"Goodby to All That"

One of the top WW-1 memoirs is Robert Graves' "Goodby to all That" in which he details his experiances as a British Officer in the trenches of France. Graves' memories are compelling in and of themnselves and your WW-1 library is not complete without this work.

Of all the phrases and words Graves uses, the most memorable to me is the title itself; "Goodbye to All That". I supoose most of us at one time or another have reached a point in life when we said, or wanted to say, "Goodbye to all that".

Last week I said, "Goodby to all that." regarding my Facebook account. I haven't totally deactivated the account, but am taking a much needed sabbatical from it.

For some reason the Facebook platform has a way of amplifying all the good,the bad, and the ugly of social media. The bad and the ugly are even more amplified during this American Prsidential election year coupled with the COVID 19 pandemic.

Yes, I see the same kinds of stuff on Twitter, but my Twitter list is not primarely built around freinds, families, and aquaintences, and it has been easier to ignore or block obnoxious tweets and people.

Social media has created a platform for all sorts of half-baked conspiricay theories, mis-information, selective data picking, etc, so on, and so forth. It gets to be nauseating and when you see professing Christian people engaging in those things, it is depressing.

Goodby to all that...

...and maybe I'll have more time for blogging here.

He really was born...

Be deaf, therefore, when anyone ever speaks to you apart from Jesus Christ, who was of the family of David, who was the son of Mary; who really was born, who both ate and drank; who really was persecuted under Pontius Pilate, who really was crucified and died while those in heaven and on earth and under the earth looked on; who, moreover, really was raised from the dead when his Father raised him up. In the same way his Father will likewise also raise up in Christ Jesus us who believe in him. Apart from him we have no true life.

(Ignatius To the Trallians #9; “The Apostolic Fathers, Greek Texts and English Translations” 3rd Edition; Michael W. Holmes)

Worship as Aliens

"So we must gather on a regular basis for worship. To speak about God in a world that lives as if there is no God. We must speak to one another as beloved brothers and sisters in a world which encourages us to live as strangers. We must pray to God to give us what we cannot have by our own efforts in a world which teaches us that we are self-sufficient and all-powerful. In such a world, what we do here on Sunday morning becomes a matter of life and death..."

Citation from "Resident Aliens"; Hauerwas & Willimon; (Abingdon Press, 1989 ; pg. 154

The Way God Is

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"As we have argued, Christian ethics arise out of the very specific tradition of Jesus of Nazareth and the church formed in faithfulness to his way. As believers, we are called to act right, not simply because an act can be demonstrated to be universally right. but because it is an act God commands. We are called to base our lives and actions on something which, to Kant, seemed woefully contingent--a Jew from Nazareth. Our claim is not that this tradition will make sense to anyone or will enable the world to run more smoothly. Our claim is that it just happens to be true. This really is the way God is. This really is the way God's world is."

("Resident Aliens"; Hauerwas & Willimon; (Abingdon Press, 1989) pg. 101)

Resident Aliens

"The church exists today as resident aliens, an adventurous colony in a society of unbelief. As a society of unbelief, Western culture is devoid of a sense of journey, of adventure, because it lacks belief in much more than the cultivation of an ever-shrinking horizon of self-preservation and self-expression."

"Resident Aliens"; Hauerwas & Willimon; (1989, Abingdon Press); pg. 49

Neo-Barbarianism

"Barbarians are people without historical memory. Barbarianism is the real meaning of radical contemporaneity. Released from all authoritative pasts, we progress towards barbarianism, not away from it."

Philip Rieff as quoted by Rod Dreher in The Benedict Option"; pg. 154

The Theater of the Absurd

“The campus revolt in America is not unlike the French theater of the absurd: actors on the stage, moving about in crazy quilt patterns without discernible purpose, speaking their lines without listening for a response Everyday engaged in private conversation or in dialogues that make no sense. Nobody communicating. Just people on a stage, confined to their own little worlds, talking past one another.”

“The Test”; Walter Adams; (Macmillan Co,; 1971) pg 9

Not much has changed in the last almost 50 years since this was written.

Beatific Vision & New Creation

The fact is that both the "beatific vision" and the "new creation" view of heaven are correct, but only one takes precedence. Despite all that we will discover in eternity regarding the new earth and the New Jerusalem, this truth will hold true even in heaven: "in this place is One greater than the temple."

"The Alluring Brightness of His Glory: Cherishing the Preeminence of Christ above the Counterfeit Offers of a Consumer-driven Christianity" ;R.L. Coursey; (West Bow Press, 2017); page 438

The Gospel & the Christian’s Reward

God purposely puts an offence in the message of the cross to render it unattractive to self. As a result, those who would seek Him and find Him cannot do so under the power of self, nor from the primary motive of self. Real Christianity is foolish from the world’s point of view,; “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable..” Paul concludes that, from the world’s perspective we lose in this life. But doesn’t Hebrews 11:6 tell us that “he that cometh to God must believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him?” Yes, but many of the heroes of the faith in that chapter do not look like they were rewarded, unless we have an erroneous view of rewards! Upon a closer examination, it becomes obvious that the rewards experienced by these people were of another nature than those commonly sought after by the world or offered by the church.

