Seneca On the Rustic Life
Posted: July 10, 2023 Filed under: Madness of Hercules, Quotes, Seneca | Tags: Latin, Seneca Leave a commentSeneca has his Chorus offer up a wonderful yet brief reflection on the blessings of the rural life in the Act I of his Madness of Hercules. It’s worth dwelling on.
There are these things for those people (the poor rustic): the calm peace of a harmless life and a home happy with its little. Vast hopes and nervous fears wander in the cities. The approach of kings cherishes the proud and hard gates free from sleep; this man (the rich urbanite) collects fortunate wealth without end while he gapes in treasures and is poor in his collected gold.
Kierkegaard On Guilt
Posted: February 27, 2016 Filed under: Quotes Leave a commentAs I was reading Adolph Koberle’s The Quest For Holiness, I stumbled upon this Kierkegaard quote in a footnote. In the penitential address Pureness of the Human Heart, he wrote, “It is ever untrue that the guilt becomes changed [by time] even though a century should pass. To affirm anything of the sort is to exchange the eternal for what is least like the eternal, namely human forgiveness.” Although we love to think that the passage of time washes away guilt since over time we push out the guilt with a host of our thoughts, in reality time erases no guilt; our sins remain just as dire and deadly fifty years later as they were the day of their commission. Time and our other fabricated remedies for sin cannot cleanse the guilt which we rightly feel for our sins; instead Christ’s blood is the only means by which sin and its guilt can be cleansed from our hands, and the true remedy for guilt is only found in the Word preached and distributed by His church.
P.S. Kierkegaard is really fascinating to me.
The Word and the Word Alone as the Fount of all Christian Doctrine and Experience
Posted: August 20, 2014 Filed under: Pieper, Quotes | Tags: Holy Scripture, Law & Gospel, Pieper Leave a commentPieper’s Christian Dogmatics is a really great resource, and I keep finding these beautiful quotes in it.
It is sheer delusion to make the Christian “experience” take the place of Scripture. It is a delusion, because without Scripture there can be no Christian experience. Needless to say, there is a Christian experience. Without the personal Christian experience there can be no Christianity. Everyone who is a Christian has experienced, and daily experiences, both sin and grace. He knows and realizes that on account of his sin he is subject to eternal damnation. And he knows and realizes that on account of Christ’s vicarious satisfaction his sins are forgiven. But this twofold experience of the Christian is wrought solely through the preaching and teaching of God’s Word, of the Law and the Gospel—certainly not through his experience. In order to create this experience of repentance and forgiveness of sins, Christ commands that repentance and remission of sins be preached in His name among all nations (Luke 24: 46), and Paul, by Christ’s command, proclaimed to Jews and Gentiles “that they should repent and turn to God” (Acts 26:20). This Word, the Word of the Law and the Word of the Gospel, the Church has in the recorded Word of the Apostles, and when the Church preaches this Word, which is God’s own Word and pronounces God’s own verdict in re “sin” and “forgiveness of sins,” men learn to know what repentance and forgiveness of sins is (66)
On the Imitation of Christ For Christian Ethics
Posted: August 11, 2014 Filed under: Quotes | Tags: Sanctification Leave a commentI just finished Dr. Joel Biermann’s excellent book A Case for Character: Towards a Lutheran Virtue Ethics, and it was great! Dr. Biermann does an excellent job of showing from the Lutheran Confessions and the Scripture that orthodox and historic Christianity is completely compatible with a virtue ethic.
