Sunday, March 07, 2010

Lewis: the God of good

Sunday, March 7, 2010
    Feast of Perpetua, Felicity & their Companions, Martyrs at Carthage, 203
Meditation:
    And now, O Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you but to fear the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and to observe the LORD'S commands and decrees that I am giving you today for your own good? To the LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and everything in it. Yet the LORD set his affection on your forefathers and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations, as it is today. Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer.
    —Deuteronomy 10:12-16 (NIV)
Quotation:
    There were in the eighteenth century terrible theologians who held that “God did not command certain things because they are right, but certain things are right because God commanded them.” To make the position perfectly clear, one of them even said that though God has, as it happens, commanded us to love Him and one another, He might equally well have commanded us to hate Him and one another, and hatred would then have been right. It was apparently a mere toss-up which He decided on. Such a view of course makes God a mere arbitrary tyrant. It would be better and less irreligious to believe in no God and to have no ethics than to have such an ethics and such a theology as this.
    ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), Reflections on the Psalms, Edinburgh: James Thin, 1958; G. Bles, 1958, p. 61 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your are good, and You have rejected evil.
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1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

What Mr. Lewis related is disturbing. What sort of "theologian" supposes that the Word (Logos) of God is not representative of His nature? "He who does not love does not know God, for God is love." (First John 4:8) How did they overlook this and many other expressions of the nature of the God of the Bible? Are they examples of the "blind guides" of whom Jesus spoke?

Concerning the Bible quote: Am I ever delighted to know that the very righteousness of Christ is imputed to me and all believing adherents! My favorite name for God is found in Jeremiah 23:6 - THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS. Hallelujah and amen!

March 7, 2010 at 8:17 AM  

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