Duggan: the individual responding to the Word

Saturday, August 14, 2010
    Commemoration of Maximilian Kolbe, Franciscan Friar, Priest, Martyr, 1941
Meditation:
    I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: “The righteous will live by faith.”
    —Romans 1:16-17 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Luther’s rejection of Papal authority was not due to any difficulty he may have experienced in reconciling the claims made for the Petrine office with the character of the men who occupied the Papal throne in his time, nor to any confusion caused by the Conciliar Movement. His objections went much deeper and sprang, not from the concrete existential situation of his time, but from his theological principles. Luther saw quite early that his theory of justification by faith alone implied a denial of any divinely appointed hierarchy in the Church. Already in 1518 he had accepted the Hussite doctrine that the True Church, the Church of the promises and the Mystical Body of Christ, is invisible. Luther’s saving faith is the response of the individual soul to the Word of God revealed in Scripture; in his theology there is no place for any created activity to mediate to men God’s saving action nor for any active sharing by men in the dispensation of grace or divine truth.
    ... George H. Duggan (b. 1912), Hans Küng and Reunion, Westminster, Md., Newman Press, 1964, p. 21-22 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are the sole purpose for the church. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Tozer: seven days a week

Friday, August 13, 2010
    Feast of Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down & Connor, Priest, Teacher, 1667
    Commemoration of Florence Nightingale, Social Reformer, 1910
    Commemoration of Octavia Hill, Worker for the Poor, 1912
Meditation:
    Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch!”? These are all destined to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings.
    —Colossians 2:20-22 (NIV)
Quotation:
    If you do not worship God seven days a week, you do not worship Him on one day a week. There is no such thing known in heaven as Sunday worship unless it is accompanied by Monday worship and Tuesday worship and so on.
    ... A. W. Tozer (1897-1963), Tozer on Worship and Entertainment, WingSpread Publishers, 2006, p. 9 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have called me to follow You every day, not just the days commanded by man. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Capon: the wine of paradox

Thursday, August 12, 2010
Meditation:
    If you ever forget the LORD your God and follow other gods and worship and bow down to them, I testify against you today that you will surely be destroyed.
    —Deuteronomy 8:19 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Man... cuts the wine of paradox with the water of consistency. The mystery of God and things is tamed to the simplicity of God or things; [man] builds himself a duller, skimpier world.
    If he is a pagan, he abolishes the secular in favor of the sacred. The world becomes filled with gods. To improve his wine, he searches, not for purer strains of yeast, but for better incantations, friendlier gods. He spends his time in shrines and caves, not chemistry. Things, for him, become pawns in the chess game of heaven. Religion devours life.
    On the other hand, if he is a secularist, he insists that God must have no part in the world at all. That God has made Saccharomyces ellipsoideus competent enough to ferment sugar on its own, becomes, for him, a proof that He never made it at all. Poor man! To be so nearly right, and so devastatingly wrong. To hit so close, and yet miss the mark completely. Yeast, without God to give it as a gift, ceases to be good company. It becomes merely useful—a mechanism contributory to other mechanisms. And those, in turn, to the vast mechanism of the whole. And that, at last, to—well, he is hard put to say just what.
    ... Robert Farrar Capon (b. 1925), The Supper of the Lamb, New York: Doubleday, 1969, p. 87 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    You are the sole answer to life’s mystery, Lord. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Mead: fundamentalism

Wednesday, August 11, 2010
    Feast of Clare of Assisi, Founder of the Order of Minoresses (Poor Clares), 1253
    Commemoration of John Henry Newman, Priest, Teacher, Tractarian, 1890
Meditation:
    Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jews. With Pilate's permission, he came and took the body away.
    —John 19:38 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Insofar as theology is an attempt to define and clarify intellectual positions, it is apt to lead to discussion, to differences of opinion, even to controversy, and hence to be divisive. And this has had a strong tendency to dampen serious discussion of theological issues in most groups, and hence to strengthen the general anti-intellectual bias inherent in much of revivalistic Pietism... “Fundamentalism” in America, among other things, was a movement that tried to recall these denominations to theological and confessional self consciousness. But it was defeated in every major denomination, not so much by theological discussion and debate as by effective political manipulations directed by denominational leaders to the sterilizing of this “divisive” element.
    ... Sidney E. Mead (1904-1999?), Church History, v. XXIII [1954], p. 291-320 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, strengthen Your people that they may not be shamed into silence. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Kierkegaard: in the midst of life

Tuesday, August 10, 2010
    Feast of Lawrence, Deacon at Rome, Martyr, 258
Meditation:
    For in just a very little while, ”He who is coming will come and will not delay. But my righteous one will live by faith. And if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him.“ But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but of those who believe and are saved.
    —Hebrews 10:37-39 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Sermons should not be preached in churches. It harms Christianity in a high degree and alters its very nature, that it is brought into an artistic remoteness from reality, instead of being heard in the midst of real life, and that precisely for the sake of the conflict (the collision). For all this talk about quiet, about quiet places and quiet hours, as the right element for Christianity is absurd.
    So then sermons should not be preached in churches but in the midst of life, of the reality of daily life, weekday life.
    ... Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), quoted in Kierkegaard’s Attack upon “Christendom,” 1854-1855, tr., Walter Lowrie, Princeton University Press, 1968, p. 2 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You have promised to give us the words to speak at the right time. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Augustine: praise God for the body

Monday, August 9, 2010
    Feast of Mary Sumner, Founder of the Mothers’ Union, 1921
Meditation:
    By faith we understand that the universe was formed at God's command, so that what is seen was not made out of what was visible.
    —Hebrews 11:3 (NIV)
Quotation:
    If bodies please thee, praise God on occasion of them, and turn back thy love upon their Maker; lest in these things which please thee, thou displease. If souls please thee, be they loved in God: for they too are mutable, but in Him they are firmly established.
    ... St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), Confessions [397], Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1886, IV.xi-xii, p. 70 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are the root and origin of all things praiseworthy. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Bunyan: the benefits of jail

Sunday, August 8, 2010
    Feast of Dominic, Priest, Founder of the Order of Preachers, 1221
Meditation:
    And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.
    —1 John 5:11-13 (NIV)
Quotation:
    I never knew all there was in the Bible until I spent those years in jail. I was constantly finding new treasures.
    ... John Bunyan (1628-1688), quoted in A Treasury of Sermon Illustrations, Charles Langworthy Wallis, ed., Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1950, p. 27 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your word is precious. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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