The self-forgetfulness of love

In Dietrich Bonhoeffer's study of the Sermon on the Mount, he discusses the extraordinary quality of the Christian disciple's life and the seeming contradiction that the disciples are to be the light of the world but at the same time should not make their Christian life visible. How do these two ideas go together? In explaining this, Bonhoeffer says something profound about the character of love itself.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and confirmands, 1932

"From whom are we to hide the visibility of our discipleship? Certainly not from other men, for we are told to let them see our light. No. We are to hide it from ourselves. Our task is simply to keep on following, looking only to our Leader who goes on before, taking no notice of ourselves or of what we are doing. We must be unaware of our own righteousness, and see it only in so far as we look unto Jesus; then it will seem not extraordinary, but quite ordinary and natural. ...
     [Discipleship] means an exclusive adherence to him, and that implies first that the disciple looks only to his Lord and follows him. If he looked only at the extraordinary quality of the Christian life, he would no longer be following Christ. For the disciple this extraordinary quality consists solely in the will of the Lord, and when he seeks to do that will he knows that there is no other alternative, and that what he does is the only natural thing to do....
     The genuine work of love is always a hidden work. Take heed therefore that you know it not, for only so is it the goodness of God. If we want to know our own goodness or love, it has already ceased to be love. We must be unaware even of our love for our enemies. After all, when we love them they are no longer our enemies. This voluntary blindness in the Christian (which is really sight illuminated by Christ) is his certainty, and that fact that his life is hidden from his sight is the ground of his assurance...
    Genuine love is always self-forgetful in the true sense of the word. But if we are to have it, our old man must die with all his virtues and qualities, and this can only be done where the disciple forgets self and clings solely to Christ. When Jesus said: "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth," he was sounding the death-knell of the old man. Once again, who can live a life which combines [Matthew] chapters 5 and 6? Only those who have died after the old man through Christ and are given a new life by following him and having fellowship with him. Love, in the sense of spontaneous, unreflective action, spells the death of the old man. For man recovers his true nature in the righteousness of Christ and in his fellow-man."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship 

(trans. R. H. Fuller. New York: Macmillan, 1963 [German: 1937]), 176-179.

Evangelicals and Universalism?

Is it possible for evangelical Christians to believe that all people will be saved? The question has been hotly debated ever since the publication last year of Rob Bell's book Love Wins. My friend Robin Parry has recently published a challenging article in The Evangelical Quarterly arguing that these two positions, being an evangelical and believing everyone will be saved, are not mutually exclusive, and that universalism is in fact "authentically evangelical." Whether or not he convinces everyone, his theological arguments are well thought out and worth listening to. Here is one short extract:

"Arminian evangelicals have always maintained that God loves all people, wants to save all people, and sent Christ to die for all people to achieve this goal. 'Evangelical' universalists agree. Calvinist evangelicals have always maintained that God will achieve all his purposes in salvation; that all for whom Christ died will be saved. 'Evangelical' universalists agree. But, of course, the Arminian belief-set and the Calvinist belief-set, when combined, entail universalism. Consider:
     1. God, being omnipotent, could cause all people to freely accept Christ.
     2. God, being omniscient, would know how to cause all people to freely accept Christ.
     3. God, being omnibenevolent, would want to cause all people to freely accept Christ.
(Premises 1 and 2 are Calvinist whilst premise 3 is Arminian.) Now 1-3 entail:
     4. God will cause all people to freely accept Christ.
From which it follows that
     5. All people will freely accept Christ.
My point in presenting this argument is not, in this context, to persuade readers to be universalists. Rather, it is simply to illustrate that widely accepted evangelical beliefs can, in certain circumstances, motivate universalism. Both the Arminian and the Calvinist belief-sets above are evangelical-compatible, so are 'evangelical' universalists unevangelical because they believe both? That seems odd. Or must evangelicals believe either (a) that God cannot save all without violating their freedom (Arminianism), or (b) that God does not want to save all (Calvinism)?"