When we tell the lost that “God loves them and has a wonderful plan for their lives,” we must be very clear as to what that plan might entail. If we mean wonderful from the world’s point of view, we not only give false expectations, but also encourage them to seek themselves in religion. Ultimately God’s plan for all these heroes of faith was wonderful;, but before they could arrive at their reward some had to travel the path of “trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonments: they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented.” In essence, the way of faith that leads to rewards always directs its travelers down paths of self-denial and self-sacrifice, rather than self-indulgence.”

"The Alluring Brightness of His Glory: Cherishing the Preeminence of Christ above the Counterfeit Offers of a Consumer-driven Christianity" ;R.L. Coursey; (West Bow Press, 2017); page 71

Our High Priest

Thus, we are comforted each and every moment that our high priest ministers for us in the Holy of Holies. The prosecuting attorney is ejected from the courtroom. The case against us is dismissed because our sentence was executed on our high priest himself. But we are not only exonerated, we are actually declared "righteous," as if we had lived perfectly before God. And so we have only a defense attorney before the throne of God. He pleads our case, and the Father accepts his meritorious intercession as sufficient for our right to enjoy his eternal presence forever. "Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has gone through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess (Heb. 4:14 NIV).

There are no candles to light, no buttons to push, no aisles to walk, no rededications or resolutions to do better. Nothing will suffice but the intercession of the high priest whose ministry is far superior to that of Moses. For Moses brought us to Mount Sinai where God appeared in terror, clad in lightning and surrounded by peals of thunder. "But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the first born, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel" (Heb. 12:22-24 NIV).

"We Believe: Recovering the Essentials of the Apostles Creed", Michael Horton, (Word Publishing, 1998), pages 143-144

Regarding the Presidential Debates

Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon.
Going to the candidates' debate.
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you've got to choose
Every way you look at this you lose.

~ Simon & Garfunkel, "Mrs. Robinson"

Who do you trust?

 

Thus says the Lord: 

  “Cursed is the man who trusts in man  and makes flesh his strength,  whose heart turns away from the Lord.   He is like a shrub in the desert,  and shall not see any good come.  He shall dwell in the parched places of the wilderness,  in an uninhabited salt land.   

 Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,  whose trust is the Lord.  He is like a tree planted by water,  that sends out its roots by the stream,  and does not fear when heat comes,  for its leaves remain green,  and is not anxious in the year of drought,    for it does not cease to bear fruit.”   

~ Jeremiah 17:5-8

Death Destroyed

"Now, if it is by the sign of the cross and by the faith that is in Christ that death is trampled down, then, if judging by truth,it is none other than Christ himself who shows the trophies and victories against death and renders it fully weakened. And if formerly death was strong, and therefore fearsome, but is now despised, after the sojourn of the Savior and after the death and resurrection of his body, clearly it is by him, the Christ who was raised upon the cross, that death has been destroyed and conquered."

Athanasius, "On the Incarnation", (translated by John Behr)

Into this Alien Land...

"We are not left alone in this frightful world. Into this alien land God has come to us."

Karl Barth, Dogmatics in Outline; (as quoted by Stanley Hauerwas,With The Grain of the Universe)

The Nature of Revolutionary Civil War

“The bloodlust in revolutionary civil wars stems from the apocalyptic nature of such contests, the attempts on each side to create a new society and cultural order, not merely a different political system, totally purged of antagonistic elements. In these conflicts the enemy is perceived not as an ordinary political rival, but as a kind of metaphysical incarnation of evil that must be eradicated before it infects, or imposes the same terror on, one’s own side. A revolutionary civil war is not an ordinary political contest, but a contest of ultimates about society, religion, and culture, perceived to demand a total and uncompromising solution.”

~ Stanley G. Payne, “The Spanish Civil War” (Cambridge University Press, 2012) pg. 103

tou θeoῦ Λὀγoς (The Logos of God)

"...by the grace of the resurrection banishing death from them as straw from the fire."

For this purpose, then, the incorporeal and incorruptible and immaterial Word of God (tou θeoῦ Λὀγoς) comes into our realm, although He was not formerly distant. For no part of creation is left void of Him; while abiding with His own Father, He has filled all things in every place. But now He comes, condescending towards us in His love for human beings and His manifestation. For seeing the rational race perishing, and death reigning over them through corruption, and seeingf also the threat of the transgression giving firm hold to the corruption that was upon us, and that it was absurd for the law to be dissolved before being fulfilled, and seeing the impropriety in what had happened, that the very thing of which He Himself was the Creator were disappearing, and seeing the excessive wickedness of human beings, that they gradually increased it to an intolerable pitch against themselves, and seeing the liability of all human beings to death--having mercy upon our race, and having pity upon our weakness, and condescending to our corruption, and not enduring the dominion of death, least what had been created should perish and the work of the Father Himself for human beings should be in vain,He takes for Himself a body and that not foreign to our own.

