“Christians are those who ask to be saved. When we pray to God to save us, we are not asking for some changed self-understanding, some new way of feeling about ourselves, something to put zest in our lives. Salvation in Christ is being adopted (baptism), made members of a people, Israel, and the church. We really believe that if we were not part of this people we would not be saved.”

“So when the church has opinions about how you spend your money, how you have sex, how you vote, this is salvation. You are not simply being saved from personal greed or licentiousness, you are thereby being made a member of God’s people.”

Lord, Teach Us: The Lord’s Prayer & the Christian Life by William H. Willimon & Stanley Hauerwas

“What do you mean, you want to be a good Catholic?”
The explanation I gave was lame enough, and expressed my confusion, and betrayed how little I had really thought about it at all.
Lax did not accept it.
“What you should say”—he told me—“what you should say is that you want to be a saint.”
A saint! The thought struck me as a little weird. I said:
“How do you expect me to become a saint?”
“By wanting to,” said Lax, simply.

The Seven Storey Mountain by Thomas Merton

Christian Scholar’s Review has published a review-essay (Conflicting Views from the Banks of the Little Bighorn: A Modest Proposal for a Christian Approach to Indian Studies) I co-authored with Dr. Todd C. Ream. A table of contents is available at http://www.csreview.org.

Psalm 2
“Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The kings of the earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together, against the LORD, and against his anointed, saying, Let us break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision. Then shall he speak unto them in his wrath, and vex them in his sore displeasure. Yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.

I will declare the decree: the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee. Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.

Be wise now therefore, O ye kings: be instructed, ye judges of the earth. Serve the LORD with fear, and rejoice with trembling. Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.”

Calvin says, “Let this, therefore, be held as a settled point, that all who do not submit themselves to the authority of Christ make war against God.” Calvin’s comment is correct and his logic draws heavily from Saint John: “For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son: That all men should honour the Son, even as they honour the Father. He that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father which hath sent him.”

Commenting on Modern Man’s obsession with progress, Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy writing in 1938 said, “When we act too early we are not ourselves; our intellect, our will, our efforts, are in advance of our true being, and they may easily forfeit – by their restlessness – our own secret destiny.”

When I was a twenty-one year old collegiate
I learned a prayer for the first time from a classmate,
“Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

The two of us and our friend with the shaved head
Seeking forgiveness of sin and the Kingdom –
Everywhere, at all times, and by any Universal means.

Servant-thinking is humble, acknowledging that God is sufficient. Servant-thinkers will look for His grace in their weaknesses; they do so because they think Theocentrically. Biblical, that.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. 2 Corinthians 12:9

“Both Lutherans and Calvinists answered the question ‘What must I do to be saved?’ by saying that Spirit-worked repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and His substitutionary work of atonement are necessary. But Lutherans had a tendency to remain focused on the doctrine of justification, whereas Calvinists, without minimizing justification, pressed more than Lutherans toward sanctification, which asks, ‘Having been justified by God’s grace, how shall I live to the glory of God?’” (Joel R. Beeke, Living for God’s Glory: An Introduction to Calvinism, p. 11).

A servant-thinker is one who “adopts God’s world as his own.”[1] Therefore, “the believer [servant-thinker] . . . is affirming creation as it really is; he is accepting creation as the world that God made, and he is accepting the responsibility to live in that world as it really is.”[2]

[1] John Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, p. 28.
[2] Ibid., p. 28.