Gray: creeds

Saturday, March 27, 2010
Meditation:
    “Of what value is an idol, since a man has carved it? Or an image that teaches lies? For he who makes it trusts in his own creation; he makes idols that cannot speak. Woe to him who says to wood, ‘Come to life!’ Or to lifeless stone, ‘Wake up!’ Can it give guidance? It is covered with gold and silver; there is no breath in it.”
    —Habakkuk 2:18-19 (NIV)
Quotation:
    [Continued from yesterday]
    Because God has been so far from us, we feel the need to draw nigh to him. We use sacred word, sacred rite, and sacred music to celebrate his previous disclosures of his character and will for us. We perhaps await his further word and guidance. We certainly confess our faith that he is the answer or the resolution of our questions, the guide or the disturber of our conduct, the peace or the sword of our spirits. Confessions of faith tend to become specific and explicit. At their best, they win converts, rekindle loyalty, and place the confessors of creeds at the mercy and disposal of the almighty God. At their worst, creeds alienate the alien seeker in our midst, deaden our spontaneity, and protect us from adventuring beyond God’s previous calls. If the wideness of God’s possible revelations can be perverted into an idolatry of the world, the narrowness of an inflexible use of traditional forms of worship can also be perverted into its own kind of idolatry—the idolatry of book, altar, preacher, and propriety.
    ... Wallace Gray, “Philosophy and Worship”
Quiet time reflection:
    Only You, Lord, can keep Your church safe from idolatry. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Gray: the nearness and remoteness of God

Friday, March 26, 2010
    Feast of Harriet Monsell of Clewer, Religious, 1883
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] “The King will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.’”
    —Matthew 25:40 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The nearness of God may inspire awareness of his activity, mystery and order in the most ordinary and “non-sacred” places. Therefore, Christians working in any kind of college must pray for and cultivate delicate sensitivity to God’s unexpected disclosures in the ordinary and even in the profane areas of life. The temptation of those who exalt the unrestricted activity of God in any and all places is that they may become overly diffuse in their outlook, seeing him where he does not deign to disclose himself or scorning the customary or conventional places of public worship. These, strangely enough, are the places where the very distance of God leads us. [Continued tomorrow]
    ... Wallace Gray, “Philosophy and Worship”
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, make me know the touch of Your Spirit when I am involved with the world’s affairs. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Lewis: the cosmology myth

Thursday, March 25, 2010
    Feast of the Annunciation of our Lord to the Virgin Mary
Meditation:
    There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.
    —Proverbs 14:12 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Long before I believed Theology to be true, I had already decided that the popular scientific picture at any rate was false. One absolutely central inconsistency ruins it... The whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears. Unless we can be sure that reality in the remotest nebula or the remotest part obeys the thought-laws of the human scientist here and now in his laboratory—in other words, unless Reason is an absolute—all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world-picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based. The difficulty is to me a fatal one; and the fact that when you put it to many scientists, far from having an answer, they seem not even to understand what the difficulty is, assures me that I have not found a mare’s nest but detected a radical disease in their whole mode of thought from the very beginning. The man who has once understood the situation is compelled henceforth to regard the scientific cosmology as being, in principle, a myth—though no doubt a great many true particulars have been worked into it.
    ... C. S. Lewis (1898-1963), “Is Theology Poetry?”, in They Asked for a Paper, London: Geoffrey Bles, 1962, p. 162 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You cause all things to hang together. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Goodspeed: the translator's ideal

Wednesday, March 24, 2010
    Feast of Oscar Romero, Archbishop of San Salvador, Martyr, 1980
    Commemoration of Paul Couturier, Priest, Ecumenist, 1953
Meditation:
    Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked.
    “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.
    —Acts 8:30-31 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The modern translator must be a close student, not only of Greek, but of the art of English translation... In every sentence he must recognize a new problem, for it must be rendered not only for itself but in such a way that its relation to the context is maintained. The best translation is ... one that makes the reader forget that it is a translation at all.
    ... Edgar J. Goodspeed (1871-1962), Problems of New Testament Translation, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945, p. 8 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, may Your word reach all with hearts to know You. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Wright & Fuller: seeing through the miracles

Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Meditation:
    The Pharisees came and began to question Jesus. To test him, they asked him for a sign from heaven. He sighed deeply and said, “Why does this generation ask for a miraculous sign? I tell you the truth, no sign will be given to it.”
    —Mark 8:11-12
Quotation:
    Biblical man did not look upon a miracle quite as we do. He did not have such a word in his vocabulary. He spoke of “signs and wonders.” Any unusual or spectacular happening that was a sign of the direct working of God—this was his miracle. If a modern man could have stood beside him and given a rational explanation of all the events through which he passed, he would not have been particularly impressed. His question would always have been, “Well, why did they happen at exactly this time in this way and secure this result?” To us the major focus of attention in the matter of miracle is to explain how it could have happened without setting aside natural law. With him the point was rather what was happening, what was going on, what result God achieved through the unusual.
    ... George Ernest Wright (1909-1974) & Reginald Fuller (1915-2007), The Book of the Acts of God, London: Doubleday, 1957, p. 78 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are the sign we have received. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Ramsay: the Ascension

Monday, March 22, 2010
Meditation:
    After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them.
    “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”
    —Acts 1:9-11 (NIV)
Quotation:
    [Continued from yesterday]
    After this conviction was produced, we come to the final stage, the apparent departure of the embodied Divine Nature, the man Jesus, from the world. The earthly period had fulfilled its purpose and reached its climax. This is the Ascension. This term, like many of the other words which must be employed by man in discussing the subject, is an attempt to express Divine truth—which as Divine is not subject to worldly conditions—in the language of human imperfection. The Divine Nature is omnipresent. It does not lie more in one direction from us than in another; it is neither above nor below: it is everywhere. To say that Jesus went up into heaven is a merely symbolic expression; it has not a local significance; it is an emblematic statement of the truth. The truth which has to be conceived in the mind is that, at the due stage and the proper moment, Jesus ceased to be apparent to human senses in the world, and is God with God.
    ... Sir William M. Ramsay (1851-1939), Pictures of the Apostolic Church, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1910, p. 2-3 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your authority is without limit. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Ramsay: witnesses to the Resurrection

Sunday, March 21, 2010
Meditation:
    ... but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
    —2 Timothy 1:10 (NIV)
Quotation:
    [Continued from yesterday]
    It was therefore an essential part of the Divine purpose, that those who had known the Divine Word in its human expression as the man Jesus, should become aware that death had no real power over Him. This result was accomplished by various events after such fashion that a sufficient number of persons were firmly convinced of the truth, and constituted a body of witnesses whose evidence might convince the world and give effect to the Divine will. [Continued tomorrow]
    ... Sir William M. Ramsay (1851-1939), Pictures of the Apostolic Church, London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1910, p. 2 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have conquered death. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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