Dr. Biermann favorably quotes Adolf Koberle’s Quest For Holiness several times, and so I have an excellent Koberle quote to share:
It is necessary to remind ourselves most emphatically what a deep significance the concrete contemplation of the historic picture of the life of Jesus has for our sanctification. For us men who have daily to contend with flesh and blood it is of supreme importance to see how the Holy One of God conducted Himself amid the sinful, wretched, contentious realities of this earth and at the same time preserved His holiness. . . . For that reason only such an example has a liberating effect, which comes from a complete, real human life that was lived in this world and that has known and overcome the needs and trials of humanity. For the formation of the image of God within us, for the renewing of our minds (Rom. 12: 2; Eph. 5: 17), for the control of our emotions, for the determination of the manner and form of our conduct, the contemplation of the teaching, praying, healing, suffering Savior as He is portrayed in Scripture is indispensable.
We May Have Been Mistaken About Faith…
Posted: July 30, 2014 Filed under: Quotes | Tags: Faith Leave a commentOne of the great joys of being a Lutheran is witnessing the wealth of scriptural knowledge which our fathers have left to us. A month or so ago, I was listening to a conversation between two American evangelicals on faith, and I was utterly surprised that they had no clear definition of faith at hand. While they tried to clearly define faith, I couldn’t help but wonder, “Don’t you all know that faith is like a hand? That historical faith is distinguished from saving faith?” The Lutheran confessions and Lutheran dogmatists set forth a clear scriptural definition of faith, and since we stand within the bounds of the confessions, because the confessions sets forth the teaching of the Scripture, and upon the shoulders of these giants, a clear definition sits at the fingertips of every Lutheran.
Giertz provides wonderful discussion on faith within his Hammer of God:
“It may very well be that we have drawn wrong conclusions regarding faith ,” he continued. “Faith does not dwell in our brain or in our thoughts. Faith is not a work which we accomplish; it is not a gift that we give to God. Being made righteous by faith does not imply that faith is some kind of payment that will serve as well as our almsgiving and good works. Is it not written that the kingdom of God belongs to those who are poor in spirit? Faith is, then, a poverty of spirit, a hunger and thirst, a poor, empty heart opening toward God so that He can put His grace into it. When God bestows His grace upon us, we are born anew and become partakers of the new life.”
A Summary of the Christian Faith
Posted: June 24, 2014 Filed under: Quotes | Tags: Law & Gospel Leave a commentI recently finished reading part I of Henry Eeyster Jacobs’ A Summary of the Christian Faith, and it was excellent. There were so many times when I was forced to exclaim, “that is so awesome!!!” as I stumbled upon some beautiful passage concerning the faith. It was excellent. Here’s a great snippet from it:
“The proper theme of the pulpit is not philosophy, not literature, not ethical or economical or sociological theories, even for audiences of highly educated people, but the cross in its manifold relations and with its many lessons. He who abides close to the cross, will be sure to find hearers to whom his words will be like cold water to the parched tongue. All preaching that has been of permanent influence has been a preaching of the crucified Jesus, which, as will be seen below, is a preaching of Law as well as Gospel.” (Jacobs, A Summary of the Christian Faith).
One very interesting thing which I noticed in it is the Lutheran church’s willingness to confess the words of theologians from all traditions, provided that those theologians are confessing the truth. In his dogmatics text, Jacobs cites John Calvin multiple times when Calvin writes good and salutary on aspects of the faith. I found it very exciting and refreshing.
