Journey of the Magi

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wineskins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (as you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

T. S. Eliot (1936)

Adam's words to Michael on leaving paradise

Henceforth I learn, that to obey is best,
And love with fear the only God, to walk
As in his presence, ever to observe
His providence, and on him sole depend,
Merciful over all his works, with good
Still overcoming evil, and by small
Accomplishing great things, by things deem'd weak
Subverting worldly strong, and worldly wise
By simply meek; that suffering for Truth's sake
Is fortitude to highest victory,
And to the faithful Death the Gate of Life;
Taught this by his example whom I now
Acknowledge my Redeemer ever blest.

John Milton, Paradise Lost XII.561-573 (1674)

Martin Luther and the Priesthood of All Believers

"Now we, who have been baptized, are all uniformly priests ... The only addition received by the priests is the office of preaching, and even this with our consent... Thus it says in 1 Peter 2, "Ye are an elect race, a royal priesthood, and a priestly kingdom." It follows that all of us who are Christian are also priests. Those whom we call priests are really ministers of the word and chosen by us; they fulfil their entire office in our name. The priesthood is simply the ministry of the word. So in 1 Corinthians 4 it says: "Let a man account of us as of ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God."
That being the case, it follows (i) that any one who has been called by the church to preach the Word, but does not preach it, is in no way a priest; and (ii) that the sacrament of ordination cannot be other than the rite by which the church chooses its preacher. That is how Malachi 2 defines a priest: "The priest's lips should keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth; for he is the messenger of the Lord of Hosts." ...
Therefore every one who knows that he is a Christian should be fully assured that all of us alike are priests, and that we all have the same authority in regard to the word and the sacraments, although no one has the right to administer them without the consent of the members of his church. ...
A joyful liberty would come back to us, in which we should understand that we are all equal by any law whatever; and, when the oppressive yoke had been cast aside, we should know that he who is a Christian possesses Christ; that he who possesses Christ possesses all things that are Christ's, and is able to do all things."

Martin Luther, Pagan Servitude of the Church (1520) part 6.

John Yoder on the Priesthood of all believers in the New Testament

"The work of Christ is described in Hebrews as the abolition of the priesthood. The perfect high priest, fully obedient among His brethren, by sacrificing Himself, puts an end to the recurrent functions of all priesthood, and gives us all access into the holy place. Priesthood, to the extent that it applies at all in the new covenant, is the character of the entire people of God, not of any single priestly person in the church. Thus Revelation 5 and 1 Peter 2 take up the mosaic phrase "a kingdom of priests" to designate the abolition of the distinct priestly role (whereas the prophetic role and the eldership, and something like the rabbinate, are carried over in the N.T. church). Priests joining the Jerusalem church did not create a Christian priesthood....
The conclusion is inescapable that the multiplicity of ministries is not a mere adiaphoron, a happenstance of only superficial significance, but a specific work of grace and a standard for the church ... We would expect, in a turbulent first-generation movement, that wisdom should call everyone to restrain his individualism; but the apostolic call is to each to be the most uniquely oneself. Not only should one not despise the other, not only should all work in unity like the organs of a healthy body, but each is invited to sharpen his or her distinctiveness (1 Pet. 4:10, Rom. 12:3, 6 ff). Harmony and diversity are not in tension but complementary."

John Howard Yoder, The Fullness of Christ: Paul's Vision of Universal Ministry (1987) 16-17

Avoiding epistemological suicide

"Reading the Gospels as eyewitness testimony differs therefore from attempts at historical reconstruction behind the texts. It takes the Gospels seriously as they are; it acknowledges the uniqueness of what we can know only in this testimonial form. It honors the form of historiography they are. From a historiographic perspective, radical suspicion of testimony is a kind of epistemological suicide. It is no more practicable in history than it is in ordinary life. Gospels scholarship must free itself from the grip of the skeptical paradigm that presumes the Gospels to be unreliable unless, in every particular case of story or saying, the historian succeeds in providing independent verification. For such a suspicious approach the Gospels are not believable until and unless the historian can verify each claim that they make to recount history. But this approach is seriously faulty precisely as a historical method. It can only result in a misleadingly minimal collection of uninteresting facts about a historical figure stripped of any real significance."

Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (Eerdmans, 2006) p. 506.