Robin Parry, "Evangelical Universalism: Oxymoron?" Evangelical Quarterly 84 (2012) 16.

Even though Parry's article is appealing, the part of the argument I would like to see better fleshed out is how universalism can be motivated from the New Testament. In the same issue of The Evangelical Quarterly Derek Tidball responds negatively, that Scripture will not allow us to affirm universalism. After a quick survey of Jesus' teaching, Paul's teaching, and the teaching of the General Epistles and Revelation, Tidball concludes:

"Whatever our emotions may say concerning the lost state of the impenitent, it is very hard to find a doctrine of universalism in the New Testament, whether of a general variety or the more specific 're-educative' variety proposed by Parry. There are two distinct forms of universalism which the NT does teach and two only: (i) that the offer of salvation is universal in its scope in the present time and is available to all without distinction of race, gender, wealth or social standing, and (ii) that God will reign 'all in all' when the whole of creation is brought into submission, voluntarily or otherwise, to his rule at some future time....
     Universal homage will one day be paid to the King of kings and Lord of lords. Does that mean all will be saved whether they have gone directly into his presence or come into it via a temporary, if terrifying, detour in hell? The Bible presents no evidence to support the latter. Hell is presented as the final destination of the impenitent rather than a temporary deviation. To believe otherwise is to 'clutch at insubstantial straws'."

Derek Tidball, "Can Evangelicals Be Universalists?" Evangelical Quarterly 84 (2012) 29-30.

"We have this treasure in clay jars to show that the power is from God and not from us"

Charles Williams was one of C. S. Lewis' closest friends after he became a Christian. Williams wrote a little book on forgiveness during the Second World War, and the encouraging insights in this passage on how we perceive our own progress in sanctification are well worth reading. Interestingly, Dietrich Bonhoeffer had been writing similar things just a few years earlier.

"The virtues, owing to the laborious detail in which they have to be pursued by us...are apt to be subdued to our own niggling style. But in themselves they are not so; they are gay and princely; and so they are seen when they are recognised in others simply because we are in a state of love towards others. We can admire them in their freedom in others when in ourselves they must seem, if not in servitude, at least only just escaped from servitude, sore from the manacles, bleeding from their effort at freedom, lame, purblind, unheavenly. it is our business to admire them heavenly whenever they can be so seen; the opportunity is in such states as marriage and friendship, and we do very well to take it whenever it is found. "This ought ye to have done, and not to have left the other undone." We must not ease from our own labour because the glory is seen free in another; but neither must we cease to admire the glory because the labour is all that we can feel in ourselves."

Charles Williams, "The Technique of Pardon," The Forgiveness of Sins (London: Bles, 1942)

"Taste and see that the Lord is good"

This morning I stumbled across these words by Jerome (c 347-420) against Pelagius on our need for divine aid to do what is good.

St Jerome in his study (1480)

"He is always a giver, always a bestower. It is not enough for me that he has given me grace once; He must give it me always. I seek that I may obtain, and when I have obtained I seek again. I am covetous of God's bounty; and as He is never slack in giving, so I am never weary in receiving. The more I drink, the more I thirst. For I have read the song of the psalmist: O taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34:8). Every good thing that we have is a tasting of the Lord. When I fancy myself to have finished the book of virtue, I shall then only be at the beginning."

St Jerome, Letter 133 (AD 415)

Frank Thielman on the Center of Paul's Theology

This spring I used Frank Thielman's Theology of the New Testament as a textbook when teaching in Ethiopia, and was impressed with his argument that  the center of Paul's theology is best described as God's grace.

