Witherspoon on liberty

There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost, and religious liberty preserved entire.
- John Witherspoon

Scripture, tradition, and arrogance

G. K. Chesterton:

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about. (source)

Charles Spurgeon:

In order to be able to expound the Scriptures, and as an aid to your pulpit studies, you will need to be familiar with the commentators: a glorious army, let me tell you, whose acquaintance will be your delight and profit. Of course, you are not such wiseacres as to think or say that you can expound Scripture without assistance from the works of divines and learned men who have laboured before you in the field of exposition. If you are of that opinion, pray remain so, for you are not worth the trouble of conversion, and like a little coterie who think with you, would resent the attempt as an insult to your infallibility. It seems odd, that certain men who talk so much of what the Holy Spirit reveals to themselves, should think so little of what he has revealed to others. (source)

Rev 15.3-4

a beautiful hymn, worthy of being matched with melody.

“Great and amazing are your deeds,

O Lord God the Almighty!

Just and true are your ways,

O King of the nations!

Who will not fear, O Lord,

and glorify your name?

For you alone are holy.

All nations will come

and worship you,

for your righteous acts have been revealed.”

http://biblia.com/books/esv/Re15.3 

I wonder who has already set this to music?

death of Protestant America

America was Methodist, once upon a time—or Baptist, or Presbyterian, or Congregationalist, or Episcopalian. Protestant, in other words. What can we call it today? Those churches simply don’t mean much any more. That’s a fact of some theological significance. It’s a fact of genuine sorrow, for that matter, as the aging members of the old denominations watch their congregations dwindle away: funeral after funeral, with far too few weddings and baptisms in between. But future historians, telling the story of our age, will begin with the public effect in the United States.

As he prepared to leave the presidency in 1796, George Washington famously warned, “Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” Generally speaking, however, Americans tended not to worry much about the philosophical question of religion and nation. The whole theologico-political problem, which obsessed European philosophers, was gnawed at in the United States most by those who were least churched.

We all have to worry about it, now. Without the political theory that depended on the existence of the Protestant Mainline, what does it mean to support the nation? What does it mean to criticize it? The American experiment has always needed what Alexis de Tocqueville called the undivided current, and now that current has finally run dry.

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2008/08/001-the-death-of-protestant-america-a-political-theory-of-the-protestant-mainline

Man sovereign in US politics

The people reign over the American political world as does God over the universe. They are the cause and the end of all things; everything comes out of them and everything is absorbed into them.

- Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville, Harvey C. Mansfield, Delba Winthrop

While true, also frightening in light of a people who are "post-virtue" and for the most part,  "post-God".

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This passion tends to elevate the small to the rank of the great; but one also encounters a depraved taste for equality in the human heart that brings the weak to want to draw the strong to their level and that reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom.

- Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville, Harvey C. Mansfield, Delba Winthrop

American average

"I do not think that there is a country in the world where, in proportion to population, so few ignorant and fewer learned men are found than in America.

Primary instruction there is within reach of each; higher instruction is within reach of almost no one.

One understands this without difficulty, and it is so to speak the necessary result of what we advanced above.

Almost all Americans are comfortable; they can therefore readily procure for themselves the first elements of human knowledge.

In America there are few rich; almost all Americans therefore need to practice a profession. Now, every profession requires an apprenticeship. Americans, therefore, can only give the first years of life to the general cultivation of intelligence: at fifteen they enter into a career; thus their education most often ends in the period when ours begins. If it is pursued beyond this, it is then directed only toward a special and lucrative matter; one studies a science as one takes up a trade; and one takes from it only the applications whose present utility is recognized.

In America most of the rich have begun by being poor; almost all the idle were, in their youth, employed; the result is that when one could have the taste for study, one does not have the time to engage in it; and when one has acquired the time to engage in it, one no longer has the taste for it.

There does not exist in America, therefore, any class in which the penchant for intellectual pleasures is transmitted with comfort and inherited leisure, and which holds the works of the intellect in honor.

Thus the will to engage in these works is lacking as much as is the power.

In America a certain common level in human knowledge has been established. All minds have approached it; some by being raised to it, others by being lowered to it.

One therefore encounters an immense multitude of individuals who have nearly the same number of notions in matters of religion, of history, of science, of political economy, of legislation, of government. Intellectual inequality comes directly from God, and man cannot prevent it from existing always.

But it happens, at least from what we have just said, that intelligence, while remaining unequal as the Creator wished, finds equal means at its disposition."

- Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville, Harvey C. Mansfield, Delba Winthrop

dare mighty things

Far better it is to dare mighty things,
to win glorious triumphs,
even though checkered by failure,
than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much,
because they live in the grey twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

-Theodore Roosevelt, Strenuous Life

"in America, it is religion that leads to enlightenment; it is the observance of divine laws that guides man to freedom."
- Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville, Harvey C. Mansfield, Delba Winthrop

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"The Mississippi Valley is, all in all, the most magnificent dwelling that God has ever prepared for the habitation of man..."

I couldn't help but think of home when I read this quote from Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville, Harvey C. Mansfield, Delba Winthrop

Famine for the Word

Might this be the case in the US today? 

Amos 8.11-12:
Behold, the days are coming,” declares the Lord God, 
“when I will send a famine on the land— 
not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, 
but of hearing the words of the Lord. 
They shall wander from sea to sea, 
and from north to east; 
they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the Lord, 
but they shall not find it. ..."

I know my Redeemer lives!

“Oh that my words were written!
Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
Oh that with an iron pen and lead
they were engraved in the rock forever!
For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and at the last he will stand upon the earth.
And after my skin has been thus destroyed,
yet in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see for myself,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another.
My heart faints within me!”
- Job 19.23-27

http://ref.ly/Jb19.23-27 via the Logos Bible Android app.

People willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve neither and will lose both.
- Benjamin Franklin

Mutuality in Thucydides

"They should have shared their power with you before they asked you to share your fortunes with them.”

Corinthians, writing to Athenians, regarding Corcyraeans, in "The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War" by Thucydides, Robert B. Strassler, Victor Davis Hanson, Richard Crawley -

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Therefore my people go into exile
for lack of knowledge;
their honored men go hungry,
and their multitude is parched with thirst.
- Isaiah 5.13


Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon:  Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce.  Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease.  But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the LORD on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. ... For thus says the LORD: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. Then you will call upon me and come and pray to me, and I will hear you. You will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart.  I will be found by you, declares the LORD, and I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have driven you, declares the LORD, and I will bring you back to the place from which I sent you into exile.
- Jer. 29:4–14.

fruitful or fruitless? (Bunyan)

If my life is fruitless, it doesn't matter who praises me,
and if my life is fruitful, it doesn't matter who criticizes me.

- John Bunyan, author of Pilgrims Progress

"I firmly believe that before many centuries more, science will be the master of man. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Summary science shall have the existence of mankind in its power and the human race commit suicide by blowing up the world."

- Henry Adams, April 11 1862

frighteningly accurate foresight 

abandon self-interest, find oneself

In the context of Mark's Gospel, where Jesus says to take up your cross and follow, D.A. Carson writes:

the alternative is to forfeit one’s soul. It is to gain the approval of the “world” and Jesus’ disapproval. The confrontation between, on the one hand, Jesus and his kingdom, and, on the other, the world he has come to redeem, is so total that one necessarily sides with one or the other. The irony is that those who “lose” their lives by this “crucifixion” thereby find their lives. They discover what they had always denied before: they belong to God by creation, and they can never find themselves, never be fulfilled, never realize their potential, unless they abandon self-interest and abandon themselves to God. But as long as that takes place in this rebellious and self-focused world, suffering and opposition are inevitable.  ...

It is beginning to cost something to be a Christian; and perhaps the church will be purer for it.

http://ref.ly/o/howlonglord/167304 via the Logos Bible Android app.

Not a Chance (Sproul)

It is universally allowed that nothing exists without a cause of its existence, and that chance, when strictly examined, is a mere negative word, and means not any real power which has anywhere at being in nature. (David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding).

...Hume is correct when he says that chance has no power because it has no being in nature.

Hume states a truism when he says that “nothing exists without a cause of its existence.” His analysis of causality does not annihilate or disturb the law of causality. He focuses on the limits of empirical perception and on our inability to arrive at demonstrative knowledge of necessary connection. This makes no dent in the formal law of causality, which is analytically true. It is true by definition. It carries no synthetic baggage. The law of causality has no concrete content. It is theoretically possible that there are no real causes and/or no real effects in the universe. Though l believe there are both causes and effects, my belief does not make it so.

What is unassailably true is that if there are real effects there must be real causes, and if there are real causes there must be real effects.

Science and philosophy use the formal law of causality in their spheres of investigation as an extension of the law of non-contradiction. Assumptions are made about effects, and then searches are undertaken for sufficient causes of those effects. Physicians search for “causes” of diseases and causes of medical healing.

