stuffsamread

[stuffsamread]

Now the goods of this world which come into use in human life, consist in three things: viz. in external wealth pertaining to the "concupiscence of the eyes"; carnal pleasures pertaining to the "concupiscence of the flesh"; and honors, which pertain to the "pride of life," according to 1 Jn. 2:16: and it is in renouncing these altogether, as far as possible, that the evangelical counsels consist. Moreover, every form of the religious life that professes the state of perfection is based on these three: since riches are renounced by poverty; carnal pleasures by perpetual chastity; and the pride of life by the bondage of obedience.

Thomas Aquinas, Summa, I-II, Q 108, A 4.

[stuffsamread]

This thinking, thus prepared and trained, has, in the main, a threefold task in theology. First, it offers its services in finding the material. Scripture is the principle of theology. But the Bible is not a book of laws; it is an organic whole. The material for theology, specifically for dogmatics, is distributed throughout Scripture. Like gold from a mine, so the truth of faith has to be extracted from Scripture by the exertion of all available mental powers.

Herman Bavinck, John Bolt, and John Vriend, Reformed Dogmatics: Prolegomena, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 617.

[stuffsamread]

Born in Tubingen, the son of a teacher, Holl had studied theology in his home city under the direction of the liberal professor Carl von Weizacker. He served briefly in a pastorate and earned a licentiate in theology in 1890. His academic and pastoral beginnings were difficult. On the one hand, having to explain himself to ordinary people and children as a vicar gave him a lesson in clarity and directness that he never forgot: "If I cannot explain something to a twelve-year-old, it is a sign that I do not understand it myself.”

Stayer, Martin Luther: German Saviour, 19.

[stuffsamread]

“Disputations have been allowed from ancient times, even concerning the Holy Trinity. What good is a soldier if he is not allowed to fight, a sheep dog if he may not bark, and a theologian if he may not debate?”

This is what Martin Luther said to Eck, arguing that it must be possible to speak against the Pope on the basis of the Bible. Is this not the true spirit of Protestantism that we lack today?

Source: Roland Bainton, Here I Stand, 108.

[stuffsamread]

“What is illness to the body of our knight errant?  What matter wounds? For each time he falls he shall rise again. Woe to the wicked! Sancho! My armour! My sword!”  Man of La Mancha in as cited in Newsroom

[stuffsamread]

At quite an early stage, Barth’s theological interest was largely concentrated on, and thus reduced to, his parish work, and he became less and less inclined to pursue his own course of research along the lines of liberal theology. In his view, one sub-conscious reason for this may have been an event which took place right at the beginning of his time in Aargau: ‘The death of my father, which took place in 1912, may have been a contributory factor.’48 His father died suddenly, from blood-poisoning, on Sunday 25 February; he was only fifty-five years old. Shortly before, he had given lectures in Berlin and Berne and the previous autumn had ordained his second son to the pastorate. ‘This last period, in particular, had been extremely peaceful for him, in the bosom of his family.’49 Karl hastened to his father’s death-bed immediately after his Sunday sermon. ‘He said farewell to his loved ones peacefully. One of his last remarks which we could hear, spoken as though to students in a lecture room, was: “The main thing is not scholarship, nor learning, nor criticism, but to love the Lord Jesus. We need a living relationship with God, and we must ask the Lord for that.” ’50

Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts, trans. John Bowden (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005), 68.

[stuffsamread]

While preparing for his first Dogmatics, Barth not only began to listen to ‘orthodoxy’, but also developed a positive interest in the Fathers of the early church and even to some extent in Catholic scholasticism. Indeed, he scented still unknown theological possibilities in the realm of Catholic thought—so much so that he resolved ‘not to stand too firmly on the “ground” of Protestantism’.145 Of course the Dogmatics which he then outlined proved to be neither ‘orthodox’ nor scholastic. The really new feature about it proved to be the ‘stubborn persistence’ with which he ‘kept returning from every angle to the situation of the pastor in the pulpit’.

The first paragraphs set the tone for the whole work. The opening sentence read: ‘The problem of dogmatics is scholarly reflection on the Word of God, spoken by God in revelation, and handed down in holy scripture by prophets and apostles. This is what is and should be stated and heard in Christian preaching today. By prolegomena to dogmatics we understand an attempt at an agreement in principle about the object of this reflection, the need for it and the way in which it should be carried on.’ Above this explanation Barth put a prayer by Thomas Aquinas: ‘Merciful God, I pray thee to grant me, if it please thee, ardour to desire thee, diligence to seek   p 155  thee, wisdom to know thee and skill to speak to the glory of thy name. Amen.’

Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts, trans. John Bowden (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005), 154–155.

