William Zinsser’s priceless observation: “Like the minister’s sermon that builds to a series of perfect conclusions that never conclude, an article that doesn’t stop where it should stop becomes a drag and therefore a failure” (On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction, 63).
I have heard those sermons and read those articles. “A drag and therefore a failure,” ouch.
The Didache is one of the earliest manuscripts we have on Christian teaching, written at the end of the first or the beginning of the second century. Regarding Christian charity, the Didache quotes from an unknown source: “Let your gift to charity sweat in your hands until you know to whom to give it.”
“The establishment of a Christian school movement is in principle a threat to the current establishment, and the establishment knows it” (Douglas Wilson, The Case for Classical Christian Education, 36).
“The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre once said that without an infinite reference point, every finite point is absurd. This statement is exactly correct and explains why every secular classroom is a manifest absurdity. The need for an infinite reference point explains why an understanding that each child bears the image of God is so central to the process of Christian education” (49).
“In order to teach a child rightly, his parents and teachers must know both who and what they are, and they must know this on the authority of God’s Word. They must understand that mankind has fallen away from the initial task assigned in the Garden of Eden, but that Jesus Christ came in order to make it possible for people to resume work on that task. Given the nature of the case, men and women must either serve God or refuse to do so. They must either serve God or man. This is the fundamental question before us in all our debates about education” (50).
Writing after Christ’s accomplishment, John the Evangelist said: “He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8).
During the Lenten season we prepare for and anticipate celebrating a historical event. In a word, the Atonement; when Christ destroyed the works of the devil. Which is why Christians sing: “Death, where is your sting?”
From Richard A Muller’s Dictionary of Latin and Greek Theological Terms:
“protoevangelium: literally, the protogospel; the first announcement of the redemption to be effected in and through Christ, given figuratively to Adam and Eve in the words of God to the serpent, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15); in Reformed federalism, the inception of the covenant of grace.”
“The disciple is not above his master: but every one that is perfect shall be as his master” (Luke 6:40).
It is Ash Wednesday. It is the genesis of the Lenten season. In preparation for Easter the Church has historically found this to be an opportune time for confession of sin and imitation of Christ. Such practices are good and lawful; Spirit-led, that.
It is, therefore, a time for disciples, the pupils, the followers and adherents to the way of Christ, to confess sins and become as their master.
“The function of doctrine is to make Christian prayer as difficult as it ought to be” (William H. Willimon & Stanley Hauerwas, Lord, Teach Us: The Lord’s Prayer & the Christian Life, p. 22).
Psalm 133: Why are the mountains of Zion wet with Dew? And why is godly unity compared to that image?
Revelation 21:2 — Zion, the New Jerusalem, the holy city — she is the Church who was “prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” Christ is the husband, and the Father has created the Church, the Bride. Therefore, the mountains of Zion are wet because she, the Church, is covered with the Dew-wetness of new birth. The Church is wet with Dew because she has been born by the regenerating work of the Spirit, she has left the womb, is wet with new birth and has been given to the Son.
Spirit and water are present and that is why godly unity exists between men who are wet with the waters of Baptism; men who are now united in Christ.
Question 80 from The Heidelberg Catechism: “What difference is there between the Lord’s supper and the popish mass? Answer: The Lord’s supper testifies to us, that we have a full pardon of all sin by the only sacrifice of Jesus Christ, which he himself has once accomplished on the cross; and, that we by the Holy Ghost are ingrafted into Christ, who, according to his human nature is now not on earth, but in heaven, at the right hand of God his Father, and will there be worshipped by us. But the mass teaches, that the living and dead have not the pardon of sins through the sufferings of Christ, unless Christ is also daily offered for them by the priests; and further, that Christ is bodily under the form of bread and wine, and therefore is to be worshipped in them; so that the mass, at bottom, is nothing else than a denial of the one sacrifice and sufferings of Jesus Christ, and an accursed idolatry.”
Travel here to read an article about the University Chorale from my alma mater, who sang last year at a Wednesday evening Mass at Saint Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City. Unsettling, that.
‘”I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away, and there was no more sea. And I John saw a holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.” In taking these words for my text I placed myself at the point where the whole teaching of Scripture culminates. Here, at the last step, we have a definite and satisfactory completion of the former doctrine of the future. There is to be a perfect humanity; not only perfect individually, but perfect in society. There is to be a city of God. “The Holy City!” – there is the realization of the true tendencies of man. “New Jerusalem!” – there is a fulfilment of the ancient promises of God’ (Thomas Dehany Bernard, The Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament, 217).