When something is assumed to be an effect, it is usually done so by virtue of a perceived change in its state. Change, as Aristotle observed, may he understood as a type of motion. Generation and decay, aging, movement. and the like are all forms of change and/or motion.  They are ingredients of what we call contingency.

...

In a significant way Hume’s study of causality anticipated Werner Heisenberg’s theory of indeterminacy. The mysterious behavior of quantum particles posits at least a temporary limit to our powers of perceiving the real cause(s) of motion or change. But they do not give us license to adopt an irrational, unscientific view of chance as a causal agent, force, or power. 

Chance as a real force is a myth. it has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue the advance in knowledge, chance must he demythoiogized once and for all.

R.C. Sproul, Not A Chance, 201-203

live not exist

I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. . . . The proper function of a man is to live, not to exist.

- Jack London

encourage stewardship of giving in all things.

Paul encourages the Corinthians to excel is giving in all areas:
faith, speech, knowledge, earnestness, and love, as well as financial resources.

2 Cor. 8.1f
We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints— and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us. Accordingly, we urged Titus that as he had started, so he should complete among you this act of grace. But as you excel in everything—in faith, in speech, in knowledge, in all earnestness, and in our love for you—see that you excel in this act of grace also. 

O Lord, make me know my end
and what is the measure of my days;
let me know how fleeting I am!

Ps. 39.4

Never give in (Churchill)

Never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

Winston Churchill, 29 October 1941 to the boys at Harrow School.

Coping with Context and original languages (Carson)

Perhaps the principal reason why word studies constitute a particularly rich source for exegetical fallacies is that many preachers and Bible teachers know Greek only well enough to use concordances, or perhaps a little more. There is little feel for Greek as a language; and so there is the temptation to display what has been learned in study, which as often as not is a great deal of lexical information without the restraining influence of context. The solution, of course, is to learn more Greek, not less, and to gain at least a rudimentary knowledge of linguistics.

From the section “The Heart of the Matter: Coping with Context"

D.A. Carson, Exegetical Falacies

http://ref.ly/o/exgtlflcs/136166 

To know and possess true knowledge

According to Scripture, persons do not truly possess knowledge unless they are living in the light of that knowledge. True faith is not only knowledge about God (which even the demons possess [James 2:19]) but knowledge acted on. The unbeliever can know (intellectually comprehend) many truths of Scripture using the same means of interpretation he would use with nonbiblical texts, but he cannot truly know (act on and appropriate) these truths as long as he remains in rebellion against God.

...

for the Christian believer, hermeneutics should not be a process that attempts to use only human faculties and education to discover the author’s intended meaning, but neither should it be a process that ignores a disciplined approach. That is to say, hermeneutics should be methodical but not mechanical. In approaching a passage, the believer should be praying, “Holy Spirit, help me to understand the meaning you intended when you inspired human hands to write these words."

Hermeneutics: Principles and Processes of Biblical Interpretation.  Henry Virkler.     http://ref.ly/o/hermvirkler/79508 

We must be careful to not present this as salvation by works, yet simultaneously holding on to maturing in Christ, working out salvation.  God's grace and mercy, and our appropriate response. 

memorable Dante:"to be here is to exist in love and peace"

There are multiple characters and events which are memorable, including the expansion of the Lord’s prayer (Purgatorio, Canto XI, p252) and Virgil’s discourse on the nature of love while in the Terrace of the Slothful (Purgatorio, Canto XVIII, p290), which is also the geographic center of the Comedy (as Dr. Gage stated).

However, the most memorable speech to me is Piccarda Donati's speech in Paradiso, Canto III, p406:

"Brother, the virtue of our heavenly love,
  tempers our will and makes us want no more
  than what we have - we thirst for this alone.
If we desired to be higher up,
  then our desires would not be in accord
  with His will Who assigns us to this sphere;
think carefully what love is and you'll see
  such discord has no place within these rounds,
  since to be here is to exist in Love.
Indeed, the essence of this blessed state
  is to dwell here within His holy will,
  so that there is no will but one with His;
the order of our rank from height to height
  throughout this realm is pleasing to the realm,
  as to that King Who wills us to His will.
In His will is our peace - it is the sea
  in which all things are drawn that it itself
  creates or which the work of Nature makes."
Then it was clear to me that every where
  of heaven is Paradise, though there the light
  of Grace Supreme does not shine equally.

The beauty of this hope (notably since the passage is in Paradiso) gives peace in the midst of our world, torn as it is by strife, bitterness, decay, evil, and sin.

