Workman: a root antagonism

Saturday, August 15, 2020
Meditation:
The LORD has established his throne in heaven,
    and his kingdom rules over all.
    —Psalm 103:19 (NIV)
Quotation:
    The student should beware lest he overlook the momentous issues involved in the refusal of the State to allow any society or club to exist which had not first obtained official recognition, and the equally momentous refusal of the Church to obtain such recognition. The question is not one of legal technicalities or procedure, or the “sheer obstinacy,” as Marcus Aurelius would have phrased it, of Christian fanatics, but points rather to one of those root antagonisms of principle the influence of which, in different forms, may be felt in the twentieth as much as in the second century. By Roman theory, the State was the one society which must engross every interest of its subjects, religious, social, political, humanitarian, with the one possible exception of the family. There was no room in Roman law for the existence, much less the development on its own lines of organic growth, of any corporation or society which did not recognize itself from the first as a mere department or auxiliary of the State. The State was all and in all, the one organism with a life of its own. Such a theory the Church, as the living kingdom of Jesus, could not possibly accept either in the first century or the twentieth.
    ... H. B. Workman (1862-1951), Persecution in the early church: a chapter in the history of renunciation, 2nd ed., London: Charles H. Kelly, 1906, p. 71-72 (see the book)
    See also Ps. 103:19; 133:1; Rom. 13:1-7; Eph. 2:19-22; 1 Pet. 4:16-18
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your rule will conquer all. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Duggan: the individual responding to the Word

Friday, August 14, 2020
    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 dis pensation of grace or divine truth.
    ... George H. Duggan (1912-2012), Hans Küng and Reunion, Westminster, Md., Newman Press, 1964, p. 21-22 (see the book)
    See also Rom. 1:16-17; 3:22-24; 8:27,34; Eph. 2:18; 1 Pet. 2:9
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, You are the sole purpose for the church. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Taylor: mercy over sins

Thursday, August 13, 2020
    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:
    [Jesus:] This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
    —Matthew 26:28 (NIV)
Quotation:
    I acknowledge, dear God, that I have deserved the greatest of Thy wrath and indignation; and that, if Thou hadst dealt with me according to my deserving, I had now, at this instant, been desperately bewailing my miseries in the sorrows and horrors of a sad eternity. But Thy mercy triumphing over Thy justice and my sins, Thou hast still continued to me life and time of repentance; Thou hast opened to me the gates of grace and mercy, and perpetually callest upon me to enter in, and to walk in the paths of a holy life, that I might glorify Thee and be glorified of Thee eternally.
    ... Jeremy Taylor (1613-1667), Holy Living [1650], in The Whole Works of the Right Rev. Jeremy Taylor, D.D., v. III, London: Longman, Brown, Green & Longmans, 1847, p. 34 (see the book)
    See also Matt. 26:28; Jer. 31:33-34; Matt. 1:21; Jas. 5:15; 1 John 1:9
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, I believe Your promise to forgive sins. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Capon: the wine of paradox

Wednesday, August 12, 2020
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 (1925-2013), The Supper of the Lamb, New York: Doubleday, 1969, p. 87 (see the book)
    See also Deut. 8:19; Luke 17:33; John 12:25; Rom. 1:18-23; 2 Cor. 6:4-10; 12:9-10; Phil. 3:7
Quiet time reflection:
    You are the sole answer to life’s mystery, Lord. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Newman: failure to start

Tuesday, August 11, 2020
    Feast of Clare of Assisi, Founder of the Order of Minoresses (Poor Clares), 1253
    Commemoration of John Henry Newman, Priest, Teacher, Tractarian, 1890
Meditation:
    However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name.
    —1 Peter 4:16 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning.
    ... John Henry Cardinal Newman (1801-1890), included in Leaves of Gold, Evan S. Coslett & Clyde Francis Lytle, ed. [1948], Honesdale, Pa.: Coslett Publishing Company, 1938, p. 55 (see the book)
    See also 1 Pet. 4:16; Ps. 49:15; John 11:25; Rom. 6:11
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, through Your grace, my life has begun. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Tillyard: temptation to despair

Monday, August 10, 2020
    Feast of Lawrence, Deacon at Rome, Martyr, 258
Meditation:
    [The LORD] determines the number of the stars and calls them each by name.
    —Psalm 147:4 (NIV)
Quotation:
    When Christianity was young and growing, there was general terror of the stars and a wide practice of astrology. The terror was mainly superstitious, and the only way of mitigating the stars’ enmity was through magic. It was one of the Church’s main tasks to reduce the license of... astrological superstition to her own discipline: there was no question of cutting it out altogether. Naturally, she did not wholly succeed, and her task could never be completed. In the Elizabethan as in earlier ages, the orthodox belief in the stars’ influence, sanctioned but articulated and controlled by the authority of religion, was not always kept pure from the terrors of primitive superstition... The superstitious terrors... have little specifically to do with the Elizabethan age. But it is worth reflecting (as is not always done) that even these were not all horror and loss. If mankind had to choose between a universe that ignored him and one that noticed him to do him harm, he might well choose the second. Our own age need not begin congratulating itself on its freedom from superstition till it defeats a more dangerous temptation to despair.
    ... E. M. W. Tillyard (1889-1962), The Elizabethan World Picture [1943], 9th ed., Vintage Books, 1960, p. 53-54 (see the book)
    See also Ps. 147:4; Isa. 47:13; Job 38:4-7
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, free us to receive Your revelation. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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Reeves: the unity of a new race

Sunday, August 9, 2020
    Feast of Mary Sumner, Founder of the Mothers’ Union, 1921
Meditation:
    There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
    —Galatians 3:28-29 (NIV)
Quotation:
    Whatever may be our differences of colour, culture, and class, the unity that is ours in Christ is given visible expression at every Synod. Here we all gather around the one Altar, here we all share in shaping the policy of the Church in this diocese; here we all take part in making provision for carrying on the work of the Church during the coming year. At this time, year by year, we are specially conscious of our unity in Christ, and are made aware afresh that we are members of this new race of human beings which is made up of all those of every ethnic group who have been added to Christ. We are members of that Kingdom in which all human antagonisms are transcended. Yet we shall not interpret aright this unity which is ours in Christ Jesus unless we continually remind ourselves that it has its origin in His death and resurrection. The Church springs out of the deeds of Jesus done in the flesh, and we can only fulfill our destiny in the Church as we learn that we are utterly dependent upon the whole Body of Christ... Whatever gifts we possess belong to the Body, and are useful only as they are used in the common life of the Church. All this is made very plain in the New Testament Epistles, for in them we are taught that in each local Christian community is a fellowship in which every member is to live in humility and in love to the brethren. Yet no local church is to live to itself. Again and again, local churches are reminded of their close relationship to one another, in life, work, worship, pain, and death. Not that such a relationship is to be regarded either as a matter of convenience or as a question of organization. On the contrary, this intimate relationship is seen as the direct outcome of the saving work of Christ. This unity with one another, and of local churches with each other, is the unity which belongs to the Body of Christ, arising from the unity of God Himself, uttered in the dying and rising again of Jesus, and now expressed in the order and structure of the Church.
    ... Ambrose Reeves (1899-1980), “The Church is United in the Body of Christ”, in Church and Race in South Africa, David M. Paton, London: SCM Press, 1958, p. 30-31 (see the book)
    See also Gal. 3:28-29; Ps. 133; Phil. 2:2; 1 Pet. 2:9-10
Quiet time reflection:
    Lord, Your presence saves us again. CQOD    Blog    email    RSS
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