Ellul: the persistence of election

Saturday, January 14, 2012
    Commemoration of Richard Meux Benson, Founder of the Society of St John the Evangelist, 1915
Meditation:
    The word of the LORD came to Jonah son of Amittai: “Go to the great city of Nineveh and preach against it, because its wickedness has come up before me.”
    —Jonah 1:1-2 (NIV)
Quotation:
    In reality (spiritual reality) it is much too simple to think that God offers his grace to man and man accepts or refuses. When God has graciously chosen a man his grace continues even though the man does not do what God has decided. On the other hand, this persistence of election... does not entail a negation of man’s will. God pursues this man, conducts him through his whole life, in order to bring about the consent of this man’s will to what God has decided.
    ... Jacques Ellul (1912-1994), The Judgment of Jonah, tr. Geoffrey W. Bromiley, Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1971, p. 24 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Thank you, Lord, that You pursued me. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Hilary: divinity and eternity

Friday, January 13, 2012
    Feast of Hilary, Bishop of Poitiers, Teacher, 367
    Commemoration of Kentigern (Mungo), Missionary Bishop in Strathclyde & Cumbria, 603
Meditation:
    Jesus answered, “Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid, for I know where I came from and where I am going. But you have no idea where I come from or where I am going.”
    —John 8:14 (NIV)
Quotation:
    We proclaim ... that the Father is eternal and the Son eternal, and demonstrate that the Son is God of all with an absolute, not a limited, preexistence; that these bold assaults of... blasphemous logic—He was born out of nothing, and He was not before He was born—are powerless against Him; that His eternity is consistent with sonship, and His sonship with eternity; that there was in Him no unique exemption from birth but a birth from everlasting, for, while birth implies a Father, Divinity is inseparable from eternity.
    ... St. Hilary (ca. 300-367?), On the Trinity, in A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, second series, v. IX, Philip Schaff & Henry Wace, ed., New York: Christian Literature Company, 1902, p. 50 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are eternal. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Trueblood: conveying the knowledge

Thursday, January 12, 2012
    Feast of Aelred of Hexham, Abbot of Rievaulx, 1167
    Commemoration of Benedict Biscop, Abbot of Wearmouth, Scholar, 689
Meditation:
Posterity will serve him;
    future generations will be told about the Lord.
They will proclaim his righteousness
    to a people yet unborn—
    for he has done it.
    —Psalm 22:30-31 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The religion of a hundred years ago or of two thousand years ago does not seem quaint, for men can speak to each other about their knowledge of God, unhindered by the barriers of centuries.
    ... Elton Trueblood (1900-1994), The Knowledge of God, Harper & Brothers, 1939, p. 107 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You planned our salvation from the foundation of the world. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Denney: the authority of Jesus

Wednesday, January 11, 2012
    Commemoration of Mary Slessor, Missionary in West Africa, 1915
Meditation:
    Knowing their thoughts, Jesus said, “Why do you entertain evil thoughts in your hearts? Which is easier: to say, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up and walk’? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins...” Then he said to the paralytic, “Get up, take your mat and go home.”
    —Matthew 9:4-6 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The displacement of ‘the Son of Man’ by ‘man’ [according to the recommendation of textual critics] has only a superficial plausibility in logic. The healing of the palsy by Jesus does not prove that man generically can forgive sins. The man who does the visible miracle in confirmation of his claim to do the invisible is to be taken at his word: but it is no more true that man generically can speak the word of forgiveness with divine effect than that man generically can effectively bid the lame walk. The only question raised, and the only question settled, is one concerning the power claimed by Jesus; and it is settled, not by bringing Jesus under the general category of humanity, but by an act of Jesus Himself which was as impossible for men in general as the forgiveness of sins. It is not any man, but only He who has the right to think of Himself as the Son of Man, who can forgive sins upon the earth.
    ... James Denney (1856-1917), Jesus and the Gospel: Christianity justified in the mind of Christ, New York: Hodder & Stoughton, 1908, p. 275 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, to You all power is given. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Wand: from authority to persuasion

Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Meditation:
    [Jesus:] told them still another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed into a large amount of flour until it worked all through the dough.”
    —Matthew 13:33 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Almost everywhere political secularization was accompanied at length by a general decrease in religious observance. Theological matters ceased to be, if they had ever genuinely been, the main interest of the people. This does not mean that religion died out: far from it. But it became the interest, not of the whole, but of a section of the people. The Church, instead of being a recognized ruling authority, became what its Founder said it was, a little yeast in a large lump of dough. In some countries it barely maintained the right to exist; in others it had to adapt its methods to new conditions. But wherever possible it has continued openly to pursue the same ends, and has not ceased to declare what it believes to be the will of God even in the political sphere. Indeed, we may recognize a gain in the new situation. What it could once do by authority, it now seeks to do by persuasion.
    ... J. W. C. Wand (1885-1977), The Church Today, Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1960 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, enable Your church to proclaim Your truth boldly. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Augustine: living by the Spirit

Monday, January 9, 2012
Meditation:
    ... those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
    —Romans 8:14 (NIV)
Quotation:
    But when does flesh receive the bread which He calls His flesh? The faithful know and receive the Body of Christ if they labor to be the body of Christ; and they become the body of Christ if they study to live by the Spirit of Christ: for that which lives by the Spirit of Christ is the body of Christ.
    ... St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel according to St. John, vol. ii, Marcus Dods, ed., as vol. xi of The Works of Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, Edinbugh: T & T Clark, 1884, tract. 26.13, p. 376 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Spirit of God, lead me! CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Elliot: the extraordinary God

Sunday, January 8, 2012
    Commemoration of Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Roger Youderian, Ed McCully, and Pete Fleming, martyrs, Ecuador, 1956
Meditation:
    [God] chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things—and the things that are not—to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him.
    —1 Corinthians 1:28-29 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Forgive me for being so ordinary while claiming to know so extraordinary a God.
    ... Jim Elliot (1927-1956), The Journals of Jim Elliot, ed. Elisabeth Elliot, Revell, 1990, p. 98 (see the book)
Quiet time reflection:
    Amen. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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