As we all know, there are many passages which touch on these themes.  A few that came to mind include thinking about God's will for us.  Dante stated "the essence of this blessed state is to dwell in His holy will" and "in His will is our peace."  Paul states more clearly what His will is for us: "For this is the will of God, your sanctification" (2 Thes 4.3).  It is in our sanctification, in holiness, that we find and experience peace; growing in Christ-likeness, being conformed to His image, that when He appears, we shall be like Him. (1 Jn 3.2).  And what is one attribute of God's character?  Love.  God is love (1 Jn 4.8).  So as Dante states, "to be here [i.e. in Paradiso] is to exist in love." 

Even more poignantly, Paul wrote " God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus."  (Eph 2:4–7)  We have the hopeful expectation of being seated with Christ in the heavenly places (i.e. Paradiso).  We will dwell in peace with Him ("In His will is our peace"), and have no fear of rejection.

How appropriate this theme is today: our church has focused on the themes of hope and peace these first two Sundays in advent.  One song we sang today was Chris Tomlin's "I Will Rise" which contains the lyrics:

There's a peace I've come to know 
Though my heart and flesh may fail 
There's an anchor for my soul
I can say "It is well" ...

There's a day that's drawing near 
When this darkness breaks to light 
And the shadows disappear
And my faith shall be my eyes

And I will rise when He calls my name 
No more sorrow, no more pain
I will rise on eagles' wings 
Before my God fall on my knees 
And rise 
I will rise

While not an advent or Christmas song, it does point us toward the hope and peace which Paul, John, and even Dante point toward.  It was this theme in this passage of Dante's work that was most memorable to me.

(written Dec 7 2014)

God's elect (Dante)

You men who live on earth, be slow to judge,
  for even we who see God face to face
  still do not know the list of His elect.

- Dante, The Divine Comendy:  Paradiso.  Canto XX, 133-135

justice in Dante

And so the vision granted to your world
  can no more fathom Justice Everlasting
  than eyes can see down to the ocean floor;

while you can see the bottom near the shore,
  you cannot out at sea; but nonetheless
  it is still there, concealed by depths too deep.
...
for you would say: 'Consider that man born
  along the Indus where you will not find
  a soul who speaks or reads or writes of Christ,

and all of his desires, all his acts
  are good, as far as human reason sees;
  not ever having sinned in deed or word,

he dies unbaptized, dies without the faith.
  What is this justice that condemns the soul?
  What is his guilt if he does not believe?'
...
O earthbound creatures!  O thick-headed men!
  The Primal Will, which of Itself is good,
  never moves from Itself, the Good Supreme.

Only that which accords with it is just.
  It is not drawn to an finite good,
  but sending forth its rays creates that good.
...
Circling, it sang, then spoke: "Even as my notes
  are to high for your mind to comprehend,
  so is Eternal Judgment for mankind.
...
it raised its voice again:  "And to this realm
  none ever rose who had not faith in Christ,
  before or after he was crucified.

- Dante, The Divine Comendy:  Paradiso.  Canto XIX, 58-105

God's jealousy for His glory, shared with His Son

Isaiah 48.11:
For my own sake, for my own sake, I do it,
for how should my name be profaned?
My glory I will not give to another.

God the Father is speaking.  He is jealous for His name (Ex. 20.7f) and His glory.  Consider that He does give His glory to another - His Son, who is co-equal with Him.  Same in essence, three persons. This is just one verse in the argument supporting our understanding of the Trinity.

Compare to passages such as (to name a few):
Jn 7.39
Jn 8.54
Jn 11.4
Jn 12.16
Jn 12.23
Jn 12.28
Jn 13.32
Jn 16.14
Jn 17.5

divine justice in judgement (Dante)

And so the vision granted to your world
can no more fathom Justice Everlasting
then eyes can see down to the ocean floor:

while you can see the bottom near the shore,
you cannot out at sea; but nonetheless
it is still there concealed my depth too deep.
...
for you would say: consider that man born 
along the Indus where you will not find
a soul who speaks or reads or rights of Christ,

and all of his desires, all of his acts
are good, as far as human reason sees;
nor ever having sinned in deed or word,

He dies unbaptized, dies without faith.
What is this justice that condemns his soul? 
What is his guilt if he does not believe?
...
O earthbound creatures! O thick-headed men!
The Primal Will, which of Itself is goodn
never moves from Itself, the Good Supreme.

Only that which accords with it is just.
It is not drawn to any finite good,
but sending forth its rays creates that good.
...
Circling, it sang,  then spoke: even as my notes
are too high for your mind comprehend
so is Eternal Judgment for mankind.

Dante, The Divine Comedy, Paradiso, Canto XI, 58-99.