"If one theological theme is more basic than others in Paul's letters, ... it is this notion that God is a gracious God and that he has shown his grace preeminently in his arrangement of history to answer the problem of human sinfulness in the death and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ.
     This is "the truth of the gospel" that Paul passionately defended against those who threatened it in Jerusalem and Antioch. When false brothers at the Jerusalem council tried to insist that a right relationship with God was defined not only by faith in Christ but by conformity to the Mosaic law, Paul "did not submit to them even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might remain intact" (Gal 2:5). When Peter, under pressure from Jewish believers from Jerusalem, tried to force Gentile Christians in Antioch to conform to the Mosaic law, Paul told him that he was out of line with "the truth of the gospel" (Gal 2:14).
     The problem in both instances was that by insisting on conformity to the Mosaic law as a means--however partial--of bringing people into a right relationship with God, both the false brothers and Peter had "set aside the grace of God" and implied that "Christ died for nothing" (Gal 2:21). Here, then, Paul answers for us the question of the "center" of his theology. It is an answer given in the passion of the moment, but as the importance of this concept throughout the Pauline corpus demonstrates, it was an answer that arose from Paul's deepest convictions."

Frank Thielman, Theology of the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 479.

How to avoid antiquarianism and self-congratulation

Alasdair MacIntyre's words about the value of the history of philosophy are equally true for the history of theology and biblical interpretation.

"It is important that we should, as far as it is possible, allow the history of philosophy to break down our present-day preconceptions, so that our too narrow views of what can and cannot be thought, said, and done are discarded in face of the record of what has been thought, said, and done. We have to steer between the danger of a dead antiquarianism, which enjoys the illusion that we can approach the past without preconceptions, and that other danger, so apparent in such philosophical historians as Aristotle and Hegel, of believing that the whole point of the past was that it should culminate with us. History is neither a prison nor a museum, nor is it a set of materials for self-congratulation."

Alasdair MacIntyre, A Short History of Ethics: A History of Moral Philosophy from the Homeric Age to the Twentieth Century (2nd ed. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1996), p. 4.

Higher Criticism and Winnie the Pooh

What happens when New Testament Form Criticism and Redaction Criticism are applied not to the New Testament but to Winnie the Pooh? The following excerpt is from Richard Bauckham's brilliant, unpublished lecture, "The Pooh Community" (the entire lecture is available on Richard Bauckham's home page).

"... The [Winnie the Pooh] stories afford us a fairly accurate view of some of the rivalries and disputes within the community. The stories are told very much from the perspective of Pooh and Piglet, who evidently represent the dominant group in the community - from which presumably the bulk of the literature originated, though here and there we may detect the hand of an author less favourable to the Pooh and Piglet group. The Pooh and Piglet group saw itself as central to the life of the community (remember that Piglet's house is located in the very centre of the forest), and the groups represented by other characters are accordingly marginalized. The figure of Owl, for example, surely represents the group of children who prided themselves on their intellectual achievements and aspired to status in the community on this basis. But the other children, certainly the Pooh and Piglet group, ridiculed them as swots. So throughout the stories the figure of Owl, with his pretentious learning and atrocious spelling, is portrayed as a figure of fun. Probably the Owl group, the swots, in their turn ridiculed the Pooh and Piglet group as ignorant and stupid: they used terms of mockery such as 'bear of very little brain.' Stories like the hunt for the Woozle, in which Pooh and Piglet appear at their silliest and most gullible, probably originated in the Owl group, which used them to lampoon the stupidity of the Pooh and Piglet group. But the final redactor, who favours the Pooh and Piglet group, has managed very skilfully to refunction all this material which was originally detrimental to the Pooh and Piglet group so that in the final form of the collection of stories it serves to portray Pooh and Piglet as oafishly lovable. In a paradoxical reversal of values, stupidity is elevated as deserving the community's admiration. We can still see the point where an anti-Pooh story has been transformed in this way into an extravagantly pro-Pooh story at the end of the story of the hunt for the Woozle. Pooh and Piglet, you remember, have managed to frighten themselves silly by walking round and round in circles and mistaking their own paw-prints for those of a steadily increasing number of unknown animals of Hostile Intent. Realizing his mistake, Pooh declares: 'I have been Foolish and Deluded, and I am a Bear of No Brain at All.' The original anti-Pooh story, told by the Owl faction, must have ended at that point. But the pro-Pooh narrator has added - we can easily see that it is an addition to the original story by the fact that it comes as a complete non sequitur - the following comment by Christopher Robin: "'You're the Best Bear in All the World," said Christopher Robin soothingly.'..."

