On God's Glory, Fear Of God, Nature And Love

Psalm 19:1 explains:

The heavens are telling of the glory of God; And their expanse is declaring the work of His hands.

Lewis makes a nice connection between nature and glory.

Nature never taught me that there exists a God of glory and of infinite majesty. I had to learn that in other ways. But nature gave the word glory a meaning for me. I still do not know where else I could have found one. I do not see how the "fear" of God could have ever meant to me anything but the lowest prudential efforts to be safe, if I had never seen certain ominous ravines and unapproachable crags.

- C.S. Lewis, The Four Lives, in A Mind Awake: An Anthology of C.S. Lewis, ed. Clyde Kilby (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1968), 202.

On The Logician, Myopic Intellectual Pride And Poetry

The general fact is simple. Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion, like the physical exhaustion of Mr. Holbein. To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.

- G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1936).

On Anime, Depravity, And Darkness

This past week, I have been watching the Anime Tokyo Majin Gakuen. My youth watch it, and I wanted to see what exactly was influencing them. Needless to say, it is demonic and full of divination, so I am not too thrilled they watch it. With that said, there are themes of sin, death, atonement, salvation, resurrection, redemption, love and even the need for a savior. Sadly it's wholly deficient and distorted without revelation of Jesus. The anime struggles with the human condition (mixed with themes of divination). Although it's not like reading Nietzsche or Dostoyevsky where a sin wrought, depraved humanity drips off the page in honest fashion, there is still something to learn. So what is seen when one goes below and within and observes the human heart? There is a telling monologue in episode 13:

"That man said to me, 'to exact your revenge you will need a mighty power. A power to violate or obliterate the laws of this world and change it forever.' He told me I could obtain that power if i was willing to sacrifice. I would have to abandon my human heart. What heart? I don't need any human heart? What good is it? I abandoned it a long time ago. A human heart -what is a human heart? What a useless organ -much more trouble than it's worth. What did the human heart ever do for me? What did the human heart ever do for my mother. Those people, those miserable pigs don't deserve to live -so why don't you kill them? There is nothing stopping you. I have been chosen -I don't have to worry about those swine anymore. Destroy them... do them in.... end their lives... MURDER every last one. And then.... become a demon. I'll show you once and for all why we call it the dark arts."

- Tendo Kozunu, Episode 13, Toyko Majin Gakuen Kenpucho

On God, Poetry, And Trees

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the sweet earth's flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

- Joyce Kilmer, "Trees," 1914.

On Being "Gennethenai Anothen"

Can one really know if someone is born again (John 3:3; 3:7)?

"No one who is born of God practices sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are obvious (phanera): anyone who does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother."

- 1John 3:9f

On The Humility of Tomorrow

For a practical application of James 4:13-17 note Luke's record of Paul's words:

"But taking leave of them and saying, 'I will return to you again if God wills," he set sail from Ephesus."

- Acts 18:21

On Humble Orthodoxy And True Orthopraxy

St. Augustine notes:

"That the Platonists, though knowing something of the Creator of the universe, have misunderstood the true worship of God, by giving divine honor to angels, good or bad: this being so, if the Platonists, or those who think with them, knowing God, glorified Him as God and gave thanks, if they did not become vain in their own thoughts, if they did not originate or yield to the popular errors, they would certainly acknowledge that neither could the blessed immortals retain, nor we miserable mortals reach, a happy condition without worshipping the one God of gods, who is both theirs and ours.

To Him we owe the service which is called in Greek Latreia (adoration), whether we render it outwardly or inwardly; for we are all His temple, each of us severally and all of us together, because He condescends to inhabit each individually and the whole harmonious body, being no greater in all than in each, since He is neither expanded nor divided.

Our heart when it rises to Him is His altar; the priest who intercedes for us is His Only-begotten; we sacrifice to Him bleeding victims when we contend for His truth even unto blood; to Him we offer the sweetest incense when we come before Him burning with holy and pious love; to Him we devote and surrender ourselves and His gifts in us; to Him, by solemn feasts and on appointed days, we consecrate the memory of His benefits, lest through the lapse of time ungrateful oblivion should steal upon us; to Him we offer on the altar of our heart the sacrifice of humility and praise, kindled by the fire of burning love.

It is that we may see Him, so far as He can be seen; it is that we may cleave to Him, that we are cleansed from all stain of sins and evil passions, and are consecrated in His name. For He is the fountain of our happiness, He the end of all our desires. Being attached to Him, or rather let me say, re-attached for we had detached ourselves and lost hold of Him; Being, I say, re-attached to Him, we tend towards Him by love, that we may rest in Him, and find our blessedness by attaining that end.

For our good, about which philosophers have so keenly contended, is nothing else than to be united to God. It is, if I may say as, by spiritually embracing Him that the intellectual soul is filled and impregnated with true virtues. We are enjoined to love this good with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our strength. To this good we ought to be led by those who love us, and to lead those we love.

Thus are fulfilled those two commandments on which hang all the law and the prophets: 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy mind, and with all thy soul;' and 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself' (Matt. 28:37-40). For, that man might be intelligent in his self-love, there was appointed for him an end to which he might refer all his actions, that he might be blessed. For who loves himself wishes nothing else than this. And the end set before him is 'to draw near to God' (Ps. 123:28). And so, when one who has this intelligent self-love is commanded to love his neighbor as himself, what else is enjoined than that he shall do all in his power to commend to him the love of God?

This is the worship of God, this is true religion, this is right piety, this the service due to God only. If any immortal power, then, no matter with what virtue endowed, loves us as himself, he must desire that we find our happiness by submitting ourselves to Him, in submission to whom he himself finds happiness. If he does not worship God, he is wretched, because deprived of God; if he worships God, he cannot wish to be worshipped in God's stead. On the contrary, these higher powers acquiesce heartily in the divine sentence in which it is written, 'He that sacrificeth unto any god, save unto the Lord only, he shall be utterly destroyed' (Ex. 22:20)."

- St. Augustin, The City of God, in The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. II ed. Philip Shaff (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1979), X: 3.

On Scholasticism and the Church

       "Speaking figuratively, the study of theology often produces overgrown youths whose internal organs have not correspondingly developed. This is a characteristic of adolescence. There is actually something like theological puberty.... Churches must also understand it and must have it explained to them every possible way.

     It is a mistake for anyone who is just in this stage to appear before a church as a teacher. He has outgrown the naivete with which in young people's work he might by all means have taken this part. He has not yet come to that maturity which would permit him to absorb into his own life and reproduce out the freshness of his own personal faith the things which he imagines intellectually and which are accessible to him through reflection. We must have patience here and be able to wait. For this reasons I have mentioned I do not tolerate sermons by first-semester young theological students swaddled in their gowns. One ought to be able to keep still. During the period when the voice is changing we do not sing, and during this formative period in the life of the theological student he does not preach."

 - Helmut Thielicke, An Exercise for Young Theologians (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1962).

On Natural Theology

"Natural theology is to be understood to include the totality of the human engagement with the natural world, embracing the human quest for truth, beauty and goodness. We invoke the so called 'Platonic traid' of truth, beauty, and goodness as a heuristic framework for natural theology. When properly understood, a renewed natural theology represents a distincitlvey Christian way of beholding, envisaging, and above all appreciating the natural order, capable of sustaining a broader engagement with the fundamental themes of human culture in general. While never losing sight of its moorings within the Christian theological tradition, natural theology can both inform and transform the human search for the trascendent, and provide a framework for understanding and advancing the age-old human quest for the good, the true, and the beatufiul."

- Alister E. McGrath, The Open Secret: A Ne.w Vision For Natural Theology (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2008)