[stuffsamread]

‘In fact we found ourselves compelled to do something much more obvious. We tried to learn our theological ABC all over again, beginning by reading and interpreting the writing of the Old and New Testaments, more thoughtfully than before. And lo and behold, they began to speak to us—but not as we thought we must have heard them in the school of what was then “modern theology”. They sounded very different on the morning after the day on which Thurneysen had whispered that phrase to me (he had meant it in quite general terms). I sat under an apple tree and began to apply myself to Romans with all the resources that were available to me at the time. I had already learnt in my confirmation instruction that   p 98  this book was of crucial importance. I began to read it as though I had never read it before. I wrote down carefully what I discovered, point by point … I read and read and wrote and wrote.’167

Eberhard Busch, Karl Barth: His Life from Letters and Autobiographical Texts, trans. John Bowden (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock Publishers, 2005), 97–98.

[stuffsamread]

Delivered in the House of Commons in Westminster on 13 May 1940 by Winston Churchill

Mr. Speaker:

On Friday evening last I received His Majesty's commission to form a new Administration. It was the evident wish and will of Parliament and the nation that this should be conceived on the broadest possible basis and that it should include all parties, both those who supported the late Government and also the parties of the Opposition.

I have completed the most important part of this task. A War Cabinet has been formed of five Members, representing, with the Liberal Opposition, the unity of the nation. The three party Leaders have agreed to serve, either in the War Cabinet or in high executive office. The three Fighting Services have been filled. It was necessary that this should be done in one single day, on account of the extreme urgency and rigour of events. A number of other key positions were filled yesterday, and I am submitting a further list to His Majesty tonight. I hope to complete the appointment of the principal Ministers during tomorrow. The appointment of the other Ministers usually takes a little longer, but I trust that when Parliament meets again, this part of my task will be completed and that the Administration will be complete in all respects.

Sir, I considered it in the public interest to suggest that the House should be summoned to meet today. Mr. Speaker agreed and took the necessary steps, in accordance with the powers conferred upon him by the Resolution of the House. At the end of the proceedings today, the Adjournment of the House will be proposed until Tuesday, the 21st of May, with, of course, provision for earlier meeting, if need be. The business to be considered during that week will be notified to Members at the earliest opportunity. I now invite the House, by the Resolution which stands in my name, to record its approval of the steps taken and to declare its confidence in the new Government.

Sir, to form an Administration of this scale and complexity is a serious undertaking in itself, but it must be remembered that we are in the preliminary stage of one of the greatest battles in history, that we are in action at many points in Norway and in Holland, that we have to be prepared in the Mediterranean, that the air battle is continuous and that many preparations have to be made here at home. In this crisis I hope I may be pardoned if I do not address the House at any length today. I hope that any of my friends and colleagues, or former colleagues, who are affected by the political reconstruction, will make all allowances for any lack of ceremony with which it has been necessary to act. I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined the government: "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."

We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, what is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: victory. Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival. Let that be realised; no survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge and impulse of the ages, that mankind will move forward towards its goal.

But I take up my task with buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men. At this time I feel entitled to claim the aid of all, and I say, "Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength."

--

"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat."

[stuffsamread]

The fact that the alteration of our situation is made in both events does not mean that their sequence and correspondence is that of repetition, or that their relationship is that of the unity of two equal factors, of which either the one or the other might appear to be superfluous or simply a closer definition. On the contrary, it is a genuine sequence and correspondence in a differentiated relationship in which both factors have their proper form and function. In all this alteration we have to do with the conversion of man to God and therefore with his reconciliation and that of the world with God. It is, therefore, clear that we have to distinguish a terminus a quo* and a terminus ad quem*: first, a negative event (with a positive intention), a turning away (for the purpose of turning to), a removing (in the sense of a positing), a putting off (with a view to a putting on, 2 Cor. 5:2, Eph. 4:22–24), a freeing from something (with a view to freeing for something else); then a positive event (with a negative presupposition), a turning to (made possible by a definite turning from), a putting on (after a previous putting off), a freeing for something (based upon a freeing from something else). According to the resurrection the death of Jesus Christ as the negative act of God took place with a positive intention. It had as its aim the turning of man to Himself, his positing afresh, his putting on of a new life, his freeing for the future. And, according to the prior death of Jesus Christ, the resurrection has this negative presupposition in a radical turning of man from his old existence, in a total removing of man in his earlier form, in his absolute putting off, in his complete freeing from the past. It is in this correspondence that we see their difference but also their relationship—which is, of course, necessarily a differentiated relationship.

Karl Barth, Geoffrey William Bromiley, and Thomas F. Torrance, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of God, Part 1, vol. 4 (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 310.