Richard Bauckham, "The Pooh Community." Unpublished lecture.

Christ makes every one a debtor to all those for whom Christ died

Paul S. Minear, 1906-2007

It may be said, then, that as Paul sees it, Christ makes every man a debtor to all those for whom Christ died. He thereby creates a fabric of mutual interdependence which defies the usual method of computing obligations in proportion to tangible, direct contributions. This new interdependence is not two-sided but triangular. For example, Paul teaches that Gentiles are indebted to the Jews because Christ became a servant to the circumcised for the sake of the Gentiles (15.7-12). So, too, Paul magnifies his ministry to the Gentiles for the sake of the Jews (11.13f.). This triangular logic also lies back of his injunction to the ‘strong in faith’ (who were predominantly Gentile) that they should honour their obligation to the ‘weak in faith’ (who were predominantly Jewish, 14.1ff.). This obligation was incurred when Christ chose not to please himself but to accept as his own the reproaches which in all justice should fall on others (15.1-3). In Christ, therefore, each man becomes a debtor to every man.

Paul S. Minear, The Obedience of Faith: The Purposes of Paul in the Epistle to the Romans (Studies in Biblical Theology, Second Series 19. London: SCM, 1971), pp. 104-5.

(with apologies for the non-inclusive language)

Moltmann on God's future for the earth

When the Eternal One comes to "dwell" on the earth, the earth will become God's cosmic temple, and the restless God of hope and history will come to his rest. That is the great biblical -- Jewish and Christian -- vision for this earth. It is the final promise: "Behold, the dwelling of God is with [human beings]. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people" (Rev 21:3 RSV, following Ezek. 37:27). The ultimate Shekinah, this cosmic incarnation of God, is the divine future of the earth. In this expectation we shall already treat the earth as "God's temple" here and now, and cherish its creatures as sacred. We men and women are not "the masters and possessors" of the earth, but perhaps we shall one day become its priests and priestesses, representing God to the earth, and bringing the earth before God, so that we see and taste God in all things, and perceive all things in the radiance of his love. That would be a sacramental view of the world which would be able to take up and absorb into itself the worldview held at present in science and technology.

Jürgen Moltmann, "Progress and Abyss: Remembrances of the Future of the Modern World," p. 26 in The Future of Hope: Christian Tradition amid Modernity and Postmodernity, Miroslav Volf and William Katerberg, eds. Grand Rapids and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 2004.

BS 505 Pauline and General Letters and Revelation

The above link takes you to the syllabus for BS 505 "Pauline and General Letters and Revelation," which I will teach this term beginning Wednesday, 25 January, at Ethiopian Graduate School of Theology in Addis Ababa.

More information, literature lists and power point presentations are available on the EGST network drive. These will be updated as the course progresses.

N. T. Wright on holding off theological conclusions about Jesus until history has had its say

" John the Baptist is said to be 'more than a prophet'; but if that is said of John, what must be said for Jesus himself? At this point some will want to jump without more ado into a full Nicene christology, and will, not for the last time, have to be severely restrained. It will not do for the elder brother (orthodoxy) to set terms and conditions for the return of the younger (history). But the question 'Who then is this?', or at least 'Who does he think he is?', will not go away. ... the stories that Jesus told indicate well enough that he did not see himself as a prophet entrusted with a task simply for his own generation, one member of a long, continuing line. None of the 'leadership' prophets who have left traces in Josephus thought of themselves in that way, either. The stories he told, and acted out, made it clear that he envisaged his own work as bringing Israel's history to its fateful climax. He really did believe he was inaugurating the kingdom."

