow, a person like we are, only vastly more intelligent, powerful, and virtuous, and in particular without our physical and moral limitations. He made the world the way a carpenter builds a house, as an independent object that would carry on even if he were to ‘go away’ from it, but he nevertheless may decide to intervene in its operations from time to time.
God is not an object or substance alongside other objects or substances in the world; rather, He is pure being or existence itself, utterly distinct from the world of time, space, and things, underlying and maintaining them in being at every moment, and apart from whose ongoing conserving action they would be instantly annihilated. The world is not an independent object in the sense of something that might carry on if God were to âgo awayâ; it is more like the music produced by a musician, which exists only when he plays and vanishes the moment he stops. None of the concepts we apply to things in the world, including to ourselves, apply to God in anything but an analogous sense. Hence, for example, we may say that God is âpersonalâ insofar as He is not less than a person, the way an animal is less than a person. But God is not literally âa personâ in the sense of being one individual thing among others who reasons, chooses, has moral obligations, etc. Such concepts make no sense when literally applied to God.
God as understood by someone who has had a mystical experience of the sort Aquinas had.
God as Aquinas knows Him now, i.e. as known in the beatific vision attained by the blessed after death.
Brad East, offering his answer to the question “What is the greatest threat to the church in America today?” (I normally hate the question because it’s used so often as a marketing ploy by authors/publishers who promise to offer the “solution” in their latest book; but, since it’s Brad, I’ll allow it.):
My answer is DIY Christianity.
That’s the term I use with my students to communicate the notionâwhich they readily recognizeâof the Christian faith as recreated anew in, by, and for each generation, or even perhaps each local body of believers. This is Christianity without history, without tradition, without authority, without saints or martyrs or anything mediate, that is, anything intervening (thus obtruding, thus obstructing) between the individual and Jesus. DIY Christianity is “founding” a local church the way entrepreneurs found a start-up, with Big Ideas and Enough With The Old and Radical Innovation. (DIY Christianity thinks “innovation,” like “curiosity,” is a virtue rather than a vice.)
Given the diagnosis, Brad’s constructive solution certainly resonates:
In positive terms, what I want is for American Christians today to learn, or relearn, to be catholic: to belong to the one great tradition, the one apostolic faith, the one universal church. To reimagine faith not as something they create or manufacture or curate or judge for themselves, but that to which they submit, in joy, the way one simply receives an unexpected gift, a beloved friend’s return, the birth of a child. The faith as a given, and the real matter before us one of how to live that faith today, in the midst of so many challenges.
Receive. Submit. Given. Handed Down. Tradition. These are good words. Go and act accordingly.