[stuffsamread]

And in substance Luther’s drastic commentary on this exchange is quite right, that God the Father said to God the Son: Tu sis Petrus ille negator, Paulus ille persecutor, blasphemus et violentus, David ille adulter, peccator ille qui comedit pomum in Paradiso, latro ille in cruce, in summa: Tu sis omnium hominum persona, qui feceris omnium hominum peccata, tu ergo cogita, ut solvas, et pro eis satisfacias* (ib. 437, 23). And so Christ must and is willing to stand as omnium maximus latro, homicida, adulter, fur, sacrilegus, blasphemus, etc., quo nullus maior unquam in mundo fuerit* (ib. 433, 26).

Karl Barth, Geoffrey William Bromiley, and Thomas F. Torrance, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of God, Part 1, vol. 4 (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 238.

[stuffsamread]

But further, sin is (2) the negation, the opposite of what God did in Jesus Christ, the servant who became Lord, to exalt man—not to deity but to His own right hand in a fellowship of life with Himself. This is the grace of God in its second form: He wills and seeks us as we are, in our creatureliness, as men, that we may be raised to the status of children. That is why He humbled Himself. That is the meaning and force of His mercy. And again the commandment is clear—it is a matter of our being and activity as men in accordance with the exaltation which has come to us. As against that, sin in its second form is sloth. God Himself has not merely shown man the way, but made it for him. God Himself has already exalted him. Therefore man must not wilfully fall. He must not set against the grace of God which is addressed to him, and leads him, and orders his going, his own dark ways of frivolity or melancholy or despair which he seeks and chooses and follows. Adam at the very first fell into this sin too. Israel did it again and again. The world lives and thinks and speaks and seeks and finds on this downward way. Even forgetful Christians are on this way. This is man’s disorder—corresponding to the order established by the grace of God. The doctrine of sin will have to treat of this sloth of man in the second part of the doctrine of reconciliation, and therefore in connexion with the consideration of Jesus Christ as the servant who became Lord (the doctrine of His kingly office).

Karl Barth, Geoffrey William Bromiley, and Thomas F. Torrance, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of God, Part 1, vol. 4 (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 143.

[stuffsamread]

But this means that He is the One who as the Creator and Lord of all things is able and willing to make Himself equal with the creature, Himself to become a creature; the One whose eternity does not prevent but rather permits and commands Him to be in time and Himself to be temporal, whose omnipotence is so great that He can be weak and indeed impotent, as a man is weak and impotent.

He, the true God, is the One whose Godhead is demonstrated and plainly consists in essence in the fact that, seeing He is free in His love, He is capable of and wills this condescension for the very reason that in man of all His creatures He has to do with the one that has fallen away from Him, that has been unfaithful and hostile and antagonistic to Him. He is God in that He takes this creature to Himself, and that in such a way that He sets Himself alongside this creature, making His own its penalty and loss and condemnation to nothingness. He is God in the fact that He can give Himself up and does give Himself up not merely to the creaturely limitation but to the suffering of the human creature, becoming one of these men, Himself bearing the judgment under which they stand, willing to die and, in fact, dying the death which they have deserved. That is the nature and essence of the true God as He has intervened actively and manifestly in Jesus Christ.

Karl Barth, Geoffrey William Bromiley, and Thomas F. Torrance, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of God, Part 1, vol. 4 (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 130.

[stuffsamread]

The first is that in Jesus Christ we have to do with very God. The reconciliation of man with God takes place as God Himself actively intervenes, Himself taking in hand His cause with and against and for man, the cause of the covenant, and in such a way (this is what distinguishes the event of reconciliation from the general sway of the providence and universal rule of God) that He Himself becomes man. God became man. That is what is, i.e., what has taken place, in Jesus Christ. He is very God acting for us men, God Himself become man. He is the authentic Revealer of God as Himself God. Again, He is the effective proof of the power of God as Himself God. Yet again.   V 4, p 129    p 129  He is the fulfiller of the covenant as Himself God. He is nothing less or other than God Himself, but God as man. When we say God we say honour and glory and eternity and power, in short, a regnant freedom as it is proper to Him who is distinct from and superior to everything else that is. When we say God we say the Creator and Lord of all things. And we can say all that without reservation or diminution of Jesus Christ—but in a way in which it can be said in relation to Him, i.e., in which it corresponds to the Godhead of God active and revealed in Him. No general idea of “Godhead” developed abstractly from such concepts must be allowed to intrude at this point. How the freedom of God is constituted, in what character He is the Creator and Lord of all things, distinct from and superior to them, in short, what is to be understood by “Godhead,” is something which—watchful against all imported ideas, ready to correct them and perhaps to let them be reversed and renewed in the most astonishing way—we must always learn from Jesus Christ. He defines those concepts: they do not define Him. When we start with the fact that He is very God we are forced to keep strictly to Him in relation to what we mean by true “Godhead.”