N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996),

p. 197

Bibeltexter för advent

Växelläsning jag använde i morgonbön på Johannelund den 7 dec 2011

Ett barn är oss fött, en son är oss given.

Hans namn är Underbar i råd,

Väldig Gud, Evig Fader, Fridsfurste.                                         Jes 9:6

       Han ger oss kraft; vi kan göra allt genom honom.         Fil 4:13

       Utan honom kan vi ingenting göra.                                  Joh 15:5

Han ger våra själar vila.                                                                Matt 11:29

Han lever alltid för att vädja för oss.                                          Heb 7:25

       Han sover aldrig, han vakar ständigt.                                 Ps 121:4

       Han fyller alla våra behov.                                                     Fil 4:19

       Han är allt vi önskar.                                                              Ps 73:25-26

       Han är vår rika belöning.                                                        1 Mos 15:1

I hans hand är alla levandes själ, och alla människors anda.    Job 12:10

       Han är vår store herde.                                                         Heb 13:20

       Han vallar oss bland liljor.                                                    Höga v 2:16

       Han överger oss aldrig.                                                          Heb 13:5

Han har utvalt oss före världens skapelse.                                 Ef. 1:4

Han har kallat oss från mörkret till sitt underbara ljus.            1 Pet 2:9

       Han har kommit för att vi skall ha liv i överflöd,             Joh 10:10

       för att vår glädje skall bli fullkomlig.                       Joh 15:11, 16:20

Han förmår göra långt mer än vi kan begära eller tänka.        Ef 3:20

Med honom är ingenting omöjligt.                                       Luk 1:37, 18:27

       Han uppfyller både himmel och jord.                                   Jer 23:24

       Hos honom är all ljuvlighet.                                   Höga visan 5:16

Han är vår överstepräst, som känner med oss i våra svagheter,

Han har varit frestad i allting, liksom vi, dock utan synd.          Heb 4:14-15

       Han är nära de förtvivlade.                                                    Ps 34:19

       En hjälp i nöden.                                                                      Ps 46:2

Han har klätt oss i frälsningens klädnad.                                      Jes 61:10

Han ger oss glädjens olja i stället för sorgdräkt,

lovsång i stället för modlöshet.                                                        Jes 61:3

Han är den osynlige Gudens avbild                                       Kol 1:15

       och utstrålningen av Guds härlighet.                                       Heb 1:3

I honom har hela den gudomliga fullheten

förkroppsligats och tagit sin boning.                                              Kol 2:9

Han lyser upp våra hjärtan med kunskapen om Guds

härlighet.                                                                                          2 Kor 4:6

Han gör vårt mörker till ljus.                                                          Ps 18:29

       Genom honom har vi frid med Gud.                                   Rom 5:1

       Guds frid, som övergår allt förstånd, bevarar

       våra hjärtan och tankar genom Jesus Kristus.                   Fil 4:7

Han slår sitt läger omkring oss.                                                      Ps 34:8

Hans eviga armar råder här nere.                                               5 Mos 33:27

Han går framför oss.                                                                      2 Mos 23:20

och hans härlighet följer i våra spår.                                                Jes 58:8

       Hans godhet och nåd följer oss i alla våra livsdagar.           Ps 23:6

       Han är den uppståndne som vädjar för oss vid

               Guds högra sida.                                                          Rom 8:34

Han släcker törsten av alla som törstar.                                      Joh 7:37

Alla som vill får dricka fritt av Livets vatten.                                Upp 22:17

       Genom honom har vi friköpts

       och fått förlåtelse för våra synder.                                  Kol 1:14

       Han vill alltid förlåta.                                                           Jes 55:7

Hans blod fortsätter att rena oss från all synd.                        1 Joh 1:7

Han har dött för oss för att vi, vare sig vi är vakna eller

sover, lever eller dör, skall leva tillsammans med honom.          1 Thess 5:10

       Han är Immanuel, Gud med oss,                                         Matt 1:23

       det är i honom vi lever.                                                       Apg 17:28

       Han är vårt liv.                                                                      Kol 3:4

       Stunden är nära. Se, han kommer snart!                         Upp 22:11-12

Alla:  Halleluja! Herren vår Gud, allhärskaren, är nu konung!