For He did not wish simply to be in a body, nor did He wish merely to appear, for if He had wished only to appear He could have made His divine manifestation through some other better means. But He takes that which is ours, and that not simply, but from a spotless and stainless virgin, ignorant of man, pure and unmixed with intercourse with men. Although being Himself powerful and the creator of the universe, He prepared for Himself in the Virgin the body as a temple, and made it His own, as an instrument, making Himself known and dwelling in it. And thus taking from ours that which is like, since all were liable to the corruption of death, delivering it over to death on behalf of all, He offered it to the Father, doing this in His love for human beings, so that, on the one hand, with all dying in Him the law concerning corruption in human beings might be undone (its power being fully expended in the lordly body and no longer having any ground against similar human beings), and on the other hand, that as human beings ha d turned towards corruption He might turn them again to incorruptibility and give them life from death, by making the body His own and by the grace of the resurrection banishing death from them as straw from the fire.

St.Athanasius, "On the Incarnation" , (Translation by John Behr)

Those Who Sing About the Resurrection of the Slain Lamb

"The point that apocalyptic makes is not only that people who wear crowns and who claim to foster justice by the sword are not as strong as they think--true as that is: we still sing, "O where are Empires and Kings now of old that went and came?" It is that people who bear crosses are working with the grain of the universe. One does not come to that belief by reducing social progress to mechanical and statistical models,nor by winning some of one's battles for the control of one's own corner of the fallen world. One comes to it by sharing the life of those who sing about the Resurrection of the slain Lamb."

John Howard Yoder, "Armaments and Eschatology"; as quoted by Stanley Hauerwas in "With the Grain of the Universe"

The Seventh Word

Father, into your hands I commend my spirit. ~ Luke 23:46

These words,"Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit," have been repeated by countless Christians on their way to death. We Anglicans pray, at the Commendation in the Liturgy for Burial, "Into they hands, O merciful Savior, we commend thy servant." Christians repeat these word in imitation of Jesus and because we assume these are words of comfort as we face the unknown that death names. These words can and should comfort, but that these words comfort us should not hide from us that these last words of Jesus before his death name his willingness to embrace the ice-cold silence of hell. accordingly these words, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit," are every bit as frightening as Jesus's prior cry of abandonment. Jesus is not comforting himself; he is gesturing to the Father that he is ready to face the final work that only Jesus can do.

Stanley Hauerwas, "Cross-Shattered Christ"

The Second Word

"Truly I tell you, today you will walk with me in Paradise..."

Accordingly it is almost impossible for us not to identify with the thief's request. Please, dear Jesus, remember us. Insure that our lives will have significance so that we will be more than bubbles on the foam of life. Jesus's crucified companion, however, does not ask to be remembered so that his life will have significance. Rather he asks, as the Psalms have taught Israel to ask, to be remembered when Jesus comes into his kingdom. Such a request makes sense only if Jesus - a man undergoing the same crucifixion the thief suffers - can fulfill such a request. We desperately ask to be remembered, fearing we are nothing. In contrast this thief confidently asks to be remembered because he recognizes the One who can remember...

Here in this crucified Messiah, we see the love that moves the sun and the stars. To be "with Jesus" means we are not "lost in the cosmos," but rather we can confidently live in the recognition, with faith, that God is not other than the one found in Jesus of Nazareth. How could we ever think we need more than this thief? Like the thief we can live with the hope and confidence that the only remembering that matters is to be remembered by Jesus.

Excerpt from: "Cross-Shattered Christ", Stanley Hauerwas; (Brazos Press,2004)

Salvation is of the Lord

...It is all of God. Man cannot save himself, and the Law of God cannot save him, because it is weak through the flesh, our flesh. And even if the salvation planned and prepared by God Himself had to depend upon our flesh - my faith, my holding on, my abiding, or anything else - it would fail. But, thank God, it does not depend upon us at any point; it is altogether from God: it is God's action upon us at any point; it is altogether from God: it is God's action from beginning to end. The God who saves us is the God who keeps. He keeps us, we are in His hands, it is God's action.

This is vital to the whole argument of the Apostle. You can not have assurance of salvation, you can not have certainty of your final glorification unless you realize that salvation is altogether of God..."

D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, "Romans: Exposition of Chapter 7:1 - 8:4: The Law: Its Functions and Limits", (Comments on Romans 8:3-4)