Month: May 2016

Dorothy Sayers on Tolerance and Despair

“In the world it calls itself Tolerance; but in hell it is called Despair. It is the accomplice of the other sins and their worst punishment. It is the sin which believes nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, interferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, loves nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing, and only remains alive because there is nothing it would die for.”

–Dorothy Sayers, Letters to a Diminished Church: Passionate Arguments for the Relevance of Christian Doctrine (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2004 ed of the original), p.98

h/t, http://www.kendallharmon.net/t19/index.php/t19/article/64894/

Anglican perspective on ‘double predestination’

“”But what becomes of the non-elect?” You have nothing to do with this question, if you find yourself embarrassed or distressed by the consideration of it. Bless God for his electing love, and leave him to act as he pleases by them that are without. Simply acquiesce in the plain scripture account, and wish to see no farther than revelation holds the lamp. It is enough for you to know that the Judge of the whole earth will do right” (A. M. Toplady, The Doctrine of Absolute Predestination, pgs 18,19).

Martin Luther writing to Melanchthon about his prolapsed rectum

“The Lord has afflicted me with painful constipation. The elimination is so hard that I am forced to press with all my strength, even to the point of perspiration, and the longer I delay the worse it gets. …..My constipation has become bad….I tried the pills according to the prescription. Soon I had some relief and elimination without blood or force, but the wound of the previous rupture isn’t healed yet, and I even had to suffer a good deal because some flesh extruded, either due to the power of the pills, or I don’t know what……

“….. At last my behind in my bowels have reconciled themselves to me.”

Maximus the Confessor on the Incarnation

… On the incarnation being part of God’s divine plan from all eternity, irrespective of humanity’s primal disobedience.

“He who, by the sheer inclination of his will, established the beginning of all creation, seen and unseen, before all the ages and before that beginning of created beings, had an ineffably good plan for those creatures. The plan [even before the sin and fall] was for him to mingle, without change on his part, with the human nature by true hypostatic union, to unite human nature to himself while remaining immutable, so that he might become a man, as he alone knew how, and so that he might deify humanity in union with himself. Also, according to this plan, it is clear that God wisely divided “the ages” between those intended for God to become human, and those intended for humanity to become divine” (Maximus the Confessor, Ad Thalassium 22, as quoted in Harink’s commentary on 1 Peter, pg 40).

Hope vs accidie in Christian obedience

“A botanist, discovering a rare flower growing thickly all along the margins of one of our Scottish rivers, followed it back and back up a sidestream, and then along a tributary of that in its turn, until at long last the trail ended high among the lonely hills in the garden of a ruined shepherds cottage beside a tiny hill. There it was, in that far off, forgotten, hidden spot that the original plant had caught and seeded itself, and the winds and waters running past had done the rest. You, too, will make a difference in your land, will sow seeds, however small your sphere may look, which the winds of God and the currents of life will carry far” (AJ Gossip, In Christ’s Stead).