Låt oss vara glada och jubla och ge honom vår hyllning!

Amen, kom Herre Jesus!                                             Upp 19:6-7; 22:20

The need for intellectual and scholarly skill

"God's Word is neither a human discovery nor a human invention; it is divinely disclosed truth. It requires all the intellectual and scholarly skill the student of Scripture can muster to determine what a given passage or book means, for the Word of God has been given to us in human words in non-English languages and in ancient historical situations. But when the message of Scripture has been understood, then the believer no longer sits in judgment upon its truth but lets its truth judge and control his life and thinking." 

George Eldon Ladd, A Commentary on the Revelation of John (1972), p. 296. 

How Matthew wanted to be read and proclaimed

"How can Matthew, originally functioning as a catalyst for character formation, serve this end in our time? In order to allow Matthew to function in line with its original aim, it must be read and proclaimed not as a "striver's manual" but as a "verbal icon".

"Reading and proclaiming a gospel text rightly are not acts of moralism in which the text is assumed to be law and the purpose of reading to specify what we ought to do, utilizing guild and shame to motivate the desired behavior. When this type of use of Matthew occurs, the typical sermon is essentialy "here is how bad we are because we have not done what we ought to have done". The typical accompanying prayer is essentially "forgive us for being so bad and for not being willing to do better". The typical emotion of the preacher is impatience with, and sometimes anger at, the delinquent parishioners. Underlying this approach is the assumption that if humans know what to do, they can do it. Hence failure to do so is due to conscious perversity on our part. This is no way to read or proclaim a gospel text.

"A reading and proclamation of Matthew that fits with the Gospel's original concern to enable the transformation of the character of its auditors is one that treats it as a verbal icon through which one sees into the divine realm and God's will. The purpose of such reading and proclamation is to become centered on Jesus so as to see into another world, assuming that, over time, one becomes like that which he/she contemplates. The typical sermon, then, presents Jesus in his sayings and deeds as the embodiment of the divine presence, through whom one sees into God's heart and will for us. The sermon becomes an encomium (=bragging on Jesus). The typical accompanying prayer for such a reading is, "praise you Jesus for who you are and thank you for what you have done". The typical emotion of the preacher is awe and adoration. Underlying this approach is the assumption that humans cannot do what they know to be right unless they are enabled to do so. Hence, the vision of "the good", patterned in the story of Jesus, is presented so that it can function as a catalyst for a change of our perceptions, dispositions, and intentions. When Matthew is so read and so proclaimed as a catalyst for character formation today, it is once again functioning as its first auditors would have experienced it."

Charles H. Talbert, "Matthew and Character Formation", Expository Times, 121:2 (Nov 2009) pp. 58-59.

Martin Luther on the True Nature of the Church

But we are speaking of the external word, preached orally by people like you and me, for this is what Christ left behind as an external sign, by which his church, or his Christian people in the world, should be recognized.... Now, anywhere you hear or see such a word preached, believed, confessed, and acted upon, do not doubt that the true ecclesia sancta catholica, a "holy Christian people" must be there, even though there are very few of them.

Martin Luther, On the Councils and the Church (1539)

The Exciting New World of the New Testament

A book from the ancient East, and lit up by the light of the dawn, a book breathing the fragrance of the Galilean spring, and anon swept by the shipwrecking north-east tempest from the Mediterranean, a book of peasants, fishermen, artisans, travellers by land and sea, fighters and martyrs, a book in cosmopolitan Greek with marks of Semitic origin, a book of the Imperial age, written at Antioch, Ephesus, Corinth, Rome, a book of pictures, miracles, and visions, book of the village and the town, book of the people and the peoples, the New Testament, if regard be had to the inward side of things, is the great book, chief and singular, of human souls.