C.F.W Walther on the Proper Distinction of Law and Gospel
Posted: June 4, 2013 Filed under: Quotes | Tags: Law & Gospel Leave a commentNo gospel element, then, must be mingled with the Law. Anyone explaining the Law shamefully corrupts it if he adds grace to it—the grace, loving kindness, and patience of God who forgives sin. That person would be like a nurse who fetches sugar to sweeten bitter medicine, which the patient dislikes. What is the result? Why, the medicine would not work, and the patient would remain feverish. In order to retain its strength, the medicine should not have been sweetened. A preacher must proclaim the Law in such a way that nothing in it is pleasant for us lost and condemned sinners. Any sweet ingredient injected into the law is poison. It renders this heavenly medicine inactive. It neutralizes its effectiveness. (Thesis VI)
C.F.W. Walther’s on Properly Distinguishing Law and Gospel
Posted: March 13, 2013 Filed under: Quotes | Tags: Faith, Law & Gospel Leave a commentThesis 1 Third Evening Lecture
It is easy to lose your way when you are taking a narrow and rarely traveled path through a dense forest. Without intending to do so and without being aware of it, you might make a wrong turn to the right or left. It is just as easy to lose the narrow way of pure doctrine, which likewise is traveled by few people and leads through a dense forest of false teachings. You may land either in the bog of fanaticism or in the ravine of rationalism. This cannot be taken lightly. False doctrine is poison to the soul. If people at a large banquet drink from wine glasses in which arsenic has been added, they can drink physical death from their wine glasses. In the same way, an entire audience can be subject to spiritual and eternal death when they listen to a sermon to which the poison of false doctrine has been added. People can be deprived of their soul’s salvation by a single false comfort or single false rebuke administered to them. [And this a]ll the more [true because of] the fact that we are by nature more attracted to the glaring light of human reason than God’s truth.
Thus you can gather how foolish it is—in fact, how terribly deceived so many people obviously are—when they ridicule pure doctrine and say to us, “Enough with your ‘Pure doctrine, pure doctrine’! That can lead only to dead orthodoxy. Focus on pure living instead. That way you will plant the seeds of righteous Christianity.” That would be like saying to a farmer, “Stop fretting about good seed! Be concerned with good fruit instead.”
On the contrary, if you are concerned about good fruit, you will also be concerned about good seed. In the same way, if you are concerned about pure doctrine, you will at the same time also be concerned about genuine Christianity and a sincere Christian life.
From the CPH Law And Gospel Readers Edition, pg. 24-25.
An Excerpt from Luther’s A Simple Way to Pray
Posted: January 24, 2013 Filed under: Quotes | Tags: Law & Gospel Leave a comment
Third, I confess and acknowledge my great sin and horrible thanklessness, that I have violated the Festival Day so disgracefully my whole life long and so terribly despised His Word. I have been so lazy, and felt so filled with His Word that I just have not felt like hearing it and thought I did not need it. I have not truly desired it and I have not given thanks for it. I have also allowed my dear God to preach to me in vain and have let the precious treasure go and stomped on it. Out of purely divine goodness, He has put up with all this from me and has not stopped continuing to preach to me and to call for my soul’s salvation, despite my sin. He has done this with all fatherly, divine goodness and faithfulness. All this gives me great sorrow, and I plead for grace and forgiveness.
Luther, Martin (2012-11-19). A Simple Way to Pray (Kindle Locations 258-259). Concordia Publishing House. Kindle Edition.
Christianity as a means to an end or mere accesory
Posted: August 24, 2012 Filed under: Quotes Leave a commentDue to lack of time and sleep deprivation, I’m simply going to put up a simply spectacular quote from J. Gresham Machen’s unfathomably helpful book Christianity and Liberalism.
“For if one
thing is plain it is that Christianity refuses to be regarded as a mere
means to a higher end.6 Our Lord made that perfectly clear when He
said: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother . . . he
cannot be my disciple” (Luke xiv. 26). Whatever else those stupendous
takes precedence of all other relationships, even the holiest of relationships
like those that exist between husband and wife and parent and
child. Those other relationships exist for the sake of Christianity and
not Christianity for the sake of them. Christianity will indeed accomplish
many useful things in this world, but if it is accepted in order to
accomplish those useful things it is not Christianity. Christianity will
combat Bolshevism; but if it is accepted in order to combat Bolshevism,
it is not Christianity: Christianity will produce a unified nation, in a
slow but satisfactory way; but if it is accepted in order to produce a
unified nation, it is not Christianity: Christianity will produce a healthy
community; but if it is accepted in order to produce a healthy community,
it is not Christianity: Christianity will promote international
peace; but if it is accepted in order to promote international peace, it is
not Christianity.”
lexsemperaccusat 