CQOD: 11/30/05 -- Newbigin: the limits of history

Christian Quotation of the Day

November 30, 2005

Feast of Andrew the Apostle

Meditation:
    Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. But concerning that day and hour no one knows, not even the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father only.
    -- Matthew 24:35-36 (ESV)

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Quotation:
    This means that we do not know what are the limits of human history, but it does not mean that there are no real limits. It is important to assert this, because if we do not do so, the limit which we know apart from Christ becomes determinative of our outlook. That limit is death—the death of the individual, and the death of the social structure in which his corporate personality is embodied. When these are the only limits that men know, then they are left in a hopeless alternation between hope for an individual survival of death, which evacuates their corporate life of ultimate significance, and hope for the eternity of some social or political or cultural achievement, which evacuates personal existence of ultimate significance. This false alternation is overcome in Christ in whom we are brought into relation with the true limit—a consummation of all things in which both the significance of each personal life and the significance of history as a whole are to be gathered up.
    ... Lesslie Newbigin (1909-1998), The Household of God [1953]

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Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I pray for the victory of Your glorious church.

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See Believer's Desktop Companion 2004
    http://www.cqod.com/cqoddtcb.html

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