Because of its psychic depth and breadth this book of the East is a book for both East and West, a book for humanity: a book ancient but eternal.

And because of the figure that emerges from the book -- the Redeemer, accompanied by the multitude of the redeemed, blessing and consoling, exhorting and renewing, revealing Himself anew to every generation of the weary and heavy-laden, and growing from century to century more great -- the New Testament is the Book of Life.

Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East (1908), p. 392.

Gregory of Nyssa on the Imago Dei

If, then, man came into being for these reasons, viz., to participate in the divine goodness, he had to be fashioned in such a way as to fit him to share in this goodness. For ... something akin to the divine had to be mingled with human nature. In this way its desire [for divine goodness] would correspond to something native to it. Even the natures of irrational creatures, whose lot is to live in water or air, are fashioned to correspond with their mode of life. In each case the particular way their bodies are formed makes the air or the water appropriate and congenial to them. In the same way man, who was created to enjoy God's goodness, had to have some element in his nature akin to what he was to share. Hence he was endowed with life, reason, wisdom, and all the good things of God, so that by each of them his desires might be directed to what was natural to him. And since immortality is one of the good attributes of the divine nature, it was essential that the constitution of our nature should not be deprived of this. It had to have an immortal element, so that it might, by this inherent faculty, recognize the transcendent and have the desire for God's immortality.

The account of creation sums all this up in a single expression when it says that man was created "in the image of God."

Gregory of Nyssa, Catechetical Oration (4th C AD), p. 276 in Christology of the Later Fathers, ed. E. R. Hardy. Phildelphia: Westminster, 1954.

Why did God leave difficulties on the surface of scripture?

If [the Bible] is, as we devoutly believe, the very source and measure of our religious faith, it seems impossible to insist too earnestly on the supreme importance of patience, candour and truthfulness in investigating every problem which it involves. The first steps towards the solution of a difficulty are the recognition of its existence and the determination of its extent. And, unless all past experience is worthless, the difficulties of the Bible are the most fruitful guides to its divine depths. It was said long since that 'God was pleased to leave the difficulties upon the surface of scripture, that men might be forced to look below the surface.'

Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901, Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, Bishop of Durham), The Bible in the Church (1864), p. x.

C S Lewis on Three Enemies which War Raises Up against the Scholar

The first enemy is excitement--the tendency to think and feel about the war when we had intended to think about our work. The best defence is a recognition that in this, as in everything else, the war has not really raised up a new enemy but only aggravated an old one. There are always plenty of rivals to our work. We are always falling in love or quarrelling, looking for jobs or fearing to lose them, getting ill and recovering, following public affairs. If we let ourselves, we shall always be waiting for some distraction or other to end before we can really get down to our work. The only people who achieve much are those who want knowledge so badly that they seek it while the conditions are still unfavourable. Favourable conditions never come. There are, of course, moments when the pressure of the excitement is so great that only superhuman self-control could resist it. They come both in war and peace. We must do the best we can.

The second enemy is frustration--the feeling that we shall not have time to finish. If I say to you that no one has time to finish, that the longest human life leaves a man, in any branch of learning, a beginner, I shall seem to you to be saying something quite academic and theoretical. You would be surprised if you knew how soon one begins to feel the shortness of the tether: of how many things, even in middle life, we have to say "No time for that", "Too late now", and "Not for me." But Nature herself forbids you to share that experience. A more Christian attitude, which can be attained at any age, is that of leaving futurity in God's hands. We may as well, for God will certainly retain it whether we leave it to Him or not. Never, in peace or war, commit your virtue or your happiness to the future. Happy work is best done by the man who takes his long-term plans somewhat lightly and works from moment to moment "as to the Lord". It is only our daily bread that we are encouraged to ask for. The present is the only time in which any duty can be done or any grace received.