Karl Barth, Geoffrey William Bromiley, and Thomas F. Torrance, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of God, Part 1, vol. 4 (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 128–129.

[stuffsamread]

The figures of every religious culture are necessarily secularised and recede. They can keep themselves alive only as ideas, symbols, and ghosts, and finally as comic figures. And in the end even in this form they sink into oblivion. No sentence is more dangerous or revolutionary than that God is One and there is no other like Him. All the permanencies of the world draw their life from ideologies and mythologies, from open or disguised religions, and to this extent from all possible forms of deity and divinity. It was on the truth of the sentence that God is One that the “Third Reich” of Adolf Hitler made shipwreck. Let this sentence be uttered in such a way that it is heard and grasped, and at once 450 prophets of Baal are always in fear of their lives. There is no more room now for what the recent past called toleration. Beside God there are only His creatures or false gods, and beside faith in Him there are religions only as religions of superstition, error and finally irreligion.

Karl Barth, Geoffrey William Bromiley, and Thomas F. Torrance, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of God, Part 1, vol. 2 (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 444.

—

God’s presence includes His lordship. How can He be present without being Lord? And His lordship includes His glory. How can He be Lord-without glorifying Himself, without being glorious in Himself? And if nothing exists without Him, this means that everything is subject to Him. And that it is subject to Him means that it can and must serve His glory.

Karl Barth, Geoffrey William Bromiley, and Thomas F. Torrance, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of God, Part 1, vol. 2 (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 461.

—

And what is left to us? What place is there for us when we are like that? In what sense is the history of the acts of God at this centre and end our history? Are we not without history? Have we not become mere objects? Have we not lost all responsibility? Are we not reduced to mere spectators? Is not our being deprived of all life or activity? Or does it not lack all significance as our life and activity? “God with us”—that is something which we can easily understand even in these circumstances. But how is it to include within it a “We with God”? And if it does not, how can it really be understood as a “God with us”? The answer is that we ourselves are directly summoned, that we are lifted up, that we are awakened to our own truest being as life and act, that we are set in motion by the fact that in that one man God has made Himself our peacemaker and the giver and gift of our salvation. By it we are made free for Him. By it we are put in the place which comes to us where our salvation (really ours) can come to us from Him (really from Him). This actualisation of His redemptive will by Himself opens up to us the one true possibility of our own being. Indeed, what remains to us of life and activity in the face of this actualisation of His redemptive will by Himself can only be one thing. This one thing does not mean the extinguishing of our humanity,   V 4, p 15    p 15  but its establishment. It is not a small thing, but the greatest of all. It is not for us a passive presence as spectators, but our true and highest activation—the magnifying of His grace which has its highest and most profound greatness in the fact that God has made Himself man with us, to make our cause His own, and as His own to save it from disaster and to carry it through to success. The genuine being of man as life and activity, the “We with God,” is to affirm this, to admit that God is right, to be thankful for it, to accept the promise and the command which it contains, to exist as the community, and responsibly in the community, of those who know that this is all that remains to us, but that it does remain to us and that for all men everything depends upon its coming to pass. And it is this “We with God” that is meant by the Christian message in its central “God with us,” when it proclaims that God Himself has taken our place, that He Himself has made peace between Himself and us, that by Himself He has accomplished our salvation, i.e., our participation in His being.

Karl Barth, Geoffrey William Bromiley, and Thomas F. Torrance, Church Dogmatics: The Doctrine of God, Part 1, vol. 4 (London; New York: T&T Clark, 2004), 14–15.

[stuffsamread]

Augustine was, he contends, the first Existentialist. We can find the philosophical and conceptual roots of the 20th-century quest for authenticity in Heidegger’s Being and Time, and these ideas can, in turn, be traced to Augustine’s Confessions, on which Heidegger was lecturing for several years before writing his opus.

Camus wrote his dissertation on Augustine, Smith notes. He was also examined by Derrida, and, in 1895, the first two books that Oscar Wilde requested in HM Prison Pentonville were his Confessions and The City of God. Even today, Smith observes, Augustine appears on history and literature syllabuses.

from: https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/articles/2019/11-october/features/features/the-20th-century-was-augustinian?fbclid=IwAR1Y7L6q-PPyxsKIfMJXsXRNJ2NVpr4WTLhxdnoyL5eR3AcfQI9Bc9a9GpQ