The Difference Between Law and Gospel

The law points to sin; the gospel remedies it.
The law condemns; the gospel redeems.
The law is a word of wrath; the gospel is a word of grace.
The law fills us with despair; the gospel comforts.
The law says, "Pay the debt!" The gospel says "Christ paid it."
The law says, "You are a sinner!" The gospel says, "Your sins are forgiven."
The law says, "Make amends!" The gospel says, "Christ has made amends for you."
The law says, "God is angry with you!" The gospel says, "God loves you."
-- Patrick Hamiltion: Treatise on the Law and the Gospel

Near to the Heart of God;  August 18

Lewis in the Purpose of the Secular Community

The secular community, since it exists for our natural good and not for our supernatural, has no higher end than to facilitate and safeguard the family, and friendship, and solitude. To be happy at home, said  Johnson, is the end of all human endeavour. As long as we are thinking only of natural values we must say that the sun looks down on nothing half so good as a household laughing together over a meal, or two friends talking over a pint of beer, or a man alone reading a book that interests him; and that all economics, politics, laws, armies, and institutions, save in so far as they prolong and multiply such scenes, are a mere ploughing the sand and sowing the ocean, a meaningless vanity and vexation of spirit.
The Business of Heaven: August 16, p. 208

The Origin of Evil

Yesterday's reading from Near to the Heart of God had some good things to say about the concept of evil.
All qualities that are in God are good. If they are in God they are infinitely perfect. It is absolutely impossible that they could have any evil defect.
Good things can be used in an evil way. There is only one explanation for the existence of evil, guilt, and deformity in the natural and moral world. These things have been separated from God.
Don't blame God for evil. It would make more sense to blame the sun for darkness! We have free will. We make choices between right and wrong. Every quality is equally good. It becomes an evil when we, of our own free will, separate it from God. The same thing can be both evil and good depending upon whether it is used by a devil or an angel. -- William Law: Mystical Writings

R.I.P. John Stott

I'm still processing the death of John Stott, one of my favorite theologians.  What an amazing guy and a true inspiration.  Sunday's section from Through the Bible: Through the Year P. 402 ends with the following.


Without love everything is nothing.

The Painter of Lite™

 I happened upon an old card from Square Halo books.  Upon exploring the site a bit I found this article about Thomas Kinkade and sentimentality by Gregory Wolfe.  I'm mainly quoting the end of the article but thought it was interesting. -- drs

The word sentimentality is now a term of opprobrium, but it is notoriously hard to define. Of course, that hasn’t prevented it from being the source of a few witty epigrams. The Zen scholar R. H. Blyth once noted: “We are being sentimental when we give to a thing more tenderness than God gives to it.” That’s good, but as usual Oscar Wilde hits closer to the mark: “a sentimentalist is one who desires to have the luxury of an emotion without paying for it.”

There are times when criticizing sentimentality seems like overkill. But it would be wrong simply to dismiss the phenomenon— and the specific instance I’ve been discussing, religious kitsch—as nothing more than examples of harmless mediocrity. The great theologian, Cardinal Henri de Lubac, once wrote: “There is nothing more demanding than the taste for mediocrity. Beneath its ever moderate appearance there is nothing more intemperate; nothing surer in its instinct; nothing more pitiless in its refusals. It suffers no greatness, shows beauty no mercy.”

Perhaps, at its best, sentimentality strives for something approximating the theological virtues of hope and love. But in refusing to see the world as it is, sentimentality reduces hope to nostalgia. And in seeking to escape ambiguity and the consequences of the Fall, it denies the heart of love, which is compassion. Unless compassion means the act of suffering with the other in their otherness, it becomes meaningless. Well-intentioned as the purveyors and consumers of sentiment may be, they still want the luxury of an emotion without having to pay the price for it.

Faith Defined and Illustrated

Stott puts  H.L. Mencken in his place : )


It comes therefore as a shock that these two spheres of human uncertainty (the future and the unseen) are precisely those in which faith specializes and even flourishes! It is the function of faith to apprehend both the unseen present and the unrealized future. Put simply, faith is the assurance that the future we anticipate will take place and that the present we cannot see is nevertheless real.

Of course, unbelievers scoff at Christian faith. According to H.L. Mencken, the so-called sage of Baltimore, "Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable." It is witty but inaccurate. Faith is not a synonym for credulity or superstition.  It is neither irrational nor illogical. No, faith and reason are never placed in antithesis to one another in Scripture. Faith and sight are contrasted, but not faith and reason. On the contrary, "Those who know your name put their trust in you" (Ps. 9:10 NRSV). They trust because they know. The reasonableness of trust arises from the trustworthiness of its object, and nobody is more trustworthy than God.

Through the Bible: Through the Year; p. 391

Screwtape Explains the Disadvantages of War

Remember that Screwtape is the demon and his perspective is pretty much coming from "the dark side."

Of course war is entertaining... But, if we are not careful, we shall see thousands turning in this tribulation to the enemy [God], while tens of thousands who do not go so far as that will nevertheless have their attention diverted from themselves to values and causes which they believe to be higher than the self.

Consider too what undesirable deaths occur in wartime. Men are killed in places where they knew they might be killed and to which they go, if they are at all of the Enemy's party, prepared. How much better for us if all humans died in costly nursing homes amid doctors who lie, nurses who lie, friends who lie, as we have trained them, promising life to the dying, encouraging the belief that sickness excuses every indulgence...

How disastrous for us is the continual remembrance of death which war enforces. One of our best weapons, contented worldliness, is rendered useless. In wartime not even a human can believe that he is going to live forever.

The Business of Heaven: July 28, p. 192