The third enemy is fear. War threatens us with death and pain. No man--and specially no Christian who remembers Gethsemane--need try to attain a stoic indifference about these things: but we can guard against the illusions of the imagination. We think of the streets of Warsaw and contrast the deaths there suffered with an abstraction called Life. But there is no question of death or life for any of us; only a question of this death or of that--of a machine gun bullet now or a cancer forty years later. What does war do to death? It certainly does not make it more frequent: 100 per cent of us die, and the percentage cannot be increased. It puts several deaths earlier: but I hardly suppose that that is what we fear. Certainly when the moment comes, it will make little difference how many years we have behind us. Does it increase our chances of a painful death? I doubt it. As far as I can find out, what we call natural death is usually preceded by suffering: and a battlefield is one of the very few places where one has a reasonable prospect fo dying with no pain at all. Does it decrease our chances of dying at peace with God? I cannot believe it. If active service does not persuade a man to prepare for death, what conceivable concatenation of circumstances would? Yet war does do something to death. It forces us to remember it. The only reason why the cancer at sixty or the paralysis at seventy-five do not bother us is that we forget them. War makes death real to us: and that would have been regarded as one of its blessings by most of the great Christians of the past. They thought it good for us to be always aware of our mortality. I am inclined to think they were right. All the animal life in us, all schemes of happiness that centred in this world, were always doomed to a final frustration. In ordinary times only a wise man can realize it. Now the stupidest of us knows. We see unmistakably the sort of universe in which we have all along been living, and must come to terms with it. If we had foolish un-Christian hopes about human culture, they are now shattered. If we thought we were building up a heaven on earth, if we looked for something that would turn the present world from a place of pilgrimage into a permanent city satisfying the soul of man, we are disillusioned, and not a moment too soon. But if we thought that for some souls, and at some times, the life of learning, humbly offered to God, was, in its own small way, one of the appointed approaches to the Divine reality and the Divine beauty which we hope to enjoy hereafter, we can think so still.

C. S. Lewis, "Learning in War-Time", a sermon preached in Oxford, Autumn 1939, pp. 52-54 in Transposition and other Addresses, London: Bles, 1949.

On Being Purchased through Christ's Cross

"Is sin, man’s refusal to be reconciled with eternal, absolute Goodness, really an organ essential to life? Is it not much more like a spreading cancer? Can we say that God is robbing man of anything by restoring his health? Furthermore, if a man has become locked in a syndrome of refusal, if he refuses to keep faith with God, can he free himself from his own obstinacy? He may think he can, but in reality he becomes a slave of his ‘No’ because there is only true freedom when we are in contact with the Good, in the atmosphere of love -- that is, of God. This is something that has to be shown, from within, to the person who has turned away. What is taken away from sinful man through the surrender of the Son of God is nothing other than his alienation from the Good; what is given to him is nothing other than inner access to the Good, that is, true freedom. He is liberated both toward himself and toward God.

'Bought at a great price.' The first Christians were well aware of this when they put these two little words, 'pro nobis,' at the heart of the Creed. It was 'for us' that the Son came down from heaven, 'for us' that he was crucified, died and was buried. And this means not only 'for our benefit' but also 'in our place,' taking over what was our due. If this is watered down, the fundamental tenet of the New Testament disappears and it looks as if God is always reconciled, sin is always forgiven and overcome, irrespective of Christ's self-surrender; then the Cross becomes merely a particularly eloquent symbol of God's unchanging kindness, only a symbol, indicating something but not effecting anything. ... By sleight of hand the modern world has caused death to vanish from its everyday awareness: let us make sure that we Christians do not, by equal stealth, remove the tremendous drama of the Cross from our Christianity. "

Hans Urs von Balthasar, You Crown the Year with Your Goodness: Radio Sermons, trans. G. Harrison (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989), pp. 78-79.